CAUSAL CONUNDRUMS

Upon closer examination of the dynamicity-ratings I explored in MEGA, MESO, MICRO PT. 2, I feel I should explore the differing phenomenalities of a given character's personal dynamicity and the dynamicity of the weapons he may control.

In the case of one example cited in the above essay, the heroic characters of VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA-- Admiral Nelson being the foremost figure-- exist in a naturalistic continnum.  Although the show's time-period was set a few years in the future, the setting was not distinctly distanced from the real time in which the show was filmed.  Nelson, like the rest of the Seaview crew, was just an ordinary man, perhaps better trained in self defense than an average citizen.  This military training, however, did not eventuate in the sort of spectacular fight-scenes characteristic of combative narratives, so that I rate Nelson as "mesodynamic."  The weapons controlled by Nelson-- simple handguns on the personal level, the nuclear submarine Seaview itself-- are all of a naturalistic phenomenality.  The employment of these weapons on the teleseries is similarly subcombative in nature; most of the time the various menaces covet the submarine's nuclear weapons, but rarely are they employed to produce spectacular effects.

The representative character of Captain Kirk from the 1960s STAR TREK is a more mixed example. In the essay I rated him as "megadynamic" both in terms of his fighting-skills and his weapons.  However, Kirk's personal fighting-skills by themselves are also as naturalistic in phenomenality as those of the Nelson character. In contrast, the weapons Kirk controls, the weapons typical of Federation technology, are thoroughly marvelous in nature, as is his overall environment.

His costarring character Mister Spock is a pure marvelous type.  Not only does Spock have access to the same marvelous technology appropriate to his environment, but he himself possesses attributes that go beyond the limits of the naturalistic: primarily greater-than-human physical strength and his famous "mind-melding" power.

This raises an interesting question, however.  If a given alien character is constructed so that his bodily resources are no greater than those of a standard human being, then logically he should be deemed "naturalistic" in terms of personal dynamicity, even if his environment is a marvelous one, simply because he inhabits a marvelous universe.

I'd enlarge on some of these concerns as I follow up on some of the implications of my essays on causality and efficacy here.