SciFi movies and pathetic misconceptions of tech failing for the story line.

[CatalinaWOW]

Firefly was a good show but they made no attempt to get spaceflight correct.

Firefly is the *only* show or movie that I have ever seen showing how a ship properly descends into a lower orbit for entry into the atmosphere.  I almost jumped up to cheer.

https://youtu.be/J3rX0T2XNxs

Forward takes you out, out takes you back, back takes you in, in takes you forward.

Ha. Flip and burn maneuver. Despite the early sci-fi CGI it really looks like something a ship would do.
It's a strange disconnect for people. Everyone seems to know that you can go to mars every 26 months, and the route is 9 months long, but then you rarely see anything else orbital implemented. Like I was watching Red Planet the other day. They start the landing like 20 minutes early, end up kms from the original landing site. So the ship must be going 20km/h in orbit I guess.

Well that is one answer.  Another would be that the start was 20 minutes early and the various dynamic correction mechanisms couldn't take out the initial error.  That would exceed the capability of any system appropriate for the time frame, but is only off by one or two orders of magnitude, not the three orders that chaps you about your solution.

[BrianHG]

Firefly was a good show but they made no attempt to get spaceflight correct.

Firefly is the *only* show or movie that I have ever seen showing how a ship properly descends into a lower orbit for entry into the atmosphere.  I almost jumped up to cheer.

https://youtu.be/J3rX0T2XNxs

Forward takes you out, out takes you back, back takes you in, in takes you forward.

Babylon 5 was good w.r.t. spaceflight dynamics. It completely avoided the "spitfires/mustang in space" syndrome. It also replaced "cowboys and indians in space" with "Roman empire / Japanese empire / Tolkien in space".

But then B5 was pioneering in many ways, including CGI, 5 year story arc, plot points being introduced many many episodes  before they came to fruition, none of the "global reset" between episodes (think Star Dreck!), general literacy, being based around classic philosophical questions, and the way the creator (JMS)  interacted with the fan base on usenet after each episode was transmitted.

Still worth rewatching after 30 years. Newbies should start with series 3, get hooked, then watch the earlier series to see how they got to that point.

Yes, B5 had a slow season 1 which you just had to sit through, but the entire series is worth watching.
It is the same with Farscape.

[tszaboo]

Firefly was a good show but they made no attempt to get spaceflight correct.

Firefly is the *only* show or movie that I have ever seen showing how a ship properly descends into a lower orbit for entry into the atmosphere.  I almost jumped up to cheer.

https://youtu.be/J3rX0T2XNxs

Forward takes you out, out takes you back, back takes you in, in takes you forward.

Ha. Flip and burn maneuver. Despite the early sci-fi CGI it really looks like something a ship would do.
It's a strange disconnect for people. Everyone seems to know that you can go to mars every 26 months, and the route is 9 months long, but then you rarely see anything else orbital implemented. Like I was watching Red Planet the other day. They start the landing like 20 minutes early, end up kms from the original landing site. So the ship must be going 20km/h in orbit I guess.

Well that is one answer.  Another would be that the start was 20 minutes early and the various dynamic correction mechanisms couldn't take out the initial error.  That would exceed the capability of any system appropriate for the time frame, but is only off by one or two orders of magnitude, not the three orders that chaps you about your solution.

Nah, Red planet was just an overall bad science accuracy movie. They had some sort of proton storm or something, and had to do emergency landing early.

B5 is great, and does sci-fi well. As in focusing on the human element instead of the tech gizmos. The human ships are pretty grounded design with centrifugal artificial gravity, or the Star Fury wit it's 4 engines and high maneuverability. I watched the series again, after like 25 years? Too bad the CGI is quite dated, and some of the sets are... Let's just say I had no idea that plastic pallets and IBCs, and garden floor tiles are so versatile.

[tggzzz]

B5 is great, and does sci-fi well. As in focusing on the human element instead of the tech gizmos. The human ships are pretty grounded design with centrifugal artificial gravity, or the Star Fury wit it's 4 engines and high maneuverability. I watched the series again, after like 25 years? Too bad the CGI is quite dated, and some of the sets are... Let's just say I had no idea that plastic pallets and IBCs, and garden floor tiles are so versatile.

Clearly you have never watched classic British TV SF from the 60s, 70s, 80s. For starters, have a look at Doctor Who and Blakes 7...

There's a subset of fandom that amuses itself by working out what various bits are and where they came from. The most famous example is probably "a sink plunger".

(They are a bit like my old Land Rover, which had many parts from many cars (frequently Minis!), and a fuel gauge calibrated in Roentgens/hour)

[tszaboo]

B5 is great, and does sci-fi well. As in focusing on the human element instead of the tech gizmos. The human ships are pretty grounded design with centrifugal artificial gravity, or the Star Fury wit it's 4 engines and high maneuverability. I watched the series again, after like 25 years? Too bad the CGI is quite dated, and some of the sets are... Let's just say I had no idea that plastic pallets and IBCs, and garden floor tiles are so versatile.

Clearly you have never watched classic British TV SF from the 60s, 70s, 80s. For starters, have a look at Doctor Who and Blakes 7...

There's a subset of fandom that amuses itself by working out what various bits are and where they came from. The most famous example is probably "a sink plunger".

(They are a bit like my old Land Rover, which had many parts from many cars (frequently Minis!), and a fuel gauge calibrated in Roentgens/hour)

No, but why would I? I also don't watch Turkish Sci-Fi, or the Sharknado series or 90s Brazilian soap operas. Or a number of genres.
Watched Doctor who from Eccleston to Peter Capaldi, didn't really like Capaldi since most of the time I didn't understand what he was saying, plus Steven Moffat is a baboon who doesn't understand storytelling, and it went all downhill from there. I think I wanted to watch some Red Dwarf, but it's nowhere to be found.
I don't think you realize, but If you don't have access to BBC 14 or whatever channel these films are goin on, you will never see them. They are so niche, even the BBC doesn't have all the Doctor Who episodes archived.

[Gyro]

Clearly you have never watched classic British TV SF from the 60s, 70s, 80s. For starters, have a look at Doctor Who and Blakes 7...

There's a subset of fandom that amuses itself by working out what various bits are and where they came from. The most famous example is probably "a sink plunger".

(They are a bit like my old Land Rover, which had many parts from many cars (frequently Minis!), and a fuel gauge calibrated in Roentgens/hour)

There's one in an Antique shop in Southsea - a Dalek that is, not just the sink plunger! It's comforting to see that the lights on its head have amber lenses with the appropriate approval markings.

[vk6zgo]

B5 is great, and does sci-fi well. As in focusing on the human element instead of the tech gizmos. The human ships are pretty grounded design with centrifugal artificial gravity, or the Star Fury wit it's 4 engines and high maneuverability. I watched the series again, after like 25 years? Too bad the CGI is quite dated, and some of the sets are... Let's just say I had no idea that plastic pallets and IBCs, and garden floor tiles are so versatile.

Clearly you have never watched classic British TV SF from the 60s, 70s, 80s. For starters, have a look at Doctor Who and Blakes 7...

There's a subset of fandom that amuses itself by working out what various bits are and where they came from. The most famous example is probably "a sink plunger".

(They are a bit like my old Land Rover, which had many parts from many cars (frequently Minis!), and a fuel gauge calibrated in Roentgens/hour)

One episode of "Dr Who" showed, in passing, the Doc messing round with a cylindrical aluminium device with multiple knobs protruding at varying angles around its periphery.
I was bemused by the amount of detail the Props Dept had gone to with this seemingly incidental device.

I wasn't till years later, when I ended up in a Studio environment, that I realised what it really was.

Philips had produced this device which clamped to the tubular handles of one model of their Colour Studio cameras, so the operator could have "easier" access to adjustments of various parameters.

It was lying, neglected, on a high shelf in Camera Maintenance, TVW7 having decided, as evidently also did the BBC, that it wasn't worth the effort.

Then there was the "Dalek Supreme" (which my mate reckoned sounded like "the specialty of the house"), that had an Eveready "Magnet lite" mounted on its "forehead" where lesser members of the "species" had that weird thing that looked like something out of a children's party.

Re the Landrover, it always fascinated me how many parts of old Britbeasts were interchangeable with those from quite different brands, sometimes with a bit of butchery needed, but often not.

[tggzzz]

B5 is great, and does sci-fi well. As in focusing on the human element instead of the tech gizmos. The human ships are pretty grounded design with centrifugal artificial gravity, or the Star Fury wit it's 4 engines and high maneuverability. I watched the series again, after like 25 years? Too bad the CGI is quite dated, and some of the sets are... Let's just say I had no idea that plastic pallets and IBCs, and garden floor tiles are so versatile.

Clearly you have never watched classic British TV SF from the 60s, 70s, 80s. For starters, have a look at Doctor Who and Blakes 7...

There's a subset of fandom that amuses itself by working out what various bits are and where they came from. The most famous example is probably "a sink plunger".

(They are a bit like my old Land Rover, which had many parts from many cars (frequently Minis!), and a fuel gauge calibrated in Roentgens/hour)

No, but why would I? I also don't watch Turkish Sci-Fi, or the Sharknado series or 90s Brazilian soap operas. Or a number of genres.
Watched Doctor who from Eccleston to Peter Capaldi, didn't really like Capaldi since most of the time I didn't understand what he was saying, plus Steven Moffat is a baboon who doesn't understand storytelling, and it went all downhill from there. I think I wanted to watch some Red Dwarf, but it's nowhere to be found.
I don't think you realize, but If you don't have access to BBC 14 or whatever channel these films are goin on, you will never see them. They are so niche, even the BBC doesn't have all the Doctor Who episodes archived.

Er, I realise all of that!

The "modern" Doctor Who (Eccleston onwards) has modern special effects. That's why I mentioned the earlier incarnations.

You are wrong about the reason the BBC doesn't have all the episodes. In the 60s and 70s most programmes were recorded on an expensive medium: videotape. Since it was expensive, it was recycled after use for newer programmes. Astounding? Of course! Many programmes of the era no longer exist.

For Capaldi: use the subtitles. I do, because I'm deaf.

Yes, the last couple of series have been soulless design-by-committee-and-focus-groups affairs. Russell T Davies is back for the next series, and the Doctor Who actor is interestingly quirky. Promising, but time will tell.

But to get back to the point. If the principal things you notice in B5 are the props, then you are missing the soul of the series. A good intro to all the subtleties is the B5 lurkers guide, since it contains many of the interactions between JMS and fans that occurred on usenet after each episode was transmitted for the first time (see the "jms speaks" sections in http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/reference/episodes.html )

[AndyBeez]

Credible Sci-Fi?

SPACE 1999 - no Moon Base Alpha (yet) but it did predict the arrival of cathode ray based smart phones.

RED DWARF (the early series') - every EEV DMM knows that one day it will go to a dumpster called Silicon Heaven.

LEXX - just about the most left-field sci-fi of the past 30 years - But for adults only. Seriously, it's not Doctor Who.

And stop off some time to watch the original 1960 version of THE TIME MACHINE ( as later referenced in the The Nerdvana Annihilation episode of The Big Bang Theory ) A pure 1950's take on the dystopian trajectory of human kind.

There are other higher brow films such as SOLARIS 1972, by Russian Andrei Tarkovsky and SUNSHINE 2007, by Danny Boyle. But you'll need to be a student to watch them, with other students, in a student context. If you know what I mean.

Enjoy 

[TimFox]

A former co-worker, originally from the UK, had commuted to work past a job shop that constructed Dalek props for the BBC, with a yard full of them in plain sight on the side of the road.

[Rick Law]

As the OP was asking: "Can anyone point me to any good SciFi series which don't make such stupid mistakes?"...

Movies are limited-episode series, so I equate movies with series.  As they are for entertainment rather than for pure education, 100% accuracy is unlikely.  One has to give them a "give-me" or two just to create a story, but the rest should be consistent and reasonably accurate.  Particularly for space-related movie as distances involved is huge.  It will take us decades to getting to our nearest neighboring star so movies will be way too slow and way too boring if we don't allow them warp-drives.  Thus, trade-offs will be made.  We just hope they did the right trade-offs (nothing too stupid), but "right" in this case will be "observer dependent".

Besides the aforementioned Interstellar, The Martian, Arrival, and 2001, try the following, I consider them good but of course my taste may not fit others:

2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984) Roy Scheider, John Lithgow, Helen Mirren, Bob Balaban, Keir Dullea, Candice Bergen, Arthur C. Clarke... :
A sequel to "2001: A Space Odyssey" it followed the creative and scientific accuracy spirit of 2001 - it is scientifically strong (good accuracy).  Technology looks rather outdated since the movie was made in 1984.  Rather good movie I must say.

Deep Impact (1998)  Robert Duvall, Téa Leoni, Elijah Wood, Morgan Freeman, Leelee Sobieski... :
A 7-mile rock/comet headed for earth.  Discovered about 2 yrs before impact.  With little time to react, they choose the simple "blow it up" way.  The science of space part is so-so, accurate enough that you can enjoy it still.  The hit by the smaller broken up rock is presented quite well.  The large one...  I am not so sure a 7-mile rock could be "broken up into pieces no bigger than a brief case" (actual quote from the movie spoken by Robert Duvall).  You have to "give them" the Ion Drive, the comet landing, and the "blow it up" works, but the rest are good.  Overall, a "C+" in science but "A" for entertainment.

Gravity (2013) Sandra Bullock, George Clooney...:
Rather unique, while most are about space exploration or space war, this one is about Space Garbage causing accidents in space.  The time is accelerated (duration between events are too quick) but presented with adequate accuracy.  In reality, Sandra Bullock hasn't a chance to survive, but it is a movie.  The garbage problem and the domino effect it portraits is however real.  Few SciFi movies are about the garbage problem, so it is something to watch.

Contagion (2011)  Marion Cotillard, Matt Damon, Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow...:
Virus infected the world...  This came out before our recent virus event.  The depiction of the spreading, panic, profiteering...  It is a good movie and also very thought provoking.

I am sure there are others, but only these came to mind.

[james_s]

(They are a bit like my old Land Rover, which had many parts from many cars (frequently Minis!), and a fuel gauge calibrated in Roentgens/hour)

What were you fueling that thing with? 

[snarkysparky]

As far as the Firefly scene.  Camera shows them all stand up in the bridge.   Then the pilot yells " hold onto something"   Proceeds to perform multi G maneuvers with random acceleration directions while crew is "holding onto something"

Also the flying in the atmosphere, being chased by reavers with only rear engine thrust.   What keeps the ship from the dirt.

I know it's entertaining sci fi.   And firefly is some of the very best.   But it cut corners for the sake of the space western vibe

For the best reentry scene check the Expanse when Amos was travelling to the moon.  The sequence of landing on the moon was superb.   Sorry don't remember episode number.

[HuronKing]

Primer (2004) is a pretty fun time-travel film made by engineering students where they do NOT dumb down the plot or science fiction for the sake of the audience. It's a challenging movie but very rewarding if you can follow it.

[rdl]

Sadly, less than 20 minutes in they talk of "pulling volts from a battery". Maybe I'll give it another look later, but somehow the presentation didn't really work for me.

Primer (2004)

[RJSV]

Yes I saw that, too.

[intabits]

I haven't re-watched this piece of crap since about the time that it first appeared, so my recollection may be erroneous: "Independence Day (1996)"

The Earth super-geek (Goldblum) was able to take a captured/downed alien space craft, and somehow reverse engineer it's giga-advanced alien technology (all with zero documentation of course), identify a vulnerability, design a virus to exploit it, compile/build it into alien machine code, design/build an electrically compatible interface to the alien ship, correctly interact with the alien interface protocol to upload his virus, and use it to gain operational control of the craft.

And of course, doing all this while causing no damage to the ship, having all this work on the very first attempt, with his only error being a minor bit-flip that got forward/reverse arse-about.

Then skillfully operating the craft to defeat the bad guys...

[Infraviolet]

Post #91, pretty hard to believe aliens would use a computer architecture that humans could reverse engineer well enough in a matter of days to be able to write a virus to exploit it.

As for Babylon 5, I can recommend it too. Does a very good job of having a proper strong and continuous story arc.

[coppice]

I haven't re-watched this piece of crap since about the time that it first appeared, so my recollection may be erroneous: "Independence Day (1996)"

The Earth super-geek (Goldblum) was able to take a captured/downed alien space craft, and somehow reverse engineer it's giga-advanced alien technology (all with zero documentation of course), identify a vulnerability, design a virus to exploit it, compile/build it into alien machine code, design/build an electrically compatible interface to the alien ship, correctly interact with the alien interface protocol to upload his virus, and use it to gain operational control of the craft.

And of course, doing all this while causing no damage to the ship, having all this work on the very first attempt, with his only error being a minor bit-flip that got forward/reverse arse-about.

Then skillfully operating the craft to defeat the bad guys...

130 years ago someone sat down and pondered how he could construct a story where advanced aliens attack us and we still survive. "Let them be sloppy about bio-hazards. Everyone gets sloppy about bio-hazards" he thought, and wrote a story that worked well enough people still want to make new versions of it.

In the 1990s someone sat down and pondered how they could construct a story where advanced aliens could attack us and we still survive. "Lets have people who can barely reach orbit be able to defeat the most critically important technologies of a race that can roam among the stars. We'll give them a few hours. That'll work.". Only a small percentage of the public thought "hey, wait a minute".

As a society, I think we may be going backwards.

[David Hess]

The Earth super-geek (Goldblum) was able to take a captured/downed alien space craft, and somehow reverse engineer it's giga-advanced alien technology (all with zero documentation of course), identify a vulnerability, design a virus to exploit it, compile/build it into alien machine code, design/build an electrically compatible interface to the alien ship, correctly interact with the alien interface protocol to upload his virus, and use it to gain operational control of the craft.

My counter arguments are that the aliens had already done the work of interfacing human computer systems to theirs when they used the human satellite networks to coordinate worldwide, (1) and that as scavengers, the alien systems were only as good as what they scavenged, so they had poor understanding of their own technology.

Of course the movie neglected to explain or refer to any of this and really should not be taken that seriously.

An example of the same plot point can be found in A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge where the aliens counterhack the human systems without the humans realizing who had actually hacked them until it was too late.

(1) Why was this even necessary?  Did the aliens lack their own satellite technology?

[RJSV]

...but seems like, (if he could reverse engineer the comments, buried in the code), should be an Alien's nerd referring to Cheetos, or some other popular crap.

[coppercone2]

I don't see why the thing in ID4 was so unrealistic. It could be as simple that the aliens setup an ad hock cyber attack on satellites based on what they usually do, if you watch the sequel (not as bad as people say, I enjoyed it just as much as the first one in the movie theater).

It clearly showed that the aliens were a intergalactic menace. If they did the same attack for the last 50 civilizations they destroyed, why would you change your methods and get paranoid all the sudden about people still on CMOS? Intergalactic conquest is like a day job for them.

I am sure everyone here has heard "its good enough, this works, stop worrying about it" about a host of technological things at work. For some reason people seem to think that interstellar aliens would have a vastly different risk matrix then humans for some reason. Kind of like arguing about if you need to put a fuse on a circuit, you damn well know (if you were in the industry) that some people have been winging it for many years and they see it like asking them to put a safety helmet on for walking in the driveway. Its super easy to get made fun of for taking precautions lol

Its like a pest control guy getting paranoid about above average intelligence rats that are gonna coordinate an attack on him some how. And its kind of like prewar conjecture about the Russian military's projected 'success' in the Ukraine war that was on some places online last year

[vk6zgo]

I haven't re-watched this piece of crap since about the time that it first appeared, so my recollection may be erroneous: "Independence Day (1996)"

The Earth super-geek (Goldblum) was able to take a captured/downed alien space craft, and somehow reverse engineer it's giga-advanced alien technology (all with zero documentation of course), identify a vulnerability, design a virus to exploit it, compile/build it into alien machine code, design/build an electrically compatible interface to the alien ship, correctly interact with the alien interface protocol to upload his virus, and use it to gain operational control of the craft.

And of course, doing all this while causing no damage to the ship, having all this work on the very first attempt, with his only error being a minor bit-flip that got forward/reverse arse-about.

Then skillfully operating the craft to defeat the bad guys...

I seem to remember that the spacecraft was at Area 51, & it was inferred that it was from Roswell, circa 1947, so scientists had near 50 years to analyse the craft.
Remember, it was flyable---the craft that was seen to crash that the alien was captured from was wrecked.

All that said, you would think alien technology and/or operating protocols would have progressed in 49 years, & that they would notice an extra one turning up inside the mothership, especially as it would have looked weird with a massive nuclear missile "bodged" onto it.

[David Hess]

All that said, you would think alien technology and/or operating protocols would have progressed in 49 years, & that they would notice an extra one turning up inside the mothership, especially as it would have looked weird with a massive nuclear missile "bodged" onto it.

Without an external threat, the aliens would have no reason to track their own returning ships.  If the IFF says friendly, then that is good enough.

Hardly any series shows progress in technology.  It is almost always overlooked.

[coppercone2]

and scavangers or not, they might be mostly busy just mining and building stuff between occasional conquests. I don't think they said the scout ship reported back, it just went missing. For all we know the last time they had to do any conquering was 500 years ago, possibly a different generation did it, so they had nothing but simulators.

And look how fast things de-fund when the threat goes away. Everyone is always saying that the military is in a sad shape compared to the cold war times when they were expecting something, and that was only 30 years ago. Scavangers are usually greedy IMO, and lazy. Could be stupid assholes that got lucky.

Actually I remember now the second movie did say they were fighting for a while