Before Saturday night fever, before Grease, and only a couple of days after Carrie hit theatres, John Travolta had already been the star in his very own movie. A made for tv movie, admittedly, but a movie nonetheless. The boy in the plastic bubble is very loosely based on the story of a boy suffering from severe combined immunodeficiency from birth.1 Because of that, he has to spend his life in a plastic cage to prevent exposure even to pathogens that, for other people, would be completely innocuous. There are some plastic gloves built into the walls because otherwise the poor boy couldn’t even play chess.
Probably, chess was a very large part of his life, but we only get to see him play a game once, against a doctor who’s visiting him to see how he’s doing. Frankly, I’m curious, too. Has he been studying the latest Informant or was he thumbing Myers’ Opening Bulletin?
Sadly, I cannot tell you, because he’s playing black and the black pieces are very hard to make out. I’m pretty sure that his queen’s knight is on c6 and that at least the d-pawn is right next to it, but Lord knows what’s happening on his king’s side. However, I am confident about the white pieces.2
It seems white has played some kind of mirrored stonewall; a system that essentially no-one plays. I’m not exactly sure why that is, but a large part is probably that a black bishop on c5, looking at f2, is a good deal scarier than one on f5, looking at c2.
We get to see a single move in this game: white plays Qa4 in the above position, which is neither the best nor the worst move. Just like this is neither the best nor the worst movie. It’s closer to the worst, though.
Realism: 2/5 Apparently, black has just been doing nothing for several moves.3 I’m admittedly unsure about the exact position of his pieces, but none seem to have crossed the Rubicon between the fifth and sixth rank.
Probable winner: White is far ahead in development, particularly that of his immune system.
1. [Also known as SCID, a terrible disease in which the patient stops paying for his chess database software.] ↩
2. [I’m also confident about my choice of diagram editor.] ↩
3. [That’s bound to become your speciality if you spend all your life in a plastic bubble.] ↩