I can’t beat the throw away line from The Time Tunnel;
-Ignorant English Serf"How did you knock him out?"
-American Time Traveller"Oh, just some home made nerve gas"
Probably helps if you watched the episode.
I loved Babylon 5, but some of the acting performances were unpleasant.
We had a running argument on who was the worse actor, the fellow who played the Doctor or the woman who played Lyta.
Evidence 1) Doctor: If you told me you were going to flap your arms and fly to Earth (from Mars), I’d say you were nuts. If the Captain told me to do it, I’d tell him to stop by the East Side and pick me up some bagels.
Evidence 2) Lyta (during a covert, quiet mission): WHY DOES THIS KEEP HAPPENING? When I get back to the station, I"M GONNA SUE SOMEBODY!
In the end, most folks preferred Lyta to the Doc, because “At least she’s HOT.”
Any line from “Space: Above and Beyond” in which they referred to light-year as a measure of time. Kee-ryst, I hate it when they do that.
Dammit Jim, I’m a doctor, not a . . . (insert favorite here).
Okay, this isn’t exactly on topic. But there was a moment in the Dr. Jekyl and Ms. Hyde movie, you know, the one with Sean Young and the guy from Wings. The main character was a geneticist and he puts forth, “Here it is. The gene that causes all human evil.” This has become synonymous for me with all crappy sci-fi premises. Like “jumping the shark” but different.
Yeah, poor Pat Tallman. She means well, but she can’t act her way out of a paper bag and should probably stick to stunt work. I still like her though.
And allow me to say, for the third time since I joined the Straight Dope:
“Brain and brain, what is brain?”
Star Trek, 3rd season, of course.
Please…don’t forget the ultimate cliche’:
I’ll just reconfigure the polarity of the <X> and everything will be solved.
As for Lyta, I prefered her to Talia. But then…[homer simpson voice]Redheads, MMMMMMM[/homer simpson voice]
The most recent and damned annoying variation of this is when the character looks at a 3-D computer model of DNA and immediately blurts out, “This is human DNA!”
On a very old episode of Bonanza, DeForest Kelly played a lawyer. One of his lines was “I’m a small town lawyer,
not a surgeon.” Cracked me up.
When this happened, my head nearly exploded. I’m not especially skilled when it comes to science (I’m a journalism major, after all :)), but as a human being who has completed high school biology, chemestry, and physics, I was personally offended by the science in Mission to Mars. I hope everyone responsable for that movie has to watch it on an endless loop once they reach Hell.
End hijack. Show’s over. Move along. Nothing else to see here.
Have none of you seen Nightman? Any sentence, taken at random, from that show is ten times worse than anything you’ve mentioned thus far. My personal favorites:
“Maybe you were in a state of nervonic sleep- you know, like a shark.”
“Hmmm… this symbol looks Celtic, or perhaps Chinese or Atlantean.”
My friends and I made our predictions of what cliched plots “Nightman” would eventually drag out- you know, someone steals Nightman’s suit, Nightman travels through time, Nightman vs. Evil Nightman, Nightman vs. Jack the Ripper, etc. Subsequent episodes of Nightman played out our list one by one.
Let me not forget to mention the truly bizarre thing about that show: overuse of bluescreen. It seemed like about 90% of what went on in that show was badly bluescreened, including (honest to god) shots of people just sitting around talking.
As for Mission to Mars, remember that NASA was touted as being a scientific consultant for that movie. Scientific American even did an article on it…
-Ben
Attention everyone! There is a herd of killer rabbits headed this way!
From almost all of the real old 1950s science fiction movies:
Girl, upon seeing creature: Scream!!!’
Girl, inside boy’s car trying to escape creature: ‘Scream!!!’
Girl, after out running creature, sees bushes move: ‘Scream!!!’
Girls script in movie: 'This happens and you line is ‘scream,’ then this happens and your line is ‘scream with feeling.’
Basic human to alien encounter: ‘What are they?’
‘Shoot!’