Chapter 44 - "The Eclipse, Part 1" - Discussion Thread 11/17/2008

[Matt]

As far as Adam, I doubt The Haitain would turn off adams ability since there was no need to but if he did the ability was still there it was just dormant as to Arthur sucking it entirely out of Adam so his body had nothing to function off of.

So lets assume the healing turns off and suddenly, all the past wounds come back (as must be the case with Adam's rapid degeneration). Shouldn't Claire, Sylar, and Peter be getting all of their old wounds back since their powers are gone?

 

[Gilpesh]

So lets assume the healing turns off and suddenly, all the past wounds come back (as must be the case with Adam's rapid degeneration). Shouldn't Claire, Sylar, and Peter be getting all of their old wounds back since their powers are gone?

I don't think it was old wounds coming back... but it got to the point where all the cells in Adam's body were only kept alive by his healing so once the healing was gone, he aged all four hundred years at once.

Of course that is assuming that Arthur didn't use another power on Adam... which would be a much better excuse for that reaction.

 

[Exploding Boy]

I simply don't understand why arthur didn't use linderman to heal himself and remain under the covers instead of staying in a vegetative state.

Arthur is very smart, I'm sure he figured out it was linderman(either through telepathy or just being smart) and didint trust him to heal him. Therefore, if he did know it was Linderman, it was basically Lindermans fault that Arthur was in the vegetative state.

 

[Neptune]

I don't think it was old wounds coming back... but it got to the point where all the cells in Adam's body were only kept alive by his healing so once the healing was gone, he aged all four hundred years at once.

Of course that is assuming that Arthur didn't use another power on Adam... which would be a much better excuse for that reaction.

Adam's death didn't make sense at all. His body was in perfect condition. He shoudln't have died, even if he lost his ability because his body has been constantly healing it self. He should have just aged normally from that point on. If Arthur used a different ability on Adam then they should have made that clear.

 

[Laderlappen]

The catalyst has to be older than Nathan and Tracy...assuming they aren't going to just ignore logic and make it just Claire.

Why? I must have missed something.

 

[Gilpesh]

Why? I must have missed something.

They have 'fake' powers now *cough bad retcon of Nathan cough*.


Maybe if they avoided the promicin storyline, they wouldn't be this many lazy writing moments in the show.

 

[fu manchu]

I think, 'not work at all' is the term you are looking for.

i like my term better.

 

[Matt]

I don't think it was old wounds coming back... but it got to the point where all the cells in Adam's body were only kept alive by his healing so once the healing was gone, he aged all four hundred years at once.

Of course that is assuming that Arthur didn't use another power on Adam... which would be a much better excuse for that reaction.

But since cells constantly reproduce, it shouldn't be an issue, should it? Cells in our body die every second just as they are "born," every second. He ought to have at least been able to live out a natural life span, right?

 

[Matt]

Why? I must have missed something.

Because the formula was used to create Tracy and Nathan's powers.

 

[Gilpesh]

But since cells constantly reproduce, it shouldn't be an issue, should it? Cells in our body die every second just as they are "born," every second. He ought to have at least been able to live out a natural life span, right?

That's the semi-"Alright sure..." answer to why Adam dies without his healing. But heck, it would have been awesome of Arthur to let Adam live, instead of pulling the number one on the list of ******edly cheap things that writer's do to make a new bad guy look menacing. *cough Red Hulk cough* *cough hey wait who worked on this show and Red Hulk? cough*



But I would have been fine if they threw another sound effect to suggest that Arthur has another power that dehydrates people. Or maybe just had him to that to someone else, to suggest that it wasn't just Adam's healing disappearing.

 

[Primal Slayer]

After this volume ends, Heroes wont be back on air till February...hope it doesnt work against them.

 

[dark_b]

Someone from another board found a loophole when it came to Daphne: THe Haitain stopped her from using her speed earlier in the season and she was just fine...so it looks like the writers didnt really think out her secret until this episode.

thats a very good point.
its a mistake.

but i bet that if we would ask the writters they would say that the Haitain works different then the eclipse.

 

[Gilpesh]

thats a very good point.
its a mistake.

but i bet that if we would ask the writters they would say that the Haitain works different then the eclipse.

Which is bull. No powers = no powers.

 

[Exploding Boy]

Well it would make complete sense that since the Haitian has MENTAL manipulation and not PHYSICAL manipulation that his power dampening is just preventing people's minds from accessing their powers or something. Not physically ridding them of their power.

 

[inov8ve]

thats a very good point.
its a mistake.

but i bet that if we would ask the writters they would say that the Haitain works different then the eclipse.

Daphne didnt immediately become paralyzed. it occurred gradually and she knew before hand when she told her father that it was happening again. So if the Haitian took powers temporarily she wouldnt necessarily fall to the ground crippled.


And as far as Adam... he was hundreds of years old and his powers kept him looking young. no powers, he becomes hundreds of years old again, which means dead.

the other healing heroes are of normal age so the change is not recognizable.

 

[Neptune]

But that doesn't make sense. His body wasn't 400 hundred years old because he was constantly healing himself. So no powers only means no more healing. He should have just aged like a normal person. I agree about Daphne though.

 

[Neptune]

By the way, where is the thread for "The Eclipse part 2"?

 

[inov8ve]

But that doesn't make sense. His body wasn't 400 hundred years old because he was constantly healing himself. So no powers only means no more healing. He should have just aged like a normal person. I agree about Daphne though.

think of it this way. his body was 400 years old but his powers kept it constantly regenerating to the state at which his powers manifested (at the age we first meet him in the past).

that's my theory.

 

[Neptune]

But that's excatly why he shouldn't have died in the first place. His body wasn't really 400 years old if it was then he had a lousy healing factor.

 

[carrrnuttt]

But since cells constantly reproduce, it shouldn't be an issue, should it? Cells in our body die every second just as they are "born," every second. He ought to have at least been able to live out a natural life span, right?

Different causes of aging

As to the process of aging, there seems to be a multitude of effects involved, so that we should not expect any single genetic mutation to solve the problem. One of those is the production of "free radicals" (a type of oxidyzing agents, damaging proteins necessary for the functioning of the cell) during energy production. Much of the damage done by free-radicals is repaired by the cell, but in the long term damage tends to accumulate. One of the suggested therapies to increase life-span (

life-extension) is to combat free radicals by

antioxydant chemicals such as selenium, Vitamin C and Vitamin E, or to minimize their production by calorie restriction diets.


Another one is an apparently inbuilt limit on the number of times a cell can divide (mitosis). This so-called Hayflick limit (of the order of 50 divisions) is well beyond the one that is reached during normal life, and should thus not be interpreted as a preprogrammed death. The hypothesis is that it functions to limit the risks for the development of cancer or tumors (characterized by unrestricted reproduction of cancerous cells). The mechanism seems to be that during each splitting of a cell, the chromosomes are copied incompletely, with a small stretch of DNA on the outer extremum being cut off during the split. The outer stretches of DNA (

telomeres) for a young cell are not functional, so that losing them does not impair function. But after a sufficient number of divisions, the process would start to cut off functional DNA, thus making it impossible for the cell to survive. The cutting off does not happen during cell divisions (meiosis) producing sex cells (sperm or egg cells). Otherwise each subsequent generation would have less DNA than the previous one. This reminds us of the fact that the loss of DNA is not an unavoidable effect of increase of entropy or a similar physical principle leading to aging.
Very recently, researchers have managed to synthetically produce the enzyme telomerase, which is capable of produce new telomeres. This open up new avenues to combat those forms of again linked to the Hayflick limit.

I'm too lazy right now to think up of any plausible explanations based on the quote I posted, but I'm sure someone can think up something. Either way, I don't like what they did there, and how they did it.