• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Science-fiction series which fiercely avert "dumbing down" the actual science and/or reiteration?

Ragitsu

Ragitsu

Commodore
Commodore
Good afternoon.

As I've become increasingly accustomed to science-fiction television (of the United States variety, to be specific), I've noticed the tendency to have a character repeat what an expert just said...but in layman's terms. While I still enjoy the older series I grew up with, I wish I could find just one show that bucks convention and lets the science (be it real, fictional or some combination of the two aforementioned extremes) remain blatantly unexplained to John Q. For that matter, I would LOVE to find a series that doesn't rely on main characters conveniently suffering from chronic amnesia and having events they should remember being reiterated for the audience's sake.
 
If your request includes books, these are written to be accurate, accessible, but not dumbed-down.

kitra-saga.png
 
For all Man Kind?

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

There's no need to explain the science since most of it is real and we should have a basic understanding of it already.
 
^Indeed, four episodes of FAM this season had accompanying featureless doing all the explaining of various science concepts the story itself slipped in fairly quickly; spin-gravity, solar sails, drilling into an underground reservoir on Mars, and nuclear fusion.

I'd also dispute The Expanse doing a lot of reiteration and dumbing-down, based solely on the high-speed double-cross space-battle in the season five finale that was meticulously choreographed and depicted yet went by so fast I actually needed the explainer video.
 
This seemed apropos here...

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

I supposed the reiterating in layman's terms is unavoidable to some degree, especially if the 'science' in question is a bunch of nonsensical technobabble baloney that doesn't actually mean anything in terms of real-world science.

Kor
 
Dr. Weir: Right. Well, um, using layman's terms... Use a retaining magnetic field to focus a narrow beam of gravitons - these, in turn, fold space-time consistent with Weyl tensor dynamics until the space-time curvature becomes infinitely large, and you produce a singularity. Now, the singularity...

Miller: [interrupting] "Layman's terms"?

Cooper: Well, f#=% layman's terms! Do you speak English
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top