erikboy (imported) wrote: Fri Jan 14, 2011 9:14 am
Babylon 5... I am a great fan of sci-fi. But with age I have become more and more critical towards the series as my still very limited knowledge about universe around us grows. After a long time I watched Battlestar Galactica original series again. That seemed ridiculously simplistic. Awful. But at the time I saw Galactica first time, I was a big WOW!.
Many good sci-fi series since Original Startrek have been created. But I feel they get more and more similar despite all the unimaginably good special effects that have become available.
What irritates me most is 95% of races look like humanoids. More or less. Races behave like they have human psychology. Despite there have been good examples of different motivation system and psychology, like the Borg. Still, at the end very human like Borg Queen emerges.
I would like to meet species very different from ours in appeareance and behaviour. Not in Real Life of course
Then all the physics that should be valid in space simly isn't there! I could hear bangs and futuristic weapons fireing in absolute vacuum!
If there is anything going on in space it happens like there is a ground down below and horizon somewhere on the horizon. Also gravity seems to work on everything.
When engines are stopped then the whole ship slows down to standstill. How could that happen? There is no friction in space and there is no reference related to what ship could stop movement. there is no standstill objects in the Universe!
Gravity on the ships... Except B5 that creates gravity by turning, other ships use gravitygenerators which never fail even when the ship has been dead for centuries.
When ship explodes into pieces, these pieces will fly in different directions non stop. Instead I have seen many great battlefields with ship parts floating freely in close formation. Thats simply not possible in space.
When speed is accelerated close to lightspeed, then related to what object?
Also you can imagine forces that apply in such accelerations. At 3-4G which humans could withstand longer periods, it takes 3 full minutes to accelerate to mere 7kps, not few seconds. To accelerate to 250 000kps it takes full 3 months at 3G and undescribable amount of energy. How many Saturn V rocets? 50 000 for a small ship. If that acceleration happens in few seconds, then even thoughest metals would vaporize. If there are energy fields that could keep ships structure intact, the energy, put into that field is equal to energy put into acceleration plus energy that compensates acceleration with antigravity, so that humans inside the ship would not feel a thing. A tiny small glitch at such energies could mean total evaporization of the whole ship not a mere bump.
A lot of simple problems like that, makes using of wormholes the only acceptable way to cover distances measured in lightyears.
there are many similar aspects.
Allright, I think watching too realistic movies could be extremely boring and uneventful
erikboy,
True...
One of the problems with Sci-Fi TV series is that generally, they don't have enough of an audience where they can get the *budget* to do the best that can possibly be done. For example, alien characters have always been fairly humanoid because of the cost factor; the more involved the makeup and prosthetics involved, the more it costs. Doing NON-humanoid aliens in CGI is *very* costly, too; making aliens realistic in both appearance *and* movement takes a *lot* of processing and rendering power, not to mention the necessity for artists! The cost has come down in recent years, but it's still an *extremely* labor-intensive process (which is why shows use a lot of stock shots, i.e., the USS Enterprise going through space or around a planet)!
Technical science on sci-fi shows tends to be inaccurate, and for one simple reason: our conditioning. For example, when the TOS Enterprise 'whooshes' as it flies past, it's *not* accurate; the problem is that we're conditioned by our experiences, and we *expect* something to 'whoosh' as it goes by! In fact, if it *doesn't* 'whoosh', it feels wrong; again, it's because we're conditioned to *expect* it!
So we don't get completely accurate science; these are *dramatic* shows, though, and accuracy *has* to take a back seat to dramatic action! We can't stop and explain science or technology in depth, because we have to move the story forward, *without* getting bogged down in details. Some of the old 1950 sci-fi movies had long, involved explanations of details like why magnetic boots were needed, etc.; even in the best movies, the story was slowed down because of it. Then, in 1968, "2001: A Space Odyssey" came out; no explanations of technology, and, in fact, *very* little dialogue. The story was told *visually*, and Stanley Kubrick pulled it off *perfectly*!
In any case, let's be thankful for what we have...
-YPA
