Common Sci-Fi tropes that annoy you!
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i quite like your second point, i say keep the job changes.
I hate that Star Trek thing of nameing a couple of famous scientists for example, and then throwing a future scientist from Star Treks canons past, just to show... well i dont know what its meant to show. i'm probably explaining it badly too
EDIT: oh yeah and "reverse the polarity"
I hate that Star Trek thing of nameing a couple of famous scientists for example, and then throwing a future scientist from Star Treks canons past, just to show... well i dont know what its meant to show. i'm probably explaining it badly too
EDIT: oh yeah and "reverse the polarity"
really? where have you seen this?Reed Spacer said:
for my own gripe: technobabble. i don't care if the transmolecular-inverse-tetryon polarity reverted transmogrifcationatormotronoton needs new batteries, say it in plain english!
Really? I dunno, a couple of my favourite shows/books involve one or both of these things. Now, granted, if it's poorly written, it's poorly written, but I don't think that this should automatically make a show bad- it's all down to execution.SKBPinkie said:
if we are talking about overused sci-fi tropes im pretty sick of seeing the ancient and highly advanced race of aliens that mysteriously vanished leaving only their ruins full of advanced technology
The Xel naga from Starcraft
The Protheans from Mass Effect
The Forerunners from Halo
The Precursors from Jak and Daxter (im reaching with this one)
The Xel naga from Starcraft
The Protheans from Mass Effect
The Forerunners from Halo
The Precursors from Jak and Daxter (im reaching with this one)
As much a Fantasy one as a Sci-Fi one: Humans being either weaker than or average to other races. The "average human" being more the leaning of fantasy as the jack of all trades with a reproduction rate usually second only to the worlds orcs with Sci-Fi being more guilty of humans being weak with regard to other races in one way or another, usually physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually or intellectually.
While this may be the way the world is going presently, when dealing with speculative fiction you're open to a wide range of things, and yes, a more "old fashion" outlook is a possibility due to environment and social pressures.
What if Mankind gets reduced to only a few tens of thousands and maximizing childbirth goes from an imperative to a moral virtue and any which gets in the way of that is looked on as a social evil, like homosexuality, long after the need for such a view has passed because necessity turned into tradition.
Or, for a revival of racism one could have Mankind (or certain ethnic groups) be so decimated that the surviving groups are so small that the fear of losing their identity and literally their appearance makes people coalesce into tight knit groups which avoid others and again look on miscegenation as social evil.
Given the ebb and flow history these possibilities are just as likely, if not more so likely given human nature, than a future with little to no racial, sexual or gender discrimination.
A human being would have a better chance of reproducing with a plant or fungus than it would have with an alien.
The only Sci-Fi world which had a rational reason for a single dominant ecosystem to encompass a planet was Dune and that was entirely due to the Sandtrout and their instinctive obsession collect and horde water deep beneath the ground because it was a necessary component to their lifecycle.
It's the Sci-Fi race equivalent of general movie/game titles like Revolution and Revelations.
They remain the stereotypical super old, super advanced race whose technological level is and seemingly will never be surpassed by younger races, technology in ruins that usually take the shape of massive space stations and superweapons.
I'm all together sick of present social issues being the focus Sci-Fi. Either look towards a future where different circumstances will create new and different ones or back off from it and create a new world focused more around a historical perspective where cultures and civilizations come and go.
I don't find it an issue of realism at all and has more to do with your perceptions of the progress of society being linear.Queen Michael said:
While this may be the way the world is going presently, when dealing with speculative fiction you're open to a wide range of things, and yes, a more "old fashion" outlook is a possibility due to environment and social pressures.
What if Mankind gets reduced to only a few tens of thousands and maximizing childbirth goes from an imperative to a moral virtue and any which gets in the way of that is looked on as a social evil, like homosexuality, long after the need for such a view has passed because necessity turned into tradition.
Or, for a revival of racism one could have Mankind (or certain ethnic groups) be so decimated that the surviving groups are so small that the fear of losing their identity and literally their appearance makes people coalesce into tight knit groups which avoid others and again look on miscegenation as social evil.
Given the ebb and flow history these possibilities are just as likely, if not more so likely given human nature, than a future with little to no racial, sexual or gender discrimination.
I loath this one.
A human being would have a better chance of reproducing with a plant or fungus than it would have with an alien.
The thing is, this isn't limited to just Star Wars.
The only Sci-Fi world which had a rational reason for a single dominant ecosystem to encompass a planet was Dune and that was entirely due to the Sandtrout and their instinctive obsession collect and horde water deep beneath the ground because it was a necessary component to their lifecycle.
It's become so silly I find the sheer number of franchises who use the name Precursor to be hilarious.
It's the Sci-Fi race equivalent of general movie/game titles like Revolution and Revelations.
How does that change things?
They remain the stereotypical super old, super advanced race whose technological level is and seemingly will never be surpassed by younger races, technology in ruins that usually take the shape of massive space stations and superweapons.
Another one I loath, one that is also in a lot of popular fantasy, like Warcraft 3 making it the orcs being herded into camps being something of a bad thing when they were nothing but mindless, bloodthirsty warmongers to humans.
I'm all together sick of present social issues being the focus Sci-Fi. Either look towards a future where different circumstances will create new and different ones or back off from it and create a new world focused more around a historical perspective where cultures and civilizations come and go.
1.) Abuse of the word "quantum" makes me absolutely cringe.
2.) Needlessly high tech weapons and equipment. I was just today replaying Halo CE and found the Covenant designs to be extremely guilty of this. These aliens with all their sci fi plasma-lasers are being mowed down with weapons whose operating principles haven't really changed since the 1950s. Sure, a plasma gun isn't completely impossible, at least in theory: you just need to be able to create a hand-portable device light enough to be used in combat and durable enough to not have its extremely precise mechanisms be disrupted (remember, these devices are frequently used in melee combat as bludgeons), and be able to generate enough power to create the plasma, and then it has to contain the plasma while it is projected, and then there has to be a system to keep the plasma hot and focused on its trajectory, and it has to do all this without burning the user whose hands may be mere inches from the plasma generator with the enormous temperatures required to sustain plasma. Oh, and it won't do any more damage than a conventional bullet.
You could also just use a bullet.
3.) Assuming that technological progress occurs in dramatic leaps and discoveries. It doesn't. There will not be one single event that signifies humanity's change from a "normal" civilization what is shown in sci fi.
4.) Humans as "the standard". The humans have no special abilities....BUT ALSO NO WEAKNESSES! Wooooooo! Really, there are actually a lot of things we kind of suck at. We're not terribly physically strong and don't have a great deal in the way of natural defenses.
5.) All species, human and alien, are unified under a single leader or government. Okay, just take one look at today's geopolitics and tell me that you think this is ever going to happen.
2.) Needlessly high tech weapons and equipment. I was just today replaying Halo CE and found the Covenant designs to be extremely guilty of this. These aliens with all their sci fi plasma-lasers are being mowed down with weapons whose operating principles haven't really changed since the 1950s. Sure, a plasma gun isn't completely impossible, at least in theory: you just need to be able to create a hand-portable device light enough to be used in combat and durable enough to not have its extremely precise mechanisms be disrupted (remember, these devices are frequently used in melee combat as bludgeons), and be able to generate enough power to create the plasma, and then it has to contain the plasma while it is projected, and then there has to be a system to keep the plasma hot and focused on its trajectory, and it has to do all this without burning the user whose hands may be mere inches from the plasma generator with the enormous temperatures required to sustain plasma. Oh, and it won't do any more damage than a conventional bullet.
You could also just use a bullet.
3.) Assuming that technological progress occurs in dramatic leaps and discoveries. It doesn't. There will not be one single event that signifies humanity's change from a "normal" civilization what is shown in sci fi.
4.) Humans as "the standard". The humans have no special abilities....BUT ALSO NO WEAKNESSES! Wooooooo! Really, there are actually a lot of things we kind of suck at. We're not terribly physically strong and don't have a great deal in the way of natural defenses.
5.) All species, human and alien, are unified under a single leader or government. Okay, just take one look at today's geopolitics and tell me that you think this is ever going to happen.
*One character does techno-bable with a fellow scientist/geek.
Along comes the techno-idiot in the group (like Jack from Stargate) crying out "Durr! Explain what you were talking about in English so I won't feel left out!". At least Star Trek is reasonable with it, most of the time.
*Deus ex machina for the sake of deus ex machina. But that can be said for every genre. "I successfully transformamorfahack the toaster into a time machine in the last minute, such luck!".
*That hackers use an absurd amount of screens, because that means you are skilled. And let's not get started on counter hacking measures. I would link the NCIS clip, but everyone has seen it already.
Along comes the techno-idiot in the group (like Jack from Stargate) crying out "Durr! Explain what you were talking about in English so I won't feel left out!". At least Star Trek is reasonable with it, most of the time.
*Deus ex machina for the sake of deus ex machina. But that can be said for every genre. "I successfully transformamorfahack the toaster into a time machine in the last minute, such luck!".
*That hackers use an absurd amount of screens, because that means you are skilled. And let's not get started on counter hacking measures. I would link the NCIS clip, but everyone has seen it already.
Certainly, that could happen. Only, that's never mentioned.beastro said:
For some reason, most sci-fi shows that are dominated by white straight people don't have the heroes talk about how they wiped out all the black people and drove homosexuals underground, for example.
Aside from many things already mentioned (single biome planets, always class warfare, always humanoid aliens, the universal translator, technobabble), it really irks me whenever "lasers" work as slow-moving discrete "bullets of light". That ain't how lasers work, dammit!
And "asteroid thickets". Seriously, asteroid fields don't tend to be that dense.
Oh, and the annoying "This is Earth" ending. How original...
Explosions in space. A vessel that was moving at some funky speed explodes, and the explosion is stationary? What? Planar shockwaves around space explosions? Seriously? Explosions in the vacuum of space being noisy? Come the hell on! Not to say anything about how explosions in space should be pretty much spherical.
A distinct lack of Kessler Syndrome around planets where ships often blow each other up also bothers me.
And "asteroid thickets". Seriously, asteroid fields don't tend to be that dense.
Oh, and the annoying "This is Earth" ending. How original...
Explosions in space. A vessel that was moving at some funky speed explodes, and the explosion is stationary? What? Planar shockwaves around space explosions? Seriously? Explosions in the vacuum of space being noisy? Come the hell on! Not to say anything about how explosions in space should be pretty much spherical.
A distinct lack of Kessler Syndrome around planets where ships often blow each other up also bothers me.
You can add Panzer Dragoon to that list (which was inspired by Miyzaki's Nausicaa).heroicbob said:
But I have to say I'm not sick of this trope. I'm just sick of seeing it done poorly.
Because most Science Fiction, especially that on TV and in theaters, especially the popular stuff, is the produce of Western, mostly Anglosphere nations, which by their very nature are predominantly white.thaluikhain said:
A far more interesting and subversive possibility would be exploring the racial repercussions of such a setting that I stated would be where, to use your example as one, if blacks suddenly became endangered or whites literally were the predominant "race" thanks to an alien menace wiping out most human populated plants and leaving others untouched. How that would affect not only the development of subsequent human history and culture but the shock it would cause to the framework of Mankind as a whole where it's a given that whites have always been one of the smaller population groups.
Or to explore that in a more deeper, focused example, what if the Han found themselves a tiny ethnic group amongst not only the Chinese but of Mankind? How that would affect the broad Chinese identity? Would it even survive with the different ethnic groups finding identities broadening out and differing, essentially reverting back to the days before China was united when to be "Chinese" was to be "Germanic", "Slavic" or "European" in Western terminology.
Along with that would be how that would affect the self-perception of the Han and how they'd evolve, maybe becoming reclusive or maybe furious at their loss of prestige and standing in Mankind and work to recover their past glory with all the entails given how humans always try to recover a mythical, utopian past.
That's a fair point, and I would have written about it myself in the post you quoted if I hadn't been so lazy. (Thanks for doing it for me.) But my problem is that it never feels like that. It always feels like the writer just didn't anticipate that things would change.beastro said:
The problem when Sci-Fi deals with this is that it brings the misanthropist out in many writers and why fantasy tends to have humans be the middle man within the usual Tolkienesque gallery of fantastical races.renegade7 said:
With Sci-Fi, going back to it's very beginnings and walking hand in hand during the 50s with patriotism and xenophobia is going on about how weak we are ranging from physically weaker (the most common form) to spiritually weaker (usually revolving around us being a broken race who can't be in touch with nature) or mentally and emotionally (Vulcans or any given super advanced race of brainy aliens), or all of the above with a heavy mix of hatred towards are apparent lack of wisdom.
For all it's faults, Plan 9 sums up that aspect of Sci-Fi the best with the climax being the head alien spewing "You're stupid! Stupid! Stupid!" like a domineering mother would as she spanked a baby.
That also reminds of something just as bad and something which dominated Sci-Fi for faaaar too long, especially in the 60s with Star Trek being the banner carrier: Not so much Mankind being perfect, but Mankind "evolving" from very basic, fundamental things that are at the core of human nature like "negative" emotions or simply being frail beings prone to err.
The though is the negative emotion thing and how in the perfect future it's somehow possible for human being to literally, not socially, evolve away feelings like anger, hate, even sadness. The funny thing is that the worst cases of this weren't in the Original Series but came from the first couple of seasons of TNG thanks to Roddenberry having too much creative control.
It got so bad that after he died the producers went on to create an episode expressly to criticize such a mentality and try to explain it in universe when a kid loses his mother to a mine and struggles to grieve while being helped out by the crew. Wesley, in one of his few shining moments, really gives it to Roddenberry by proxy by letting the kid know what shit it was for him after he lost his father when everyone expected him to act as if nothing bad had ever happened and to dare not express the grief anyone would expect would come from a young child basically putting the mentality down to an older generation that strove to overcome Man's darker aspects by acting as if they no longer had them at all.
Intertial Dampers made out of eggshells and wet toilet paper.
Seriously, and Star Trek is very guilty of this, the first time anything makes a ship so much as wobble almost immediately someone pipes up that the inertial dampers (or is it "dampeners"? Whatever...) are offline. If they were such a critcal component you'd think that they'd make them a tad more robust!
Seriously, and Star Trek is very guilty of this, the first time anything makes a ship so much as wobble almost immediately someone pipes up that the inertial dampers (or is it "dampeners"? Whatever...) are offline. If they were such a critcal component you'd think that they'd make them a tad more robust!