What tropes in science fiction annoy you?
- Thread starter Gingerbread Demon
- Start date
I think it'd have to be something a little more plausible than that, but I like the idea.
It'd be interesting where they went with that premise. Where I'd go is that it made it into a game of telling the best technical truths about yourself and the worst technical truths about the other person. People creatively finding ways to create misinterpretation of things that are technically true using psychology. Like everything you say is planned like a commercial.
It'd be hard not to make it seem like the aliens didn't really represent some human ideology.
Another trope I hate are characters that are "holier than thou" This isn't scifi but I've seen it in non SF shows and I find it annoying.
Watching Blue Bloods they have "holier than thou" characters and that is pretty much the whole Reagan family besides Linda.
I have watched the show from season 1 to 8 and my impression of the Reagans is that they are more then sometimes holier than thou and are always right and have the right answers, and are pompous asses. Yet I find myself strangely liking the show I don't know why.
Watching Blue Bloods they have "holier than thou" characters and that is pretty much the whole Reagan family besides Linda.
I have watched the show from season 1 to 8 and my impression of the Reagans is that they are more then sometimes holier than thou and are always right and have the right answers, and are pompous asses. Yet I find myself strangely liking the show I don't know why.
I believe there are stories from the colonial era of western colonists encountering communities who didn't care about people's sexual behaviour unless it was abusive, but considered anger or violence of any kind to be unforgivable outrageous crime. The colonists blithely installed their own values and learned nothing.
"We've come back in the wrong timeline. You must help us put it right."
"Okie dokie, let me just wipe out my entire lived history because you say this is wrong, strange person I don't really know."
"Okie dokie, let me just wipe out my entire lived history because you say this is wrong, strange person I don't really know."
Where did that happen? Considered your avatar too and hoping it wasn't The Doctor who did that.
Also what's with actors in their mid to late 20s trying to pass off as teenagers in movies?
Teenage actors are often not great, also often harder to work with (partially because of age and partially because of laws about exactly how much they're allowed to work per day). I do feel like this has become less prominent recently, though, with some great teenage actors like Chloe Grace Moretz, Millie Bobbie Brown (the entire ST cast, really), Hailee Steinfeld, etc.
All over the place. SG1 did it a number of times. I guess their main example would be the end of Season 8 or Continuum. In Moebius it wasn't quite some stranger telling them so much as a video of themselves, but they travelled to ancient Egypt, changed the timeline by mistake and then left a video telling themselves to put it right, flashforward 4000 years and they go and do it. Why? Their history is their history, just because someone tells them it was different before doesn't mean they should automatically want to change it.
Well, Janeway refused to be killed for the future's sake...
On the other hand, both Chak and Kim willingly destroyed their future for Janeway's sake...
Kim even wiped-out an "ideal" present because though very nice... "it just wasn't right"...
Yeah, like I don't like my good life where I am successful, respected and with the woman I love, so I'll risk death to switch to, a life where I am the doormat of a power-drunk harpy, and a thankless stalled career...
Yeah, lets wipe out this perfectly fine timeline for some other, unknown, unknowable timeline, where life may be incredibad.
Yeah, the Voyager writers really stretched that one, didn't they?
Indeed, a skilled writer could produce something much more interesting. Finding an alien civilization with ideal attributes shown and the implications of it would be interesting....mostly we've just gotten "you are too primitive, come back in xxxxxx years and we might be friends". Meh.
Hmmm...the Nox in SG1 qualify I suppose...
I get this, but then we also see men beating up people they really shouldn't be able to. Seems the entire cast of DS9 can take down Jem Hadar with relative ease.
Though only Worf can break their necks.
One thing that annoys me on DS9 is their "heroic" responses that are almost anti-human. For example, in "Rocks and Shoals" when the Vorta gives them the plan of attack of his men, they seem disgusted and reluctant to use it, but it seems obvious that:
1) if the situation were reversed, the Jems would have exterminated them without hesitation.
2) without the plan of attack most of them would have died in the attack.
3) Even with the plan of attack one of them died anyway!!!
4) as anybody knows, when you're at war, you try to win with as little casualties on your side as possible. You don't agonize over the "fairness" of the combat. In fact, I've done some time in the army of my country (I was drafted) and I learned that in combat you don't attack unless your superiority is established. The recommended ratio is more than 3 against 1. And if you have a clear terrain advantage then all the better. In fact, the only sane thing in the series has been said by Worf: "In war, nothing is more honorable than victory."
1) if the situation were reversed, the Jems would have exterminated them without hesitation.
2) without the plan of attack most of them would have died in the attack.
3) Even with the plan of attack one of them died anyway!!!
4) as anybody knows, when you're at war, you try to win with as little casualties on your side as possible. You don't agonize over the "fairness" of the combat. In fact, I've done some time in the army of my country (I was drafted) and I learned that in combat you don't attack unless your superiority is established. The recommended ratio is more than 3 against 1. And if you have a clear terrain advantage then all the better. In fact, the only sane thing in the series has been said by Worf: "In war, nothing is more honorable than victory."
Honestly, a lot of these strike me as just standard scifi conventions rather than glitches. Can't say they ever annoyed me.
That being said, it does bug me when movie and TV aliens always seem to come from another "galaxy" rather than just another solar system in our own vast galaxy. I get that "we come from a galaxy far beyond yours" sounds more dramatic, but it is akin to implying that just because somebody doesn't come from your neighborhood they must have come from another continent!
That being said, it does bug me when movie and TV aliens always seem to come from another "galaxy" rather than just another solar system in our own vast galaxy. I get that "we come from a galaxy far beyond yours" sounds more dramatic, but it is akin to implying that just because somebody doesn't come from your neighborhood they must have come from another continent!
I don't think there's anything wrong with that situation. Yes, their survival is the most important and they did act accordingly. But the Vorta's actions are disgusting, even though they were good for the heroes. Any reasonable analysis of the situation on that planet would indicate that the Jem'Hadar should probably have sided with Sisko against the Vorta if they were actually acting in their own self-interest - but they don't do that because they've been brainwashed their entire lives to believe that this weasel has the right to screw them over however he likes. That's an honest tragedy and I don't find it at all strange that, as a victory, it feels kind of dirty to some of the crew.
I am sorry, but this has absolutely no relevance with my point whatsoever. I am neither judging the Jems or the Vorta. In war, there are spies, traitors, and all sorts of people in between Your duty as a soldier for your country is to use these when they present themselves and not stop to wonder if it's wrong or right to do that. As I said, it's obvious that if the situation were reversed and if the Jems did get Sisko's plan of attack from a traitor in Sisko's camp, they would have used it without hesitation.
Sisko's warning of the Jems was stupid and borderline suicidal. If the Jems had decided to change their plan of attack based on Sisko's revelation, it would have meant the death of all of Sisko's companions. Lucky for Sisko that the Jem's respect of the chain of command was stronger than their survival instinct. No real soldier in a real war would have been stupid enough to do what Sisko has done.
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Isn't that the point of the thread?
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