Steampunk Comes to Primetime

Last night the TV detective show Castle involved steampunk.

The show started with a dead, naked body. It eventually turned out that the victim had been wearing a Victorian outfit (which had been stolen by a local homeless man) and was shot with a 200-year old bullet.

The detectives followed the victim's associations through Wild West reenactors to a steampunk hang-out. The title character even tried out a steampunk outfit.

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It eventually turned out that two members had fought a duel with antique pistols. But, the main characters tested the guns and were not able to hit a silhouette. From that they deduced that there was an additional shooter who used a better weapon. They eventually tracked it down to a someone who "modified a modern shotgun to fire antique pistol balls."

The steampunk parts were great. They brought in some people with really nice props as well as costumes from the Steampunk Emporium.

The parts about the dueling pistols was stupid. Dueling pistols were smoothbore which meant that they were not as accurate as a modern pistol but they are certainly better than what was shown. I've hit three out of three body shots in a competition. You would think that a trained police detective who has to qualify regularly with pistols would be able to do at least as well. But the plot said that the pistols wouldn't work so they didn't.

The other point is the shotgun. The show didn't give the slightest indication about how you modify a shotgun to shoot a lead ball. Not much modification would be needed. You could custom load a shell with black powder and a ball. The only trace would be if you loaded more than one shell so that there was one for the police to find. Outside of that, you could pull the slug from a modern shell and insert the ball along with some wadding. I doubt that either of these would be more accurate than a pistol. You would be shooting a fairly small ball out of a big barrel so there would be little to guide the ball.

Obviously the script writers made the physics fit the solution.

Now if they had just had some airship pirates.