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Bad science in fiction Hall of Shame


peadar1987

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7 hours ago, Treveli said:

I've taken it as being Starfleet mission assignments.

That would cover the ships being sent to known systems, but it doesn't explain the extremely high percentage of uncharted, never-before-seen planets the ships come across that just happen to be Class M.

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2 hours ago, razark said:

That would cover the ships being sent to known systems, but it doesn't explain the extremely high percentage of uncharted, never-before-seen planets the ships come across that just happen to be Class M.

Those planets are used for them who asks too much, why only terrestrial planets are considered inhabited.

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11 hours ago, Treveli said:

RL reason; easier on the FX budget to fill the galaxy with Earth-like worlds.

Actually it's more like the show - or any other sci-fi tv show since - wouldn't exist otherwise.

McCoy's hand-held medical scanners were SALT AND PEPPER SHAKERS fercrhrissakes, and you want airless planets?

Edited by 5thHorseman
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3 hours ago, 5thHorseman said:

Actually it's more like the show - or any other sci-fi tv show since - wouldn't exist otherwise.

McCoy's hand-held medical scanners were SALT AND PEPPER SHAKERS fercrhrissakes, and you want airless planets?

Yeah. “Captain, scanners indicate that we’ve located the 3127th ball of rock, ices and not-even-prebiotic organic molecules, for this mission. The away team are reporting that their brief and pointless EVA has consumed 125% of the budget for this episode.”

Edited by KSK
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On 11/28/2019 at 11:52 PM, RealKerbal3x said:

I’ve never posted about Star Trek here because it’s so far removed from actual science that I don’t see any reason to connect it to reality, but there’s one thing that annoys me more than it really should.

99% of the planets they visit are Earth-like, with a nice oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere and 1G gravity. Sure, Starfleet may mostly be interested in these types of planets (probably for colonisation), but surely they can’t be THAT common. We only rarely see them visiting gas giants or atmosphereless rocky planets/moons, which is actually what they would likely be doing most of the time.

Then again, this is Star Trek, so I probably shouldn’t question it... :P

A theory: with easy FTL, non-Earthlike planets become utter flyover country.   

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26 minutes ago, DDE said:

A theory: with easy FTL, non-Earthlike planets become utter flyover country.   

 

Reasons to colonize no-man's land when Earth-worlds and FTL warp exist are:

 

1. Your terraforming is THAT good.

2. Strategic. If at war with Earth, colonizing Proxima Centauri planets is a good base of operations to launch supplies from.

3. Trade operations. Sometimes some systems really do have a surplus of valuable ore. Maybe there are shiny planets with so much gold dust in the dirt that it shines from space.

 

Edited by Spacescifi
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One thing that kind of bugged me about ST.   They arrive on a planet, and their scanners detect something just happened, but what?    Ok... Warp far enough away that the event 'signal' can now be detected, and warp back.      They basically have a poor man's form of time travel, why not use it?  

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1 hour ago, Gargamel said:

They basically have a poor man's form of time travel, why not use it?

For the same reason that some rare disease isn't easily cured using the medical supplies in the well-stocked sickbay, or the engine failure isn't solved by building a new part in the ship's machine shop or pulling a spare from the storeroom, or the emergency situation isn't handled by one of the multiple other starships in range of the problem area.

 

In short, it's because the crew and ship were exposed to a highly-charged field of plot radiation, and the intense ploticle residue tends to interfere with the common sense drive.

Edited by razark
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4 minutes ago, Gargamel said:

Machine shop?   Us machinists were put out of business with the invention of the fabricator.

How do you fix the replicator when it needs a replacement frangedoodle and you can't replicate it?

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37 minutes ago, razark said:

See Star Fleet Command Memo #3, Starship Separation, Minimum Distances (in parsecs).

I meant the cabin next door.

I mean sure not every cabin had a replicator but more than 1 did, and if they are ALL broken you're likely in more trouble than having a broken replicator.

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4 hours ago, 5thHorseman said:

Go next door and ask to use their replicator.

Is that the 24th century equivalent of going round to borrow a cup of sugar? For the discerning starship crew member, etchings are probably back in vogue too - the real thing mind, none of your holo-replicated ‘etchings’.

4 hours ago, razark said:

In short, it's because the crew and ship were exposed to a highly-charged field of plot radiation, and the intense ploticle residue tends to interfere with the common sense drive.

“Easy, Captain. I could resolve this problem by simply recalibrating the deflector to accept a phase sensible pulse from the narrativium core. Unfortunately that’s not an option.”

”May I ask why not, Mr LaForge. I remind you that lives are at risk.”

”Writers Guild will go on strike, Captain. Again.”

 

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44 minutes ago, KSK said:

“Easy, Captain. I could resolve this problem by simply recalibrating the deflector to accept a phase sensible pulse from the narrativium core. Unfortunately that’s not an option.”

”May I ask why not, Mr LaForge. I remind you that lives are at risk.”

”Writers Guild will go on strike, Captain. Again.”

Not the Galactica Maneuver!

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1 hour ago, έķ νίĻĻάίή said:

Remember Star Wars? 
Need I explain?

Exactly

Except Star Wars never pretended to be sci-fi. It’s classified as space opera or space fantasy. You can talk about the logical or plot inconsistencies, but this thread is about bad science in sci-fi 

Edit: whoops, been so long since I actually read the thread title that I forgot this thread encompasses all fiction 

Edited by StrandedonEarth
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