Was Gilligan Science Fiction?

[Buster's Uncle]

Consider:

• Clearly, the Minnow was dimensionally transcendental - the Howells brought along a sizable percentage of everything they owned, including what must have been an entire steamer trunk full of cash.
• The Professor could make a ludicrous range of things from coconuts.
• A weird dude on a nearby island had a practical functioning mind control device.
• The government had a robot that could win cybernetic completions to this day by finding its way around a room and taking voice instruction.
• There was a jet pack that could fly, not for 90 seconds, like in our world, but for hours and hundreds of miles.
• Stone age Polynesians using voodoo (not in our world). 
• -And it worked.
• Frequent winds of sufficient strength to pull Gilligan horizontal while he clung to a tree - on clear days, with no storm-surge flooding of the island and nothing on the radio about Hawaii being destroyed.
• It's a delusional world where everyone thought Ginger was hotter than Mary Ann.

Magic working makes it at least a fantasy.  And after all this, it still made more sense than Lost. 

Discuss.

[Unorthodox]

I'm going to have to take issue with you on the magic and whether or not it works. 

I have myself been a practitioner of various forms of magic over my years (including a stint as a professional psychic...with a smidgeon of mystical mixed with mostly con-artistry).  They can work.  Not as hollywood depicts, though. 

Voodoo, in particular, played a role in Anesthesiology, for instance, and there's a good chance your next operation you are given a drug derived from voudoun rituals.   


Otherwise, aside from the theme song I don't think I could tell you much about the show. 

[Buster's Uncle]

And Polynesian head hunters use it?  And the voodoo doll trick works?

[Unorthodox]

Well, POLYNESIAN headhunters are non-existant.   

MELANESIAN headhunters, now, that is a possibility, but would need to put the island around New Guinea and Fiji, which is a problem for the whole 3 hour tour thing. 

Dolls work. 

Not in the I poke it with a pin and you cry out in pain.  They are to commune with spirits, not lay curses on you.  (though the spirits can be directed to harm you, I suppose by a bokor (evil priest)) 

Generally though, voodoo does not headhunt, and vice versa.  Shrunken heads are not a voodoo thing either, thank you hollywood.

 

[Buster's Uncle]

Aren't the Maori Polynesian?  In addition to the location problem you site -Hawaii being the nearest locus of civilization was pretty well established- the headhunters were too light-skinned to be Melanesian -I did think of that- or even Micronesian.

So there's another item in the SF/alternate universe column:

• Polynesian headhunters.

[Unorthodox]

Maori Mokomokai...I would not call that headhunting (and neither would the Maori). 

More a funeral practice than a trophy.  Yes, they would preserve the heads of fallen enemies as well as family, but that was more as something of a prisoner or war to be given back when peace was made, and only those with a full moko (the facial tattoo) were preserved.  Little difference between this and giving your enemies a proper burial. 

[Buster's Uncle]

At any rate, Polynesian, ISTR - yes?

[gwillybj]

I sort of felt that Ginger looked stoned and Mary-Ann acted high. Maybe the Prof. found some things on the island to keep them from dwelling too much on the reality of the situation?

[Buster's Uncle]

He could make anything out of a coconut.

[Unorthodox]

ISTR ?

[Buster's Uncle]

I Seem To Recall.

...

I really expected this thread to quickly degenerate into Ginger or Mary Ann - you guys are weird.

[Rusty Edge]

Hmm.
I liked Mary Anne when I was a kid. Probably the farm-girl angle.

Now that I'm older, and have seen some episodes on color TV, I'm partial to the tall readhead.

As for voodoo, I don't really believe in it. I'm not 100% sure it has no basis. Why?

My wife sent one of her peers at work to bring her a pair of voodoo dolls from New Orleans, which she named after her bosses. This peer had been a military diver, but he was creaped out by the shop, the shopkeeper and the dolls themselves ( they look like something from Africa).  She used them to get back at her bosses a few times over the years for minor stuff with some success. 

Anyway, after the economic collapse, one boss could see the handwriting on the wall, either my wife or himself would have to be cut, so he made her as miserable as possible in hopes that she'd quit. A year later she still hadn't, so he told her to clean out her office. She put a pin through his doll's neck while packing up, and next thing we heard he went to the emergency room with neck pain and runaway blood pressure.

Probably an unlikely  coincidence. Somebody else might call it focused karma, or tempting fate. 

[Unorthodox]

"shopkeeper" = Bokor.  That's bad juju there. 

I'd be curious to see a pic of the dolls, could probably tell you which spirit they were meant to commune with.  It's unlikely they were 'working' without providing the spirits with payment.  Depending on the spirit, she just might have been providing payment without knowing.  Needles are a focus for whatever the doll was designed for, not to pinpoint a specific area to cause pain.   

My own experience with Voodoo.

When I first started the whole skulls on pikes in the yard, I went out and got some authentic ritual music to go along with it.  When I say authentic, I mean the actual rituals for communing with the dead and becoming possessed.  Recorded in person at a local possession ceremony. 

The ritual in person was fine, fun, interesting. 

Nothing I could ever nail down and put a finger on, the RECORDING always just made me feel OFF, and the CD itself had a bad feeling to it.  One or two times I would feel like there was something in the room with it around, so started leaving it in the car.  After it had been in the car about a year, that particular car had a phenominal year of bad luck being struck twice while parked, being struck by a semi while I was driving, and a student driver hitting me head on while I was stopped at a light. 

I just left it in the car when it was crushed to a cube. 

Caused me to do a fair bit of research, and make sure all "voodoo" symbols I use are actually nonsense just to be safe. 

I have a couple veve that on cursory glance are the real thing.  If you know how to read them though, one says "this is a torch", the rest are our names.  Much like the tombstones last year were our names in mystical looking alphabets.

[Buster's Uncle]

I definitely wouldn't want to fool with malicious magic if it worked - there's always a price.

[Rusty Edge]

It's not stored in our house at this time, for that matter, I don't think it's ever been in this house. I think I like it better that way.
I got a smart phone today. Next time I see the doll, I'll attempt a photo.

Maybe it's the doll thing that gives me the creeps more than the voodoo. For example, to me the creepiest twighlight zone episodes were the ventriloquist's dummy, the dept store manequin, and Talking Tina.