Enterprise said:Has anyone noticed that when Al is smoking his cigars, you can still see the smoke, even though it is not physically touching him? :x
My theory is that there is a kind of field of projection around Al as a nuerological hologram so you can see anything he touches back in the imaging chamber or anything in his immediate vicinity.
Also, in the episode 'Shock Theater', Al does touch Dr. Beeks(?) with his bare hand, so I think that Sam can only see what Al is physically touching.
Going out on a limb here, but...perhaps since Al is physically touching the cigar, the smoke is actually still part of/attached to the cigar, only it's in the process of disintegrating/detaching.
I've brought this topic up before myself, when I asked why we couldn't see the government committee when they grabbed Al in "Star-Crossed." I came to the conclusion that it would have to be skin-to-skin contact. But what about things like Al's shoes or when he wears gloves? His skin touches his socks, and his socks touch the shoes, but no direct contact. Well, I kind of figure that as long as Al is touching something that is touching an object (like when he's holding the handlink and wearing gloves), the brainwave signal still allows it to be visible. The committee, however, grabbed Al by his elbows, and therefore anything they were wearing that touched Al's robe was too thick to transmit through.
But other instances, especially in the early episodes, where Al goes up and down a few steps, are simply a mistake. (OK, to be fair, maybe Don didn't fully establish his rules yet, but Al still goes up a step in the church in "Last Dance Before An Execution," which was a lot later in the series.) Unless there happened to be steps in the Imaging Chamber exactly where the holographic steps were... I'm not sure why Don simply didn't have the Imaging Chamber have some kind of treadmill-type floor, so that Al could walk all he wanted without risking bumping into a wall. And other things like Al's shadow should not exist at all either; light and shadow can be cast on him, but he can't cast light or shadow on anything else. But hey, we're not supposed to think that deeply into it, right?
Don't mind me──I love explaining this stuff.
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