[QUOTE=scr4]
Organic material can be pretty strong. Spider silk is much stronger than steel (for the same weight). Pretty close to Kevlar, in fact.
[/QUOTE]
But organism tend to be, well, complicated. Would you like to be inside Moya when she’s having her period?
This whole thread reminds me of the scene in Galaxy Quest where Tim Allen and Sigourney Weaver’s characters are trying to get to the self-destruct system (which is buried in the bowels of the ship, and not on the bridge). They have to go through “the chompers” to get there:
[QuOTE=IMDB]
Gwen DeMarco: What is this thing? I mean, it serves no useful purpose for there to be a bunch of chompy, crushy things in the middle of a hallway. No, I mean we shouldn’t have to do this, it makes no logical sense, why is it here?
Jason Nesmith: 'Cause it’s on the television show.
Gwen DeMarco: Well forget it! I’m not doing it! This episode was badly written!
[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=Gangster Octopus]
How do folks who have invisibility see (The Fantastic Four, Hollow Mna)? Think about it, to see our eyes collect the light, well if you are invisible it seems either the light is going through or around you.
[/QUOTE]
I have seen movies and read stories where invisible characters keep their pupils visible, since presumably they’d be hard to notice but allow the character to see.
Oh, and then in Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, we had the nuclear hand grenade.
[QUOTE=Lightray]
Both the lazgun and the shield are taken out – and it’s an effect comparable to an atomic explosion, since they’re apparently prohibited by the same pact that outlaws atomics.
So it’s basically a good way to take out your army along with their army. Given how surprised the Saudarkar were when Paul used atomics to blow up the Shield Wall – a tactical obstacle, not an enemy unit – I’m thinking that military tactics in the Dune imperium were relatively primitive.
I mean, who would think “There’s no way he can get through our ginormous Shield Wall to attack us, when all he has are atom bombs that he can’t use on people!”
[QUOTE]
To be fair, they had no idea that the Fremen would even have access to atomics. They did not know about Paul being alive so they probably had no idea atomics would be involved.
Fremen do not use shields because it calls irate worms. So the Sardaukar are thinking that they are dealing with a relatively primitive populace with great hand-to-hand fighting skills and some weapons including lasguns and projectiles.
Also in the Duniverse, small shields are sometimes placed so that they will be hit with lasguns, and lasguns can be programmed to fire at an enemy shield. It is a set of weapons that are very risky but can be very handy as well. Much in the Duniverse is a two-edged sword, so to speak. 
Also, in The Matrix, I think it makes sense for the machines to use humans for their energy. Humans do need more energy than they produce, but that energy is in the form of useless organic materials. Why not feed your crop of humans some garbage and soylent green or whatever, which they can convert to a form of energy that the machines can actually use? It makes a lot of sense. What doesn’t make sense, though, is why they don’t have the humans all riding bicycles or something. Now that would produce much more useable energy than just having them sit there radiating heat, and using their negligible magnetic fields to produce electricity.
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
Darth Vader should remote-strangle the R&D team that came up with the imperial walkers in The Empire Strikes Back. They’re obviously designed for no purpose but to get knocked down. There’s a very good reason why real-life tanks run on treads and have the lowest center of gravity possible.
Got any?
[/QUOTE]
But they made neato movie tie-in toys!! 
[QUOTE=Sean Factotum]
This whole thread reminds me of the scene in Galaxy Quest where Tim Allen and Sigourney Weaver’s characters are trying to get to the self-destruct system (which is buried in the bowels of the ship, and not on the bridge). They have to go through “the chompers” to get there:
[/QUOTE]
“THE WRITER RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS NEEDS TO BE SHOT!”
[QUOTE=brianjedi]
I have seen movies and read stories where invisible characters keep their pupils visible, since presumably they’d be hard to notice but allow the character to see.
[/QUOTE]
It wouldn’t work unless their retinas were visible. In fact, the whole eyeball would have to be visible – both to absorb the light focused by the lens, and to keep extraneous light from flooding the retina.
Atomics are a bit hard to come by in the Dune universe (only the Great Families have them), but shields and lasguns are common as dirt. And sure, they both blow up, and you can’t computer-control them (since computers are religiously forbidden, one of Herbert’s smartest decisions as a writer), but has nobody heard of a suicide bomber? Or how about just a simple timer? You don’t need a machine that can think like a man to set up a simple delay. Just get on some desolate, unnoticed crag on a mountain in line of sight of the enemy city, sight by eye on the shield protecting their headquarters, hook up a 3-hour spring timer to your trigger, and get the hell out of there.
Movies & TV vastly inflate the space available on ships. Presumably to make for better looks, and just to make it easier to film.
The original Star Trek corriders had to made wide enough to accomidate bulky camera equipment. When they constructed the sets for ST:TMP the corridors were much more claustrophobic. Wider corridors were restored in TNG so that characters could walk next to each other and converse.
Gene wanted at least one big set, and on TOS it was engineering. In TMP, it was the conference/rec room. TNG was designed to make everything look spacious. Crew quarters, the bridge itself, all very roomy. Gene believed that on a long space voyage, you would have to make the accomodations pleasant for the mental well being of the crew, and would have the material resources to do so.
Every bit of space on a spaceship is that much more area where you have to provide heat, light, air, etc.
Well, on a capital ship, adding interior space becomes less and less of an issue. Once you have enclosed an area, heat can only escape through the outer hull. The surface area of outer hull/interior volume ratio is not constant. It goes down as the ship gets bigger. Air is only an issue when people breathe it, so volume alone doesn’t dictate the size of your air recycler, your crew compliment does. Light? By the time of TOS don’t ya think that our LED tech or even something better will make that a trivial energy drain? I notice that they are very careful never to show a 23 or 24th century “light bulb”, but incandescents are already going the way of the dodo… (Of course, then you couldn’t dark out the ship after a battle hit, because it would be so trivial to give each light a backup battery)
One final point. If everything was very realistic on a movie or tv show, people would walk/tune out. You aren’t paying to see people get wrong numbers, watch television commercials because the story they are looking for hasn’t come on yet, etc.
The fundamental rule of filmed drama is that every moment of every scene must serve to advance either the mood, the storyline or the character development. You don’t waste the audience’s time looking for parking. They just went through that hassle outside in the mall parking lot. They came into your movie screening to escape that shiat, yo?
And I notice that part of my last post belongs in another thread. :mad:
[QUOTE=Giles]
On another dimension, battle androids in anime that have the appearance of very cute teenage girls – like Nuku Nuku or Mahoro Ando. They are clearly designed for fanservice: not for effectiveness in battle.
[/QUOTE]
But maybe that’s an intentional part of the design: you don’t expect that cute teenaged schoolgirl to be a killer robot.
That, and the engineers get real lonely after getting locked up in the lab for hours on end with nothing but coffee and ramen noodles. :eek:
[QUOTE=Ethilrist]
So, Jabba the Hut had more on the ball than the Emperor? Who knew?
[/QUOTE]
Dude. The Emperor had Darth Vader standing next to his throne.
Jabba had Leia in a gold bikini.
There’s no contest, here. You may quite possibly be the only geek on the planet who didn’t realize that Jabba had more on the ball than the Emperor.
[QUOTE=dotchan]
That, and the engineers get real lonely after getting locked up in the lab for hours on end with nothing but coffee and ramen noodles. :eek:
[/QUOTE]
Come to think of it, that might explain a lot of things!
[QUOTE=Giles]
On another dimension, battle androids in anime that have the appearance of very cute teenage girls – like Nuku Nuku or Mahoro Ando. They are clearly designed for fanservice: not for effectiveness in battle.
[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=Anne Neville]
All the holes in areas of the Death Stars where people walk, with no railings to prevent people from falling in/being thrown in.
[/QUOTE]
I once proposed a half-joking, half-serious explanation for this: Those deep shafts were originally meant to be tunnels, with the local gravity adjusted accordingly. But massive cost overruns meant that to complete the Death Star, it had to be given a single up/down gravity orientation throughout the station.
[QUOTE=Anne Neville]
What’s more, it was a primitive human who probably didn’t have much experience writing computer viruses, writing on a machine whose operating system and software were presumably completely different than that of the alien ship’s computer.
[/QUOTE]
It was a Mac! The software and OS are compeletely different from everything on Earth!
How about cryo-freezing prisoners (Demolishion Man, Minority Report)? What the fuck? So from the perspective of the prisoner, they go to sleep and wake up 50 years later with no skills and not knowing anyone in a completely new world? For what purpose?
Laser/force field prison cells. What the hell is wrong with regular metal bar cells that can’t be deflected or lose power?
Energy weapons that fire glowing pyrotechnic balls of whatever. HERE I AM!!!
[QUOTE=msmith537]
It was a Mac! The software and OS are compeletely different from everything on Earth!
How about cryo-freezing prisoners (Demolishion Man, Minority Report)? What the fuck? So from the perspective of the prisoner, they go to sleep and wake up 50 years later with no skills and not knowing anyone in a completely new world? For what purpose?
[/QUOTE]
Nah, they wake up with skills trained into them (somehow) while they’re frozen. The bad guy in Demolition man ended up with various kinds of martial arts, weapons training, computer hacking, etc., and Sly’s character ended up with knitting.
[QUOTE=Mangetout]
Imperial Stormtrooper armour. One blaster hit and you’re dead. What’s the point?
[/QUOTE]
Forgive me if this has already been pointed out, but…
Why do soldiers in the field today wear bullet-proof gear? Most armed forces use armor-piercing bullets by default, so most of the time it’s only going to slightly reduce the momentum of the bullet as it enters the body. Nevertheless, as long as it doesn’t restrict momentum or prohibit the wearer in some other manner, the fact that it does work sometimes makes it worth it.
Another example is hard-hats for construction workers. Again the idea is that yeah, most of the accidents that could occur aren’t going to be stopped by a hat, but for those few times they can…
Mind you, as a big Star Wars fan, I’ll admit it still seems impractical, but it isn’t absurd.
[QUOTE=H3Knuckles]
Why do soldiers in the field today wear bullet-proof gear? Most armed forces use armor-piercing bullets by default, so most of the time it’s only going to slightly reduce the momentum of the bullet as it enters the body. Nevertheless, as long as it doesn’t restrict momentum or prohibit the wearer in some other manner, the fact that it does work sometimes makes it worth it.
[/quote]
Name a single occasion in any SW film where the armour was of any use whatsoever, aside from allowing the enemy to disguise themselves.
A disproporionate number of construction site accidents are from things dropped onto you. From directly above the hard hat actually covers quite a large portion of the target area.