Common Sci-Fi tropes that annoy you!

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Megalodon

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Dreadjaws said:
tmande2nd said:
Alien space babes:
Making an entire group of aliens "hawt" so that people can get cheap fanservice.
Twileks
Orions
Asari
I dont mind fanservice in works of fiction, but when Captain Dude lands on a planet and the female population consists entirely of bikini models in skin paint with some rubber ridges added to their forehead my eyes roll so hard they hurt.
The Asari shouldn't count. The interesting deal about them is that they're "shape-cheaters". They actually look like a member of whichever race whomever's watching them belongs to. They look human-like to us because we're human, to the Turians, they look turian-like and so on.
Except that doesn't quite work, as Asari are clearly the most human shaped of all the major alien races you encounter. If Asari looked like Krogan or Turians to members of that species, the illusion would be dispelled as soon as physical contact was made, as they are blatantly different (wrong head shape, number of fingers etc.). Combined with the fact that only humans and asari could use the same armour in ME1, it is clear that asari are basically human-like.

So there are 2 possible explanations I can think of for that scene in the bar in ME2 (which I assume is the basis for the "shape-cheater" idea). The first is that the writers were stupidly lazy and forgot what the first game had already shown us, and put that scene in to deflect the very trope we're discussing, despite it not making any sense (this is very possible, as I'm leaning towards the idea that the only thing the writer could remember between games was who Shepard could sleep with). The second is that you hear the salarian and turian essentially explaining their own species' 'male gaze', with each species focussing on the closest analogue the asari posses to their own species' secondary sexual characteristics.
 

rorychief

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Any time humanity inherits the solution to an unstoppable all consuming galactic cull/purge type threat, and the solution is always some form of automatic purge wave anyway. It would make for a great thought experiment to try and come up with a way to stop the reapers, flood, necromorphs etc. without the cop out of their last victims having fully developed a machine to simultaneously turn every member of the enemy 'off' with no collateral damage or need to tactically deploy the weapon. It's just a button press and they would have won, too bad they went extinct somewhere between making the win machine operational and hitting the switch.

It pisses me off because it reeks of laziness when there are so many real life cases of drastic solutions to insurmountable problems. It robs humans of the chance to use the traits we're supposed to hold over the less imaginative, more rigid enemy, our ingenuity and adaptiveness and turns the final section into a 'Get to the button!'rat race like humanities greatest militaristic feat is the equivalent of a toddler making their way across the floor to get to a discarded pistol. I mean would WW2 really be the fascinating example of humanity pushed to extremes if it had just been the allies throwing all their resources into excavating Antartica in search of the fabled Nazi off switch?

For once I'd love if the human's poured absolutely everything they had left, every ship, man, woman child and sentient drone into securing the magic OFF button created by the ancient ones to combat the great Darkness, only to realize it was all a huge waste of time, and that every culture has some kind of dispelling satan from the world myth and just because you find hieroglyphs on an alien planet doesn't mean the staff depicted as being held by the most prominent high priest figure is a literal real world object and the key to saving the present day. Bonus points if the bad guys spread word of the legendary weapon of absolute zero drawbacks and effort as a means to keep the goodies chasing bullshit mythical artifacts rather than accomplish anything tactical.
 

Soviet Heavy

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Zetatrain said:
Soviet Heavy said:
Serioli said:
Proud warrior race guys who are:

A - (western view?) Samurai analogues. What about warrior guys whose culture rewards sneaky, dishonourable or whatever wins thinking?
So Klingons, then? I'm not talking about the TNG YOU LACK HONOR Klingons. I'm referring to the sneaky, backstabbing sons of bitches from TOS and Deep Space Nine. The Klingons in TOS were analogs for the Russian communists, and were quite keen on playing dirty tricks to gain the upper hand.

Deep Space Nine Klingons were a reaction to the ridiculous honor obsessed TNG Klingons, showing them to be completely ruthless, indiscriminate in their attacks, and that their whole display of honor and courage is just a bluff that hides their true ambitions.
DS9 Klingons are still TNG Klingons except shown in a more...realistic light. While its shown that there are those who are hypocrites or simply don't believe in the whole honor code, the Klingon culture is still heavily engrossed in the whole honor and courage thing and definitely does not reward sneaky and dishonorable acts as Serioli mentioned above.

There was one episode in DS9 (one where Quark has to marry a Klingon woman) where Quark finds out that one Klingon guy is undermining another Klingon house/clan through financial means (something considered dishonorable). When the matter is brought to the chancellor, the same Klingon tries to deny it.
It's only dishonorable if you get caught. Besides, Quark teaching Klingons finance is hilarious.
 

hermes

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Universes where humans are the best because they are more adaptable, resilient, had more potential or know the power of love... I believe Mass Effect 1 did a great job by making humans the underdogs, but by the time of 2, we where the biggest priority of the eldritch killing machines, and run the show on the most powerful clandestine organization in the galaxy
 

hermes

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thaluikhain said:
Schtimpy said:
Alien invasions being so easily repelled. Let's say you travelled across a galaxy, would you really bank conquering a planet on an all in attack and not stop and see what's up with the planet first? In Signs, the aliens were weak against water (which you can see from space), in War of the Worlds it was a earth disease of some kind. Both easily checked by sending down a scout and realizing "Nope, not worth it." I know in movies humans always have to win, but it wreaks my suspension of disbelief when the super powerful, technologically advanced race shows up to conquer a planet and just kinda fizzles by the end of the movie. At least make the victory earned.
In War of the World's, they couldn't send down a scout, they travelled via giant space guns, not ships, they'd probably have not way of signalling back home.

The point of the story was that victory wasn't earned by the humans, the aliens just didn't understand the planet, which is fair enough.

(As an aside, British artillery was capable of defeating the alien war machines, and most European nations had better artillery at that time)
Actually, in war of the world it was shown that the tripods where below the surface the entire time, and it was interpreted as them being sent a long time ago. It was also said that we where intended as a target for a long time.
 

Strain42

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Given how long this has gone on for, I'm sure someone has already said this (and if they haven't that makes me very sad)

but I'm going to go with the Genius Smart-Ass kid that seems to pop up in a lot of sci-fi.

Wesley Crusher, Cubert, etc. etc.
 

Belaam

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xPixelatedx said:
Not to defend that awful, awful movie... but what about real life? Most things here are 4 limbed species, yeah, but you can bet we have a bunch of things that aren't to! What would have happened if not humans, but a giant octopus or insect rose up and became the sentient life form on earth? Technically speaking, it would then be like Pandora, with the citizens of earth having a different limb-set then most of the animals around them.
All mammals, birds, and most reptiles have very similar skeletal systems. Certainly there could be sentient octopi or insects, but it does seem as though it would be unlikely for only one member of that species to exist in a given area. It would be like if humans were the only mammal on the planet. I guess theoretically possible, but...

I spent a good chunk of Avatar wondering if there was going to be a reveal that the Na'vi were also alien to Pandora, but showed up and bio-engineered the planet to be controllable by them.

Certainly their pretty much identically human feet seem more evolved for fast movement on a flat surface than running around on trees as they do throughout the movie.

But in general CGI budgets keep alien biodiversity low. I mean, if an alien landed in my backyard and peeked over a couple fences and hung out there for ten minutes, it would almost see humans of a variety of sizes and skin tones, three very diverse breeds of dogs, a half dozen differently colored cats, quite a few bird species (hummingbird to possibly hawk), dozens of flying and crawling insects, and probably 50 species of trees, plants, grasses, flowers, etc. In contrast, alien worlds in film all seem to have suffered some major disaster that killed off most plant and animal life.
 

Grach

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xPixelatedx said:
But that was just a hypothetical idea for the sake of argument. I was merely defending the notion, not the movie. That said, I am pretty sure they showed other primates on Pandora who had six limbs. If their other primates had six limbs there is simply no reason why the Na'vi didn't, aside from purposely making them more "human-like" to be relatable. Which is indeed VERY poor alien design.
The problem with the wildlife in Avatar is that it's just a mishmash of species we already know, essentially having WAY too much evolutionary analogues to earth. This makes the movie hard to take seriously, since everything is either two species combined together (the thanatos is just a bigger panther with a flower in its neck) or just a species we already know but with more limbs added (which would make them useless) and decked out with bioluminescence just for making them cool.

This wouldn't bother me so much if only Cameron hadn't said that he wanted the wildlife to be biologically accurate.
 

Genocidicles

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hermes200 said:
Actually, in war of the world it was shown that the tripods where below the surface the entire time, and it was interpreted as them being sent a long time ago. It was also said that we where intended as a target for a long time.
In the original book the Martians were fired at Earth in giant capsules, and they built their tripods after landing.
 

ccggenius12

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Reed Spacer said:
Cockable beam weapons.

It's a beam weapon, you pillocks. There are no moving parts.
I like to think that they added a function that accomplishes nothing, just because of popular demand, like how the close door button on an elevator really doesn't do anything. Basically, cocking weapons feels good, so even if it accomplishes nothing, we have a reason to build it in anyhow.
Also, I love technobabble, especially if what their saying has nothing to do with what's being discussed. You get to laugh at how stupid it is, and at the fact that somewhere, someone thinks they're being accurate.
Personally, I dislike it when the food of the far future, billions of light years away from earth, looks exactly the same as earth cuisine. Although I find the thought of humans taking cows with them to the stars because delicious to be hilarious.
 

Nadia Castle

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Alien Communists, Alien Capitalists, Alien Feudal, basically anything that feels the need to create and entire new species that somehow correlate perfectly with human civilizations. Phrases like 'when their planet became industrial' annoy the hell out me. Our planet industrialized so every other culture used the method of industrial production as their means of using machines? Not to mention our planet built industry in chunks and at different speeds, with some areas heavily reducing it. Who says an alien civilization would even need or understand commerce or currency?

I actually love the whole '20 mins into the future' sci fi trope. I can't help it, Captain Scarlet is set in 2068 and the world is essentially our world with giant vehicles, but there is an imagination to them in terms of basic tech which countless stories set in the 24th century could never dream of touching. Robocop and Dredd also stick with the 'everything is the same but bigger' and are much cleverer with their material than 'it's swords and sorcery with spaceships'.
 

Silvanus

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The worst sci-fi trope for me is dialogue that is intended to be advanced science, but is absolutely meaningless. Usually, it's used to hand-wave away plot concerns.

This is present in GW2, but by far the worst offender is Doctor Who. The following is actual dialogue from the episode "Journey's End". For reference, just before this part, the Daleks are counting down to destroying the universe with their "reality bomb", but then the Dalek machine starts malfunctioning, and they look to Donna...

Journey said:
Donna Noble: "Aaaaand, closing all Z-Neutrino relay loops, using an internalised, synchronous, back-feed reversal loop! That button there!"
Daleks: "System in shutdown! Detonation negative!"
Supreme Dalek: "Explain! Explain! EXPLAIN!"
Doctor: "Donna, you can't even change a plug".
Donna Noble: "You wanna bet, time boy?"
Davros: "You'll suffer for this".

Davros aims his metal lazer-glove at Donna. Suddenly, it shorts out.

Donna Noble: "Ohh. Bio-electric dampening field with a retrogressive arc inversion!"
Daleks: "Exterminate! Exterminate! ...Weapons nonfunctional!"
Donna Noble: "Macro transmission of a K-field wavelength blocking Dalek weaponry in a self-replicating semi-bifold matrix!"
Doctor: "How did you work that out? You're..."
The Doctor's Clone: "Time Lord. Part Time-Lord".
Donna Noble: "Half human. Oh yes. That was a two-way biological metacrisis".
No, no, no, that's fucking criminal.
 

Ihateregistering1

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Melee combat in the future.

I'll be the first to admit I'm a huge Warhammer 40K fan (which has probably the most egregious use of this) but I always found it bizarre that we have these futuristic settings where firearms and weaponry are supposed to be vastly superior and more advanced than modern day firearms, yet melee is used MORE often in combat than it is now. Riddick, StarCraft, WH40K are all pretty bad abusers of this.

I wouldn't mind it so much if they provided a reason for why, but the only one that really gave a good explanation was the "Dune" books, in which pretty much everyone had personal shielding that stops fast-moving objects (ie. bullets, arrows, etc.) but doesn't stop slower moving objects, so Soldiers are forced to fight with swords and knives.
 

Zontar

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Ihateregistering1 said:
Melee combat in the future.

I'll be the first to admit I'm a huge Warhammer 40K fan (which has probably the most egregious use of this) but I always found it bizarre that we have these futuristic settings where firearms and weaponry are supposed to be vastly superior and more advanced than modern day firearms, yet melee is used MORE often in combat than it is now. Riddick, StarCraft, WH40K are all pretty bad abusers of this.

I wouldn't mind it so much if they provided a reason for why, but the only one that really gave a good explanation was the "Dune" books, in which pretty much everyone had personal shielding that stops fast-moving objects (ie. bullets, arrows, etc.) but doesn't stop slower moving objects, so Soldiers are forced to fight with swords and knives.
This is a common one that annoys me as well, but even in ones where they try to explain it there is usually no real reason for it (in 40k they try to explain it away as the armor just being that good. Yeah, the same armor that animals bit off with their teeth).
 

JediMB

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Megalodon said:
The second is that you hear the salarian and turian essentially explaining their own species' 'male gaze', with each species focussing on the closest analogue the asari posses to their own species' secondary sexual characteristics.
That's always how I interpreted the scene. I was quite surprised when I first realized that a lot of people actually thought they changed their outward appearance through telepathy.
 

Tom_green_day

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canadamus_prime said:
This irritates me too. Esp. what the franchise can't stay consistent with what time travel rules are in play. Stargate, I'm looking at you.
You think that's bad don't watch Doctor Who.
OT: Boring monster design. If you're going to design crazy alien species, don't make them boring. Bad examples include Doctor Who, XCOM, Mass Effect etc. Good examples include Pacific Rim and Cloverfields.
And when the hero is fighting against the sci-fi part like the new Robocop or Deus Ex, when it's basically conservative fighting the change.
And expanding from OP's second point, when nouns are invented for other nouns in general. Like 'Blaster', it's a bloody gun. 'Synthetic' it's a goddamn robot. And let's face it, the lightsabre is just a sword in disguise.
 

Ihateregistering1

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Zontar said:
Ihateregistering1 said:
Melee combat in the future.

I'll be the first to admit I'm a huge Warhammer 40K fan (which has probably the most egregious use of this) but I always found it bizarre that we have these futuristic settings where firearms and weaponry are supposed to be vastly superior and more advanced than modern day firearms, yet melee is used MORE often in combat than it is now. Riddick, StarCraft, WH40K are all pretty bad abusers of this.

I wouldn't mind it so much if they provided a reason for why, but the only one that really gave a good explanation was the "Dune" books, in which pretty much everyone had personal shielding that stops fast-moving objects (ie. bullets, arrows, etc.) but doesn't stop slower moving objects, so Soldiers are forced to fight with swords and knives.
This is a common one that annoys me as well, but even in ones where they try to explain it there is usually no real reason for it (in 40k they try to explain it away as the armor just being that good. Yeah, the same armor that animals bit off with their teeth).
Or the "Armor" that the Orks wear, which is usually just scraps of leather and tin cans.

That being said, in WH40K's instance, I completely get why they do it, as it creates a wider variety of army and unit types that players can put together and use, so I give it a big pass. Plus WH40K is already so bat-shit crazy that trying to apply too much logic to it just takes away half of what makes it fun.
 

CelestDaer

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I don't know if it's been said yet, because I got bored half way through the thread, but alien races that are human, but technicolor... I'm glaring at you, Mass Effect... Not only are the Asari humanoid but blue (plus the cartilaginous head fins and the 'can have children with any race) but the Quarians, who were humans but weak through their immune system, and when we finally get to see one without a mask, she's purple...? Whereas that one picture of Tali suggests they're meant to be kind of aqua green...