Roswell Plot Holes?

[killjoy]

Well the Granolith was there all along just hidden behind the pods.So it has been there since the crash just no one had found it.

[Misha]

Well, you get to see from Liz's flashes in Sexual Healing that someone had time to burry the orb. So the ship crashed, but it doesn't mean the aliens were unconscious until the army found them. And, once the aliens recovered the pods, they did have time to move them into the Pod Chamber, along with the Granolith. Probably they moved the Granolith right after it crashed, and sometime later moved the pods in, sealing the device behind them.

Supposedly -according to the "real" facts surrounding the Roswell Conspiracy- the ship crashed during a thunderstorm at night... so the army didn't find anything until the following morning. If you are a Royal bodyguard guarding a very powerful machine that, thanks to your recent crash, is your king's only way home, well... I would hide it too as fast as I could

There's so much we just don't know about that time.

Also, why would there be only one ship? The aliens could have been exploring Earth for decades before, especially if they had time to experiment creating human-alien hybrids, knowing how to bring the Gandarium into the mix, etc, etc, etc. The pods on board the crashed ship were either created back on Antar, or in-route here, so that must have been another ship. They must have gathered the information way before, and then considered it a sound plan to risk their royalty to be made partly human.

[RoswellOracle]

Not exactly what I meant, Killjoy. Of course the granolith was in the pod chamber for years. I'm just speculating exactly when the granolith was put there, before the crash or after, at the same time they put the pods in there too.

Yes, Misha, someone buried the orb, and doens't that seem strange to anyone?

They saved an orb and not the pods? The granolith and the pods would be the most important things to save.

They could have easily hidden the pods and the granolith right where they were at the crash site. Made them look like rocks, or covered them in sand or something. They could have hidden the whole damn crash easily enough, but they didn't. The aliens must have been either injured or screwed up by the crash enough not to. If the aliens were well, they never would have let the military take the pods. And why didn't they shapeshift into humans to hide themselves?

And it is said that the pod chamber is a couple of miles from the crash. So they crash, drag the granolith and one orb a couple of miles to the pod chamber, and then go back for the pods?

That is why I think they must have put the granolith in the pod chamber before the crash, and the orb was buried by a lone alien that got seperated or chased by the miliary.

And Misha you make me laugh, stating so obviously there is more than one ship. It is not a popular opinion. I agree that the aliens had to know something about Earth, possibly explored it before, but it is never mentioned in the show that more than one ship came to Earth. And what happened to the other ship or ships, and what happened to the other aliens on them? They didn't come to the resuce of the crashed ship.

In season 3 Cal doesn't say to Max, oh by the way, there were other ships that came to Earth that you could take back to Antar. Nope, he goes for the crashed ship. So Cal didn't know there were other ships? Or they went back to Antar already?

And isn't that why we speculate about plot holes? Because the show never explained what happened?

[Misha]

Hey, at least I make you laugh

Okay, maybe it's not really that obvious, but it's still plausible and makes sense. There's nothing to support it but nothing against it either. No one ever said flat out "and this was the first ship that ever came to Earth". These guys traveled among five planets all the time, apparently, enough for a civil war in one planet to drag the rest of them all in... Besides, there's nothing to contradict there were ships before, that came here, researched and then left. A few years afterward, Antar's royal family is killed and a plan to create hybrids and hide them in our lovely primitive Earth comes to fruition. It couldn't be an incredibly detailed plan if the ship crashed, only four bodyguards were aboard and no one from their home planet came in to help (that we know of). Just to have the podsters emerged as kids, have them lost, etc, etc, etc...

In any case, we do know that the Skins arrived in 1950, so there was at least one more ship mentioned besides the one that crashed Which apparently didn't fare better than the podster's if they also needed the Granolith to get home...

But that's beside the point.

The orb could have been buried after the pods were rescued, since we are hardly given a time frame from Liz's flashes. As viewers, all we got to see in Summer of '47 was Hal seeing the aliens, and then running while the alarms went of. Who's to say the aliens didn't have one hell of a time rescuing the pods, and maybe one of them got separated and buried the orb? Or maybe who buried the orb was the alien who escaped three years later. There must be a reason why the Special Unit thought the orbs had to work together, right? Maybe they had both orbs all along, and then lost one, hence their search for the second orb... We just don't know. I'm not saying it happened like that, just that there's no evidence to support it one way or another. All we have is our common sense trying to connect the few dots we were given.

Besides, we probably would need to work out an incredible complex scenario to explain every little detail to our satisfaction... which can be done. You wrote a prequel, KathyW wrote another, so you know how much thought you need to straighten things up. If it were easy, it wouldn't be half as fun

I don't see why Kal would be mentioning ships that came in the past to Max. Not only was it more than sixty years ago that those ships had been around, but Kal had absolutely no intention of going back to Antar. Why would he even mention those ships to Max? Kal wanted to make it as hard as he could. And how would that have gone? "Oh, by the way, we had an entire fleet of ships once upon a time around this place... shame they are no longer here..." It would have served no purpose at all to the story... would've been an interesting tidbit, but completely useless. We already know because of Charles Dupree that aliens were around the '30. Aliens were here before. If it was the same ship or not, no one can say.

I do laugh at how many CHADs there are, but I also see the potential there. There are several different ways to explain all that is left unknown, though trying to keep in canon is difficult. Granted, some things will make more sense to you than to me, and viceversa, but unless there's an exact dialog or piece of information to contradict a theory, you just can't shoot it down because you don't like it or it's not popular Just because they didn't say it out loud does not count either... And there's also the oh-so-convenient way to twist things and say "well, I don't think he really meant that" (The NasedoPact, anyone?).

I'll try to phrase my comments without the "obvious" remark being implied, though, that was my bad...

Misha

[RoswellOracle]

I'm not shooting anything down. Seems to me you are the one shooting things down. I am offering possible explanations for events, examples, 'evidence', and asking questions about what we know, and don't know. Then you offer your explanations, we discuss, and we see if we can figure some of these things out. Just because we disagree on exactly how it happened, isn't a big deal is it? We are both are allowed our views.

All I am saying is that I believe there was no time for the aliens to hide the granolith in the pod chamber after the crash, so it must have been there before the crash. If you believe differently, great. I'd love to hear the theories. Maybe you will even get me to change my mind if they are convincing enough.

And not the point I was trying to make with Cal, that he could have talked to Max about various ships that may have been on Earth at one time. What I was saying, was that it was possible that ships other than the crashed one were still on Earth. Like if the ship that was on Earth in 1936 was different than the one that crashed, and is still here, or the ship that brought the Skins to Earth. It is never mentioned again.

I know a lot of people think the Skin's ship crashed too, and they had to use the Granolith to get back. I actually always assumed that the Skin's ship was fine, and they were given orders by Khivar not to come back without the Granolith. Like, 'if you come back without it, you're all dead', type of thing. So they didn't dare go home.

About the events around the crash, we do know several things from the show and the SHP documents.
- there was an alien ship on Earth in 1936 collecting DNA (the same ship that crashed or a different one)
- the ship with the pods aboard crashed in 1947
- the shapeshifters killed 2 humans at the crash site
- the military took possession of one orb, the 2 sacks containing the pods, and captured 4 aliens, 2 dead, 2 alive, and the collected the crash debris
- Hal and Richie seemed to run over an alien with their truck (was there another 5th alien, or was it a mindwarp?)
- autopsies were performed on the 2 dead aliens
- two aliens killed the military doctors to rescue the sacks with the pods
- one or more shapeshifters put the pods in the pod chamber
- one alien was held by the military in the white room for three years and died (so one alien was recaptured or never left the base) he was also the one who told the Special Unit that the orbs needed to be together to work
- one alien (Nasedo), of course, went to live in the cave on the reservation

We also know from the SHP that the military never had the granolith, one of the orbs, the healing stones, the pendant, or the 'destiny' book. Nasedo somehow had the healing stones, the pendant and the destiny book. It is unclear who buried the 2nd orb or how the granolith got in the pod chamber, or when.

I have often wondered if the 'dead' aliens might have been healed with the healing stones. Not to mention we have no way of knowing if there were more than 4 aliens on the ship to begin with, or if there were other ships still on Earth. If so, there could have been any number of aliens running around.

[Misha]

We are saying the same thing then, imagine that We are both offering alternative views.

I guess it's just the fact that we are reading the internet, and things like "And Misha you make me laugh, stating so obviously there is more than one ship. It is not a popular opinion" sound like you are shooting me down without even giving me the benefit of the doubt But you know how the internet gets... things sound one way when we intend them in another.

Unpopular does not equal impossible. But I digress. It could have been the popular way too

Anyway, why do you assume the alien in the White Room those three years died? Textually, Pierce says:

You know, I might not have been around in 1947, but I know all about the crash. About the four aliens they captured: two dead, two alive. I’ve spent my entire career studying the documentation. Especially the three years of observation they made on the one held in captivity, right here in this room.

which, true, could be interpreted as the alien died... But then you have Kal showing up out of nowhere, and Max - who also assumed- he was the second alien who survived the crash, Nasedo being the first. Even in the OST, the special features have it that one of those two was the alien held in captivity for those three years.

Now, about the timing with the Granolith. The ship crashed in the middle of nowhere, during the middle of a thunderstorm. There could have been plenty of time before they were found out. The actual "Roswell incident" has the ship crashing either July 2nd or July 4th, and I think they give them a couple of days before they were located. So, going by this logic, you have the aliens stranded for two to four days. They had logistics problems, of course, like moving something as big as the Granolith, and as important as the pods to protect. With a failing ship, risk of discovery by both their own enemies and the humans, and possibly having either injured or dead friends/colleagues, they had to plan fast.

You are right, we don't know how many aliens were on board. We just know there were at least four.

Kathy has this scenario, and the aliens prioritize the Granolith because it looks more like a weapon than the pods, making it a primary target for humans if they were to be found. Plus, they need a power source to keep the pods alive, so the Granolith had to be moved first. They steal a trailer to move the Granolith -they also gain human allies- and in fact they had three sets of hybrids, so they had started moving the first one and all is going according to plan until the military discovers them.

It's a lot more complicated than just that, but you get the idea.

I agree with the Skins ship still being here. But Courtney knew enough about the Granolith to want to use it to survive. One can argue it was because it would get her home, and that's what she was after. Now, what exactly did the Granolith do besides time travel... and being a ship to get back home... we'll never know. Obviously, Nikolas and the four guys at the Summit knew it was incredibly valuable... Would have been nice to know why exactly... The whole "it's a holy thing" always sounded to me like an excuse Lonnie made up out of the blue to say something to Max and Tess ::shrug::

Sorry about the confusion with Kal. It still sounds to me that you were wondering why Kal didn't say anything to Max if there had been other ships around in 1936, or in present time. If there were ships he knew about, I still believe Kal would have kept his mouth shut. He didn't want to leave Earth. And it was Max who was dead set on getting the crashed ship. He ordered Kal to look for it, an order Kal was bound to follow.

But retaking the scenario: Let's say for argument's sake that there were several other ships before the crash. Then civil war all but explodes on Antar. If all those ships were loyal to Khivar, then they would have returned. It took the Skins three years to figure out the podsters were on Earth, why would anyone stay around on this planet before that? How would they know the dead king would be resurrected by hybridization with an alien race?

Or, okay, they stuck around, and were friendly. Fifty years go by between the crash and the first time we get to see a shapeshifter. That's an awful lot of time for too many things to have happened to these other guys, maybe not at the hands of the FBI, but at the hands of the Skins. They've certainly had enough reason to believe they have a chance to get the podsters back even if fifty years have gone by.

So, as I see it, there's nothing to contradict that there were more ships around before and during 1947, even with allies to help the original crew of the crashed ship. They just got either systematically killed, stopped believing their king would ever come back and deserted, or we just didn't get to see them during the show.

On the other hand... let's say that there was only one ship during 1936, and was the same during 1947. How would they have gained access to the Royal DNA? Was Zan and company killed a decade before? Regardless, this ship has -for some reason- Royal DNA and is also researching humans. Then they decide to make hybrids and -for some reason again- end up crashing on Earth. Hhhhhhmmmmm... could be. You can actually make a pretty strong case about it, now that I'm thinking about it...

Most importantly, both theories follow canon.

Misha

[RoswellOracle]

Yeah, I don't think you can mix 'reality' and Roswell successfully in looking at the crash. They don't match up on a ton of stuff. Apparenely the Roswell military were a lot more on the ball than the real military in the case of the crash.

According to Milton the crash took place 4th of July after the fireworks, so probably sometime after eleven or midnight, maybe even later. The SHP says that the cleanup of the crash site started around 4am, so they had hours, not days. And that is assuming the aliens were even conscious.

As for the alien in captivity dying, true it is never spelled out, but the line in the dialog right after the one you quoted, is Pierce telling Max - One of them escaped. Nasedo. It seems to me from that statement, that the other alien didn't make it out alive.

If there was one ship or more, it is likely that the one from 1936 was here to gather DNA to make the clones. You could argue that the Royal 4 were dead already or not, but the plan seems to already have been put in motion to bring them back.

And if there was more than one friendly ship, the other aliens might not have known that the one crashed, for days or weeks, or longer. True, they might have gone home, but to what? It seems more likely that they would stay on Earth and try to help, or try to find the others. Or maybe they couldn't go back for whatever reason.

And the Granolith is a whole other thing. I think everyone lied about what it was and what it could do. Sure, it could have been a religious object, but it obviously wasn't used often if they hadn't noticed in over 50 years that it was even gone. Maybe Khivar had a fake one made to fool everyone.

As for Courtney wanting to get to it, either she thought she could use it to go home, or possibly she could use it to 'heal' herself or her husk.

[killjoy]

The fact there is a huge group of healed kids running around now all over the Southwest who at any moment will show alien powers.

The fact that the hand print on said kids is a well documented clue known to some alien hunters who would most likely hunt down the kids.

[RoswellOracle]

What about the fact that Vaenti was surprised to find out that Isabel and Michael were aliens too?

Isabel was found with Max wandering naked, and Michael was probably found not to long after, also naked. No one ever connected the three of them?

In a small town like that, 3 kids abondoned and left naked in the desert would be BIG news. Surely Valenti woud have known about it.

[RoswellOracle]

I noticed something else weird when I was doing some work on my Roswell archive the other day. Alex showed Liz the slides of pics he took in 'Sweden', and one of them was his host family. When Liz broke into the school and stole Alex's file, one of the pages she found had the exact same photo on it, and it was submitted before Alex went on the trip. lol

Not to mention that Alex tells Liz the names of his host family, the Olsons,
Johan, Gustav, Rebecka, Mattias, and little Kiki.
There are 4 women, and 1 man in the pic, but Alex tells Liz,
3 men's names and 2 women's names .
So unless 2 of the men got sex changes, maybe Liz should
have been suspicous of Alex's trip to Sweden a bit earlier. lol