Tintin Forums

I've just had a thought. I hope this is okay, I'm just wondering...

I know that Herge uses a lot of luck, chance and fortune in his Tintin adventures which is good because he seems to operate from a 'anything can happen' view; I think so, anyway. So I expect what I'm about to ask will probably apply to a lot of the Tintin adventures in different ways.

What if Haddock didn't literally bump into Skut at the airport? He wouldn't have been introduced to Carreidas. He gave him money, sure, but if he hadn't come across Skut, then he wouldn't have met the man properly because Skut introduces them and he, Calculus, Tintin and Snowy wouldn't have been put on the flight. They're not supposed to be there, after all; they're a hindrance to Spalding. I'm just wondering, given the fact that Snowy comes along and frees them when they're all prisoners: would Skut, Gino and Carreidas have survived the hijacking if they had been on their own? I'm not sure, myself.

What do the rest of you think?

A lot of things in that album really do seem to rest especially on luck or chance! What if Tintin had managed to keep the element of surprise on the plane? Or Carredidas hadn't even sneezed!?

I guess if the Captain hadn't bumped into Skut, they would have gone on to the conference, only to read about events of the island in a newspaper later. Skut and Gino would have definitely been in big trouble. I like to think they would have survived somehow, cause Skut is a great character. But I think Rastapopoulos and Carreidas would probably have stayed on a similar path - with the truth telling going awry.

Ah, the truth-telling is very... true. :) Yes, that probably would've still happened.

I think Skut would do everything possible to protect himself and Gino but I wonder if ultimately it would have been enough.

Actually, come to that, why doesn't Skut suffer any sudden illnesses or accidents like his colleages; he's the only original crew-member among the imposters. Herge as the narrator obviously wanted to bring him back so excluded him from the others' misfortunes, but within the story, did they decide two was enough and decide to leave the third pilot? I'm curious...

I should say that the biggest luck of all was the intervention of Mik Kanrokitoff who contacts Tintin via his head and then leads them through the tunnels to the volcano and the flying saucer!

I always thought that it wa a bit of a cheap ending that. It does provide something of a twist but to shift from thriller to science fiction is not very good planning in my mind.

More to the point, I think, would have been to try and survive on the island long enough to steal a boat and escape, with added drama in trying to find and defuse the explosives on board.

How would you have concluded this story?

Well, I don't know really, I'm not very good at such action sequences. :) Although the 'explosives on the boat' thing would have been a great dramatic alternative, the same idea was used before in Red Sea Sharks; for Tintin, Haddock and Skut that would have been a case of deja vu.

I think I quite liked the ending; it was different. It's just a shame that they can't remember anything from it! At least they all flew together in the end.

Well, I think that even if Tintin and company hadn't been with them on the island of Pulau-Pulau-Bompa, Mik Kanrokitoff would still have rescued everyone from the eruption just like he does in the actual story. Whether he would have been able to sort out "good" and "bad" like he does in the book remains to be seen though.

Actually Herge didn't like the ending either. He felt he hed been telling "either too much or not enough". Bad planning indeed. He also regretted to have shown the UFO so precisely.

I personally dislike it too, but for other reasons. I found the whole "aliens" deus ex machina kinda cheap. It was very fashionable at the time (there was the whole UFO trend around), so maybe a lot of people found it cool, but to my eyes it hasn't aged well. It doesn't seem too consistant with Tintin's universe. In fact I even find the Kanrokitoff character annoying. In general, my memory blanks that part of the story out, without needing any extraterrestrial help for that. People wondering if the flying saucer was around during the moon adventures just confirm my impression that the "ufo" and "contacted" thing doesn't fit too well.

But the rest of the story makes up for it.

I just didn't like the idea that none of the characters could remember what happened to them.

I think that it is actually rather interesting that Tintin had an adventure which he doesn't know about.