(Originally posted on LiveJournal)
Okay, so in the background, I have the Sleuth Channel on, and they are running a marathon of NCIS episodes. I love the show: the characters are fun. Supporting character Timothy McGee has an ongoing plot-line of being a writer of thriller novels. So the plot of the episode on at this moment is built around that.
McGee is suffering from writer’s block. He’s stuck on his second novel, being a writer who doesn’t plan out the plot ahead of time. His affectation as a writer includes writing at an old manual typewriter, instead of on a computer. He also bases his characters on the people around him (including his co-workers). So when the models for two characters in his unfinished novel turn up dead, it points to someone who has access to his highly guarded manuscript. Except, that in addition to there being only two people (Tim and his agent) who have seen the incomplete manuscript, McGee shreds everything else. How is the killer reading it?
In a plot twist that I’d seen years ago on Colombo, it turns out that the killer was piecing it together from film typewriter ribbons.
The only problem is……
Film typewriter ribbons came in cartriges. After one use, you have to replace them, because the striking key removes the ink from the film, tranferring it to the paper. And they were only made for electronic typewriters.
The manual typewriter that we see McGee using can only take fabric ribbons, which get soaked in ink, and get used over and over (the ribbon goes from one spool to the other and back again as you type over a long period). And there is no way you can reconstruct a text from a cloth ribbon — the constant striking over and over obliterates the sequences of letters.
It’s a cute episode. But this technological gaff snags me every single time I see it. Sorry, scriptors! But THAT typewriter cannot use that type of ribbon.
And now I’m feeling officially old, because I know this detail from experience. I learned to type on manual typewriters, moved to electric typewriters that used cloth ribbons and then to electronic typewriters (which had a slight memory, allowing you to backspace-erase up to 10 characters) which used the film ribbon cartridges. In fact, I still own my last typewriter, although I haven’t used it in years. I even have a box of ribbon cartridges in the back of one cupboard. Thank heavens for computers and word processors!
I just had to vent. 😀
Comments
quest4success – Apr. 13th, 2009
I understand why you needed to vent!
Seems to me I’ve seen that episode, so I can’t understand why it didn’t send me up one wall and down the other. That’s such an obvious gaffe!
scribblerworks – Apr. 13th, 2009
I think you have to have used manual typewriters regularly – AND changed their ribbons – in order to understand the whole complexity of it.
For one thing, the film ribbons are more delicate, so that even if one could make such a ribbon to work on the spool to spool spindles of the manual typewriter, the keys would strike it so hard the poor thing would be tearing all the time.
And like I said, it was used as the crucial turning point in a Colombo plot once. Amusingly, it was done not long after the film ribbons were introduced for electric typewriters. It was still a novelty, and folks hadn’t noticed before then that you could reconstruct the character sequences from the discarded ribbons.
My speculation is that the writer of the NCIS episode may not have ever used a manual typewriter, but DID see the Colombo episode — and remembered the document reconstruction, but forgotten that it was for an electric typewriter. I mean… if you are used to computer word processors, aren’t all typewriters alike?
McGee’s typewriter and shredding habits had been referred to before. But this was the first time the actual working of the typewriter was a key plot point.
Ah well. It’s still a fun episode. Which is why I usually give it a pass. McGee not wanting to admit that he has writer’s block wins points, just enough to cover the research gaff. Heh.
