If I had a screenplay idea...

[CaptainChewbacca]

would it be ok to post it here and get feedback?

[Peregrin Toker]

I'd have nothing wrong with it.

[Sarevok]

Go ahead and post it. I have nothing against the idea.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Ok, this is largely not my work, but rather the collaborative effort of a group of geologists who were tired of seeing implausible disaster movies. All of the science in here is well-founded and theoretically possible.

Fire in the Deep

Premise: An ocean survey ship full of scientists confronts the discovery of the century, the heist of the century, and the storm of the century in the middle of the pacific.

Plot: An ocean-drilling ship is conducting a 2-month survey of the north pacific, when they make an epic discovery; the earth is six billion years old. Beneath the ocean sediments in a trapped wedge of continental crust they find basement rock. This, naturally, throws the geologists in turmoil. Some dismiss the data out of hand, some don’t care, and some want to keep looking around. In the meantime an enterprising, glory-hungry geologist sends off an article to nature in the hopes of winning a Nobel prize. This doesn’t sit well with the other geologists. All the while, seismologists on the ship are detecting very unusual seismic activity in the region.

By day four, the various groups of scientists on the sides of the issue are nearly at each-other’s throats over this. Suddenly, the weather trackers register a typhoon which will be coming in less than a day, and the ship is ordered to port.

Meanwhile, a group of four foreign geologists (2 russian, 1 Chinese, 1 English) turn out to be imposters, which explains why they’ve been unhelpful all along. They are there because a year ago an illegal shipment of nuclear weapons from Russia to a Colombian warlord sank here. They know its approximate coordinates thanks to sonar soundings, but they had to wait until the “Alvin” submersible would be in the region since it is the only thing that can go deep enough to retrieve the weapons. When they find out that the ship is going to be leaving, they act and take the ship hostage. They take the ship with only 1 person killed, and lock the scientists in the core except for a tech and a sub-pilot. The pilot and the englishman go down and get the nukes, and start coming back up.

Back on the ship, a roomfull of scientists manages to jimmy a lock, and gets out of the core room. In the confusion of the storm, which arrived early, they manage to retake the ship. It’s a “perfect storm”, with hundred-foot swells so bad that you can look up and see a wall of water, because the ship is zooming down one swell and into another. The steering thrusters are near failure, and the Alvin submersible is being tossed around on the end of the line. A close-quarters scuffle results in the Englishman getting killed.

Now, back on the boat, things are bad. An intrepid petrologist is trying to figure out how to survive, and figures out that the seismic readings they’ve been getting all week long are in fact indicators of a near-surface magma event in the old crust. What’s cool is, since its silicious, when it erupts it is going to be a continental eruption and send three cubic kilometers of pumice into the ocean. So, there’s a plan.

To stabilize the ship and keep it from sinking, our similarly intrepid sub-pilot has to take the Alvin back down to the borehole, drop the nukes in it, and then get high enough that when they remote-detonate the nukes (got the codes from the russian) that he won’t get killed. With luck, a giant carpet of buoyant rock will save the day. It comes down to the wire, with the storm getting so bad that they actually have to cut the towline to the Alvin so he can get to the hole, meaning they can’t pull him in. The nukes go in, the storm pounds the boat, power goes out, windows shatter, and our hero has to play out his cable to the end and trigger a volcanic eruption when he is only 1500 meters from the seafloor. The eruption looks cool, the boat is saved, and we eventually find our hero (or don’t, havn’t decided) floating unconscious in the debris.

Any thoughts? This is only a rough outline.

[Sarevok]

Not bad. I like the premise.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Any concept is made better with:

submarines
russians
nuclear explosions
bitchy scientists

I'm just following the formula

[18-Till-I-Die]

I dont know. Speaking from the perspective of a person of average intelligence, it sounds to 'sciencey' to me. I've read it several tiems and i still dont understand why the planet being six billion years old is so horrendous. I'd try to marginalize the science, and go with a less realistic approach like The Core, which was a good movie IMO.

Realism is not a good route in movies or sci-fi. It makes it into one discussion of science facts after another, from my experience. I put into evidence the various movies shown on Pax TV, such as Lightning: Bolts of Destruction, Night of the Twisters and Runaway Virus. The titles say it all. Fire in the Deep could fall into that trend of science-heavy movies if you arent careful, but if done correctly you could do well. IF and only if you add sufficient amount of action, it could work. Otherwise, veer away from realistic movies at all costs, avoid it like teh plague.

OTOH, i like pulp sci-fi and anime movies, so what do i know.

[CaptainChewbacca]

I dont know. Speaking from the perspective of a person of average intelligence, it sounds to 'sciencey' to me. I've read it several tiems and i still dont understand why the planet being six billion years old is so horrendous. I'd try to marginalize the science, and go with a less realistic approach like The Core, which was a good movie IMO.

Realism is not a good route in movies or sci-fi. It makes it into one discussion of science facts after another, from my experience. I put into evidence the various movies shown on Pax TV, such as Lightning: Bolts of Destruction, Night of the Twisters and Runaway Virus. The titles say it all. Fire in the Deep could fall into that trend of science-heavy movies if you arent careful, but if done correctly you could do well. IF and only if you add sufficient amount of action, it could work. Otherwise, veer away from realistic movies at all costs, avoid it like teh plague.

The planet being 6 billion years old isn't horrendous, it just changes everything we know about the formation of the earth. It means that life didn't start "almost immediately" at 3.8 billion years, but rather took a long time. The Core was a fun movie, but the science was bad.

You are, I believe, a fan of the escapist, disaster-fantasy movies. So am I, but I and my cohorts felt it was possible to write a "techno-thriller", which this barely is, without sacrificing science. I felt that sufficient action would come from the personal conflicts, the niftiness of the Deep-Sea submersible, the superstorm, and the nuclear drama.