Yes, indeed! Going by that and this, maybe I should give up comics altogether.
Martial arts training disquised as household chores.
Heroes visit site of famous mystery, where modern wierd events are happening. We learn a lot about the famous mystery. Modern events are solved, but no progress is made on the famous mystery.
If you're a scientist in comics and you don't have superpowers, it's a death wish.

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"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek
"Carl Sagan sent a message to ET,
Neil Armstrong walked in the Sea of Tranquility
Steve Squyers built Spirit and Opportunity
Dan Haylen upchucked in zero gravity." -Brent Simon, The Space Camp Song

Here's one I realized recently, though it may have already been mentioned in the thread: Dialect / accents. Even though there are significant differences in English dialect and accent just in the British Isles--which have an area less than the state of California--everyone in the _________ Federation / Empire speaks the lingua franca the same way, even if they've been independent for centuries or millennia.

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"Call me old-fashioned, but I think fire is magic. And it scares me a lot."

--The State

The plot of every dramatic sports film is exactly the same as the plot of every other dramatic sports film.

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

Oh Yes! and of course that links in with time travelers who even when moving backwards and forwards through time even within the English speaking parts of this planet, find that they can understand the people from other times who speak to them and that they can be easily understood by the people from those times - the only concession to time difference seems to be the mention of inventions or historic events which lie in one or other person's future.

You only have to look at how people wrote English (even conversational English) over previous centuries to see the difference. Even if I traveled back barely more than a century to 1890's London I would probably be accused of being a Foreigner, because I sounded strange and perhaps used certain known words but in an unfamiliar context. Go back 400 years I might still be able to understand a reasonable amount of what is said to me, they might understand me, providing I chose my words carefully but there would be frequent misunderstandings. Go back 600 years and I would stand about as much chance of understanding English people as I would understanding Danes or Dutch. If ended up at Hastings in October 1066 I would not have a hope in hades of asking the locals the directions to the battlefield. Mind you if I did get there with a minigun and 8,000 rounds well the implications could just be a little profound.

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Note 1. All requests for planetary demolition must now be submitted in quadruplicate on form UX-565/B4 and be counter-signed by the assistant administrative officer for interstellar traffic calming - department QG-7. Subject to approval by the chief planning officer and the infrastructure development coordination sub-committee.

All movie previews must be quick cut and contain flashes, explosions, and whatnot. Typically the previews will be more exciting than the actual movies.

Very few, if any, epileptics or migraneurs will watch the previews or see the movies.

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A person's name, or a mark representing it, as signed personally or by deputy, as in subscribing a letter or other document.

Two people don't like each other, but then one of them gets cancer.

I wrote a story about a fifth grader who went back to 1914 and met Shackleton. Everybody excused her speech differences because "She's just one of those crazy Americans."
To amend what I wrote before:
Cryptozoologists get a bad rap in the movies. They're either total woo-woos, evil hunter/collector types, or act like this: they find the creature, but decide that it's safer left alone and do nothing.
I mean, come on! It's not the Victorian Age, you don't have to kill a specimen to prove it exists. Do a live capture, get independant qualified witnesses, take video and DNA. Lobby the local government for protection. In other words, act like the real Cryptozoologists would.

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"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek
"Carl Sagan sent a message to ET,
Neil Armstrong walked in the Sea of Tranquility
Steve Squyers built Spirit and Opportunity
Dan Haylen upchucked in zero gravity." -Brent Simon, The Space Camp Song

And of course it just happens to be English.

The original Battlestar Galactica had a few particularly silly bloopers where you saw inscriptions on ships or text on computers, like the huge GALACTICA label on the docking bay (which looked kind of cool, though). Were we supposed to believe that extraterrestrials from many lightyears away would speak English?

I guess Lucas learned a lesson from that, since he invented an alien script for Return of the Jedi.

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"All your bias are belong to us." Ara Pacis
"A witty saying proves nothing." Voltaire

It took them many yarns to learn that language.

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A person's name, or a mark representing it, as signed personally or by deputy, as in subscribing a letter or other document.

Every time somebody said "but Sibrel" here, I've been amused.

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

And then inserted it retroactively into Star Wars (the old "Tractor Beam Power" readout is now gibberish on the DVD special edition).

Actually I think it makes more sense to translate the writing on screen into English. You're already (presumably) translating everything the characters say in their alien speech. Why not also translate all the written text?

And anyway, Galactica 1980 showed that, by whatever coincidence, the crew were in fact speaking Enlish all along, since they interacted with Earth humans perfectly.

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"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" - Wayne Gretzky

Interesting. I had never noticed that.

In principle, that makes some sense, but I have to say that in practice a supposedly "alien spaceship from a galaxy far, far away" with Latin letters splattered all over it screams fake fake fake to me.

I have a vague recollection that they mentioned having to learn the languages of Earth in Galactica 1980, though I'm not completely sure.

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"All your bias are belong to us." Ara Pacis
"A witty saying proves nothing." Voltaire

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"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek
"Carl Sagan sent a message to ET,
Neil Armstrong walked in the Sea of Tranquility
Steve Squyers built Spirit and Opportunity
Dan Haylen upchucked in zero gravity." -Brent Simon, The Space Camp Song

That must have been x-rated shock jock radio, since now you're using nothing but blue words.

__________________
A person's name, or a mark representing it, as signed personally or by deputy, as in subscribing a letter or other document.

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"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek
"Carl Sagan sent a message to ET,
Neil Armstrong walked in the Sea of Tranquility
Steve Squyers built Spirit and Opportunity
Dan Haylen upchucked in zero gravity." -Brent Simon, The Space Camp Song

It is just the opposite for me. Having them speak english with gibberish for an alphabet screams fake to me. It adds nothing, and makes exposition more difficult. If you are seeing it through their eyes, and can understand their speech, then there is no reason why you shouldn't be able to understand their written language.

David.

Now I should have already figured that out without reading this post! That's what I get for not keeping up with that thread.

Wild blue yonder et al.




One wonders how that Death Valley search turned out. The media seem to have lost interest and are back to their ANS obsession.

Re movie clichés, this one is more about moviemaking than the movies themselves: the suits figure that even though it's a lousy, hackneyed script that's been done many times before, the director can't do a scene to save his life, the producer makes Max Bialystock look like a "Lifetime Achievement" winner, and the studio's budget is painted red, they'll cast a bunch of "stars" and the movie will be a success.

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A person's name, or a mark representing it, as signed personally or by deputy, as in subscribing a letter or other document.

__________________
"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek
"Carl Sagan sent a message to ET,
Neil Armstrong walked in the Sea of Tranquility
Steve Squyers built Spirit and Opportunity
Dan Haylen upchucked in zero gravity." -Brent Simon, The Space Camp Song