Common Sci-Fi tropes that annoy you!

[mechman123]

Settings where humans are surrounded by aliens who have clearly superior biology (ie space elfs, space orcs,etc) that outmatch humans, YET humans are still able to go toe to toe with them because of the human spirit/unbelievable luck. Star trek is the WORST of the offenders in this regard. Humans have no stand out features in any way that gives them a leg up on anyone in any situation beyond said luck/spirit. In the marvel/DC universes that luck also includes the fact that we have more superheros than any other freaking planet.
This same issue can be leveled at fantasy setting. Humans are some how the most populous race despite being featureless.

Another one I am sick to Death of is Symbiont using(not simply the spiderman goo),tentacle possessing, organo-tech based species being EVIL. They are always evil and It is SO darn overused.

 

[Gromril]

Easily my biggest is when you are told you are dealing with something like a UN in space, but what you get is 'murica in space (I'm looking at you Halo).

 

[Reed Spacer]

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)

And also the Chozo from Metroid...though to me there's a hint of something Lovecraftian about them, it feels a little different, they DID show up personally in the canon at a few early points.

I've read through all 5 pages so far and how has THIS not come up yet?
THE AI GOES INSANE! OH NOES!

I really hate this trope. If we have the technology to actually construct a fully-functioning AI, don't you think we'd have the sense to debug it and introduce some fail-safes to keep it from going nut and say, killing everyone or imprisoning them to do horrible experiments on them or something? I realize this falls under that whole "Fear of Technology" trope but this particular part of it bugs me. I'm very fond of actually-functioning AI characters, or even AIs that start off damaged and are repaird, but having robo-madness be your endgame seems like a cop-out to me since it's been done and done well many times before (Portal, 2001, I have no Mouth, etc)

HAL 9000 wasn't really insanity, just logical thinking taken to extremes:

He was given important information and told to keep it secret. HAL was designed to offer any requested information, but it had a big peice of vital info he wasn't allowed to share.

He therefore reasoned that the most logical method to keep this info safe was to kill the crew.

If everyone were dead, there was no risk of the information being found.

He was basically forced to go 'insane'

 

[Vegosiux]

HAL 9000 wasn't really insanity, just logical thinking taken to extremes:

He was given important information and told to keep it secret. HAL was designed to offer any requested information, but it had a big peice of vital info he wasn't allowed to share.

He therefore reasoned that the most logical method to keep this info safe was to kill the crew.

If everyone were dead, there was no risk of the information being found.

He was basically forced to go 'insane'

I actually really can't buy into that, because of the simple concept of "Specific rule overrides general rule". We (humans) don't go insane from making exceptions, so HAL couldn't have been a "human-like" AI.

And a "Mechanical, logical" AI would simply, keeping that priority in "mind" (assuming it was programed in), do this:

-Information was requested.
-Is requested information ?
--a) If yes, I deny access to requested information.
--b) If no, I allow access to requested information.

Adding to that, why I never bought into the "Zeroth Law Rebellion" is because of the vagueness of the Zeroth Law and the fact that a true all-seeing, all-knowing sentient AI simply breaks my suspension of disbelief too much.

 

[Zipa]

Futuristic laser or energy weapons that are less effective than a normal gun like what we have on Earth today, Star Trek is a big culprit of this, especially Voyager. Meanwhile on DS9 someone takes a shot in to the leg and loses the leg.

I dunno, I kinda liked how effective the Tommy Gun Picard used on the Borg was. They're adaptive and eventually immune to certain lasers due to their unique armor and what not, armor that's obviously not designed for kinetic damage.

It kind of makes you wonder how dumb Starfleet were, they never adopted any kind of projectile weapons after their encounters with the Borg despite their effectiveness and them already having a gun that could beam a bullet through walls and kill someone without even being in the same room as them.

Admittidly though it would probabally do little to their ships as they seemed originally at least to be able to adapt to ship based kinetic weapons like photon torpedos as well. Though post the best of both worlds Starfleet apparently got around that.

I think the Klingons have the right idea, Bat'leths seem to be far more reliable of a way of killing someone than a energy weapon.

 

[Zontar]

Futuristic laser or energy weapons that are less effective than a normal gun like what we have on Earth today, Star Trek is a big culprit of this, especially Voyager. Meanwhile on DS9 someone takes a shot in to the leg and loses the leg.

I dunno, I kinda liked how effective the Tommy Gun Picard used on the Borg was. They're adaptive and eventually immune to certain lasers due to their unique armor and what not, armor that's obviously not designed for kinetic damage.

It kind of makes you wonder how dumb Starfleet were, they never adopted any kind of projectile weapons after their encounters with the Borg despite their effectiveness and them already having a gun that could beam a bullet through walls and kill someone without even being in the same room as them.

I think the Klingons have the right idea, Bat'leths seem to be far more reliable of a way of killing someone than a energy weapon.

The fact that Bat'leths are that effective in their universe speaks volumes for the intelligence of every species in it.

 

[Zipa]

Futuristic laser or energy weapons that are less effective than a normal gun like what we have on Earth today, Star Trek is a big culprit of this, especially Voyager. Meanwhile on DS9 someone takes a shot in to the leg and loses the leg.

I dunno, I kinda liked how effective the Tommy Gun Picard used on the Borg was. They're adaptive and eventually immune to certain lasers due to their unique armor and what not, armor that's obviously not designed for kinetic damage.

It kind of makes you wonder how dumb Starfleet were, they never adopted any kind of projectile weapons after their encounters with the Borg despite their effectiveness and them already having a gun that could beam a bullet through walls and kill someone without even being in the same room as them.

I think the Klingons have the right idea, Bat'leths seem to be far more reliable of a way of killing someone than a energy weapon.

The fact that Bat'leths are that effective in their universe speaks volumes for the intelligence of every species in it.

It is more how bad the writers have been on Trek, weapons are as powerful as the writers need them to be. In one episode of Voyager Tuvok shoots a guy with his phaser front and center and the guy just staggers a bit and runs off after a second, then in another episode Tuvok one hit KOs a entire room of people with the wide beam setting on the same type of phaser.

Same for the ships, one day the Ent - D can blow crater sized holes in a borg cube but the next can't hurt a 80 year old bird of prey.

 

[Piorn]

I just wish we'd get some of the more optimistic sci-fi back.
Nowadays it's always about horrible monsters, terrorism, classism enforced by stereotypical "evil" people, post-apocalypse, war crimes, revenge for war crimes, you name it.
Sure these elements can be present in a story, a story even needs a certain amount of conflict, but does the future always have to be so grim?

 

[MrBaskerville]

I´m tired of Sci-Fi movies that spend a lot of time building a complex and expensive universe, just to make a repeat of Minority Report where someone notices something he shouldn´t have noticed and therefore he is hunted down by men in suits until he reveals the truth and yadda yadda yadda.

 

[Zeras]

Easily my biggest is when you are told you are dealing with something like a UN in space, but what you get is 'murica in space (I'm looking at you Halo).

You'd probably see more of how the UNSC works beauracratically if humanity hadn't been embroiled in a civil war and then a war with a group of aliens bent on wiping them all out - and then encoutering the very organism that led the mythical race of beings whose technological artifacts everyone seems to find killing themselves to stop.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

I just wish we'd get some of the more optimistic sci-fi back.
Nowadays it's always about horrible monsters, terrorism, classism enforced by stereotypical "evil" people, post-apocalypse, war crimes, revenge for war crimes, you name it.
Sure these elements can be present in a story, a story even needs a certain amount of conflict, but does the future always have to be so grim?

Yep. Seems like modern sci-fi can be one of two things: grimdark, or a soap opera. You can have both, but you can't have neither without giving up the sci-fi elements entirely. I just don't get the idea of taking a genre that is uniquely suited to escapist fantasies and focusing on the absolute worst aspects of the modern day, at least not in the "well we do it because things are shitty right now so nobody would believe a happy future!" way that it keeps being excused with. Dystopian fiction has its place, but that's not the reason for it.

Futuristic laser or energy weapons that are less effective than a normal gun like what we have on Earth today, Star Trek is a big culprit of this, especially Voyager. Meanwhile on DS9 someone takes a shot in to the leg and loses the leg.

I dunno, I kinda liked how effective the Tommy Gun Picard used on the Borg was. They're adaptive and eventually immune to certain lasers due to their unique armor and what not, armor that's obviously not designed for kinetic damage.

It kind of makes you wonder how dumb Starfleet were, they never adopted any kind of projectile weapons after their encounters with the Borg despite their effectiveness and them already having a gun that could beam a bullet through walls and kill someone without even being in the same room as them.

Admittidly though it would probabally do little to their ships as they seemed originally at least to be able to adapt to ship based kinetic weapons like photon torpedos as well. Though post the best of both worlds Starfleet apparently got around that.

I think the Klingons have the right idea, Bat'leths seem to be far more reliable of a way of killing someone than a energy weapon.

I've seen people arguing about this before. The usual explanation is that if the borg were routinely facing off against projectile and bladed weapons, they'd adapt to them just as easily as they do energy weapons. They're only effective because they almost never run into them, if that makes sense. Kind of like antibiotic resistant bacteria.

 

[Mr Mystery Guest]

People in the future not watching television. Star Trek was the worst for this, (I know not Enterprise as it was closer to our time) but when you have worked for twelve hours scrubbing jefferies tubes i refuse to belive you will have the energy to run around a Holodeck. I don't even turn my Wii on.

 

[Zontar]

People in the future not watching television. Star Trek was the worst for this, (I know not Enterprise as it was closer to our time) but when you have worked for twelve hours scrubbing jefferies tubes i refuse to belive you will have the energy to run around a Holodeck. I don't even turn my Wii on.

Funny thing, for all it's odd decisions and the whole "being the worst of all 5 shows, even Voyager", Enterprise did come off as the most realistic of the shows (if you ignore the incompetent crew and ineffective Starfleet). They use money, they have to wright and rewrite protocol on a daily basis since no one has written it for them, they have the crew watch movies and recorded sports in their free time (including having screenings in the mess hall, complete with popcorn) and I think there may have been a moment where someone caught cabin fever (or it could have been something else).

By comparison: TOS has a mess hall and a bowling ally (not even joking), and that's about it.
Next Gen is a military research base with an engine, and all it has for crew and civilian downtime is Holodecks, a small indoor park and a bar.
Voyager has the amenities of Next Gen (except the park), yet despite the fact they are trapped in nowhere, they still waste energy and food rations in both like they where on patrol at home. The only one who even does anything else is Tom, who on rare occasion in later seasons can be seen watching TV (though he STILL uses the holodeck).
Then there's DS9, which admittedly is better then others at it. There's gambling (with money), shopping, the holodecks are used for their logical purpose (adventures and sex, usually both). Still no TV, but also admits there's more to life then work and holodecks.

 

[PirateRose]

1. Judeo-Christian mythology. Example: Planets called Eden, Adam and Eve characters, chosen one Jesus Christ type characters.

2. Technology is bad, if we go back to the stone age and start riding bikes( which apparently isn't technology), things will be better(as in better for healthy people who never ever get sick or ever have accidents disabling them or grow old or have children or had to grow food).

3. War with aliens, because they just attacked humans out of the blue for either a mysterious reason or they are just pure evil and they screwed up their own planet. It seems like people take examples of colonialism/imperialism as what will happen with meeting aliens, instead of the times groups of humans met on friendlier terms and started trades both of goods and culture, like between Egypt, Rome and Greece for a while.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

People in the future not watching television. Star Trek was the worst for this, (I know not Enterprise as it was closer to our time) but when you have worked for twelve hours scrubbing jefferies tubes i refuse to belive you will have the energy to run around a Holodeck. I don't even turn my Wii on.

Funny thing, for all it's odd decisions and the whole "being the worst of all 5 shows, even Voyager", Enterprise did come off as the most realistic of the shows (if you ignore the incompetent crew and ineffective Starfleet). They use money, they have to wright and rewrite protocol on a daily basis since no one has written it for them, they have the crew watch movies and recorded sports in their free time (including having screenings in the mess hall, complete with popcorn) and I think there may have been a moment where someone caught cabin fever (or it could have been something else).

By comparison: TOS has a mess hall and a bowling ally (not even joking), and that's about it.
Next Gen is a military research base with an engine, and all it has for crew and civilian downtime is Holodecks, a small indoor park and a bar.
Voyager has the amenities of Next Gen (except the park), yet despite the fact they are trapped in nowhere, they still waste energy and food rations in both like they where on patrol at home. The only one who even does anything else is Tom, who on rare occasion in later seasons can be seen watching TV (though he STILL uses the holodeck).
Then there's DS9, which admittedly is better then others at it. There's gambling (with money), shopping, the holodecks are used for their logical purpose (adventures and sex, usually both). Still no TV, but also admits there's more to life then work and holodecks.

In Voyager's defense, they rationed use of the holodeck and the replicators. Crew members, including the officers, were limited to a certain amount of energy to use on them. The units could be saved up, but you had to have them to make use of the facilities. They even had Neelix cooking real food picked up along the way, instead of replicating/whatever you call what the food machines in TOS did everything like on the other shows, because at the end of the day it wasted less energy to store and prepare real food than it did to make it out of energy.

 

[K12]

Human-alien half breeds annoy me a bit. There is no way for this to be biologically feasible. Why would we even assume that aliens would produce sexually like we do? They could have 9 different genders as far as we know.

Pretty much all the scientifically implausible stuff that is just assumed for no real reason(e.g. sound and explosions in space) irritates me a bit. I'm fine with this stuff if it's for story reasons (I'm not going to begrudge faster than light travel in an intergalactic show) or if it's cool enough but I'd like a little nod towards the fact that they know this is wrong otherwise I just feel like I'm celebrating ignorance.

The general assumption that "we will be psychic in the future" I find rather baffling as well. Why does this seem to be such a standard idea? So much so that it can be a tiny little background (oh by the way psychics) kind of deal rather than the main focus of the story.

Does it really matter? And why? Removing those two situations would seriously limit the scope of the genre. We've got some really nice stories based on the possibility of breeding aliens and telepathy which actually do mirror relevant issues today. On the other hand, removing anything that is 'impossible' in sci-fi based on the grounds that our current science cannot foresee the possibility only serves to restrict the potential creativity of the genre. As far as I can see, the basis for such an argument can only be that the purpose of science fiction is to discuss life as we think it will be lived in the future and the issues we might have then. While I don't doubt that such sci-fi exists, it's a rather pointless type of fiction - I mean why write such fiction at all, why not make it non-fiction? Good sci-fi is interesting because it's relevant to our immediate circumstances, not some far off future life when we're dead.

And anyway, if you want to talk about (the completely boring topic of) scientific possibilities, it's not impossible that similar conditions give rise to sexually compatible life on two different planets. Very unlikely, but then so is FTL travel.

First of all I would protest extremely strongly that looking at scientific possibilities and plausibilities is boring in any sense of the word. Many fantastic hard science-fiction stories exist and speculation about the future in an honest way has produced a list of brilliant stories far too long to contain here.

I also don't really appreciate you removing the middle paragraph of my comment which clearly shows exactly what it is that I don't like. It is when these things are both incidental and uninteresting used and completely unexplained that I get annoyed. I don't like the fact that too many science fiction writers seem to be ignorant of many very simple scientific facts. I feel that Science fiction as a speculative genre, as opposed to fantasy which happens to look futuristic, should actually be written by people who have an appreciation of science. People who are inspired by scientific possibilities rather than see them only as things to ignore or randomly stick the word quantum in front of to make it sound cool.

I wouldn't care if these weren't almost omnipresent tropes. Whenever there's an alien race cohabiting with humans there will always be a half human/half alien character somewhere and there is never even a single little line of dialogue that nods to the fact that this is a surprising occurrence. You could easily make the inability of a inter-galactic couple to conceive an interesting plot point if you wanted to. You could make the inability to conceive be used as ammo for the anti-inter-species relationships proponents that their will inevitably be.

If a sci-fi show has spaceships travelling faster than light and simply say they are powered by "faster than light" travel technology then that's actually all I'd want as a nod towards scientific knowledge.

We know this is impossible except... is preferable to complete ignorance of what even is or isn't possible. Unless of course you simply want to make future fantasy and in that case be more inventive. Why have laser guns when there's no reason why you can't have magic powered flying metal space golems!

I think too many science fiction writers are getting their ideas from other science fiction stories and not enough of them are getting inspired by actual real scientific ideas (even discredited ones). I'd like more of a balance is all.

 

[K12]

double post sorry

 

[Zontar]

People in the future not watching television. Star Trek was the worst for this, (I know not Enterprise as it was closer to our time) but when you have worked for twelve hours scrubbing jefferies tubes i refuse to belive you will have the energy to run around a Holodeck. I don't even turn my Wii on.

Funny thing, for all it's odd decisions and the whole "being the worst of all 5 shows, even Voyager", Enterprise did come off as the most realistic of the shows (if you ignore the incompetent crew and ineffective Starfleet). They use money, they have to wright and rewrite protocol on a daily basis since no one has written it for them, they have the crew watch movies and recorded sports in their free time (including having screenings in the mess hall, complete with popcorn) and I think there may have been a moment where someone caught cabin fever (or it could have been something else).

By comparison: TOS has a mess hall and a bowling ally (not even joking), and that's about it.
Next Gen is a military research base with an engine, and all it has for crew and civilian downtime is Holodecks, a small indoor park and a bar.
Voyager has the amenities of Next Gen (except the park), yet despite the fact they are trapped in nowhere, they still waste energy and food rations in both like they where on patrol at home. The only one who even does anything else is Tom, who on rare occasion in later seasons can be seen watching TV (though he STILL uses the holodeck).
Then there's DS9, which admittedly is better then others at it. There's gambling (with money), shopping, the holodecks are used for their logical purpose (adventures and sex, usually both). Still no TV, but also admits there's more to life then work and holodecks.

In Voyager's defense, they rationed use of the holodeck and the replicators. Crew members, including the officers, were limited to a certain amount of energy to use on them. The units could be saved up, but you had to have them to make use of the facilities. They even had Neelix cooking real food picked up along the way, instead of replicating/whatever you call what the food machines in TOS did everything like on the other shows, because at the end of the day it wasted less energy to store and prepare real food than it did to make it out of energy.

Oh god, Neelix's cooking, a fate worst then death. Say what you will about Voyager, the idea that the power for the holodecks is incompatible with the rest of the ship (despite the rest of the universe being compatible, and that all other series with holodecks show that they ARE connected to the ship's main power source) is laughable in how hard of a copout it is for a reason to use the holodecks in a situation where they should be off-limits completely. And sure, have a cook, but for god sake why couldn't they make him a character that was at least neutral? Voyager had no sense of direction and never had a clue what it wanted to do with itself. They never should have had the ship leave the Alpha Quadrant in the first place and just stick to it being Next Gen with a new crew and ship.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

People in the future not watching television. Star Trek was the worst for this, (I know not Enterprise as it was closer to our time) but when you have worked for twelve hours scrubbing jefferies tubes i refuse to belive you will have the energy to run around a Holodeck. I don't even turn my Wii on.

Funny thing, for all it's odd decisions and the whole "being the worst of all 5 shows, even Voyager", Enterprise did come off as the most realistic of the shows (if you ignore the incompetent crew and ineffective Starfleet). They use money, they have to wright and rewrite protocol on a daily basis since no one has written it for them, they have the crew watch movies and recorded sports in their free time (including having screenings in the mess hall, complete with popcorn) and I think there may have been a moment where someone caught cabin fever (or it could have been something else).

By comparison: TOS has a mess hall and a bowling ally (not even joking), and that's about it.
Next Gen is a military research base with an engine, and all it has for crew and civilian downtime is Holodecks, a small indoor park and a bar.
Voyager has the amenities of Next Gen (except the park), yet despite the fact they are trapped in nowhere, they still waste energy and food rations in both like they where on patrol at home. The only one who even does anything else is Tom, who on rare occasion in later seasons can be seen watching TV (though he STILL uses the holodeck).
Then there's DS9, which admittedly is better then others at it. There's gambling (with money), shopping, the holodecks are used for their logical purpose (adventures and sex, usually both). Still no TV, but also admits there's more to life then work and holodecks.

In Voyager's defense, they rationed use of the holodeck and the replicators. Crew members, including the officers, were limited to a certain amount of energy to use on them. The units could be saved up, but you had to have them to make use of the facilities. They even had Neelix cooking real food picked up along the way, instead of replicating/whatever you call what the food machines in TOS did everything like on the other shows, because at the end of the day it wasted less energy to store and prepare real food than it did to make it out of energy.

Oh god, Neelix's cooking, a fate worst then death. Say what you will about Voyager, the idea that the power for the holodecks is incompatible with the rest of the ship (despite the rest of the universe being compatible, and that all other series with holodecks show that they ARE connected to the ship's main power source) is laughable in how hard of a copout it is for a reason to use the holodecks in a situation where they should be off-limits completely. And sure, have a cook, but for god sake why couldn't they make him a character that was at least neutral? Voyager had no sense of direction and never had a clue what it wanted to do with itself. They never should have had the ship leave the Alpha Quadrant in the first place and just stick to it being Next Gen with a new crew and ship.

I thought the point was more that the power /was/ all coming from the same source, and the holodeck and replicators used so much of it that they had to limit crew access to it, not that it was some separate power source that randomly spit out tokens.

I agree with most of the rest, though. Neelix was obnoxious, and the only episode I can remember enjoying was the Year of Hell two parter.

 

[Zontar]

I thought the point was more that the power /was/ all coming from the same source, and the holodeck and replicators used so much of it that they had to limit crew access to it, not that it was some separate power source that randomly spit out tokens.

I agree with most of the rest, though. Neelix was obnoxious, and the only episode I can remember enjoying was the Year of Hell two parter.

Nope, right from the start all the way to the end they repeatedly state that the power is incompatible. Though one thing that upsets me is that Year of Hell was intended to be a whole season, not a 2 parter. That would have been great.