Things that BUG YOU in sci-fi flicks?

[ChrisIII]

^Actually something Doctor Who generally does pretty well. The Daleks generally have interfaces designed around their sucker arms going back to the black and white classic Who.

I think some of the earlier EU tried to explain all the humans in Star Wars, I think even one even tried to pull a GALACTICA and imply Earth humans are colonists from SW's galaxy (!) but is either really obscure or was vetoed by Lucas.

[superduperman]

When humans and aliens make contact nobody catches any diseases?

An early episode of Enterprise kind of touched on this. Tripp goes to an alien ship to help them with repairs and gets sick in their environment. That's of course the same episode where he gets pregnant! But this definitely should have happened more often early on because they wouldn't have had the kind of filtration system the transporters would have had. They sat in that decon room in their underwear for hours getting sweaty with each other insead! No innuendo there!

[Captain Smith]

That weird honeycomb effect for force fields. When did that start being a thing?

Changing the timeline and having the person who caused it still being around. Marty McFly would either have an alternative version of himself that exists in the new timeline who never went back in time and who the cool truck actually belongs to, or he would have his memory changed and realigned with the new timeline.

Aliens who speak English the first time we meet them. Or a magical universal translator that can immediately interpret a language it's never heard before. Language forms over thousands of years.

Humans being the default dominant species in societies with multiple species. Both major "Star" franchises are guilty of this. Andor made reference to some kind of human dominance group in a galaxy where humans make up maybe 2% of the population.

All species having the same type of controls for their spaceships. A different species would develop their controls differently.

Similarly - everyone is roughly on the same top level technology. Yes, every once in awhile they run into some omnipotents like the Q. But the main protagonists are usually equivalent. It's not like a ship of the line from 1750 runs into the Iowa class. Even if they run into a slightly move advanced craft - they pull out some techno-fix on the spur of the moment.

The Culture universe has omnipotents around who usually don't care about the Culture level folks. Another point is that the less developed planets are usually some Middle Ages folks in tunics from the wardrobe room. Yeah, Star Trek did cowboys, gangsters and Nazis - wardrobe room. But the dominant cultures seem all the same level. The Borg are slightly more advanced but they are figured out quickly.

[ChrisIII]

The Federation doesn't generally make first contact with a world until they've reached a certain technical/society level I think. At least warp drive I think. Although naturally that rule is broken several times, although sometimes by accident.

In the original Romulan episode Balance of Terror it seems to indicate that the Romulan ship is incapable of warp drive, although that could mean it was just that ship (as it seemed to be short range anyway) and not the whole species. Kind of would be difficult for them to have a war with the Federation or get to Romulus from Vulcan without it....then again the whole Star Trek warp drive stuff wasn't set in stone as much back then-"Speed of plot" and all that.

[DrNewGod]

Hostile aliens that are always physically superior to us. Let the tech do the talking. One of the things I think holds up well from Wolfman & Perez' NTT were the Psions: wimpy little punks, but still dangerous AF.

[Powerboy]

Some things that mildly annoy me with Doctor Who. But, I know they are inevitable because the show has to appeal to a current day audiences.

The Doctor, although he is a time traveler, never runs into, say, the old daleks that he could run rings around and get them to shoot each other, that Ian Chesterton or Jamie McCrimmon could beat by dodging and kicking them off a cliff. He should occasionally run into those sorts of daleks or the old cybermen, etc.

One thing I really liked about the 12th Doctor is that whole feeling that he really doesn't fit into any specific time period. It's like he couldn't keep track of what the rules were in any given time. He couldn't keep track of what it was or wasn't proper to say or do in any given time and place. He's been to so many.

On the other hand, one of the things that bug me about time travel stories in general is that they display no understanding of the time they travel to or, if the writer does understand, he ignores it and gives us 21st century people and attitudes living in the 10th century or wherever. Let's just say most time travel stories are not "Time and Again".

[ChrisIII]

Kind of works with Marty since he wasn't intended to be the pilot of the ship in the first place. He's not even that interested in travelling in the first place, just asking Doc to "look him up when he gets there" regarding the future.

Doc probably intended to fit in and do some research, since we see in II he has money from different years and probably would've done much better in '55 having lived it (He's in a bit of a hurry in II but fits reasonably well in), plus he seemed to have enough knowledge of the old west to pass as a blacksmith.

The Doctor runs into older models of Daleks (Or at least older casings, possibly 'fresher' mutants) in "Asylum of the Daleks" but they're in bad shape and then again in "Magician's apprentice" and "The Witch's familiar" which shows them co-existing with the modern versions of the Daleks (apart from old mutants which are dumped in the 'sewer').

He also runs into older versions of Cybermen (Including his converted companion) in The Doctor Falls, although it's mainly the Mondasian Cybermen from Tenth Planet (And even though with some small tweaks such as their "headlamp" firing lasers) which 'evolve' strait into both versions of the new series Cybermen.

Think there's one of the short stories which has them encountering some of the other Cybermen during the adventure such as the electronic-sounding Troughton era ones, the generally more chatty and deeper voiced Tom Baker and 80's Cybermen etc.