{"id":4314,"date":"2021-11-17T09:15:09","date_gmt":"2021-11-17T09:15:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/edgeverse.org\/?p=4314"},"modified":"2025-04-16T05:18:43","modified_gmt":"2025-04-16T04:18:43","slug":"5-common-overused-sci-fi-tropes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/edgeverse.org\/?p=4314","title":{"rendered":"5 Common Overused Sci-fi Tropes"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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5 Common Overused Sci-fi Tropes\n<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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A.P. Zappkinson and Seth Hyperwynn<\/h5>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Science fiction is obviously the best genre in the known universe, but for every Isaac Asimov and Douglas Adams there is creating it, there\u2019s a J.J. Abrams and Veronica Roth ripping it apart. These dreadful hacks throw in any old nonsense they think will work, just because they\u2019ve seen someone else do it. This can give way to cliches and overused tropes such as clickbait articles from indie-authors who have nothing better to do.<\/h5>
Here are our top favourite things to point and laugh at in science fiction!<\/h5>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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The countdown<\/h4>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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We all love drama, otherwise we\u2019d be sitting watching two hours of our favourite characters scratching their arses and playing cards. Drama helps us to invest in the actions of our characters and root for them as they go on their journey, overcoming obstacles and learning to be better\u2014assuming they’re not already a perfect 5 foot martial arts master and genius\u2026<\/p>

But drama comes from tension, and when they run out of ways to build tension with stakes that our characters care about, there\u2019s always a really big clock that is counting down to an event so terrible that it must be the end of the movie.<\/p>

No franchise is safe from this clich\u00e9.<\/p>

In Star Wars, the ending comes down to the giant space station the size of a moon that can travel through space fast enough to cross the galaxy in a matter of minutes. It lies ready to blow up our plucky heroes, but has to do some inexplicable stuff first. Just wait\u2014it\u2019s more fun that way.<\/p>

In Alien, Ripley set the self-destruct and then had to run around debugging the system before the time ran out. They even pulled the same stunt again in the sequel. Twice.<\/p>

Star Trek the Motionless Picture tried to be a little more original by making the entire movie one long countdown, with an alien object coming to Earth to do terrible things, but they weren\u2019t above using the same trick again whenever the writers ran out of cocaine.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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\"Do you have time to talk about our lord and saviour, the Force?\"<\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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The flawless character<\/h4>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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These days, no Disney movie would be complete without a female character dragging everyone around by the nose, being the best ever at everything, and annoying us with dreadfully shallow franchise-destroying arrogance. Some call it the \u2018Mary Sue\u2019 phenomena, but someone will always then jump in and say, \u2018Well technically it\u2019s not a Mary Sue because of some arbitrary reason I just made up.\u201d So we\u2019re not going to call it that so we can get back to the good stuff – that isn\u2019t really all that good.<\/p>

It all started with the likes of Ellen Ripley and Sarah Connor, strong female characters who earned every step they took with well-plotted character development and personal growth. Then, along came corporate writing staff who were so out of step with reality that they thought Batwoman was a documentary. The rest is, as they say, hystery.<\/p>

Well written characters need flaws, personal shortcomings and obstacles. Without them, there is no character development or story arc. Disney writers were obviously taking a hangover sickie the day this was covered at writing school, because they just throw in poorly conceived characters they identify with\u2014perfect, flawless, capable individuals that just want everyone to love them, and to dictate the terms by which they\u2019re loved. Because they were generally employed because of their politics instead of their accomplishments, they never realised that real people, like Ellen Ripley, have to work for the things they want\u2014like not being eaten by the giant biomechanical murder-morph.<\/p>

We got an influx of characters who were as realistic as a Fox news editorial, characters that never had to earn their status but were somehow the best at everything. This is Rey in Star Wars, Space-Jesus in Star Trek Discovery, Charlie\u2019s Angels (you probably haven\u2019t seen that because nobody saw that), Batwoman, Captain Marvel, the chick from Men in Black International\u2026 the list goes on.<\/p>

I\u2019m not even getting into the identity politics behind it. I\u2019ll leave you to make your own mind up, while these idiot writers get on with the business of trying to make your mind up for you.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Being flawless is, of course, the ultimate character flaw!<\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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'I'll save you!'<\/h4>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Just in case you weren\u2019t sure who you\u2019re meant to give a crap about, there\u2019s often a \u2018save the cat\u2019 moment that really nails the message home. In sloppy writing, the clich\u00e9 is that if you want the audience to like someone, you have them do something nice, such as save a cat. You get them to \u2018kick a dog\u2019 if you need to send a message that their Daddy didn\u2019t love them enough.<\/p>

When we first meet Darth Vader, he was pacing through the aftermath of a slaughter and then he starts strangling people and throwing them around. This sends a powerful message that you don\u2019t want to borrow money from this person, and if he wants to borrow money from you, you\u2019re probably going to have to remind him to return it so many times you eventually give up. Darth Vader doesn\u2019t give a shit!<\/p>

All this has become so common that the film series John Wick was based entirely on the premise of a bad guy hurting a dog, and that was sufficient to carry a three-movie arc.<\/p>

But just as often as we see this well-used trick, we almost just as often see a last minute version, shoehorned in simply to nail the message home that this person is the one we\u2019re meant to like.<\/p>

In Alien, Ripley was just another one of the crew, and at the end the film needed to just give us a little poke to remind us that we\u2019re meant to like her and that she was really the main character all along. Her saving the cat meant nothing in terms of plot or character progression, but it sent a strong message that she\u2019s a nice person, and we\u2019re now meant to hope she doesn\u2019t die.<\/p>

In the sequel she does it again, but it\u2019s a sequel and the odds have to be higher, so the writers decided to replace the cat with a child. Subsequent writers thought it would be funny to undo all that. Writers are terrible people.<\/p>

During Star Wars, Han Solo became a bit of a centrist character. He\u2019s taken the far more intelligent position of not fighting in a brutal war that\u2019s getting everyone killed on both sides. But, we just needed to know where the writers stood on all this, so he turns up at the end and saves Luke, just so we know we should be rooting for him.<\/p>

We\u2019re not saying Luke is a cat\u2014just that he\u2019s a lot like a cat.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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- insert pussy joke here - <\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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You were right all along!<\/h4>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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At the end of Terminator, Sarah Connor sits in her Jeep, rubbing her belly, and talking sadly to herself into a tape-recorder now that her mind has fully snapped. It\u2019s a touching scene where she looks back over the dreadful events of the last few months. A murder-bot from the future had come back to slaughter her. This cost her her mother\u2019s life, her boyfriend got punched to death, carnage was wrought on the local police, and her friends were brutally killed. If she had a cat, she probably would have saved that, of course.<\/p>

If only she\u2019d just listened to Kyle, who was trying to tell her this all along\u2014most of this could have all been avoided.<\/p>

But she didn\u2019t.<\/p>

This is a pretty common way to end a story, and nails home the message that the writers started with an ending and worked backwards, a professional thing to do, and now they want to let you know it. You never see this in a J.J. Abrams movie because his writing process never involves professionalism.<\/p>

We see this in Aliens where the Marines are mercilessly slaughtered with startled looks on their ripped-off faces while Ripley can only look on and sigh. Yoda rolls his eyes at Luke for the same reason.<\/p>

Don\u2019t even get me started on the use of this clich\u00e9 in horrors.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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If only I\u2019d listened, everyone I ever knew would still be alive. Oh well, this is fine too...<\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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We just didn't get you...<\/h4>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Frankenstein is a poorly-written pile of crap by Mary Shelley\u2014allegedly. It weakly tells the tale of a man making a terrible creature that goes out into the world and murders people because \u2018Daddy didn\u2019t love me,\u2019 even snapping the necks of the odd child without the benefit of due process when the fancy takes him. He couldn\u2019t just go out and become a stripper like a normal person, he had to resort to slaughtering everyone his maker ever cared about.<\/p>

At the time, everyone recognised that this made him a bit of a scumbag, but in the era of Disney making heroes out of villains and writers out of idiots, the whole thing is a bit cloudier. Now people think that the monster was just misunderstood.<\/p>

But this is a commonly used trope we see a lot in science-fiction (and other) stories.<\/p>

At the end of the first Star Trek film, the crew sit back with beaming smiles after the monstrous alien cloud of carnage turned out to just be a lost child. Everyone forgets it wiped out endless planets and just wishes it well as it goes off to do its filthy business.<\/p>

Star Trek pulls out this \u2018Joker\u2019 card fairly often, and we see it rear its head in \u2018Generations\u2019 when the Nexus turns out to be a retirement home instead of a space-dwelling Bermuda-Triangle with pink lights. Likewise the cylindrical planet-shattering rock thing in \u2018The Voyage Home\u2019 turning out to be a really crude telephone for talking to fish\u2014or something.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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If you don\u2019t love me, I\u2019ll kill everyone you ever cared about until future liberal students think I\u2019m the good guy. <\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Secret bullshit saves the day<\/h4>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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An annoying and overused piece of nonsense is the \u2018big red button\u2019 clich\u00e9 where the way out of a bind is to use a super-secret weapon that just happens to fix whatever plot-hole your ship is being sucked into.<\/p>

This is used in the worst possible way in every single James Bond film ever where they make a special point of giving him very odd and pointless gadgets that turn out to be exactly what he needs later on. Are you going to be attacked by a huge monster made of kettles? Don\u2019t worry, we thought of this and designed you a special oven-glove with a built-in tin-opener.<\/p>

But this is used frequently in science-fiction when the writers can\u2019t think of a proper way to resolve a problem. This trope was used to good effect in Galaxy Quest where they actually mocked it by relying on an unknown piece of technology to save the day.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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If only there was a gadget that made Daniel Craig actually like playing James Bond<\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Gibber, ramble, nonsense, nonsense<\/h4>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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When a writer has run out of ideas before the story has run out of story, it might be time to resort to using every long word they know while their characters describe how they\u2019re going to save the day.<\/p>

This is used way too often. In Doctor Who, we often see the titular character cobbling together a solution from leftover kettle-monsters who have been ripped apart by a special oven-glove while explaining how things work, in ways that couldn\u2019t actually work.<\/p>

Star Trek the Next Generation mastered the art of this with the only possible solution to every problem being having Geordi roll off a pile of gibberish that sounded vaguely plausible.<\/p>

It\u2019s not just bad TV and movies that suffer from this clich\u00e9. Politicians and liberal arts majors do it too\u2026 A lot\u2026<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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\u201cOh, the ship\u2019s run out of gas? I\u2019ll just flimberbuck the silgrimulator and tribleflung the plastgrobulon. We\u2019ll be going before you know it...\u201d<\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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The old switcheroo<\/h4>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Isn\u2019t it great when you\u2019re enjoying your story and something you thought you knew suddenly and inexplicably becomes something completely different in a clumsy and awkward way?<\/p>

We\u2019re not talking about how Ash in Aliens is revealed to be a robot with a general dislike of humans, or in Empire Strikes Back when Yoda reveals he\u2019s not just a sock puppet. Those have sensible reasons for happening and are carefully plotted. Oh no\u2014we\u2019re talking about things like how in Charlie\u2019s Angels, where Captain Picard reveals he\u2019s a man, and therefore evil.<\/p>

This is the kind of clumsy writing we see in the last Batman movie of Christopher Nolan\u2019s massively overrated trilogy, where Batman\u2019s girlfriend stabs him and then goes on to explain in boring exposition why the plot of the film made no sense whatsoever.<\/p>

It\u2019s the same crap we see in Disney\u2019s \u2018Frozen\u2019 when Hans, the only likeable character in it, who so far has spent almost the entire movie taking care of freezing civilians and promoting common sense and good hygiene, while the rightful rulers galavant around the mountains making it snow on everyone while singing about feelings or whatever, suddenly he was the bad guy all along. Ha! Bet you didn\u2019t see that coming!<\/p>

It\u2019s the same crap we see at the beginning of the second Austin Powers movie when the female co-protagonist of the first movie (and now his wife) suddenly turns out to be a murderous Fembot that tries to kill him. Exposition puts the record straight by explaining that they actually knew about this all along, which Powers seems perfectly happy with. We\u2019ll give them a free pass on this one because it happened at the start of the story, and it was intentionally played for laughs.<\/p>

It\u2019s the same crap we see in Captain Marvel\u2014which was mostly made of actual crap\u2014where her mentor reveals he was the villain all along or something.<\/p>

Even this is too hard for some people, as in when Rian Johnson \u2018snubvertled your exploitation\u2019 by having the big reveal of his lead villain being that he had forgotten to write anything for him.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Captain Marvel pulled the old switcheroo by being absolute crap. Actually \u2013 I think we all expected that.<\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Sadly there are plenty more, and most people never notice them, but as a writer you can\u2019t help but roll your eyes every time a story runs out of fresh ideas and just throws out whatever nonsense it had at the bottom of the barrel. \nWe hope we\u2019ve ruined your favourite movie for you. <\/h5>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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