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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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The camera thing drives me nuts, because we all know it’s generally just going to be what’s drives the plot for this story. Which is okay.
But as a privacy nerd, my brain immediately concocts some deeply weird privacy law to explain why main engineering is monitored 24/7 and the front door is somehow not. Then my brain starts trying to come up with the relevant moments in the fictional history why the laws are so broken…
And even if, for example, the Federation had such privacy laws, it should be pretty much impossible to hide on a Cardassian ship because you know they’re all about that surveillance state.
Becky Chambers wrote 4 books that did a really good job of exploring different species getting by with their differences not just in culture, but also in things like how they speak (one species has 5 vocal chords, so you literally cannot speak their language) or ‘how does publich transit account for different butt shapes?’
But on to your question on pet peeves:
- throwing science-y words out there that make no sense is probably my biggest.
- deus ex-machina - getting saved at the knick of time by something showing up without warning, but that’s just bad writing. I actually like how the Orville series removed transporters as a tech. It’s actually a bad plot device.
- but yeah, like you said, things that are obvious but are removed from the show, like cameras
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 and “gym ball”…
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.
I can still enjoy far-future science fiction of the “humans in space” sort but I can’t take it seriously as a portrayal of what the future might be like unless there’s an explanation for why people haven’t been modified by technology to the point where they’re hardly recognizable as human. I really like Alpha Centauri (the video game) as a portrayal of a future where everyone is either a cyborg or a Luddite. The best part is that the game does this gradually until at the end the player realizes (or doesn’t) that the annoying Luddite faction (which usually gets eliminated early) had a point.
Star Trek also seems to lack any form of video surveillance.
In the Star Trek: The Next Generation series premiere 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.
Language drives me nuts too. I believe in Star trek the badges translate in real time? Best explanation I ever saw (read) was hitchhikers guide. The babel fish “eats” language and poops out brainwaves or whatever to the receiver. I probably got the details wrong but it’s close enough and hilarious to boot.
Camera thing is another I hate. Obviously for the drama but I mean they can pull up video on the main window of the enterprise to the engineering room, captains room, even other ships but can’t see the biggest point of entry??
Star Trek has a common language in the federation or not? It would be cool if they encountered a new species and get out their communicators, record for a bit and have an AI figure out the new language. Wouldn’t take up a lot of screen time and explain the communication.
There’s a couple of scenes I think in enterprise that shows the linguistics person programming something like that actually. Been many years since I watched it (it’s been a long road lol) but I recall that scene.
You might enjoy the book “Blindsight” by Peter Watts.
It does a phenomenal job telling a very unique first contact story. I can’t remember if cameras are much of a plot point (I think they use them occasionally), but one of the characters is a linguist, and the aliens are distinctly non-human.
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 scare 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.
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.
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
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.
Since Stargate is my go-to scifi I’m kinda offended at the “doesn’t take itself too seriously”. Sure it’s not as hard on the science as The Expanse (you know, except for the magic portals to other stars), but it feels like it takes itself pretty seriously. There are obvious bottle episodes that were probably written for other shows and shoe-horned in because they were cheap to buy and produce.
For #2, I think this would get pretty old pretty fast, not to mention that they have to fit everything into runtime constraints. Every new planet the team spends months researching the new language. Sure, you could handwave it (we found a Goa’uld translator just laying around), but that would be back to just one language. Since the Stargate presents an instant transportation rather than the days/months/years of starship travel it would make sense that languages stay fairly consistent as people move from planet to planet.
For #3, they pretty much handwave this in SG-1 as the majority of planets in the Milky Way were repopulated by the ancients in their image, and others were transferred from Earth.
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.
Noisy space battles.
Making a second comment to answer your actual question:
For me it’s when technology is very uniformly high tech. So for example in the real world technology advances but it doesn’t advance everywhere at the same speed. There might be high tech versions of things in cities while you still find old or ancient equivalents out in the countryside (or just both types existing alongside each other all over). I really like it when SciFi can capture this nonlinear pace of technological advancement.
That goes for history as well. In films with nice period-acurate costumes and sets, you rarely see anything old-looking with design from the previous periods.
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?
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.
This is why Darmok is peak sci-fi. It discusses what happens when species can’t communicate with one another. It even works within the in-show explanation of the universal translator: the Tamarians don’t just use different vocabulary and syntax. They have an entirely different language model.
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.
Starships in Star Trek have three systems for propulsion: thrusters, impulse, and warp. Oh, and in my head, nothing exists after Bakula’s Enterprise, the era of star ships dogfighting like fighter jets flooding the screen with beam spam “isn’t my father’s Star Trek” and isn’t mine either.
In TOS through ENT, we see;
Warp Drive is the FTL technology in this setting; when at warp the stars themselves seem to whiz by like signs on a highway. The exact details of what warp factor means what actual speed change over time; Warp 10 is and isn’t an absolute speed limit, trans-warp drive is a thing USS Excelsior has, and then something only the Borg have…generally the bigger the warp number, the more desperate the plot is. Urgent plot point! Helm, warp 8, engage! Episode is over and the status quo has resumed. Helm, set a course for somewhere, warp 2, engage.
Thrusters are barely able to move the ship and are used for docking maneuvers or when the ship has had the snot beat out of it and nothing works; the thrusters never break so they are always at least barely able to move.
Impluse power is also depicted inconsistently. In plot delivered by dialog, the ship can move at like a quarter of the speed of light under impulse power; they sometimes talk about doing short trips under impulse to the next planet or star system over; yet when we visually see ships maneuvering under impulse, they’re acting like watercraft chugging along at 10 or 20 knots, slowly hoving in and out of space dock as if “1/4 impulse power” meant “all ahead slow.” If full impulse power moves the ship at 0.25c, leaving space dock under 1/4 impulse should look more like THIS.
I love how the different special effects recontextualizes the actors’ performances.
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New topic: my favorite sci-fi mode of FTL travel is from the Battletech franchise. Jumpships are able to teleport anywhere within 30 light years of their present position in a matter of seconds, though they’re delicate and need to stay pretty far outside of a gravity well for safety, so they tend to hang out far outside the plane of the ecliptic above or below a star, recharging the engine via solar power. The trick is flying to and from the jumpship, which is done on a dropship which spends half the time accelerating at 1G, and half the time decelerating at 1G, because “fusion rockets” can do that.
A journey from Earth (called “Terra” in-universe) to some planet within 30 light years will take a week or so on the dropship on the way to the jumpship, a few seconds in hyperspace, and then a week or so on the dropship on the way down to the planet. Need to go farther than 30 light years? You either have to have set up a series of jumpships ready to do a relay race, or your jumpship has to take half a week to recharge its batteries to jump again.
They even treat communications semi-realistically; there are special space radios called HPGs which kind of use jump drive technology to instantly send a message to another HPG within 50 light years, or you can hand the message to someone who is getting on a dropship, or you have radio as we know it now complete with speed of light delay. And unless Michael Stackpole is writing, it’s depicted as pretty consistent. (In one of the Blood of Kerensky books, Stackpole has the Wolf’s Dragoons jump into low orbit of Luthien “inside the orbit of our nearest moon” which per established fiction shouldn’t have worked for a couple different reasons.)
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.
