During the Dominion War on Star Trek DS9 they had the The Founders wipe out an unstoppable Dominion invasion fleet and then shut the wormhole closing off any further reinforcements, nicely evening the odds back to the Federation side. Of course, the context of the show, The Founders were gods for all intents and purposes, so it was a very literal deus ex machina.
Having become a recent fan of the new Doctor Who, I must admit they’re awful with neatly tidying up the dire situations they get into before the commercial break…just after the commercial break.
The worst example: The Satan Pit. They arrive at a space station, and all of a sudden a bunch of weird creatures appear out of every door and slowly approach them, chanting “We must feed…we must feed…”
::cut to opening credits::
Back to the same scene…the monsters say “We must feed…you!” And then ask them if they want something to eat. Ugh.
[QUOTE=VCO3]
So the next season is trucking along and Brenda has found a stable relationship with a new man, while she keeps sleeping with Nate. So basically the situation is reversed; suddenly Brenda “can’t handle commitment and stuff” and that guy’s just immediately written out of the show so that she can Nate can get back together, instead of the writers making it a complicated and interesting three-way situation with real people.
[/QUOTE]
This isn’t really accurate, especially the part about the other guy being immediately written out of the show. They spent a lot of time dealing with complicated nature of the situation they were in.
I thought Lisa’s brother-in-law blowing his brains out was a bit strange, but it clearly wasn’t “out of nowhere.” There was a lot leading up to it, like Nate figuring out that Lisa wasn’t alone when she died, and the guy’s daughter who knew something strange was going on.
[QUOTE=Paladud]
Malazan series - in the first three books, while the majority of the characters are relatively mundane, virtually every major storyline except the Chain of Dogs is resolved through the direct intervention of gods or demigods. (The fourth book seems to be a lot better in this regard so far).
[/QUOTE]
I have to disagree with this. The central plotline to the Malazan series is a war between the Gods. Given that, you should hardly be surprised that the Gods play a major role in the series.
If you want to complain about lameness in the Malazan series, complain about how every major character who has died, save one, has found a way to return to life in some fashion or another. It’s reached the point that when one character died in what I’m sure was supposed to be a poignant scene in the last book, my only reaction was “He’ll be back within two books”.
Midichlorians.
[QUOTE=Morbo]
Having become a recent fan of the new Doctor Who, I must admit they’re awful with neatly tidying up the dire situations they get into before the commercial break…just after the commercial break.
The worst example: The Satan Pit. They arrive at a space station, and all of a sudden a bunch of weird creatures appear out of every door and slowly approach them, chanting “We must feed…we must feed…”
::cut to opening credits::
Back to the same scene…the monsters say “We must feed…you!” And then ask them if they want something to eat. Ugh.
[/QUOTE]
I agree there is an awful lot of convenient tying up of dire situations, but I don’t agree that this is a good example of what the OP is talking about. Especially since this was mere foreshadowing of the real dire situation with the Uud. And the way they resolved the situation with the Uud made perfect, logical sense within the context of the episode.
[QUOTE=pepperlandgirl]
I agree there is an awful lot of convenient tying up of dire situations, but I don’t agree that this is a good example of what the OP is talking about. Especially since this was mere foreshadowing of the real dire situation with the Uud. And the way they resolved the situation with the Uud made perfect, logical sense within the context of the episode.
[/QUOTE]
Looking back on it in context of the rest of the episode, sure. But when I first saw it, after coming back from the commercial break, not having seen the rest, I felt pretty ripped off.
[QUOTE=John DiFool]
My worst cop-out has to be the ST-TNG episode when Data is taken prisoner by that collector guy (who later moves to Earth in the past and becomes Daphne’s fiance on Frasier). Data finally realizes that the guy’s reign of terror must be stopped, and shoots him-while at the exact same moment Geordi beams him up to the Enterprise. Then we get some lame line from Data (after the transporter “deactivated” the weapon) to the effect that it was just a simple malfunction in the weapon, thus neatly avoiding the very interesting question as to whether android (artificial) organisms have free will. Of course TNG was notorious for this kind of issue evading and button resetting.
[/QUOTE]
The cop-out isn’t in the issue of Data having the free will to choose to kill (he clearly did), but rather in the beam-up preventing him from doing so and dealing with the consequences.
[QUOTE=HowieReynolds]
There was a lot leading up to it, like Nate figuring out that Lisa wasn’t alone when she died, and the guy’s daughter who knew something strange was going on.
[/QUOTE]
It really bothered me that they never followed up on what the guy’s daughter knew and how she knew it. She practically told Nate “my dad and Lisa were having sex” and then they just dropped it.
What the hell. I stand by my belief that Six Feet Under Season 3 was pretty lame all around.
[QUOTE=fiddlesticks]
During the Dominion War on Star Trek DS9 they had the The Founders wipe out an unstoppable Dominion invasion fleet and then shut the wormhole closing off any further reinforcements, nicely evening the odds back to the Federation side. Of course, the context of the show, The Founders were gods for all intents and purposes, so it was a very literal deus ex machina.
[/QUOTE]
You mean the Prophets - the Founders were the shapeshifters.
The Cylons can somehow hack the internal computers on Galactica when they are internally networked with no connection to the outside, but for some reason they never hack the FTL calculator or the Life Support Regulator when they are un-networked, but when they are networked watch out!
And only having 20 pilots for dramatic tension. They could have the same dramatic tension with 300 pilots and still show us that pilots are valuable whenever the scene with the Base stars come in and it launches 400 Raiders. Somehow I have trouble believing that 20 Vipers can handle 400 Raiders.
AND! The Galactica not having a staffed hospital with at least four doctors at any given time. That they need to transport a single doctor all over the place. For some reason I should think that an intergalactic aircraft carrier as well as intergalactic cruise ships would have hospital staffs as a standard feature so that Dr’s while in short supply amongst the remnants of Earth would still amount to more than 1.
[QUOTE=Illuminatiprimus]
You mean the Prophets - the Founders were the shapeshifters.
[/QUOTE]
Ack…I need to have my geek card revoked for that blunder. 
The Last Days of Pompeii, by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, who doesn’t have a bad writing contest named after him for nothing.
The most blatant proof EB-L can’t plot his way out of a paper bag is at the end of Part I, when the chief villain has lured the heroine to the temple in back of his house, where he plans to work his wicked ways upon her (EB-L is full of proper Victorian vagueness on this point, of course).
But the brave blind slave girl has got wind of his scheme and gone to alert the hero and the heroine’s geeky brother, who haste to the rescue. They burst into the temple and a manly fight breaks out, with the geeky brother being quickly knocked down and out, and the heroine falling into a swoon, of course, because she’s the proper heroine of a proper Victorian novel and GOD FORBID she should do anything useful in a crisis.
So it’s hero vs. villain, man to man, blow for blow, back and forth, up and down the rows of pagan statues, until the villain gets a sneaky blow in, drops the hero (but he’ll soon be up again!), and being a dastardly villain and all, grabs a knife with which to make sure the hero stays down. He looms over the hero, raises the knife–
and at that exact instant Vesuvius belches. No not THE eruption–it’s only the end of part 1, we’ve got nearly 300 more pages to go. No just a little burp and a rumble, just big enough to tip one of the villain’s pagan statues off its pedestal so it can fall on the villain and smack him and his dastardly blade flat to the pavement.
Doesn’t kill him, mind you. Just squishes him a bit, so he can heal up in Part II and come back for some more villainy.
[QUOTE=mswas]
The Cylons can somehow hack the internal computers on Galactica when they are internally networked with no connection to the outside, but for some reason they never hack the FTL calculator or the Life Support Regulator when they are un-networked, but when they are networked watch out!
[/QUOTE]
I think the idea is that they are networked Over the Air, not by wire. This provides a connection to the outside since the network is being broadcasted.
This seems decently plausible. While you could set up shielding that blocks the signal from being able to leave the ship, Galactica wasn’t built to have a WAN running in it, and hence wouldn’t have needed this shielding. But it also wouldn’t have a wired network, since this still makes them vulnerable if they are boarded.
With neither WAN nor a wired network, unless a Cylon can get on the bridge and fiddle with the FTL calculator, it’s secure.
[QUOTE=mswas]
The Cylons can somehow hack the internal computers on Galactica when they are internally networked with no connection to the outside, but for some reason they never hack the FTL calculator or the Life Support Regulator when they are un-networked, but when they are networked watch out!
And only having 20 pilots for dramatic tension. They could have the same dramatic tension with 300 pilots and still show us that pilots are valuable whenever the scene with the Base stars come in and it launches 400 Raiders. Somehow I have trouble believing that 20 Vipers can handle 400 Raiders.
AND! The Galactica not having a staffed hospital with at least four doctors at any given time. That they need to transport a single doctor all over the place. For some reason I should think that an intergalactic aircraft carrier as well as intergalactic cruise ships would have hospital staffs as a standard feature so that Dr’s while in short supply amongst the remnants of Earth would still amount to more than 1.
[/QUOTE]
My turn!
To point 2, the Galactica has point defense guns in addition to fighters. I assume they help. The Cylon base ships have missles, not cannon.
To point 3,
There is at least one other doctor in the fleet. In the 3rd season episode, “The Woman King” there is another doctor. Cottle is the Galactica’s doctor and they have too few for the fleet. Thus, they move him around a lot.
The galactica was about to be decommissioned, so I think it’s reasonable that it had a skeleton crew when the Cylons attacked. Would you like your tax dollars paying for a full compliment of nurses as a warship was about to be decommissioned?
[QUOTE=Morbo]
Looking back on it in context of the rest of the episode, sure. But when I first saw it, after coming back from the commercial break, not having seen the rest, I felt pretty ripped off.
[/QUOTE]
Really? I laughed my ass off at that one. It was a great twist, and set up a couple of the episode’s more important themes.
The Doctor finding the intact Tardis at the bottom of the sealed hell-pit, on the other hand, was a total cop-out.
[QUOTE=Miller]
Really? I laughed my ass off at that one. It was a great twist, and set up a couple of the episode’s more important themes.
[/QUOTE]
Well it was also one of the very first new ones I’d ever seen, so I wasn’t up on the humor yet.
[QUOTE=stolichnaya]
Yeah, it seems to me that you’re supposed to think that the Balrog is a greater threat than the BUEGs, because they flee at its approach. It’s a device to make the Balrog seem badassier. Not a unique device, but a device all the same.
[/QUOTE]
Yeah…they don’t have time in the movie to give a history of Balrogs and how they are of an order of demi-gods in their own right so they have it run off a thousand orcs. And rightfully so…the Balrog would annihilate the lot of them with ease.
Although IIRC the Balrog ran off the dwarves centuries earlier but when the orcs moved in it knew they were part of Sauron’s design so it let the be. Technically I would think when the Balrog shows the orcs would be more of a mind to be thinking, “You’re really fucked now!” more than “Oh shit, we’re fucked!”.
[QUOTE=Sitnam]
War of the Worlds- Our species is so advanced we can travel across the universe intending to invade and conquer a world we knew about before we left. No need to take any precautions to prevent diseases, theres no chance an alien race which evolved completely independently would have anything our biology couldn’t handle.
[/quote]
In the book, they neither had an immunity nor expected to need one because there is no microbial life on Mars. I know it doesn’t make much sense biologically (macroorganisms without microorganisms?!), but that might not have been so obvious in 1899.
[QUOTE=Sitnam]
The Sign- The only way to truly invade a planet is to first make bizarre shapes in corn fields to scare hick conspiracy theorists. This planet’s surface is 70% blue, there’s no way it’s water, a chemical that will kill us.
[/QUOTE]
And even that is not nearly as stupid as the idea that God would arrange an alien invasion just to restore one minister’s faith.
[QUOTE=Sitnam]
The Sign- The only way to truly invade a planet is to first make bizarre shapes in corn fields to scare hick conspiracy theorists. This planet’s surface is 70% blue, there’s no way it’s water, a chemical that will kill us.
[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
And even that is not nearly as stupid as the idea that God would arrange an alien invasion just to restore one minister’s faith.
[/QUOTE]
According to one theory I’ve read about the movie, there really wasn’t an invasion because it was all Mel Gibson’s character’s dream.