And yeah, not only does no one seem interested in a pretty complex situation, but he explains he's not doing it for any of the reasons they thought but from sincere self-sacrificing belief so let's murder him horrifically (scientists: evil narcissists if they get their names on things, also evil narcissists if they don't care about that, I guess?) and Virdon's reaction to seeing the wormhole went off properly is he'd rather kill them all just to spite Jones than even try it, because better certain failure and death than something Virdon didn't sign off on. Also, while everything's presumably going to go to hell given this is Marooned On The Planet Of The Apes and not Landed Just Fine On The Planet Of The Apes And Had A Lovely Time, right now the fact everything's going wrong seems tied to stuff being smashed up and the only guy who knew how to work it being murdered.
If it's supposed to be unambiguous supervilliany, then I'd say it'd work far better to be more, "This will only work for a fraction of the people the other way would've, but the couple people who do will be in great shape! And for my betrayal, I shall be one of them! Along with that other scientist guy we're also supposed to hate! Mwahahaha!" Since it's going to be time travel, maybe instead of that being a complete surprise it could've been that their secret evil plan was to jump into Earth's better-off past and live like kings with their superior technology, and it just turns out they were wrong about the direction. Or, if it's important that the focus revolve around science as inherently villainous, then having the motivation be science itself would work - maybe they don't expect the wormhole to help anything. Maybe they looked at the same timeline Sally did, decided the colony ship couldn't be finished faster than the human race would self-destruct, but they would have just enough time to do one last grand experiment and at least find out the outcome of it before they die with everyone else. Right now all of this seems to boil down to that we should just assume science people are always up to no good. I don't think that chunk of people would be put off by adding in a more detailed explanation about how the science people are up to no good, while I'm definitely pretty put off by the lack of it.
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timeasmymeasure
Marooned On The Planet Of The Apes Ch3
Date: 2022-07-09 01:15 pm (UTC)If it's supposed to be unambiguous supervilliany, then I'd say it'd work far better to be more, "This will only work for a fraction of the people the other way would've, but the couple people who do will be in great shape! And for my betrayal, I shall be one of them! Along with that other scientist guy we're also supposed to hate! Mwahahaha!" Since it's going to be time travel, maybe instead of that being a complete surprise it could've been that their secret evil plan was to jump into Earth's better-off past and live like kings with their superior technology, and it just turns out they were wrong about the direction. Or, if it's important that the focus revolve around science as inherently villainous, then having the motivation be science itself would work - maybe they don't expect the wormhole to help anything. Maybe they looked at the same timeline Sally did, decided the colony ship couldn't be finished faster than the human race would self-destruct, but they would have just enough time to do one last grand experiment and at least find out the outcome of it before they die with everyone else. Right now all of this seems to boil down to that we should just assume science people are always up to no good. I don't think that chunk of people would be put off by adding in a more detailed explanation about how the science people are up to no good, while I'm definitely pretty put off by the lack of it.