Common Sci-Fi tropes that annoy you!

[tmande2nd]

Oh were to start:

The comically inept armed farces with horrible accuracy, garbage tactics, and stupid leaders.
Why yes lets exchange fire ala the Napoleonic era, have broadsides at point blank range, and make everything look cool! There is a reason why real armed forces dont carry out infantry charges or fire their ships guns at things close enough you can throw rocks at.
Or have a military whose idea of a battle ship goes around with shields or weapons ready, and waits to get SHOT AT before engaging....cough Starfleet cough.

Technobabble:
Honestly it is so annoying to hear "Create a subspace wave at a neural wiggly figgly of 98 shindigies!". Just for God's sake use some real science or not at all. Its painful to watch shows misuse terms and actual science like that.

Alien space babes:
Making an entire group of aliens "hawt" so that people can get cheap fanservice.
Twileks
Orions
Asari
I dont mind fanservice in works of fiction, but when Captain Dude lands on a planet and the female population consists entirely of bikini models in skin paint with some rubber ridges added to their forehead my eyes roll so hard they hurt.

I now await the "LEAVE MY GREEN SKINNED SPACE BABES OUT OF THIS!"

 

[Zontar]

Or have a military whose idea of a battle ship goes around with shields or weapons ready, and waits to get SHOT AT before engaging....cough Starfleet cough.

But didn't you know? Starfleet isn't a 'military', it's just an organization which has a military rank structure, uses starships with weapons to keep the peace and uphold the law, and to act as diplomats, it isn't a 'military'. (though sarcasm aside, I honestly have no idea WHY Starfleet members double as diplomats when that should be representatives sent by the government, not ship crew members who can be as low as a Lieutenant who just happen to command a starships).

And because you said it: LEAVE MY GREEN SKINNED SPACE BABES OUT OF THIS!

 

[Nosferatu2]

Alien space babes:
Making an entire group of aliens "hawt" so that people can get cheap fanservice.
Twileks
Orions
Asari
I dont mind fanservice in works of fiction, but when Captain Dude lands on a planet and the female population consists entirely of bikini models in skin paint with some rubber ridges added to their forehead my eyes roll so hard they hurt.

I now await the "LEAVE MY GREEN SKINNED SPACE BABES OUT OF THIS!"

I'm cool with that one. But there is a word for that. "Xenophilia" roughly describes what you're talking about. It pretty much means a love, or attraction, to something alien.

 

[LadyLightning]

Pinocchio Robots. Fuck you, I am fucking sick of your "I wanna be a real human!" bullshit. Mass Effect 3, you're one of the biggest culprits of this. The Geth and EDI were perfectly happy living as bits and bytes, why did you have to go and ruin that in favor of this played out junk?

I'm torn on this. On the one hand it can be used well (See Data from Star Trek) but I agree with you that Mass Effect 3 took synthetic characters that were interesting the way that they were and make it so that them being like Humans was ideal in the sake of fulfilling a cliche when it really didn't work. (For fuck's sake, Legion was SCARED by the concept of individuality.)

Legion ~were~ scared. You have to remember to use the plural when talking about them. Many Geth, one platform.

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

Well, what do you guys want? It's science fiction. If you want realism go watch some boring legal-crime drama or medical series. It doesn't matter what future tech they come up with, it's about exploring the possibilities were such techs actually possible. In fact I'd say it's their impossibility which makes it work. That's why cockable beam weapons don't matter to me one tiny bit.

What I hate: Shows which try their hardest to make the future the most realistic they can. I got this impression from watching a bit of Battlestar Galactica which is probably why I didn't like it. Just present the tech vaguely and get on with it. The details aren't important.

We want Science Fiction that has weight to it.

Sci-Fi isn't like other forms of fiction, it's inherently rooted in reality and if it had been developed (or rather, labelled) earlier than it had been it would have been considered just a sub-genre of fantasy. It's no coincidence that Sci-Fi and High Fantasy took the forms we know in roughly the same time period, they were divisions within fantasy that broke with folk and fairy tales opting to be more grounded only with one focused on the past and tradition while the other looked into the future and possibility.

Human nature prefers to accept things the more realistic they are and dismisses others which aren't with condescension at best and hostile contempt at worst. Folk and fairy tales are the realm of children's stories now because they lost their ground with adults becoming so silly in our eyes that they were only worth telling to ignorant kids while High Fantasy and Science Fiction have always aimed to be more mature and deeper.

Your complaint has less to do with us or anyone else that desires ever realistic Sci-Fi and more to do with the fact that people as a whole have grown sick of more fantastical Sci-Fi and it's hang up with utopia and the triumphal march of Positivism. The last century showed us that such high hopes were nothing but silly delusions and wish fulfillment, people now increasingly seek darker, more gritty fantasy because it's not only refreshing, but it's also more relatable, and when it all comes down to it, seems far far more plausible, something that doesn't matter to you, but matters to most people.

In my case I'm frankly sick of technology and as funny as it sounds, science, dominating Science Fiction at the expense of the social and historical aspects of the genre and exploring their repercussions and evolution. It's why I've grown sicker of TV/Movie Sci-Fi and find the Dune series to be the only novels which tackle those aspects of the genre while giving pure lip service to the tech: "These things were invented, this is these things work, here are their limitations, here's how they react to other technology. Wanna know how it all works? That's not the point of these little books!!! Just accept it that they work in the way that they do and focus more on how civilization and society evolved into this odd form you now find it in and where it's going".

Also, most people are utterly sick of the science in Science Fiction being a stand in for magic without any set parameters that is incessantly used to get lazy writers out of the corners they've written themselves into, written themselves into such corners so badly people have spent entire careers spewing technobabble out and not only lowered themselves into contemptible levels but have done a lot of lower the standards of the genre as well.

Reading that I agree with most of it but it's also confusing because I'm not sure whether you're for or against fantasy in sci-fi, since you seem to be for realism then bring up Dune, a work of fantasy, in a positive light. I fully agree with you that the science in sci-fi must be there for a reason - to raise issues actually relevant to the way we live now or may live in the future. I don't see how greater realism and "grittiness" do anything but limit the scope of the work.

In the future anything must be considered possible - things people considered impossible 1000 years ago are now our reality. Saying something's impossible in the future must be done for a greater reason - for example in Babylon 5 the station needs rotating parts to create gravity - something which is ignored in say, Star Trek. But this is not just to show off the knowledge of physics, but to contrast the humans with the more advanced species which have artificial gravity, something which may well be impossible.

TLDR: I'm not against realism, more against realism for its own sake. The shaky-cam and lots of blood we're stuck with in new sci-fi is there to look cool, not for any good reason.

 

[xPixelatedx]

One of my biggest pet peeves:
1. Human hangs out with Alien of opposite gender. They are clearly good companions, and even have a chemistry; may even fight or die for one another. Same human meets another human of opposite gender. INSTANT ROMANCE! Doesn't matter if they even like each-other, they are now a couple... just because! I recently saw this in that god awful movie John Carter. The green alien risked everything for that fuck and they seemed really friendly with one another. Then a human woman shows up and clearly thats the love interest... because! It's nearly as insulting as those movies/shows/books where the only two black people end up becoming lovers just because they're black.

This one isn't as bothering, but it's annoying over time:
2. Every alien acts distinctly human, never any real divergence. And no, being more warrior like, or greedy, or religious doesn't count (looking at you Star Trek). I am sorry, but NO. The mind is a really amazing but frail thing. Much of how we think and act is dependent on the very shape of our brains and the chemicals it produces. An animal with completely different physical characteristics literally cannot think exactly like us. They would have to have a human mind and produce human chemicals in it. That's not to say we might find things that closely resemble the way we think, those would be the things we'd have the easiest time communicating with, thats for sure. But it is highly likely we would encounter things so beyond our comprehension they would seem either frightening, nonsensical or animal-like to us. Dolphins are a good example of something approaching human-levels of thought but being so distinctly different it opens a frightening precedent of what an alien might be like.

Aliens being very human in appearance. It's perhaps not as prevalent now as it was a few decades ago although even now most aliens are at least humanoid shaped. I just feel like there should be a lot more evolutionary diversity. Not mentioning any names but slapping a couple of pointy ears on someone's head makes for a pretty underwhelming alien (nothing against a particular character, just the idea in general).

I agree fully, and while I believe another primate(or primate-like) species is more then capable of becoming the citizens of that respective world, the type of animal we are differ so much between species, I still have a hard time believing they would look so perfectly human-like. If anything they would look more like "another monkey" to us. Just look at the huge difference between primates on earth.

 

[Dreadjaws]

Alien space babes:
Making an entire group of aliens "hawt" so that people can get cheap fanservice.
Twileks
Orions
Asari
I dont mind fanservice in works of fiction, but when Captain Dude lands on a planet and the female population consists entirely of bikini models in skin paint with some rubber ridges added to their forehead my eyes roll so hard they hurt.

The Asari shouldn't count. The interesting deal about them is that they're "shape-cheaters". They actually look like a member of whichever race whomever's watching them belongs to. They look human-like to us because we're human, to the Turians, they look turian-like and so on.

On topic, I have to say what really irks me is lack of diversity in alien worlds. Here on Earth humans have several races, languages, cultures and religions, but in Sci-Fi whenever other planets are shown, most of the time the entire planet there shares the same race, culture, belief and language.

The only times this is different, when a planet shows diversity between inhabitants, rest assured it's because there's two or more different species in it. But species-wide, they're all basically the same.

This wouldn't bother me as much if we were talking about some super-advanced civilization, which has done away with the differences between their members, but it's usually not the case, as those worlds tend to show individuals very much like us humans.

Another thing that grind my gears is presenting humans as saviors. Humans travel to worlds much more advanced, yet they all lack "humanity", which ends up saving the day all the time. Give me a break, please, humans don't need an ego boost.

 

[Grach]

Anthropomorphic aliens. It really irks me is writer that thinks there's other intelligent lifeforms on the galaxy that look like us but with some added prosthetics. To think there could be literally anything out there, even a race of spacefaring spider clowns, it seems just like a lack of creativity on the writers part.

Mass Effect is exempt though. They would've needed entire new skeletons for the models and the first Mass Effect didn't have the time or money to make a bunch of skeletons from scratch.

Also, "warrior" races that have one and ONLY one doctrine, weapon and fighting style. Especially when humans (who have a fuckton of different martial arts, strategies and weapons) are portrayed as a being more diplomatic race.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

Proud warrior race guys who are:

A - (western view?) Samurai analogues. What about warrior guys whose culture rewards sneaky, dishonourable or whatever wins thinking?

So Klingons, then? I'm not talking about the TNG YOU LACK HONOR Klingons. I'm referring to the sneaky, backstabbing sons of bitches from TOS and Deep Space Nine. The Klingons in TOS were analogs for the Russian communists, and were quite keen on playing dirty tricks to gain the upper hand.

Deep Space Nine Klingons were a reaction to the ridiculous honor obsessed TNG Klingons, showing them to be completely ruthless, indiscriminate in their attacks, and that their whole display of honor and courage is just a bluff that hides their true ambitions.

 

[Belaam]

Poorly designed alien life forms. Evolution should work the same everywhere. Pandora's entire planet of six limbed creatures with one single four limbed species drove me nuts.

 

[Zetatrain]

I hate the Big Dumb Object trope when done stupidly.

an example on it being done well was the Ringworld book series, Ringworld started off as a big dumb object but as the characters actually explored it, it slowly started showing it's actual reasoning for being there.


as for being done poorly, Mass Effect's Citadel.


Reason for it being there? cause the reapers want the galactic civilization to form around it. no other reason given.


it's there for the sake of plot and being a late game McGuffin powered Checkov's Gun.

Err...well the reapers want the Citadel to be at the core of galactic civilization so that when they come through the portal it makes it easier for them to divide and conquer. To me that seems like a good explanation.

Also considering it's the setting where a good chunk of the series takes place, I think that raises it above McGuffin status since a McGuffin is something that has a single purpose and is never seen or heard of again once that purpose is fulfilled.

 

[Zetatrain]

Proud warrior race guys who are:

A - (western view?) Samurai analogues. What about warrior guys whose culture rewards sneaky, dishonourable or whatever wins thinking?

So Klingons, then? I'm not talking about the TNG YOU LACK HONOR Klingons. I'm referring to the sneaky, backstabbing sons of bitches from TOS and Deep Space Nine. The Klingons in TOS were analogs for the Russian communists, and were quite keen on playing dirty tricks to gain the upper hand.

Deep Space Nine Klingons were a reaction to the ridiculous honor obsessed TNG Klingons, showing them to be completely ruthless, indiscriminate in their attacks, and that their whole display of honor and courage is just a bluff that hides their true ambitions.

DS9 Klingons are still TNG Klingons except shown in a more...realistic light. While its shown that there are those who are hypocrites or simply don't believe in the whole honor code, the Klingon culture is still heavily engrossed in the whole honor and courage thing and definitely does not reward sneaky and dishonorable acts as Serioli mentioned above.

There was one episode in DS9 (one where Quark has to marry a Klingon woman) where Quark finds out that one Klingon guy is undermining another Klingon house/clan through financial means (something considered dishonorable). When the matter is brought to the chancellor, the same Klingon tries to deny it.

 

[Schtimpy]

Alien invasions being so easily repelled. Let's say you travelled across a galaxy, would you really bank conquering a planet on an all in attack and not stop and see what's up with the planet first? In Signs, the aliens were weak against water (which you can see from space), in War of the Worlds it was a earth disease of some kind. Both easily checked by sending down a scout and realizing "Nope, not worth it." I know in movies humans always have to win, but it wreaks my suspension of disbelief when the super powerful, technologically advanced race shows up to conquer a planet and just kinda fizzles by the end of the movie. At least make the victory earned.

Also, I'd like to see a movie with a alien as the main character, maybe even with humans as the bad guys. And no free passes if you have one human as a co-conspirator, District 9 I'm looking at you. Seriously, how did the hero of that movie end up being a white guy?

 

[xPixelatedx]

Poorly designed alien life forms. Evolution should work the same everywhere. Pandora's entire planet of six limbed creatures with one single four limbed species drove me nuts.

Not to defend that awful, awful movie... but what about real life? Most things here are 4 limbed species, yeah, but you can bet we have a bunch of things that aren't to! What would have happened if not humans, but a giant octopus or insect rose up and became the sentient life form on earth? Technically speaking, it would then be like Pandora, with the citizens of earth having a different limb-set then most of the animals around them.

But that was just a hypothetical idea for the sake of argument. I was merely defending the notion, not the movie. That said, I am pretty sure they showed other primates on Pandora who had six limbs. If their other primates had six limbs there is simply no reason why the Na'vi didn't, aside from purposely making them more "human-like" to be relatable. Which is indeed VERY poor alien design.

 

[Thaluikhain]

DS9 Klingons are still TNG Klingons except shown in a more...realistic light. While its shown that there are those who are hypocrites or simply don't believe in the whole honor code, the Klingon culture is still heavily engrossed in the whole honor and courage thing and definitely does not reward sneaky and dishonorable acts as Serioli mentioned above.

There was one episode in DS9 (one where Quark has to marry a Klingon woman) where Quark finds out that one Klingon guy is undermining another Klingon house/clan through financial means (something considered dishonorable). When the matter is brought to the chancellor, the same Klingon tries to deny it.

Er...the TNG klingons were pretty dodgy as well. All that stuff about Worf's father, and covering it up, and keeping it covered up. Later, Gowron wants to quietly forget the Federation's help when Picard needs him, until Picard says it's ok, we'll find other klingons to be friends with.

 

[Zetatrain]

DS9 Klingons are still TNG Klingons except shown in a more...realistic light. While its shown that there are those who are hypocrites or simply don't believe in the whole honor code, the Klingon culture is still heavily engrossed in the whole honor and courage thing and definitely does not reward sneaky and dishonorable acts as Serioli mentioned above.

There was one episode in DS9 (one where Quark has to marry a Klingon woman) where Quark finds out that one Klingon guy is undermining another Klingon house/clan through financial means (something considered dishonorable). When the matter is brought to the chancellor, the same Klingon tries to deny it.

Er...the TNG klingons were pretty dodgy as well. All that stuff about Worf's father, and covering it up, and keeping it covered up. Later, Gowron wants to quietly forget the Federation's help when Picard needs him, until Picard says it's ok, we'll find other klingons to be friends with.

Oh definitely, in addition to Gowron you also had the Duras Sisters who definitely weren't above trickery and backstabbing. There was also Alexander's mother who wasn't exactly a fan of traditional Klingon values if i remember correctly.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Oh definitely, in addition to Gowron you also had the Duras Sisters who definitely weren't above trickery and backstabbing. There was also Alexander's mother who wasn't exactly a fan of traditional Klingon values if i remember correctly.

True, but Gowron was supposed to be the establishment, the best klingon leader. Duras et al were rogues...though they had loads of supporters.

 

[Zetatrain]

Suicidal kamikaze death dives being heroic.

I am so sick of the whole 'If I'm going to go, I'm going to take them with me!' crap being jazzed up as some heroic action of self-sacrifice. You're possibly about to die, crashing into one last enemy not only makes it 100% certain you will perish rather than 'finding a way' to pull through, but it's essentailly a coward's way out. Usually effective the first time, true, but it's not heroic at all, and has much wider consequences than just that incident.

For example, in WW2 the Japanese were idealogically opposed to ever being taken prisoner. Wounded soldiers would call out for help, and when Allied soldiers approached, they would produce a grenade and try and blow as many away as possible. This strategy is not heroic, and was never regarded as such at the time. As a result of witnesses to this strategy, the Allies would give the Japanese no quarter or mercy. The wounded would be shot on sight. Bodies would be bayonetted to 'make sure' they were dead. Japanese who wanted to live weren't given the chance, because the Allies could no longer risk leaving them alive.

I'd say it depends on the circumstances, like say the enemy is already taking no prisoners or said sacrifice does make a difference.

If a spaceship does a death dive like that- chances are the ships of that faction will be seen differently after that. They'll be engaged from further away, and shown no quarter when mercy is asked for. The actions of one stupid, arrogant big ship captain condemn countless other lives that could have been saved... to death.

The new Star Trek is probably the worst. Didn't even scratch the other ship. He should have been seen as the absolute useless moron that he was.

HUMPH! /rant

Well what did you expect him to do?

It was clear Nero wasn't taking any prisoners, and the crew had already evacuated. Also by charging at the ship you could argue that he drew their fire away from the fleeing shuttles. And whose to say he didn't scratch Nero's ship? That looked like a pretty decent sized explosion and Nero's ship didn't fire upon the shuttles or attempt to follow after it got rammed. So who knows maybe it did do some damage.

Oh definitely, in addition to Gowron you also had the Duras Sisters who definitely weren't above trickery and backstabbing. There was also Alexander's mother who wasn't exactly a fan of traditional Klingon values if i remember correctly.

True, but Gowron was supposed to be the establishment, the best klingon leader. Duras et al were rogues...though they had loads of supporters.

IMO, politicians are usually the first to break their code of ethics...it's just something that comes with the territory I guess. And I would say the Duras sisters are in the same boat as Gowron since they have political aspirations themselves.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Alien invasions being so easily repelled. Let's say you travelled across a galaxy, would you really bank conquering a planet on an all in attack and not stop and see what's up with the planet first? In Signs, the aliens were weak against water (which you can see from space), in War of the Worlds it was a earth disease of some kind. Both easily checked by sending down a scout and realizing "Nope, not worth it." I know in movies humans always have to win, but it wreaks my suspension of disbelief when the super powerful, technologically advanced race shows up to conquer a planet and just kinda fizzles by the end of the movie. At least make the victory earned.

In War of the World's, they couldn't send down a scout, they travelled via giant space guns, not ships, they'd probably have not way of signalling back home.

The point of the story was that victory wasn't earned by the humans, the aliens just didn't understand the planet, which is fair enough.

(As an aside, British artillery was capable of defeating the alien war machines, and most European nations had better artillery at that time)

Also, I'd like to see a movie with a alien as the main character, maybe even with humans as the bad guys. And no free passes if you have one human as a co-conspirator, District 9 I'm looking at you. Seriously, how did the hero of that movie end up being a white guy?

Because it was about the mistreatment of aliens, based on the mistreatment of black people. So the hero is white. Same way as Schlinder's List was about killing Jewish people, so the hero was white. The Last Samurai was about the end of the old way in Japan, so the hero was white.