Vampire teenagers falling in love, or going to college, or...anything. Stop with the teenaged Vampires. (Unless it is like "Lost Boys"). Vampire hunting teenagers is ok, i.e. Prom Night ( I think it was Prom Night, the one with Roddy McDowell being an actor on a late nite show and this teenager asking for help in killing his next door neighbor who he suspects is a Vampire).
I think it is in "man's" genes to smoke. Why is it that hundreds of years ago some cave man thought to himself "I'll smoke it". They'll be smoking 500 yrs from now.
Spaceships with windows, ships modeled after earth air or sea vessels, hostilities, and advanced tech in pill or dram. All human traits. No matter how strong the "transparent aluminum" is, it's still a weak spot in the construction. Advanced technology means the "drivers seat" can be well protected and visual\sensor data can be presented on a monitor. It's not a car or airplane. Subs are a good example, but they still don't make good spaceships. Humans also want to eat, kill, or have sex with something different. Really? How about trade knowledge, goods, services and get along? Quick cures. Another human wish just like the genie in the bottle. We're too lazy or want the easy fix to something. That said, can we still create sufficient conflict to interest our audience with these guidelines? Make the words portray the visual picture? Will they believe a craft with no windows? Peaceful trade, even though we can do it in our current society framework? Perhaps.
Actually, you bring up another good point. Spaceships with huge unsupported voids in them, large rooms. Y'know what's going to happen if you lose atmosphere containment in a space like this: Spaceships should be designed to look more like submarines on the inside, and for more or less the same (exactly opposite) reason: a sub is designed to minimize the damage if the water starts getting in, a spaceship needs to be designed to minimize the damage if the air starts getting out. See that door that can be sealed to maintain the integrity of the rest of the station if there's a hull breach? Now think about the fact that the Death Star is a warship, and otherwise designed with "antiaircraft" turrets and fighter bays that show that the architects assumed that it would come into close combat with enemy ships. I know Star Wars is easy to pick on, and I did so for that reason, but you can find the same issues in quite a few other SF properties, as lazy set designers simply swipe tropes from aircraft carriers. Babylon 5, on the other hand, had centripetal fighter launching, and at least in the initial episode, featured fighter craft doing flip turns to toast someone who was on their tail. Still huge empty spaces in the station, but at least it wasn't intended to be a warcraft.
Absolutely. Sci-fi is written so badly at time it's funny, the movies extract it even worse. Why would spacefaring ships need wings, windows, and travel on a linear course? I think it would be really cool to film a sequence of a space dogfight complete with gravity drifts and three dimensional maneuvers. Call it the Andromeda Drift!
Cover thy universe in socks, sweaters, scarves, and afghans. Murder and Orgasms have been banned upon this spaceliner.
could be a possibility. However, what view would you base that on? Some humans would kill an anthill without a second thought. If aliens killed off the human race, would they think differently?
When I first watched it, I noticed Babylon 5 had a bit of this. You'd see things like space fighters disengaging their engines and turning (while drifting in the same direction they'd been thrusting in the absence of friction or gravity) to strafe their target. It would be a nice twist on masturbatory misanthropy. We seem to have a habit of portraying aliens or AI's as our judges or as tedious lecturers on our flaws.
The death star was a symbol of imperial power. It probably didn't need to be as big as it was from a strictly engineering standpoint. They were definitely trying to send a message there. And since that's a hangar bay, it's essential to be able to fit ships of other sizes too, not just ones exactly the same size as the Millennium Falcon. Here we see an example of a different sized craft in a similar docking bay, plus it being used to demonstrate imperial power. Marching troops around and whatnot. I get your point though. The bridges are perhaps the best example of impractical design. It seems like it would be easy for someone to fall down for example. Again there's the flag bridge aspect, where an admiral wants to project his power. But I doubt they need to do this for every star destroyer. They could easily have a battle bridge and a show bridge like the various Starship Enterprises do. Again, imperial audacity; I think the engineering faults can still be explained by the reliability of shields and inertial compensators, and imperial show-boating. But I do think I recall officers getting thrown by impacts, so it's still a fall hazard. For the ISS photo... I don't think the ISS is a good example of how space ships should be designed in the distant future. It's basically a massive, stitched-together prototype. Wires going everywhere. It would be easy for someone who doesn't know what they're doing to break something. And as technology becomes more reliable, it makes sense to build spaces that are more comfortable. Submarines have confined quarters, but that is also likely due to engineering constraints that exist in the water but not in space. Imperial ships need vertical clearance to fit wookies after all, and large structures in space don't have to worry about causing more water resistance when moving through the water. It's more mass to move I guess, but open spaces aren't mass. Large sizes are also less significant in space, because it's so empty. You aren't going to run into anything and your enemy needs to radar scan a larger area to even find you. Imperial ships have blast doors that are concealed and can be deployed. Real ones would probably deploy instantly though, rather than blundering shut. I agree that windows probably don't make sense, though the star wars universe seems to also have EMP bombs that could disable the controls. It might be useful to have visuals as a backup, particularly if a well placed blaster bolt will destroy the entire ship anyway. X-wings operate in atmospheres as well. It's unclear whether they are useful given the universe's "anti-gravity" technology. I'm not sure what the tie-fighter wings do, as they obviously wouldn't be much use in an atmosphere. Through a space craft could probably have use of wings for placing thrusters. That way they can direct wide turns by firing rockets on only one side of the vehicle. I don't have many pet peeves here. Many inaccuracies make the films more entertaining. Readers and filmgoers give some allowances in this area and it's good to take advantage of them unless selling to an audience of scientists. After all, movies like star wars drive huge attention to the scifi genre that supports more writers in that space.
Are they still doing the "Prime Directive", the "we can't interfere with alien cultures and influence what they will become"? Why not?
In my Sequel WIP they ain't. Of course it may take a bit of getting used to having sub-space travel, and the fact that Hybrids are extremely rare amongst hetero-sexual couples. Though I don't think they worry about chillens too much whether they are in hetero or homo sexual relations. So at least by the end of the story my main most advanced species will be more than happy to share their tech and knowledge with the re-building of Terra.
They're used a solar collectors to help power the ships systems and as a radiator to help dissipate heat produced by the weapons. This is also why the X-Wing opens it's spoilers into attack formation, to give more surface area for heat to radiate from.
They also provide shielding from the dangers of peripheral vision. The Imperial Space Force realized that the reason Storm Troopers couldn't hit shit in a firefight was because they got distracted by the array of possible targets, so the ISF wisely decided to put blinders not on their pilots, but on the craft itself. In many arenas, this would be a fatal flaw, but the Rebels were trained by turncoat Imperial pilots and have mastered the art of completely linear thinking without the use of physical barriers, rendering the concept of flanking maneuvers and lateral defense irrelevant. Just look at the "Hey-diddle-diddle, straight up the middle" attack and defense used at Helm's Deeper in The Last Jedi if you don't believe me.
Yeah, Tie fighters also didn't have shield shields... or life support. That's why Tie pilots in the Orig. Trig. wore full helmets and space suits with hoses on them. Which makes about as much sense as pretty much anything else in an opera populated my Space Samurai, Cosmos Cowboys and White Dwarf Wizards.
Bad special effects. There are not enough good NEW Sci-Fi movies. At least not ones I have not seen.....
