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My Hobby: Finding Realism in Sci-Fi

Any idiot can spot mistakes in sci-fi. Finding excuses makes for a better game.

Star Trek shows every race in the world speaking the same language, because they have universal translators. But then we hear klingons shouting in Klingon, and hear random Bejoran phrases. Clearly lazy writing.

But better writing might suggest universal translators work at will. Maybe klingons stop using them because they're occupied by a fight. And maybe idioms don't translate so well, and Bejorans slip into phrases more than most others.

Spaceships shouldn't explode, given the lack of oxygen in space. But then stars have yellow flames, and they don't have atmosphere, so perhaps space ships could contain something with enough joules to make a flame.

And when Worf loans Jadzia Dax a copy of his klingon opera on disks, it looks like a 90's notion of futuristic CD's, rather than the post-scarcity society we've come to expect from Star Trek. But perhaps copyright on art has developed faster than any technology, and those holding the copyright have recognized that if any digital copies of a work exist, people could easily copy the work. In this case, songs and such may only come in a format which computers could not copy or understand - a legally mandated regression back to analogue music.