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In Praise of the Sci-fi CorridorComments:171
Posted by
samzenpus
on Thu Sep 03, 2009 10:08 AM
from the getting-there-is-half-the-fun dept.
from the getting-there-is-half-the-fun dept.
brumgrunt writes "Technically a corridor in a science-fiction movie should just be a means of getting from one big expensive set to the next, and yet Den Of Geek writes lovingly of the detailed conduits in films such as Alien, Outland, Solaris and even this year's Moon by Duncan Jones."
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How to do a much shorter article next time (Score:3, Interesting)
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Without drama and conflict there's no story. Would you pay to see a story about a guy who went about his day in the future and didnt have any problems or anything interesting happen to him?
Perhaps someone can combine twitter with scifi:
futureguy: I am using my future toilet
futureguy: I am driving my futurecar
futureguy: I am sleeping in my futurebed
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I don't know. I thought the Jetsons had a pretty long run.
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Re:How to do a much shorter article next time (Score:4, Interesting)
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Idiocracy may reach extreme levels and an AI born from the technological singularity may control everything.
People may even have a total lack of privacy.
As long as everyone is confortable (lack of privacy is not uncomfortable by itself, it's the negative reactions of the other people and your broken expectations that do it.) and entertained, nobody will care.
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Until some dickhead wearing mirror shades and a black trenchcoat came around and wrecked everything. That part would really suck.
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He's not saying the future shouldn't have conflict, he's saying that future doesn't need to always emphasize how horrible EVERYTHING will turn out to be.
That's why people like Star Trek movies, they have conflict, but at the same time, they point out that the future can be bright, technology can be helpful, people can be happy and life is worth living.
Back to the main topic, corridors - they are cheap for filming. That probably influenced the reason to use them more than a necessity in "Sci-Fi" films. I r
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Re:How to do a much shorter article next time (Score:5, Insightful)
>>>Would you pay to see a story about a guy who went about his day in the future and didnt have any problems
No but that doesn't mean you have to go extreme either. I thought the best Science Stories were those that took ordinary genres, but set them in the future:
- Elijah Baley - a detective solving a murder in the year ~3,000
- Tekwar - a detective solving crimes in ~2020
- The Road Must Roll - a worker strike in the year ~2050
- I Robot - a collection of short stories where a household appliance (robot) goes haywire, and the engineer's attempt to find why the problem happened.
And so on. Science stories are best when they are tied to reality. It doesn't have to be some "nightmarish reality" to quote the grandparent..
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Well, 2001: A Space Odyssey [imdb.com] did have nothing but flashing lights that everyone stared at for what seemed like hours.
At least it seemed to take that long, and I wasn't even stoned!
Re:How to do a much shorter article next time (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm sorry but I'm having a very hard time comprehending your post. Did you actually call Kubric's 2001 one of the worst movies you have ever seen?
DOES NOT COMPUTE
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Depends. By the time I saw it, I was told its an Important Film and Important People made it and Important Things happen because its Important Art. As such, its interesting to watch and comment on all the little things that happen and more or less take it apart in your head and sit back and enjoy the swirling lights because they are Important Art. I think for the average filmgoer at the time of release it must have been somewhat unbearable. The critics at the time either loved it or hated it. I think thi
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This.
You realise that this was released before the Apollo landings ? There was nothing other than satellites and grainy B&W photos of earth. Then you associate lack of knowledge with drug use.But you treat the imagination of others like shit because they were too early ! Just you wait, grasshop
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Seinfeld 2049?
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futureguy: I am using my future toilet
futureguy: I am driving my futurecar
futureguy: I am sleeping in my futurebed
Oh great. They're still using Twitter in the future? Shoot me now.
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Actually, this is one of my major complaints about a lot of popular sci-fi.
The plot can usually be summarized as:
or
It seems to me that a lot of science fiction has an anti-sc
Re:How to do a much shorter article next time (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think that catastrophe sci fi is anti-science, I just think it's easier - it's the 'disaster movie' equivalent.
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...
It seems to me that a lot of science fiction has an anti-science bent.
You could just as well say that all non SciFi has the same problem... Govenrment wants to do something stupid and only the maverick politician can save the day; Spouse does something stupid and only two hours of dramatic avoiding-the-real-problem can reunite the couple; Boy wants girl but it takes 90 minutes of wacky adventures and two near-death experiences before he gets the courage to ask her
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At this point in human development we've got a name for fiction based around a non-dystopian future... it's called fantasy.
Star Wars Gets "More Later"? Really? (Score:4, Insightful)
What's mostly wrong with the corridors in Stanley Donen's Saturn 3 (1980) is that the floor-surfaces resemble the base floor of a movie studio, something which had plagued the corridors in the medium-budget Star Wars three years earlier (more on Star Wars corridors in a moment).
The movie that has an opening fight sequence in a corridor and later corridor after corridor on the death star followed by another fight sequence in a prison block corridor only leading up to the-equivalent-of-Jesus getting lightsabered in half in a corridor adjacent to a docking bay .... and you say "more on Star Wars corridors in a moment."
And the second movie? Hoth ice corridors. IV, V & VI are so dependent on corridor shots.
Did you mean to say "The Corridors of Star Wars article will be out later today with a 58 page thesis on the strength of corridor running and combat between rebels and imperials in the Star Wars cinema"?
Re:Star Wars Gets "More Later"? Really? (Score:5, Interesting)
A friend of mine who films his own movies has a corriodor in his basement. He says that corridor is one of his primary sets.
The same was true with Trek. If they weren't on the bridge, they were in some damn corridor. One of the things I liked about DS9 and Babylon 5 was that they had lots of "open" sets, and tried to avoid corridors as much as possible.
Re:Star Wars Gets "More Later"? Really? (Score:5, Interesting)
You can't really fault Trek for having so many corridors when most of the shots occur on the ship. If the space ships of Star Trek are anything like U.S. naval vessels, then they are mostly corridors connecting rooms. The rooms will be cargo, berthing, galleys, a few work shops, engineering, and the bridge. If the ship supports fly ops, it will have a hanger and flight deck.
The important thing is that there will be no "open" decks. Everything will be enclosed, much like a modern submarine. Space will be at a premium due to life support considerations, so rooms will be small and packed together. Plus, depending on how long it takes to get around, there is the matter of food and water storage, recycling systems.
In ST:TOS, the Enterprise would often be "three weeks out" from the starbase of the week. It had a crew of about 1,000. So, the ship had to have enough food, water, and air for 1,000 people for three weeks. Even with the "replicators", there would need to be source matter to create the food from. Let us not forget waste handling. Ejecting it from the ship means loss of material, water, and air. Storing requires voids. Recycling it requires space for the recycling equipment.
Also, a ship moves through space so it must have engines and fuel. The bigger the rooms, the bigger the ship, the more mass the ship has, the bigger the engines and the more fuel it needs.
Most people forget many of the details required for life because those details are taken for granted on a planet.
Corridors are the natural result of building large space ships with large crew compliments. Even a large cargo vessel will be some huge empty spaces for the cargo and a large space for engineering both connected to a small crew section which will be mostly small rooms off of corridors.
Re:Star Wars Gets "More Later"? Really? (Score:5, Funny)
[...] Even with the "replicators", there would need to be source matter to create the food from. Let us not forget waste handling. [...]
You just solved both problems with the same solution.
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In ST:TOS, the Enterprise would often be "three weeks out" from the starbase of the week. It had a crew of about 1,000.
No, it was usually somewhat more than 400, IIRC.
Creepiest sci-fi corridor (Score:3, Interesting)
Event Horizon! Can you imagine trying to walk down that hall with the walls spinning around you?
Of course, maybe Event Horizon doesn't actually qualify as science fiction.
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Does the suspension bridge in Black Hole count as a corridor?
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What about the corridor of chompers in Galaxy Quest? Just imagine trying to wheel a food-service cart or carry an antigrav-attached magnetic bucket of antimatter down that one...
SyFy? (Score:5, Funny)
Don't you mean a syfy corridor?
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No I'm not really into "siffy", whatever that's supposed to be. I prefer science stories.
Sci-Fi (Score:5, Funny)
Cause in the future we don't have cable management or flimsy plastic plates to cover up sensitive equipment and sharp corners.
Re:Sci-Fi (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Sci-Fi (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, once you invent artificial gravity, you're back to having to have dedicated floor space for walking, standing, sitting, etc. And when your habitat expands beyond just a six person capacity with everyone knowing everything, to a large community where people have specialized tasks, you will probably not want to have everything just sitting out in the open like that for people who don't know what they are doing to accidentally bump things on their way by and not know how to correct it. And when your habitat grows beyond just a few small rooms, you will have to have dedicated travel (dare I say it?) corridors, that are just that, corridors.
When your entire environment is very small and contains a very few smart, well-trained people, you can make use of every available space like they do on the ISS.
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And we have an entire infrastructure of pipes dedicated to moving steam around every ship or building complex, for some reason.
Tune in next week... (Score:5, Funny)
...for the space toilet special. An interview with George Lucas will explore the challenges of sci fi pooping, creating believable multi-species lavatories that account for physical as well as cultural differences, whether Jedi excrement has any force abilities, and the problems traditionally associated with merchandising this under-developed aspect of cinema.
I'm damburger, and I'm a corridorholic (Score:3, Insightful)
Dear god, I thought I was alone.
Corridors are the unappreciated bedrock of science fiction. I guess the original reason is because they could be repeatedly used for different parts of a ship/space station/alien planet, but they've taken on a life of their own.
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Then you must remember the guy from the Mac ads as a fellow corridorholic in the best example of a science fiction corridor yet created [imdb.com].
No Event Horizon "meat grinder" corridor? (Score:2)
I would think the "meat grinder"-like "containment corridor" from Event Horizon would be a great example for that article, but it's a no-show.
Non standar ones (Score:3, Insightful)
I hate corridors in series (Score:2)
Am i the only one that doesn't want to see people walking around for 10mins of a 50min show! The worst offence is opening a scene showing somebody silently walking into a room from a corridor, in a 2/3hr film this isn't too bad as it can be used to set the scene (i'd still rather they didn't), but if you add up the time people walk about in a series like Stargate SG-1 it's got to be about a 1/5 of the show!!! I distinctly remember the lack of corridors on firefly as one of the reasons i loved the show!
Blakes 7 had the best corridors!!! (Score:2)
The liberator had corridors of POWER( and cardboard)!!! They were all lit up and meant business!!!!
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When a Sci-Fi corridor is mentioned I instantly think of old series Dr. Who. They were all flimsy and cheap, but they were interesting to look at and it always seemed like half the story involved the Doctor and/or an assistant running through them.
Best corridor(s) from the classic 2001 (Score:5, Interesting)
The best corridors were from the movie 2001. In it we have:
- The long corridor connecting the crew module from the propulsion system on the Discovery. Note it was octagonal in section and had no up or down as it was only to be accessed in zero-g.
- The short corridor/connector in the shuttle to the moon where the mod space stewardess walks in and, thanks to the tricks of a rotating set and fixed camera, travels up the wall onto the "ceiling" and exits. (She is supposedly held on by her velcro shoes).
- The short connector on the Discovery which is where the non-rotating main part of the space-craft meets the rotating part of the crew module. The astronauts must float down it and then clamber down a spinning opening to the part of the spacecraft that has artificial gravity. This is also another great "corridor", here Stanley Kubrik built basically an enclosed ferris wheel and in some memorable shots, had his astronauts jogging all around the "wheel".
Amazing what you can do with a script that isn't pseudo science and a director who cares (and has a good budget!).
The lost art of gypsum drywall (Score:4, Interesting)
Just as people currently endeavor to recreate the manufacturing methods for medieval stained glass or the great pyramids, the people of the future will be awestruck at the ability of 20th and 21st people to make such smooth walls out of the mysterious and amazing material known as drywall.
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Corridors in ships serve the same purpose as hallways in homes - to move from one room to another.
The corridors in the original Star Trek were practical. In the Next Generation it was an example of how "soft" the Federation had become, and Q said as much during his forced encounter with the Borg. Enterprise-D was almost like a luxury liner (see season 1's final episode where a guy compares the ship to the QE2).
Re:I never liked Sci Fi corridors. (Score:5, Insightful)
You have never been on a submarine have you? Space ships have a lot in common with submarines.
Yes, because no one would mind people walking through their work space. Who cares if one get's jostled by someone passing through while one is performing a delicate and/or dangerous step in a procedure or experiment?
Yes, because no one would mind people walking through their living and sleeping space at all hours of the day and night. I am sure those people on night watch won't mind have their sleep disturbed ever few minutes.
Those corridors connect rooms together. They are hallways. No corridors, and you end up with one huge room which will result in no privacy, a huge waste of air, and is wonderful vulnerability because it takes just a hole or two to kill everyone on the ship.
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