Sci-fi lines that just hurt to listen to

[Crazedwraith]

Then again, in the first season Finale, Teal'c comments about the mighty FTL capabilities of a Ha'tak class Warship in such a blatantly stupid way. "This vessel is capable of traveling at TEN TIMES the speed of light". Really Teal'c? You're Apophis's lieutenant, have traveled to other worlds and are qualified to fly FTL starships, yet you think the thing only goes at 10 times lightspeed?

IIRC Teal'c mentions in that episode that 1) He was only qualified to fly gliders and 2)He'd never been on a Ha'tak before. Of course that gets contradicted in flashback episodes in later seasons but what the hey. Carter also comments on how slow 10c would be.

The only thing I really remember annoying me in a movie was in TMNT when donatello pulls a grey weapon out of Rapheal's back and comments that its made out of obsidian. GEOLOGY RAGE!

[DudeGuyMan]

That line has got to be the single DUMBEST line I've ever heard in a flick. Just out of curiosity, I wonder how powerful said charges would have to be to blow the moon out of orbit without just blowing the moon into pieces?

Regarding The Time Machine and blowing up the moon, the most hilarious bit is that the explosive used was explicitly stated to be... twenty megatons.

[Srelex]

Obviously, in that verse, 'megatons' must mean something else. Right? Right?

[Eternal_Freedom]

From what I remember, in 2020 he saw the report of the FIRSt 20 megaton blast to clear the caverns. Then in 2027 it's all gone to shit. Quite recently. So maybe they stepped it up. Or maybe they found some freaky shit mineral like Stargate's Naqada in the caverns that started a big chain reaction

Or some bolocks liek that. It was a fairly linor point in the film, more important than the yield was that it's our fault

[keen320]

Not sure if it matches the "spirit of the thread," but...
About half the times Anakin opens his mouth in TPM. Taken alone they aren't that bad, but it's just whine, whine, whine for most of episodes 2 and 3. Palpatine must have had a really hard time getting him to stop that in the 20 odd years between that and episode 4.

Last time I went through the prequels, I found them far more enjoyable if I just muted the TV when Anakin opened his mouth.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Destructionator, you're right that they could be using 20 megatons of anti-matter as explosives

But I don't think tht's the case. It was a news report or comercial I believe, appealing to the common folk who (in my observation) don't associate megatons with mass but with yield. If they were referring to mass they would probably have used "20 million tons"

Coupled with the fact it specifically calls them "20 megaton blasts" suggests they using it as a unit of explosive yield

[adam_grif]

Does CSI count?

One of my personal antifavorites.

[Junghalli]

A quick comparison...

20 billion kg M/AM annihilation = 1.8 X 10^27 joules
Energy needed to fully de-orbit moon = 3.8 X 10^28 joules

I'm not sure whether it'd be enough, but at least it's got a shot at actually effecting the moon's orbit appreciably.

Next question is whether the moon would still be in one piece after an explosion like that...

Personally I stick to my hypothesis that the story takes place in an alternate universe where the moon is the mass of a largish asteroid and orbiting not far from the Roche Limit. It's the sanest rationalization.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Possibly. I think a (maybe) equally sane idea is that there is a previously unkown mineral or somesuch that causes a chain reaction. Possibly in an alternate universe but not necessarily

[Batman]

I don't think I've seen that iteration of Time Machine but to me the most sane rationalization is the person saying that simply had no clue what he or she was talking about.

[Junghalli]

I don't think I've seen that iteration of Time Machine but to me the most sane rationalization is the person saying that simply had no clue what he or she was talking about.

That would work better if the explanation wasn't sort of backed up by visual evidence. The context also makes the character not knowing what's going on pretty bizarre.

[Batman]

As I said, I haven't seen that iteration of Time Machine. I just find one person saying something stupid massively more believable than an Earth-Moon system that is (presumably) indistinguishable from the real deal being radically different to the extent that would be required for this to work.

[Norade]

A quick comparison...

20 billion kg M/AM annihilation = 1.8 X 10^27 joules
Energy needed to fully de-orbit moon = 3.8 X 10^28 joules

I'm not sure whether it'd be enough, but at least it's got a shot at actually effecting the moon's orbit appreciably.

Next question is whether the moon would still be in one piece after an explosion like that...

Personally I stick to my hypothesis that the story takes place in an alternate universe where the moon is the mass of a largish asteroid and orbiting not far from the Roche Limit. It's the sanest rationalization.

Maybe if you packed all of the anti-mater into a tube lined with super dense metal and magnetic fields and used it like a rocket engine.

[jollyreaper]

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.

Never watched the Saw movies. Was actually thinking of the idiot redneck guy on the roof from the Walking Dead show. When they showed him gone from the roof with a hand left behind the whole absurd conversation sprung to mind and I was almost pissing myself laughing.

On a related note, the scene in Hannibal with the cuffs and cleaver was dumb. Hannibal is a sociopath. Even if he has an affection for someone, it's as a pet or possession and never would come close to the regard with which he holds himself. Self-sacrificing love would be an alien concept for him. So if she cuffs his hand and he's given a choice between chopping her or him, he's chopping her.

[jollyreaper]

I watched the ANH scene too to try to nail down what bugs me about it, and I think I've got it: it's just too many fucking words.

"You kidding, at the rate they're gaining?!"

"long winded lecture of irrelevant details mixed with farm boy insults carried out for quite a while. Oh and one last thing before I go back to flying the ship."

Gah. It might not have been so bad if it wasn't in the middle of a chase/escape sequence.

If you want an education in editing, read the Alan Dean Foster novel for Star Wars which has the lines as written in the script, not as filmed. The actors did a lot of ad lib trimming to get them down to the lines we all remember and quote. Less is pretty much always more. I think Ford was quoted as saying "George, you may be able to write a line like that but you can't say it."

A lot of what makes the lines work in the original movies is the delivery. Without that context, they lose a lot of life. Sort of like Joss Whedon writing. The line on paper, you're not sure if it'd good. You watch his actors saying the line, suddenly you understand why it works and why it's funny.

That's part of the reason why the new movies fell so flat. There was no life in the films, no chemistry between actors. Calling someone a "scruffy nerf herder" is equally as bad as any of the lines between queen wooden delivery and whiny psycho boy but Fisher sells it and Ford's indignant "Who's scruffy-looking?" seals it. The chemistry and charisma of the actors carries it through.

[jollyreaper]

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.

They're both fucking stupid. Just because some people excuse one stupid thing doesn't mean you should suddenly be so willing to excuse another. If you really have to break it down, the "planet core" line is somewhat more offensive because "planet core" is a pretty self explanatory term, whereas lots of people aren't going to know what a parsec is. The planet core line is also followed up by a silly underwater chase scene that actually shows them apparently going through the planet's core.

Far dumber than that is the idea of an asteroid whose interior has standard gravity and is somehow friendly enough to be braved with nothing more than a breath mask. The whole space slug thing was ridiculous but we're inclined to give it a pass because it's a better movie. Crappier movies have nothing to offer so we have nothing better to do than tear them apart for their faults.

It was a pretty stupid concept but it could have been sold with a better action scene. The whole scene failed as good action and so we're not giving it a pass.

[DudeGuyMan]

I think the most sane rationalization is that the most recent Time Machine movie had shitty writing. Or to put it another way, since there's no active versus debate which compels us to just suck it up and work with what's in front of us, why should we want to rationalize it at all?

[Ford Prefect]

I don't think I've ever seen them contribute anything to an actual story.

I don't know, Captain Synapse saying 'An explosive force equivalent to twenty thousand megatons; the most powerful weapon every used by man' in Stardust Memory was actually pretty effective, when he and his XO reveal to Nina that they'd already be flying over Australia if it wasn't for Operation British.

[mr friendly guy]

If the CSI example counts, then I can have the scene in Firefly where Simon announces he is going to shock someone in asystole. Heck, most medical shows I have seen shock someone in asystole. Geez you would think they haven't heard of adrenalin or atropine. Except perhaps in House.

[Nyrath]

I've always wondered about the 'event horizon' being a problem (for USS Voyager, not the show) - after all, isn't an event horizon where the gravitational field is so intense not even light can escape? Can't Voyager travel FTL? I can't remember if gravity wells mess with Trek Warp like they do with Wars Hyper, do they? If they don't, apart from the whole thing with Voyager's Roche limit and getting torn apart by shearing, etcetera, none of which is addressed in the episode as far as I can recall, why should this thing they're calling an 'event horizon' even be a problem? You can just engage warp and get the fuck out of dodge, right?

Got it in one.

Escape velocity increases the closer you get to a black hole. At the event horizon, the escape velocity equals c (speed of light in a vacuum). Further inwards the escape velocity becomes increasingly higher values of FTL.

So yes, if you have an FTL drive, the event horizon is no barrier.

Fredrick Pohl novels Spoiler

This was used in one of Frederik Pohl's Heechee novels. If other races have no FTL but you do, the interior of a black hole is a safe place to hide.

[keen320]

But isn't the idea of warp drive that it warps space around the ship to move it at FTL speeds without technically moving the ship through space FTL? And isn't the black hole already warping space, presumably interfering with this? Not to mention, a lot of FTL drives (like most hyperdrives in fiction, including Star Wars) in fiction have limits placed on them by proximity to large planets and stars, so they don't work until you get a ways out from the planet.

[JME2]

I dislike hearing Trek techno-babble, essentially any from VGR/ENT. Strangely, I don't mind it in Stargate...

[Freefall]

FTL is already a cheat that violates relativity. Yeah, the properties of space-time inside a black hole should prevent you from escaping regardless of velocity, but then the normal properties of space-time should prevent you from going FTL regardless of how much energy the engines put out. It just seems kind of redundant to argue about the properties of black holes in light of working FTL. Either relativity has turned out to be somehow false in the extreme limits of v -> c, or the ship can somehow warp space itself, which could reasonably counteract it being already warped to some extent. Unless someone wants to argue that the ships engines somehow generate more than infinite energy and the whole thing has a complex mass?

To me, it seems the simplest solution to FTL vs. Black Hole is indeed to just assume that the event horizon for the ship is smaller than the event horizon for light. If any of you guys want to try and re-derive all of SR and GR while trying to incorporate a new rule that massive objects are no longer limited to traveling slower than c, go ahead. Let us know what happens.

And Stark, that bit you're quoting doesn't say "greater than FTL," it says "greater values of FTL."

[The Yosemite Bear]

It's when your using the black hole as a slingshot....

[Batman]

It's when your using the black hole as a slingshot....

Not really. In slingshoting (is that actually a verb?) around a black hole you'd never actually CROSS the event horizon.