11.06.2008 08:10 - Particle Physics for TV SF Writers.
Scientists have recently postulated a new particle, which, they claim, has an effect on narrative structure. The particle was formulated after postgraduate students were subjected to several heavy nights of "Star Trek: Voyager" reruns and has been named the "McGuffin boson" or, more informally, the "convenient boson".
A McGuffin particle (Hitchcock, White et al) is a class of subatomic particle which acts as catalyst for change. Thus McGuffin particles drive events in the normal universe. The convenient boson is a particle that reacts in the presence of a McGuffin. This reaction takes two forms.
- The convenient boson will decay into a number of equally convenient subatomic particles, which just happen to provide a get-out clause. This is the reason that in, Star Trek:NG, the Enterprise deflector shield can usually be reconfigured in a ridiculously small amount of time to generate beams of these new particles. It's not actually being reconfigured, it's just generating convenient bosons, which decay into exactly the right particle to save everyone's skin.
- The convenient boson will warp narrative time by exactly 97% of the story length (minus commercial breaks), causing a complete "plot reset". Characters who have been killed will therefore never have been killed, and so on.
It is theorised that convenient bosons are at their greatest energy potential around a fatal occurence, causing quantum rethreading. Hence, the more fatalities to long-running crewmembers, the more chance of a plot reset. Convenient bosons also tend to get trapped in areas of dimensional instability, such as wormholes, black holes and in the neighbourhood of quasars, pulsars or any other astronomical phenomenon which Hollywood TV writers don't understand.
The charge of the convenient boson can be measured (ie its "convenience") by taking the length of the TV show and working out how late in the plot the convenient boson appears. The later the appearence, the higher the charge. This can also be applied to the complete run of the TV show and how late in the season the episode appears. This is why many TV series runs end with "flashback" episodes - the convenience of the bosons is approaching infinity. (better known as a "Deus Ex Machina" state)
Neutron stars, which consist largely of quark matter, are also theorised to have produced dense versions of matter that consists of nothing but superconcentrated convenient bosons. This material is referred to as McGuffinium, small amounts of which have been obtained (conveniently, of course) in the United States from a "meteor" found at Roswell Air Force Base. The bullet responsible for the death of President Kennedy was rumoured to be tipped with a small amount of McGuffinium, which accounts for its strange flight path.
McGuffinium, which is a narrative semiconductor (ie it only conducts electric when its necessary to the plot) has been postulated as the ideal substance with which to build a quantum computer, as current attempts to build a qubit have run into problems with the theory of indeterminacy, and lawsuits for cruelty to cats. A quantum computer built out of McGuffinium would produce the right answer at exactly the right time, without impacting on the inherent drama of the situation. There is evidence to suggest use of McGuffinium in electronic circuits is already widespread, for example in timer circuits for atomic bombs, nuclear power station control systems, self-destruct systems and any other system that has the capability of being deactivated just in the nick of time.
