854
But first they would need to invent some tape
(i.imgur.com)
They could have fitted the whole ring / tape / mouse assembly into a small paper bag Aragorn could have kept it in his jacket and fed it little bits of lembas on the way how lovely x
This is the LOTR equivalent of
"ACTUALLY the transporter can do almost anything in Star Trek and should be used constantly to solve every problem and renders every other technology on the show obsolete, including the spaceships themselves" and it is only cute in very small doses.
The original was "why didn't the eagles fly to mordor and drop the ring in the top of the volcano" which was funnier the first time than the thousandth time. You're right that these witty workarounds are only funny the first time and tire quickly.
Tolkien himself answered that very annoying and very old question, if this is real anyway.
https://youtu.be/1-Uz0LMbWpI
'shut up' lmao
i was expecting something about how the nazguls would intercept or the ring would corrupt them or something
The answer is that the eagles are theologically angels in LotR and both sapient and very susceptible to the Ring, and having a flying Sauron-replacement is not an improvement.
I thought it was that the eagles were basically demigods and they didn't originally help frodo for the same reason we don't regularly help carry ants back to their mound with food but then after Gandalf came back he was able to convince them
I just assumed that sauron had some means of stopping eagles flying to mordor
He's got the Nazguls riding the Fellbeasts as well as the fact that if the big ass eagles flew directly at Mount Doom, everyone would see them and orcs would be swarming the mountain before they could land.
Bothered me to no end. Why introduce an ex-machina tech like the transporter, when they never fkn use it to solve literally every problem.
It was originally introduced because the show's shuttlecraft prop was not quite ready for the early episodes and was too expensive to easily lug around later. That's it. That's why. And now we're stuck with it and the smug "ACTUALLY" types that remind us constantly at what the tech magic could/should do.
The transporter basically requires it to be a clear sunny day with nothing unexpected in the way to function properly, and even in those conditions we see it malfunction quite a lot. TBH if I were in Starfleet I would invent a religion that eschews transporter use and take a shuttle everywhere because they seem safer.