It’s not so much a question of what tech are they choosing not to use… it’s that Mr. Weasley, an extremely well-educated graduate of Hogwarts, working for the Ministry as a researcher into the nature of muggle artifacts, who was also, by the way, born and raised in 20th-century England, didn’t know what a fucking rubber duck was for.
To be fair, it is a massive parody of Heinlein’s 1950s (?) Cold War-vibe novel. In the novel, infantry are supported by orbiting spaceships.
I personally both love (for the sheer intentional piss-take dickery - apologies for the lapse into the Australian vernacular) and hate (because I loved the novel as a kid) that movie.
My favorite is from Gears of War. Set centuries in the future, after humanity has started colonizing other planets, their go-to infantry weapon for killing people at long range… is a single-shot, bolt-action rifle.
In the original Star Trek role-playing game, the phaser rifle had a shorter range than a bow & arrow. And in TNG, they didn’t have sights.
That’s not entirely accurate. It’s not meant to be a parody of the book - Paul Verhoeven was already working on a movie (Assault on Outpost 13, IIRC) that was meant to be a parody of sci-fi war movies in general. The studio had previously optioned the rights to Heinlein’s novel, and were going to lose them if they didn’t do something with them, so they made Verhoeven rewrite his idea with some of the names and a loose outline of the plot from the book. Verhoeven, reportedly, had never heard of Robert Heinlein before that, and read less than half the book before he started filming his movie.
Generally, Starfleet/Federation infantry equipment—at least in the DS9 era, which is when we saw the most outright fighting and warfare—sucks pretty badly. Along with tactics.
You can explain this in a couple of ways, I think. An “in-universe” way (the UFP, generally both peaceful and married to the strength and mythos of their capital ships being the backbone of their defense, is caught woefully off-guard on a doctrinal and cultural level when it comes to other forms of combat), and the “offscreen” way…the creative team deciding to write gritty war stories in a fashion that, perhaps, isn’t what the established setting was designed to support, aesthetically or logically.
That last bit is probably a bit more caustic than is deserved. I think maybe I’m just still bitter about the lack of razor wire at AR-558.
Hand-held phasers seem to be all-around crummy weapons. It seems like the majority of enemies in the shows can shrug off phaser fire.
I’ve criticized the film many times on this Board, and I fully agree. My favorite stupidity – if it even makes sense to have such a thing – is the way the soldiers would surround a Bug and then all fire at it in a circle. I’m sure nothing bad can happen to soldiers getting around something in a circle and firing at it.
Who said Harry Potter’s magic world doesn’t have technology? Technology could be just in one’s mind, in the way you do or make things. It doesn’t have as a pre-requisite complicated hardware that operate following muggles’ natural laws.
How come not everyone can make deathly hallows, or even a goblet of fire? How come goblins can monopolize banking and fine crafts?
Well, they are defensive weapons… which reminds me of something I loved about the guns in Babylon 5. NOT stun guns. You get shot with one of those suckers, you were dead.
jedibot.py
import midiclorians;
UseTheForce = TRUE;
done!
There are real people who are very smart, born and raised in 21st century where ever that are the same, i find nothing abnormal there.
Aha. Thanks for this recalibration of my understanding.
IIRC, the PPG was designed to put holes in people but not station hulls and bulkheads.
I find it interesting how the movie still manages to be a rebuttal to the book. The movie heavily implies that humans are the aggressors in the conflict (I believe the book is silent on this matter). In order to keep military service necessary for citizenship, they need to keep the military relevant. They also want to keep it difficult and/or dangerous to earn citizenship. They use bad tactics by design. Those who make it through the meat grinder alive appear braver, more heroic, and more exceptional than they would if the war had had minimal casualties (even if their survival is mostly a matter of luck).
If you’re talking video games, Homefront: the Revolution deserves a mention. In this alternate-history shooter, North Korea becomes a technological powerhouse. They become the main supplier of high tech infantry weapons to the US and then take over the US by basically turning all of our rifles off and walking on in.
In the game itself, the excuse for why you can’t just pick up some dead N. Korean occupier’s rifle is because they’re biometrically locked. But the fact that N. Korea could turn them all off presumably means the biometric data isn’t stored in the weapon itself like “This is Joe’s rifle” but rather there has to be some main server that the rifles have to constantly communicate with to say “Yeah, this is Joe’s finger on the trigger”. Imagine having all your infantry weapons be dependent on a solid wireless internet connection. Even if it was stored locally in the weapon, what happens if you need to pick up your buddy’s gun? Plus, it doesn’t even really matter anyway because everyone in the resistance just, you know, builds their own guns. I mean, if the AK47 came out of a need for cheap mass-produced guns to become the world’s most common rifle, then what made the Koreans think this would work? Heck, you can even use the ammo out of their guns, just not the guns themselves.
It was an episode from the last season of DS9 when Cardassia and the Dominion were allied. I believe The Dominion were in control fo Cardassia at that time.
My New Newphew, upon encountering five rubber duckies for the first time at the advanced age of 2 years and 5 months, knew perfectly well what is it they were for. I’m now known to my family as “Aunt Nava Duckies”, because he took to exclaiming “duckies!” every time he heard my name.
Anyone who needs an explanation of what rubber duckies are for has serious cognitive issues.
Just not a good one. Or a coherent one. Or an intelligent one.
Sorry, but ST is one of my favorite Good Bad Movies.
Me, I just marveled at the bugs ability to shoot a rock across 40,000 light years or so with such precision and timing… literally astronomical precision and timing… that they were able to target a specific spot on a rotating globe that itself is circling a star.