Bad Sci Fi, Naughty Sci Fi

Rating: 1/10 (27 July 2013)

OK, 11 pages of reviews have covered pretty much everything that was bad about this truly terrible movie but there are two things I want to get off my chest that occur in this film and pretty much every other of its genre. The first concerns gravity and its effect on space travel. Just like a football (soccer) match, any space trip will be a journey of two halves. For the first half the vessel will continuously accelerate at an acceptable rate in terms of the G force exerted on the occupants. 1 to 1.5g for several months would do the job. When it reaches the half way point, in order to slow down in time, it will have to decelerate at exactly the same rate, otherwise it will fall short or overshoot its target.
This being the case why is the ship still burning its 4 thrusters as it nears the planet?
My other massive gripe concerns spaceship geometry. We've had all sorts of designs; massively, pointlessly, complex shapes in Star Wars, discs with hulls and pods in Star Trek, animalistic, worm/snake like things in Iron Man and Battleship. We get sensible child discs in Independence Day but these are launched from a mother ship that looks like a dog's head. All of these shapes are ridiculous. There is no gravity in space neither is there any air resistance. A Pentagon shape vessel or cube like the Borg have in Star Trek are almost certainly the most practical design for spaceships. The emphasis for spaceship builders will be travel time from one area of the ship to another so long thin shapes are definite no noes. The same goes for strange poly configurations. Space vessels will need to rotate to provide gravitational support for their occupants. Shapes that don't lend themselves to rotation simply won't work.
I don't know why the original sci fi spaceships were flying saucers but whoever thought that up got it dead right. Forbidden Planet got it spot on; all space ships will be saucer (disc) shaped. Those that aren't will look like a Borg cube or several 1,000 shipping containers stuck together.