jeeves posted:

I'd have to say the shittiest piece of garbage tech in modern media would have to be most everything Star Trek's incredibly bottom of the bucket mediocre writing has made for the last decade.

From JJ Abrams' "WELL MY ENTERPRISE IS A MILE LONG!!!!!!!!" or "Black holes are magic" of his first Trek film, to the absolute bangers of "Ok transporters can work across the galaxy so we don't need ships anymore" or "we have magic blood that invalidates death" of JJ's second film.

To then almost everything in Star Trek Discovery, from magic instant-teleporting space ships that were invented in the past of all modern Trek and thus could and should have been used in all of the dire/existential crisis events of the future (also they require the space ship's parts to SPIN!) to ... whatever the gently caress happened in Picard, there are too many numerous things to even want to remember? Doesn't like Romulans spies have a gadget that lets them LOOK INTO THE PAST of events of a room or something by the first episode?

gently caress. Star Trek has been known for technobabbble, but for so long it was somewhat grounded by nerdy base ideas that they stuck to their guns about. Now there has been so much stupid tech all in one franchise that it almost kills all of the good will of the previous half century of the franchise and reveals the new shows to most likely be just a lot of "push this content out as quick as possible we need to launder this loving money quick!!!"

However that's not to say that Star Wars is desperately trying to catch up with even just the the "a ship going into hyperspace can destroy anything" of The Last Jedi pretty much is up there for top tier stupidity tech writing. Wouldn't it mean you could just strap a hyper drive onto an asteroid and throw it at a death star? Ooops I just gave more thought to that than anyone on the movie did.

Tulip posted:

I was trying to remember anything particularly odd in Lower Decks and the first thing that hit me was "pot full of eels that you use to torment people in contempt of court, also has burners so that you boil people (and eels)" which feels pretty lovely and funny.

Asterite34 posted:

I gotta give it to the maser tanks from Godzilla movies. Ten times more expensive than a regular tank, but exactly as effective against Godzilla. It's in that sad middle ground where it's fancy scifi tech ENOUGH that it's hugely expensive and impractical, but not on the level of, say, a Super X or an Oxygen Destroyer or any actually effective anti-monster weapon.

sean10mm posted:

It would have been smart to show maser tanks loving up some D list monster like that mantis prick or the big spider or whatever so it's more impressive for Godzilla to shrug them off, and humans look less stupid for making them.

Lawman 0 posted:

All tech in the Hyperion Cantos seems to be hot garbage since it's all hand me downs.

SlothfulCobra posted:

It seems to me more like "this scene with Jabba was written and filmed but after it was cut from the movie the later movie didn't take it into consideration at all and designed a totally different Jabba from scratch". Maybe a novelization stuck it back in, the novelizations did a lot of weird stuff.

Star Wars Second Draft posted:

The entry bay of the large starship is also the main lounge area of the ship. Two gruff and grisly pirates are playing a kind of dice game with thin little sticks. The larger and mangiest of the two slavering hulks, JABBA THE HUTT by name, throws his dice at Chewbacca.

Star Wars Third Draft posted:

A commotion filters down from the entry gantry and Chewbacca whines pessimistic comment. A dozen or so gruff and grisly pirates approach the ship. The grossest of the slavering hulks is JABBA THE HUTT. His scarred face is a grim testimonial to his prowess as a vicious killer.

Star Wars Revised Fourth Draft posted:

Jabba the Hut and a half dozen grisly pirates and purple aliens stand in the middle of the docking bay. Jabba is the grossest of the salivering hulks and his scarred face is a grim testimonial to his prowess as a vicious killer.

Star Wars Fourth Draft - publicly published version posted:

Jabba the Hut and a half-dozen grisly alien pirates and purple creatures stand in the middle of the docking bay. Jabba is the grossest of the slavering hulks and his scarred face is a grim testimonial to his prowess as a vicious killer. He is a fat, slug-like creature with eyes on extended feelers and a huge ugly mouth.

karmicknight posted:

lmao.

Asterite34 posted:

I guess it's one of those military industrial complex things, where even though the tanks and stuff don't actually DO anything to deter Godzilla, you don't wanna get a bunch of negative ads come election season talking about how you were soft on Big Monster. So you make the most of a bad situation and try and capitalize on it by getting your district all those juicy manufacturing jobs making lovely tanks you're gonna throw away, because there's no question of NOT making the tanks. Might as well overengineer them to hell and back and get the most bucks for your bang, so to speak.

Jetto Jagga posted:

All the 90s giant robots were total boondoggle projects. Oh no our Mechagodzilla got smashed, guess we better build another different giant robot that doesn't work.

Fivemarks posted:

Yeah but gently caress Moguera though.

zoux posted:

For the thread: Transporters were never supposed to be in ST. The original plan was to have the Enterprise or whatever ships just land on planets, but that would've been too expensive with models and sets, and when it came time to film the pilot, the shooting model of the shuttle wasn't ready, so they came up with transporters, which cost next-to-nothing. So, that's why every writer for ST has to come up with some reason that the transporters, which would easily solve whatever problem, won't do that this time.

Also remember when they used the transporter to de-age Dr. Pulaski and then forgot about and never told anyone about the loving FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH effect you get by messing around with some sliders in the transporter settings. We could probably come up with dozens of galaxy-transforming technological leaps made by rerouting and re configuring systems that never get brought up again.

Foxfire_ posted:

Counter-counterpoint: Mr Roger's Neighborhood was made in Pittsburg

Worf posted:

Didn't that place used to have a football team

Cease to Hope posted:

they were going to have the trolley run from the stadium to the neighborhood of make-believe but all the city planning sessions were derailed by lady elaine complaining about "unsavory elements" commuting in from the collective unconscious

Butternubs posted:

Starfleet surge protectors.



I guess a post scarcity society still contracts out to the lowest bidder.

Like jesus christ load a bunch of consoles into a torpedo casing and fire them at the enemy.

Cease to Hope posted:

Barudak posted:

Honestly, of most sci-fi settings while the tech has obvious issues it feels authentic to reality in so far as everything is cut to the bone on manpower and corporations exert an unquestioned role in society.

Cease to Hope posted:

Barudak posted:

I really liked that bit in Alien, if only because it has such a good setting establishment of "the company doesn't give a gently caress as long as it makes it there, the little humans exist to solve our mistakes and corner cuts"

Honestly, of most sci-fi settings while the tech has obvious issues it feels authentic to reality in so far as everything is cut to the bone on manpower and corporations exert an unquestioned role in society.

Nebakenezzer posted:

That gets emphasized around those scenes in an detail I didn't notice before: the Nostromo repairs are revealed to need drydock time, which at least two characters treat as bad news, like this affects their pay