Tired Sci-Fi Tropes That Must Be Retired!

POSTED BY: cljohnston108
UPDATED: Tuesday, April 10, 2007 16:47
VIEWED: 10267
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CRUITHNE3753

Wednesday, March 28, 2007 6:02 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by cljohnston108:
Read Larry Niven's story "The Warriors," about mankind's first contact with the Kzinti.

Think I may have read that many Solar cycles ago... was thinking of Certain Televisual Aliens beginning with "K"...

Quote:
The Earth vessel has no weapons, so they end up focusing their fusion drive at the Kzinti ship!

Now I'd like to see that in a TV show!

GRIZWALD

Wednesday, March 28, 2007 6:18 PM

Getting back to the original post...

I loved his Top 20 Hot Babes of Sci-Fi series, too.

___________________________________________________
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Click on my profile for my Annoyingly Long List of Firefly Links.

SHINYED

Wednesday, March 28, 2007 7:05 PM

Last week a friend of mine made me DVD copies of the original Trek series...all 79 episodes. I've watched through a dozen or so of them...and now I'm wonderin' why I ever liked the show??....The answer is obvious.....although the plots in most are really lame, it's the characters that made the show beloved....not the aliens, not the ship, not anything...JUST the characters ...even Next Generation...like the chatacters, but most of the plots are stupid, predictable, and boring....again, love the characters so it's ok. I think EVERYBODY between Roddenberry & Whedon FORGOT about that!

DANFAN

Wednesday, March 28, 2007 7:38 PM

In response to the earlier minithread in here regarding the showing of "ordinary folk" getting by in a sci-fi story universe... the point was well taken that a show that FOCUSED on that would die simply because it isn't the sort of escapist drama that we watch TV for.

However, I think that such "everydayness" could be more seamlessly integrated into sci-fi shows. For example, Battlestar Galactica is about a ragtag fleet of all kinds of ships upon which people live. Some of these ships weren't meant to be lived in. Colonial One is made to look like an airliner for goodness sakes... rows of seats with aisles between them. Whilst filming the main actors engaging in the main action, couldn't they show families in the background, sleeping in airliner seats? Eating food out of their laps? People sleeping or sitting on pallets in a wide spot in the halls of the refinery ship? It would take only a few little touches like that to present a small (but sufficient) sense of the reality of living in ships that weren't meant to be lived in... WHILE they tell the dramatic story that they need to tell.

Just a thought from your rock 'n roll zoo.

CLJOHNSTON108

Thursday, March 29, 2007 11:33 AM

One of my favorite episodes of Babylon 5 was "A View From The Gallery", as we follow two maintenance guys as they try to keep things running while the station's being attacked.
They weave in & out of the various sub-plots, and connect it all together.
Just beautifully written.

http://babylon5.epguides.info/?ID=998
http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/guide/092.html

SHINYED

Thursday, March 29, 2007 11:51 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by danfan:
In response to the earlier minithread in here regarding the showing of "ordinary folk" getting by in a sci-fi story universe... the point was well taken that a show that FOCUSED on that would die simply because it isn't the sort of escapist drama that we watch TV for.

However, I think that such "everydayness" could be more seamlessly integrated into sci-fi shows. For example, Battlestar Galactica is about a ragtag fleet of all kinds of ships upon which people live. Some of these ships weren't meant to be lived in. Colonial One is made to look like an airliner for goodness sakes... rows of seats with aisles between them. Whilst filming the main actors engaging in the main action, couldn't they show families in the background, sleeping in airliner seats? Eating food out of their laps? People sleeping or sitting on pallets in a wide spot in the halls of the refinery ship? It would take only a few little touches like that to present a small (but sufficient) sense of the reality of living in ships that weren't meant to be lived in... WHILE they tell the dramatic story that they need to tell.

Just a thought from your rock 'n roll zoo.

The Original Battlestar Galactica (1978-1979) had all that...everything you described....episodes WITHOUT life or death battles...just stories about the folks...all the folks....officers, crew, and civilians...really hasn't been anything like that or as good until Firefly. Those characters became part of my family, and have remained dear to my heart for almost 30 years.

PENGUIN

Thursday, March 29, 2007 12:10 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Grizwald:
I loved his Top 20 Hot Babes of Sci-Fi series, too.

I just read this...Miss Kaylee is on the list (of course!).

King of the Mythical Land that is Iowa

FLATTOP

Thursday, March 29, 2007 12:46 PM

never mind. Maybe later.

IMNOTHERE

Sunday, April 1, 2007 2:37 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by danfan:
However, I think that such "everydayness" could be more seamlessly integrated into sci-fi shows. For example, Battlestar Galactica is about a ragtag fleet of all kinds of ships upon which people live.

Sounds like a (possibly valid?) criticism of Galactica version two - not sure its true of all SF. I guess extras cost money.

Babylon 5 (apart from the specific episode mentioned earlier) did a pretty good all-round job of showing that the station had a community, with crowd scenes, sub-plots involving poverty and crime, industrial disputes, people in bars watching news reports etc.

...and a central plank of the new Dr Who is that "Assistants have Mums" (in one lovely early scene, Rose is standing on a space station billions of years in the future, watching the dying Earth... talking on her cellphone to her Mum who is loading up the washing machine). The new assistant comes with a big dysfunctional family too...

SLOWHAND

Sunday, April 1, 2007 5:09 PM

I had some problems with some of those comments. I've heard this a lot, and I always have the same arguement. It's science FICTION.

Some of the stuff that's used over and over again, I agree with. But some of the stuff HAS to be used. Like sound in space.

Firefly didn't have sound in space...but it didn't have aliens either. So, it was a little more on the real side, so no sound in space works. Star Wars has aliens. So sound in space makes sense there.

The way I see it is this. If a show has ONE SINGLE ALIEN, or faster than light travel or anything else that's unrealistic, and you accept it, anything they do after that has to be accepted too.

I have a friend that doesn't like Van Helsing because he thought the crossbow worked in an unrealistic way. A GUY TURNS INTO A WEREWOLF AND HE'S COOL, but the crossbow doesn't work right and it ruins the movie for him.

It's entertainment. Let it entertain you. After all, what would we rather watch? The NASA channel? Or worse yet....reality TV?

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