So I am currently rewatching Stargate SG1 and thinking about certain things that always rub me the wrong way when watching or reading SciFi. Now, I know that Stargate in particular doesn’t really take itself too seriously and shouldn’t be scrutinized too much. It’s also a bit older. But there are still some things that even modern SciFi-Worlds featuring outer space and aliens have or lack, that always slightly rub me the wrong way. I would love to hear your opinion.
- Lack of any form of camera surveillance technology
I mean, come on, the Goa’uld couldn’t figure out a way to install their equivalent of cameras all over their battle ships in order to monitor it? They have forms of video/picture transmitting technology. Star Trek also seems to lack any form of video surveillance. (I’m not up to date with the newest series.) Yes, I get that having a crew member physically go to a cargo bay and check out the situation is better for dramatic purposes. But it always rubs me the wrong way that they have to do that. I would just love to see a SciFi-Series set in space where all space ships are equipped with proper camera technology. Not just some vague “sensor” that tells the crew “something is wrong, but you will still have to physically go there and see it for yourself”. I want the captain of a space ship to have access to the 200,000 cameras strategically placed all over the ship to monitor it.
- Languages
I have studied linguistics, learned several foreign languages and lived in a foreign country for a while, so my perspective is influenced by that. I always find it weird when everybody “just talks English”. Yes, I get that it’s easier to write stories in which all characters can just freely interact with each other. But it’s always so weird to me when an explorer comes to a foreign planet and everybody just talks their language. At least make up an explanation for it! “We found this translator device in the space ship that crashed on earth”. There you go. I love the Stargate Movie where Daniel Jackson figures out how to communicate with the people on Abydos. During the series most worlds will just speak English, with some random words in other languages thrown in. As someone interested in linguistics I love Stargate for how much it features deciphering languages, though I still find it weird when they go to another world and everybody just speaks English.
- Humanoid aliens
Especially with modern CGI I would just love to shows get more creative when it comes to alien races. We don’t need a person in a costume anymore. Every once in a while you will have that weird alien pop up, but all in all I feel like there’s still a lot of potential. Also changes in Human physiology due to different environmental conditions on foreign planets.
That being said, I would also like to mention some SciFi-titles that in my mind stand out for being very creative in this regard:
- The writing of Julie Czerneda is very creative when it comes to alien species. She was a biologist and uses her knowledge to create a wide variety of alien life forms
- The forever war (Without spoiling the end, so I’ll leave it at that. Just liked it as a creative take on an alien race so different it’s incomprehensible to us)
- I very much appreciate Douglas Adams for the babel fish.
- I also liked The expanse for including the development of a Belter language and changes in human physiology due to different gravity.
What do you think? Do you know any good examples of SciFi-Worldbuilding, that solve some common inconsistencies?
(Edited because it looked weird :P) Also, I rembered one more thing: I have two serious food allergies and I always cringe when I see characters take some random food from an alien civilisation and eat. It’s especially bad right now while rewatching Stargate. SG1 just keeps happily eating and drinking anything that is offered and there are so many scenes of them eating without asking much. Maybe it’s just because I can’t even do that in my own society and am so used to always asking “What is in it? Can I eat it?” Although some shows have good solutions like standard nutrient packs in a military context or food replicators that create any food you want.
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“Humane Treatment”, " Human rights", “I’m doing this for the good of humanity”. When there are heaps of non human species but the writers keep reffering to “human” traits everyone else clearly has.
Azetbur was right.
Scale. Most sci fi notoriously sucks at doing large scale well. 40K, of all things, is one of the few that does.
To your second point, I think the Universal Translator in Star Trek is the best explanation. Not only does it make for more convenient television, but it seems like such a well thought-out invention that would actually exist in the future. Like why make everyone learn one language and wipe out all the history/culture behind the others when you can just let everyone do their own thing.
Best explanation was in Fargate tv shows.
When MC find himself to other side of galaxy in alien spaceships with prisoners escaping he is injected by a little icon robot with nanobot (or something like that) enabling him to understand any language.
Just before he is injected other characters are speaking alien and you don’t understand them and gradually (but in a matter of 15/30 secs) after injection you start to hear aliens speaking English. I believe they even specifically speak about the technology.Look at Species of Farscape #8 – Translator Microbes it is explained better and there is a short video. Too bad you don’t see him injected/shot but you got alien explaining how it works.
Like the Babel fish in H2G2
This is a common complaint, but it deserves to be mentioned frequently: exploding control panels. This is especially a problem in Star Trek. Are circuit breakers a lost technology?
Not just circuit breakers, but why are high powered circuits being used in the habitable parts of the ship?
Even modern cars no longer run high amperage circuits to the driver’s controls. Back in the old days, you turn on the lights, the light switch carried a full 12v and a lot of current to control relays. Today, the light switch and turn signal stalk use a signal circuit to tell a body control module what to do.
The bridge of a Star Trek ship should have control panels running on the future equivalent of 5 volt signal circuits that tells a distant and well shielded control module to switch the ultra high powered circuits.
That leads me to the one thing that has always bothered me about Star Trek and its transporters and replicators. E=MC^2… When a replicator creates food or an object, it would take at least the same amount of energy to make, as it would if the same amount of mass were destroyed in a nuclear reaction. That DOES mean in areas where those devices are installed there ARE ultra high powered circuits (EPS conduits) in the wall. So high powered that they have the equivalent of multiple nuclear explosions flowing through them every second… YIKES.
“This is especially a problem in Star Trek”
It gets really bad in ST Discovery, especially in the last season. Any time the ship gets into trouble, a cascade of sparks starts falling down. It looks like a waterfall made of sparks. The bridge basically looks like a KISS concert.
The bridge basically looks like a KISS concert.
lol I’ve seen what you’re talking about. It’s a little much.
Exploding anything I would say, though this seems to be a general TV problem. Your device got shaken up a tiny bit? EXPLOSION!
In and of itself, I don’t mind it, but I’m mildly annoyed by most having some form of FTL travel. That’s why The Expanse was so refreshing for me.
Like, I get it. Having FTL drive (or comparable ways to go vast distances in short times) allows a larger universe for the characters. It’s also, I would imagine, easier to write since the writers wouldn’t have to deal with the vast scales, time dilation, and asynchronous events happening in different parts of the galaxy/story.
For comparison, The Expanse worked because it was all within our solar system. In the Revelation Space series (book), humans are doing interstellar travel, but they’re in cryo the whole trip, and the journey takes years. The author formerly worked for the ESA and pretty much had to show his work every step of the way to get all the characters together on the same planets at the same time.
So yeah, I get why we don’t see that more often (especially in TV series with less accredited writers), but it would be nice to see it once in a while nonetheless.
I’ll never forget the Expanse audiobooks pronouncing gimbal as “gym ball”…
Only for the first 6 books or so, was listening to Persepolis a few weeks ago and had to do a double take when the reader finally pronounced it with the hard g (“gim ball”).
I figured it couldn’t be any worse than the Black Prism reader absolutely butchering javelina (ordinarily the J makes an H sound) a few books in
I intuitively pronounce gimbal as gimble because of Jabberwocky. 'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe; all mimsy were the borogroves, and the mome wraths outgrabe."
Like even if it was wrong that is how it looks like it sounds.
I can’t remember the name of the book.
Space travel takes years. One trick is to slow down the crews metabolism so that a five year voyage feels like five weeks. The ship’s AI ‘wakes up’ crew when an emergency occurs. If you were not ‘awoken’ you’d see your crewmate suddenly vanish and then reappear a moment later.
Revelation Space series does not have FTL, but in its place, an engine that can produce 1G indefinitely (not manufactured anymore, powered by handwavium, it seems… but the secret is revealed in one of the short stories). There is further shenanigans with physics, but never FTL.
It definitely adds more nuance to the world, because now you can’t have interstellar empires if you cannot communicate over large distances.
Spoiler
I forget the exact hand-wavium, but something like a contained black hole kept in check by a child’s brain. A child who volunteered for the task.
There is further shenanigans with physics
Yeah, and I really liked that subplot, too. In Star Trek, inertial dampeners are just a handwave device. But in RS, they explored humanity’s experiments with manipulating inertia and the gruesome results when pushed too far. Probably one of my favorite chapters of Redemption Ark.
That women can only be scientists or whatever if their father was. They can have no other reason or backstory.
I’m curious how everyone gets here about the languages in the original star wars trilogy?
Secondly, in one of the ex expanded universe series, leia and chewbacca go back to kashyyk and Leia can understand the wookie mayor much better than she can chewbacca.
It’s explained that the mayor actually has a speech impediment, which makes him easier to understand than most wookies
What annoys me is that science fiction is that some of the biggest writers don’t seem to know any women IRL. If Robert Heinlin or Cixin Lu had to write a believable woman character to bring them food and water, they’d be dead in three days.
That’s true. I already mentioned Julie E. Czerneda, her books have female main characters that are pretty well written. I’d recommend looking into her books.
My main gripe is a lot of plots have too much high stake events solved by improbable happenings?
Why save the earth when one can save a meadow? I would love to see a story about a group of people trying to prevent nano technology from entering a park, and the social backlash when they try.
Why do nearly impossible things within a certain time, when one can have more humble happenings?
Space battles are cool but does the main character have to save the ship, fleet or day? Isn’t it enough to save one’s squad?
“From Russia, With Love” has, imho, the best script of any of the Bond movies. The McGuffin in the movie is a decoder. No A-bombs pointed at NYC, just a pretty routine Cold War assignment.
I’m saying this in the terms of the tabletop role playing game setting Transhuman Space but…
Your post reminded me that I’d like a series of either mysteries or maybe noire detective stories with infomorphs running in cybershells used for blue collar labor like janitorial services on a big belter trading port.
One of the funniest episodes of the Men In Black cartoon was J trying to adjust to MIB’s 37 hour day.
But it shows a problem; in most sci-fi not only are all the aliens 1.8 meters tall with five fingers and a larynx that can mimic human speech, they all come from world’s with a 24 hour day. Actually, to get nerdier, most cultures with a sun would probably have a 24 hour day based on them using circular sun dials. But the length of the hours would vary.
Another thing that annoys me is when an author comes up with a fantastic idea and uses it once. There’s a Poul Anderson story I read in high school that I always wanted to see developed. A group of time travelers from 3854 AD go back to meet da Vinci. They get captured by a baron who tortures them into revealing all their secrets.
The baron and his family set up an estate in 20,000 BC and maraud through time.
This story could run six seasons, easily.
most cultures with a sun would probably have a 24 hour day based on them using circular sun dials
The use of 24 (really its 2 12 part divisions of day and night) is arbitrary. They could really use any numbering system.
The reason we use 12 and 60 is from the babylonians. We think they used base 12 and 60 because of body part counting. Each digit of the hand minus the thumb is divided into 3 parts. That gives you 12 then each finger on the opposite hand gives you 5 of each 12 count giving you base 60. If an alien has different parts, which they will, they wouldn’t necessarily use the same numbers.
There are many reasons why other races would use base 12.
But it shows a problem; in most sci-fi not only are all the aliens 1.8 meters tall with five fingers and a larynx that can mimic human speech, they all come from world’s with a 24 hour day.
Yeah! Lamp-shading this trend is one of the ways that Farscape shines.
While Farscape is still frequently guilty of this trope, it’s fun that at least the human main character is often scolded by peers for his human-anatomy-centric biases.
Sounds and non-newtonian physics in space flight. You wouldn’t hear rumbling engines or lasers shooting in space. You also wouldn’t need to keep burning your thrusters after you’ve accelerated towards your destination.
You would hear the engines inside the ship. I always imagine the sound is from the point of view of the crew.
Yeah, it makes sense in interior shots. But exterior shots in space should be dead silent. Just doesn’t make any sense.
The thrusters thing is subverted in Battlestar Galactica, The Expanse, and Babylon 5. The first two also do an excellent job with sound in space.
Distance. Almost every SciFi completely fails to represent distance even remotely closely.
This isn’t a gripe about FTL, it’s a gripe about non-FTL! Fancy FTL avoids the problem.
Star trek does it quite well in most cases, it takes days at warp foo to get anywhere. Voyager took years.
New Star wars butchers it; e.g. The Mandalorian episode with the no lightspeed/hyperspace plot device: oh no it took hours/days to get between star systems. Days! Imagine taking days to travel unfathomable distances!
New Dune (KJA’s books) inexcusably get it wrong. Claiming that “slow” travel between systems took months.
The mote in God’s eye does it extremely well with its pairs of jump points (shoutout to Mass Effect here too). Sometimes it’s quicker to use a jump point to another system, crawl to another (nearer) jump point and then jump back to the first sytem rather than crawl directly across the original system.
It takes light very long time to travel across our solar system, let alone interstellar distances. It’s like these writers have never even considered how long a container ship on earth takes to travel and still be viable.
I’ve been listening to the audiobook of Dirk Van den Boem “Sternkreuzer Proxima” (“Starcruiser Proxima”, couldn’t find the actual English titel on a quick search). He has some very good descriptions of the gruelingly long times any maneuver in space takes. Also being cramped in a small space ship with no fresh air, tasteless food rations and not knowing what is going to happen, while your ship and the enemy ship spend the next 50 hours getting in position for their attack.
Star Trek also seems to lack any form of video surveillance.
In the Star Trek: The Next Generation series premier Encounter at Farpoint, Riker comes aboard later on after several plot-relevant events. To bring him up to speed, he’s seated in front of a viewscreen and watches what has happened up to that point, basically the first part of the episode. Of course, this sort of thing is never used in the series again, but it’s kind of interesting.
Yeah I will say it’s fun to point out the plot holes whenever comparing it to the real world. But as you get older you realize. I don’t want writers to care about this stuff unless it is in service to the story. That’s the problem with a lot of new scifi. Is worrying about this stuff and always calling back to previous series is what bogs down storying telling. If your story is good I don’t care about the holes.
yeah, you want viewers to be subject to fridge logic because the alternative is that they realise while watching because the plot isn’t grabbing them.
Yeah also I thought we all agreed to call out tv tropes links as I have to work and can’t go down a rabbit hole for the next 8 hours. 😉
i was going to CW it but i thought it was funnier to let you, personally, suffer
It’s also the reason I hated mobile phones in media. It kills so many story lines if they use them.
These two people can’t communicate watch as they learn to build a common language or one picks up a phone uses the translation app and roll credits
One person needs to tell the person they love them before they get on that plane. Obstacles put in the way of the protagonist as a metaphor for their courage to say the words I love you or person picks up the phone and calls them roll credits.
The “cinema-sins-ification” of media criticism has been a fucking disaster for our collective media literacy.
If your story is good enough, no one gives a fuck about plot holes.
I get what you mean, but on the other hand I want to be able to out myself into the story and relate to the characters. If the characters are behaving in a dumb way or the problems they face are too unrealistic, that takes away from the enjoyment. Let me put it like that: I can suspend my disbelieve to accept that an allien artifact can create a wormhole to another planet or that intelligent parasitic life forms exist. I find it hard to believe the US military would send poeple to alien planets without cautioning them about eating the local food. Because to me it is inconsistent with the premise: A military operation would at least address this problem in some form. As I said, it’s just a minor annoyance to me, not a big plot hole or anything. But I find it hard to enjoy media where part of the storytelling is based on the premise “let’s just assume this advanced human/alien civilisation hasn’t thought about an easy solution that we have been using for decades”.
“I find it hard to believe the US military would send poeple to alien planets without cautioning them about eating the local food.”
I laughed hard when I saw this sentence. I guess you have not been around the military much. The military puts solders, sailors , marines, and airmen through class after class to not do stupid shit when deployed or even state side and they still do stupid shit and get article 15s or worse arrested.
Hack The Planet!
I would like to see someone re-do Star Trek from the ground up. Get rid of all existing alien races and story lines. Start with a brand new ship and a different confederation of races.
Kinda what orville did if they would have dropped the comedy sooner
The Orville sorta confused me about their focus. Having not read anything about it, at first I thought it was a show solely to poke fun at Star Trek tropes. Then it appeared to try to actually emulate ST.
Yeah it seemed fox wanted the jokes and seth slowly back away from it to make a pretty good show.
Noisy space battles.
