Not Enough Imagination In Sci-Fi
Often in television shows and movies regarding alien species there is a clear lack in proper preparation and research when coming up with clothes, tools, and other usual equipment that these species use.
Tools often look as though they were created for humans and just placed in the hand of the actors covered in prosthetics of the week.
Let’s take glasses for instance. In Babylon 5, we sometimes see Narn people wearing glasses, and a few times we see one take them off or on. Right away we clearly see that these glasses were not made for this person, or even someone with that particular shape of head.
Then you have the tools, like the tricorder, used by the Voth in the Distant Origin episode of Voyager. The Voth are a saurian species hailing from dinosaurs of Earth, and they have three “fingers” shaped like thick claws. These claw-hands are bigger and less agile than a human hand, but yet we see them use tools created for them, but as if there were humans.
My point in all this is the lack of imagination that writers and prop makers on shows and movies have. If I dig deep enough, I’m guessing I’ll find the true answer lies in lack of funding and time, but I also believe that to be a bit of a cop-out.
I feel it should be part of the research when you are coming up with a new alien species, to really sit down and think about their entire history. If they are not like us in shape and form, how would their history be different with regards to objects. Would a ladder be shaped the same way? Would a steering wheel? Would a scalpel?
It might not seem like a big deal for most people, but when I see a scene with an alien species clearly using a tool not made for them, it kinda destroys the flow of it. The scene, and maybe the entire episode or movie, will end up lacking in that department or maybe several, finally making the feature less of what it could be.
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