Melanie's Vault Rant
I worked in a commercial bank for thirteen years. In all this time, I was fortunate enough to only experience one bank robbery. Some of my colleagues, who worked in other branches, saw two or three over a career-and one veteran teller I knew made it through her eighth robbery before retiring. (Her words as the last robbery ended peacefully: "I wonder if his mother knows what he's doing?")
Another of my friends actually went through a robbery lying on the floor with a shotgun pressed against her head.
Bank robbers are usually desperate and stupid. The risks are enormous and the potential payoff is very small. Smart criminals don't use guns to rob banks, they use pens. (I'm talking about fraud. Never mind what Willie Sutton said, *that's* where the money is.)
But let me tell you about the robbery in my bank, the one I lived through.
It was 9:24 on a Friday morning. Two individuals wearing ski masks entered the bank lobby with guns drawn. A young man, one of our customers, was at the same time walking away from the teller line with five $20 bills in his hand. One of the robbers demanded the cash. The customer, probably acting on gut instinct, tried to be a hero; he refused to turn over the money and tried to knock the robber to the ground.
Two seconds later the customer was on the floor with an bullet wound in his stomach and an exit wound in his back. His $100 was scattered on the floor around him. The robbers fled, with not one single penny of profit. Do you think we were grateful?
I spent the longest five minutes of my life on my knees beside that wounded customer, my hands on his belly, trying to staunch the bleeding. I am relieved to be able to tell you that he survived. The bank paid all his medical bills and we put $100 back into his account. (The actual cash on the floor was taken as evidence.) The would-be robbers were never caught.
We would have given those robbers whatever they asked for. That's standard policy. If you are ever in a bank when a robbery happens, stay calm and take your cue from the employees. They have been trained, really trained, to deal with these occurrences. The first rule, the only important rule, is to protect the lives of the people in the bank. The money can be replaced.
If someone points a gun at you and asks for your money, give it to them! Your life is infinitely more precious than anything you are carrying in your pocket.
There was one very good moment in Vault. Ray says that it would be stupid for them to die just so that bank doesn't have to pay higher insurance premiums. He was absolutely, 100 percent right about that. And Fraser was absolutely, 100 percent wrong. His actions created an unnecessary hostage situation, and I'd bet every one of those (yes, I know, fictional) bank employees was thinking the same thing. "Give them the money. Give them the money, and they'll go away."
Vault is packed with technical errors as well. Principal among these is that it is physically impossible to either close or lock a vault door from the inside, because there is no mechanism on the inside to extend the locking bolts or to operate the combination dials. No doorknob, if you will. And if Fraser knows so much about vaults, why didn't he use the vault's telephone to call for help? (You know the one I'm talking about--he yanked the cord out of the wall so Ray wouldn't have to talk to Francesca.) It also occurs to me to wonder what would have happened if Morgan and her gang had just given up and left? Or if the police came along and arrested them? (Hint: Glug, glug, glug.)
If it were just the technical stuff, I wouldn't be so upset with Vault. Unfortunately, the episode's serious philosophical error makes it very hard for me to enjoy the show.
(First posted to RideForever 9/30/99)
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Melanie's All the Queen's Horses Rant
All the Queen's Horses is one of only three episodes of Due South that I can clearly remember watching on CBS. (The others are the Pilot and Victoria's Secret.) I didn't see much of DS the first time 'round, because it usually aired on the same night as choir practice.
For some reason, I was home for this one. I remember laughing so hard I almost cried when the drugged Mounties awoke from their slumber, still on-pitch and in perfect tempo. I remember being fascinated by the well-paced action plot. And I remember being disappointed by all the technical mistakes. I taped the episode that night, and I made my family watch the tape. "This is a great show--but they don't know the first thing about trains," I said. (My family has learned to put up with my little quirks.)
I only nitpick out of deep respect for the Due South. I salute this episode's wild-rollicking plot, it's snappy dialog and the teasingly hot Ben/Meg scenes (the best scenes those two had together in the whole series, as far as I'm concerned). I dock them 5 points for fart jokes, but I give 'em plus 25 points for Ray jumping off the bridge with Dief in his arms. (Is this not the bravest, most foolhardy single act performed by any character other than Fraser in the entire series?)
But the mistakes--oh God, the mistakes! Let's start with Buck's heroic Double-Douglas Fir Telescoping Bank Shot. It was a fine piece of shooting, but Buck was shooting at the wrong thing! That pointer on a pole is a signal, there to tell the engineer which direction the switch is set. Operating a switch by shooting the indicator is like trying to steer a car by shooting the turn signal.
But miracle of miracles, the Mountie train reached the switch and began to roll onto the spur line and out of harm's way--just seconds ahead of the oncoming train full of nuclear waste. Meanwhile, Fraser and Ray disabled the booby-trap and hit the brakes. Yikes! This was the worst time to apply the brakes! They left the back end of the train, full of horses and sleeping Mounties, right in the path of the other locomotive. (Crunch!)
My biggest train-related complaint is that the show completely ignored the role of the railroad dispatcher. The dispatcher is somewhat like an air-traffic controller, only much more powerful because the dispatcher actually controls the path of the trains. (Ain't no steering wheels on those babies.) The engineer controls his train's speed--he can brake, stop, or even run the train backward--but he can't control where the train goes. That's done by a railroad dispatcher who may be hundreds of miles away.
Each dispatcher has a section of tracks under his control. Thanks to a fairly simple sensor system in the tracks, he knows exactly where every train in his sector is located, which direction it's traveling, and how fast. He is in constant radio contact with all of them. (The engineer must radio the dispatcher every time the train passes a signal.) The dispatcher decides whether a passenger train has to sit on a siding while a slow freight passes it in the opposite direction, or whether the slow freight has to wait for the passenger train to pass. (Freight equals profit; passengers are just government-mandated charity.)
The dispatcher alone controls the switches. If there is a manual control at the site, it'll be padlocked in one position to prevent rowdy kids (or terrorists) from playing games with it. I seriously doubt that a switch onto a spur line toward a nuclear power plant would have had such a manual control. If anything, a line used by trains carrying radioactive waste would be more secure, not less.
So. The Musical Ride's train was a runaway. The terrorists disabled the brake, and there was some kind of explosive rigged to go off if the train slowed down. (I wonder: was this episode made before or after the movie Speed?) What would the dispatcher do?
First of all, he would have gotten every other train in the area off of the runaway's track. He'd have switched them off onto sidings or spur lines, and told them to sit there until the danger is past. Then he'd have found some harmless place for the runaway train to roll until its diesel fuel ran out, or until the bomb was disarmed. Runaway or not, that train was going to go where the dispatcher sent it!
Let's assume, for a moment, that the freight carrying the spent fuel rods somehow managed to get caught in the runaway's path with no siding or spur available. What would the engineer of the freight have done? First of all, she wouldn't have kept the damn thing rolling forward! Trains can run just as fast in reverse as they can going forward. Admittedly, if there was no caboose from which the conductor could have acted as the engineer's eyes it would have been pretty dangerous--especially if there were grade-level crossings along the way--but it would have been a hell of a lot less dangerous than running head-on into a passenger train loaded with explosives!
Being the obsessive, beta-reading sort that I am, I've considered a possible alternative plot for ATQH that maintains much of the story's best parts while dealing with my concerns about realism. There's one major change that would be needed: Bolt would have to be angry with the Canadian government, not the American government. Considering that he hijacked a Canadian Pacific train full of Mounties, I don't think that's too hard to believe. In my version of the story, the Musical Ride members themselves are the intended victims of Bolt's scheme.
Next, take the freight train full of spent fuel rods out of the picture. (You're not going to get a nuclear meltdown out of spent fuel rods anyway, just a messy radiation leak.)
Wire the Mounties' train to explode if it slows down. Hell, throw some radioactive waste or a vial of deadly jungle virus into the story if a simple bomb isn't evil enough, but put it on the train with the Mounties. Then sabotage the brakes so it can't stop, and let the fun begin!
The police, FBI and RCMP would have to cooperate with the railroad, whose dispatchers would clear the main line of traffic and estimate how long the runaway can continue at its current speed before exhausting its fuel. For excitement, throw in some physical dangers for a fast-moving train--wild animals on the tracks, level crossings that have to be cleared of vehicular traffic, poorly maintained track, steep grades and curves that shouldn't be taken at full speed. The dispatchers would have to choose the safest stretch of track for the train to traverse while out of control.
That leaves our heroes to fight it out with the bad guys. I don't see any reason why the action on and around the train would have to change one bit. The bathroom scene, the singing/sleeping/singing Mounties, the holy hairpin incident, the fight on top of the train, the kiss on top of the train, Ray's leap of faith--all would work in the revised story. The only plot element I can't work into this version is the Double-Douglas Fir Telescoping Bank Shot.
If anyone has stayed with me through all of this, I apologize for babbling on so long. I've always wanted to have a captive audience for my ATQH "trains don't work that way!" rant, and I feel much better now. ;-) If you spotted any holes in my plan, jus' let me know.
(First posted to RideForever 12/1/00)
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Why season three is a good thing, even for fans who hate season three
If Due South had ended after two disappointing seasons on CBS, it would have disappeared. In order for the series to enjoy television immortality in syndication, there would have to be more episodes--a full season's worth. No third season, no syndicated re-runs.
When production started up again for the third season, circumstances left Paul Gross and Alliance with a choice: either make the series without David Marciano or don't make the series at all. They had the money, they had the backing, and they had the fan support to go forward, so it didn't make (business) sense to quit. Television series make money for the networks during their first runs, but the big profit for the production company comes in syndication.
Given that the show would go on without one of its leads, they had to make another choice. Either replace David Marciano with another Italian-American actor (the legendary horrible accident / plastic surgery scenario); write Ray out of the series with finality (he died, he moved to Sheboygan, he was transferred to the Missing Persons Division); or come up with a plausible explanation for Ray's absense that would keep his character's spirit "alive" in the show.
I happen to think they made the best possible choice. They wrote the absent Ray Vecchio as a hero, who accepted an extremely dangerous undercover assignment and who only reluctantly left his home and friends behind. David Marciano's appearences in the first and last episodes of the final season showed a great deal of class.
In Call of the Wild, Francesca rhapsodized about the "night, heart-to-heart talks... even if you weren't there." That's what the last season of Due South gave to Ray Vecchio fans: gripping drama, heart-stopping adventure... even if the camera wasn't there. That's what fanfic is for! Ray Vecchio's undercover assignment with the mob provided a wealth of inspiration to hundreds of fanfic writers (including me), and the third season gave Due South a new life in syndication for new fans to discover.
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How long was Ray Vecchio undercover in Las Vegas?
I spent a lot of time trying to figure that one out for my story, Betrayal. The one thing we know for sure is that COTW ended on March 11 (Buck Frobisher made a speech about it.) Earlier, when Benny blew Ray's cover, Ray said, "For a full year I'm deep undercover...." I think it's unlikely that Ray actually meant that his assignment had lasted exactly 365 days, but I interpret this statement to mean that he was undercover for at least 12 months.
That would place the opening scene of Burning Down The House in March of the previous year. Does this work? I think not--because in that episode Benny was finishing a vacation in Canada and the leaves there were green and mature. From the foliage, I would guess that the vacation took place in mid to late summer or very early fall, but we can play around with dates from, say mid-May through late September. If Burning Down The House took place in May, then Ray's undercover operation lasted either 10 months or 22 months. If Burning Down The House took place in September, then the undercover operation lasted either 6 or 18 months.
Doctor Longball can be assigned specifically to the end of August, as it is the last weekend of the minor league baseball season. Good for the Soul takes place at Christmas. Did all the events of the first half of season 3/4 take place in a four month period between May and August? Unlikely, as Eclipse is definitely not a summer episode.
Dead Guy Running must take place no more than three months after Vecchio's departure, or he would not be a suspect in Rankin's death. However, my sharp-eyed friend Sasscat pointed out that the very next episode, Mountie on the Bounty, carried a date of August 13, 1997 on Ray's transfer. That restriction puts the whole first half of the season into confusion.
The second half of the season is easy: Easy Money through Good for the Soul represent September through December, and Dead Men Don't Throw Rice through Call of the Wild represent January through March.
For Betrayal I chose to place BDTH at early September and run the whole undercover operation to 18 months. But you could very well chose an amount as short as 6 months or as long as 22 months. Take your pick.
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Where is Bob's cabin, anyway?
The cabin of the Pilot was in Ontario, 2,000 miles southeast of Ben's detachment in the Yukon, near dam that will provide electricity to the northeastern United States. And yet, the cabin that burned down in Victoria's Secret was in the Yukon--and the cabin of North was in the Northwest Territories.
When asked about the cabin's location, Paul Haggis simply said, "It's in Canada." Big help there, Mr. Haggis!
My theory is that Bob Fraser actually had two cabins. Visual evidence supports this view, as the cabin that was torched in the opening scene of Victoria's Secret bears little resemblence to the cabin that was severely damaged by automated gunfire and an exploding grenade in the Pilot.
Bear with me.
Bob had a cabin somewhere near the NWT/Yukon border. Although he lived there a long time, he was eventually transferred to a detachment in Ontario, near the dam. While there, he saved up enough money to build a retirement cabin there.
Meanwhile, Benton was assigned to a post in the Yukon, close enough to his father's old cabin for him to use it as his home base. This cabin (still referred to as "Bob Fraser's cabin") was Ben's official address at the time he was transferred to Chicago.
All the action at the end of the Pilot happened near Bob's retirement cabin in Ontario, not far from the dam. (Eric's presence confirms this.)
Victoria buried the stolen money under the older cabin, the one near the Yukon/NWT border that was Ben's most recent permanent address, and then torched it. Since this cabin was close to Ben's last posting, his old boss Meers was the one who directed the investigation and notified Ben of the outcome. It was this cabin, destroyed by fire, that Ray and Benny planned to rebuild in North.
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Orienteering in North
On midsummer day in June, the sun is directly overhead at 23 and a half degrees north latitude, which is the farthest north it ever gets. That's the Tropic of Cancer, which lies farther south than even the southernmost point of Florida. The only one of the 50 United States that ever has the sun directly overhead is Hawaii.
Needless to say, there is no place in Canada where the sun is directly overhead at any time of year. If you were to observe a flagpole in Canada at noon on any day of the year, the pole would cast a shadow--to the north. In other words, in Canada the sun may rise in the east and set in the west, but it is always somewhat to the south (more so in the winter than in the summer).
Just *how* far south would depend on one's latitude in Canada. The southernmost point in Canada is approximately 42 degrees north, and Elora Gorge (where "North" was filmed) is at 43 degrees north. In other words, the noonday sun would be *at least* 18 and a half degrees south of vertical on midsummer day, and at any spot other than Point Pelee and on any day other than June 21 the southerliness would be even greater. The vast majority of Canada lies north of 49 degrees, where the sun would be more than 25 degrees south of vertical even on midsummer day.
Furthermore, in Canada the summer the sun reaches its zenith not at noon, but at 1:00 pm--because of Daylight Savings Time. Actually, the moment of zenith might be anywhere from 12:30 to 1:30 pm, roughly speaking. Each one-hour time zone covers approximately 15 degrees of longitude (360 degrees total divided by 24 hours in a day).
Which brings me to "North." At one point in the story, Ray chose a westward course using the compass, and Fraser put up an argument:
Fraser: I can feel the sun on the left hand side of my nose.
Ray: Ahh Fraser, there is no sun.
Fraser: What time is it, Ray?
Ray: It's, uh. . . one thirty.
Fraser: I think you're a little off.
Ray:Hehe. How do you know that?
Fraser: Because of the sun on my nose.If it is 1:30 pm, then the sun would be very high in the sky. If they are on the western edge of a time zone the sun would be at zenith; if they are close to the eastern edge of a time zone it would be 15 degrees to the west. Either way, it would also be at least 18 and a half degrees (and probably quite a bit more) to the south.
If you were walking Due West at 1:30 on a summer day in Canada, the sun would be overhead, slightly to your left and perhaps a hair in front of you. If you were as perceptive as Fraser, you just might feel its warmth on the left side of your nose. ;-)
Which means Ray was right. They were walking west.