Mad Scientist Laboratory: Difference between revisions
m
clean up
m (update links) |
m (clean up) |
||
Line 11:
* Bits of animals and people preserved in formaldehyde.
* A whole bunch of glassware, especially test tubes, beakers, [[Technicolor Science|flasks of colored liquid]], distilling columns, condensers, burettes, Bunsen burners, and that thing you get when you hook a bunch of them together.
* Optionally, depending on your flavor of [[Mad Scientist]], you may find a wall generously populated with chains and manacles (just to make sure the experimental subjects stay handy and don't wander away) and a big worn chalkboard filled with equations.<ref>
* Dusty piles of [[Cow Tools|incomprehensible failed experiments]], which may or may not suddenly become a danger to anyone wandering around unsupervised.
* May be in the dungeon of the [[Haunted Castle]], or on an isolated tropical island.
* Big levers or control panels ([[Explosive Instrumentation|that may or may not explode]]).
Never mind that real science does not generally call for all of these things at the same
Also never mind that modern chemistry has very little use for the big impressive glass-sculpture thing with with a lot of burettes, condensers, and funny coils of glass. (These actually were useful constructs at one time, but they're the chemistry equivalent of doing differential equations on an abacus. Also, even when they were used, a typical experimental setup would have consisted of three to six of the pieces put together; never dozens of pieces, all connected, as shown on the screen.) You need this stuff because otherwise, the [[Viewers are Morons|audience won't realize]] that ''Science'' goes on here.
The archetypical movie
All of the film, TV, and comic versions of the Mad Scientist's Lab derive originally from Gothic horror stories of the 18th and 19th centuries, the most famous of them being [[Mary Shelley]]'s novel ''Frankenstein'' and [[H. G. Wells]]' ''The Island of Doctor Moreau.'' The concept developed from older stories about the lairs of alchemists and sorcerers. The Enlightenment put paid to many kinds of mystical dabbling by dilettantes, tinkerers, and wealthy eccentrics, but these characters were replaced in the public imagination by gentleman
The age of the gentleman scientist was ending by the 1850's, when the most famous of them, [[Charles Darwin]], published his Theory of Evolution. More and more, experimental research became associated with facilities provided by universities, foundations, museums, governments and industry. However, the romantic image of the mad
This is edging toward becoming a [[Discredited Trope]], at least in the classic beaker/Jacob's Ladder/operating table configuration.
Line 95:
* Professor Joseph Corwin in ''[[Tales Of Gnosis College]]'' houses his Apsinthion Device, a tank with a tentacle monster, and in impressive amount of weird glassware in a mad scientist's laboratory located in a derelict red-brick ''brewery'' that rather resembles an old-fashioned castle.
* [[Evil Plan the Webcomic]] Doctor Kinesis has a multi-level lab, complete with minions and a vat of "acid."
* Dottore's lab in ''
| |||