OU on the BBC: Hollywood Science - Tricky Situations

Production team

Our first movie star to find themselves with their back against a wall is Saffron Burrows, in Deep Blue Sea. Trapped by a mutant shark in a room half full of sea water, our heroine has the bright idea of ripping an electricity cable off the wall and shoving it in the sharks mouth, thereby bringing about its demise. Where she gets really clever though, is in using her wetsuit to insulate her from the highly charged sea water sloshing all about her. Would Saffron have, in fact, gone the same way as the shark, or would she, as the movie would ask us to believe, have lived to fight another day?

Jonathan and Robert turn their attention next to a scene from The Last Castle, in which a prison riot is underway. But our angry inmates are being picked off one by one by a hovering helicopter. It seems that all is lost, but Robert Redford has something up his sleeve. Commandeering a water cannon, he instructs his men to shove a grappling iron into the end. As he then turns on the tap, the water pressure is enough to send the iron high into the sky, where it swiftly brings the helicopter down in a heap!

Last, but not least, it’s the turn of Bond…James Bond. In a nailbiting scene from A View to A Kill, Roger Moore has been dumped in a lake, trapped inside a Rolls Royce. Unable to escape, because the baddies are sticking around to make sure that this time he really is dead, he comes up with a brilliant plan. By unscrewing the valve from one of the tyres, and breathing the escaping air, Roger is able to stay under long enough for the villains to leave.

First broadcast: Wednesday 2 Apr 2003 on BBC TWO

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