Yeah, you also have to love his theory that CGI is cheap now, so all aliens can be non-humanoid. That wouldn't pose any difficulties in terms of a story's emotional impact or anything. It's a huge challenge for actors in prosthetics to convey emotions past all of that latex or makeup. Now you want me to care about something CGI'd?

Well, I'm sure he'll come up with a "cop movie cliches" list tomorrow.

I love the SG1 episode where Sam deduces they're on an ice planet.

Turns out they're in the Arctic.

Hee. Exactly! I mean, the way these things work...think of the many, many places one could land on Earth. It's a diverse planet!

Really, the worst is when someone is marooned on A Planet and then a search party just LANDS ON THE PLANET IN THE SAME AREA. (And, no, they didn't do any sort of "scans" or anything. They just...landed. And voila!)

At least on the BSG episode where Kara gets stranded on the planet/asteroid, they spend days looking for her. And then they note how little of the asteroid's surface they've covered. And they never actually find her (she finds them).

Antarctic! Thanks. I tried to google, and it was not useful.

I think the guy forgets that humans are the ones consuming the stories, and that fiction has...mechanisms. Sometimes emotional impact is the point, not equations.

Yeah, there are lazy writers. But there are also writers whose goal wasn't what this guy thinks their goal should have been--and that's not his call.

His thing about spaceships all having a top and botton is annoying. OK, lets say a spaceship is a sphere or a cylinder. You'd constantly be seeing people with different vertical orientations, and/or people making the transition from one vertical orientation to another. It would be a big PITA to write, produce and direct, and it'd have little or no dramatic benefit.

eta: The Death Star is a sphere, but it's big enough that they never have to show these issues.

Oh, and if spaceships moved with 100% accurate Newtonian physics and orbital mechanics, the results would be weird and not very exciting. I know that spaceship movement is almost never depicted 100% correctly (according to our understanding of physics) but I suspend my disbelief unless the offense is especially egregious.

At least with Stargates, the natives have an actual reason to hang out in one geographical region, since that would give them readier access to it.

I have to say, while his examples mostly suck, I have to agree with him that the "nonhumans who want to become human" trope is annoying and overused, especially when it shows up in conjunction with "love is a human emotion." Blargh.

But spaceships have a top and a bottom because they're going to be manned by people who grew up on planets, and expect their vehicles to have tops and bottoms. Once we all agree that interstellar travel is science fiction, I don't think it's a huge stretch to assume that we've also invented a workable artificial gravity by that point.

And even when the society moves to the point where the inhabitants of a ship don't need up and down, we still will be most comfortable viewing that. And it'll be cheaper, most often.

The Pinocchio/Pygmalion stories don't bother me much, not if they're well done. Data did bother me. He was boring, and his desire didn't add much to the character or most of the storylines.

I think as long as there are valid reasons for the nonhumans to be obsessed with humanity, that kind of story can work,, but I was still pumping my fist in Matrix Reloaded when Neo was all "but love is a human emotion!" and the programs were all "Um...nsm."

It's Humanity Sue stories that bug me -- random other species encountering us in space who are instantly impressed with what a beautiful and unique snowflake of a species we are.