Agreed about Lance Henriksen. I've liked him since Aliens.
I think the reason is less bad writing than just not wanting to spend too much time dealing with an issue and possibly confusing/boring an audience who don't realize the huge amount of time and trouble really involved in breaking military-grade encryption. I know I wouldn't care to watch some kid babysit an algorithm as it ran through all possible combinations over the next 11 years. They just need to convey to the audience that they needed a whiz-kid's help (thereby securing the popular idea that super-genius computer geek types are all Doogie Howser contemporaries).
I often wonder though why TV shows don't show other (slightly more realistic) means of hacking using stuff like distributed computing to speed up the process, or key-loggers, or some social hacking, just as a few examples. Retiring the whiz-kid plot device would be a breath of fresh air from writers. The closest I've ever seen Hollywood coming to doing this is the movie Sneakers, which is an excellent flick IMHO, if you haven't seen it. Still though, Sneakers indulges in the whiz-kid character plot device (River Phoenix). It's forgiven-- Sneakers dates from '92, plus River Phoenix is like a whiz-kid you would actually want to hang out with.
'Course Millenium has an excuse for sticking with the whiz-kid plot device, it's run was from '96-'99. People were still dialing into AOL at the peak of that run.
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Date: 2007-08-29 02:39 am (UTC)I think the reason is less bad writing than just not wanting to spend too much time dealing with an issue and possibly confusing/boring an audience who don't realize the huge amount of time and trouble really involved in breaking military-grade encryption. I know I wouldn't care to watch some kid babysit an algorithm as it ran through all possible combinations over the next 11 years. They just need to convey to the audience that they needed a whiz-kid's help (thereby securing the popular idea that super-genius computer geek types are all Doogie Howser contemporaries).
I often wonder though why TV shows don't show other (slightly more realistic) means of hacking using stuff like distributed computing to speed up the process, or key-loggers, or some social hacking, just as a few examples. Retiring the whiz-kid plot device would be a breath of fresh air from writers. The closest I've ever seen Hollywood coming to doing this is the movie Sneakers, which is an excellent flick IMHO, if you haven't seen it. Still though, Sneakers indulges in the whiz-kid character plot device (River Phoenix). It's forgiven-- Sneakers dates from '92, plus River Phoenix is like a whiz-kid you would actually want to hang out with.
'Course Millenium has an excuse for sticking with the whiz-kid plot device, it's run was from '96-'99. People were still dialing into AOL at the peak of that run.