But they really didn't. They had music representing sounds (like the drums when Mal fires the gun at the Reaver ship). It was done for dramatic effect, yes, but it was a lot better than real "pew pew" laser sounds or explosions.
Scifi silly science
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But they really didn't. They had music representing sounds (like the drums when Mal fires the gun at the Reaver ship). It was done for dramatic effect, yes, but it was a lot better than real "pew pew" laser sounds or explosions.
No, they had sound in space in Serenity. Or, rather, they had that magical cloud around the planet during the final battle that allowed for them to cheat and have sound in space. I wasn't a big fan of that choice, really. Few moments have been as great as when the fire is (silently) extinguished in Out of Gas.
Well, you may not like it, but that's still not "sound in space." If you're in a cloud, you're not in space.
They had sound in other points of the movie also. At the very end, when part of the Serenity detaches and flies towards the screen, you can hear it.
There's no magic sound-generating cloud there, either.
They're coming out of the atmosphere at that point.
You are, if the cloud is in space. Any space cloud/nebula has a far far lower density than a planet's atmosphere... there's not much stuff around to really carry sound, or at least not sound in the way it would be heard on a planet's surface.
The cloud in the Serenity movie is one of three excuses for having space in sound I know of so far.
Serenity: The space battle was taking place in a nebula.
Battlestar Galactica: Sound in space is only heard muffled as it would be heard from inside a spacecraft.
Babylon 5: There's sound during a space battle because there's atmosphere leaking from damaged spaceships (this also supposed to explain "fire in space").
The B5 "explanation" is really the most stupid of those, but I think JMS has at least admitted as much. In the end, it's just dramatic reasons again. Kudos to Serenity and BSG for at least acknowledging that the problem of no-sound-in-space exists. B5, nuBSG, and Firefly are still the most realistic sci-fi shows around when it comes to the depiction of space travel and its physics.
Really? I never actually watched it past an episode or two, but Defying Gravity, say, was anchored in a FTL-lacking spaceship. The absence of FTL by itself may be enough to have its space-travel more plausible than those three.
I never heard of a show named "Defying Gravity" before, so I'm unable to include it in my list.
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Well, it wasn't just some random nebula or gas. It was surrounding a planet. For all we know the gravity pulled it close enough to the planet and made it dense enough for sound to travel through.
Another silly science example:
Artificial gravity generators which continue to operate even when a full power failure has disabled the life support and the crew is threatened to suffocate. Happened more than once on Star Trek. Is sometimes explained away by giving the artificial gravity generators some sort of separate emergency power supply. Raises the question why the life support isn't equipped with such a fail-proof emergency power as well. Apparently, not floating around is more important than not suffocating.
(Real-world reason: Depicting people as suffocating is cheaper than depicting people as floating around... especially on a TV show.)
Artificial gravity generators which continue to operate even when a full power failure has disabled the life support and the crew is threatened to suffocate. Happened more than once on Star Trek. Is sometimes explained away by giving the artificial gravity generators some sort of separate emergency power supply. Raises the question why the life support isn't equipped with such a fail-proof emergency power as well. Apparently, not floating around is more important than not suffocating.
(Real-world reason: Depicting people as suffocating is cheaper than depicting people as floating around... especially on a TV show.)
Another silly science example:
Artificial gravity generators which continue to operate even when a full power failure has disabled the life support and the crew is threatened to suffocate. Happened more than once on Star Trek. Is sometimes explained away by giving the artificial gravity generators some sort of separate emergency power supply. Raises the question why the life support isn't equipped with such a fail-proof emergency power as well. Apparently, not floating around is more important than not suffocating.
(Real-world reason: Depicting people as suffocating is cheaper than depicting people as floating around... especially on a TV show.)
I always technobabeled it away by thinking that the gravity generators are some how charged (with gravitons?) and the charge takes time to dissipate, hence why they don't loose gravity immediately.
Correct. Everybody knows that there is no sound in space in "reality". I've never taken it literally.
It's like when I see a diagram in an instruction manual that shows a curved red arrow apparently floating in mid-air over the lever I'm supposed to turn, I don't call up Tech Support complaining that the holographic projector's apparently not working, because I didn't see the floating red arrow when I turned the lever. It's simply a stylized representation for the benefit of the user.
A filmmaker only has a screen and some speakers with which to make a connection with a person sitting in a chair, so any sort of stimuli that engages the viewer is helpful.
Space Is Noisy - Television Tropes & Idioms
Rule Of Perception - Television Tropes & Idioms
Or that's the way it seems to me. But then, I'm an idiot.
I doubt that "everybody knows it". At least not the casual viewer or non-scifi geek. Frequent "consumers" of science fiction on the other hand? Probably.
But yes, it is done for dramatic purposes. Even Joss Whedon and Ron Moore found it hard to get rid of it altogether.
Or when Jayne fired Vera out of the spacesuit in Our Mrs. Reynolds.
I reckon anyone with a middle school education--and most without--knows it. Then again I give the public more credit than most.
