Horrible Movie and TV tropes about computers

Cafe Society
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This thread is inspired by a panel I went to at the Los Angeles Worldcon about a week or so ago.
Why do script writers and directors treat computers like magic wands and computer programs like magic spells? There are many examples that will probably come up eventually, but let us begin with a Glen Larson series that aired on ABC back in the early '80s-Automan. Walter Nebicher (played by Desi Arnaz, Jr.), a computer programmer (not super genius, or even run-of-the-mill kinda smart guy), using computer technology of the early eighties, creates an artificially intelligent computer program/hologram that can pull solid objects out its artificial ass and create a car that defies most laws of physics that other humans can ride in. Y’all remember how “powerful” most computers weren’t in the early '80s? The creators of that show thought, "Well, it’s a computer, and since we don’t know jack shit about computers that must mean the audience is even stupider than we are they must know even less than we do.
Well, the creators were wrong, and it didn’t even last one season.

What have you got?

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I haven’t watched NCIS in years, but one thing I remember from its early days is how Tim and Abby would pound on her keyboard together whenever there was a glitch in the computer.

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I think it only happened once…but I think it ended with Gibbs stopping the computer virus that was running throughout the NCIS computer system…by pulling the plug on their monitor?!? By ghod, I hope this is a mistake that will be corrected by another poster.

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Mention of NCIS reminded me of a very common trope in modern procedurals: that your computer geek can “enhance” a blurry photo or video, and magically make details become crystal-clear.

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Yep-ALL cameras are 16K. :grin:

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Or reveal the face of a perp even if it’s covered by a mask, as in CSI.

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Any sort of malware, or alternatively an app that causes a contradiction to the computer, will make it physically explode - sparks coming out of the monitor, etc.

And of course there is the film Hot Millions where Peter Ustinov needs to break into a computer. Apparently to the script writers this meant physically accessing the inside of the computer, which he does by hitting its case with a metal bucket.

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Or combine grainy partial images from several different cameras into one crystal clear complete face

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That was back in 1968. Around the same time, all they had to do in It Takes a Thief was feed notes of music into a super computer to make it spit out “Our car is on ice”—an anagram of Enrico Caruso, “a singer who could shatter glass with the sound of his voice”—and thus prevent an assassination by means of shattering glass with sonic waves,

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Text appearing on screen one letter at a time like it’s being typed, complete with sound affects.

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It’s always amazed me how every computer used by a private or government agency contains a complete schematic of a particular building, no matter where on Earth it might be.

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I can forgive a science fiction show doing science fiction things with computers. That doesn’t bother me all that much. But when it’s a regular drama and they are using them for things we are all very familiar with but now are achieving extraordinary results, or something else we can all see is nonsense, like everything constantly beeping, or destroying an alien invasion using a Mac virus*, or never ever using the mouse and instead doing everything via keyboard, that all really bugs me.

*A sci fi premise, but a real world setting.

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Enhance.

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Here’s the scene you’re referring to.

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Hey, don’t be dissing my 9 year old self’s favorite show!

Of course, I tried to watch it as an adult a few years ago and much to my dissapointment…it did not hold up to my childhood memory.

Misfits of Science was even worse. It’s true what they say - you can never go home again.

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While not specifically computers, lets say tech (though I worked on the software for a card access company, so its computers for some of this).

For instance Keycard systems access. Steal a card. Get in anywhere. NOPE. Any real secure place with card access has Card AND PIN. You need both. And if really secure, like a prison, or a mental asylum, it would need third party verification. You’d put your card in, enter the pin, and then someone on the end of a camera will compare your photo from the system to the person in front of them. Then press a wired in switch to open the door. None of it automated. None of it done over wireless (can be blocked, real secure systems are wired into the walls).

None of this happens. Only recent example of something actual real world happened in the movie Relay is where someone uses a duress pin. This is where you’ve been compromised, in that case, someone has a gun on you, and you enter your pin in a different order, to indicate that. There may be different levels, ie: open this door, but trigger security, and don’t open this door, or have a feedback from the keypad indicator that there are heavies with guns behind the next door, and you should duck.

And severed cold hands don’t work on fingerprints, and I think iris scan never happened (not seen it, but perhaps, it always was a bit scifi scan and prone to error).

Also alarms and cctv, if they have an alarm, cutting some wire will shortcut it. Nope. Tamper alarm. I don’t think Dexter has ever entered a house with CCTV for instance. While the novels are a product of its time, there was plenty of CCTV when the show aired. CCTV has motion triggers too, so you know people are in the house.

But all of these don’t suit the narrative shortcut required nowadays. Our hero can shortcut everything, enter secure facilities with a keycard or a dead hand. Hack computers with a second try (nope).

Yep, modern Movies and TV do now have tech as magic. AI, for instance, is currently ludicrously overrepresented, like the tastiness of Taco Bell in Demolition man, great for people writing fiction, not our reality. Something which can make shit movies, and write shit books, isn’t the intelligence they need to make the story work.

But don’t get me onto the use of a keyboard without ever pressing the space key…

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You should definitely watch “Kung Fury” which makes fun of that kind of thing

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Ah, the days of computers with flashing lights and beep-boop-beep sound effects!!

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In an episode of The Prisoner (1967), Number Six says he knows a question a supposedly omniscient computer can’t answer. He feeds it into the machine, a 1960s Hollywood-style mainframe, which promptly self-destructs.

Asked what the question was, Number Six ponderously replies, “It’s insoluble for man or machine: WHY?"

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Computer stuff starts at about 0:55