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The Curiosity Mars rover covers a lot of ground for a robot that only moves at a max speed of .1 mph. A photo snapped recently by NASAs Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter provides a pretty cool visualization of what the rover has been up to so far this year, showing the tracks Curiosity left behind as it journeyed from its previous science target an area called the Gediz Vallis channel to its next destination. The rover itself is just a tiny speck at the front of the roughly 1,050-foot-long trail, and according to NASA, this snap is believed to be the first orbital image of the rover mid-drive across the Red Planet. The image was captured on February 28 by the orbiters HiRISE (High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) camera, and shows Curiositys movement over 11 drives starting at the beginning of that month. While a few weeks might seem like a long time for tire tracks to stick around in the dirt, this is normal for Mars. The tracks are [l]ikely to last for months before being erased by wind, NASA says. Curiosity is expected to reach its next science destination, which is home to formations thought to have been created long ago by groundwater, in the coming weeks. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/nasas-mars-orbiter-snapped-this-image-of-curiosity-trucking-along-down-at-the-surface-211404950.html?src=rss
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Spoilers for The Well. Sometimes, in fiction, you dont need to say a Very Important Thing in a Very Important Way to make a good point, just ask how a thing would work if it played out in the world. This weeks episode of Doctor Who, The Well, does exactly that, and brilliantly. Picking up straight after Lux, the Doctor and Belinda, still in their 50s outfits, are trying to get the TARDIS to work. Belinda helps with the controls, but the vessel still refuses to land on May 24, 2025, which panics the nurse even more. If the TARDIS isnt broken, she assumes that the date or the Earth itself could be broken, and frets about her parents. The Doctor shares her concerns, but promises that she will be reunited with her family. The Doctor persists with his plan to land in a few more spots with the Vindicator (the gadget he built last week) to orient the TARDIS. This time, its 500,000 years in the future, and Belinda asks if humanity even exists by now. He assures her it does, as humans spread to the stars and wormed themselves into every corner of the universe. The pair head to the TARDIS wardrobe to get into some appropriate clothes before heading out. They step out onto the gantry of a spaceship where an advance party of marines are leaping into the void. With no choice but to join them, they land on the planet below, enabling the Doctor to take the Vindicator reading. But, alas, the planets heavy radiation means the ship (and by extension, the TARDIS) has to glide down slowly over the next five hours. So they tag along with the mission, the Psychic Paper enabling the Doctor and Belinda to insinuate themselves with the team. The planet is inhospitable, occupied only by a small mining colony that has dug down into the world to extract its last remaining useful resources. The colony went silent a few days before and, before you can say Oh, is this going to be an(other) Aliens riff? one of the marines suggests it would have been wiser to nuke the site from orbit. All of the colonists are dead, half from gunfire, half from injuries that look like they fell and broke every bone in their body. The mirrors are all smashed and the systems are offline, the records of what went on inaccessible. But there is one survivor, the colonys chef, Aliss Bethick (Rose Ayling-Ellis) who, like the actress who portrays her, is deaf. Aliss has been waiting in the middle of a large cargo turntable (which reads on camera as a big circle) for days. Aliss is isolated, both physically in the staging and because of her hearing loss, and while she can lipread, its still a barrier between her and the soldiers. The Doctor can communicate with Aliss in sign, and the soldiers all have their own captioning screens on their lapels. Much of the second act is taken up with the interrogation of Aliss as the marines work through the logistics of how to communicate with her. For instance, getting her attention by casting to another soldiers screen in her eye-line to get her to turn around. Belinda enters the circle to treat Aliss injuries but keeps seeing something lurking behind her new patient. It isnt long before the Doctor learns that the desolate planet they stand on was once covered in diamonds. This is the planet Midnight from the series four episode of the same name when the Doctor, trapped in a shuttle, tries and ultimately fails to defeat a sinister entity that possessed one of the passengers. Like then, the Doctors pleas for calm fail. Two of the soldiers mutiny and attempt to lure the entity out and kill it. They do not survive. Its Belinda who works out and explains the rules: If you imagine the host Aliss at the center of a clock, then whoever stands directly behind her is attacked by the unseen monster. If you stand at six oclock then youre fine, but youll die at midnight. Quite literally, as whoever is in the entitys way gets thrown around like a ragdoll half the crew shooting each other to kill the entity, the other half getting minced by the alien. The Doctor approaches Aliss to speak to the monster but since its time for the third act to start wrapping up, he just stares for a bit before working out the solution. In order to mine the diamonds the colonists would dump down mercury, using a pipe which is conveniently running behind Aliss head. Shooting the pipe will cause a river of mercury to cascade down, creating a mirror that should be enough to banish the monster. They make their escape, but the Doctor cant help but wait behind to see the monster, giving it a chance to latch onto Belinda. The captain of the marines shoots Belinda enough that the entity thinks shes about to die and switches hosts, after which point they leap into the mineshaft. Belinda wakes up in the TARDIS in the Doctors care, ready for the next adventure. Meanwhile, the marines debrief their boss Mrs. Flood! Who knows all about the Vindicator, too before revealing the alien did make it on board their spaceship after all. One of the threads in the episode is Belinda keeps discussing human terms and superstitions to shrugs from everyone around her. Its something thats got both her and The Doctor puzzled, as there seems to be something very wrong with all of reality. You die at midnight... James Pardon / BBC Studios / Disney / Bad Wolf Showrunner Russell T. Davies was asked about bad faith criticisms that the show had somehow gone woke. Someone always brings up matters of diversity and there are online warriors accusing us of diversity and wokeness and involving messaging and issues and I have no time for this, he said. What you might call diversity I just call an open door, he added, its cold and its bracing and theres a world in front of you! Theres a blue sky, theres clouds and theres noise, theres birdsong, theres people arguing. Whats notable about this is that Davies open-minded (and open-hearted) approach to making the show creates storytelling possibilities. For instance, the last time an episode of Doctor Who featured a deaf character (2015s Under The Lake), she relied upon a colleague to interpret on her behalf. And her ability to lipread wound up being part of the solution to the episodes problem reducing her to little more than a plot mechanism. Here, while Aliss deafness is a core part of the plot, it doesnt feel as if shes defined by that one facet. Effort has been made to flesh out her character, and its more a venue to explore how technology and communication intersect with someone with different accessibility needs. Especially as (co-writers) Sharma Angel-Walfall and Russell T. Davies made the effort to think through how this would work. BBC Studios / Disney / Bad Wolf Whenever Im watching an episode of nü-nü-Who, in the back of my mind Im mulling what the injection of Disney money changed. Midnight, the episode The Well is a sequel to, was produced as a double banked episode splitting the leads to shoot two episodes at a time. Midnight was also intended as a cheap story, with the bulk of the script taking place in a single room. If were being honest, The Well could have worked just as well given the bulk of the action takes place in a handful of rooms. Thats not to say the extra cash lavished upon this episode is wasted: The Well feels almost indulgent by Doctor Who standards for the sheer breadth and depth of its sets. I cant help but recall the Aliens riff Strange New Worlds produced in its first season, which re-used the series standing sets for the wreck of the USS Peregrine. It sounds weird to say that Doctor Who is luxuriating in the fact it can afford to show a trashed bunkroom for all of a minute, but it is. Perhaps part of the reason it does feel indulgent is that this is an episode relatively low on incident and high on character. Belinda gets a real showcase here, both asserting herself on the narrative at several points, but also being rebuked for doing so. She tries to take charge to help the injured Aliss but the medical kit is so advanced shes not able to use it. Shes smart enough to work out the rules of the alien, but also it gets the better of her in the end. Whereas the first two episodes this season felt overstuffed and rushed, the smaller story and focus on character lets everything breathe. That an accessibility tool is a key focus of the plot and used as a venue for storytelling and character development is marvelous. Look, Im as bored saying it as you are reading it, but once again I cant help but point out the influence of Steven Moffat on this season. One of the inspirations for monsters like the Weeping Angels and the Silence was the idea of them being easy to turn into a schoolyard game. The unnamed entity here, with the mechanic that if you stand directly behind the host you will die, seems perfectly in that tradition. But The Well also offers instances where Davies is in conversation with the rest of this season and his earlier work. In both Midnight and The Well, the Doctor is at risk of losing his grip on the situation because the threat of the unknown makes people paranoid and jumpy. A streak of deeply dark pessimism runs through all of this work and while its also on show here, theres a little more hope than there was before. Its also interesting how Davies, who has always structured his seasons in a fairly rigid manner, seems to be deliberately repeating motifs and beats. The parallels between this season and the last feel almost like theyre trying to draw attention to themselves. Space Babies and The Robot Revolution, The Devils Chord and Lux and now the Boom paired with The Well feel like episodes vying for the same space in different realities. Not to mention the repetition of moments from episode to episode like the TARDIS wardrobe sequence and the repeated hand injuries. If next week's "Lucky Day" is predominantly featured on Ruby Sunday without the Doctor and revolves around physical distance and / or the supernatural, then perhaps we might assume that this is more than coincidence. Mrs. Flood Corner Ive always hated The End or is it? fake-outs that often undermine the drama of whatever denouement theyre tacked on to. Sure, it can be effective if you want to cheapen the sacrifices your characters made to vanquish the villain, but often it comes across as hacky. Not to mention that people with poor media literacy will assume that its actually a teaser for a cliffhanger to be resolved the following week. Here, eh, its essentially a way to shoehorn Mrs. Flood in as the soldiers' boss taking the debrief after the Doctor and Belinda depart. She knows about the Doctors use of the Vindicator, and has now seen it in action thanks to the soldiers recording. But theres no breaking the fourth wall, which means shes operating here in the same manner as Susan Twist did last year. Which is, uh, interesting.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/tv-movies/doctor-who-the-well-review-signing-makes-you-feel-heard-200528202.html?src=rss
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The hit co-op adventure game Split Fiction is already headed for Hollywood with Sydney Sweeney in a starring role, according to Variety. Along with the Euphoria actor, the film adaptation welcomed Wickeds Jon M. Chu as the projects director and screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, who worked on Deadpool & Wolverine. Sweeney will also reportedly be an executive producer for the Split Fiction movie. Split Fiction features two authors named Mio and Zoe who get trapped in fictional worlds they penned up. Its still unknown which of the two Split Fiction protagonists Sweeney will portray. Shortly after the video games release in March, Variety reported on a bidding war for a film adaptation of Split Fiction. Hazelight Studios, an indie video game developer out of Sweden, created the game that centers around split-screen combat and bounces between sci-fi and fantasy worlds. The game saw early success, selling two million copies in its first week, which may have led to the quick turnaround of a proposed Hollywood adaptation. It was picked up by Story Kitchen, a studio known for adaptations of franchises like Sonic the Hedgehog and Tomb Raider, but theres no release window yet. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/split-fiction-movie-adaptation-lands-sydney-sweeney-as-star-180322064.html?src=rss
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