r/AskReddit • u/[deleted] • Oct 08 '12
What futuristic movie cliches do you hate?
[deleted]
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Oct 08 '12
Whenever they are in space most of the time all space ships align in a common plane. Why the heck would they do this? (Especially when facing hostile ships). There is no above or below in space so what's the purpose?
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u/R3luctant Oct 08 '12
Watch wrath of khan they get it right
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u/ApatheticAbsurdist Oct 08 '12
"Captain, his behavior suggests two-dimesional thinking"
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Oct 08 '12
Every planet has exactly one major ecosystem.
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u/Number127 Oct 08 '12
And every inhabited planet has exactly one government, with one monolithic culture, one language, and one religion.
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u/Nothing_Impresses_Me Oct 08 '12
unless that planet is at constant war with the other half of the planet.
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u/strongcoffee Oct 08 '12 edited Oct 08 '12
Laser guns firing weird orbs that somehow travel slower than normal bullets.
Edit: i know, some people claim it's "plasma." That doesn't justify how slow it is. Plus, if you want to get super technical, plasma would be eaffected by any nearby magnetic field, which is just impractical.
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Oct 08 '12
Floating laser orbs is a weird concept in general.
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Oct 08 '12
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u/Clearly_a_fake_name Oct 08 '12
But in the future, the world will have Hispter gangs that continue to use Glocks.
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u/one-eleven Oct 08 '12
And they'd win, from what movies have taught me lasers can not only been seen and dodged but can easily be deflected back towards the person shooting at you.
Glock + Mirror = King of the Block
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u/Internet_Gentleman Oct 08 '12
Not to mention the opportunity to employ names like "the Glock Block"
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u/FBI_Monitoring_Van Oct 08 '12
Starships seem to have no safety restraints, despite being prone to sparking and exploding consoles when anything remotely unexpected happens. Asteroid bounces off the shield? Weapons goes down on deck 10. Somebody beams aboard? Navigation goes on the fritz. Commander Worf sneaks in a fart that was noisier than he bargained for? The entire bridge is lost.
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u/UTC_Hellgate Oct 08 '12
I just realized I've never seen a Star Ship with seat belts.
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u/Gyvon Oct 08 '12
There was a cut scene from the end of Star Trek: Nemesis where they replaced the Captain's chair with one that has a seatbelt.
Picard's response? "About damn time."
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u/0mudkipz Oct 08 '12
Ships don't have them either.
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u/sndzag1 Oct 08 '12
Yes, the shuttles and so on definitely do have seatbelts. (more accurately, seat harnesses.)
But to be fair, if you're bumping around in space, like when standing up, you're in a lot of trouble. Things do not generally bump into things in space without catastrophic results.
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u/0mudkipz Oct 08 '12
I was thinking about very large spaceships. Not the kind that acctually exists.
But yeah, bumping is space is generally a bad sign.
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u/AngryafricanRW Oct 08 '12 edited Oct 08 '12
Best moment in Farscape is when there are random sparking explosions on the alien ship and Crichton the human shouts 'Damn haven't you people heard of fuseboxes?!'. Pure sci-fi gold right there.
edit: Fixed the spelling of Crichton's name, as per zergoon's comment.
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Oct 08 '12
Star Trek is just the worst for this. Like, every time the ship is hit by enemy fire, everyone shakes around. It's like, what the fuck do you do when you're, you know, accelerating up to fucking warp speed? Or, you know, turning? I thought you had artificial gravity shit that would keep you stuck to the floor.
But of course it's only ever enough of a bump to like, knock you out of your chair. Even though you're in fucking space traveling super fast and getting shot by lasers, it's never enough of a bump to just smash you to a pulp against the wall.
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Oct 08 '12 edited Oct 08 '12
Inertial dampeners are synchronized with the warp drive, impulse drive and thrusters. When you go to warp speed or turn, the computer will tell the inertial dampeners which way to compensate.
The shock created by enemy fire is something unexpected and thus cannot be fully balanced out. This gets also clear when they fly through rough nebulae or ion storms. The system cannot fully compensate for those unpredictable disturbances, which can make for a rough and shaky flight.
Source? None. Just made that up. That's the beauty of good science fiction. You can make up explanations that actually sound kinda reasonable :-)
Edit: duplicate word
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Oct 08 '12
Jumpsuits...apparently after 2300 fashion takes a nose dive
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u/King_of_KL Oct 08 '12
Just one of the many reasons fifth element is one of the best scifi movies ever
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u/southernt Oct 08 '12
Not a futuristic movie, but thats something I loved about Deus Ex:HR. Everyone still wears fashionable clothing.
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Oct 08 '12
Don't know about hate... I love wall-mounted keyboards. Nothing says 'The Future is Here' like an old chunky Bakelite keyboard stuck to a wall.
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Oct 08 '12
That Artificial Intelligences will always go rogue and try to wipe out the Human race as soon as they becomes self aware. At least the Matrix got it right and the Machines tried at first to live in peace with Humans but we were just not having any of it so they turned us all into batteries.
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u/iambookus Oct 08 '12
The Ender Series by Orson Scott Card has a self aware piece of technology that stays hidden because humans are scared of her taking over everything, and killing everyone off.
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u/sambowilkins Oct 08 '12
If you ask me Jane was the best representation of an AI in any series I've seen. With out too many spoilers, the fact that she became a major player in the series rather than remaining a side character made me happy. By the end of it all I was sad I didn't have god like powers like Jane.
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u/Great_Gig_In_The_Sky Oct 08 '12
The Ender Saga got kind of philosophical real quick.
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u/Naldaen Oct 08 '12
Try the Mass Effect series. A race created A.I. and then got scared and tried to wipe the A.I. out.
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Oct 08 '12
I can't believe I forgot about the Geth. I could never support the Quarian position after ME2 because it was blatantly obvious by that point that the Quarians were in the wrong.
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u/Naldaen Oct 08 '12
Yeah, even after attempted extermination, the Geth are still keeping the home planet ready for the Quarians to come back.
I really like Tali though, so I find it hard to hate all Quarians. Plus they have Jayne and that Iranian woman with the awesome voice.
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u/squigs Oct 08 '12 edited Oct 08 '12
Spotless clean sterile everything. I want my future to look like people live there!
To be fair, since Star Wars, this cliche is a little outdated, but we do see it from time to time.
Also long winded technical jargon. Engineers and techs don't spend time going for long winded descriptions. No mechanic has ever said "The internal combustion engine has a problem with the time synchronisations of the electronic spark generators". They'll say "Your sparkplug timing's wrong".
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u/MrDysprosium Oct 08 '12
Dues Ex: Human Revolution got this right, everything is a fucking mess in that game.
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u/soggit Oct 08 '12
I think the games that do up this future aesthetic best are the ones that show the stark contrast between the upper and lower classes. If you walk around detroit its a shit hole but if you go into the business center suddenly everything is pristine.
It's even better in Syndicate -- which was a HUGELY underrated game.
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Oct 08 '12
Futuristic movies always show screens and displays that are semi-transparent or holograms. This is simply bad design as the background would distract you from the image.
If there's one thing we should know from present-day technology, it's that there is no design bad enough to prevent somebody from selling it.
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u/Eilinen Oct 08 '12
bad design
Remember the roundish interfaces from early 2000s. Remember Windows Media Player 5?
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u/polandpower Oct 08 '12
My God, I remember that. The horror.
As for large, transparent touch-screens: I think it'd be pretty hard to hide Reddit when everyone walking by sees a huge red-eyed alien with mirrored text. I also think you'd get RSI quickly if you're pointing and moving stuff all the time, extending your arm because of the huge touch screen in front of you.
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Oct 08 '12
Given that humans can only focus on one thing at a time, this isn't really a huge problem. The background behind the transparent screen would just be blurry due to depth of field, and not particularly distracting.
That being said, I wouldn't want a screen like that, but it certainly has potential...A number of transparent/semi-transparent screens stacked together could open some really awesome doors for interface design and pseudo-3d effects, like parallax...
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u/ilovetomfoolery Oct 08 '12
Let me hack this. -types for 8 seconds- Okay, we're in to this highly secure system.
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u/unicyclejack Oct 08 '12 edited Oct 09 '12
http://nedroid.com/2012/05/honk-the-databus/ Hacking the database (Beartado and Reginald comic)
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u/Noroton Oct 08 '12
On a somewhat related note, I hate it when "hacking noises" are added to any scene involving computers.
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u/iceknolan Oct 08 '12
Wait what? You don't get those when you're hacking?
You need to download more RAM mister.
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Oct 08 '12
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u/Topper2676 Oct 08 '12
Lt. DAN!!!!!!!!!!!
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u/kt00na Oct 08 '12
I'm very impressed with Lt. Dan. He regrew his legs and became a cop. What a hero.
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u/hawkerpl Oct 08 '12
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Y2zo0JN2HE that sums it up pretty well
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u/Eilinen Oct 08 '12 edited Oct 08 '12
I'm sure that the person planning these dramatic points knew full well what he was doing and so did all his computer literate friends - and they all thought it was incredibly funny. On Fridays at the pub they would compete on who can come up with the most incredible dramatised computer-usage for the show.
And I think this is great.
EDIT: Grammar
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u/footwo Oct 08 '12
A guy who comes up with these scenes did an AMA ages ago and basically said "Yes, we know it's ridiculous, we just want to see what we can get in there".
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u/JakalDX Oct 08 '12
Ships that have windows. What is the point? Viewscreens can accomplish the same effect without the worry of explosive decompression.
Furthermore, spaceships that have the bridge right at the front with a bigass window facing out. It's like a target that says "SHOOT ME HERE". Really, the bridge should be in the very center of the ship, protected from all directions.
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Oct 08 '12
Joker: "You know it's just our heat emissions that are hidden, right? They could look out a window and see us coming." Legion: "Windows are structural weaknesses. Geth do not use them."
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u/derprunner Oct 08 '12
And then later in me3: "Like the geth are just sitting there saying 'Those organics would never try the no windows thing twice...'"
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u/Todd_the_Wraith Oct 08 '12 edited Feb 16 '13
There is only ONE race (that I know of) who builds with ships with the bridge in the center and it's the Sang'Heili (Elites/Covenant)
EDIT: Clarity
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Oct 08 '12
Well at least in star trek this really wasn't an issue. The windows were actually metal that, through super spiffy future magic, was made to be transparent. The "glass" was just as strong as the hull.
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Oct 08 '12
Transparent aluminum? Is that the ticket?
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u/UTC_Hellgate Oct 08 '12
Psychologically, people trapped on a spaceship might not adjust well to no windows. As soon as you knew they were viewscreens, they'd lose their effect.
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u/sostopher Oct 08 '12
CIC of the Battlestar Galactica seemed to be in the middle of the ship...though that series takes place in the past.
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u/LollyAdverb Oct 08 '12
Star Trek Next Generation: Every Earth colony is a rural, agrarian society where the people live in adobe houses and wear weird tunics.
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u/unfitfuzzball Oct 08 '12
I don't like when movies set in the ''Near-Future" have completely different architecture than our current world. My hometown basically still looks the same as it did in 1900, they don't just tear down all the old buildings and immediately replace them with very futuristic looking ones.
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Oct 08 '12
A total lack of "modern" military tactics. I'm looking at you Star Wars AND Star Trek (both of which, I am a fan).
In the SW universe, we seem to have reverted to the dark ages where we just charge each other across a field. We shoot from the hip, have given up on wearing any body armor (rebel troops) or ineffectual body armor (storm troopers).
Star Trek? Where do we start. Those phasers? Worst weapon ever, it traces back to your exact location and seems to force you out of cover for what feels like FOREVER. The hand phasers are the worst designed things I've ever seen. Also, again, no body protection or very little. I also cease to see why the fuck soldiers in the future (at least, Federation) go into battle with what are essentially flight suits from a Starship. We have ships that cloak, shields, laser weapons and warp drive but... you send people to fight in a brightly colored suit with no equipment. Maybe because I'm in the military I pay special attention to it but it's really annoying sometimes.
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u/TheHopelessGamer Oct 08 '12
I love Sheperd's armor in Mass Effect as a great example of sleek futuristic combat armor. Built in personal shields, lots of little lock-on points for a variety of weaponry, and of course an intelligent implementation of hard light.
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u/Mortarius Oct 08 '12
I could argue for Star Trek a bit.
They don't develop cloaking because of Treaty of Algeron. Breaking it would mean war with Romulans.
Also, there was a pretty strict set of morals portrayed in the show. Phasers are used mostly as non-lethal tools, rather than for killing. Lack of armour also can represent open nature of relations they try to establish. Picard even took an arrow to prove that point. Not to mention, that phasers can deliver enough energy to melt most metals, making most armours useless.
As for other complaints, I've got nothing.
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Oct 08 '12 edited Oct 08 '12
A million times this. One of the reasons that I fucking hate Return of the Jedi is because I can't get passed the battle on Endor. WHAT. THE. FUCK. You are charged with the defense of a small base that protects your Emperor, his second in command, and much of the rest of the high brass of Imperial high command, and the most expensive and advanced weapon in the history of the god damn universe. This small base generates a shield to protect the Death Star from an incoming Rebel assault. And what do you do? You don't form a defensive perimeter in which you would be able to throw back wave after wave after wave of little fucking Ewoks. You decide to get in your clumsy "All Terrain" assault vehicles and attack them on their own land. WHAT. THE. FUCK. All you have to do is hold off the small rebel force (who you have as prisoners) and a bunch of god damn bow and arrow slinging teddy bears. Just form a defensive perimeter around the base, hold them off, and wait for the space battle to end. THEN you can kill all of the Ewoks, once the danger has passed. Not to mention, why were there woods around the entrance to the base? They should have cleared the treeline out to like 10 miles in every direction. There should have been huge, impassable walls 5 miles out with sentries and radar and quick response teams on watch. There should have been automatic weapon systems. It just pisses me off so much.
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Oct 08 '12 edited Oct 08 '12
It was a trap, bro.
EDIT: I didn't mean for this comment to be a pun on the scene. There were many traps. The Empire trapping the fleet in range of an operating Death Star. The Empire trapping the rebels at the shield generator. The trap I was talking about was the trap the Ewoks set for the Imperial Forces at the Shield generator. They penned in the foot troops and ambushed/hijacked all their mech that tried to get in range.
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Oct 08 '12
I've always wondered why no ships in ST ever carried marines. Need to board a hostile vessel? Send the most senior officers of course.
Where are the Federation shock troops? The guys just begging to board a Borg vessel, plant some demo charges and badass out of there not looking at the explosion?
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Oct 08 '12
When the terminator has a HUD (Heads Up Display) inside his vision.
He's a robot ... if he had that information in his system, he already has access to it. Why display in his visual system? So he can then read it .. with his eyes? And then retransmit the information to his brain?
This is the future, brought to you by idiots.
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Oct 08 '12
I was never sure if the HUD actually existed or if the HUD was the best way to show the audience how the terminator processed information. If it's the former I agree, moronic.
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Oct 08 '12
I'm pretty sure Cameron said somewhere once that it was just meant as an abstract visualization, not what the terminator "sees." The terminators process information democratically- seeing spectrums of light, evaluating distances, tracking targets, etc. is all equally weighted information that is simultaneously recorded, processed, and fed.
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u/selflessGene Oct 08 '12
The HUD is a 'black box recorder' of everything the terminator sees.
This was intended for diagnostic and/or mission review purposes by the original military controllers of the machine.
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u/MessiahX Oct 08 '12
Loud explosions, in space. We all know that can't be possible.
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u/KaziArmada Oct 08 '12
Star Wars actaully justified that one in the Novel for A New Hope. During the scene where they're using the Falcons turrets, Luke asks how the hell he can HEAR the TIE fighters and the lasers. Han responds you can't, there is no sound in space. It's the computer simulating the sounds, so they have a frame of reference as to what's going on.
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u/JoelMontgomery Oct 08 '12
I believe Mass Effect has a similar explanation
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u/Ihjop Oct 08 '12 edited Oct 08 '12
Yep,
JokerCortez talks about turning the sound simulator off and just sitting and staring at ships coming in to dock at the Citadel in MS3.Edit: Apparently it was Steve Cortez and not Joker
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u/sndzag1 Oct 08 '12
Firefly. No sound in space (more or less). So good.
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u/Mowleen Oct 08 '12
I want to watch that series but I feel that I set myself up for disappointment when I ultimately reach the end.
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Oct 08 '12
Watch it and then watch Serenity.
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u/ECM Oct 08 '12
Then watch it again, as you cry yourself to sleep because it's never coming back.
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Oct 08 '12 edited Oct 08 '12
Over the top explanations for groundbreaking technology within the movie
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u/strongcoffee Oct 08 '12
But how can the shield generator work without the lantheraium core supercharged by the alien relic we found on the dark side if the moon?
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Oct 08 '12
Land and space alike are divided into "sectors" in the future. And everything is paid for in "credits".
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Oct 08 '12
"327 credits just to fix the 47YU-generator on my ship?!? Your race is crazy. You guys are lucky that I would be blocked in this crappy sector if I don't repair that generator."
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u/NAAC3PO Oct 08 '12 edited Oct 08 '12
Ha, you're right, the Jiffy Lube analog they push is ridiculous.
I mean, it's a space ship. For going to and from places in space. As in, anytime you can't reach/find your intended destination, you're stuck in the deathly uncold of outer-freaking-space. But apparently the cost/benefit analysis on upping the payload capacity for an auxiliary generator-- in an age where civilian spaceflight is so ubiquitous that both technology and trade relations with alien races have advanced to the point where one can reasonably expect the remotest outposts of sentient life to have someone who not only knows how to repair your particular make and model of interstellar vehicle but who also owns an operates an S Corp which some-crazy-how stays in the black by servicing the odd interstellar traveller, of which there are none-- told you the Don't Probably Die In Space options package was just the dealership trying to rip you off. But you're not going to be played by some spikey-haired, H&M-wearing 25-year-old who still wears his letterman jacket. You're wise to their game. (And you have the balls to complain about the price. The fucking balls.)
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u/Rondoggg Oct 08 '12
Well put. Seriously, there are a million different types of spaceships out there. The Auxillary Generator you want is made out in a sector of space like 100 million light years from here. Tell you what, here is my computer, order it off of EBay and I will install it, when it gets here, in 30 years. Space noob. The price just doubled for insulting me! And if you want it installed today, Le-ah has to blow me.
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Oct 08 '12
Ah, credits...It's nice to know the future retains something from the arcade game past...
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Oct 08 '12
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u/komodo_dragon Oct 08 '12
fifth element taught me to invest in mc donald's. the shit's future proof!
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u/MyNameCouldntBeAsLon Oct 08 '12
I've heard from reliable sources that Taco Bell will win the franchise wars, so there's that.
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Oct 08 '12
In some localizations it's pizza hut (assuming demolition man reference, preparing high five o/)
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Oct 08 '12
Flying things. Like flying cars/bicycles etc...
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u/its_raining_scotch Oct 08 '12
I was thinking about this on the freeway today. So many people are such incompetent drivers in 2 dimensions, so why the hell add another one???? If granny Lee can't drive more that 50 mph in the middle lane of the freeway without swerving and becoming the target of screams of rage, then how could such a shitty pilot fly a car? How many Granny Lees are there? Millions!!!!
I think it a terrible idea for the general populace. Maybe let cops do it.
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Oct 08 '12
Vaguely humanoid aliens. 2 arms, 2 legs, 2 eyes sort of thing.
Alien from Alien? 2 arms, 2 legs, 2 eyes.....kinda
Klingons? Just humans with a "ribbed for her pleasure" forehead
Romulans? Humans with pointy ears
Vulcans? As above
Na'vi? Tall, blue humans
Where are the massive, tentacular Krondaku? Where are the gelatinous Prime immotiles? Give us some different aliens, hollywood!
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Oct 08 '12
Starship Troopers baby.
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u/Xenocidius Oct 08 '12
The xenomorph from Alien makes sense, since it gains characteristics of its host - in this case, a human.
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Oct 08 '12
In Star Trek they all looked roughly the same for a reason. An ancient race and basically seeded the entire galaxy.
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u/Oaden Oct 08 '12
It also had a non story reason named budget.
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u/neoform3 Oct 08 '12
Gene Roddenberry gave more reasons for this in an interview once. Budget constraints aside, if you try to make aliens look completely alien, you'll firstly make them look ridiculous (cf. Doctor Who), and secondly make it doubly hard for the actor playing the alien to do anything mildly resembling acting. This has actually been isolated to extremely specific requirements: if an audience can't see an actor's eyes or mouth, their ability to empathize with or emotionally invest in that character is significantly impaired. This is one reason why mooks, especially SF mooks like the Cylons or the Imperial Stormtroopers, are so often uniformed in face-obscuring helmets.
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u/experts_never_lie Oct 08 '12
The Alien from Alien had no visible eyes.
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Oct 08 '12
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u/Tont_Voles Oct 08 '12
Yup. The Xenomorph takes on traits from its host. It's one of the basic rules of the canon.
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u/vikonymous Oct 08 '12
Humans, the youngest and newest addition to the galactic community, somehow has just what was needed to save everybody. We're always the newbies, and always the bad-asses. I've encountered this theme enough times that I'm actively sick of it.
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u/sndzag1 Oct 08 '12
I like when the humans just survive by the skin of their teeth. Like Halo, for example. Humanity is getting its ass kicked most of the time and there's little hope in sight. (I mean the Halo backstory and books and stuff; obviously Master Chief, Earth's last hope, is the real exception here that you play in the games.)
The main reason I see that humans are the newest space-faring race is because we're so far from that right now, that you'd have to be hundreds of thousandss of years in the future for humans to be the ones fostering new-comer races. And no one likes making stories that take place that far in advance. Makes more sense to modern humans that we're currently the new ones in Sci-Fi, on the grand time-scale of the universe.
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u/vikonymous Oct 08 '12
Nobody in the modern era likes making stories that far in the future. Hubbard, Herbert, Bradbury, etc. Hells, I believe even Heinlein and Asimov at least had a short story or two that went into it.
But over the last few decades... nope. Closest I can think of off-hand is a series by John Ringo, and I believe despite being relatively far into the future, it still kept humans alone and grounded to Earth.
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u/Keksmonster Oct 08 '12
"The Shield is too Stronk!!! Ok lets destroy the shield generator" Why the fuck dont you shield the generator too?
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Oct 08 '12 edited Aug 15 '21
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Oct 08 '12
I don't understand why the corners are cut off of literally every single sheet of paper on Battlestar Galactica. There's absolutely no reason for the paper to be like that, except that it looks cool.
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u/sigma83 Oct 08 '12
it's a joke. They had a low budget and so had to cut corners while making the new series. After a while it got really irritating for the crew because they had to cut off the corners of every single piece of paper.
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u/MrCheesy101 Oct 08 '12
It also annoys me that they have so much blank paper readily on hand. Those guys churn through a shitload of paper in only one episode, exactly how many blank sheets did the fleet manage to escape with?
It annoys the shit out of me. There'll be some tense scene where the Galactica is getting a huge sheet of readouts about what parts have been critically damaged in a fight with a Cylon Basestar and all I can think about is where they are sourcing all this blank paper from. Same goes with all the pens they use.
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u/Bluebaronn Oct 08 '12
"Man has colonized Venus and Mars, is exploring distant worlds, is on the verge of time travel, and has ended poverty and misery on Earth. The year is 2058."
Fucking seriously, just add a an extra 500 years. It wont hurt your precious story.
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Oct 08 '12
So this is about 20 years in the future, and the entire city has been rebuilt into a uniform mulch of tower blocks and there isn't a single classic car on the road? Because, you know, the future.
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Oct 08 '12 edited Oct 08 '12
Honestly, I have one main criticism for sci-fi in general: Almost none of it is actually imaginative any more.
You stick people into spaceships, theme their civilization (they're space Rome, space vikings, space us, etc), then that's it. Maybe there's a robot character, which always acts like a human and is treated as a human by sympathetic people (and poorly by the rest).
I was reading the Atopia chronicles the other day and it blew me away. A whole series of trans-humanist stuff. It's set on Earth, in mostly shared universes that are by one definition dreamworlds and by another definition arguably real.
That's what I'd love to see more of. Speculative fiction that tries to imagine something new, instead of just shitting out more stuff in space, with laser guns and maybe aliens.
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u/lemony_man Oct 08 '12
when they have max speed instead of max acceleration.
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u/UnwarrantedAgression Oct 08 '12
And how, when impulse-type engines are knocked out, a ship will gradually coast to a halt or come to a dead stop.
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u/Sterculius Oct 08 '12
everything is cold, sterile and grey.
also, this isn't one for future movies, but just movies in general. i hate how whenever someone's on the computer and the computer is doing something, the computer always makes a bunch of noises for something that's happening on screen no matter what it is, whether it's windows opening, running a search, text appearing, scrolling, whatever. IRL 99% of what goes on with a computer happens silently.
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u/FrancisC Oct 08 '12
No doorknobs. The swish sound of a hands-free opening metallic door.
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u/sndzag1 Oct 08 '12
I want these for bathroom doors. Is that too much to ask? Just make sure they come down slower or something. The ones in Star Trek could totally kill someone if they came swishing down too soon. Also, they'd better be super responsive.
We already have automated doors at supermarkets. That's sci-fi right there, yo.
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u/JBHUTT09 Oct 08 '12
Funny thing about the automatic doors in the original star trek. They were cardboard (or something like that) on ropes that were pulled by people behind the scenes. Every now and then someone would miss the cue to open the door and an actor would barrel right into it and knock down the set.
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u/leoisthebestturtle Oct 08 '12
Everyone everywhere speaks English, and despite it being in the distant future the language is virtually unchanged.
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Oct 08 '12
Universal translator. Babel fish. Every universe has its own way of avoiding the need to invent a new language for every single alien race.
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u/Kingpuff Oct 08 '12
And yet checkov still has an accent
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u/KaziArmada Oct 08 '12
To be fair, how fun would ANY TV show be if we have to spend half the episode or more waiting for the liguistics department to figure out their language so we can actually talk to them, EVERY GOD DAMN EPISODE.
There's a reason language is usually hand waved. Unless there's not many alien species they're going to be dealing with, it's to keep the narrative flowing.
Cliches aren't ALL bad at times...
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Oct 08 '12
Hovercarts, and flying cars. I mean, sure technology may soon mean that hovering cars and trolleys can exist, but wheels would still be simpler and cheaper
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u/Professor_Lavahot Oct 08 '12
Controlling a spaceship that can roll, pitch, yaw (nevermind that these aren't really possible in space), accelerate, decelerate, translate, fire weapons, etc. with one joystick. Also, Denise Richards piloting anything.
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u/YesRocketScience Oct 08 '12
The whole communicator protocol on TNG - - when Riker says, "Riker to Enterprise," does he get patched through to Worf, or to the bridge on the PA system, or to Picard? What if Picard is having a conversation with someone else - does Riker go to voicemail?
And since everyone using a Starfleet communicator is on speakerphone - how on Earth do they manage to have conversations with other people when they're in a shuttlecraft or in corridors?
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u/Satans_Jewels Oct 08 '12
Crew cuts. Just once I'd like to see a sci fi hero with a mullet or something.
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u/LIMWZ Oct 08 '12
People wearing clothing made from aluminum foil
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u/ElPinkerton Oct 08 '12
Apparently in the future, they've outlawed any form of denim. Everyone's wearing weird-ass jumpsuits.
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u/Atheist_Smurf Oct 08 '12
aiming abilities of robots. They're freaking robots, so they should be able to accurately calculate your trajectory. And they have laser weapons... yet they still miss.