The most ridiculous thing you've seen in Sci Fi

[SheikhJahbooty]

On the interspecies front, the most ridiculous thing I've seen in sci fi is the fact that Major Kira hesitated for even a second when offered the opportunity to have sex with someone who can control the exact size and shape of his stuff. I guess the writers wanted to hold onto racism for a few more weeks. "But she's a former terrorist. She has to fall in love with the cute Arab doctor."

But I have to wonder why interspecies breeding is a space opera trope at all. Who was the person who started that trope? Was there a nerdy sci fi writer somewhere who said, "I would love to travel to outer space, and by some bizarre quirk of parallel evolution meet a species of aliens where the females at least look mostly like attractive humans, except for maybe skin pigmentation or pointy ears or some forehead or nose ridges. And then I could have sex with one of the hot alien women, and... accidentally knock her up." It's that last part that I don't see ever happening.

This is a really old trope too. In an old episode of Rocky Jones, Space Ranger, upon landing on an alien planet, the boy sidekick goes off to play with the princess. Although they are just children and their relationship is very innocent, she is very pretty. One wonders what will happen as they grow up. She is apparently a recurring character but I've only ever seen the one episode.

[Chainsaw Aardvark]

The whole inter-species thing goes back to the ideal that most aliens are analogs for certain human archetypes/elasticities. Furthermore SF is about human problems, and sex is definitely one of those.

Of course, this begs the question, if we found a species with compatible equipment - but not the ability to reproduce due to a different number of chromosomes - what would happen? Would the rate of alien sex go up, since there is no chance of pregnancy, and little chance of diseases hopping the species gap (thus no consequences/cosmic free love) or would this be seen as an abomination/non-reproductive habit and result in a conservative back-lash. For those brave enough to tackle the issue, this might be a way to explore the gay rights debate.

Similarly, reproduction and intimate contact is at the core of many of our customs - an alien species wouldn't seem very alive if these habits weren't mentioned, at least in passing. Of course there is a line between pathology of the cosmos and porn...in...space(TM?) Admittedly, cheap titillation is a way to sell books...

The Mekton Zeta book has a lot of great chapter headings, and one of them is "Kissing a slug is no fun". It then explains why so many anime series have truly bizarre looking aliens that somehow always produce an anthropomorphic version for one of the main characters to fall in love with. Its pathos, drama, displays a gentler side of the invaders, internal conflict and paranoia...

And then there is the conquest of space and adding them to our tribe/planetary family. Or the question of what precursor/deity/random number generator decided to make everything compatible. Of course, there is the equation of beauty/aesthetics with the right and good - so something that looks like us is far more ok than a creature that isn't. (Yes, one can argue beauty is only skin deep - but given the history of judging ripe fruits, etc. first impressions of aesthetics have their place as well.)

There an oddly large number of reasons for this trope in SF - but it does get rather "squick" when taken far enough.

[misterecho]

it is possible for similar species to have offspring,
lion+tiger=liger
tiger+lion=tigon

so if there are aliens who share a fairley recent ansester. even though our evoloutions have diverged its possible for us to breed.

on the desies front. it is difficult for desease to cross species barrier but when it does it can be disasterous. for example AIDS crossed the barrier when a hunter cut himself while butchering a monkey.

we've all heard of the various influenza viruses bird flu, swine flu etc.


ps how do i add this link to my signiture?
http://www.northayrshirewargamesclub.co.uk [EDIT - have sent a PM, misterecho, check your messages at the top of the forum - Rob L]

[SirDonzer]

Whenever I watch science fiction movies or shows, I always try to enjoy the experience first. I look at it with logic after the show is over. To me, good shows have an internal consistency that makes sense. Bad shows don't have that.

Good Example: Jar-Jar Binks on Starwars Episodes 1-3. I have heard many say hes just a bad stereotype. When I look at him from within the film's context: He's on the outside of his own society. His society doesn't have much contact with the Naboo. So why should he perfectly speak the language of a peaple he never has contact with? So to me, he does speak correctly for his situation.

Bad Example: The new Battlestar Galactica series on the sci-fi channel. I stopped watching when they started arguing about how to detect cylons. On one hand they were claiming that the new cylons were indistinguishable from humans. That their technology was undetectable. Then they claimed that the cylon girl's baby was cylon...

Problems: If the cylon technology was biological, it would show up in their DNA. Just a simple DNA test would reveal them. If it is hard tech, they would pick up the electronic signature very easily. But the biggest problem with the show -- to me -- was why the cylons would bother attacking in the first place. They had the ENTIRE universe to choose a place for themselves. They could have ran their stardrives until they failed, rebuilt it and repeated this dozens of times. They could have settled in a system so far away, the humans would never run into them again... In the old series, it was simple, the cylons were alien built robots making war on all intelligent life in the universe.

I feel that the new Battlestar show has no internal consistency...Especially that last scene of the last episode...

Just my opinions...

[misterecho]

I am lucky. I can switch off my brain when i watch or read Sci-fi. Otherwise i just couldn't enjoy it.

[modred11]

Personally I've been going the opposite way with science fiction lately, it's been seeming to me that I was over critical of what was possible.

One of the reasons why Time Travel & Parallel Universes aren't currently considered possible is that there's simply no way of changing our movement through time (excepting relativistic effects near black holes and the speed of light, but those don't really help) and there's simply no way of moving from one universe to another, if the possibility does exist there must be something that alters movement through time, or which is effected by multiple universes in some way. Logically then they're both impossible (unless and until something happens to be discovered which proves they exist).

I was reading the page the other day and noticed one of the goals was to prove/disprove the existence of other dimensions. This surprised me greatly, I had no idea that such things had or could have any impact on our (perceivable) universe . Admittedly most of my excitement over this is my original misconception that "Extra Dimensions" meant "Parallel Universes", but still!

It's exciting to think that on the microscopic level things like time travel and parallel universes might have some calculable effect (even if that doesn't provide a way to travel through/to them). I mean I have no idea how string theory works or anything, which only reinforces (for me) the possibility that there could be a way to travel through universes/time! Now as long as I remain in blissful ignorance it'll remain possible for something to exist to prove that! Yay!

[misterecho]

Cutting edge physics is always difficult to understand for us laymen. Just ask a bonefide Professor of Physics to explain the measurment problem! String theory has its champions, but it's very contreversial.

In the end, what does it if antimatter engines, direct energy weapons and teleportation are impossible? they're still cool!

[Kinslayer]

Going back to Kirk vs. Green Women, my assistant commented today on the subject. She said that two very similar species (she used vulcans and humans) would be just close enough to be in the deepest part of the Uncanny Valley. We would be able to get on better with something resembling a scaly bug with tentacles. Something alien but obviously sentient would be more acceptable than something so close to human as to be decidedly inhuman.

[Evil_Lawyer]

I saw something called Princess of Mars recently....and apparently all the neccessary information to perfectly replicate a human down to the quantum level can be perfectly stored on a 6 GB flashdrive.

Are we REALLY that simple, since a 6GB flash drive is barely a pittance of the human brains storage facility

A

[Sanglorian]