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When life and death for everyone hangs on a ten-second countdown, those ten seconds can feel endless because of your adrenaline rush and your super-focused attention. Or maybe those seconds actually are endless. (Like this awesome moment from Time Chasers via MST3K — thanks t3knomanser!) Science fiction TV shows (and some movies) have a long and honorable tradition of cheating on final countdowns, where seconds last ridiculously long. It's like ten, nine, eight and a half, eight and a quarter.... Here are some of the most unreal countdowns from science fiction.
When life and death for everyone hangs on a ten-second countdown, those ten seconds can feel endless because of your adrenaline rush and your super-focused attention. Or maybe those seconds actually are endless. (Like this awesome moment from Time Chasers via MST3K — thanks t3knomanser!) Science fiction TV shows (and some movies) have a long and honorable tradition of cheating on final countdowns, where seconds last ridiculously long. It's like ten, nine, eight and a half, eight and a quarter.... Here are some of the most unreal countdowns from science fiction.
We at the io9 Space Station debated the reason why there are so many elongated countdowns in scifi. Here are a few possible theories:
1) When your ship is traveling faster than light, time appears to be moving more slowly to a stationary observer (such as the audience.)
2) Similarly, if you're traveling through time, or there's some element of time-distortion going on, it's entirely possible that two or three of our seconds could equal just one second in our heroes' continuum.
3) Every alien planet will have a day that's much longer, or shorter, than our Earth days. And if your home planet's "day" lasts 40 Earth hours, then you might evolve a clock that moves quite a bit more slowly than our Earth clocks. And who's to say whether the spaceships of the future operate according to Earth time, or Rigelian time? Eh?
So without further ado, here are some examples of the "extra Mississippi" phenomenon in scifi:
Star Trek:
I feel like there are about a hundred countdowns in Trek that last way, way longer than they're supposed to. Here's one of them. I acutally timed it — the computer says there are 25 seconds left before the ship blows up. And then 25 seconds later, Kirk is still giving his chest-thumping speech about how nothing can stop the countdown except him. (Blame Shatner's trademark mid-sentence pauses.) A few seconds after the ship should already have blown up, the computer starts its ten-second countdown. (To be fair, this could be a feature deliberately built into Federation self-destruct sequences, given how often captains use them to bluff their way out of a jam.)
Doctor Who:
Here's the exciting climax from the Doctor's first ever encounter with the Daleks, who are like mutated Nazis in mini-tanks. The Daleks are going to launch some kind of neutron bomb that will kill off everybody who's not them, and give them the nice shiny radiation that they've gotten used to. So the Doctor and his friends launch a desperate last minute attack, as the countdown ticks down to zero... but it all just takes a little too long. The countdown reaches "4" and the guy waiting patiently in the background still hasn't swung down on his rope. Not to mention the Daleks still haven't been defeated, and there's a lot of pre-choreographed mayhem still to go. In those days, Doctor Who was recorded in one take, with little chance for retakes. So obviously somebody decided to just let the countdown stop, and let the last battle take as long as it needs to. You can't rush an apocalyptic final battle between humans and machine-creatures. You just can't.
Green Lantern/Green Arrow:
When Green Lantern and Green Arrow first teamed up, based on their color schemes matching so well, their comic was all about the mismatched duo traveling around and discovering America. It was one long civics lesson, about racial injustice and smack being bad for you. But low sales drove writer Denny O'Neill to reinvent it as a crazy space-opera, where Green Lantern fights aliens with his self-righteous buddy Green Arrow along for the ride. In this sequence, Green Arrow decides he can survive in the vacuum of space for ten seconds... which is enough time for him to jump from ship to ship, get inside the other ship's airlock, make himself some lunch, and invent a whole new space dance: 
Spaceballs:
Watching this scene, I feel as though Spaceballs wasn't even trying to be taken seriously or something. I mean, what is up with this final self-destruct countdown? First the computer says it'll take two minutes and 45 seconds, and some three minutes later Mel Brooks is still goofing around. And then the computer skips the number 7 and goes straight to six — and has time to make a joke about it and restart the countdown at 6. And then when it reaches zero, it still pauses to wish the soon-to-be-incinerated people a nice day. At least it's a suicidal computer with manners. But seriously, it's almost as though they were mocking the genre conventions or something.
The Fifth Element:
This one doesn't take any longer than it's supposed to, but it's still a tad unrealistic to evacuate an entire huge pleasure ship in five minutes — and it actually only seems to take three minutes, since everyone's gone by the two-minute mark. And you can watch that awesome sequence here.
Comments
this brought to mind Aliens and that damn, nagging, "minimum safe distance" recording-- that thing went on for like twenty minutes! how many warnings do these people get? i prefer Lando Calrissian's emergency announcement from Empire: "OK my people, the shit has hit the fan. I recommend you split." So simple, so effective.
I never would have expected anyone to ever say "Spaceballs" and "taken seriously" in the same sentance without the word "can't" in between.
"Its the Final Countdown!"
That songs takes forever!
Wow those early Daleks were kind of...weak...weren't they.
@92BuickLeSabre: They were just getting ready to kick some ass... but the humans attacked before they had finished psyching themselves up.
The Brunette's outfit doesn't look very pressurized in Green Lantern Arrow. I guess there's no need for a bra in space, though.
Those Green Lantern/Green Arrow panels are hilarious. I love how he opens the air lock and continues to give his speech. I guess the "Science Boys" forgot to tell him about de-pressurization. And then he just leaves the hot chick in the half tank top in a room that's just emptied of breathable oxygen. And then there's a reference to the villain as 'Taupin'. Is this Bernie Taupin, Elton John's long time song-writing partner?
@BullfightsOnAcid: It's all totally accurate, with the Science Boys seal of approval!
Just to nit-pick, the scene you posted for the 5th Element starts off with a bomb set with a 5 minute timer.
The whole scene runs 3min 10sec long.
It might seem like it lasted a long time, but it actually ran *faster* than the countdown implied.
@Charlie Jane Anders: So all that "Exterminate! Exterminate! Exterminate!" stuff is really just the equivalent of the pre-game huddle?
@zenpoet:
Oh thank you soooo much for that pleasant little earworm.
Ah, Space Balls.... good times!
@92BuickLeSabre: That was back when a Dalek could be overcome by putting a blanket on the electric floor, so when they rolled over it they lost power.
They upgraded quick and often, though, just like Nazi iPods.
Quite possibly the worst scene from the worst episode from the worst season of the original Star Trek.
The only thing more uncomfortable than the super-tight close-ups of the actor's eyes and mouths are the super-tight marble-bag costumes on guest stars Loki and Bele.
This isn't quite the same thing, but I believe it deserves mention...
In the horrible Independence Day, Our Hero's fiance is in a car in a tunnel. She looks behind her, sees the explosion already in the tunnel and has time to get out of the car, run to a utility closet, use her Super-Stripper Power! (tm) to bust open the steel door and get in to hide (somehow) from the car-hurling pressure wave.
That's not even the best part though - once she's in the closet, she calls the dog, still in the car. Dogs are so much faster than people, that the dog easily runs in, too.
Someone needs to explain "hypersonic" to Hollywood.
-Kle.
@zenpoet:
Yeah, but the power guitar solo more than makes up for it.
@Shiryu: At one point I believe I had 4 copies of Space Balls due to xmas gifts... I should have watched it 4 times in a row on the different dvds!
@AaronZ: Yeah, in the case of Fifth Element, it's mostly just the unrealistic nature of the entire pleasure ship evacuating in five minutes, rather than the actual countdown itself, which isn't stretched out.
@Klebert L. Hall:
That would be the James Bond out run the flaming fire ball special skill. See Moonraker, Goldeneye etc.
Speaking of lousy countdowns, as much as I enjoy the many variations of the James Bond Film, those countdowns do piss me off.
@AaronZ: Agreed. That's not the greatest example. It seems that the place evacuated within the 5 minutes, and the movie skipped 3 minutes to the two minute mark when Corben is watching the timer.
@Klebert L. Hall: I never thought of that scene, but good example. That reminds me of The Mummy Returns where Brendan Fraser outruns the fucking sunrise.
@Bluecell: Yeah, the Star Trek clip is the best example, but I put the Fifth Element one up top because it was funny... and the business of evacuating an entire huge pleasure ship in five minutes (or three, really) is just a bit unlikely.
This list is useless without Time Chasers. The big climax involves our butt-chinned hero fighting our helmet-haired villain while the plane/time machine's countdown time takes an entire minute to count ten seconds.
@t3knomanser:Wow, I've never even heard of Time Chasers, but it sounds fantastic.
@Charlie Jane Anders: True. In that regard, I was looking for a video clip of a great scene from Galaxy Quest, but I turned up dry.
They have to stop the self destruct of the ship, and though they press the button with time to spare, the timer keeps going until it reaches 1 because that's where it always stops.
It seems appropriate here that we pay tribute to the BEST countdown in sci-fi history: John Carpenter's 1974 film, "Dark Star," when the spaceship's lieutenant argues epistemology with a talking bomb to convince it not to explode.
@t3knomanser: Filmed in my home town.
Wait, so Fifth Element goes from 4:51 seconds on the clock to 0 in just over 3 minutes.
I'm first to admit that lots of shows elongate countdowns, cause it raises the tension for an audience who isn't paying attention.
But Besson shaved off a minute. Surely that's a good thing.
@t3knomanser: I found it and swapped out the Fifth Element clip for the Time Chasers clip... it's just the most perfect illustration ever. Thanks so much!
Stargate: Atlantis... "Thirty-Eight Minutes" It was filmed and paced so it would take precisely 38 minutes.
@BullfightsOnAcid: My answer to everything from now on is going to be, "Not according to the science boys!"
@t3knomanser: That is one of the greatest moments of MST3k during the SciFi era.
Wait, what about Galaxy Quest, when the countdown stops at one, after they hit the "stop countdown" button at 10? :)
On some it seemed slow but on others it seemed to go like a regular 10sec go.
@B:
No gravity, hence no bustenhalter...
@deandude: The Star Trek one and the Time Chasers one are definitely slowed down... I think the Doctor Who one is also slowed down, but also just stops randomly for no reason to allow the scene to continue for another minute. Spaceballs is definitely a messed up countdown (on purpose)... which one looked normal to you?
@Klebert L. Hall: Independence Day actually DID have its own hilarious extended countdown sequence, when they launch the nuke with the 30-second timer and have to get out of the 500km-diameter ship before it blows. By the time they get to about the 10-second mark and they're just exiting the ship, about 45 seconds have already passed. And when the nuke actually goes off, our heroes are magically well over a thousand km away from the mothership.
@Ubik2501: Good one!
@zenpoet: Not only does that song take forever..its used on just about EVERY car dealer commercial in most local markets on TV...
@Bluecell: Outrun the sunrise? Try outrunning *heat*-- in Riddick, they not only outrun the sun-line on the planet Crematoria, apparently the sun hitting just feet away from them does absolutely nothing to heat up the atmosphere, cooking everyone across the entire hemisphere.
Good times. . .
/threadjack
For something completely different, I nominate the BSG episode "33" (season one, episode one) as one of the BEST uses of the countdown ever.
Not only is the Trek countdown screwed up once, but several times! Time it!
At 5 1/2 seconds to go, Kirk starts the abort sequence and finishes the abort sequence 7 seconds later!
I....am.....Kiiiirrrok!
I work on a a very large RCI cruise ship. International safety codes say that we have to have every "soul" off the ship and loaded in to lifeboats in 22 to 30 minutes.....most people on board would not have even left the buffet after 2 minutes.....awesome list
The countdown in "Outlander" starring Sean Connery was dreadfully pointless and longwinded. The badguys show up an hour early, but Connery has already laid his traps in plenty of time, so the "surprise" has zero impact on anyone's game plan.
And the Lord spake, saying, "First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin. Then shalt thou count to three, no more, no less. Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thy foe, who, being naughty in my sight, shall snuff it.
@orbital1: Amen! Right!
OK, the only point I have in favor for the Fifth Element is that this was immediately preceded by the large fire fight/explosion, during which I'm sure many people were headed towards the escape areas, so it's not THAT implausable for it to have happened.
I think one of the cooler things in the Fifth Element is when Zeus tells Cornelius he has 20 seconds to explain, and he does it in exactly twenty seconds.
I think worse than how long the countdown takes in the Star Trek clip is how long and involved the destruct sequence is to initiate. Picard and Riker could do it in 15 seconds flat. W/ Data it takes 20, but that's cuz he has to impersonate Picard AND type a 100 digit code in. But he's tricky like that.
@Git Em SteveDave: I really think that episode was running about 5 minutes short, and they were like, "we have to pad this out somehow..."
@Charlie Jane Anders: I doubt the StarFleet science boys were like
Boy 1:"OK, we need something that will prevent enemies from taking over the ship and using it."
Boy 2:"How about a auto destruct?"
B1:"Brilliant. Now b/c this is a last ditch measure, only to be used as the ship is about to be overrun, I think it should take about five minutes to enable, require four crew members to initiate, involve some sort of flashing lights, and be un-cancellable during the last five seconds."
B2:"Well, then wouldn't five seconds really be zero?"
B1:"No. That would just be silly. And for good measure, the process should involve a lot of eye shots."
@zenpoet:
+ Watch video
@CMG: ZOMG that's totally made of awesome!
@CMG: Is that Yo-Yo Ma w/back up provided by Harry Potter and Ron Weasley?
@zenpoet: I LOVE that song it is so god damn epic, it makes me feel like i should be doing something, I listen to it every day when I wake up and before i go to sleep
@CMG: I did not think that I would live to see that day that someone could possible headbang whilst playing bass or cello.
Thank you for allowing me to die tomorrow.
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