Part of scifi fluff that really annoys you

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**hotsauceman1**

MeanGreenStompa wrote:
Replicator technology.

Oh look it's the borg, we're fethed...

Wait a mo, I just replicated 20,000 Datas crewing 1,000 Defiants, why don't we all just enjoy these cigars and romulan brandy and watch the giant cube fireworks?

That works...

Also:

ALL TIME TRAVEL EVER.

Replicators are used to make ships.
And if i remember correctly, they cant do extremely fine details, like micro-processors.
Me has to be the ancient race that created mankind or that we descended from, it ticks me off.

**notprop**

I watched 30minutes of Enterprise this evening that demonstrated another SciFi standard Mcguffin - Sheild Harmonics/weak spots.

[soon to be dead from exploding console Helmsman #1] Another hit sir, we're down to 12% on aft shields and the bakery deck is depressurised; damage control are dealing with but we've lost all of the profiteroles for dinner.

[Captain] Dammit! Profiteroles are ace, they will pay for this. Target coordinates Xyz,123.

[Helmsman #2] That did it sir, their venting plasma and retreating.

Right do we have crew that do not know these supposed weak spots and captains that don't exploit them until their own ship is virtually a floating hulk. And another thing why do they all give thir ships/shields deactivation codes that any old nugget can use even from outside of the ship? Argh!

**CthuluIsSpy**

The fact that every alien and his mother speak a terran language.

Fortunately, there are some shows that fix this problem; Farscape and new Who for example.

**hotsauceman1**

No, They all just have universal translators.

**CthuluIsSpy**

Grey Templar wrote:

They are ceremonial weapons

What really annoys me in sci-fi is when you have advanced technology but don't have people using it "properly". Star Trek is a huge one for this, even when the "advanced technology" isn't rendered inoperative by some electrical storm or something they do the most derp things. Why isn't your ship computer making micro warp jumps all over the place and firing its weapons etc rather than just sitting there getting pounded by incoming fire while the helmsman apparently waits for orders to roll the ship over or hide in a nebula or something and the weapon officers are all asleep at their posts or on the holodeck?

The complete lack of ANY sort of military competance in the supposedly military forces of certain sci-fi. Star Trek is the biggest culprit.

Red Shirts. They're freakin marines on a Navy Ship! Yet they'll just walk right down the middle of the street on an Alien world with only pistols, NO form of body armor, and no attempt to take advantage of any sort of cover. Everyone seems to have completely lost any sense of military tactics, superior firepower, and armor.

Also, for how often Phasers are rendered useless you think they would carry some sort of combat knife. Instead they seem to be fond of using their phasers as a melee weapon, which almost always gets dropped in favor of some sort of pisspoor wrestling moves that never really work.

**Sir Pseudonymous**

ProtoClone wrote:
Germs, and how little they play a part in encountering alien species.

Using "War of the Worlds" as an good example of poorly planned alien enviroment preperation. In most other sci-fi settings, you never see something like this happening. It's like the go waltzing through a biological fire fight and manage to not get hit by anything.

That was one thing I priased Enterprise for was their emphasis on making sure no one brought anything back with them when they would go to alien worlds.

Actually, seeing as how the inside of living creatures forms one of the most hostile environments on earth, with bacteria and virii only able to inhabit/attack species they've specifically adapted to, it's so unlikely as to be impossible for alien diseases to effect humans, and vice-versa.

The worst trends in sci-fi are, first off: using alien species as a hamfisted metaphor for racism: racism isn't wrong because it's mean or intolerant, it's wrong because it's factually incorrect and grossly detached from reality; when you introduce beings that genuinely are of a fundamentally different nature, pretending they shouldn't be treated any different because "TOLERANCE!" is outright gibbering lunacy.

The second is treating humans as "weak but clever", or levelheaded to a fault; we're physically large and powerful creatures possessed of incredible endurance and general resilience, ridiculous adaptability, an instinctive grasp of basic tactics, and a propensity for extreme violence in the face of danger.

**Ensis Ferrae**

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
ProtoClone wrote:
Germs, and how little they play a part in encountering alien species.

Using "War of the Worlds" as an good example of poorly planned alien enviroment preperation. In most other sci-fi settings, you never see something like this happening. It's like the go waltzing through a biological fire fight and manage to not get hit by anything.

That was one thing I priased Enterprise for was their emphasis on making sure no one brought anything back with them when they would go to alien worlds.

Actually, seeing as how the inside of living creatures forms one of the most hostile environments on earth, with bacteria and virii only able to inhabit/attack species they've specifically adapted to, it's so unlikely as to be impossible for alien diseases to effect humans, and vice-versa.

The worst trends in sci-fi are, first off: using alien species as a hamfisted metaphor for racism: racism isn't wrong because it's mean or intolerant, it's wrong because it's factually incorrect and grossly detached from reality; when you introduce beings that genuinely are of a fundamentally different nature, pretending they shouldn't be treated any different because "TOLERANCE!" is outright gibbering lunacy.

The second is treating humans as "weak but clever", or levelheaded to a fault; we're physically large and powerful creatures possessed of incredible endurance and general resilience, ridiculous adaptability, an instinctive grasp of basic tactics, and a propensity for extreme violence in the face of danger.

There are some instances of sci-fi taking Xenophobia to the other extreme (see 40k... where if it aint human, it's filthy xenos, and needs to be purged)

The thing that kinda gets me is, how many sci-fi series out there have a bad guy (TM) who owns an "ultimate superweapon" but ALWAYS gets beat by some tiny dude who gets a "lucky" shot off.

**Grey Templar**

Well that depends on what your other races end up being and how your sci-fi is written.

You could write a sci-fi where all the aliens are much shorter than humans, like all Hobbit sized, and Humans would also be extremely intelligent. But then you'd have humans roflstomping everyone else and that just wouldn't make for great literature or gameplay.

Sci-fis are almost always written from a human perspective, because we are human. So its a natural POV.

With Humans being the main characters, you need the humans to be struggling against a foe thats stronger than they are in some way. This is how you set up a good story generally.

So this results in most aliens being either stronger, smarter,or having better technology than humans in some way.

Its not the only way to write sci-fi, but it is the most successful.

**AndrewC**

Inconsistency really annoys me. I don't care how improbable the context is, I just would like consistency, for example If a gun.bomb works in a certain way, it works that way all the time.

Changing the laws of physics/ structural integrity/Newtonian Laws is another. Right, so you are wearing a solid metal suit, but you can climb across a thin wooden roof?

If you're going to run with a series of books/programmes, at least keep it consistent.

Cheers

Andrew

**Relapse**

Grey Templar wrote:

The complete lack of ANY sort of military competance in the supposedly military forces of certain sci-fi. Star Trek is the biggest culprit.

Clearly you have never seen "Space, Above and Beyond". It was a show that lasted about a season or so back in the 90's that had what was supposed to be and elite group of marines fumbling around like kids playing in the back yard. Almost weekly, someone would be stealing a fighter from the carrier to go on unauthorized personal missions or some unknown ship would be allowed to land with no communication.
I could go on, but those things are enough for starters.

**Kovnik Obama**

Time travel used to make me want to vomit, way too silly. Then I discovered Doctor who. Which is weird because that's like total silliness overload.

It's probably Billie Piper's hips.

**Grey Templar**

I don't like sillyness in places where its inapropriate.

Dr Who works because it doesn't take itself seriously, which is how Time Travel should be treated IMO. Time Travel can't be hard sci-fi, it just doesn't work.

**sebster**

My biggest question in Star Trek is why there's so many people on that ship. At any given point in time there is at most about a dozen people who are capable of doing anything, and that includes the add on characters like Ensign Ro.

And it isn't as if all those people are in the background doing important but basic ship functions, there's an episode where Data goes bad and takes over the whole ship, and he flies it just fine by himself.

MeanGreenStompa wrote:
Replicator technology.

Oh look it's the borg, we're fethed...

Wait a mo, I just replicated 20,000 Datas crewing 1,000 Defiants, why don't we all just enjoy these cigars and romulan brandy and watch the giant cube fireworks?

Replicators can't produce positronic brains. Which just leads to the question about how Data can go in the Transporters...

The bigger question is why they continue to treat death as a thing, when anyone can be recreated through the technology used in transporters (and every so often duplicates of people are made, and treated exactly like regular people, or people's signal are kept in the transporter etc). I mean, when that's happening the only reason to die is because people chose not to bring you back to life. Which is fair enough, sort of, but it should completely change how death was viewed.

**marv335**

Sound in space battles.

**sebster**

Grey Templar wrote:
The complete lack of ANY sort of military competance in the supposedly military forces of certain sci-fi. Star Trek is the biggest culprit.

Red Shirts. They're freakin marines on a Navy Ship! Yet they'll just walk right down the middle of the street on an Alien world with only pistols, NO form of body armor, and no attempt to take advantage of any sort of cover.

Star Trek isn't a military vessel, and they're not marines on a navy ship. It's a civilian operation, albeit one that is used for military purposes when needed.

Everyone seems to have completely lost any sense of military tactics, superior firepower, and armor.

Honestly, the absence of modern tactics doesn't bother me much given the technology available in Star Trek. Once you have guns powerful enough to blast through any cover the enemy might modern tactics of suppression and manoevre stop making a lot of sense. And who needs door entry tactics when you can just teleport in?

What's annoying is that the show argues that armour has little value because phasers are so powerful that they could just up the setting and blast through... but they never actually use that to blow through cover, and instead just end up having a pretty typical Hollywood style shoot out.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

hotsauceman1 wrote:
No, They all just have universal translators.

Yep. In fact in Enterprise they even went with the idea of universal translators being a technology in development, so that one character on ship was a language expert who's job it was to translate the alien language and get the translators working well.

They dropped it about halfway through the first season and just let the translator work fine on all the aliens, because it produced no good storytelling.

**hotsauceman1**

And because Hoshi was useless.

**sebster**

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
The worst trends in sci-fi are, first off: using alien species as a hamfisted metaphor for racism: racism isn't wrong because it's mean or intolerant, it's wrong because it's factually incorrect and grossly detached from reality; when you introduce beings that genuinely are of a fundamentally different nature, pretending they shouldn't be treated any different because "TOLERANCE!" is outright gibbering lunacy.

It was even worse when they were preaching racial equality but actually pretty damned racist at the same time. I mean, we're talking about a show where humans make out and even breed with aliens as a matter of course, and it's not treated as an issue at all.

But when Geordi finally got some alien action... she was black. So they could show inter-species relationships as completely normal, but at the same time they didn't dare upset the apple cart of 20th century race politics.

Admittedly they got better eventually.

**d-usa**

Star Trek did have the first interracial kiss in TV history.

**malfred**

d-usa wrote:
Star Trek did have the first interracial kiss in TV history.

Kinda sorta.

It was cleverly cut to make the audience assume the kiss happened.

Or so I've been told.

**GalacticDefender**

Vulcan wrote:
Inter-species romance and crossbreeding.

You expect me to seriously believe that two species not only managed to randomly evolve close enough to make the mating rituals and behaviors attractive both ways... AND make the plumbing mutually compatable... AND make the DNA mutually compatable as well?

Bull.

In my own sci-fi universe (I write) inter species romance does take place, but no way in HELL is it going to produce any sort of zygote. There are plenty of refugee children to adopt.

I am a firm believer in convergent evolution, so I do not think it is too far fetched that aliens would look at least vaugely humanoid. At least bipedal.

One thing I HATE, is when, in an otherwise quite realistic setting (Mass Effect, I'm looking at you) there is often something like space magic. Call it The Force, Call it Biotics, call it Psionics, etc, but it totally takes me out of a Hard(ish) SF setting when I see someone fething pushing someone with their mind/a blue energy field.

This is another thing that I don't have in my universe. I write in sort of a semi-hard SF space opera setting, btw.

Also I really don't like it when female characters (or male characters?

) are basically there for no reason but sex appeal. All characters should serve a legitimate purpose as far as plot goes.

And stupid things that could have easily been fixed in movies with a SLIGHT knowledge of physics annoy the crap out of me.

Yup, there are things in most SF universes that just bug the hell out of me. That's why I write my own stories. A few good examples of science fiction that isn't TOO far out there/physics ignorant are the Revelation Space series by Alastair Reynolds, the movie Avatar (except for the damn floating mountains), and The Leviathan Wakes/Caliban's War trilogy.

**insaniak**

CthuluIsSpy wrote:
hotsauceman1 wrote:
No, They all just have universal translators.

Even primitive words that are found in the middle of nowhere?

No, it's the travelers who have the translators.

In Star Trek, from memory it was supposed to be an extra feature of their communicators, although I think some of the very early fluff suggested it being an implant that acting directly on the crewman's brainwaves.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

hotsauceman1 wrote:
MeanGreenStompa wrote:
Replicator technology.

Oh look it's the borg, we're fethed...

Wait a mo, I just replicated 20,000 Datas crewing 1,000 Defiants, why don't we all just enjoy these cigars and romulan brandy and watch the giant cube fireworks?

That works...

Also:

ALL TIME TRAVEL EVER.

Replicators are used to make ships.
And if i remember correctly, they cant do extremely fine details, like micro-processors.
Me has to be the ancient race that created mankind or that we descended from, it ticks me off.

Replicators can create complicated patterns, but they can't create energy. So you can replicate, for example, a phaser, but you then still need to go an charge it before it will work.

Having said that, I'm fairly sure they broke that rule in various Star Trek episodes.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
On the interspecies thing, the novel writers tried to tackle that one early on, but explaining that a certain amount of genetic tinkering was required to make it work. So Spock, for example, wasn't actually a straight mix of Vulcan and Human... he was a genetically engineered creature that was what the scientist in charge of creating him thought was the most functional mix of Vulcan and Human traits.

Then later Star Trek went on to introduce the idea that the Federation abhors genetic engineering, and that the galaxy had been seeded by a master race, and so everyone was more or less compatible genetically.

**sebster**

hotsauceman1 wrote:
And because Hoshi was useless.

They were all useless, perfectly interchangeable and completely forgettable. Enterprise was the final culmination of Star Trek's ability to only write alien and special characters. It got really noticeable in Voyager, where everyone that didn't have special alien condition was just boring. And then in Enterprise it got ridiculous. I watched the whole damn thing and at the end I still had to remind myself which one was the engineer and which was the security guy, because they both acted in the exact same boring ways.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

d-usa wrote:
Star Trek did have the first interracial kiss in TV history.

Yeah, and then almost 30 years later they couldn't have a black guy date a white alien. Or a white guy date a black alien.

**KalashnikovMarine**

Vulcan wrote:
Inter-species romance and crossbreeding.

You expect me to seriously believe that two species not only managed to randomly evolve close enough to make the mating rituals and behaviors attractive both ways... AND make the plumbing mutually compatable... AND make the DNA mutually compatable as well?

Bull.

This, the explosives behind the screens get me too, but holy feth this drives me up the wall sometimes XD

**malfred**

You all should read Red Shirts.

**dreamakuma**

My biggest irritant is the lack of advanced human and alien technologies in sci fi universes where human tech is comparable to alien. This is even worse when there is an alliance and democracy between the humans and aliens yet all we get is human tech instead of new possibilities and mixes of differing cultures.

That and a universe where technology is blooming at it's greatest heights but is dwarfed by an ancient artifact of grand power that no one understands.

**TheCustomLime**

I never liked how in the Star Wars EU every author seems to always one up the Death Star.

In general, I never enjoyed how in the far future we still have firearms that eject bullet casings (I'm looking at you Halo!)

**nels1031**

I hate the "destroy the mothership and the rest of the alien force crumbles". Most recent offender was Avengers. Apparently earth is the only place in the universe with monotreme reproduction (laying eggs) so no alien civilization ever had the benefit of knowing not to put all of ones eggs in a basket.

Also dislike the concept of actively trying to contact alien species/civilizations. If they are even remotely like us, but above us technologically, we're screwed. Unless they put all their eggs in one basket of a mothership.

**Piston Honda**

Never liked the obsession with the color white in scifi films. White everywhere. Ships, corridors, gadgets, uniforms.

Also hate skin tight uniforms. Like star trek. Looks more like something you wear on Dancing with the Stars.

**Breotan**

Classic: Evil androids blowing fuses and shutting down after being given a simple logic puzzle that relies on a fallacy.

TNG: Sesame Street on a space ship. Seriously, how many episodes were about teaching Worf or his son to cooperate? New age philosophy with gems like, "The adventure is in here..." points to own head.

DS9: Aggregeous use of silly-putty on actor's nose or forhead to signify he/she is an alien.

Voyager: Forced conventions that were never needed, like "Blue Alert". Flying through stars using "metaphasic" shields. Re-alligning the deflector dish turning it into Green Lantern's power ring.

Enterprise: Having to be the inventors of every cliche ever used in the other series.

Star Wars: More muppets than Farscape. CGI muppets.

Dr. Who: Like most BBC stuff, it's about conversating your opponents into submission.

Galactica: Retcons & forgotten plot threads. Cylons spines glow, Sharon jammed a headphone jack into her arm, and yet nobody can tell them from humans without an autopsy? Tyrel spent a long time on the station that messed up cylon neural stuff (loading munitions) but was later outed as a cylon? Spinning up all that stuff about the cathederal and then forgetting about it all for three seasons?

Anything "post apocalyptical". Sorry, but I just don't believe in the concept. Most scenarios are highly contrived and frequently require people to behave contrary to human nature.

**reds8n**

d-usa wrote:
Star Trek did have the first interracial kiss in TV history.

The episode features a kiss between James T. Kirk (William Shatner) and Lt. Uhura (Nichelle Nichols). This is often cited as the first white and black interracial kiss depicted on a scripted television series,[1][2] but took place after Sammy Davis, Jr. had briefly kissed Nancy Sinatra on the variety program Movin' With Nancy in December 1967;[3] and an interracial kiss on Emergency Ward 10, a British drama series, in 1964;[4] a kiss between Asian American actress, Victoria Young and David McCallum in the 1966 The Man from U.N.C.L.E episode, "The Her Master's Voice Affair;" September 16th, 1966, and a kiss between multi-racial actress Barbara Luna and William Shatner in the October 6th, 1967 Star Trek: The Original Series episode, "Mirror, Mirror". Predating, in America, all of these but the "Man from U.N.C.L.E", the November 3rd, 1966 episode of "Daniel Boone" where the title character leans in to take a kiss on the cheek (audible smack) from a little black girl who Boone had saved from slavery, along with her family and friends. The episode and the little girl are both called "Onatha". And, even predating that Daniel Boone episode is the 1959 episode of Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer with Darren McGavin, titled "Siamese Twinge," where a white male (named "Gary") kisses his Asian fiancé ("Sandi") on the forehead.
The episode portrays the kiss as involuntary, being forced by telekinesis, perhaps to avoid any hint of romance that would risk outrage among some sensitive viewers. As one TV critic put it, "The underlying message was, 'If I have to kiss you to save my ship and crew, by God, I'll do it.'"[5] Also, William Shatner recalls in Star Trek Memories that NBC insisted their lips never touch (the technique of turning their heads away from the camera was used to conceal this). However, Nichelle Nichols insists in her autobiography Beyond Uhura (written in 1994 after Shatner's book) that the kiss was real, even in takes where her head obscures their lips.[6]
When NBC executives learned of the kiss they became concerned it would anger TV stations in the conservative Deep South.[7] Earlier in 1968, NBC had expressed similar concern over a musical sequence in a Petula Clark special in which she touched Harry Belafonte's arm, a moment cited as the first occasion of direct physical contact on American television between a man and woman of different races.[8] At one point during negotiations, the idea was brought up of having Spock kiss Uhura instead,[9] but William Shatner insisted that they stick with the original script.[citation needed] NBC finally ordered that two versions of the scene be shot—one where Kirk and Uhura kissed and one where they did not.[10] Having successfully recorded the former version of the scene, Shatner and Nichelle Nichols deliberately flubbed every take of the latter version, thus forcing the episode to go out with the kiss intact.[11][12]
As Nichelle Nichols writes:
'Knowing that Gene was determined to air the real kiss, Bill shook me and hissed menacingly in his best ham-fisted Kirkian staccato delivery, "I! WON'T! KISS! YOU! I! WON'T! KISS! YOU!"
It was absolutely awful, and we were hysterical and ecstatic. The director was beside himself, and still determined to get the kissless shot. So we did it again, and it seemed to be fine. "Cut! Print! That's a wrap!"
The next day they screened the dailies, and although I rarely attended them, I couldn't miss this one. Everyone watched as Kirk and Uhura kissed and kissed and kissed. And I'd like to set the record straight: Although Kirk and Uhura fought it, they did kiss in every single scene. When the non-kissing scene came on, everyone in the room cracked up. The last shot, which looked okay on the set, actually had Bill wildly crossing his eyes. It was so corny and just plain bad it was unusable. The only alternative was to cut out the scene altogether, but that was impossible to do without ruining the entire episode. Finally, the guys in charge relented: "To hell with it. Let's go with the kiss." I guess they figured we were going to be cancelled in a few months anyway. And so the kiss stayed.'[13]
There were, however, few contemporary records of any complaints commenting on the scene.[14] Nichelle Nichols observes that "Plato's Stepchildren" which first aired in November 1968 "received a huge response. We received one of the largest batches of fan mail ever, all of it very positive, with many addressed to me from girls wondering how it felt to kiss Captain Kirk, and many to him from guys wondering the same thing about me. However, almost no one found the kiss offensive" except from a single mildly negative letter from one white Southerner who wrote: "I am totally opposed to the mixing of the races. However, any time a red-blooded American boy like Captain Kirk gets a beautiful dame in his arms that looks like Uhura, he ain't gonna fight it."[14] Nichols notes that "for me, the most memorable episode of our last season was 'Plato's Stepchildren.'"[15]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato's_Stepchildren