KC

Another thing that Star Trek teaches us: manual overrides never work.

KC

Jimmy Higgins

I'm conviced that there never was a "warp core ejecter".

Picard: We'll need to eject the warp core.
Jordie: It's offline captain.
Picard: What the God damn hell, Jordie? That damn thing never works! What the hell are you doing down there anyways?
Jordie: What if we reroute the energy through the power conduits an....
Picard: Don't f'in start with me Jordie!

tribalbeeyatch

I laughed at both the "erectus" joke AND the "homo" joke. I don't see where scientific literacy comes into play; you just need a sophomoric sense of humor.

Oh, and the carbon-dating problems didn't register with me (I, like most of America, wasn't paying close attention to the substance of his talk), but the meeting format was pretty laughable. As if they'd have that tiny little plasma screen instead of using a projector and large screen. Then they end Ross's lecture with a standing ovation AND NO QUESTION AND ANSWER SESSION!?!

[edited to add]

The one thing that really rung with truth in that episode was the "joke" that Ross told. It was something about the irony of carnivores having such large heads given their poor cerebral development or whatever. And the throngs of nerds in the audience all yuck it up on cue while the normal people (Joey and Rachel) look perplexed as to what everybody is laughing at. There have been more than a few occasions where I'm yucking it up with my labmates only to be struck by how impossibly nerdy the average person would find it to be in stitches at a joke whose punchline is "chorionic plexus" or "...and they hadn't balanced their tubes before ultracentrifugation." [cue braying nerd laughter]

Valentine Pontifex

If you are wondering how they eat and drink and other science facts. La La La. Just say to yourself its just a show. And that I should just relax....



Okay I get annoyed at silly bad science on skiffy shows as well.

thebeave

I'll admit...movies and TV just aren't as fun anymore now that I've become a full blown skeptic and science nerd. I nitpick the science misinfo to death rather than sitting back and just "enjoying the ride". I don't think I can sit and watch a fun movie like "Back to the Future" without going, "... you can't do that... flux capacitor?? WTF??? ... 1.21 jigawatts...what the hell?? ... but what about causality problems... 88 mph...huh?? And the biggest one of all... how could you expect us to believe a babe like Marty's young mom (Lea Thompson) would ever go for a dork like Marty's young dad (Crispin Glover)?! That's clearly a violation of the laws of Natural Selection.

Blinn

Anyone ever try the Star Trek Drinking Game?

DMB

I don't think we should be too hard on fiction, so long as there is no direct attempt to mislead people. No writers of fiction ever get things 100 % accurate. I am a born nit-picker and have to slap my own wrist when I get the urge to write to authors about their minor inaccuracies. Of course, if they make large numbers of gross mistakes I simply give up reading or watching or whatever.

Lobstrosity

Example of something I cannot forgive and will never ever watch again...ever: Armageddon

There's enough fucking drama inherent to the premise of an asteroid/comet impact. You don't need to butcher the rules of physics and all conceivable logic in order to "enhance the excitement." I hate when I leave a movie feeling like the screenwriters have cheated me (as in the whole movie you think you're operating under one set of rules and then the final solution is to simply change the rules to give you instant victory).

Example of something I had no problems with: Back to the Future

I was simply able to enjoy this for a fun movie that didn't really even take itself seriously. Hell, look at Doc.

RED DAVE

Leave us not forget, in Star Wars I, we learned that a parsec is a unit of time. Some people didn't pay attention in high school.

RED DAVE

gcameron

The science in Star Trek is laughable, but the science in most TV/movie "science fiction" is equally so. I just compartmentalize. Star Trek got me at an early age and by the time I realized how bad the science was, I was already hooked. I'm not even reading Trek as "science" most of the time -- I read it as drama/action etc. -- so the cognitive dissonance only occasionally kicks in. If I had encountered it as an adult (which of course Sagan did), and moreso if science had been my profession, I suppose I might have had more resistance to it.

It does create a peculiar situation sometimes. I'm watching an episode and admiring what a great character Spock is, but at the same time realizing "he is an absurd depiction of an alien." (The writers did scramble later on to justify the fact that the galaxy is populated entirely by humanoids... the Preservers seeding the cosmos, etc. Some interesting retroactive apologetics. But then there is the episode with Frank Gorshin who comments "You believe your species is descended from apes..." so what species is Frank Gorshin, who apart from his black/white pigmentation looks identical to humans, descended from?) Then there are all those episodes set on planets which follow Hodgkins' Law of Low Budget Television Production -- a planet full of Romans, a planet full of Indians, a planet full of Chicago gangsters, etc. That seems to fall under the "Hey! Let's raid the Paramount prop department again!" school of TV writing.

I still love Star Trek, though.

Speaking of egregious clunkers, I remember reading a sci-fi screenplay set on a "mysterious planet" that was supposed to be 7 million miles from Earth... The scientific literacy of the average sci-fi screenwriter is abysmal compared to that of the average sci-fi novelist. Stuff any 7th grader shouldn't get wrong.

This all reminds of my brother, a WWII buff who has trouble with "Patton" because they used the wrong sort of tanks.