Heroes #1-3 [spoilers]

[ewx]

References - or at least things that reminded me of other stories:

• Claire being involved with a train crash connects to Unbreakable (you could say that of the involvement with comics too)
• "Probably lots of Sureshes where you're from. Like Smith. Or Anderson." Matrix.
• Hiro's half-asleep travelling reminded me of Fight Club.
• "How was school?"
  "Very school-like. How was work?"
  "Very work-like."
    ...reminded me of Heathers.
• When Claire goes off with the quarterback at the party, another girl watches them go. Straight out of The Rules Of Attraction.
• Claire in the morgue obviously put me in mind of CSI.

Most of the interconnections are pretty obvious but some seemed a little subtler:

• Micah Sander's comic matches Hiro Nakamura's screensaver.
• Hiro's colleague (what's his name?) is watching Niki on the net.
• Spotting things that Isaac predicted is probably mostly too obvious to be worth mentioning, but one of his paintings has the kind of cursive f shape seen on the pool at house Matt Parkman attends and later on the necklace of the black guy in the bar.

Finally:

• Matt got dumped by telepathy!
• Drunk people seem to think double as well as see double.
• If the magic powers are supposed to be genetic then Micah presumably has something too.
• Were the cheerleaders told to change into uniform before meeting the fireman or was it their own idea?

Comments

[gareth-rees.livejournal.com]

I like Hiro Protagonist Nakamura. But shut up already with the stupid technobabble explanation for the superpowers. I don't believe a word of it and it just wastes time that these episodes desperately need because there are so many characters to catch up with.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Ooh, cool.

If the magic powers are supposed to be genetic then Micah presumably has something too.

Well, they're presumably not supposed to be *always* inherited, or someone would have noticed by now. But it does mean he *could* have something, and the laws of narrative say he probably will.

Were the cheerleaders told to change into uniform before meeting the fireman or was it their own idea?

LOL. I think they just wear that all the time (seriously :)).

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

(BTW I don't know if you know/have it available, but next week's episode seems to be shown directly after on BBC3, I've seen 1-4.)

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's handy to know. I still have a discovery problem for TV programs.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Likewise. I browse what's on tonight, and watch the "and next week..." or check ahead for something I want to follow, but don't watch enough to spot something good coming up -- it was pure chance I saw the first episodes of Heroes were going to be on. And mostly chance I caught #4, though I thought to check because I expected two eps.

(I'm glad it was helpful, I checked ahead to next week to make sure I wasn't going to tell you they'd gone and put half the eps on bbc3 only and you missed it :()

[imc.livejournal.com]

Who the hell autopsies a person who died of a head injury by ripping open their chest? Before removing the foreign object, even? [IANAmortician]

Is Ando watching a recorded session of Niki? She didn't seem to be spending an awful lot of time in front of the camera. Is $40 for a 20-minute webcam striptease the going rate? Sounds a bit steep to me, not that I have any experience in such matters.

I don't know Fight Club very well, but doesn't it have a scene with buildings blowing up in the background?

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Yes, though it's ordinary demolition, not a nuclear attack on a city.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry for the length of comments at this time in the morning...

Yes, though Isaac's painting could *in theory* be a gigantic conventional explosion... the mushroom cloud is (if I remember Sonic and Martin's explanations) an atmosphere effect, not tied to the bomb, just the size of the boom :)

[sonicdrift.livejournal.com]

If you popped a huge balloon full of a pretty coloured gas which was less dense than air you'd get the same effect. Alternatively, get JamesR to take you up in an aeroplane a burst a balloon full of denser gas for an upside-down mushroom cloud.

Actually that sounds pretty, I wonder if I could get funding to do a really big experiment.

By the end of the series the interconnections were making my head spin and I was forgetting who knew who. It didn't get as insane as Lost though.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Who the hell autopsies a person who died of a head injury by ripping open their chest?

Well, I suspect that was poetic license. But afaik I don't think that's stupid. She's a mysterious death, right? So you have to do a full autopsy to find out what killed her (whether the head injury was first, or the river was first, or drugs or something was first). I don't know which you'd do first, but cutting her open should be at least as *important* as examining the chunk of wood, as you can *see* the chunk of wood would have killed her, what you want to find out is if there was anything else. Removing the wood looked very casual, maybe she was *finished* and removing it was the end of the autopsy and the start of sewing swtuff back up?

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Is Ando watching a recorded session of Niki?

I assumed the first time was real, and then he was watching a recording of it (maybe a little cheekily), after all, her studio was trashed and she's on the road. But I'm not sure. I notice he didn't recognise her :)

Is $40 for a 20-minute webcam striptease the going rate?

I've no idea, but it doesn't seem too extreme. (Someone could look it up, but not me...) She'd have to do a few hours a day to equate to a professional salary, but there's also setting up and finding clients, and likely doesn't enjoy it -- I think I'd rather do seven and a half hours of programming than three hours of stripping for sleasy people, which suggests it's on the right order of magnitude. (I don't know how much such online 1-1 stuff exists though, presumably it does, but all I know comes from TV dramas :))

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Do we know for sure that all the threads are happening at the same time? (In fact I'm pretty sure they cannot be.)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Oh, I hadn't thought of that. I assumed they were. But don't many sync up, for instance didn't Niki walk past Hiro in the casino?

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Are you talking about #4 here??

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Doh! God, I'm sorry. I totally forgot what was in which.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Stop watching things four books out of sync from me ;)