Or velociraptors…
They were even called PADDs – Personal Access Display Device.
Batman in particular bugs me. At least, Batman as currently presented by DC Comics. He is, what, maybe 35 to 40 years old? In that time, he has accumulated Ph.D. level knowledge of biology, chemistry, forensics, criminal psychology, cryptology, and probably a lot of other fields. He is also one of the world’s top masters of six or seven different forms of martial arts. In addition, he is an Olympic class gymnast. His piloting skills put the Blue Angels to shame, and he drives better than a Formula One champion. He can create disguises that rival the work of Oscar winning makeup artists, supported by the fact that he himself is apparently a better actor than Olivier. He is fluent in several different languages.
And if you ask people why they like him so much, they’ll say it’s because, unlike all the other superheroes, he’s so realistic.
yep, batman, Bond, James Bond … and the guy from MI … they all jump into any helicopter and 8 seconds later they fly them like a pro …
or boat
or submarine
It helps a lot that in comic book universes, there’s one field called “science” that covers everything from astrophysics to genetic engineering. Saves a lot of time, since you only have to study for the one degree.
My favorite thing about PADDs in TNG is how they’re depicted as being one PADD per document. If you need the Captain to see something, you hand him a PADD. If he needs 3 documents, it’s 3 PADDs. You don’t e-mail it to his personal PADD because the idea of personal computing barely existed when TNG aired, much less personal mobile devices.
I generally agree about sound in space, but The Expanse was so good, I was willing to ignore it.
And that brings to mind something that did sometimes bother me on TNG/DS9/Voyager – Crew members were always turning in reports or otherwise distributing information by waking into the room and physically handing a PADD to another officer. Do they not have email on Starfleet ships? The worst example was on Voyager. They managed to find a way to send messages from home to the Voyager crew in the Delta Quadrant, but once Voyager received them Neelix had to distribute them by literally walking around the ship handing out PADDs.
One of the reasons I like Firefly is because they were smuggling basic things. Food, medicines, and stealing money. Before that, if someone was doing a train robbery, it was for some macguffin gadget that was really powerful. It was nice to see that. I also liked that tech was there but hidden. They did have a lot of things that looked like the 1800s wild west, until the scanner shows up or the hovercraft arrive.
Obviously, you didn’t like it, which is fine. As an aside, the movie was supposed to be what season two was about spread out more, IIRC.
Once again, it seems to be based on the writer and what they want to do. Don’t want to deal with Batman going to experts? He knows it. I agree it’s lazy though. I thought at one point, he had an mechanical expert for his cars, another for science, and a few others that he consulted. Again, Sherlock Holmes in a lot of ways.
Thanks for the discussion!
I’ve got to defend my favorite goofy-ass zombie action shooter a bit. Umbrella’s business plan is more like:
Step 1: Develop a serum that will turn us into super-powered immortals.
Step 2: Rule the Earth like gods.
The problem they have is that their immortality serum only gives .001% of subjects immortality - everyone else it turns into zombies. They’re trying to make the serum more reliable, but they need to do a lot of trials, which means they end up creating a lot of zombies, which eventually escape and start eating people. But the zombies aren’t the goal, they’re an unintended side effect - sort of biological waste.
But the final is a real bitch.
Consistency is very important in science fiction.
I’ve read the Star Trek actors made a point to try to use the same buttons on the helm and transporter console. They knew the audience would remember the purple button fired phasers.
I’m willing to accept alternate reality in a sci-fi world. But, don’t say one thing in scene 1 and do something entirely different in scene 3.
Niven & Pournelle explained this quite well in The Mote In God’s Eye.
Mega corporations are stupid and evil now. I have no doubt they will continue to be both, with R & D not knowing what Marketing is doing, while HR raids Accounting for various offenses to Corporate Policy.
Quite a lot of what is played on the radio today is just as weird as “sound in Space.”
Steve Rogers: Big man in a suit of armor. Take that off, what are you?
Tony Stark: Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist.
QFT. Mal getting tossed through the “window” in the opening scene of the “first” episode really sold the concept.
Damn, that should be inserted into almost every discussion of TV/movies that I’ve been in.
Your use of Batman was a good example, too. If it can’t be explained by being rich and psychotic, then you’d better come up with a damn good reason for it.
Dammit, just like other sci-fi, superheroes have to follow their in-universe rules!
Or, to put it another way, a fictional world should follow its own rules.
(And, to put it in object-oriented programming terms, this includes the rules it inherits from its superclass.)
They lost the technology for email at the same time the lost the technology for seatbelts.
Regarding humanoid aliens…
Some extra-terrestrial species…like Asgardians and Kryptonians…appear superficially human.
Others, like the Centauri, could pass for human if you overlook the hairdo and…attributes.
I really think it is this. There are limitations on what a TV/movie production can do. Especially in the “old” days before CGI was doable and looked ok(ish). Even that is still expensive and it is hard for actors to interact with something that is not on set but will be added later. Even big movies do not have unlimited budgets. TV shows much less so. Instead, they use humans with makeup on.
Kind of the same thing for “universal translators.” Star Trek uses them. Star Wars everyone just seems to understand each other with no explanation. The alternative is the story meets a new alien and they stand there jibbering at each other. It makes it hard to progress the story (unless the not understanding each other is part of the story).
So much is sacrificed on the altar of telling a story.
The only things that bother me in Sciffy are bad characterizations and poor plotting. Tech isn’t it. I enjoy some hard SF, but usually that means military SF, and I do not like most of that. Most of what I like is soft or opera.
Oh, yeah, I vividly remember that Gunsmoke episode where the Marshal was stuck on a dead steamtrain slowly running out of oxygen while bandits tried to break in…
Or that one Bonanza where the Cartwright brothers had to pull off a heist by building a medical carriage out of spare parts while Hoss pretended to be an apothecary…
I had the same problem and had one or two false starts with the series. That was probably its downfall.
But, it grows on you and really is pretty great. It’s the story and not the setting you need to get wrapped around. Great dialog and characters.
Kinda like Dr. Who (especially old Dr. Who). If you were watching it for special effects you were left wanting.