Tired Sci-Fi Tropes That Must Be Retired! by cljohnston108

I can't get to that site from here, so I'll have to check it out later.

In the meantime, not having seen his list, here are a few I'd put on it:

- solving every problem by reversing the polarity of the deflector array (or more generally, Treknobabble).

- bumpy-headed humanoid aliens.

- aliens that all seem to be at exactly our technological level.

- easy faster-than-light travel.

- humans who can't resist imposing their cultural and moral norms on every alien race they encounter, while giving lip service to "prime directive" ideals.

- so many alien races that we meet one (or more) new ones every week. Come on, Trek, pick a dozen or so ET species and give them a little complexity instead of bringing in this week's version of the "half black, half white" species just to hammer home a lame point about racism or the theme-of-the-week!

- SCIENCE fiction that totally ignores SCIENCE.

- aliens. Hey, it might be nice to wait until we actually meet some before we make up stories about them... okay, that's not really serious. But since I've listed various other problems with aliens I thought I'd just wipe out the whole category in one swell foop.

- cardboard-cutout, one-note, cliched human characters. I just put this on my list because it's so not Firefly.

- lack of a sense of humor or fun. Stargate, anyone? (the original movie, I mean)

- big-name actors playing their wisecracking selves. Men In Black anyone? Not that I didn't enjoy those flicks, but they're comedies, not SF.

- movie adaptations of classic SF works that bear little or no resemblance to the originals. I, Robot springs to mind.

Now I'll have to check the link to see if we're on the same wavelength...

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I'm pointin' right at it!

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Tuesday, March 27, 2007 9:58 AM

GUYWHOWANTSAFIREFLYOFHISOWN

Ships with huge powerful engines that apparently work with no fuel whatsoever.

Edible alien food - slight differences in biochemistry would almost certainly render food poisonous across different biospheres. Our vitamin C could possibly (although not neccesarily) be a deadly nerve toxin, whilst strychnine could be play a vital part in an alien's brain function. At least it would give you bad indigestion, and smell really bad too. It might be blue though.

Warlike races that have managed to survive to develop space travel without nuking themselves as soon as they've worked out how to bang bits of plutonium together.

No matter how many times your ship's been hit in combat, destroying half the equipment on the bridge, you never lose air pressure.

Has anyone mentioned sound in space yet? :)

Visible lasers in space - you need something to scatter the beam off to make it visible. Noticed all that dry ice at concerts?

Androids. What's the point? If you want to create something that looks human and acts human, there are already well documented ways of going about it.

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Tuesday, March 27, 2007 10:06 AM

FLYVOTE

Quote:
Originally posted by Cruithne3753:

Warlike races that have managed to survive to develop space travel without nuking themselves as soon as they've worked out how to bang bits of plutonium together.

Most likely us.

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Tuesday, March 27, 2007 10:34 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Cruithne3753:

Has anyone mentioned sound in space yet? :)

I've always been willing to allow for sound in space. Plus, in the case of small ships no bigger than Serenity it can be explained somewhat as audio feedback generated by the ship's computer in order to allow the pilot/gunner(s) to engage more of their senses in tracking a threat.

Why is the rum always gone?

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Tuesday, March 27, 2007 11:09 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by FlyVote:
Quote:
Originally posted by Cruithne3753:

Warlike races that have managed to survive to develop space travel without nuking themselves as soon as they've worked out how to bang bits of plutonium together.

Most likely us.

Races more warlike than us, particularly those that begin with a "K".
(I usually realise the oversights in my posts the moment I hit the Post button and edit them straight away, but Life on Mars had just started)

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Tuesday, March 27, 2007 11:36 AM

Of the ones that were listed in the two, the one that I was so happy that they listed was the "alien baby" cliche.

Lately, that has been the one sci-fi trope that pisses me off. That anytime someone's pregnant in a sci-fi series or franchise, it's because they're carrying some messiah or special baby that'll change the course of the future or some shit like that. BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, THE 4400, PLANET OF THE APES, STAR WARS, the list goes on and on. The only time I've seen it actually have weight was in CHILDREN OF MEN. Other than that, should be retired.

FUTURAMA was a good show in that it not only made fun of the different sci-fi cliches but tried to be more scientifically accurate. Like the ep when Zapp became an employee of Planet Express and they went to the planet with the almost crushing gravity. Or in "Godfellas" when they accidentally shoot Bender out and they can't catch up to him because they shot him out when they were going at full speed, so he'd be going faster than they could.

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"Have you ever fired two guns whilst jumping through the air?"
"No."
"Have you ever fired ONE gun whilst jumping through the air?"

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Tuesday, March 27, 2007 11:56 AM

Excellent points by Doncoat, Cruithne and the guy who wrote the article. But then again, I don't really like sci-fi, I only like character-driven sci-fi that doesn't revolve around the fact that it's sci-fi, like Firefly, BSG, and maybe Macross. And call me a bigot if you want, but I hate aliens.

A point one could argue about is this one:

Quote:
If Marty McFly goes back in time and prevents his parents from meeting, there is no way to fix it. Even if Marty gets George and Lorraine to kiss at the Enchantment Under the Sea Dance, and they get married, and buy the house in the Lyon Estates, and have three kids, and buy a 4x4, Marty and his siblings will still never be born. The sperm that makes Marty will never be joined with the egg that makes Marty – too many details have changed. No Universal Cosmic Force will ensure that Marty is born, and the McFlys will give birth to a different son, perhaps one with the good sense not to hang out with crazy old inventors.

Right, but if he hadn't been born, he couldn't have gone back in time in the first place and the past wouldn't have been changed. Hence he was born.

Time travel is full of these sort of paradoxes, so if one doesn't believe physics when it says time travel is impossible, at least submit to logic and the fact that the universe hates paradoxes. But I digress...

"The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter."

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Tuesday, March 27, 2007 12:41 PM

Quote:
Races more warlike than us, particularly those that begin with a "K".

Notice that said races are usually depicted as having a culture based on a warrior ethic.
No Klingon Woyyer worth his prune-juice would use a WMD - it would not be honourable and deprive them of the glory of battle. Its the races that talk about peace and security tht you've gotta watch :-)

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Tuesday, March 27, 2007 1:25 PM

Another issue that they brought up that I think would open the door to a lot of storytelling possibilities is the whole population issue. How in a ship or a fleet that has tens of thousands of people on board, that we only focus on seven people and how they apparently run the ship.

TREK is guilty of this, but also BATTLESTAR GALACTICA to a bigger degree. Very rarely do we actually get glimpses into civilian life on the Galactica fleet. If season 4 is their last season, and they have to have filler eps in between the mythology eps, I'd like to see them do an ep with none of the normal cast members that focuses primarily on just some normal person and their day to day life on one of the ships and the daily drama inherit in it.

**************************************************
"Have you ever fired two guns whilst jumping through the air?"
"No."
"Have you ever fired ONE gun whilst jumping through the air?"

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Tuesday, March 27, 2007 1:49 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by reginaroadie:
...but also BATTLESTAR GALACTICA to a bigger degree. Very rarely do we actually get glimpses into civilian life on the Galactica fleet. If season 4 is their last season, and they have to have filler eps in between the mythology eps, I'd like to see them do an ep with none of the normal cast members that focuses primarily on just some normal person and their day to day life on one of the ships and the daily drama inherit in it.

I wouldn't blame the writers and producers for that though. If they do what you suggest, people won't stop bitching about how the show has gone downhill - just look at the general response to the filler episodes this season, episodes that were pretty good and weren't even centred on unknown characters.

"The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter."

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Tuesday, March 27, 2007 1:56 PM

Then maybe it should be a new show altogether.

There should be a sci-fi show that takes place in a huge ship or a space station that focuses primarily on the civilian people that have live on the ship. You wouldn't see anyone from a military or political point of view. Basically, no one that's involved with the running of the ship or fleet.

It would focus on the guy that has to catch a shuttle from one ship to another to get to work, the kid born on the ship getting his first job, the custodians that keep the ship clean and running. Basically, anyone you don't see on GALACTICA or TREK. It would be sort of your regular domestic drama set in outer space.

I'm sure some of you guys can name a half dozen shows that deal with this, but I'm saying that this would focus primarily on the civvies. No Captains, or Ensigns or XO's or Commanders. Just everyday people.

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"Have you ever fired two guns whilst jumping through the air?"
"No."
"Have you ever fired ONE gun whilst jumping through the air?"

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Tuesday, March 27, 2007 2:07 PM

Well, I agree, but what you describe sounds a bit like Firefly. A show like that lasts around half a season.

"The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter."

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Tuesday, March 27, 2007 2:13 PM

Yeah, but that only focuses on nine people in a very enclosed environment. I'm talking about a ship the size of Galactica, or the space station in DEEP SPACE NINE. A huge ship that hold hundreds, if not thousands of people. You know the extras you see when someone from Galactica goes to Cloud Nine or one of the civilian ships. Those are the people. The people whose job isn't to fly ships or repair them or do medical or ambassadorial work. I'm talking about the pencil pushers and manual laborers and bartenders of the fleet. The people that you only see on sci-fi shows as extras, even on FIREFLY.

**************************************************
"Have you ever fired two guns whilst jumping through the air?"
"No."
"Have you ever fired ONE gun whilst jumping through the air?"

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Tuesday, March 27, 2007 2:25 PM

I guess as long as they make it compelling enough (from a dramatic pov), the creators could count on at least the two of us to be watching. But a show like that won't ever be made, because if it's a drama centred on ordinary people in a sci-fi setting, the studios will decide that the sci-fi setting is unnecessary and expensive fluff and will get rid of it, so that we'll end up with ordinary people in an ordinary setting, which sounds like something that'll be lucky to make it past the pilot.

"The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter."

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Wednesday, March 28, 2007 12:05 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Khyron:
if it's a drama centred on ordinary people in a sci-fi setting, the studios will decide that the sci-fi setting is unnecessary and expensive fluff and will get rid of it, so that we'll end up with ordinary people in an ordinary setting, which sounds like something that'll be lucky to make it past the pilot.

Nah - that sounds way too like a sensible decision.

There's too much "everyday life of ordinary folk" on TV already - most of the main channels in the UK have their perpetually-running 4-day-a-week kitchen sink soaps already and, guess what, they have to throw in so many gangsters, murders, kidnappings, fires, jumbo jets crashing into villages (I kid you not) that the pretence of represening "normal people" is a joke.

If you want "everyday life drama" just go outside and talk to people. I want a bit of escapism on TV thank you very much, not "Neigbours" on a space station.

Shows (and not just SF ones) focus on the military, cops, hospitals, lawyers etc. because it is a good pretext to have something interesting happen every week.

Its true that shows like BSG, Firefly and the new Dr Who have widened their appeal by upping the human drama element - but they still need to focus on people in "exciting" roles.

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Wednesday, March 28, 2007 5:46 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by ImNotHere:
No Klingon Woyyer worth his prune-juice would use a WMD - it would not be honourable and deprive them of the glory of battle. Its the races that talk about peace and security tht you've gotta watch :-)

Point there. I suppose it's a bit like tribes in places like Papua New Guinea. One village might be at war with the neighbouring village and they still fight with bows and arrows rather than nipping off to the nearest port, buying some black market AK47s and finishing off the enemy for good.

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Wednesday, March 28, 2007 7:04 AM

CLJOHNSTON108

Quote:
Originally posted by Khyron:
Time travel is full of these sort of paradoxes, so if one doesn't believe physics when it says time travel is impossible, at least submit to logic and the fact that the universe hates paradoxes. But I digress...

Somebody left a fascinating reply about paradoxes...

Quote:
Anonymous said...

A theoretical physicist, I'm blanking on his name, worked out the mathematics of time travel and came up with something different, and supposedly proved it right. The basic idea is that there is only one timeline, period, and everything will stay consistent even with time travel.

Imagine a pool table, with a little wormhole. The billiard ball going through the wormhole will go back a few seconds in time, come back on a path that intersects its path to the wormhole.

Now roll the ball through, at such a speed that it will come out the wormhole, and knock itself off course, so it never enters the wormhole in the first place. Paradox!

What this guy proved is that the ball will come out of the wormhole slightly off course, and strike its earlier self a glancing blow that allows the earlier ball to go through the wormhole after all.

And why did the ball come out of the wormhole off course? Because, before entering the wormhole, it was struck a glancing blow...
1:31 PM

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Wednesday, March 28, 2007 7:30 AM

CLJOHNSTON108

Quote:
Originally posted by Cruithne3753:
Quote:
Originally posted by FlyVote:
Quote:
Originally posted by Cruithne3753:

Warlike races that have managed to survive to develop space travel without nuking themselves as soon as they've worked out how to bang bits of plutonium together.

Most likely us.

Races more warlike than us, particularly those that begin with a "K".
(I usually realise the oversights in my posts the moment I hit the Post button and edit them straight away, but Life on Mars had just started)

Read Larry Niven's story "The Warriors," about mankind's first contact with the Kzinti.

Two crewmembers are talking: One worries that the other vessel might be hostile, and the other is unfamiliar with the word, because a spacefaring race would have to have abolished war first.

The Earth vessel has no weapons, so they end up focusing their fusion drive at the Kzinti ship!

(I really need to re-read all my Niven!)

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Wednesday, March 28, 2007 8:02 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by cljohnston108:
Read Larry Niven's story "The Warriors," about mankind's first contact with the Kzinti.

Think I may have read that many Solar cycles ago... was thinking of Certain Televisual Aliens beginning with "K"...

Quote:
The Earth vessel has no weapons, so they end up focusing their fusion drive at the Kzinti ship!

Now I'd like to see that in a TV show!

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Wednesday, March 28, 2007 8:18 AM

GRIZWALD

Getting back to the original post...

I loved his Top 20 Hot Babes of Sci-Fi series, too.

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Click on my profile for my Annoyingly Long List of Firefly Links.

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Wednesday, March 28, 2007 9:05 AM

SHINYED

Last week a friend of mine made me DVD copies of the original Trek series...all 79 episodes. I've watched through a dozen or so of them...and now I'm wonderin' why I ever liked the show??....The answer is obvious.....although the plots in most are really lame, it's the characters that made the show beloved....not the aliens, not the ship, not anything...JUST the characters ...even Next Generation...like the chatacters, but most of the plots are stupid, predictable, and boring....again, love the characters so it's ok. I think EVERYBODY between Roddenberry & Whedon FORGOT about that!

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Wednesday, March 28, 2007 9:38 AM

DANFAN

In response to the earlier minithread in here regarding the showing of "ordinary folk" getting by in a sci-fi story universe... the point was well taken that a show that FOCUSED on that would die simply because it isn't the sort of escapist drama that we watch TV for.

However, I think that such "everydayness" could be more seamlessly integrated into sci-fi shows. For example, Battlestar Galactica is about a ragtag fleet of all kinds of ships upon which people live. Some of these ships weren't meant to be lived in. Colonial One is made to look like an airliner for goodness sakes... rows of seats with aisles between them. Whilst filming the main actors engaging in the main action, couldn't they show families in the background, sleeping in airliner seats? Eating food out of their laps? People sleeping or sitting on pallets in a wide spot in the halls of the refinery ship? It would take only a few little touches like that to present a small (but sufficient) sense of the reality of living in ships that weren't meant to be lived in... WHILE they tell the dramatic story that they need to tell.

Just a thought from your rock 'n roll zoo.

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Thursday, March 29, 2007 1:33 AM

CLJOHNSTON108

One of my favorite episodes of Babylon 5 was "A View From The Gallery", as we follow two maintenance guys as they try to keep things running while the station's being attacked.
They weave in & out of the various sub-plots, and connect it all together.
Just beautifully written.

http://babylon5.epguides.info/?ID=998
http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/guide/092.html

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Thursday, March 29, 2007 1:51 AM

SHINYED

Quote:
Originally posted by danfan:
In response to the earlier minithread in here regarding the showing of "ordinary folk" getting by in a sci-fi story universe... the point was well taken that a show that FOCUSED on that would die simply because it isn't the sort of escapist drama that we watch TV for.

However, I think that such "everydayness" could be more seamlessly integrated into sci-fi shows. For example, Battlestar Galactica is about a ragtag fleet of all kinds of ships upon which people live. Some of these ships weren't meant to be lived in. Colonial One is made to look like an airliner for goodness sakes... rows of seats with aisles between them. Whilst filming the main actors engaging in the main action, couldn't they show families in the background, sleeping in airliner seats? Eating food out of their laps? People sleeping or sitting on pallets in a wide spot in the halls of the refinery ship? It would take only a few little touches like that to present a small (but sufficient) sense of the reality of living in ships that weren't meant to be lived in... WHILE they tell the dramatic story that they need to tell.

Just a thought from your rock 'n roll zoo.

The Original Battlestar Galactica (1978-1979) had all that...everything you described....episodes WITHOUT life or death battles...just stories about the folks...all the folks....officers, crew, and civilians...really hasn't been anything like that or as good until Firefly. Those characters became part of my family, and have remained dear to my heart for almost 30 years.

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Thursday, March 29, 2007 2:10 AM

PENGUIN

Quote:
Originally posted by Grizwald:
I loved his Top 20 Hot Babes of Sci-Fi series, too.

I just read this...Miss Kaylee is on the list (of course!).

King of the Mythical Land that is Iowa

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Thursday, March 29, 2007 2:46 AM

FLATTOP

never mind. Maybe later.

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Sunday, April 1, 2007 4:37 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by danfan:
However, I think that such "everydayness" could be more seamlessly integrated into sci-fi shows. For example, Battlestar Galactica is about a ragtag fleet of all kinds of ships upon which people live.

Sounds like a (possibly valid?) criticism of Galactica version two - not sure its true of all SF. I guess extras cost money.

Babylon 5 (apart from the specific episode mentioned earlier) did a pretty good all-round job of showing that the station had a community, with crowd scenes, sub-plots involving poverty and crime, industrial disputes, people in bars watching news reports etc.

...and a central plank of the new Dr Who is that "Assistants have Mums" (in one lovely early scene, Rose is standing on a space station billions of years in the future, watching the dying Earth... talking on her cellphone to her Mum who is loading up the washing machine). The new assistant comes with a big dysfunctional family too...

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Sunday, April 1, 2007 7:09 AM

I had some problems with some of those comments. I've heard this a lot, and I always have the same arguement. It's science FICTION.

Some of the stuff that's used over and over again, I agree with. But some of the stuff HAS to be used. Like sound in space.

Firefly didn't have sound in space...but it didn't have aliens either. So, it was a little more on the real side, so no sound in space works. Star Wars has aliens. So sound in space makes sense there.

The way I see it is this. If a show has ONE SINGLE ALIEN, or faster than light travel or anything else that's unrealistic, and you accept it, anything they do after that has to be accepted too.

I have a friend that doesn't like Van Helsing because he thought the crossbow worked in an unrealistic way. A GUY TURNS INTO A WEREWOLF AND HE'S COOL, but the crossbow doesn't work right and it ruins the movie for him.

It's entertainment. Let it entertain you. After all, what would we rather watch? The NASA channel? Or worse yet....reality TV?

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Sunday, April 1, 2007 9:10 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Slowhand:
I had some problems with some of those comments. I've heard this a lot, and I always have the same arguement. It's science FICTION.

Pah! You passed up a brilliant opportunity for a Firefly quote:
(Approx. - from memory):
Wash: Psychic? Is that even possible? It sounds like science fiction!
Zoe: You live on a SPACESHIP, dear!
Wash: So?

Seriously, though - good science fiction tries to use suspension of disbelief sparingly. If you take an "anything is possible" attitude then its impossible to tell stories without inventing all sorts of technobabble to explain why the hero can't just use magic to resolve every problem.

E.g. how often did Star Trek need to come up with some bull about metaphasic particle fluxes in the upper ionosphere to explain why they couldn't use the transporter* to rescue the crew?

We don't know how artificial gravity would work if it were possible. Its there because it would be to o expensive to shoot a TV show with everybody on wires all the time (the excellent but short-lived 80s UK show "Star Cops" deserves an honourable mention for trying that).

We don't know how FTL would work, but we need it if we want to visit a new planet every week - still, a good show will decide what sort of speed and range it offers , and not have our heroes take a month to get to Sirius one week, but popping over to the Magellanic Clouds for lunch the next.

We DO know how a crossbow works, how an object moves in zero-g, whether an automatic rifle would fire in a vacuum or whether sound travels in space, whether lasers show up in a vacuum. We could model a solar system with "dozens of planets and hundreds of moons" and work out likely distances and travel times - or at least make it look less like they were all suspended stationary in space. So why not get these right?

(And if it features werewolves then its Fantasy, not SF... although that goes for most TV/Film "SF", hard SF tends to have too much exposition)

* The transporter was a clever (at the time) idea to get around 60s TVs dogma that to get someone from A to B you had to show every stage of their journey. Without it, the producers felt that they'd have to do an effects sequence of a shuttle landing every time to explain how characters got down. Trek was already much faster-cut than other shows - ever watched "Land of the giants" or "Voyage to the bottom of the sea" and noticed how slow moving they are c.f. Star Trek? TNG etc. was pretty much obliged to use the cursed transporter, but introducing it in Enterprise was just daft.

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Sunday, April 1, 2007 9:25 AM

Please, no more CGI dinosaurs. Toy plastic ones are OK, though.

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Sunday, April 1, 2007 9:46 AM

Yeah, I understand what you're saying about accepting ANYTHING. I guess what some people fail to realize is that when watching a show, there are a set of rules that are set by the shows creator. One of the rules for Joss was no aliens, no sound in space. Now, if George Lucas says, "My show will have aliens and it will have sound in space", then he just set the rules for his show. And that's fine. I think what gets to me is when people compare other shows and they say things like, "Well, this show did this right, why can;t this other show?" It's not a question of if it's right or wrong. It's a question of is this show playing by the rules that it set for itself.

Time travel movies each have their own idea of time travel. Is one right? No. Time travel isn't possible. It's fiction. That's one of the great things about being a story teller. You get to play god. You get to make the rules and you get to tell the story the way you want to.

That's not to say that there aren't some bad ideas. There are times that a writer will write themself into a corner and come up with a lazy way to get out. If my hero is backed into a corner and he shoots a fireball from his eyes to escape, and the rules I set for the story don't allow for that, then yeah, I would have crossed a line. But, if my story is about a guy that can do that, I don't want to hear that I shouldn't have done that because, "technically, the eyes can't produce heat, and if they could, that heat would cause brain damage. Maybe the writer should've read 'fireball eyes for dummies' to see the right way to do this!"

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Sunday, April 1, 2007 9:59 AM

It's all a matter of sub-genre, hard SF, naturalistic SF, space opera, science fantasy... how about a swords & sorcery flick where at the end it turns out that the "sorcery" is in fact forgotten technology? Give it the wobbly hand-held camera treatment while your at it...

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Sunday, April 1, 2007 12:05 PM

Quote:

Now, if George Lucas says, "My show will have aliens and it will have sound in space"

Actually, I've thought about it, and the sound in space thing is a misconception.

You see, the theory is that sound can't travel in space, because sound is a vibration and there's no air in space to carry it.

However, we're talking about movie sound which is a totally different phenomenon. Its a well known factoid that, if you were standing (say) half a mile from a big explosion you'd see the explosion a couple of seconds before you heard the bang. This is because light travels at about a million times the speed of sound. Yet, if you put a movie camera where you were standing and filmed the explosion, the film would show the explosion and the bang at the same time. I can't be bothered to test this right now but you see it in all sorts of films, including ones about war and other stuff that is true, like Superman, so its not just a SF thing.

This is because movie cameras don't record sound as "air vibrations", they record audible photons which carry the same information as sound but otherwise behave like light. If you look up information on old movies, you'll see that they had an "optical soundtrack" (see http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/question413.htm) that recorded the audible photons directly, although this was replaced with a more efficient magnetic strip once video recording provided a way to record light on magnetic tape*. Since these are photons, they travel at the speed of light - so, even if you film an atom bomb going off 10 miles away and don't hear the bang for ages after the flash they'll both be together on film, just like in the movies.

The practical upshot of this is that, although sound can't travel in space, these audible photons can, so if you could use a movie camera in space you would get sound (at the same time as the explosion, too!).

* This wasn't used to record the picture because it was years before colour video tape was invented. But few people notice if sound is recorded in black and white (unless you suffer from a rare mental condition known as synaesthesia). Audio compression, like MP3, works by taking out the unecessary colour information from digital sound.

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Sunday, April 1, 2007 1:10 PM

Audible photons. Heehee.

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Sunday, April 1, 2007 2:18 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by ImNotHere:
However, we're talking about movie sound which is a totally different phenomenon. Its a well known factoid that, if you were standing (say) half a mile from a big explosion you'd see the explosion a couple of seconds before you heard the bang. This is because light travels at about a million times the speed of sound. Yet, if you put a movie camera where you were standing and filmed the explosion, the film would show the explosion and the bang at the same time.

Like it. Very Pratchett-esque. (Just been reading The Science of Discworld.)

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Sunday, April 1, 2007 4:52 PM

ROCKETJOCK

Having read the pages the link leads to, I have to say, for all he knows about science fiction, I don't think this guy likes it too much.

He's also very fast to express his own prejudices as scientific fact, as in his complaint about the butterfly effect. I'd suggest he read Larry Niven's classic essay Theory and Practice of Time Travel, where he discusses such concepts as temporal inertia and the law of conservation of history.

As for horizontally-oriented spacecraft, he's right in that they're not necessary but that's not the same thing as saying they're illogical. Guy, if you have non-spin type artificial gravity, you can lay out your ship any way you like, and horizontal layouts are extremely intuitive for planetborn humans to orient to.

He is dead on about a few dozen SF cliches, though--my own favorite is "The Deadly Cold of Space." Um, guys, space is a vacuum; it's nothing! Nothing doesn't have a temperature! It just insulates!

"She's tore up plenty. But she'll fly true." -- Zoë Washburn

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Sunday, April 1, 2007 5:01 PM

ROCKETJOCK

Quote:
Originally posted by Slowhand:

I have a friend that doesn't like Van Helsing because he thought the crossbow worked in an unrealistic way. A GUY TURNS INTO A WEREWOLF AND HE'S COOL, but the crossbow doesn't work right and it ruins the movie for him.

My own problem with Van Helsing was the way they go out of their way to show a full moon in one scene, then have V.H. bitten by a werewolf no more than a day later, and then announce that the next full moon is in three days...

Wow. A seven-day lunar month. Interesting physics in this universe...

"She's tore up plenty. But she'll fly true." -- Zoë Washburn

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Sunday, April 1, 2007 5:50 PM

I've always been the kind of person that, if I have to, I'll make up an excuse to MAKE something work. For example, in the Van Helsing crossbow thing. To me, the fact that the bow recoiled looked cool, so I liked it. When it comes to movies, it's ok to take cool over real sometimes. But if someone is gonna use their knowledge to make something appear wrong, I'm gonna try to make it appear right. My friend said that if it was gas powered, the bow shouldn't recoil, so that was stupid and he didn't like it. Well, again, I didn't care cause it was cool, but rather than use what I know to disprove something in a movie, I would much rather say something like, "Well, the recoil wasn't firing the bolts. It would recoil back to draw in air that was needed to mix with the gas in order to fire the bolt. Kind of like a pump." It's crap, I know, but I would rather do that and then move on with the movie rather than cry and moan over something so trivial that it ruins the whole movie for me. I HATED the fact that Spider-Man had organic web shooters. But about 10 seconds later, I was over it. LOL!

Yes, there are certain things that are just wrong, like the full moon cycle that was mentioned. Some things are just mistakes. (Wash not having a steering wheel anyone?) But hey, it didn't ruin the show. It was a mistake. They're human. Move on.

I love a good discussion about how things work just as much as the next person, but I just think some people take it too far. If you want to bring out a mistake that was made in a movie, feel free. But don't go as far as saying that the movie sucks because of that one mistake. I was reading on a forum the other day about the Transformers movie. They showed a picture of Optimus Prime's head. There was a poster that said, "Everything looks great, except Prime's eyes! Couldn't they get this right!?!? This movie has no plot and it sucks so bad! What a failure!!!" Um.....dude......uh......someone needs to let you know that whatever you think you saw.........it wasn't Transformers. The reason I know this is because THE MOVIE ISN'T EVEN OUT YET!!! Yet this guy is aparently psycic or something. He can tell the movie is a bomb cause he didn't like Prime's eyes.

Some people need to open their front door every once in a while and remind themselves that there's a whole world out there.

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Monday, April 2, 2007 2:10 AM

I'm not familiar with the Van Helsing crossbow thing, but based on your comments there's an even simpler response to the recoil objection. To wit:

"Guns are gas powered too. Ever fire a shotgun?"

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Monday, April 2, 2007 2:16 AM

LOL, yeah!

I think his main complaint was the actual bow on the crossbow would bend back like a real bow and then release, just like a real crossbow does. He said if it were gas that was propelling the bolts, the bow wouldn't have to bend like that. Well, if it were gas, you wouldn't really need a bow at all would you! LOL! It just looked cool, that's the point he was missing. My argument was that, as the bow bent back, it was compressing air into the chamber. Then, as the bow released it's tension, it was releasing the gas/ air mixture and firing the bolt. Hey. It sounded good to me. A couple of my other friends bought it anyway. LOL!

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Monday, April 2, 2007 2:21 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by RocketJock:
He is dead on about a few dozen SF cliches, though--my own favorite is "The Deadly Cold of Space." Um, guys, space is a vacuum; it's nothing! Nothing doesn't have a temperature! It just insulates!

You're right, space doesn't have a temperature. However, it's not quite right to say that it insulates, as that suggests that you'd be nice and snug out there. Not so. While space has no air to provide conduction or convection, you're still going to radiate away your heat. That's how spacecraft get rid of the heat generated by their electronics and fuel cells, and it's why Apollo 13 got uncomfortably cold when all that electronics had to be turned off, even though it was in full sun the whole time.

So it's really not so wrong to talk about the deadly cold of space, especially when you're far from the nearest star. You may not turn into an ice cube in seconds, but without an energy source you will freeze. It's just that (River's opinion notwithstanding) you'll probably die gasping first.

Hmm, pleasant topic, eh?

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Monday, April 2, 2007 2:25 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Slowhand:
I think his main complaint was the actual bow on the crossbow would bend back like a real bow and then release, just like a real crossbow does.

Ah, I see. That's definitely a bit harder to explain! It does indeed sound like they went for coolness over sensible design.

Then again... it's a story about vampires.

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Monday, April 2, 2007 2:40 AM

There have been a number of attempts to give a scientific footing to what's normally considered fantasy -- sword-and-sorcery type stuff.

One is the "Well of Souls" books by Jack Chalker. Another is the "Magic Goes Away" series of stories by Larry Niven, which proposed that magic was a finite resource (like fossil fuels) that eventually got used up. Before that happened the world was full of wizards and magical beasts, but once the magic was gone those all disappeared.

Hey, I enjoy fantasy when the author is fair and consistent. The Harry Potter books are excellent, as are the Narnia and Lord of the Rings series. But when the genre is supposed to be science fiction, I prefer having the science as correct as possible. Everything should be consistent with our present understanding of physics and chemistry, and exceptions or extensions should be clearly described and then held to. But that's just me. I'm sure others have different comfort levels.

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Monday, April 2, 2007 4:01 AM

I'm kind of the opposite. If everything held to real science and explainations, to me, it would be a documentary. I want to see something I've never seen before. A lot of scifi is in the furure, so I'm willing to accept that there have been scientific bounds that have been made that goes beyond our current science. Lightspeed, teleportation, etc...all of that is beyond what we have now. And when it comes to that, I really don't need an explaination, unless it's a plot point.

I do like to understand SOME things, but really, I just want a good story. I don't really care as much about the technical aspects as some do.

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Tuesday, April 10, 2007 12:57 AM

Well, I've just been to see the movie "Sunshine" and my disbelief is now suspended so high that you could anchor an orbital tower to it.

Its nice to see the Hollywood solution to Big Problems is still the same: Giant asteroid? Send Bruce Willis with a big nuke! Massive earthquake approaching? Nuke the San Andreas Fault! Earth's core stopped spinning? Nuke it! Sun going out? Send a really, really big nuke!

The film clearly confirmed my "audible photon" theory (not only was there sound in space but, every time you saw the sunlight the sheer volume of audible photons caused this tremendous whooshing rumble).

It also highlighted another scientific fallacy: this silly idea that gravity is some magical attraction generated by large massess. NO! Gravity is caused by air! Yes folks, we have another "pressureise the airlock and everything falls to the ground" scene.

Of course, it goes without saying that the entire ship was designed with "down" perpendicular to the direction of thrust and no concession to zero-G. However, the communications antennae were on long rotating booms...

Oh yes, health and safety scenario: You are on a spaceship. There is a fire. Do you (a) let the air out of the compartment or (b) flood the compartment with oxygen so that the fire "burns itself out"?

We also had the whole exposure to space freezing a man rigid in 10 seconds routine, too.

It wouldn't be so bad if, during all the hype for this film, they hadn't kept carping on about how they had a real live physicist advising them...

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Tuesday, April 10, 2007 1:10 AM

DESKTOPHIPPIE

I'd love to see a dubbed version of 'Sunshine' where the scientist complains the whole way through about how the physics of the movie are totally messed up. I'd watch that.

Incidentally, what *does* happen when you're exposed to space? I mean, I know you die, but how? I've heard everything from you blow up to you freeze to death to you boil to death because you're so much hotter than everything around you. What actually happens? Because no matter what it is, I'm including it in my list of 'Top 10 ways not to die'

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Tuesday, April 10, 2007 6:47 AM