Clever Solutions That Aren’t Clever

From Mythcreants: Five Clever Solutions That Aren’t Really Clever

Characters need to save the day by doing something impressive, not by pretending to.

I mean, yes? But I’m not sure where this post could be going. What are these five solutions that aren’t really clever?

1. Employing Easily Abusable Tech

It is a truth universally acknowledged that every time we get a new iteration of Star Trek, someone in the writers’ room thinks it’s clever to use the transporter as a weapon. The crew will be in a desperate battle, then, boom, they beam a torpedo onto the enemy bridge. Easy victory, and everyone gets to congratulate themselves on how clever they are. This is really frustrating, partly because everyone with even a passing knowledge of Star Trek has already thought of it. More importantly, if transporters can be used as weapons, nothing about Star Trek works anymore. It means there’s no need for phasers, shields, or any kind of exciting space battle. Characters can just reach out and beam the important parts off an enemy ship. For Star Trek stories to work, we all need to pretend that transporters can’t be used this way. 

Maybe I’m behind the times. It’s true I haven’t watched any of the more recent ST iterations. Does this really happen in each ST series?

Anyway:

When writers try to use obvious exploits in their technology or magic, all it does is damage their story’s consistency. There’s no cleverness, because the solution was apparent to everyone; we just ignored it because that was the polite thing to do. 

Or the writers can come up with reasons that weaponized uses of the technology don’t work. Energy cost is too high. Shields block transporter use. The target to be transported needs to carry a signal device or the transporter can’t lock on. I don’t remember if some or all of those limitations applied in various ST franchises, but coming up with limitations to transporter use isn’t hard, or it seems to me it isn’t hard.

The problem isn’t that the solution to the battle is obvious (“transport the engine out of the ship”) and the viewers have to agree to ignore that, the problem is that TV show writers might change the rules to make the plot of a particular episode work. That’s very specifically a TV show thing. That has nothing to do with novels, where the author can be way more consistent.

2. Using Tools as Intended 

Hmm.

In the previous section, we looked at supposedly novel uses of technology that are more story damaging than clever, but there’s a weird flip side: stories acting like it’s clever when characters use something the way it’s meant to be used. 

Okay …

In Attack of the Clones, Anakin goes from getting his butt kicked to holding his own against Dooku when Obi-Wan tosses over a second lightsaber. But if Anakin is really that much better at fighting with two weapons at once, why didn’t he carry a second to begin with? 

Because it’s annoying to carry two weapons? Because two weapons get in your way during normal daily activities? Granted, maybe not lightsabers, which are very small until triggered. But it’s definitely easy to imagine that carrying two swords could be annoying when someone is, say, walking through a crowd or mounting a horse. Eric Lowe points out that it might be illegal or against custom for people to carry two swords or polearms in cities, and idea I use in the Tuyo series. Those can be perfectly good reasons the character isn’t carrying the type of weaponry that might be most effective in a specific type of altercation.

3. The Secret Look

There’s an episode of The Next Generation where Picard has just been freed from an alien prison cell and he wants to teach these aliens an ironic lesson about imprisonment. Somehow, he communicates all of this to Riker, who in turn communicates it to Worf and Data via two more looks. This results in the aliens being briefly trapped in a force field as a taste of their own medicine. …

I don’t remember that, but first, that isn’t a secret look, that’s a communicative look; and second, under the right circumstances, I bet you can realistically communicate a lot with a look. Maybe not all the stuff in the example above. Is there some reason we’re using nothing but TV examples? I didn’t realize this post was going to be so TV-centered. Honestly, I don’t expect total plausibility from ST series. Though as I recall, DS9 did pretty well.

4. Exploiting an Obvious Weakness

The key here is that for the hero to seem clever, the weakness must be hidden. If it’s obvious, then anyone could figure it out. This is why arguments over how Batman would fight Superman are so boring. Is he gonna use kryptonite? The kryptonite that is a weakness for Superman? The weakness designed especially to beat Superman? That weakness? You know, I bet he probably will. 

Yeah, probably. You know what would be clever? For Superman to plan ahead to counter the deployment of kryptonite, and for Batman to anticipate that Superman would plan ahead and counter the counter. That would make for a neat climactic battle, if, I mean, you want to have Superman and Batman face off. Not my favorite notion. I prefer the good guys to be on the same side by the time they reach the climactic battle. But if you set that up just right, it would be fine, and then I personally would suggest iterations of both opponents thinking ahead.

5. Fake surrender

That’s not clever-but-stupid. That’s just iffy when it comes to ever getting the opponent to accept other ships’ surrendering in the future. Which, to be fair, the linked post does point out, along with this good idea for how to handle a fake surrender properly:

In Babylon 5, Captain Sheridan’s backstory sees him destroy a Minbari cruiser after luring it in with a false distress signal. Sounds bad, right? Except the show establishes that the Minbari made a point of destroying any Earth ship that tried to surrender. The cruiser did let its guard down, but only because it expected an easy kill, not because it was trying to preserve life. If your hero is ever in Sheridan’s position, they have both the dramatic and moral right to fire at will.

That’s a great situation to set up. I mean, that’s a great way for the author to arrange the situation.

***

Okay, what novels showcase really clever ways to save the day?

1) The Thousand Ways by Wexler

The reason this works so well is that Janus is constitutionally unable to explain what he’s planning. That certainly does lead to unnecessary stress in his subordinates, and occasional real problems. Winter also showcases of fast thinking and clever tactics when faced with small-scale disasters and problems. You know what, I should re-read this book.

2) The Vor Game by Bujold. I know Miles is smart all the time. I’m thinking of the scene in this book where he pulls Gregor out of the bad guy’s hands — remember that? And of course Gregor is the one who seizes the moment and saves himself, when it comes right to it. It’s just a fun scene in every way.

3) The Death of the Necromancer by Wells. I just love Nicholas Valiarde. And Ronsarde. But the two of them together. But PARTICULARLY Valiarde, who is the best kind of ruthless protagonist. Remember how he finally nails the guy on whom he wants revenge? He had to come up with a new way to do that because by that time he’d worked too closely with Ronsarde for his original plan to work.

4) Scholomance trilogy by Novik. Lots of great problem solving here, and I was so so struck by how the pieces clicked into place in the climax.

5) Your suggestion here.

What’s a great book where at the ending, the characters save the day in some clever way that’s really and truly clever?