Sci-fi technology not used to its potential in sci-fi settings

[Zontar]

We've all seen it, be it a movie, a show or a book in a sci-fi setting where some technology is shown once or in the background which should change everything, yet doesn't.

I'll give two examples of this to illustrate what I'm saying: first is from Star Trek. In Next Generation we where introduced to replicators, which make pretty much anything by rearranging matter into food, cloths, equipment or whatever. Now it is a new technology that was introduced to the world of Trek in the early seasons of Next Gen, and it's far from perfect with objects that are not capable of being replicated and food having a noticeable taste difference, but that doesn't explain why by the end of the 14 year era that is Next Gen we aren't seeing them used to their logical conclusion. While the federation was in a race to build more ships due to plot related events, we never see ships or ship components being built in the few instances we see federation shipyards, we see them being built the old fashion way. Even in the middle of the Dominion war, when industrial replicators should have been pumping out defiant class ships at the hundreds by the day, instead conventional construction is still being used. I don't care if conventionally built ships have better quality, that just doesn't make sense. That says nothing of the horrifying possibilities Section 37 would have given how they could logically make people with replicators. An instant clone made from a bit of biomass.

Another, lesser example is from the Stargate series, where staff weapons are ignored by Earth and eventually abandoned by the wider galaxy due to the low rate of fire and accuracy. Now that does make sense, but that was also a waste that some fic writers have noticed. For a series written by pretty genre-savvy guys, it surprises me that none of them ever thought about making a staff-gatling as seen in SXGCOM, or a staff-rifle like in Project Arctic Circle. It's also surprising that the only upgrades Atlantis got was a few machine guns instead of being turned into a fortress. I can understand it for season 1 due to the isolation of the expedition, but in season 2 and 3 after a supply line was established there's no justification for it not happening.

So, what are some wasted potential of sci-fi technology you have seen from series, either due to budgetary reasons or (as is the case with most of these) you're just a more evil thinker then the writers seemed to be.

 

[Queen Michael]

Every invention ever in superhero comics. They've got spaceships, helicarriers, etc. and regular people still live just like we do.

 

[DudeistBelieve]

I don't feel like you can just replicate something as complex as a whole spaceship, it leaves no room for error for something to go wrong.

I mean you point out yourself, food doesn't taste right from the replicators. You could say the technology was similar to the teleporters, but even that's a highly complex piece of machinery and even then it doesn't work right.

Especially during a war, I don't know if I would feel comfortable sliding out into the vacuum of space in a replicated ship.

 

[Zontar]

I don't feel like you can just replicate something as complex as a whole spaceship, it leaves no room for error for something to go wrong.

I mean you point out yourself, food doesn't taste right from the replicators. You could say the technology was similar to the teleporters, but even that's a highly complex piece of machinery and even then it doesn't work right.

Especially during a war, I don't know if I would feel comfortable sliding out into the vacuum of space in a replicated ship.

A whole ship, maybe not, but the parts for a ship not only should have been replicated, in the series we see they ARE replicated. Even if you don't replicate the whole ship, making a Defiant-class ship should be something done at a speed of "ships built per hour" given how small they are. And in wartime getting the numbers out there is more important then if their quality is up to snuff (real world example being Liberty Ships, weak as hell but making up for it in numbers).

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

I believe there are a number of materials that cannot be replicated due to complexity or some other technobabble. I imagine that an actual starship would be constructed of many such materials, and that manual assembly is probably just easier and less complicated than building replicators large enough to recreate an entire starship's framework and then attaching everything else.

Then again, I think we're all giving it more thought than the writers did.

And in wartime getting the numbers out there is more important then if their quality is up to snuff

When we're talking about a starship powered by a delicate balance of matter and antimatter annihilating each other, and given how much Star Trek instrumentation likes to explode on the properly-constructed models, I don't think you can be quite so blase about "churning 'em out".

 

[PainInTheAssInternet]

Aliens is a very good example. Hudson brags to Ripley about all the facy schmancy shit they have on their dropship, personnel carrier and spaceship but none of it is used. They only ever use their on-person guns which are only slightly more advanced versions of modern technology, Hicks even making use of a shotgun that was produced in 1937 in the year 2179. There are in-movie explanations as to why this isn't the case (though one really isn't clear; the dropship crashed into the APC destroying both), but it's more likely they wanted to establish the marines as very high-tech and capable but could only show them with conventional weapons for budget-related reasons. It cost 8 million US to make that movie.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

I'll give two examples of this to illustrate what I'm saying: first is from Star Trek. In Next Generation we where introduced to replicators, which make pretty much anything by rearranging matter into food, cloths, equipment or whatever. Now it is a new technology that was introduced to the world of Trek in the early seasons of Next Gen, and it's far from perfect with objects that are not capable of being replicated and food having a noticeable taste difference, but that doesn't explain why by the end of the 14 year era that is Next Gen we aren't seeing them used to their logical conclusion. While the federation was in a race to build more ships due to plot related events, we never see ships or ship components being built in the few instances we see federation shipyards, we see them being built the old fashion way. Even in the middle of the Dominion war, when industrial replicators should have been pumping out defiant class ships at the hundreds by the day, instead conventional construction is still being used. I don't care if conventionally built ships have better quality, that just doesn't make sense. That says nothing of the horrifying possibilities Section 37 would have given how they could logically make people with replicators. An instant clone made from a bit of biomass.

I bet it's because of the spaceship builders union. You can't allow replicators to put good union workers out of a job, it'll create mass unemployment.

 

[senordesol]

I'd assume replicators have some sort of practical Energy/Resouces>Output limitations. Sure, generating the protein chains for (relatively) small amounts of food is easily taken care of by a standard Warp Core, but pumping out the future metals, biogel, precise circuitry, and whatnot on an industrial scale probably requires much, MUCH bigger energy sources and waaay more material (remember, it's just rearranging matter).

Plus it would be much easier to sabotage since it's all controlled by computer. I get what you're going for, but based on what was presented in the show; conventional means were still more practical.

 

[Erttheking]

It always kind of bugged me how in the Gundam universe (At lest in Seed, the only one I really watched) apparently technology exists to build multi million person housing colonies in space that are capable of being self sufficent, shooting ships into space with magnets, have giant impractical robot men and robot tigers, yet technology seems to be at a late 20th/early 21st century level just about everywhere else in normal day life.

It makes me think of Deadman Wonderland, where it being in the future is so inconsequential it's barely touched upon, yet you see everyone using holographic cellphones and tablets and the such. More of that please.

 

[Eleuthera]

The Trek ships are built using replicators, the shipyards you get to see are for assembly or finishing. The main problem really is size, Voyager replicated shuttle craft several times during it's run, but even a Defiant class might be too large to do in one go.

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

snip

Pvt. William Hudson: "I'm ready, man, check it out. I am the ultimate badass! State of the badass art! You do NOT wanna fuck with me. Check it out! Hey Ripley, don't worry. Me and my squad of ultimate badasses will protect you! Check it out! Independently targeting particle beam phalanx. Vwap! Fry half a city with this puppy. We got tactical smart missiles, phased-plasma pulse rifles, RPGs, we got sonic electronic ball breakers! We got nukes, we got knives, sharp sticks..."

Macho bravado, and not much else. Also, notably, this line isn't in the theatrical cut of the movie. This is one of the scenes that Cameron restored for the Special Edition.

The "independently targeting particle beam phalanx" is part of the M577 APC's onboard weapon systems. During the course of the movie, the APC is never really in a position to use them as it has to disengage the main guns in order to clear the entrance to the atmosphere processor, and the secondary guns are never used because Ripley (who notably isn't a trained M577 operator) is the one driving the APC during the rescue sequence.

The tactical smart missiles is referring to either the weapon systems of the UD-4L "Cheyenne" Dropship (which during the course of the movie is never in a position to engage any targets, other than when Bishop is flying one at the end, and firing then probably would have killed Ripley and Newt in addition to the queen) or the M83 SADAR (Shoulder-Launched Active-Homing Disposable Anti-Tank Rocket) which were stowed inside the APC and likely not carried due to the unlikelihood of engaging enemy armor.

Phased-Plasma Pulse Rifles refers to the XM-99A Phased-Plasma Pulse Rifle, which according to the Aliens: Colonial Marines Technical Manual, is an experimental sniper rifle. Given the close-quarters environment that the Colonial Marines were dealing with in the movie, it makes sense that they'd remain stowed in the APC.

RPGs likely refers to either the previously mentioned M83 SADAR anti-tank rocket launcher, or the underslung 30mm grenade launchers featured on each of the M-41A Pulse Rifles used in the movie.

The "Sonic Electronic Ballbreakers" were mostly undefined until Aliens: Colonial Marines, which defined them as the "G2 Electroshock Grenade." The G2 is a thrown hand grenade that, upon detonation, bounces roughly a meter into the air and delivers a 1,200,000,000 volt shock around it. It's considered a less-than-lethal munition meant to stun targets.

Nukes probably refers to the orbital bombardment weaponry of the U.S.S. Sulaco, which Hicks and Ripley briefly mention later in the movie as being an option for clearing Hadley's Hope.

Knives is pretty self-explanatory.

The "Sharp Sticks" line was also mostly undefined until Aliens: Colonial Marines, which defined it as the "P9 Sonic Harpoon Artillery Remote Projectile (SHARP) Rifle." The P9 SHARP Rifle fires explosive-tipped darts that explode after a timed delay. I think most people assumed Hudson was referring to literal sharp sticks during his boast, though, implying that his "ultimate badasses" would be the "ultimate badasses" even with simple pointy objects.

As for Hicks and his Ithaca Model-37, it wasn't issued to him by the Colonial Marines. Hicks' shotgun was a personal weapon that was handed down as an heirloom within his family. This is mentioned in the novelization of the movie and left to be assumed by viewers of the movie that it was just a personal weapon. The movie is supposed to be an homage to Vietnam, where personal weapons weren't uncommon.

...

I really need to find something to do with my life.

 

[Neverhoodian]

Imperial Interdictor cruisers in the pre-Disney Star Wars Expanded Universe. The main feature of the ships were their gravity well projectors, which prevented enemy vessels from entering hyperspace. You'd think the Empire would start mass-producing the ships and put one in every fleet, but apparently it was too expensive or some shit like that. No, they'd rather blow the budget on huge flagships and superweapons with fatal weaknesses that a single starfighter can exploit.

 

[Zontar]

Imperial Interdictor cruisers in the pre-Disney Star Wars Expanded Universe. The main feature of the ships were their gravity well projectors, which prevented enemy vessels from entering hyperspace. You'd think the Empire would start mass-producing the ships and put one in every fleet, but apparently it was too expensive or some shit like that. No, they'd rather blow the budget on huge flagships and superweapons with fatal weaknesses that a single starfighter can exploit.

Wasn't there a paragraph dedicated to Thrawn lamenting that in the first chapter of 'Heir to the Empire'? I do admit I've always hated how many in the Imperial higher ranks seemed to be either stupid, evil over pragmatic, or both. I've always felt like I should have joined the Empire and showed them how it was done.

Speaking of Star Wars, how did they manage to only have an army of a few hundred million (if you accept the theory that puts the clone army at that level instead of the movie cannon of only millions) when coresant alone should have had enough people to make an army of billions overnight with a single round of conscription? Not tech being let go to waste, more manpower.

 

[PainInTheAssInternet]

I really need to find something to do with my life.

Cameron says the Special Edition was the standard while the theatrical release was a cut version intended to please executives. Neither Cameron or Weaver like it so I don't pay attention to it. I will say that I think filming the scenes on the colony before the outbreak was a huge mistake because it makes everything go slower and it would have been much better to leave the events to your imagination. The only benefit those scenes had in my mind were establishing why the Derelict wasn't emitting a signal any longer. I'm also weary of the turret sequence because it tells the viewer where they are instead of just lurking in the backs of everyone's minds and inescapably shows the aliens as dumb cannon fodder. The reason for that sequence is obviously to explain how Ripley wasn't immediately swamped in the hive by cutting down their numbers. I'd say my issue overall with the movie is that it's a Vietnam war film and not about the creature from the first movie. As much as I like it, this movie is the root cause of how far it's fallen since, particularly in video games. Alien 3 had a better creature. Any time I'm told the creatures aren't scary in games, I just point out that they weren't scary in Aliens either.

Anyways, keep in mind the topic was about wasted tech. Through various plot contrivances, the grand scale of the tech was disposed of. If the dropship hadn't blown the APC to smithereens, they could have used its weaponry and storage in some capacity (beyond the sentries). It would have been welcome over locking themselves over a previously failed barricade. I do know the reason Hicks has it, it was just to show how a shotgun that's old by our standards is able to keep up with technology that's 242 years later.

The nukes were also an option for ensuring the destruction of the Derelict, which the movie never addresses.

 

[Mikeybb]

We've all seen it, be it a movie, a show or a book in a sci-fi setting where some technology is shown once or in the background which should change everything, yet doesn't.

I'll give two examples of this to illustrate what I'm saying: first is from Star Trek. In Next Generation we where introduced to replicators, which make pretty much anything by rearranging matter into food, cloths, equipment or whatever. Now it is a new technology that was introduced to the world of Trek in the early seasons of Next Gen, and it's far from perfect with objects that are not capable of being replicated and food having a noticeable taste difference, but that doesn't explain why by the end of the 14 year era that is Next Gen we aren't seeing them used to their logical conclusion. While the federation was in a race to build more ships due to plot related events, we never see ships or ship components being built in the few instances we see federation shipyards, we see them being built the old fashion way. Even in the middle of the Dominion war, when industrial replicators should have been pumping out defiant class ships at the hundreds by the day, instead conventional construction is still being used. I don't care if conventionally built ships have better quality, that just doesn't make sense. That says nothing of the horrifying possibilities Section 37 would have given how they could logically make people with replicators. An instant clone made from a bit of biomass.

Star Trek is a veritable minefield of that kind of thing.

Consider transporters (ignoring the using them killing you argument).
Send down an away team.
Some members die.
Transport back remains, but reconstruct using the pattern held in the buffer at the point of transport instead.
Dead body is reset to alive, lost biomass returned via replicator like elements of the device (or whatever pool of matter the replicators use), and the only things lost are the memories of the events after transporting.
Whatever events led to their death are lost, but (should the away team be smart enough to keep their recording devices active) they could learn from as a third party to the experience.

 

[Zontar]

Star Trek is a veritable minefield of that kind of thing.

Consider transporters (ignoring the using them killing you argument).
Send down an away team.
Some members die.
Transport back remains, but reconstruct using the pattern held in the buffer at the point of transport instead.
Dead body is reset to alive, lost biomass returned via replicator like elements of the device (or whatever pool of matter the replicators use), and the only things lost are the memories of the events after transporting.
Whatever events led to their death are lost, but (should the away team be smart enough to keep their recording devices active) they could learn from as a third party to the experience.

Sounds almost like a similar concept to having your brain saved on a clone on a regular basis, then activating said clone should the original die. Yes the original is dead, but the clone is mentally the same person as the one who died minus whatever happened between their last save and their death.

Something else from Trek I realized upon giving it some thought is that they have access to a weapon that is impossible to defeat. In early TNG there was a planet that was inside unexplored federation territory that once had a species that was destroyed by a test demonstration of a death machine which always fixed itself, turned itself back on and went back on the hunt. Do a bit of tweeking and not only would that have won the war with the dominion over night, it would solve the Borg problem once and for all by having two hiveminded machines which are adaptive where only one has 'kill the other' as ingrained programming. Just program them to destroy the Borg, add in a code to have them self destruct after they finish the job and bingo, problem solved. The Borg are permanently occupied and once gone the superweapon blows itself up.

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

snip

Yeah, Cameron mentions his stance a few times toward the special edition during the various commentary tracks floating around. Generally I agree with him that it's a better version, but I also agree with you about the pre-infestation scenes. Not only do they slow things down, but they also feel pretty shoe-horned in. They don't really fit very good where they've been placed. I'm fine with the UA 571-C Sentry Gun scenes though. Like you said, the Xenomorphs in Aliens aren't really scary, so having them be gunned down doesn't really bother me all that much since the scene serves to establish two things about the Xenomorph. One, there's a lot of them, and two, they're clever enough to out-smart the Marines and find alternate routes when a frontal attack goes badly for them.

But really, I don't see the tech in Aliens as being "wasted." The majority of it just wasn't proper for the threat they were up against or the environment that they were in. The APC and the Dropship were never going to get the chance to shine. Burke didn't want damage to the Atmosphere Processor, where the hive was located, and the weapon systems from the vehicles definitely would have had that effect (considering a few hundred 10x28mm rounds from that pair of M-56 Smartguns caused enough damage to trigger a meltdown). Though the mission was under military jurisdiction, Lieutenant Gorman undoubtedly would have gone along with whatever Burke wanted (besides, prior to the team walking into the hive, they were still operating under the assumption that there may be survivors - ones that probably wouldn't want to get bombed by a Dropship). That and those weapon systems are primarily going to be effective against targets in open ground, which isn't really where the Xenomorph tends to operate.

The M83 SADAR, the XM-99A Phased-Plasma Pulse Rifle, the G9 Grenades, and the SHARP Rifle all just aren't weapons suited to the mission. I have a hard time considering it wasted if its use would have been a liability to the operator. The Colonial Marines are meant to be a highly mobile force capable of dealing with any potential kind of threat; that means having equipment that's specialized for threats that you may not actually encounter on-hand, just in case. A sniper rifle isn't going to be useful when you're fighting fast-moving enemies that can climb up walls and on the ceiling in narrow corridors and offices. Especially when the aforementioned sniper rifle requires a three-second charge-up delay before each shot it fires.

And Hicks' shotgun wasn't really able to keep up. The M-41A Pulse Rifle and M-56 Smartgun both fire a 10x28mm caseless explosive-tipped light armor piercing round. It's a multi-purpose round meant to defeat both infantry body armor and soft targets, making it simultaneously a great and horrible round to use against Xenomorphs (great because it kills 'em real good; bad because it makes a mess of the target which in this case means tons of acid splatter). The 12-gauge shell fired by Hicks' Ithaca M37 is practically worthless against body armor of today's current standards, and much less so against the Armat Battlefield Systems M3 Personal Armor used by the Colonial Marines. Against an armored target, the best you can hope for with a shotgun is to knock the target down with the force of the impact and maybe break a few ribs (assuming you're firing center mass). Hicks' shotgun is a weapon of last resort, nothing more. It was never meant to "keep up" with future-current weapons in terms of ballistics. That's why he only takes it out when he's forced to ditch his Pulse Rifle.

In the Aliens universe, energy weapons are fairly bulky and unwieldy with some very significant drawbacks. Given that we're finding more or less the same problems to exist in real-life with the idea of man-portable energy weapons, it's really not that unreasonable to assume that firearms really won't change all that much by the time Aliens takes place. It's usually the armor design and ammunition characteristics that go through the most change, even in real-life. The real-life United States military is still using the Browning M2, a .50-caliber heavy machine gun dating back to 1933, with zero plans to replace it in the foreseeable future. In fact, much of the US military's current weaponry and vehicles date back to the 1960's/1970's. The Russian AK-47 assault rifle entered service in 1949, a mere seven years after the term 'assault rifle' even became a thing, and it's still being widely used across the globe (and even its replacements are in many cases just upgraded variants of it). Given the long service histories of this stuff in real-life, I don't find the Aliens universe still using more-or-less the same sort of gear in 164 years that hard to believe. If anything, I think it makes the gear of the Colonial Marines a lot more realistic than many other SciFi militaries.

 

[PainInTheAssInternet]

SNIP

We already knew from the population numbers that there could be up to 157 of them, a few taken off for hosts being killed before impregnation and a few aliens being taken out before the marines arrive. That doesn't account for the eggs with viable facehuggers either. I don't see any benefit to them. If the creature from the first film were present, one would be harmed then the rest would try something else. Again the problem resurfaces that instead of being beyond an apex predator, they're ants.

Mostly I'm talking about after everything went to hell. The opinions of Gorman and Burke were irrelevant at that point. If they had the APC and all the equipment, they could have barricaded themselves behind that or even in it and stayed mobile. If they stayed inside the complex, they could use the weapons on the APC to cover a large corridor. They could have used the rest as traps for any trespassers as well, such as the vents Ripley strangely didn't think of considering the Nostromo's guest spent all its time in maintenance and ventilation systems. They had very little and would have had to use everything they had. Gorman was going at them with a pistol from a distance for example. If Hicks didn't think his shotgun wouldn't be helpful, he wouldn't have brought it. No one shows up on the battlefield today with a musket. Also I'm not sure how many marines walk unarmed into a situation they know is hostile. It did hold up quite well since it saved Hudson and permitted them to close the door. The shotgun was actually less of a problem with acid since the explosive bullets caused the blood to go everywhere.

The atmosphere processor didn't blow just because they shot it, a nuclear-powered aircraft fully laden with missiles crashed into it. That and I'd imagine the secreted resin messed with a few vital systems and a general lack of maintenance. Then aliens were shot around vital machinery so acid blood would've gotten everywhere. It took quite a beating before going critical.

OT
I just thought of another one. It might not count as it's Futurama, though. A whole plotline (that admittedly was in the reboot series, not the original) centered around Bender being a defective robot. His defect? He didn't have a backup system just like every other robot. So the question is why is any robot afraid of death apart from Bender? Why does anyone feel for them when they'll be back in a jiffy? Of course, the whole series is around elaborate contrivances employed for a very specific scenario, so maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree on this one.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

It always kind of bugged me how in the Gundam universe (At lest in Seed, the only one I really watched) apparently technology exists to build multi million person housing colonies in space that are capable of being self sufficent, shooting ships into space with magnets, have giant impractical robot men and robot tigers, yet technology seems to be at a late 20th/early 21st century level just about everywhere else in normal day life.

It makes me think of Deadman Wonderland, where it being in the future is so inconsequential it's barely touched upon, yet you see everyone using holographic cellphones and tablets and the such. More of that please.

I think its a result of the future being interpreted from when the shows were produced. It's essentially the 80s/90s version of the future. Same goes for Cowboy Bebop, apart from the spaceships and occasional mad science, its pretty much 1999 on another planet, right down to the wacky and garish TV commercials.

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

snip

The APC couldn't remain mobile for long. Ripley heavily damaged it during the rescue. As Hicks mentioned, she'd damaged the transaxle and was just grinding metal. Presumably the damage was caused by the acid from the Xenomorph she ran over, but she also did sorta drive through a wall and a blast door, in addition to slamming into a few other walls. As for using it to defend the staff complex where they ended up barricading themselves, they'd really only be able to position it in the courtyard (the location where they first arrived), as it was too large to enter the main structure. Even the much larger doors/main halls of the Atmosphere Processor (a completely separate off-site location) were too low to accommodate for it with its weaponry deployed.

The anti-tank equipment like the SADAR and SHARP wouldn't have helped in the confined areas unless the goal was for the operator to kill him/herself as well, and wouldn't have been able to lock onto a target anyway in the case of the SADAR. The only infantry weapon in Hudson's entire boast that would have maybe been helpful in the given environment would have been the G9 shock grenades, but who knows how a grenade designed to stun humans would even work on them.

Hicks, again, took his shotgun as a weapon of last resort. It was better than using harsh language (in the Colonial Marines, as with real-life most general infantry are not actually issued sidearms). That doesn't mean it's an effective weapon. There's a reason why, even today, most shotguns used in the military are for utility purposes like breaching doors rather than actual combat. Believe it or not, Gorman's handgun (an H&K VP-70, a real-life 9x19mm handgun that was discontinued back in the 80's), was actually a more effective weapon to use against a Xenomorph both in terms of potential damage (in the Aliens universe they use the fictional 9x19mm M901 Armor Piercing round for sidearms) and reduced risk of acid splash (if Cameron had been consistent about the damage dealt by acid, Hudson would have still lost his arm when Hicks fired his Ithaca M37 considering that blood can eat through several decks of a starship, and probably would have died from blood loss/shock since they had to drive back to MedLab for proper medical equipment and their field medic, Dietrich, was gone).

The UD-4L "Cheyenne" Dropship isn't nuclear powered, and its ordinance would have only damaged the entrance to the Atmosphere Processor, not the Atmosphere Processor itself (you see it hit the blast door and explode). The Colonial Marines in the film were directly underneath the Processor's cooling system, which Vasquez and Drake (who had been warned of exactly this thing happening if they fired) ruptured with their M-56 Smartguns (Bishop even points out later that the Processor is emergency venting due to the damage caused to the cooling system). The secreted resin was a non-acidic coating on the outside and would not somehow be inside the contained cooling system, and acid doesn't generally eat through materials very far upward.