Science fiction pet hate

[Warped9]

*furiously takes notes of what to avoid doing in his SF anthology*

The rants against how established and speculative advanced science and technology are spot on. If your heroes (or villians) can manipulate gravity on a small scale (artificial gravity for ships and antigravs to handle objects) then they most likely can manipulate gravity on larger scales. Science and tech in the real world doesn't exist in a vacuum--it has many applications.

 

[stj]

*furiously takes notes of what to avoid doing in his SF anthology*

The rants against how established and speculative advanced science and technology are spot on. If your heroes (or villians) can manipulate gravity on a small scale (artificial gravity for ships and antigravs to handle objects) then they most likely can manipulate gravity on larger scales. Science and tech in the real world doesn't exist in a vacuum--it has many applications.

As weapons against other spaceships, not the least. The more science I learn, the less and less sensible space war is. SG1's stargates don't work either, even if they aren't spaceships. Logistically, one gate that could be preempted by an incoming wormhole is useless for any significant trade in materials, even if you ran train tracks up to it.

 

[JarodRussell]

I did not really like Avatar. I hated that movie. I wanted an enjoyable experience, not propaganda. It was obviously less a movie and more of an ad campaign. Notice how the Na'Vi are depicted as strong, healthy, high-minded beings while the Marines are depicted as corrupt, greedy idiots. A political viewpoint does not make a good movie! Do you hear me, James Cameron? DO YOU!?!? IF I HAD A HUNDRED BLU-RAY COPIES OF YOUR MOVIE, I'D THROW THEM IN THE FURNACE WITHOUT EVEN TRYING TO SELL THEM! AND IT'D BE HARDLY WITH THE COAL IT WOULD REQUIRE! (gasp, pant)

... Okay, I'm done.

Though I don't think it's the movie's problem when you are way too political when watching movies. Is it Iraq criticism? Will that make the movie better or worse in ten years? Does it make the movie bad for people who don't care about the Iraq war and don't get the allegedly "in your face" propaganda?

 

[Rii]

Verhoeven and the scriptwriter were satirizing militarism [...] in general.

Oh, certainly. I don't mean to suggest that the film had nothing to say pre-9/11, merely that it became far more poignant thereafter, with some specific touches - such as embedded journalists - resonating particularly strongly in light of Afghanistan/Iraq.

There were too many easy shots at the novel he didn't bother with, starting with Rico's Olympic size swimming pool.

I don't recall the swimming pool; but if you're just talking about Rico's wealth, well, wasn't that the point? That his family was exceptionally wealthy - thereby demonstrating that lack of citizenship is no barrier to material comfort - and that for his part Rico was under no material inducement to sign up for the military? That he could've easily have pursued a far cushier, more lucrative and safer career and that as such his choice can be regarded as a free act?

 

[JarodRussell]

Verhoeven and the scriptwriter were satirizing militarism [...] in general.

Oh, certainly. I don't mean to suggest that the film had nothing to say pre-9/11, merely that it became far more immediate thereafter, with some specific touches - such as embedded journalists - resonating particularly strongly in light of Afghanistan/Iraq.

You know, there were wars, embedded journalists and propaganda long before 9/11. It's just that it didn't happen to catch your attention. Obviously it caught Verhoeven's attention, otherwise he wouldn't have done it.

 

[Rii]

You know, there were wars, embedded journalists and propaganda long before 9/11. It's just that it didn't happen to catch your attention. Obviously it caught Verhoeven's attention, otherwise he wouldn't have done it.

Not with live video feeds occurring as part of a 24hr 'wartainment' news cycle there weren't. And that's what was in Starship Troopers in 1997 and on FOX News in 2003.

But, y'know, apparently this whole 'looking at the works of the past and how they relate to the present' thing is ridiculous. So I don't expect I'll be hearing about Nineteen Eighty Four ever again, right?

 

[Temis the Vorta]

I don't know about Caprica. It has a very "regular drama" feel, despite the SF trappings. A slightly distorted fun house mirror version of our own world.

The premise of the story is classic sci fi: are artificial beings equal to humans, and if so, on what basis? (In other words: what is a human?)

Most sci fi on TV isn't sci fi at its core. BSG is a war/survival story, for instance. The Cylons could have been a colony of humans that was pissed off at being pushed around. But in Caprica, you can't do the story if the Cylons aren't AI.

Even Star Trek is really just space cops/military/exploring strange new cultures which always seem to be human cultures with a bit of window-dressing. Individual episodes may rely on sci fi elements, but overall, you could transport Star Trek to the Old West and retain its essential features. (In fact, Star Trek famously started out as a Western transported to outer space.)

I don't disagree. I just wish it pushed the SF aspects a little more to the front. The AI and VR stuff gets lost in all the family drama and mobsters elements.

Yeah the business and mafia angles just aren't very interesting, and the religious stuff is even more of a bore. Here's hoping the writers figure out that there's nothing special about presenting an alien culture that is just a slight variation from Earth's, and the AI angle is the way to go.

Ugh, technology mismatch. The very existence of the transporter and the replicator should be incompatible with the rest of Star Trek technology.

Well I won't insist that every aspect of Star Trek life be upgraded to the magical tech levels of the transporter and replicator - that could make the daily life of our Starfleet heroes so unfamiliar that it's alienating. But it does bug me that Starfleet funds force fields for spaceships and brig cells, but not for away teams. Everyone should have a personal force field that automatically activates in situations of danger (if the danger is perceived fast enough by the array of personal sensors woven into the fabric of their uniforms.)

Why is Geordi the only one who wears a VISOR? With the amount of mileage he gets out of it just on the ship, it should be indispensible to other engineers, technicians, astronomers, physicians, scouts, commandos.... There's no reason a sighted person couldn't have the receptacles implanted the same way, then remove the VISOR when he's not using it.

That's another good one. It bugged me the way Geordi was assumed to be "handicapped" - the opposite was really the case.

 

[Nerys Myk]

^^^They had those belts in TAS. ( which saved them the trouble of drawing spacesuits)

 

[Temis the Vorta]

He was going for a post-9/11 allegory in a 1997 movie?

The man was a genius!

But the film works better (as a satire) if one pretends otherwise.

As satire, that movie needs all the help it can get, such as the audience using an abundance of imagination on its behalf. Now I just need to know why I should bother deluding myself that a half-assed movie is brilliant satire.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

I did not really like Avatar. I hated that movie. I wanted an enjoyable experience, not propaganda. It was obviously less a movie and more of an ad campaign. Notice how the Na'Vi are depicted as strong, healthy, high-minded beings while the Marines are depicted as corrupt, greedy idiots. A political viewpoint does not make a good movie! Do you hear me, James Cameron? DO YOU!?!? IF I HAD A HUNDRED BLU-RAY COPIES OF YOUR MOVIE, I'D THROW THEM IN THE FURNACE WITHOUT EVEN TRYING TO SELL THEM! AND IT'D BE HARDLY WITH THE COAL IT WOULD REQUIRE! (gasp, pant)

... Okay, I'm done.

Though I don't think it's the movie's problem when you are way too political when watching movies. Is it Iraq criticism? Will that make the movie better or worse in ten years? Does it make the movie bad for people who don't care about the Iraq war and don't get the allegedly "in your face" propaganda?

The main problem with Avatar is that it's such cheap, manipulative propaganda. It flatters the audience by letting them believe they are on the side of the innocent natives whose resources are being stolen. But would anyone in the audience walk out of the theater resolving do anything concrete, such as using less gasoline, in their everyday lives? The number of people who got that message from the movie is vanishingly small. They bought an unearned glow of smugness for their ten or twelve bucks. If that's how Cameron wants to make a buck, good for him, but I at least choose not to participate in a collective delusion. All I wanted from that movie was the cool SFX.

But this thread has inspired an interesting question: which movie is clumsier propaganda, Starship Troopers or Avatar? I still gotta give the edge to Starship Troopers, but it's a fairly close call.

 

[Ruaidhri]

Not limited to SF, but in almost any tv show or movie that has computer use in it: computers that beep and warble just because text appears on the screen. It's like someone, at some point, decided that the noise of teletype printing onto paper needed to be reproduced electronically and one character at a time needed to appear to mimic the "drama" of watching important information appear sssslllllooooooowwwwwlllllyyyyy.

 

[milo bloom]

The real answer, of course, is the transporter was Gene's handwave to the problem of getting people to the surface in a hurry. As such, it's not the sort of thing that should ever be used as the key to an episode, as it was in "Second Chances" or "The Enemy Within." It opens up too many cans of worms. Either keep it in its place as a background device, just like the UT, or get rid of it completely.

This is an easy one, but episodes like "Second Chances" are a big pet peeve of mine, where the writers practically write themselves a goldmine of opportunities, then toss it out the window like a sack of moldy tangerines by the next episode.

Frakes was floundering after BOBW, Will Riker should have been left as a captain and moved onto his own ship. Since they didn't do that, when they got the chance in "SC", they could have set up a couple of episode story arc with Thomas trying to fit in alongside Riker, and Will finally growing a pair and accepting command of his own ship. Data moves to XO, Worf or Geordi to second officer, and Thomas right behind. Let us watch the Riker character grow all over again, but this time do it differently. Maybe even do subtle remakes of earlier Riker centric episodes but with different outcomes because of the differences in Rikers.

I guess, to summarize, I would say the pet peeve here would be when writers are a tease. If you can't make the incredible idea plausible, just leave it for later and do another bumpy-headed alien of the week episode.

 

[FordSVT]

The premise of the story is classic sci fi: are artificial beings equal to humans, and if so, on what basis? (In other words: what is a human?)

Most sci fi on TV isn't sci fi at its core. BSG is a war/survival story, for instance. The Cylons could have been a colony of humans that was pissed off at being pushed around. But in Caprica, you can't do the story if the Cylons aren't AI.

Even Star Trek is really just space cops/military/exploring strange new cultures which always seem to be human cultures with a bit of window-dressing. Individual episodes may rely on sci fi elements, but overall, you could transport Star Trek to the Old West and retain its essential features. (In fact, Star Trek famously started out as a Western transported to outer space.)

I don't disagree. I just wish it pushed the SF aspects a little more to the front. The AI and VR stuff gets lost in all the family drama and mobsters elements.

Yeah the business and mafia angles just aren't very interesting, and the religious stuff is even more of a bore. Here's hoping the writers figure out that there's nothing special about presenting an alien culture that is just a slight variation from Earth's, and the AI angle is the way to go.

Ugh, technology mismatch. The very existence of the transporter and the replicator should be incompatible with the rest of Star Trek technology.

Well I won't insist that every aspect of Star Trek life be upgraded to the magical tech levels of the transporter and replicator - that could make the daily life of our Starfleet heroes so unfamiliar that it's alienating. But it does bug me that Starfleet funds force fields for spaceships and brig cells, but not for away teams. Everyone should have a personal force field that automatically activates in situations of danger (if the danger is perceived fast enough by the array of personal sensors woven into the fabric of their uniforms.)

Why is Geordi the only one who wears a VISOR? With the amount of mileage he gets out of it just on the ship, it should be indispensible to other engineers, technicians, astronomers, physicians, scouts, commandos.... There's no reason a sighted person couldn't have the receptacles implanted the same way, then remove the VISOR when he's not using it.

That's another good one. It bugged me the way Geordi was assumed to be "handicapped" - the opposite was really the case.

Well remember, for a long while Geordi often complained of discomfort in his implants and when wearing a VISOR. Also, in case you haven't noticed, people in Star Trek have an aversion to getting mechanical augmentations embedded into their bodies. He lost his sight and was disabled, not much of a choice. I'm sure a tricorder or other hand-held device could be programmed to do anything Geordi's VISOR could do anyway.

They mentioned personal forcefield on DS9 once, would have been nice to see them. The recent novels make use of them, and also of the fact that Starfleet uses a phaser resistant material on some of its uniforms. Obviously not canon.

In general, the novels have always made MUCH better use of the technologies available to these people.

 

[Harvey]

Yes, Roddenberry put in the teleporter just to cut out "boring" scenes of landing on planets, and doing away with supposed dead time when the characters were merely traveling, instead of interacting or dying or whatever.

A small point, but wasn't the transporter invented to make the show financially viable by cutting out expensive sequences where the Enterprise or a smaller vessel would have to land, not to cut out supposedly "boring" sequences?

 

[captcalhoun]

yes.

 

[Warped9]

Yes, Roddenberry put in the teleporter just to cut out "boring" scenes of landing on planets, and doing away with supposed dead time when the characters were merely traveling, instead of interacting or dying or whatever.

A small point, but wasn't the transporter invented to make the show financially viable by cutting out expensive sequences where the Enterprise or a smaller vessel would have to land, not to cut out supposedly "boring" sequences?

Yes. But the argument that landing the ship would slow things down is really a false one. When using the shuttlecraft (or a Stargate for example) you only have to show the operation once or twice to establish it then the audience understands what's going on and you just cut to the action from there on.

What bothers me most in sci-fi is the total lack of realism when it comes to a "bad guy's" wardrobe, or furniture... stuff like the absurdity of Shinzon's costume in NEM, or the costume of the reptilian Xindi... I mean seriously... how the frak can anything be comfortable in that crap? Number one, the whole thing would take like over two hours to get into, and then, how the hell could you go to the bathroom in such a silly getup? Is it even machine washable? The whole design process of stuff like that just shows a total ignorance of what a humanoid form would consider comfortable... ESPECIALLY for a "military" uniform, which should be totally no-nonsense, save for maybe a few little badges or decorations... but nothing so absolutely absurd as in the examples above.

As for furniture... I frakking HATE it when we see the bad guy interrogate or torture someone in a frakkin' "chair of doom", which is made out of stainless steel, and has every bladed weapon known to the universe slapped onto it, to make it look fearsome, and has metal hand and foot cuffs... I mean, really? Gimme a frakkin' break... if you're gonna interrogate or torture someone, you just do it... you don't need Dr. Sinestro's chair of doom to do it. The CIA doesn't use such crap... they just use a normal chair. Besides, who makes those evil chairs, anyway? I wanna see the factory that makes them, and the packaging they come in, and the warranty card.

Same applies to any stupid "magical" weapons, like wooden staffs that just happen to emit bolts of lethal energy. Again, who the hell makes this stuff, and where is it sold? Where is the power/energy source? I want stuff that THOUGHT is put into. On Star Trek, you can envision a phaser being a real weapon, that is mass-produced in a UFP factory somewhere... we have seen phasers taken apart, and we can believe that they could be real devices, with real inner workings.

Ugh... I hate schlocky shit, lol.

This. Definately!

 

[JarodRussell]

The main problem with Avatar is that it's such cheap, manipulative propaganda. It flatters the audience by letting them believe they are on the side of the innocent natives whose resources are being stolen. But would anyone in the audience walk out of the theater resolving do anything concrete, such as using less gasoline, in their everyday lives? The number of people who got that message from the movie is vanishingly small. They bought an unearned glow of smugness for their ten or twelve bucks. If that's how Cameron wants to make a buck, good for him, but I at least choose not to participate in a collective delusion. All I wanted from that movie was the cool SFX.

LOL, whatever. I think you take things way too seriously. And I'm not entirely sure if you now criticized Cameron for allegedly doing propaganda, or if you criticized the stupid masses.
I didn't see cheap, manipulative propaganda, I saw an eye candy scifi/fantasy movie that was actually worthwhile. And I'm sure that's what most of the audience saw.

I'm curious... did you see the "stop wasting your life and join the military" propaganda in Star Trek?







One pet hate I have with the various Star Trek shows is that the security details and away teams NEVER have any protection against enemy weapons or the alien environment, and that EVERYONE has the same uniform, even the engineers. In the TOS movies the security personel at least wore a chest plate and a helmet, and in engineering, the crew wore these special suits that at least looked like they would be of any use down there. One TNG episode was especially laughable, where they beam down to a cave to start a surprise attack on some kind of terrorists, and they of course wore their bright red and yellow uniforms that everyone can see a mile away.


Another pet hate with science fiction overall is: every time they are out in space in space suits, or in general when there is no gravity, they mostly move in slow motion. They don't move more carefully, they just move slower. That makes no sense and always looks silly, especially when you've seen footage of the crew aboard ISS and space shuttles.

 

[Warped9]

One pet hate I have with the various Star Trek shows is that the security details and away teams NEVER have any protection against enemy weapons or the alien environment, and that EVERYONE has the same uniform, even the engineers. In the TOS movies the security personel at least wore a chest plate and a helmet, and in engineering, the crew wore these special suits that at least looked like they would be of any use down there. One TNG episode was especially laughable, where they beam down to a cave to start a surprise attack on some kind of terrorists, and they of course wore their bright red and yellow uniforms that everyone can see a mile away.

This is a very good point. One small thing I like about Stargate is that although they were on a budget they still managed to have different attire for different purposes.

 

[Christopher]

Painfully obvious explanations for the audience, Trek being a major culprit with the standard, "Oh, you mean it's like [insert random lie-to-children explanation]".

The show where that's really excessive is CSI, since the characters are always explaining their techniques to each other, even though they're all trained forensic scientists who don't need it explained.

 

[flemm]

The show where that's really excessive is CSI, since the characters are always explaining their techniques to each other, even though they're all trained forensic scientists who don't need it explained.

Sometimes on CSI it gets to the point where they feel it's necessary to have the character on the receiving end of one of these explanations do an eye roll and basically respond, well no duh, I know why I am doing this procedure, I am the one who decided to do the procedure.

On a similar note I recall an interview with the original star of the show (whose name I forget) in which he talked about how at first he complained that all he ever got to do on the show was stare at evidence, but eventually reached peace with the whole thing and began to search for new and compelling ways to stare at evidence

When you remember to look at an episode of CSI from the actor's point of view it can be really hilarious. Hmmm... several sequences of gazing at tufts of lint while holding them in a tweezer...A thespian's dream