Biological Issues and Accuracy
In the original movie, the crew (apart from the saboteur) manage to leave Benes's body safely before reverting to normal size, but the Proteus remains inside, as do the remains of the saboteur's body (albeit digested by a white blood cell), and several gallons (full scale) of a carrier solution (presumably saline) used in the injection syringe. Isaac Asimov pointed out that this was a serious logical flaw in the plot, since the submarine (even if reduced to bits of debris) would also revert to normal size, killing Benes in the process. Therefore, in his novelization Asimov had the crew provoke the white cell into following them, so that it drags the submarine to the tear duct, and its wreckage expands outside Benes's body. Asimov solved the problem of the syringe fluid by having the staff inject only a very small amount of miniaturized fluid into Benes, minimizing its effect on him when it expands.
Asimov also dealt with another logical flaw in the original, involving extra oxygen needed by the submarine's crew members. In the film, the submarine enters the lung and crew members pump oxygen into the submarine's stores. However, Asimov knew that the miniaturized crew members would not be able to breathe unminiaturized oxygen molecules. So, in the novel, the oxygen from the lung is processed through a miniaturizing device installed on board the submarine; there is no such device in the original film script.
Further literary license is taken for the final swim up Benes's optic nerve to safety. Raquel Welch's character was miniaturized to approximately .1 microns, or 250,000 times smaller than her normal stature of 5'6". If the crew of the Proteus escaped by following the entire two-inch length of the optic nerve, then Welch faced the equivalent of a 520 mile swim with less than six minutes to finish before growing back to 5'6" (thus killing the patient). Even with some de-miniaturizing along the escape route, the crew were still of microscopic size (less than .1 mm) on reaching the tear-driven surf at Benes's cornea - reducing the 520 mile swim to a still daunting five miles (in under six minutes).
Read more about this topic: Fantastic Voyage
Famous quotes containing the words biological, issues and/or accuracy:
“If the most significant characteristic of man is the complex of biological needs he shares with all members of his species, then the best lives for the writer to observe are those in which the role of natural necessity is clearest, namely, the lives of the very poor.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)
“The hard truth is that what may be acceptable in elite culture may not be acceptable in mass culture, that tastes which pose only innocent ethical issues as the property of a minority become corrupting when they become more established. Taste is context, and the context has changed.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“U.S. international and security policy ... has as its primary goal the preservation of what we might call “the Fifth Freedom,” understood crudely but with a fair degree of accuracy as the freedom to rob, to exploit and to dominate, to undertake any course of action to ensure that existing privilege is protected and advanced.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)