Convection Schmonvection / Live-Action TV

• Blake's 7:
  • Averted in "City at the Edge of the World". Avon points out that firing a laser cannon at point-blank range would kill the firer with the reflected heat and energy. The Villain of the Week is crazy enough to do it anyway.
  • The Liberator can't fire its own neutron blasters without a flare shield being put up first to prevent this.
• Subverted by Mike Rowe in Dirty Jobs. Standing at least 20-30 feet away from a fresh lava flow, he remarked "That is insanely hot!" and then added in the subsequent voiceover, "insanely hot was an understatement; it was hotter than hell". They had to get into special suits to get close since the radiant heat was enough to burn their skin, but seeing as the show centers on appreciating just how difficult everyday jobs are and strives for every aspect this is not too surprising. In other episodes, Mike has similar experiences with molten glass and molten steel — on the latter job, his face shield melted.
• Doctor Who:
  • Played straight in "The End of the World". Solar heat is shown to be a terribly lethal thing to let through, with special sun visors to block it out. But when the visors come down, the victims have plenty of time to scream and DUCK to avoid them (with mixed success, depending on the room and whether the Doctor is nearby). The walls seem to stand up to the energy reasonably well, too.
  • "42": The heat shields are the one thing stopping everyone on the Pentallian from getting fried as the ship falls into a sun.
  • "The Fires of Pompeii" justifies how the Doctor and Donna can run around inside Mount Vesuvius without getting burned to a crisp by explaining that the villains are stealing most of the volcano's energy for their own purposes.
  • The "Pond Life" mini-episodes preceding Series 7 feature the Doctor surfing a lava flow using nothing but a surfboard. However, this is ostensibly Played for Laughs due to the Doctor's rather off-hand over-the-phone comments about it.
  • "Dragonfire" has a strange inverted version with Kane. He freezes people to death with his bare hands... but since he can't stand warm (or even non-liquid nitrogen) temperatures, the body heat of his victims should burn him horribly at the same time.
• Eureka:
  • An episode deals with a miniature sun springing into being over the title city, creating an unending, superhot day. It keeps growing and getting hotter until it collapses a silo, melts the tires on a Jeep and fries the circuitry on a rocket. No people suffer any ill effects worse than sweating, and the idea that a small sun might cause a fire in the forest it's hovering over is never even mentioned.
  • Another episode features a giant artificially created pocket of magma somewhere under the city, which could pop up anywhere unless Carter diverts it into the nearby lake. Having done so, the lava spurts out of the tunnel he made and into the lake... while Carter stands right next to it, making his usual pithy comment.
• Game of Thrones: This applies to both sides of the "ice and fire" theme of the series. Dragonfire works similarly to firebending from Avatar: The Last Airbender in that characters generally will not experience burns as long as they do not directly touch the flames. This gets especially ridiculous in the season 7 episode "The Spoils of War", in which Bronn and Jamie avoid the massive column of fire Drogon produces by inches and come out of it unscathed. Similarly, the White Walkers are cold enough to instantly extinguish any fire that comes within a few meters of them and have blades so cold that steel shatters upon contact, yet somehow the characters avoid instant frostbite when in their presence.
• The Hardy Boys Nancy Drew Mysteries:
  • "Mystery of the Flickering Torch" has Frank and Joe trapped inside a small closet while a fire rages outside. They break out and dive through the flames to the outside without breaking a sweat or even a singe to their clothing. They don't even sweat when they're inside that tiny closet, with the flames raging on the other side!
  • "Arson & Old Lace" has Frank, Joe, and Nancy all trying to escape a burning office building. Both Hardys are shown entering rooms with raging flames to rescue people, with no burns, sweat, or other ill effects beyond a bit of smudge and coughing. On top of that, Frank Hardy & Nancy Drew use an elevator shaft to climb to the roof & escape the fire. The room they're in is full of smoke, the shaft is shown to have flames on the floors below, yet neither Frank nor Nancy have any issues breathing nor do they cook alive while climbing this smoking-hot chimney of an elevator.
• In an episode of the original Knight Rider, the car runs over a lava spillage not once, but twice. The tires are a little melted, but the Magical Impregnable Alloy protecting KITT is just a little dirty.
• In Lost in Space (2018) the first episode sees a cold front coming in while Judy is diving to retrieve supplies from their submerged ship. The cold weather inexplicably freezes the water from the bottom up, as well as being so cold to freeze an entire lake in minutes but not posing the people on the surface any danger.
• The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power has a particularly egregious example: Galadriel, humans, and Orcs somehow manage to survive a direct hit by a pyroclastic flow from the first eruption of Mount Doom. The heat should have killed them all, but not only do they survive, nobody asphyxiates in the aftermath.
• Subverted on MacGyver. In "Flame's End", the villain has locked him and a companion in a room at a nuclear power plant and he plans to flood it with the reactor's coolant water. Mac's companion points out that convection alone is going to kill them long before they have a chance to drown, scald, or be irradiated to death.
• The Magician: In "Illusion of the Lost Dragon", Tony is able to keep working on a complicated puzzle lock despite the heat of a Lava Pit opening up underneath him. Earlier in the episode, a young man was similarly unaffected until he fell into the lava, at which point he was instantly incinerated.
• MythBusters once tested firewalking over charcoal. The build team found out that coal is actually a decent insulator; the top being much cooler than the underside, and that the proper technique is a casual walk. This is because when running, more weight is concentrated on less area, causing a person's feet to dig into the coals; potentially causing severe burns. Adam found that out the hard way. It's a favorite trick of "life coaches" to demonstrate firewalking over wood or charcoal. Ask them to repeat the feat with a comparatively cooler metal plate.
  
  On a similar note, the MythBusters have demonstrated that it's perfectly possible to (very briefly) dip your fingers into molten lead, if you dip them in water beforehand. The layer of water coating your skin evaporates the moment it makes contact, and water vapor is yet another excellent insulator.
• Our Miss Brooks: In "Public Property on Parade", nobody so much as breaks a sweat when standing next to Madison High School's coal fired boiler.
• Power Rangers/Super Sentai:
  • In the second episode of Power Rangers Operation Overdrive, Moltor holds Andrew Hartford over a river of lava, in an attempt to get the Corona Aurora. Andrew suffers no ill effects from being so close to the lava.
  • And in Episode 15 of GoGo Sentai Boukenger, GoGo Jet is flown right into a volcano and someone dangled down to pick up a crystal that's floating in the lava.
• In the Sanctuary episode "Pax Romana", two characters in insulation suits (which leave much of the head and hands exposed) leisurely execute a medical procedure surrounded by molten rock a few meters below. There's a dramatic close call where one of them falls extremely close to the lava. Sadly, her hair fails to start smoking.
• On an episode of Smallville, Clark saves his rival Whitney from a fireball by covering his back with his body. We actually see the fireball engulfing Whitney's uncovered front, and we are shown that the blast super-heats Clark's body to the point that his father is burned just by touching him, but Whitney is fine. Their clothes are also undamaged.
• In the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Basics, part II", the "don't touch the lava" rule is very much in effect when, during an evacuation from a volcanic eruption, Chakotay rescues an alien girl who's somehow gotten herself stranded on a piece of rock.
• Surprisingly averted in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Civil Defense". Sisko and O'Brien had to crawl through a cramped, metal tube surrounded by green fire, and they even wrapped their hands in cloth. O'Brien passed out from the heat.
• The Star Trek: The Next Generation series finale includes a scene where Q takes Picard back to primeval Earth. There are flaming pools of lava all around them, but Picard doesn't even seem to sweat. Then again, this is Q; any episode he's in is bound to violate the laws of physics at least a few times over. This is supposedly the time and place where life on Earth first evolved. There shouldn't even be oxygen.
• Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles: Sarah and John standing three feet from a thermite fire hot enough to melt a metal described as having more heat resistance than titanium? Right. Setting said fire indoors and not burning down the house in the process? Priceless.

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