Arikay

Star Trek was fine till Voyager, Where they just started pulling things out of their A** to finish the stories. Heh, forget about anything scientific accurate.

My big complaint comes from swords in movies. From stuff like highlander that help boost the legend of the katana, to knight movies where they say the swords were all heavy and everyone got tired of fighting after a few minute, etc. :banghead:

lpetrich

Carl Sagan revealed in Broca's Brain that he had had much the same feeling.

He stated that he knows that it has a wide following and that some thoughtful people have told him that it ought to be interpreted allegorically rather than literally.

(as if it was a religion)

But the idea of someone being a cross-planet hybrid he found about as reasonable as a cross between a man and a petunia.

Jinto

I once knew a man named Petunia. Does that count?

Minnesota

What struck me about Ross' "keynote" speech before a roomful of PhD paleontologists was how his remarks were so obviously superficial and basic: as if he were giving an introductory lecture to college freshmen. I realize that the writers probably took easy phrases that sound important from some popular science book, but even so . . . . . . . . . .

Lobstrosity

Ok, in my opinion it's fine to mock the ignorance of others, but we should also be rational about it as we do it--I don't think anyone out there should be feigning indignation or surprise at what transpired on Friends. How much of the viewing audience watches Friends with the goal of learning paleontology? How much of the viewing audience do you think was troubled by the inaccuracies of Ross' statements? How much science do you think the show's writers know? Given that the answers to these questions are probably not much, not much, and not much respectively, I think what we saw was neither unreasonable nor unexpected (seriously, do you expect them to bring in a science advisor for a freaking sitcom?). The key was simply making it sound like Ross was saying complicated things as the goal was humor, not education. It didn't matter whether his statements were accurate or coherent, they merely had to appear to have those qualities when viewed by laypeople (i.e. the vast majority of the target audience). I did think it was a bit stupid to show a picture of a giant carnivore shortly before calling it an herbivore, however, since even idiots know what giant meat-eaters look like (you know, from movies and shit).

Nostalgic Pushhead

Um, its just a TV show.

There is a *lot* that goes into any TV show or movie. There's nitpickers of any subject- science, firearms, computers, backstory, cultures, etc.

They're going to get SOMETHING wrong. And if you notice it, it will annoy you. But its not a big deal.

X-Files has bad science? So what? Someone fires a gun 10 times that only shoots 6 on a clip? So what? The upload time for the file was completely unrealistic compared to its huge size? So what?

Now, when dealing with cultures, or important issues, every step should be taken to make sure its accurate (as to avoid offensive mistakes) but jeez, its not the end of the world.

As a transsexual, I find almost every portrayal of a fictional trans person in major media wrong, and in many cases offensively so. It happens.

Silent Dave

When it comes to putting science fiction on TV, you pretty much have two choices: finding a balance between entertainment (in a broad sense) and suspension or disbelief, or completely eliminating the latter by making your show something out of a Robert Forward or Stephen Baxter novel. I personally would love seeing, for instance, "Dragon's Egg" or "The Time Ships" made into movies, but I think hard SF in TV format would bore and/or confuse the hell out of most people.

And speaking of Robert Forward, I think it was he who coined the First Law of Storytelling: "Never let the facts get in the way of a good story." I believe in that, and so I'm a Trekkie.


Dave

Salmon of Doubt

Or you could go the Farscape direction and ignore the science almost completely for the sake of story and character development instead...
<explosion>
"What happened?"
"Who CARES? Just run!"

I always got frustrated with Star trek because it tried to put science in deliberately as part of the plot, so it was more annoying when it souded ridiculous. But with things where the science is just a tangent to the main story, like Farscape or Friends, I think you just need to accept that the focus isn't the science, so it's bound to be a little unrealistic.

Jimmy Higgins

The one thing I learned in Star Trek is that there ain't nothin' you can't do when you reroute it through the power conduits onto the deflector dish.

I was waiting for one episode where Jordie would give the insanely complex and difficult solution (probably involving the power conduits and deflector dish), and Picard responding, "What the hell are you talking about?!" ... Didn't happen.

trientalis

Exactly. Furthermore, I learned from watching Dr. Who that any technical problem can be solved by either the judicious use of a sonic screwdriver or by reversing the polarity of the neutron flow.