Sci-fi lines that just hurt to listen to

[Batman]

The Black Hole: Dr. Kate MacRae talking about her ship's mission, "Searching for habitable life."
Either she meant habitable planets, or the humans of the future have adapted themselves to living the life of fleas on gigantic aliens.

It might make some sense in the context of habitable planets, since it'd be pretty easy to imagine planets that have life but aren't habitable to humans. It could have referred to life with compatible biochemistry.

I'm sorry but no. 'Habitable to our kind of life' would do that, as would 'habitable' as you wouldn't call a planet habitable that isn't from your point of view. 'Habitable if you happen to breathe methane' or 'habitable if you don't mind the 4 g surface gravity' would work. Habitable life does I'm afraid mean settling on other lifeforms.

[The Yosemite Bear]

Space Whales, that's the awnser.

[Junghalli]

I'm sorry but no. 'Habitable to our kind of life' would do that, as would 'habitable' as you wouldn't call a planet habitable that isn't from your point of view. 'Habitable if you happen to breathe methane' or 'habitable if you don't mind the 4 g surface gravity' would work. Habitable life does I'm afraid mean settling on other lifeforms.

I figure it might refer to biochemistry, since then it really is directly a question of whether the biosphere itself is human-friendly. It really isn't worth arguing over though.

[Molyneux]

Transcribing from the movie:

SPOCK PRIME: "129 years from now a star will explode and threaten to destroy the galaxy"

Yeah, not very ambiguous.

STO actually plays with that; the standard explanation, years and years after the destruction of Romulus, is "...fuck if we know why that happened." The possibility of a star exploding being dangerous to anything outside its local neighborhood is completely unexplainable, even by Star Trek technobabble science.
Spoiler

Later on, it's actually revealed - or at least heavily implied - that the event was actual foul play, with the supernova used as the trigger for some kind of massive superweapon, and that's what caused the super-uber-mega-wave-o'-DOOM.

[Terralthra]

The only thing that could have been dumber is if Nero was handcuffed to a pipe and one of his men tossed him a hacksaw so he could get free. Five minutes later they come back and he's grasping a bleeding stump, severed hand on the floor.

"What the fuck just happened?"

"You gave me the hacksaw. I cut myself free."

"Yeah, but you were supposed to cut the chain!"

"Oh. You know, that does make more sense."

You realize most handcuffs are made of steel too hard to go through with a single hacksaw blade right? Hacksaws will not just cut through anything.

Even thin bones like the radius and ulna aren't exactly easy to cut through either. As I'm sure you know, living bone is a fairly dense and hard structure. He's specifically referencing Saw, wherein two men each have a hacksaw and are chained by the ankle to ordinary plumbing pipes, and while each gives up on sawing through the chain, neither is shown to try and saw the pipe, which should have been just as easy to saw through as their own ankle.

[adam_grif]

And half the scripts of the episodes 1,2, and 3 are filled with poor deliveries of lame lines. The worst of them all has got to be Windu's shit when arresting killing arresting killing Palpatine.

WRONG.



Da speediest way to da Naboo, is going through....

The plaaaanet cooore.

Now, go!

[Chaotic Neutral]

But it is. Naboo's core is filled with water.

[Junghalli]

But it is. Naboo's core is filled with water.

That's what makes it so terrible.

[adam_grif]

I still have fond memories of the thread where Wong et al tried to somehow demonstrate that there was no way he literally meant planet core, since "we obviously see them going through water". Cue citation from Starwars.com that Naboo's planet core is water, and filled with marine life

[Srelex]

Well, that only means that Naboo's plumbing companies really went overboard.

[Bakustra]

I still have fond memories of the thread where Wong et al tried to somehow demonstrate that there was no way he literally meant planet core, since "we obviously see them going through water". Cue citation from Starwars.com that Naboo's planet core is water, and filled with marine life

Yeah, it's pretty clear that whenever a line pops up in sci-fi, one should always go with the stupidest interpretation, as long as Ahriman George Lucas is involved. After all, all he does is rape childhoods, right?

Dumbest line that I can recall is probably "we have to heat the planet to cool it down" from, coincidentally enough, a Star Wars book. Apart from that, most awful lines that I can recall are meaningless outside of context.

[TOSDOC]

Now, now, he doesn't rape childhoods.
He just disappoints adulthoods.

[Junghalli]

Yeah, it's pretty clear that whenever a line pops up in sci-fi, one should always go with the stupidest interpretation, as long as Ahriman George Lucas is involved. After all, all he does is rape childhoods, right?

It probably was author's intent. There's certainly nothing in the movie itself to suggest that he meant anything other than what he said at face value (aside from the fact that Earthlike planets do not work that way).

I mean I don't think real world scientific verisimilitude was ever very high on the priorities of people who made Star Wars movies.

[adam_grif]

Yeah, it's pretty clear that whenever a line pops up in sci-fi, one should always go with the stupidest interpretation, as long as Ahriman George Lucas is involved. After all, all he does is rape childhoods, right?

No Bak, it's just that we had no reason to not take the statement at face value. You have to assume that the guy didn't know what a "core" was or that the word "core" means something in Starwars that it doesn't mean anywhere else. People didn't want to take it at face value because that would mean "it's stupid", and for some reason people have trouble swallowing a water filled, low temperature planet core but not hyperspace and planet destroying beams that are obviously not lasers but still called lasers anyway.

It was obviously the shroud of the dark side will of the force that the planet core be passable.

[RedImperator]

I still have fond memories of the thread where Wong et al tried to somehow demonstrate that there was no way he literally meant planet core, since "we obviously see them going through water". Cue citation from Starwars.com that Naboo's planet core is water, and filled with marine life

Yeah, it's pretty clear that whenever a line pops up in sci-fi, one should always go with the stupidest interpretation, as long as Ahriman George Lucas is involved. After all, all he does is rape childhoods, right?

Come on, man. That line was a howler, pure and simple. Even the script has them taking a submarine through the core in the next scene.

[Bakustra]

Yeah, it's pretty clear that whenever a line pops up in sci-fi, one should always go with the stupidest interpretation, as long as Ahriman George Lucas is involved. After all, all he does is rape childhoods, right?

No Bak, it's just that we had no reason to not take the statement at face value. You have to assume that the guy didn't know what a "core" was or that the word "core" means something in Starwars that it doesn't mean anywhere else. People didn't want to take it at face value because that would mean "it's stupid", and for some reason people have trouble swallowing a water filled, low temperature planet core but not hyperspace and planet destroying beams that are obviously not lasers but still called lasers anyway.

It was obviously the shroud of the dark side will of the force that the planet core be passable.

Oh Christ. I suppose that you get in a tizzy whenever a downtown is not the lowest point of a city, or the city center is not in the exact geographical median? This is a line that is only as stupid as you make it, and people that say "well obviously George Lucas is mentally handicapped, uh, I mean, the people who made Star Wars don't care about scientific verisimilitude, yeah, that's it. Author's intent, man, author's intent! There are dozens of worse lines in Star Wars to draw upon. A number are in the prequels. That line is not all that bad in comparison. Kessel Runs in twelve parsecs are significantly worse. The "asteroid field" is significantly worse.

[Chaotic Neutral]

The Kessel run quote was obviously Han speaking out of his ass to sound impressive.

[Bakustra]

The Kessel run quote was obviously Han speaking out of his ass to sound impressive.

Up-up-up! Author's intent. Lucas obviously had no intentions of scientific verisimilitude. (PS: that's exactly like what grif was mocking just a few posts up.)

[Junghalli]

Oh Christ. I suppose that you get in a tizzy whenever a downtown is not the lowest point of a city, or the city center is not in the exact geographical median? This is a line that is only as stupid as you make it, and people that say "well obviously George Lucas is mentally handicapped, uh, I mean, the people who made Star Wars don't care about scientific verisimilitude, yeah, that's it. Author's intent, man, author's intent!

I don't know why you have this apparent resistance to just admitting it's silly.

Come on, man. That line was a howler, pure and simple. Even the script has them taking a submarine through the core in the next scene.

Although Grif does make a good point in a way. Nerds people will react with outrage at stuff like that but swallow all sorts of ridiculous stuff that breaks science as long as it's tech. It does strike me that there's a little bit of a pervasive double standard with realism, where some types of unrealism get whined about much more than others.

[Chaotic Neutral]

My point is that something so easily dismissed is nothing near the level of calling poisonous snakes crawling all over you harmless.

[Bakustra]

Oh Christ. I suppose that you get in a tizzy whenever a downtown is not the lowest point of a city, or the city center is not in the exact geographical median? This is a line that is only as stupid as you make it, and people that say "well obviously George Lucas is mentally handicapped, uh, I mean, the people who made Star Wars don't care about scientific verisimilitude, yeah, that's it. Author's intent, man, author's intent!

I don't know why you have this apparent resistance to just admitting it's silly.

Come on, man. That line was a howler, pure and simple. Even the script has them taking a submarine through the core in the next scene.

Although Grif does make a good point in a way. Nerds people will react with outrage at stuff like that but swallow all sorts of ridiculous stuff that breaks science as long as it's tech. It does strike me that there's a little bit of a pervasive double standard with realism, where some types of unrealism get whined about much more than others.

It's a silly line, but people excuse equally silly lines all the time, just because they hate the prequels and/or love the original movies. Just as an example, the Kessel Run line and the core line both are easily stripped of stupid, but people will laugh at doing it to one and with doing it to the other. Basically, double standards.

[Junghalli]

It's a silly line, but people excuse equally silly lines all the time, just because they hate the prequels and/or love the original movies. Just as an example, the Kessel Run line and the core line both are easily stripped of stupid, but people will laugh at doing it to one and with doing it to the other. Basically, double standards.

Personally the Kessel run line just doesn't stick out as much in my mind because it was just that - a line. The planet core line was the set-up for a whole scene, so naturally it's going to stick out more.

[Bakustra]

Those lines were entirely improvised by Ford, interestingly enough. According to people involved, the originals were apparently a lot more complex. I think Ford ad-libbed the majority of his lines on-set. I know that many of his most memorable were.

[Srelex]

I dunno, they seem to be in the scripts I can look up online. Although maybe that's just updated.

[Bakustra]

I dunno, they seem to be in the scripts I can look up online. Although maybe that's just updated.

He definitely ad-libbed the dusting crops line, and switched parsec for standard time part in the Kessel Run line. I know that he ad-libbed a lot in general.