Browsing through today, I discovered a very interesting website that discusses the errors within science fiction, particularly in TV and movies. Some of these errors are, quite frankly, rather stupid on the part of the creators. Such as:
In the Star Trek Voyager episode “The Fight”, Voyager encounters a Negative Space Wedgie that is “2 light years across”. They start “11,000 km” away from it and yet, the whole phenomenon is visible on the viewscreen. As the Agony Booth review of this episode points out, this is exactly like “putting your nose on the ground, and still being able to see the whole landscape from horizon to horizon” except…you know…even worse. The thing also looks about as big as Voyager when it engulfs it, which might make slightly more sense (for a given value of “sense”) since Voyager is apparently the size of a planet.
Yup, that’s Star Trek. There are even a few related to literature. Such as:
The original Dune series was set 10,000 years (human history goes back 7,000 years at present) after the Robot War known as the Butlerian Jihad, featuring an old, decadent society that had presumably been going downhill for a long time. However, when Frank Herbert’s son picked up the reigns and wrote prequals set before and during said Butlerian Jihad, the prequels end with all the social orders and customs, and even the religion, of Dune already established as nearly identical to the ones in the original novel. And the reader is expected to believe that they stayed exactly the same for almost a third longer than the time between the invention of writing and the present.
Yeah, pretty interesting, don’t you think? Check out the site. Maybe one of your favorite shows is on there with an error.
