Overused Silly Sci-Fi Science.

[GlennD]

Originally Posted by sabredog

They depicted a battle in 0G in Star Trek 6 - The Unknown Country, where the Klingon Leader was killed by assassins wearing magnetic boots. Quite well done.

I've somehow avoided....err, missed seeing Star Trek 5 and 6. Maybe I need to fix that.

Someone mentioned The Wrath of Khan earlier in the thread.....it had simply the best space battle ever filmed and remains in my top 5 movies of all time for that reason.

[sabredog]

Skip 5 and go straight to 6

[Ekaros]

Maybe the artificial gravity and dampeners are the reason why everything happens in 2D...

For me there is something special in harder Sci-Fi, the moving to atleast some realism.

[Steven Lake]

I've found that it helps to visualize space battles between ships like dog fights between aircraft, except with no deck/floor. Sorta like what Ender did in Ender's Game where up was wherever you made it to be, making everything relative to your perspective.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by GlennD

Someone mentioned The Wrath of Khan earlier in the thread.....it had simply the best space battle ever filmed and remains in my top 5 movies of all time for that reason.

Well... if you consider that there actually haven't been too many space battles ever filmed... and if you buy two ships stumbling about in a heavy fog that somehow renders all of their sophisticated electronic sensors and targeting equipment useless... but still allows them to maneuver and fire... and if you buy Khan's single-minded hatred of Kirk turning the former world-class tactical genius and leader of men into a driveling idiot...

Sure, it was good!

Personally, I think the space battles on the rebooted Galactica were the most realistic I've seen, and more exciting than the Khan battles, the Star Wars space battles and the Babylon 5 battles. The Deep Space Nine Federation/Cardassian/Dominion dustups were pretty impressive, but only in that Trek style (ie, not realistic)...

Hold on. I guess there have been a lot of space battles filmed after all.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by Steven Lake

I've found that it helps to visualize space battles between ships like dog fights between aircraft, except with no deck/floor. Sorta like what Ender did in Ender's Game where up was wherever you made it to be, making everything relative to your perspective.

The thing about small aircraft is, they're harder to hit because of all that jockeying around in turbulent air. Remove the effect of air turbulence and introduce self-tracking weapons, and the dogfight loses its edge.

With larger ships that can't realistically dodge weapons fire, a firefight is pretty much rendered down to which ship wears down the others' shields first, so they can punch through the hull and take out the enemy with one decisive shot.

Shields. Huge silly sci-fi trope. Capable of deflecting energy weapons fire, but incapable of capturing some of that energy to direct back at the enemy. And should be useless against a physical weapon, but somehow they manage to take out projectile fire too. Wassup with that?

[Iphinome]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

Shields. Huge silly sci-fi trope. Capable of deflecting energy weapons fire, but incapable of capturing some of that energy to direct back at the enemy. And should be useless against a physical weapon, but somehow they manage to take out projectile fire too. Wassup with that?

Given that even running into dust at a considerable fraction of C is likely to cause damage and release some nasty energy like say x-rays, I'd imagine the first purpose of any shields devolved would be protection form projectiles. Stopping energy weapons is all well and good but before you can think of arming a ship with, or protecting one from them you need your ship to be able to get places to fight. Hence shielding from interstellar crap.

Either that or a few hundred meters of heavy duty armor plating for the dust to grind off.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Iphinome

Given that even running into dust at a considerable fraction of C is likely to cause damage and release some nasty energy like say x-rays, I'd imagine the first purpose of any shields devolved would be protection form projectiles. Stopping energy weapons is all well and good but before you can think of arming a ship with, or protecting one from them you need your ship to be able to get places to fight. Hence shielding from interstellar crap.

Either that or a few hundred meters of heavy duty armor plating for the dust to grind off.

Ah but when you are traveling faster than light there are no silly dust particles to worry about.

[ScalyFreak]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

Shields. Huge silly sci-fi trope. Capable of deflecting energy weapons fire, but incapable of capturing some of that energy to direct back at the enemy. And should be useless against a physical weapon, but somehow they manage to take out projectile fire too. Wassup with that?

I've always thought the Borg were extremely lame, for just that reason. All the Federation would have had to do was break into a couple of museums, grab hold of the blades and projectile weapons from the wars way back on Earth, and the Borg could have been eliminated in just a couple of episodes. Instead we get this huge contrived enemy that's extremely dangerous only because the writers are doing everything in their power to make it that way. Lame.

[Ekaros]

Also, this is more general, but why in most films people are so damm inefficient in fighting hand to hand. Don't they teach combat in space academies? Even when almost yearly they people end fighting hand to hand... Or if they do it's some sort of weird blind melee. And even with melee weapons they are bad...

[altworld]

Originally Posted by Ekaros

Also, this is more general, but why in most films people are so damm inefficient in fighting hand to hand. Don't they teach combat in space academies? Even when almost yearly they people end fighting hand to hand... Or if they do it's some sort of weird blind melee. And even with melee weapons they are bad...

I've been in a couple of fights in my time and I can attest they are wild, reeling melee's with guys going at it punching like dough boys, and it ain't something you see in the movies... Actually the fight in Bridget Jones is one of the most realistic average joes fights I've ever seen. I've also talked to an army friend of mine who has been in hand-to-hand combat and he says training doesn't matter, sure it helps but it does become a mess.

Fighting nose to nose is nightmarish, chaotic, visceral and vicious. It can be over in seconds, it really doesn't take that much to knock some silly, but it feels like it lasts for minutes. Best depictions of boarding actions I've seen have been BSG where it comes down defending a cross section, and speed is more important than position.

Funny enough BSG has the best Sci-fi ship to ship action, with Fighters doing the offense 'taking the fight to the enemy' while the capital ships provide a support anchor.

[volpo]

As long as it entertains, who cares.

It is after all Science FICTION.

(yah I know I'm a buzz kill and I have enjoyed reading all the posts)

[Ekaros]

Originally Posted by volpo

As long as it entertains, who cares.

It is after all Science FICTION.

(yah I know I'm a buzz kill and I have enjoyed reading all the posts)

On other hand it's also SCIENCE fiction...

Maybe it's part of being geek to be spotting the illogical stuff...

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by ScalyFreak

I've always thought the Borg were extremely lame, for just that reason. All the Federation would have had to do was break into a couple of museums, grab hold of the blades and projectile weapons from the wars way back on Earth, and the Borg could have been eliminated in just a couple of episodes.

Heck, just Worf up front with a batt'leth and a few clean-up red-shirts with magnum revolvers and baseball bats would've done it.

[QuantumIguana]

One thought that I have on the science in science fiction is that you should depart from the science when you must in order to tell the story, but you should understand that you are departing from science. That means you should know the science - not necessarily the latest bleeding edge science, but the really basic stuff.

Too often, they depart from science not because the story requires it, but because they don't understand what the science is. Often, including the real science would have given a better story.