I’ve noticed that. Even recent movies have that - huge towers everywhere, everything is 100% downtown. People teeming in the streets. There are no suburbs. Even though it’s quite clear the trend is the exact opposite.
cough holodeck cough
At least in Trek, it’s a poorly kept secret that not only can the holodecks or holosuites be used for porn, but for interactive porn. It’s pretty clear in Voyager that Janeway may be hosing an Irish hologram from the Fair Haven holoprogram. I’d attribute this quote if I could remember who said it: “Trek holodecks should probably have a drain at the bottom.” 
A notable feature of all sci-fi is that the weirdness and special capabilities of aliens tends to vary in direct proportion to the sophistication of the special effects industry. Go back far enough, and you knew the alien WAS an alien purely because you were told he was. He looked like anyone else. In something like “Space 1999” aliens are very much like people wearing a lot of make-up (so their skin is anything except skin coloured) and some weird clothes. A few years later, and all aliens look very much like ordinary people wearing a great deal of latex prosthetics. A few years after that, aliens can “shapeshift”, largely because morphing was the hot new toy in the edit suite.
This gives rise to the fun new game of Special FX archaeology. Given a decent clip from a sci-fi story, and a rough knowledge of the history of the special FX industry, you can nail when the thing was made to within a 2-3 year period. Interestingly, you have to apply a two-tier scale, whereby the “made for TV” scale lags about 18 months behind the “made for movie theatre” scale.
Clothing:
[list=1][li]Silver and/or bright primary colors[]Black leather and studs[]brown robes and cloaks[]light, flimsy stuff in pastel colors[/list=1][/li]Ships:
[list=1][li]airplanes on steroids[]V-2 rockets on steroidsflying saucers[/list=1][/li]
Every city is either an art-deco paradise or a run-down slum.
A robot, no matter the function for which it was designed, either wants to be a human, or wants to ravish the hero’s girlfriend.
No matter how advanced the civilization, its economy is still based on slave labor, hence the need to enslave humanity.
No matter how advanced the technology, raw materials can only be mined on Earth-like planets.
Then how do you explain Star Destroyers? 
The Star Destroyer is a Flying Wing aircraft on steroids. 
Or, add #4. Simple geometric shapes with a rocket stuck on one end.
Oh please. A “Flying Wing” is aerodynamic.
Still doesn’t work, 'cuz a Star Destroyeer is too complex to be called “simple” (don’t believe me? Try drawing one. Those things have angles that would make Da Vinci blow his brains out).
How’s this for a category: “Big-ass-fucking ominous chunks of death-delivering metal.”
(Sorry… I’m a tad religious about Star Destroyers… ::hums the “Imperial march”::).
Hey hey! What about absolute boneheads wandering around through space who haven’t figured out really good flashlights? (Hey Jim, we’ve got enough anti-matter to fly 8000 times faster than the speed of light, and we can turn this small moon into slag in about 3 seconds. So why am I holding a candle as we explore the big cave with the alien?)
and then there’s the Sluggy Sci-fi Adventure!
http://www.sluggy.com/d/970929.html
The ship’s computer always has a female voice unless it’s insane/evil (HAL, the Star Trek episode where a computer calculates real casualties for a virtual war).
A horde of carniverous alien creatures can live and breed on an otherwise barren planet (Starship Troopers, Pitch Black, Alien).
Starships can perform equally well in an atmosphere (X-Wings, TIE Fighters, USS Voyager), and even if crashlanding from orbit, can make it to the surface sort of intact (USS Enterprise in “Generations”, Nightingale in “Pitch Black”).
The enemy aliens have better weapons technology, but humans can always find a weakness (Star Trek).
A lightsaber can beat a squad of Stormtroopers with blaster rifles. But only if you’re a Jedi. Then again, Stormtroopers can’t aim for shit, except when beating up on innocent Jawas (Star Wars, as if you didn’t know).
Humans are the only species that comes in different colors and has more than one culture. (I suppose that’s progress; in the past, humans only came in white. snort)
Gigantic space-time anomalies can be fixed by mere mortals (Star Trek).
Deities are either con artists or misunderstood beings from another dimension. Or both (Q anyone? - Star Trek).
A whiny farmboy can save the galaxy (Star Wars).
One of the really amazing things about our current culture is how retro everybody actually is. For example, where I live (NE), everybody wants to live in a house that most closely resembles dwellings built in 1600! Our towns are typically laid out in the style of 200 years ago, and our clothing (with little changes) is identical with that worn 100 years ago. Even out lamps are imitations of oil-burning lamps of 150-200 years ago! I really don’t understand this-we have made huge technological advances, yet we seem to strive too imitate the past , as much as possible!
Maybe this is why we find the future (as projected in SciFi movies) to be so amusing!
I seem to recall (in a maddeningly vague way) an episode of either ST:TOS or ST:TNG in which they retreated and left a nuke with a proximity trigger in the path of an oncoming enemy. The trigger range was short enough that it didn’t go off until it was inside the otherwise impenetrable enemy shields (which apparently ignored small, slow-moving objects like the personal shields in Dune). Does anyone else remember this? Was it really Star Trek, or some other show?
Don’t forget the holobrothel that Captain Lochley blew up on “Babylon 5”.
Another cliché: The last 25% of the shield capacity is the best part. A kid can hit the shields with a spitball and bring them down to 25-30%, but after that they can take massive barrages of high-powered weapons for the rest of the show without failing.
but robots have male voices and bodies. Implies that females are smarter and men are better physically.
Aliens usually have two eyes, two arms and legs, walk and talk like humans, similar size as humans. They have a male and female species with the same differences as humans: women’s breast, men’s beard, and deeper voice, etc. They look like humans in a Halloween mask. It’s just not creative anymore.
That’s why I like Jabba the hut-a giant worm!
Damn, I can’t remember the name of the episode, but it was Star Trek TOS. It was the first episode where we saw the Romulans, and the Romulan commander (played by Mark Leonard, who later played Spock’s father) flushed a nuclear warhead out to trick Kirk. Kirk fell for it and hit it with a phaser blast at point-blank range. The shields were down for some reason, but the Enterprise was strong enough not to be completely destroyed.
It was the same episode where Kirk was about to perform the wedding of two crew members, if that helps jog anyone’s memory.
After leaving the underground city (as in THX-1138) or the domed city (as in Logan’s Run), the humans find a brand new world that has renewed itself after the nuclear holocaust that drove them off the planet’s surface. However, we never see the bacteria and viruses that must have evolved in the intervening centuries, and since the humans would have had
limited exposure to pathogens, you know that all those people at the end of Logan’s Run probably die from some mutant strain of the common cold.
Balance of Terror
Oh, and another cliche I forgot: When a starship powered by large quantities of antimatter explodes, it doesn’t make a nuclear fireball a thousand kilomters across.
[aside]Actually, in one way STTOS was inadvertedly realistic. For budget reasons, the show usually displayed the enemy ship as a mere blip or symbol on the viewscreen. Actually that’s probably what you’d have if you were displaying a computer generated view of a distant ship being tracked by sensors.
Hmm. On Voyager, they’ve already had the crew meet a 1940’s “Flash Gordon” style world, courtesy of the holodeck. I’d love to see them encounter a 1950’s Cold War style spaceship and crew: The all-male, caucasian crew of square-jawed, buzz cut GIs-in-space, who would spend the encounter like sailors on shore leave, seeking illicit liquor and harassing the Voyager women; while their captain would be wooing Janeway trying to convince her to give up this “silly idea” of being a captain and that she should go home and bake cookies.
[/aside]
…when lasers vaporize an object, there’s never any residue, like ash or a cloud of plasma
…no matter how odd an alien looks, he always speaks unaccented English. You’d think the ‘th’ sound at least would throw them.
…aliens always have just two genders.
…time travelers always fit in perfectly with the era they’re visiting. If 21st century folks went back in time to ancient Rome, they’d stick out as being noticeably taller and conspicuously healthy, i.e., no missing teeth
…aliens on desert worlds with no vegetation have no problem finding food and water (Starship Troopers)
That would be a great direction for Voyager. Fire the entire crew and replace them with GI trigger happy jerks.
Why is it that popular music in science fiction always sounds like (usually crappy) popular music released at the time the series was made (cough space hippies cough)?
Computers also speak out loud, even when typing would be fasting. When typing is done, the print makes clicking noises when displayed. All computer systems use the same access ports, too, which allows robots friendly to the cause to conveniently jack in. When they do jack in, the operating systems are always compatible…???..
Now wouldn’t you think that I would have remembered this?
Thanks, Lumpy.
The most important spot on a planet (emperor’s chamber, computer master control, the greatest scientist’s laboratory, the master defense control room, etc.) is protected only by two guards who can’t defend themselves against a right hook and a cheap door with an easily defeated lock.
Geez, guards who can’t defend themselves against a cheap door? What’s the quadrant coming to?*
[sub]- *sturmhauke is occasionally known to be a smartass [/sub]