Hey in ST 09 there was an orion girl in Starfleet does that count?
What tropes in science fiction annoy you?
- Thread starter Gingerbread Demon
- Start date
Definitely!
Klingons speak Klingon, Vulcans speak Vulcan, Andorians speak Andorian so why don't Earthlings speak Earth?
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I don't know if anyone mentioned this one but you kill the big bad head honcho but all the henchmen are still fighting rather then surrender till the very last one is left standing and even they don't go down without a fight.
Boy- Timmy took my toy
Klingon nanny- you will go back out there and reclaim your item or dismember him with honor!
They're not on the sides, they're in a pass-thru. The building has an opening thru the middle at that point.
They speak dirty...
Still it's a bit silly. I guess I'll wait till I see the film.
One thing that annoys me in Sci. Fi. is that even now that they have sophisticated CGI, they usually stick to the humanoid form for the aliens. But that form is extremely unlikely, here on Earth all animals (namely vertebrates) that respond to the One-head-withtwo-eyes-one-nose-one-mouth-and-sometimes-two-ears-on-the-side archetype all have ONE common ancestor!! Take the Octopus for example, some are quite smart, yet they don't look like us, at all! Imagine that for some reason the common ancestor of all vertebrates had been killed around seven hundred million years ago, then plenty of ecological niches would have been left vacant on Earth and a different type of animal would have eveolved to fill them, maybe Octopusses, the descendants of Octopusses are inimaginable to us because they would look like an Octopus the way we look like a herring, but one thing is certain they would not look like us, AT ALL!!!
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Totally love this post and agree.
But for storytelling purpose, especially in film and TV a humanoid shape tends to be something people can relate to more. Also budgetary requirements don't allow for truly alien aliens when making a production, at least that's what I'm led to believe reading various forums.
Galaxy Quest did give us truly alien aliens and they looked like giant octopuses who could use tools and make spacecraft. But that was for only a few seconds then they changed back to a humanoid shape. Now that film would have taken on a whole new dimension had they stayed truly alien during the bits of the movie that were in space.
But space aliens either arrive on Earth in spaceships or we go out and meet them in our spaceships. Either way, making contact with aliens is a function of a piece of technology, thus sci-fi. The alternative would be a wizard summoning a portal to another realm, which would be fantasy.
Just because the technology is implausible doesn't make it fantasy, nor does it make it bad sci-fi. It's just sci-fi that's having fun!
Exactly. For the most part, I think of "sci-fi" & "fantasy" more as a general aesthetic backdrop, similar to "western." Lots of different kinds of stories can be told within those frameworks and they can be mixed at will.
Although, one other category that kinda falls through the cracks here is stories that are set in the not too distant future but are centered around changes in society, not technology. SEE: V for Vendetta, The Purge, Brazil, Escape from New York, A Clockwork Orange. (Granted, A Clockwork Orange has the new mental reconditioning techniques that they use on Alex but those aren't that far fetched. And there's some minor technological advancements in Escape from New York but they don't have anything to do with turning Manhattan into a giant, lawless prison.) I just kinda lump them together as "speculative fiction" but I wish that I had a more specific name for them.
It doesn't really matter. It's just a useful shorthand. (And since when can't we be pedantic on the internet?
)While it has elements of both, I would ultimately tip it towards the sci-fi side. The Force is something that's only visible to a small segment of the population. Granted, Force users are generally the most prominent characters in the series but they're not around all the time. On the other hand, you'd be hard pressed to find many scenes in the series that don't feature either a spaceship, a robot, a hologram, or a space alien. Sci-fi is thoroughly baked into every frame of the franchise, whereas the fantasy elements can be marginalized, as in Solo & Rogue One.
Absolutely. A couple of my favorite writers have oodles of style but tend to fall down when it comes to plot.
Douglas Adams was a genius with outlandish concepts & comic exposition but Mostly Harmless is the only book he ever wrote where his plot is worth a damn. His other novels are either plotless collections of loosely connected comic vignettes (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, So Long and Thanks for All the Fish) or else have such convoluted plots that I can't remember a single thing about them (Life, the Universe, & Everything; Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency; The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul).
I just finished reading all 3 of Scott Lynch's Gentlemen Bastards novels-- The Lies of Locke Lamora, Red Seas under Red Skies, & The Republic of Thieves. (Hurry up with book 4, already!) The prose is fresh & clear and the voices of the main characters are fun & entertaining. I will always be up for more hanging out with his characters. However, his plots aren't great. The Lies of Locke Lamora has tons of great moments but introduces an interesting subplot that gets quickly discarded and unforgivably kills many of my favorite characters. Red Seas under Red Skies juggles 2 separate plot threads that don't compliment each other and the bad guy's plot makes no sense at all. The Republic of Thieves suffers from having lengthy flashbacks that are far more interesting than the present-day story (probably because it's set before my favorite characters were killed off in the first book).
True story: I once ran into a fan who didn't realize that the original GHOSTBUSTERS was a comedy. Seems he'd seen it as a small child, been terrified by it, and remembered it as this really scary horror movie.
I was never scared by it. But as a kid, I just viewed Ghostbusters & Back to the Future as fun adventure stories. I didn't realize that either one was supposed to be a comedy.
BTW, Ghostbusters is the one movie where I'm hopelessly torn about which side it tips into on the SF/F scale. The ghosts are supernatural while the proton packs are technological.
I kinda see where you're coming from. While it doesn't make a difference to me while watching the movie itself, it certainly determines the long-term impact it can have on me. I may be scared of the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park but that dissipates once I leave the theater because I know that cloned dinosaurs aren't real. But The Strangers really messed me up. I still have moments when I'm alone where I'm restively looking around every corner, closet, & shower curtain to make sure that no one else has snuck into the house.
It's like Die Hard but taller!
Firstly, you mean Lt. Valeris, not Saavik. Secondly, given that Valeris was already a mole working on the Enterprise (and presumably was the one who altered the data banks), why DIDN'T they have the assassins beam back to the cloaked Klingon ship? Had the assassins not been on the Enterprise, they never would have been able to smoke out Valeris' involvement and Spock wouldn't have mind melded with her to discover who else was involved in the conspiracy. (Given that Star Trek VI was my favorite movie in high school, finding out that it has so many holes really bothers me.)
Reminds me of Col. Kira describing why she would be a terrible counselor. "You dreamed about what?! You're crazy! Next patient!"
True.
I think that ones pretty obvious, though. Just because they're all part of the same conspiracy doesn't mean they're all friends. The assassins presumably signed up because they hate/don't want peace with Klingons, and they presumably also don't want to die, so what exactly would convince them to stay on/go back to the Klingon ship? (Where Chang would obviously have to immediately execute them for their crimes to keep the whole charade going.)
Also, Valeris would've been safe regardless if she hadn't fallen for Spock's trick, so I see no reason to believe Spock couldn't have come up with a different but equally effective trick in the event the assassins were out of reach. Probably something to do with making her think her computer alterations were in danger of being discovered.
You completely missed the point. In the category of fiction that I was discussing, it is the aliens that are implausible compared to the means of reaching them.
Given that General Chang's ship fired on Q'o'nos 1, they were presumably all on board with the conspiracy.
My point about sci-fI is that aliens and space ships are part of a unit. So just because the aliens are naturally evolved on their home world and presumably have been evolving for billions of years, they still qualify as sci-fi.
My point about sci-fI is that aliens and space ships are part of a unit. So just because the aliens are naturally evolved on their home world and presumably have been evolving for billions of years, they still qualify as sci-fi.
I hate the one where massive spaceships are near Earth and no one notices them approaching, well until they're right on the doorstep so to speak. Even optical telescopes could see the bloody things so what no one notices?
^ Two words: Cloaking device.
Only if they have one, most times they don't
They could have one and we wouldn't even know about it. They don't always have to actually SHOW things like this.
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