How much legit does the science have to be in your sci-fi TV/movies?

[Christopher]

Star Trek, not SF in general.

As I already said, Star Trek got the concept of warp drive from the well-established usage of the term "warp drive" in print science fiction over the previous three-plus decades, which was based in turn on the principle of space warps developed in theoretical papers on General Relativity. I don't see how much clearer I can make it.

 

[Nerys Myk]

As I already said, Star Trek got the concept of warp drive from the well-established usage of the term "warp drive" in print science fiction over the previous three-plus decades, which was based in turn on the principle of space warps developed in theoretical papers on General Relativity. I don't see how much clearer I can make it.

Taking the term doesn't mean taking the concept.

 

[Christopher]

Taking the term doesn't mean taking the concept.

Of course it does. Roddenberry consulted with scientists and engineers when he developed the show, and he'd been a reader of prose SF for most of his life, so he was surely familiar with the concepts from there. Also, he hired a bunch of accomplished prose SF authors like Ellison, Spinrad, Sturgeon, Matheson, and others to write for the show, although not all of them proved able to adapt to writing for TV.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Of course it does. Roddenberry consulted with scientists and engineers when he developed the show, and he'd been a reader of prose SF for most of his life, so he was surely familiar with the concepts from there. Also, he hired a bunch of accomplished prose SF authors like Ellison, Spinrad, Sturgeon, Matheson, and others to write for the show, although not all of them proved able to adapt to writing for TV.

Supposition.

 

[Christopher]

Supposition.

Have you never read The Making of Star Trek? This is extensively documented. And my last sentence can be proven just by reading the credits on the actual episodes.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Have you never read The Making of Star Trek? This is extensively documented. And my last sentence can be proven just by reading the credits on the actual episodes.

Read and reread since the 70s. Wore more than one copy out. Nowhere did I say SF writers didn't write episodes. I'm well aware of that. Again, fan since the 60s and 70s. But again dropping the word "warp" into dialog doesn't mean they actually thought through what that meant and how it worked.

 

[Mudd]

"Warp drive" is "abracadabra," like hyperspace and a host of other technical sounding terms used to enable writers of space adventure to ignore real science.


The most interesting aspect of Whitfield's book are the repeated instances of the Trek people getting answers from science consultants and then saying, more or less, "Yeah, that doesn't work for us."

Obvious example from The Making of Star Trek:

Accepted theory now is that any spaceship traveling at any significant fraction of the speed of light would encounter frightening problems regarding the relative passage of time on Earth and on the spaceship. You could go from Earth to some distant star, and on your return find you'd only aged one year, while your contemporaries were dead and gone. Presumably, if you went at faster-than-light speeds, when you got back to Earth you might meet your great-great-grandchildren. STAR TREK avoIds this problem entirely. On this point the show is inaccurate, and of necessity it ist be so, in order to entertain.

That last sentence (italics mine) is a direct acknowledgment that the essential premise of the series setting was scientifically inaccurate by deliberate choice.

Which is the way just about all popular science fiction works. In fact, this very bit of
legerdemain - positing FTL travel aboard spaceships - is why almost no popular science fiction set in space can accurately be counted as "hard sf" in the strictest definition of the term.


I guess there's something to be said for knowing the rules before you break them.

This kind of example crops up repeatedly throughout the text, whether the subject is scientific theory, "technologies" that make the starship work (artificial gravity is a big hand-wave), the use of astronomical photography in optical effects, "stardates" (invented out of whole cloth, with no intrinsic meaning other than to evade the question of timekeeping altogether), costuming, prop design and so forth.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Vacuum is an insulator! With no material to conduct or convect heat away, the only mechanism for heat loss is radiation, the least efficient one. Just as you lose heat more quickly in water than in air, because it's a denser medium, it should be obvious that you'd lose heat more slowly in vacuum, but for some reason, nobody thinks this through.

What you said there is wrong. And it's been over thirteen years (!), but we've had this conversation before, in this thread (and some of the links are still working in this post). If we're going to lecture people about what's scientifically true, let's get it right.

A liquid boils rapidly in a vacuum. Each molecule that is ejected because of the boiling carries energy away from the liquid, until the liquid freezes. That's why, for example, when liquid urine is jettisoned from a spacecraft, it almost immediately flash-freezes and crystalizes. You might even say that it is yellow snow. This mechanism of heat loss from a liquid in a vacuum is neither conduction nor radiation.

 

[The Lensman]

As I already said, Star Trek got the concept of warp drive from the well-established usage of the term "warp drive" in print science fiction over the previous three-plus decades, which was based in turn on the principle of space warps developed in theoretical papers on General Relativity. I don't see how much clearer I can make it.

While I agree that most of the tech in Star Trek is a patchwork quilt of tech from older sci-fi (transporters, scanners, sensors, communicators, phasers, ftl) I don't recall off the top of my head the usage of the term "warp drive" in older sci-fi, not that it wasn't, I simply don't recall. I think the closest I can vaguely remember, at least conceptually, is maybe from John Campbell...The Islands of Space?

My namesake series by E.E."Doc" Smith had the Inertialess Drive, and I generally thought the most common fictional FTL back in the 30's and 40's was either that, or Hyperspace. Can you recall a specific work from the 30's or 40's that uses the term "warp drive" or "warp"? I'd be interested in giving it a read.

 

[Nerys Myk]

While I agree that most of the tech in Star Trek is a patchwork quilt of tech from older sci-fi (transporters, scanners, sensors, communicators, phasers, ftl) I don't recall off the top of my head the usage of the term "warp drive" in older sci-fi, not that it wasn't, I simply don't recall. I think the closest I can vaguely remember, at least conceptually, is maybe from John Campbell...The Islands of Space?

My namesake series by E.E."Doc" Smith had the Inertialess Drive, and I generally thought the most common fictional FTL back in the 30's and 40's was either that, or Hyperspace. Can you recall a specific work from the 30's or 40's that uses the term "warp drive" or "warp"? I'd be interested in giving it a read.

Wikipedia attributes it to Campbell and Islands of Space. The reviews quoted are not kind to the novel.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

FWIW, here's a paragraph from the Wikipedia article:

​

The general concept of warp drive was introduced by John W. Campbell in his 1957 novel Islands of Space.[8][9]: 77 [10] Brave New Words gave the earliest example of the term "space-warp drive" as Fredric Brown's Gateway to Darkness (1949), and also cited an unnamed story from Cosmic Stories (May 1941) as using the word "warp" in the context of space travel, although the usage of this term as a "bend or curvature" in space which facilitates travel can be traced to several works as far back as the mid-1930s, for example Jack Williamson's The Cometeers (1936).[5]: 212, 268 ​

 

[diankra]

Fairly for me. I can accept the aliens having FTL or interstellar craft, several centuries ahead of us, But in V.... on TV they maybe seemed 50 years ahead, with a few big breakthroughs in antigrav and fusion. But when the comic had magic regrowing of limbs, no.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

But when the comic had magic regrowing of limbs, no.

The Surprisingly Simple Recipe for Starting to Grow a Limb - Harvard News & Research
Study illuminates development, could inform limb regeneration efforts

At a glance:

In a first, scientists have identified the proteins needed to kick-start limb formation in mice and chicks.
The findings allow researchers for the first time to turn non-limb-forming cells into limb-forming ones and keep them alive in the lab for far longer than once possible.
Work deepens understanding of early limb development and could contribute to the long-term goal of regenerating limbs lost to injury and disease.

Science seems to find a way. Even if it's a first step in developing the techniques to do so.

How bioelectricity could regrow limbs and organs, with Michael Levin - University of Chicago.
Biologist’s innovative research on how cells rebuild themselves could be the future of regenerative medicine

There seems to be alot of research around natural limb regeneration, and how we can apply it to humans in the future.

 

[diankra]

When it comes to shows being both entertaining and education there's trend with show on places like History and Netflix where we have fully scripted and acted dramatic scenes intercut with interviews about what's going on in those scene, we see it with shows like The Men/Food/Whatever That Built America, and The Lost Pirate Kingdom.

As for the original question, I like it when shows at least make an attempt to get the basic stuff right, but it's not a deal breaker for me. I can enjoy stuff like both The Expanse and Moonfall at the same time.

There is stuff that sticks with the no FTL, and stuff that uses FTL and then sticks with is rules/principles

 

[diankra]

The Surprisingly Simple Recipe for Starting to Grow a Limb - Harvard News & Research
Study illuminates development, could inform limb regeneration efforts


Science seems to find a way. Even if it's a first step in developing the techniques to do so.

How bioelectricity could regrow limbs and organs, with Michael Levin - University of Chicago.
Biologist’s innovative research on how cells rebuild themselves could be the future of regenerative medicine

There seems to be alot of research around natural limb regeneration, and how we can apply it to humans in the future.

It's unlikely for the visitors. But they possibly knew a lot more than the Leader OKed. Mentioning Hitler is usually a bad idea, but he did veto a lot of Jewish ideas that turn out to be right. The Visitor leader was possibly equally wrong

 

[Mudd]

FWIW, here's a paragraph from the Wikipedia article:

​

The general concept of warp drive was introduced by John W. Campbell in his 1957 novel Islands of Space.[8][9]: 77 [10] Brave New Words gave the earliest example of the term "space-warp drive" as Fredric Brown's Gateway to Darkness (1949), and also cited an unnamed story from Cosmic Stories (May 1941) as using the word "warp" in the context of space travel, although the usage of this term as a "bend or curvature" in space which facilitates travel can be traced to several works as far back as the mid-1930s, for example Jack Williamson's The Cometeers (1936).[5]: 212, 268 ​

GR is supposed to have read a lot of pulp sf. Peebles certainly had.

The initial reference to warp in Star Trek is Christopher Pike saying "Our time warp, factor seven."

There's no reason to think that their adoption of common sf terminology was anything other than just lifting from the stories they'd read.

Parenthetically, Bova's Star Conquerors (1959) uses another bit of jargon that Star Trek would later pick up:

The communications tech's startled face appeared on the screen. "Sir, as far as we can tell . . . they
jumped into subspace."

 

[JD]

Enough to be believable to a non-science person like me, but not so much as to wreck the fun.

Some examples of "bad science" that's obvious even to a non-science person, and thus distracting:

• A human exposed to the vacuumed of space only freezes and/or suffocates, without body horror.

I just assume with this that any nasty stuff just doesn't happen until their off camera

• Aliens resembling humans to excessive degrees, physically and/or culturally

Star Trek, Stargate, and Farscape at least provide us with an explanation with this one. And Star War is more fantasy than sci-fi, so there's no real need for an explanation.