Bad science in fiction Hall of Shame

[derega16]

On 8/22/2020 at 2:06 PM, s_gamer101 said:

That's indeed the official explanation for it as far as I know. And there are guns at the end of those wings. If the guns are further apart, the chance that one of them hits the target is higher.

But I don't wan't to say that Star Wars is realistic because it is not realistic. It doesn't even try to show realistic spaceflight. When watching Star Wars I try to not think too much about physics and enjoy it (I like Star Wars).

My problem about newer Starwars movies is it is trying to be realistic and failed in the flim about space wizard

Edited August 28, 2020 by derega16

[Codraroll]

29 minutes ago, derega16 said:

My problem about newer Starwars movies is it is trying to be realistic and failed in the flim about space wizard

Of all the problems of new Star Wars, I don't consider "realism" to be very significant. It has always been the case that nothing in Star Wars makes sense when you try to think it through. The problems arise when they call attention to some of the logical implications of their universe (such as hyperspace ramming with smaller vessels to completely obliterate larger ones) and then continue as if they don't mean anything. This makes the movies lose internal consistency, and that's not good.

[kerbiloid]

Spoiler

Compared to Jar-Jar and the Rey's hairdo, nothing actually deserves to be called "bad" in SW.

 

[kerbiloid]

The Hobbit, the last part of it.

In the battle, where the elves stand next to the fortress and shoot.

1. When they are shooting the orcs, the arrows trajectory looks more shallow, than when they're shooting the dwarves, though (according to the background rocks) the dwarves are closer than the orcs.

2. The town, burnt by the dragon, still contains a lot of intact wooden walls.

3. Among two related species, the one from hot climate, usually has bigger ears and other extended structures, using them as radiators.
While the species living in cold, has smaller ones, to prevent them from being frozen.

The humans have usual small ears.
The elves have the big radiator ears, like they have come from a hot place.
The orcs have similar ears, and they prefer to live under ground, close to lava and their forges.

The humans have usual hair.
The orcs don't have significant hair.
The elves have pale hair, like they are either from Ice Age, or from the caves.

The elves are higher and bigger than humans, and this is an advantage when the climate is cold, but the food is enough.

So, we can presume that the elves have evolved either in cold climate with enough food (but then what about their large ears?), or in hot caves (where their ears are radiators).

Probably, actually they have come from the underground fiery caves, like the orcs do.

Conclusion: actually the elves are a hybrid of orcs with kidnapped humans, that's why they look similar to both, and that's why their ears are long.

Edited August 28, 2020 by kerbiloid

[DDE]

3 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

  Hide contents

Compared to Jar-Jar and the Rey's hairdo, nothing actually deserves to be called "bad" in SW.

 

Amusingly, it looks Trevorrow had different plans on that... scalp back when he was sketching Episode IX: Duel of the Fates.

Spoiler

His script was bad, mind you. The crew depicted above wasn't supposed to steal just any Star Destroyer, it seems...

Spoiler

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Eclipse-class_dreadnought

It's amusing the Disney canon had already relegated it to a mere sistership of the Executor

 

[kerbiloid]

7 hours ago, DDE said:

Amusingly, it looks Trevorrow had different plans on that... scalp back when he was sketching Episode IX: Duel of the Fates.

Yeah. Even this mangy rat tail is much better.

7 hours ago, DDE said:

His script was bad, mind you. The crew depicted above wasn't supposed to steal just any Star Destroyer, it seems..

7 hours ago, DDE said:

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Eclipse-class_dreadnought

Looking at this fleet, consisting of brutally sounding "dread notes" and "destroyers", it's hard to avoid a facepalm, recalling that actually, historically, irl, the "destroyer" means just a "torpedo boat destroyer", not a "devastator".

[DDE]

6 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Looking at this fleet, consisting of brutally sounding "dread notes" and "destroyers", it's hard to avoid a facepalm, recalling that actually, historically, irl, the "destroyer" means just a "torpedo boat destroyer", not a "devastator".

Agreed, this leads to serious translation issues in Russian. Where are the torpedoes or mines on the ISD?

As to 'dreadnoughts', sci-fi authors just have an inordinate attachment to the term.

6 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Yeah. Even this mangy rat tail is much better.

It seems that, just like Emilia Clarke has a tendency for exaggerated shouting, Daisy Ridley stalwartly keeps her hair at 'medium length', at least judging by my memory and a quick image search.

Spoiler

What I'm reminded of in that regard.

 

[kerbiloid]

3 hours ago, DDE said:

this leads to serious translation issues in Russian.

Especially since "torpedo boat destroyer" in Russian is "истребитель миноносцев", where "истребитель" (literally, "mass killer", "destroyer", "eliminator") in Russian is the term for the "fighter" airplane,
while the ship which is called "destroyer" in English, is a "squadron's torpedo carrier/torpedo boat" / "эскадренный миноносец".

So, literally in Russian the rebel X-Wings are "destroyers", while the Imperial ships are "squadron torpedo boats", against which the destroyers were designed.

***

It's like "red" and "blue" arrows on a map.
For somebody "red" = "theirs", "blue" = "ours", for another one - vice versa. As a result, red and blue mark the same on everyone's map.

Edited August 29, 2020 by kerbiloid

[wumpus]

19 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

The Hobbit, the last part of it.

...

Conclusion: actually the elves are a hybrid of orcs with kidnapped humans, that's why they look similar to both, and that's why their ears are long.

Elves are extremely long lived and therefore have significantly less evolutionary pressure.  They are also fantastically overadapted (they'd be a "Mary Sue" race if Tolkien hadn't identified with the hobbits) and all selection is likely sexual selection and warfare survival.  Also note that elvish superiority extends Tolkien's Catholic view of marriage even further: elvish marriages don't "death do us part" (they don't remarry).  So sexual selection presumably includes expected warfare selection.  Which is why we see such impressive martial arts by the mostly peaceful elves in the movies, they need to impress the elfmaidens.

Orcs canonically do not exist thanks to natural selection but by deliberate breeding by Morgoth and Sauron.

Oddly enough, of all the races in Middle Earth, the only one whose origin is a mystery is the hobbit race.

[kerbiloid]

38 minutes ago, wumpus said:

Elves are extremely long lived and therefore have significantly less evolutionary pressure.  They are also fantastically overadapted (they'd be a "Mary Sue" race if Tolkien hadn't identified with the hobbits) and all selection is likely sexual selection and warfare survival. 

The book and movie elves are different, the book ones don't have long ears, as JRRT was against it.

But in the movie Galadriel has long ears, while she's just of the third (?) elvish generation, according to the books, so unlikely she could get the long ears by evolution.
(Or she is made long-eared by design, but then why the pale hair?)

Also, unlikely the warfare can be an effective evolutionary tool for them, as many well-known elves live for thousands years in Silmarillion and later in LOTR.
Probably their kung-fu is hard-coded.

38 minutes ago, wumpus said:

Orcs canonically do not exist thanks to natural selection but by deliberate breeding by Morgoth and Sauron.

Yes, the book orcs are degraded book elves.

38 minutes ago, wumpus said:

of all the races in Middle Earth, the only one whose origin is a mystery is the hobbit race.

According to the additional materials, the hobbits are a branch separated from Rokhans, and share their old language with them.
(Not depicted in books).

***

So, while the book elves look matching the description, the movie elves look strangely different from the book standard.

These ears make me to think that they've shown to us some fake, counterfeit elves.

Edited August 29, 2020 by kerbiloid

[magnemoe]

14 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Looking at this fleet, consisting of brutally sounding "dread notes" and "destroyers", it's hard to avoid a facepalm, recalling that actually, historically, irl, the "destroyer" means just a "torpedo boat destroyer", not a "devastator".

Destroyers started out as escorts to battleships or cruisers to intercept and destroy torpedo boats as in torpedo boat destroyer, however very soon they found they could add torpedo tubes on the destroyers so you could use them to attack capital ships in addition to fight other destroyers and torpedo boats. This solved the main issue with torpedo boats who was short range and did not handle rough sea well as they pretty much an large speed boat. 

Destroyers got other duties like air defense and most important anti submarine warfare. During WW2 they had become large and well armed enough to be useful in shore bombardment. 
So destroyer is an well defined term. 

Dreadnought on the other hand is obsolete, it was an revolutionary battleship then build back in 1905, and up to WW1 it was kind of an standard, however Dreadnought was second line in WW1, it killed one ship, an submarine who she rammed
Super star destroyer makes a bit more sense, however as this this is orders of magnitude larger than the standard ones, more than an carrier is larger than an destroyer its kind of under-kill. 

Also armament on them are weird, why 550 heavy laser cannons? 50 heavier ones would be much better. Assuming this is to fight other capital ships or it that the 75 ion ones. And the heavy lasers are secondary guns then 500 is nice
Now one thing it lack is point defense weapons. 
As they tend to be taken out by fighters pretty often, and that star wars is based on  WW2 there 300 meter long battleships and carriers tend to have 100 AAA guns, well 100.000 point defense weapons would be fitting. 
Simply have droids operate the smaller ones. 

[DDE]

12 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Also armament on them are weird, why 550 heavy laser cannons? 50 heavier ones would be much better.

Star Wars fluff writers have a long-standing aversion to large-bore, well-concentrated main batteries. Consider the fact that ISDs have octuple main turrets in an absolutely terrible arrangement.

12 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Now one thing it lack is point defense weapons. 

Canonically the standard ISDs have half a hundred of these as a mixed light battery and point defense:

Spoiler

However, effective, rapid fire PD systems are another thing SW lacks.

[wumpus]

21 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

The book and movie elves are different, the book ones don't have long ears, as JRRT was against it.

But in the movie Galadriel has long ears, while she's just of the third (?) elvish generation, according to the books, so unlikely she could get the long ears by evolution.
(Or she is made long-eared by design, but then why the pale hair?)

Back when Shatner and Nimoy were first making a TV show called Star Trek, there was a surprise when Nimoy got most of the fan mail from the ladies.  Presumably the pretty boy leader (Shatner) was supposed to get it.  According to "I am not Spock" and/or "I am Spock" (both by Nimoy of course), the theory on the set was that it was due to the ears.  Should Nimoy stray to far they'd threaten to take his ears away.

I'd like to hear that this was revived on the set of the [movie] Lord of the Rings.

I *think* that Lord of the Rings is less scientifically accurate than Star Wars, but this likely required a bit of effort on Tolkien's part to make it feel more like dark age/migration period myths.

[Codraroll]

21 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

But in the movie Galadriel has long ears, while she's just of the third (?) elvish generation, according to the books, so unlikely she could get the long ears by evolution.
(Or she is made long-eared by design, but then why the pale hair?)

She must have been cosplaying earlier in the day and forgotten to remove that part of the costume before she met the Fellowship.

[kerbiloid]

Also it's a rather strange hobbit habit: to end the square corridors with round doors.

Spacemen? Wheeled nomads? Or side effects of hobbit tobacco?

Edited August 30, 2020 by kerbiloid

[s_gamer101]

2 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

 

Also it's a rather strange hobbit habit: to end the square corridors with round doors.

Spacemen? Wheeled nomads? Or side effects of hobbit tobacco?

 

It was just the newest door fashion at the shire.

[magnemoe]

9 hours ago, DDE said:

Star Wars fluff writers have a long-standing aversion to large-bore, well-concentrated main batteries. Consider the fact that ISDs have octuple main turrets in an absolutely terrible arrangement.

Canonically the standard ISDs have half a hundred of these as a mixed light battery and point defense:

  Hide contents

However, effective, rapid fire PD systems are another thing SW lacks.

True, now they might want to evade the battleships in space trope even it they ended up defining it. 
And the above gun looks huge, the window behind emphasis this, I say its larger than an battleship main turret, now that would be the secondary weapons on an star destroyer but not anything close in weapons. say the 5" secondaries on battleships who was dual purpose guns. 

Now 
this Is an close in weapon system. You can tilt it up to reload the missiles from an magazine if this is installed. 

[kerbiloid]

34 minutes ago, s_gamer101 said:

newest door fashion at the shire.

Newest? In Shire?
Here There, in Shire, we they don't like anything new, and the "newest" is a harsh and swear word.

21 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

this Is an close in weapon system. You can tilt it up to reload the missiles from an magazine if this is installed. 

We can see the shoulders. Where is the other body?

[razark]

27 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

There, in Shire, they don't like anything new...

Which is exactly why the doors are round.

The original hobbit dwellings were holes in the ground, and the door originates back with the simple burrow opening.

[kerbiloid]

9 minutes ago, razark said:

The original hobbit dwellings were holes in the ground, and the door originates back with the simple burrow opening.

Yes, "kudukkan", literally "hole builders".

And this reminds of another setting.

Spoiler

Vault-Tec are hobbits.

[DDE]

1 hour ago, magnemoe said:

Now 
this Is an close in weapon system. You can tilt it up to reload the missiles from an magazine if this is installed. 

Upgrade to the newest package today!

* Droid voice sold separately

[magnemoe]

12 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Also it's a rather strange hobbit habit: to end the square corridors with round doors.

Spacemen? Wheeled nomads? Or side effects of hobbit tobacco?

Round doors are cannon so you need them but square corridors are easier to make at the prop shop, however tunnels tend to have an arched roof. 
Only exception I know is tunnels who was build and filled over not dug out. 

And yes round doors is kind of stupid but lots of fashion is. 
 

[wumpus]

On 8/30/2020 at 4:38 AM, DDE said:

Star Wars fluff writers have a long-standing aversion to large-bore, well-concentrated main batteries. Consider the fact that ISDs have octuple main turrets in an absolutely terrible arrangement.

Canonically the standard ISDs have half a hundred of these as a mixed light battery and point defense:

  Reveal hidden contents

However, effective, rapid fire PD systems are another thing SW lacks.

I seem to recall from "the making of Star Wars" (this was before the rename to "a new hope") was that the biggest influence on Star Wars gunnery was the availability of battleship model kits (presumably WWII) during the 1970s and how useful bits and pieces from such were to glue on spaceship models for the greenscreen.

All the fan theory had to be retrofitted around whatever was easy for the special effects crew to make something look good.  And since the "making of" probably was released before Empire Strikes Back (probably just before, to drive up hype), I doubt the fan theory had even started (granted, I was still a kid so who knows what various fanbases were doing in fanzines).

[kerbiloid]

Iirc, Nostromo was partially made of hulls of spent TVsets.

[magnemoe]

20 hours ago, DDE said:

Upgrade to the newest package today!

* Droid voice sold separately

Now, why did they not design the optical sensor too look like an smiley :) 

Its always nice then automated weapon systems looks friendly, stuff like this tend to mainly have two settings. Off and Active, probably with an 3rd manual setting for use against boats getting close or if you demand to board another ship and want an option for fire support, the main gun is a bit overkill if the shell even arm.