There were brilliant women in many domains. Ada Lovelace, for example, was likely the first person to think in terms of AI, about a hundred years before the first working computer was even built. She also wrote the first computer programs.
What tropes in science fiction annoy you?
- Thread starter Gingerbread Demon
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There were brilliant women in many domains. Ada Lovelace, for example, was likely the first person to think in terms of AI, about a hundred years before the first working computer was even built. She also wrote the first computer programs.
And there's a strong connection to Mary Shelley there. Lovelace was the daughter of Lord Byron, who was a close acquaintance of Mary, had an ill-fated love affair with Mary's sister Claire, and, famously, proposed the ghost-story writing contest that led to Mary writing Frankenstein, which she conceived of while summering with Byron and his entourage in 1816 . . . .
Yeah, the classic version we all know has its problems in deviating from the book, and the Robert DeNiro version is closer to the book, but they both have their share of problems.
Was that summering or simmering?
According to Mary, it was "a wet, ungenial summer" . . . but, yeah, there was a lot of drama simmering.
Well, I have to say that the difference between Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Matthew Lewis' The Monk is one sense merely stylistic...but one is SF and one if fantasy. Mary Shelley makes a point of explaining how Victor was led astray by occultism and how the creature was educated by Volney's Ruins of Empire. These are not random details. They relate the story to the here and now. Lewis revels in eschewing rationalizations, even rational motives. Nor is that random. It turns the proceedings into a kind of spectacle to be watched. When it comes to fiction and drama I tend to put a lot of emphasis on style. It's not a sophisticated or rigid or severe teacher kind of emphasis, but rudimentary as my style sense is, it serves my purposes.
It seems to me that Frankenstein adaptations tend to be crap precisely because the screenwriters don't take the difference in style into account. One essential aspect of Frankenstein is that Victor is indeed successfully playing God, and abandoning us is exactly what the purported real God did. Screen writers who don't think the connection to reality (even tenuous ones badly sketched by ignorant dolts) matter are like people who think representational art and modernist abstraction can fit in the same sketch. Diego Rivera for one can mix in symbols but the allegorical nature of his art is anathema, and Rivera is dismissed. Dali's assault on reality mixes both, and that's why he too isn't highly regarded.
It seems to me that Frankenstein adaptations tend to be crap precisely because the screenwriters don't take the difference in style into account. One essential aspect of Frankenstein is that Victor is indeed successfully playing God, and abandoning us is exactly what the purported real God did. Screen writers who don't think the connection to reality (even tenuous ones badly sketched by ignorant dolts) matter are like people who think representational art and modernist abstraction can fit in the same sketch. Diego Rivera for one can mix in symbols but the allegorical nature of his art is anathema, and Rivera is dismissed. Dali's assault on reality mixes both, and that's why he too isn't highly regarded.
I hate the trope of putting lead characters in Sci-Fi on trial. With the exception of Miles O'Brien's sham trial, I can't think of anyone that is particularly compelling. They always feel like recycled plots from other shows and generally fail at creating melodrama.
Not so much science fiction but this is a musical trope.
A musical trope......... Grrrr I really do find this one annoying.
Whenever you see a Middle Eastern bad guy on a show, even before he or she is revealed to be the bad guy and you think they might be a good guy they play Middle Eastern music cues .
They may as well put up cue cards on screen saying "this person might be the bad guy" it's just annoying and a heck of a lot of TV shows and movies do it.
A musical trope......... Grrrr I really do find this one annoying.
Whenever you see a Middle Eastern bad guy on a show, even before he or she is revealed to be the bad guy and you think they might be a good guy they play Middle Eastern music cues .
They may as well put up cue cards on screen saying "this person might be the bad guy" it's just annoying and a heck of a lot of TV shows and movies do it.
Every other planet but Earth seems to have a system that allows random conjectural evidence to be treated as fact. At least in Matter of Perspective and Undiscovered Country.
The Farscape one, where they end up on the planet of lawyers, is pretty good.
Or in American movies or series when they go to France or meet French people you hear old accordion music... as if that's all they ever played in France... You can hear it when Picard is walking to meet his brother's family.
Exactly.
Or in American sitcoms prior to their wedding the couple has to break up or run away. But in the end they come back together
TUC Trial is at least fun to watch, if it's improbable and dumb. But yeah, the Tom Paris episode always struck me as weird. And there's particularly bad one in the first few seasons of Stargate.
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