John Scalzi has a couple of very amusing posts at the AMC TV website, John Scalzi's Guide to the Most Epic FAILs in Star Wars Design:
Stormtrooper Uniforms
They stand out like a sore thumb in every environment but snow, the helmets restrict view ("I can't see a thing in this helmet!" -- Luke Skywalker), and the armor is penetrable by single shots from blasters. Add it all up and you have to wonder why stormtroopers don't just walk around naked, save for blinders and flip-flops.
And John Scalzi's Guide to Epic SciFi Design FAILs - Star Trek Edition:
V'Ger
In Star Trek: The Motion Picture, a Voyager space probe gets sucked into a black hole and survives (GAAAAH), and is discovered by denizens of a machine planet who think the logical thing to do is to take a bus-size machine with the processing power of a couple of Speak and Spells and upgrade it to a spaceship the size of small moon, wrap that in an energy field the size of a solar system, and then send it merrily on its way. This is like you assisting a brain-damaged raccoon trapped on a suburban traffic island by giving him Ecuador.
As you can see from the excerpts, both are hilarious. The fan commentary isn't as outraged as I imagined it would be -- I'm quite pleased to note that there's a lot of balance in there too, with a lot of comments equally or even more scathing than Scalzi's points.
(And yes, I have been easing back into blogging quite gradually. I plan to have at least a couple of vaguely serious and relevant posts starting next week.)
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