The Solutor wrote on 2026-09-14, 18:44:

Well it's just that I don't appreciate Hollywood cliches, in general, let alone the ones in SF Movies/Series […]
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Well it's just that I don't appreciate Hollywood cliches, in general, let alone the ones in SF Movies/Series

Say, how stupid can be to land in an unknown planet w/o a spacesuit at least for an initial exploration?

And even if a planet is "class M" how stupid can be to interact with locals like they were old friends? Native Americans were almost wiped out just because they interacted with Europeans, and with their unknown viruses and bacteria, well before they embraced guns. ON THE SAME PLANET.

How stupid can be to not have a seat belt on any spaceship, even during combats, emergency landings and so on.
Sure there are (fictional) devices meant to counteract G forces, but how comes they never fails? How come artificial gravity never fails as well? (It happened once in star trek III).

One can continue for a day describing such huge holes in the narration.

That is Star Trek is mostly a huge SF themed soap opera, with some brilliant episodes here and there.

yes indeed, same for almost all sci fi with a few 'hard science' fiction exceptions.

star trek breaks everything with FTL speed, "subspace" communications and beaming people before they even get to artificial gravity, 'g force damping' etc

and "beaming" down into an alien world, messing with locals and taking good hearty breaths of goodness knows what trace chemicals and bacteria is pure tv convenience 😀

about aliens, I find TNG more guilty of aliens with slightly longer fingers or funny foreheads than STOS, which was more experimental with 'pure energy' entities, beings looking like rocks, brains in jars and other outlandish interesting things. TNG tended to use aliens as a means to have often quite dry political "issues" rather than STOS, which tended to explore more dramatic and "philosophical" things like AI taking over, "what if" history scenarios, and various other things. I'm not saying TNG didn't have lots of this good stuff too, but the balance for inventive hit and miss creativity favours STOS imo.

Hm. I think it's also worth noting in which time TOS came out.
Back then, cheap '50s alien movies were standard (with Forbidden Planet being one notable exception).
Same time, highly philosophical Soviet sci-fi films were simplified/altered for an US American audience and shown in car cinemas as monster movies.

Star Trek was among the first shows who tried to take the topic more seriously and focused on realism/science.
For example, the size and crew number of the 1701 was approx. that of an aircraft carrier.
The sounds (intercom) and terms (red alert etc) were that of real world naval counterparts.
Space battles were usually happening at high distance, like in sub marine battles.
That's why Mr. Spock had to use instruments and that little microscope screen to figure out the enemy. The movies and TNG messed that up a bit.

Also, it had an optimistic view on humanity, which wasn't exactly common.
It proposed how thing could be, if humans would get their things together.
Other shows like Space: 1999 (British) or Space Patrol Orion (West German) were much more sarcastic or negative in their nature.
Here, the conflicts were mostly fatal with either the heros or the aliens being doomed.

About the costumes, the company behind Star Trek, Desilu, was originally making western movies and sitcoms.
And Star Trek was proposed as "Wagon Train to the stars.". That's why it was greenlit in first place.
The cheesy props also reflect that, they're basically borrowed from western and oriental movie sets.
It also explains why so many episodes took place on an earth-like planet resembling the 19th or early 20th century.

It wasn't just simply the budget or laziness, it also was made that way so that the (US American) audience could relate to it.
In retrospect, it's a wonder that such a "space western" could get away with so much dept, at all.
Simultanously, the audience also showed some willingness to open its mind, which was notable for the 1960s. But it was close, nevertheless.

The first pilot was considered too intellectual, even and the series almost didn't make it into production.
Back then, re-runs of TV shows weren't common, either.
Meaning that a show had to be financially successful from day 1 (which it wasn't, but the re-runs got popular).
There are so many little details that most people aren't aware of..
I recommend watching the Star Trek documentaries, it's fascinating.

gerry wrote on 2026-09-15, 10:55:

yes indeed, same for almost all sci fi with a few 'hard science' fiction exceptions.

Well, almost all *American* SF. I mentioned UFO and there everything is somewhat plausible, relatively speaking, obviously. There you have ONE kind of aliens, that albeit humanoids breathe liquid (something that later was realized for true), is not clear if they use it to comply better with acceleration (plausible), or because it's the normal thing they breathe (plausible as well). The transport to the moon resembles what Virgin galactic tried to build decades later, and so on. And that was just a TV show assembled with way less money than Star Trek, not a big production like 2001 Space Odissey

BTW They were wrong showing British driving on the right in the future, that's less plausible than Americans using the metric system, like hinted in Star Trek 😁

star trek breaks everything with FTL speed, "subspace" communications and beaming people before they even get to artificial gravity, 'g force damping' etc

and "beaming" down into an alien world, messing with locals and taking good hearty breaths of goodness knows what trace chemicals and bacteria is pure tv convenience 😀

TV convenience for many facts is mostly an excuse. Obviously a teleport is way cheaper than a landing, but a fictional bioshield or brathing mask (if a spacesuit is too inconvenient) would come for free or almost for free, people used to buy blindly any fictional mambojambo could safely ingore, but more educated ones would surely appreciate the effort.

about aliens, I find TNG more guilty of aliens with slightly longer fingers or funny foreheads than STOS, which was more experimental with 'pure energy' entities, beings looking like rocks, brains in jars and other outlandish interesting things. TNG tended to use aliens as a means to have often quite dry political "issues" rather than STOS, which tended to explore more dramatic and "philosophical" things like AI taking over, "what if" history scenarios, and various other things. I'm not saying TNG didn't have lots of this good stuff too, but the balance for inventive hit and miss creativity favours STOS imo.

Those are more facts derived from the era (I mean the actual era when the series was filmed, not the stardate), late 60s early 70s were amazing times.

That said I love a lot Enterprise, especially the first two seasons. It was a nice departure from earlier series, and for that wasn't appreciated by people used to more conventional tropes.
Then they decided to "startrekify" more the season 3/4, starting from the official title.

If you eat cheddar for a life, hardly you like Parmigiano or Camembert at first bite, no matter how much better they are...

I think there are also different ideas about what science fiction actually is.
Some think it's about contemporary facts, scientifically proven concepts while others consider science fiction a thought experiment of future possibilities.
That's how you have defenders of oldschool rocket propulsion (space cigars),
centrifugal force and hibernation on one side and believers of SOL drives (!=FTL), teleporters and phasers on other one.
That's akin to how pessimists believe they're realists and think that optimists are just naive dreamers.
The truth is not as black and white, I think. Not seldomly, findings in science are being revised.
It's just a momentary snapshot, after all. What's considered true today can be wrong tomorrow and vice versa. IMHO.

AND TODAY...

The first episode of Raumpatrouille Orion aired in Germany on September 17, 1966! Also 60 years ago!

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tO9I7JbXIvo&pp= … HJhaWxlcg%3D%3D

„Rücksturz zur Erde!“

Stupid Hollywood tropes exist, no matter if SF is taken in account or not. Starting from the brilliant hacker that can find a password at the third attempt, no matter the device taken in account.

Albeith once in 40+ years I typed the right PW on a PC of a company I never served before, it was just muscle memory from months spent in another (unrelated) company, and happened that both used the same logic when deciding the PW.

I typed the PW w/o thinking and was the right one. The owner said to me, so such people from the movies really exist? 😮

I replied "no I did it at the first attempt, not the third" 😁

The Solutor wrote on 2026-09-16, 23:36:

Stupid Hollywood tropes exist, no matter if SF is taken in account or not. Starting from the brilliant hacker that can find a pa […]
Show full quote

Stupid Hollywood tropes exist, no matter if SF is taken in account or not. Starting from the brilliant hacker that can find a password at the third attempt, no matter the device taken in account.

Albeith once in 40+ years I typed the right PW on a PC of I company I never served before, it was just muscle memory from months spent in another (unrelated) company, and happened that both used the same logic when deciding the PW.

I typed the PW w/o thinking and was the right one. The owner said to me, so such people from the movies really exist? 😮

I replied "no I did it at the first attempt, not the third" 😁

you were basically starring in some real world version of hackers (1995) or sneakers (1992) 😀

I also like in movies that when creating a quick program to crack something or simulate something the programmer makes sure to include graphical simulations and full long sentences in large font!

The enduring appeal of Star Trek is "Western civilization is tested on its merits compared to alien civilizations, whether as friends or as foes. Can we cut it?"

gerry wrote on 2026-09-18, 14:08:

The Solutor wrote on 2026-09-16, 23:36:

Stupid Hollywood tropes exist, no matter if SF is taken in account or not. Starting from the brilliant hacker that can find a pa […]
Show full quote

Stupid Hollywood tropes exist, no matter if SF is taken in account or not. Starting from the brilliant hacker that can find a password at the third attempt, no matter the device taken in account.

Albeith once in 40+ years I typed the right PW on a PC of I company I never served before, it was just muscle memory from months spent in another (unrelated) company, and happened that both used the same logic when deciding the PW.

I typed the PW w/o thinking and was the right one. The owner said to me, so such people from the movies really exist? 😮

I replied "no I did it at the first attempt, not the third" 😁

you were basically starring in some real world version of hackers (1995) or sneakers (1992) 😀

I also like in movies that when creating a quick program to crack something or simulate something the programmer makes sure to include graphical simulations and full long sentences in large font!

Yeah, the list is long...

Like writing a program (in real time) that does countermeasures against the bad guys who are attempting to penetrate the network in that moment...

I'm not a coder, but likely, under that kind of pressure, I would make 3 typos just writing a "hello world" popup 😀

If you are a paranoid antihero hacker, you have shellscripts premade that 'do stuff', you'd think.

If you are being actively penetrated, taking all the interfaces down would buy some breathing room, for instance.

Disconnecting the network cable(s), could be also a revolutionary idea for Hollywood writers... 😀

If someone copy my "revolutionary" idea I want my share of profits 😜

The day hollywood *properly* understands infosec and learns to love the console, is the day I die from a hysteric laughing fit.

Then, live long and prosper!! 😁

The Solutor wrote on 2026-09-14, 18:44:

[...]

How stupid can be to not have a seat belt on any spaceship, even during combats, emergency landings and so on?
[...]

I need to quote myself...

Someone @Paramount read my message 😁

in the last episode of Strange New World (s4e10) aired yesterday, maybe for the first time ever in Star Trek history, seat belts are mentioned and even briefly discussed. Not on the main ship but on the shuttle, still something... 😁

Update.
https://www.heise.de/en/news/Star-Trek-s-most … g-11500984.html

😔🕯️

Jo22 wrote on Yesterday, 23:49:

Update.
https://www.heise.de/en/news/Star-Trek-s-most … g-11500984.html

😔🕯️

He lived long and he prospered. May he Rest in Peace. ❤️

Koenig passing at 90 is such a contrast with Anton Yelchin, who played Chekov in the later Star Trek films and tragically lost his life way too young at 27. 🕯️

Not everyone is granted the privilege of a long life in good health.

Let's make the best of it, people. ❤️