# Things That Bother Me in Science Fiction Movies **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** movies\ **Created:** [October 24, 2023, 8:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bother-me-in-science-fiction-movies/992001 "2023-10-24T08:55:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 20
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2023, 10:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bother-me-in-science-fiction-movies/992001/381 "2023-11-16T22:08:24Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > I have suggested in the past that anti-gravity could be simulated by suspending an earth sized mass directly over head. For some reason I keep getting told that it wouldn’t work because of tides. I don’t see why anyone would assume it has to be a dense matter mass of some kind, or even if they do why they think it is the major flaw in this idea. Well, for one, the surface of the Earth is rotating at 465 meters/second at the equator, which means your “earth sized mass directly over head” would have to be flown around the Earth overhead at a rate to maintain position. Furthermore, the presence of such a mass would pull the barycenter of the the common system right up to your waist, and the resulting system spinning so wildly to maintain angular momentum that you’d instantly exceed the Earth’s Roche limit. If you are not at the equator, you’ll immediately experience precession and nutation effects that will make the strongest of iron stomachs motion sick, except you’ll be flung around so energetically into the seismic catastrophe that is the release of stored strain and potential energy in the crust that you’ll be far too busy being pummeled by rocks and/or burned by lava and steam that you won’t have time to vomit. In short order, both the Earth and the countermass will elongate and then lose enough angular momentum to crash into one another, forming a new and larger planet, while the previous Earth’s Moon will ramble around waiting for things to settle down before finding its new orbit or wandering off to find a nice stable relationship with a well-behaved gas giant. Other than that, no flaws. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![mbh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a6a055/32.png) [@mbh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mbh)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2023, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bother-me-in-science-fiction-movies/992001/382 "2023-11-16T22:14:24Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > the previous Earth’s Moon will ramble around waiting for things to settle down before finding its new orbit or wandering off to find a nice stable relationship with a well-behaved gas giant. The shameless hussy! ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2023, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bother-me-in-science-fiction-movies/992001/383 "2023-11-16T23:04:43Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > Other than that, no flaws. So I can get the production team working on suspending that mass while R&D finds some solutions for those problem areas. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2023, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bother-me-in-science-fiction-movies/992001/384 "2023-11-16T23:23:16Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > So I can get the production team working on suspending that mass while R&D finds some solutions for those problem areas. Sure. I recommend the same team that helped Aaron Eckhart and Hilary Swank tunnel their way to the Earth’s core, or Keanu Reeves and Rachel Weisz who made a horizontal toilet that generates ‘free’ hydrogen. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![dorvann](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/df705f/32.png) [@dorvann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dorvann)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2023, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bother-me-in-science-fiction-movies/992001/385 "2023-11-16T23:35:11Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > Don’t even get me started on Dr. Crusher, who ought to be able to regenerate or repair any injury with her advanced medical technology but struggles to diagnose a simple musculoskeletal injury and yet is still appointed to be the head of Starfleet Medical. That is the Dilbert Principle at work: _The most ineffective workers will be systematically moved to the place where they can do the least damage — management_. ---
**Author:** ![Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/son_of_a_rich/32/5439_2.png) [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Son_of_a_Rich)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2023, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bother-me-in-science-fiction-movies/992001/386 "2023-11-17T02:27:06Z")
Was that an 80 pager for 25 cents? I used to love those annuals because it was the only way I could read the old stories. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2023, 2:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bother-me-in-science-fiction-movies/992001/387 "2023-11-17T02:56:00Z")
Something like that. Regular comic books were 10¢. I don’t remember how many pages but they were a lot longer than the regular books so 25¢ sounds right. The was a Giant Superman book that had several Brainiac stories and the tiny Kryptonians that lived in a bottle in the Fortress of Solitude. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2023, 12:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bother-me-in-science-fiction-movies/992001/388 "2023-11-17T12:36:15Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > I have suggested in the past that anti-gravity could be simulated by suspending an earth sized mass directly over head. For some reason I keep getting told that it wouldn’t work because of tides. I don’t see why anyone would assume it has to be a dense matter mass of some kind, or even if they do why they think it is the major flaw in this idea. Have a look at Robert L. Forward’s very interesting novel **Dragon’s Egg**. It’s full of interesting concepts, but one of them involves the use of several large and dense bodies (much smaller than planetary size) arranged around a position to create engineered gravitation. ---
**Author:** ![vislor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/vislor/32/5933_2.png) [@vislor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vislor)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2023, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bother-me-in-science-fiction-movies/992001/389 "2023-11-17T14:45:44Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > There is also the problem that being shrunk to the scale of an atom would result in electrodynamic forces dominating over gravity, and if you “go subatomic” you’re now directly dealing with some bizarre arrangement of leptons, quarks, and gauge bosons in ways that defy everyday macroscale experience. You really just have to treat shrinking technology as some kind of magic because it can’t be made workable by any sensible physics. I also wonder about MCU’s Scott being able to control that. The first film seems to indicate that one button shrinks to a predetermined point (the unbroken regulator?) and the other hand’s button grows to a predetermined point. I assume the quick ending in that movie was he shrunk smaller with a broken regulator, fixed it (let’s not go into how), and then went back to predetermined points of size/height. In Civil War, he had “tried something” and could grow large. Presumably a constant point of the giant that he becomes. Hmm. Now I’m wondering, as I explain this out if they were internally consistent? In Quantummania, then, they are pulled into the quantum realm. But they have suits. Why not just grow back to the established point? I know, I’m overthinking it, and Pym Particles are magic particles. It seems to me that having defined points means some sort of measurement that suit can make to know what to do. Why wouldn’t it take them to that point, of either being an ant sized in our world, or regular sized in our world? How did it become relativistic in the quantum world? How did they happen to shrink right where everyone was? I mean, if you are a human shaped person smaller than an atom, wouldn’t walking across the room the machine was in be years? Of course, in Endgame, a plot point of Antman was his ability to learn how to grow and shrink and control his mass to do punches. While they can probably wave away that Tony can build the suits, how long did they train in them? Also, not like their were road signs in the quantum tunnels, so how did they know which ones to take for the correct time and space coordinates? > [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > On the contrary, my thesis is that they take all of the malcontents, hyperactives, and those incapable of grasping elementary particle dynamics that are normally mastered in primary school, run them through the “Academy” where they are told how brilliant they are and how important their mission is, and then chucked into spacecraft that are so obviously capable of autonomous exploration that you’d have to be virtually insensate to not appreciate how supernumerary the crew is. They’re sent off on ‘adventures’ where they interact with “strange new worlds” but told not to make contact with any culture that isn’t already in interstellar space (implying that there is a compact between all advanced societies to do essentially the same thing) and then presented with challenges and threats that, as far as an objective viewer can tell, may be completely fabricated by the ships computer using a combination of visual editing, fake scans and data, and holographic projection of “away missions”. I want this to be true. Granted, the episodes we see are the conflict ones, and they do hint at long boring scientific ones. In any case, now I see starfleet as this big holodeck program set on earth in some remote location. Maybe they connect real ships to the controls in the holodeck but make up what the crew sees in each new system to let them think they overcame great odds when the ship itself does scans and reports it back. If it’s remote enough, maybe they Truman Show it so that they can go to the surface of a “new” world but it’s just a replicated set. Great discussion! Thanks! ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2023, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bother-me-in-science-fiction-movies/992001/390 "2023-11-17T15:43:53Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > Have a look at Robert L. Forward’s very interesting novel **Dragon’s Egg**. It’s full of interesting concepts, but one of them involves the use of several large and dense bodies (much smaller than planetary size) arranged around a position to create engineered gravitation. I have. It’s a fantastic book IMO. I don’t know if that was any influence on my suggestion, which I make only for entertainment purposes. I’m completely serious about my time machine. I’m sure I’m only 20 years away from a working version which will correspond with the development of practical fusion energy required to power it. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2023, 5:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bother-me-in-science-fiction-movies/992001/391 "2023-11-18T05:05:32Z")
> [@vislor](#): > > In any case, now I see starfleet as this big holodeck program set on earth in some remote location. Created by Gene Roddenberry. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2023, 6:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bother-me-in-science-fiction-movies/992001/392 "2023-11-18T06:50:59Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > Something like that. Regular comic books were 10¢. I don’t remember how many pages but they were a lot longer than the regular books so 25¢ sounds right. The was a Giant Superman book that had several Brainiac stories and the tiny Kryptonians that lived in a bottle in the Fortress of Solitude. I had Superman annual #1 (2 copies in fact.) It was 25 cents, though I think regular comics had gone all the way up to 12 cents by then. If I had held on to all those things, I’d be rich today. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2023, 12:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bother-me-in-science-fiction-movies/992001/393 "2023-11-18T12:46:19Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > > [@msmith537](#): > > > > I don’t think they would give the Federation’s mission of interstellar gunboat diplomacy to a bunch of misfits and and fuckups. At least, no more than the typical level of misfits and fuckups that join the military. > > On the contrary, my thesis is that they take all of the malcontents, hyperactives, and those incapable of grasping elementary particle dynamics that are normally mastered in primary school, run them through the “Academy” where they are told how brilliant they are and how important their mission is, and then chucked into spacecraft that are so obviously capable of autonomous exploration that you’d have to be virtually insensate to not appreciate how supernumerary the crew is. They’re sent off on ‘adventures’ where they interact with “strange new worlds” but told not to make contact with any culture that isn’t already in interstellar space (implying that there is a compact between all advanced societies to do essentially the same thing) and then presented with challenges and threats that, as far as an objective viewer can tell, may be completely fabricated by the ships computer using a combination of visual editing, fake scans and data, and holographic projection of “away missions”. > > Stranger To a certain degree, is that much different from how actual militaries work? No disrespect to our servicepeople, but the military tends to often recruit for that sweet spot of people who maybe don’t have much else going on post high school but are not so screwed up that they are actually drug addicts and criminals. Then they go off on adventures that the general public are largely indifferent to. People in the military are not necessarily the “best and the brightest” outside of certain disciplines, such as piloting an aircraft. Which is not to say that the best and brightest in society don’t often have military background that maybe helped them get there. But objectively speaking, there are plenty of people who are considered “best and brightest” in fields such as engineering, athletics, management/leadership, even physical combat who have never spent a day in the military. But I digress. But other than that, your theory is not supported by several decades of movies and tv shows. Not to mention that it’s a pretty boring one. Stories about characters living in a constructed reality like The Matrix, The Truman Show, or Westworld are only compelling if those characters start to encounter evidence that questions their reality. If they (or the audience) never see such evidence, then what they experience is just the story (given that it’s all a constructed reality by the writers and producers anyway). Even worse, if there is some big reveal at the end where “it was a dream / VR / hallucination the whole time” at the very end, the audience can feel cheated. It renders everything that we just went through with the characters as completely irrelevant. ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2023, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bother-me-in-science-fiction-movies/992001/394 "2023-11-18T21:07:36Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > If I had held on to all those things, I’d be rich today. Well, in fairness, if you’d held on to those things, you probably would have sold them at a tidy profit decades ago and not be rich today ---
**Author:** ![Dallas\_Jones](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dallas_jones/32/3277_2.png) [@Dallas\_Jones](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dallas_Jones)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2023, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bother-me-in-science-fiction-movies/992001/395 "2023-11-18T21:33:17Z")
The blasters, phasers, disrupters, in the future have no sights on them, it is just point and shoot. And everyone is a lousy shot. See Star Wars, but it is every other movie too I would think that in the far future the guns would be smart guns that hit whatever you point them at. Even today jet fighter pilots don’t have to aim accuratly enough to hit their target, just close enough and weapons guidance does the rest. And even though you have a very high energy weapon, and you miss, they don’t seem to even put a mark on the wall or harm anything. Blaster marks on the wall? ---
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2023, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bother-me-in-science-fiction-movies/992001/396 "2023-11-18T22:21:48Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > Have a look at Robert L. Forward’s very interesting novel **Dragon’s Egg**. It’s full of interesting concepts, but one of them involves the use of several large and dense bodies (much smaller than planetary size) arranged around a position to create engineered gravitation. Yes; as I mentioned in an earlier post, Stephen Baxter’s novel Timelike Infinity has a craft with artificial gravity created by a mesh of very small but very heavy black holes beneath the floor. One big problem with this sort of arrangement is that it increases the mass of your vessel significantly- so much so that the mass of the gravity generators far exceeds the mass of the rest of the ship. This reduces your acceleration and causes problems with inertia too. ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2023, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bother-me-in-science-fiction-movies/992001/397 "2023-11-18T23:05:24Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > I’m completely serious about my time machine. I’m sure I’m only 20 years away from a working version which will correspond with the development of practical fusion energy required to power it. - It wouldn’t matter how many years away you are from a working model, you’d know about. Nice try, though. ---
**Author:** ![digs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/digs/32/14889_2.png) [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2023, 11:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bother-me-in-science-fiction-movies/992001/398 "2023-11-18T23:13:58Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > I think regular comics had gone all the way up to 12 cents by then. > If I had held on to all those things, I’d be rich today. I always mention to my mom what my old Spideys would be worth “if you hadn’t thrown them out… wait, you must’ve just hidden them somewhere, right?”. But to be honest, none of my friends took care of their stash… we rolled 'em up and stuffed Avengers #1 in our back pockets. Ha, I remember when comics went from 10¢ to 12… the publishers ran an editorial in each comic, apologizing! . > [@Dallas\_Jones](#): > > The blasters, phasers, disrupters, in the future have no sights on them, it is just point and shoot. And everyone is a lousy shot. See Star Wars, but it is every other movie too One episode of _The Mandalorian_ had a battle going on in a desert town, and the view cut to two storm troopers in the desert, just sitting on their speeder bikes, bored. They were chatting and trying to shoot stuff. They both missed with almost every shot. (I had to check out the credits… it was written/directed by Taika Waititi) ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2023, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bother-me-in-science-fiction-movies/992001/399 "2023-11-18T23:21:45Z")
> [@digs](#): > > But to be honest, none of my friends took care of their stash… we rolled 'em up and stuffed Avengers #1 in our back pockets. Right, other than some oddities like Action Comics 1, collectors expect their purchases to be at least near mint. Not as pTerry put it-_It looked like the sort of book described in library catalogues as ‘slightly foxed’, although it would be more honest to admit that it looked as though it had been badgered, wolved and possibly beared as well.”_ Our old comics would be worth some money, maybe - Avengers 1, in GOOD is $2200 or less, but Near mint is just under $90,000. I suspect our Fair copies could bring a few hundreds. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2023, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bother-me-in-science-fiction-movies/992001/400 "2023-11-19T00:23:32Z")
> [@running\_coach](#): > > It wouldn’t matter how many years away you are from a working model, you’d know about. Nice try, though. Not necessarily; any time travel device based on a Gödel metric will not be able to take a path that goes back to a point in time before the machine was activated. It seems clear that the first use would not to go back and record historical events or buy a sports almanac or prevent/facilitate the assassination of various historical figures, but instead to acquire/recover early issues of various comic books in pristine condition. > [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#): > > Created by Gene Roddenberry. Also known as “Sutter Cane”. Stranger [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bother-me-in-science-fiction-movies/992001.md?page=19) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bother-me-in-science-fiction-movies/992001.md?page=21)