Science fiction pet hate

[Silvercrest]

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.

Now, yes. But I wonder if it was true back in the 1960s, when the shows were a lot slower-moving. They didn't use the same narrative short cuts we do now. Back then the expectation probably would have been to show the whole landing sequence because... because... because that's just the way it was done, doggonit. And that would have been cost-prohibitive.

I dunno-- am I off-base here? Any opinions?

 

[Deckerd]

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.

This brings me to another long, long-term problem I have with most space-based sci fi. Weapons. I know it's all supposed to be dramatic tension to have someone to shoot at but it's so stupid. I can guarantee the last thing any long distance spacecraft leaving Earth has is a big gun. Of course, in the real world, the chances of bumping into someone else in a spacecraft are infinitessimal but even so. There have been a scant few intelligent secenarios where spaceships aren't armed because if ever there were MAD it's two spaceships shooting at each other.

 

[sojourner]

^I can think of a whole lot more reasons to arm your ship in a setting where there are other space going nationalities (aliens) than I can for not arming your ship. Hell, even if there isn't anyone else to encounter, weapons have uses.

Better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.

 

[JarodRussell]

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.

Also: the Broken Arrow effect. Somebody steals nuclear warheads, and the Pentagon has a meeting, and of course there needs to be some dumb idiot who has to ask "What is a Broken Arrow?" just so someone can explain it to him (or to the audience). I mean how the hell did this guy make it in there?

 

[sojourner]

^ he probably got elected to a 4 year term.

 

[stj]

This brings me to another long, long-term problem I have with most space-based sci fi. Weapons. I know it's all supposed to be dramatic tension to have someone to shoot at but it's so stupid. I can guarantee the last thing any long distance spacecraft leaving Earth has is a big gun. Of course, in the real world, the chances of bumping into someone else in a spacecraft are infinitessimal but even so. There have been a scant few intelligent secenarios where spaceships aren't armed because if ever there were MAD it's two spaceships shooting at each other.

It was James Blish, in his spindizzy series I think, who observed the greatest difficulty in space battles was getting enemy ships in range. Space is big. If for some "reason" a starfaring civilization wanted to attack another civilization, it wouldn't mess around with fleets of spaceships impossibly trying to mimic naval battles. They'd just fire a antimatter bombs or gray goo (nanotech replicators,) or redirect asteroids/comets or possibly bioweapons. A perfect anitmissile defense when the enemy missiles might mass mere kilos would be incredibly difficult for practically any tech.

(I know both SG1 and Voyager did the asteroid strike, but both were huge offenders on other counts. SG1 portrayed the go'a'uld as unable to mount security cameras in their ships, as well as being unable to detect radio waves, much less use the information they blabbed in the clear!)

 

[darkwing_duck1]

On the flipside of that, at least "Star Trek" has the supposed 'universal translator' that is able to make aliens speak English with our characters even if it's never heard that particular language before. "Atlantis" doesn't even bother with even that flimsy justification.

There's sort of an unspoken behind-the-scenes producer theory that the Stargates provide everyone who passes through them with the ability to understand other languages. There's a tie-in novel set just before "Emancipation" (the first episode where the "aliens" were shown speaking English from the get-go) that depicts this happening -- at first SG-1 doesn't understand the alien language without Daniel interpreting, but then they step through a second Stargate, one on the standard network rather than the hacked one used by the SGC, and suddenly they're imbued with the ability to understand the language.

That would certainly be within the abilities of Ancient technology. It would also fit with something Carter once said about the Stargates having hundreds of functions and data feeds and the SGC only used/understood about half of them.

 

[Rii]

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.

Well, 'brilliant' isn't a word I'd use in relation to the film (or the book for the matter). For the most part it's just a rollicking barrel of fun.

 

[darkwing_duck1]

It is ludicrous for us to be expected to believe that humans can reproduce with a species that evolved on another planet.

*Shrug.* It's less ludicrous to believe that with a lot of effort and technological help, humans can reproduce with humanoid aliens than it is to believe humanoid aliens evolve all over the place by random accident.

In the Trek universe, there's a reason for all that: all sentient humanoid life forms in the universe are the offspring of the first sentient species to evolve, genetically adapted to their "home" environments.

 

[sojourner]

This brings me to another long, long-term problem I have with most space-based sci fi. Weapons. I know it's all supposed to be dramatic tension to have someone to shoot at but it's so stupid. I can guarantee the last thing any long distance spacecraft leaving Earth has is a big gun. Of course, in the real world, the chances of bumping into someone else in a spacecraft are infinitessimal but even so. There have been a scant few intelligent secenarios where spaceships aren't armed because if ever there were MAD it's two spaceships shooting at each other.

It was James Blish, in his spindizzy series I think, who observed the greatest difficulty in space battles was getting enemy ships in range. Space is big. If for some "reason" a starfaring civilization wanted to attack another civilization, it wouldn't mess around with fleets of spaceships impossibly trying to mimic naval battles. They'd just fire a antimatter bombs or gray goo (nanotech replicators,) or redirect asteroids/comets or possibly bioweapons. A perfect anitmissile defense when the enemy missiles might mass mere kilos would be incredibly difficult for practically any tech.

(I know both SG1 and Voyager did the asteroid strike, but both were huge offenders on other counts. SG1 portrayed the go'a'uld as unable to mount security cameras in their ships, as well as being unable to detect radio waves, much less use the information they blabbed in the clear!)

Yeah, because we have nothing like anti-missile lasers at our current level of technology, never mind in the future.

The truth is that for every weapon someone thinks up, eventually someone else develops a defense for it. Escalation occurs. You start out with the lone attacks you mentioned, then someone invents a device to stop them which in turn leads to ships being sent to take out those defense which feeds back into ships being built to counter those ships, and so on and so on and so on.

True space is big, but conversely planets are easy to find and attack. Defenses and offenses will develop depth.

Just like today, warfare will take place near points of interest, not empy space.

 

[stj]

^^^We do not have antimissile defense systems that work. Possibly someone could devise a defense against antimatter bullets that would scour the planet with gamma rays but defenses against weaponized microbes engineered to cross space, or against nanotech?

It is true there will be no manned fleets attacking planets. Airplanes and copters can't take out a country even now, and the logistics are astronomically worse for an attacking space fleet. Technology like space elevators or planetary rings really would give the defense an overwhelming advantage.

Also, "points of interest" is pretty much undefinable. The technology that could make space war possible also makes it unnecessary for any material motive. Imaginary restrictions like jump gates or Alderson points a la Niven/Pournelle would qualify but they are extremely fictional at this point.

 

[FluffyUnbound]

My two pet hates are:

1. Alien technologies that implausibly render current human technology irrelevant, even in instances where current human technology is pretty damn good. My favorite example of this is the spaceships in Independence Day having shields that can stop a point-blank nuke. A point-blank nuke is incredibly powerful and destructive across the entire electromagnetic spectrum. A shield that could stop it would have to stop all radiation across the entire spectrum. Meaning it would also have to stop whatever's keeping those ships in the air.

2. Military strategies that don't take into account even the obvious possibilities of technologies we're shown.

In BSG, if an object the size of a Raptor can both jump and carry nukes, then there's no reason for the Cylons to not take a century, manufacture 100 million jump drones armed with nukes, and just destroy the Colonies that way. Their war plan makes no sense, and the Colonial defense plan makes no sense.

In Star Trek, if something the size of a shuttle can travel at warp, why aren't unmanned shuttle drones just accelerated at warp into enemy ships? Or flown at warp into space stations? Or into enemy planets? A bunch of objects that size hitting a planet at post-light speeds would convey an awful lot of kinetic energy.

Sometimes it's even the inability of characters to think of SIMPLE military strategies that's irritating. In War of the Worlds, the world's militaries can't beat the tripods' shields. But tripods need three legs to stand up, so why doesn't anyone simply blow up the ground in front of one of the feet?

 

[Tulin]

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 - the OP got it wrong.

 

[Tulin]

^ he probably got elected to a 4 year term.

And then somehow hypnotized the masses into a second one, even though he had THE WORST approval rating since Nixon and sent the country into an almost irrevocable decline on every front imaginable.

 

[Christopher]

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

CSI's a lot like Mission: Impossible in that regard. Both shows revolve heavily around extended non-dialogue sequences of characters doing tedious, detailed technical work accompanied by music. And it's the music that makes it work, though the musical styles of the two shows are profoundly different.

In Star Trek, if something the size of a shuttle can travel at warp, why aren't unmanned shuttle drones just accelerated at warp into enemy ships? Or flown at warp into space stations? Or into enemy planets? A bunch of objects that size hitting a planet at post-light speeds would convey an awful lot of kinetic energy.

That's assuming that warp travel is kinetic motion in the conventional sense, which it isn't. It's distorting spacetime to change its geometry, creating an effect akin to superluminal motion. If you want a devastating kinetic kill vehicle, you don't need warp, just high impulse. A shuttlecraft hitting a planet at 3/4 the speed of light would be an extinction-level impactor.

On the other hand, by all rights the tidal stresses generated by the severe spatial distortion of a warpfield should completely tear apart anything that comes into direct contact with it. A warp ship should be able to tear something apart just by bumping into it, but the destructive energy would be gravitational, not kinetic.

 

[RandyS]

Oh, I thought this was going to be about science fiction pets that we hated.

That's a pretty bizarre inference.

Not really. I had the same thought until I opened the thread.

 

[sojourner]

^^^We do not have antimissile defense systems that work. Possibly someone could devise a defense against antimatter bullets that would scour the planet with gamma rays but defenses against weaponized microbes engineered to cross space, or against nanotech?

Ahem,
http://www.boeing.com/defense-space/military/abl/index.html

It is true there will be no manned fleets attacking planets. Airplanes and copters can't take out a country even now, and the logistics are astronomically worse for an attacking space fleet. Technology like space elevators or planetary rings really would give the defense an overwhelming advantage.

Space Elevators and planetary rings make nice targets too.

Also, "points of interest" is pretty much undefinable.

um, what? a point of interest would be any worthwhile target. There. defined for you.

The technology that could make space war possible also makes it unnecessary for any material motive. Imaginary restrictions like jump gates or Alderson points a la Niven/Pournelle would qualify but they are extremely fictional at this point.

People (and other intelligent beings) will always find something to fight about.

 

[stj]

Ahem,
http://www.boeing.com/defense-space/military/abl/index.html

Reading between the rather sparse lines, this device "worked" when the launch time was known, so that the airborne laser was actually airborne. It was fired on a trajectory within range. Also, there was no interference of any kind, neither snow, rain, radar jamming, chaff nor decoys. Nor multiple targets either. As I said, we do not have antimissile defenses. We do have things like the Patriot which are claimed to be antimissile defenses, but aren't, by politicians and businessmen with vested interests in such claims.

Space Elevators and planetary rings make nice targets too.

Space elevators and planetary rings radically decrease the effective length of defense logistics, making the resources of an entire planet available for defense. Spacecraft are limited to what they can carry with them. Any reasonable technology would be defeated. Any blue sky tech like impenetrable force fields and perfect indifference to gravity would not need to concern itself with "targets." Blowing stuff up is not conquest, as events in Iraq and Afghanistan have reminded us.

Travel to and from other stars is a practical impossibility for the foreseeable future. Carrying significant resources other than information is currently inconceivable, rendering space war both impossible and pointless. Supposing there was some sort of remarkable technical advancement that made the resources for cargo carrying star travel, that same astronomical increase in resources means there is no need to go elsewhere for resources. With a wave of the hands, space war is possible but even more pointless.

um, what? a point of interest would be any worthwhile target. There. defined for you.

A civilization that can travel to other stars on a scale sufficient to carry resources back has no need for said resources. Therefore there are no worthwhile targets. Therefore space war cannot exist. You might as well suggest that space aliens are coming to seize the men to dig the coal and rape the women.

People (and other intelligent beings) will always find something to fight about.

Quarrels are not wars. I don't share your personal revelation that the social phenomenon of war is the inevitable expression of fallen human nature.

 

[JarodRussell]

You find space elevators and planetary rings plausible, but not a missile defense system?

A civilization that can travel to other stars on a scale sufficient to carry resources back has no need for said resources.

I think that logic is flawed. Just look at sea faring from the late 15th to early 19th century.

 

[Silent_Bob]

Here you can list your absolute worst mistake in a science fiction film. I know some of you could write books on it but just choose the one that niggles the most.

For me, for some reason I can't fathom, it's Chronicles of Riddick. When they're on the planet Crematoria, the jailers 'pop the lid' to let some fresh air in. Air? AIR? On a barren planet whose surface goes up to a thousand degrees when facing the sun? Then they all go out and run about on the surface. It makes me cross just typing this.

Over to you.

The entirety of nuStar Trek, or if a specific example is needed: Black Holes. And why no one seems to be concerned about them.

There is now a black hole in the Vulcan system, yet no one appears concerned. Even worse theres a new black hole five minutes away from Earth thanks to the Narada blowing up. That should kinda be a big issue. You would think Starfleet would delay the victory celebrations until they figured out what the hell they are going to do about the gaping void that will devour the solar system in the not too distant future.