Prepare To Be Incredibled

Dunno If I Should Use An Exclamation Mark There
Add one in if you feel deprived.  Anyway, coming back from the shadows of recent memory like <thinks> Steely Dan after their long hiatus, your humble scribe has decided to mete out, bit by bit, his extensive notes on "The Incredibles".  
     The idea, if you recall, was to analyse the film and determine what their dateline was as this is never made explicit in any media we see.  

A walking tank versus a giant shark.
Just because.

     "Why?"  I hear you enquire.  "Why!"
     Firstly, because I can.  Secondly, because I am a very sad man.  Thirdly, because I tend to focus obsessively on a task until completion (unless it's hoovering).  And fourthly, because it amuses me.*
     What can I say?  I think "Karma Police" is hilarious, too, as is "Doctor Strangelove".
     Here an aside.  I've just discovered that Steely Dan are playing in Manchester next February.  The tickets only went on sale a week ago.   Hmmmmmm.  One wonders what price a ticket?
     Enough pernicious wibble!  Back to 'The Incredibles' and let me introduce you to the 1:18:11 timestamp, when we encounter Syndrome's giant rocket ship.  Art?

Why should I begin at the start?

     That's not a brilliant picture.  Let me see if I got a screen-pic.  

     Well, the two in combination will do.  My point is that Syndrome's giant rocket is in fact a dead ringer for Wernher Von Braun's "Ferry Rocket" design of the Fifties.  Art?

You get my drift?

     This is a bit odd, frankly.  Sure, the mid-Fifties design falls squarely within the potential time-line, yet it's also very retro, whereas Syndrome's design and technologies have all been decades ahead of the rest of the Incredibles' world.
     Don't worry, I took a page and a half of A4 notes for this little project, so you're going to get LOTS more of it.  I bet you can hardly wait.
     Time to tape the motley's hands to the handlebars of a bike with no brakes and send it down the slopes of Mount Etna!**

Well, okay, maybe perhaps a bit explodey

More Answers You Never Wanted From Questions You Never Asked
Yes!  For we are back to nitpicking and hairsplitting with those pikers who posed a ton of questions without bothering to see if there were any answers: "Unanswerable Thunderbirds Questions" over on Youtube's Gerry Anderson channel.
     In the interests of fairness I should point out that there are some questions they raise that can't be answered, usually because they depend on continuity issues that are only obvious to people with an awful lot of spare time on their hands and a DVD player with Pause and Zoom functions.***  For example - Art?

Behind the pillar -

     That is part of the low-loader used to transport the Sun Probe, admittedly.  However, it's visible for less than a second at low resolution as the camera pans along all the other, much more interesting pod equipment.  Art?

Low-loader from another angle.

     Don't worry, I've got a couple of ripostes all lined up and waiting to go. Just wait until tomorrow ...

Blast It!
Ladies, gentlemen and those unsure, may I introduce you to the Condit Dam, which is not to be confused with a conduit, or even a 'damn', though you might expostulate one or two of the latter.  Art?

The dam as was

     This venerable pile was put up in 1913 in order to generate electricity, and hang the local salmon.  Well, not so much 'hang' as 'prevent from getting upstream to spawn', which comes to the same thing in the long run.  Local eco-warriors went around with long faces for decades, until -
     They blew it up!  Getting rid of it was a lot cheaper than making remedial work to bring the dam up to 21st century standards, including the creation of fish ladders, which are not what you're thinking of.  Art?

"Fire in the hole!" they shouted.  Ironically.

     To begin with, a small breach was blown at the base of the dam, which resulted in a gigantic spout of dirty black water and a fuming rapid being established.  Eventually the reservoir drained, revealing lots of smelly black mud.  This allowed folks to completely demolish the dam, for which the salmon shouted "Hooray!".  Art?

Before and after.  There.  I spelled it out for you.
(And thanks to Andy Maser)

     Not what springs to mind when the phrase "Dam busters" is spoken, eh?

Blast It!
This is merely by way of an introduction to the subject of that sci-fi staple, the "blaster", which has literally and metaphorically blazed a trail (or burnt a swath, if you like) across future landscapes since the early 20th Century.
     Typically, the reaction of any Hom. Sap. in any crisis situation was - "Blast it!" immediately, and worry about consequences later.  For example:

Oops.

     Commander Adams vapourises the very last tiger left alive ...
     We shall come back to this topic, I feel it has legs.


*  This is as much about the inner workings of my mind that you're going to get.
**  Not whilst it's erupting; that would be unfair.
***  Remind you of anyone?