SF Stuff that Really Annoys You!

[Wayne Mack]

It would be nice to have a regulatory framework ready for when we do though. If we play it right it could keep an awful lot of lawyers safely busy doing something pointless and not screwing it for the rest of us for a few years.

I don't know if this has been done already, but if time dilates, whose timeframe is used in determining wages?

 

[JunkMonkey]

I don't know if this has been done already, but if time dilates, whose timeframe is used in determining wages?

That's where we get clever and involve the economists and politicians . By the time they have finished sorting it all out the rest of us will have discovered FLT and secretly emigrated to some other, distant part of the galaxy and left the earth populated solely by the totally useless parts of our society.

 

[Vladd67]

That's where we get clever and involve the economists and politicians . By the time they have finished sorting it all out the rest of us will have discovered FLT and secretly emigrated to some other, distant part of the galaxy and left the earth populated solely by the totally useless parts of our society.

As opposed to sending them off in a B Ark?

 

[MaxRelaxman]

Following on from this, one annoyance is alien planets that have a single government/emperor/president/whatever they call their supreme leader. Have they really managed to unite a whole world under one ruler? OK, sometimes there's rebels involved, but still...

And they all seem to have a single religion. I suppose if they can have a single ruler, then maybe that ruler could decree a religion

And for some reason, a lot of aliens/future humans wear robes and cloaks and not just for ceremonial purposes, but for everyday wear.
Even soldiers wear cloaks, which I imagine in the heat of battle are actually a serious encumbrance.
I'm sure any advanced civilisation would have their equivalent to jeans and t-shirts, or business suits.

Oh, a member of the anti-cloak league I see...

 

[Bramandin]

As opposed to sending them off in a B Ark?

The people who escape will probably lead rich and happy lives until they are all suddenly wiped out by a virulent disease contracted from a dirty telephone.

 

[JunkMonkey]

As opposed to sending them off in a B Ark?

Yeah. I figured that since Douglas Adams wasn't too bothered about where he lifted his ideas I lift one of his.

Here's another thing that annoys me in Science Fiction films - written stories don't usually have this problem.

Whenever the shapeshifting alien beasty finally reveals itself in it's 'true form', it's always twice as big, and three times as dense as the human form it had assumed.

Particularly noticeable in The Faculty, a film I watched last night, in which a slim, young woman transmogrified into a five meter tall, tentacled, betoothed thingy which could whack people and heavy furniture round with impressive ease. (Though, credit where credit is due, when she transmogrified back to being human she was naked. Her clothes, being real human clothes and not 'part of her', being destroyed and left lying somewhere.*)

Where does all that extra mass come from? (Or go?)

The only attempts I can think of to engage with this problem on screen are the Slitheen from Doctor Who, who are very relieved to get out of their human suits because they are so constricted and squeezed into them (they fart a lot) and the aliens from I Married a Monster from Outer Space - where it's implied that the human forms seen by the other townspeople (and the audience) are some kind of hypnotic mental projections.





* Utter pedant that I am I now realise these clothes should have been clearly in shot, lying on the ground in a later, scene and, utter geek that I am, I'm now off to IMDb to see if anyone else has added it to the 'Goofs' section for the film - I need to get out more.[/i][/i]

 

[paranoid marvin]

Time travel. It's impossible in the way that it is portrayed in stories and on film. You simply can't go backwards to a point in time where something has happened and then affect it. Now in fantasy/scifi stories where this is the main element of the plot, I don't mind it so much. But what annoys me is when a well established series introduces time travel out of nowhere, such as Superman or Star Trek, especially when this is can be done intentionally. It negates most plot lines and makes any threats nonsensical. Why can't the crew of the Enterprise go back in time and leave Khan and his followers on a different planet? When Zod and his friends appear on Earth, why doesn't Superman simply turn back time every time danger threatens? Why don't the bad guys do the same?

 

[Brian G Turner]

Time travel. It's impossible in the way that it is portrayed in stories and on film. You simply can't go backwards to a point in time where something has happened and then affect it.

Indeed, one area where Babylon 5 stands out - you can go back in time but you can't change it, just be part of what happened.

 

[Fiberglass Cyborg]

On TV in particular, so many planets consist of 3 rooms, a corridor, and if you're lucky an old quarry. If two spacecraft crashland on the same planet, they will inevitably do so within walking distance of each other.

One of my favourite fictional planets is Gethen in "The Left Hand of Darkness." We see eough of two major countries and the polar ice cap to get a sense of just how vast a terretrial world really is. At the same time, LeGuin is at pains to say that this is a small, biologically impoverished place compared to Earth, with the habitable area a narrow band squeezed between two huge ice caps.

 

[Bramandin]

The only attempts I can think of to engage with this problem on screen are the Slitheen from Doctor Who, who are very relieved to get out of their human suits because they are so constricted and squeezed into them (they fart a lot)

They also favored fat humans because it gave them a bit more room.

I didn't watch the Animorphs series, but in the books Aximili has anxiety about turning into small animals because so much of their mass goes into the same hyperspace that their ships pass through.

Odo from DS9 makes no sense because people should be able to pick up his humanoid form almost as easily as a glass.

On TV in particular, so many planets consist of 3 rooms, a corridor, and if you're lucky an old quarry.

At some point, you're just going to cause yourself pain if you don't accept the Doyalist answer about why that is. That's what the MST3K Mantra was made for.

 

[SilentRoamer]

Ok so this annoys me.

In the Terminator franchise, efficient killing machines like to throw humans about instead of, you know, actually killing them.

The Terminators should be calculating the probability of fatal injury from the actions they are performing. Its like when they grab a person, surely they would just purposefully crush whatever they grab because that would be efficient at reducing the effectiveness of the target.

Likewise, as soon as close they would try to punch through a ribcage and/or skull to cause fatal injuries. Instead they throw the protagonist around for a little bit while walking menacingly.

Also - the Terminators should probably just build some hunter/seeker drones the size of flies, instead of stupid bipedal Terminators.

That being said I do love both of the Terminator movies.

 

[psikeyhackr]

Ok so this annoys me.

In the Terminator franchise, efficient killing machines like to throw humans about instead of, you know, actually killing them.

So we should not allow you to design killing machines because they would be too effective.

Calling Skynet: take out this guy first.

 

[Ursa major]

The Terminators should be calculating the probability of fatal injury from the actions they are performing.

That would (might) apply if terminators had purely machine intelligence, but perhaps, in order to understand how humans think (in order to understand what they might do and thus find them more easily), the ones sent back in time either contain

• a simulation of a human mind, or
• a whole or partial human mind that has been uploaded into them.

 

[SilentRoamer]

That would (might) apply if terminators had purely machine intelligence, but perhaps, in order to understand how humans think (in order to understand what they might do and thus find them more easily), the ones sent back in time either contain

• a simulation of a human mind, or
• a whole or partial human mind that has been uploaded into them.

I am sorry I disagree. The earlier Terminator films show the internal Terminator HUD complete with tracking and statistical information.

Even if they do have some form of intelligence derived from human consciousness or thought patterns then to my mind that does not place the limitations of being a poor killing machine.
I understand the reasons from the point of view of a Director to build tension etc. but i would much prefer if every action was specific and calculated. It would make them seem more machine like as opposed to robot-human analogues.

 

[Elckerlyc]

Ok so this annoys me.

In the Terminator franchise, efficient killing machines like to throw humans about instead of, you know, actually killing them.

But the Terminator, despite its designation, it not a single-minded killing machine per se. It was sent back in time solely to terminate Sarah Conner. All those annoying humans that get in its way needn't be killed but can be thrown aside casually. Repeat, if necessary.
(Perhaps it is more fun than, you know, actually killing them.)

 

[psikeyhackr]

The earlier Terminator films show the internal Terminator HUD complete with tracking and statistical information.

I read a post somewhere that said the HUD also displayed assembly language code for the 6800 processor. I recognized it as assembly language but not the processor. I did some coding for the 8080 CPU because I bought a Heathkit H-8 computer.

Should I be annoyed because they used Motorola instead of Intel?

 

[JunkMonkey]

so many planets consist of 3 rooms, a corridor, and if you're lucky an old quarry.

A few years ago one of my daughters walked through the living room where I was watching an old SF film on the television.
"What you watching?" she said, and glanced at the the screen - just as three characters walked into a cave. "Oh." she said. "A Bronson Canyon movie!" and wandered off again.

 

[psikeyhackr]

No! I was wrong. (I know, it's shocking)

It was 6502 not 6800.

The 6502 in "The Terminator" – pagetable.com

The internet is really cool!

But this means that Apple must be responsible for destroying the world. I knew it!

 

[Christine Wheelwright]

The biggest annoyance with SF is the overestimation of progress. Too many movies set in the 'near future' with incredible technology; atrificial intelligences, androids and interplanetary travel. In fact we are nowhere near achieving the advances that would be required.

This tendency also blights the real world (not just the fictional world). It is the reason an idiot like Musk can make ridiculous claims (eg for self driving taxi cabs or manned Mars missions in a few short years) and be taken seriously by huge chunks of the population.

 

[Fiberglass Cyborg]

Ok so this annoys me.

In the Terminator franchise, efficient killing machines like to throw humans about instead of, you know, actually killing them.

The Terminators should be calculating the probability of fatal injury from the actions they are performing. Its like when they grab a person, surely they would just purposefully crush whatever they grab because that would be efficient at reducing the effectiveness of the target.

Likewise, as soon as close they would try to punch through a ribcage and/or skull to cause fatal injuries. Instead they throw the protagonist around for a little bit while walking menacingly.

Also - the Terminators should probably just build some hunter/seeker drones the size of flies, instead of stupid bipedal Terminators.

That being said I do love both of the Terminator movies.

That's classic monster behaviour. Lurch around slowly and menacingly, make lots of noise, throw large objects about to demonstrate your strength. Never mind if doing this makes any sense.

It bugs me a bit when a monster that is basically an animal acts like this. Is it hunting the humans? Then it should be quiet, fast and stealthy. Is it angry at the humans for intruding on its territory? A noisy threat display makes a bit more sense, but it wouldn't bother pursuing once the humans have cleared the area.