6 Fictional Technologies That Are Completely Inefficient

Originally pitched to Cracked.com:

Much of the history of mankind has been marked by advancements in technology. We as a species are constantly trying to imagine new ways to make life a little bit better and a little bit easier for ourselves and the rest of our fellow humans. But a lot of the time reality can limit the abilities of our technology to be all it can possibly be. But it the world of fiction, one does not need to be limited to any sort of rules set forth by the world. You can make technology as great as you like. In simple fact, the only reason technology is flawed in fiction is for the purposes of the story, and not for any sense of reality in the world of the story.

1.)           Cloning for body parts (from The Island)

The concept behind Michael Bay’s film The Island is a rather gruesome one when you think about it. A society of people, thinking they are the only survivors of a global plague, are in fact all clones of people living in the real world. The clones live in a health spa like existence waiting for the day when they will be picked to go to the titular Island, a magical place where the plague never happened. In reality, they are being harvested by the person they were cloned from for whatever body part he or she happens to need at the time.

Now as the film explains (by the character played by Sean Bean, who is SURPRISE SURPRISE a bad guy), cloning just a body part doesn’t really work. Something about needed the spark of life or something to make the whole process work is required. So that explains why all the clones in the movie have to be walking and talking humans. Otherwise there would just be a bunch of bodies in jars like a fetal pig in a middle school science classroom. But it must cost a fortune to purchase one of these clones because you have to clothe them, feed them, clean up after them (all the reasons why parents don’t want to get their kids a puppy) and then keep them entertained while waiting to cut them up.

And the cutting up seems to be the real area where there is a lot of waste. Judging by the story of the film, harvesting from a clone is a one shot deal. They take the heart or kidney or baby (seriously, this film shows someone who had a clone just to be a surrogate parent) and then they dispose of the clone. Well what about all the other organs? True the whole point of having a personal clone is to insure a genetically perfect match, but lots of people can get organ donation without the match being 100% perfect. It’s why when you get a driver’s license they ask you to be an organ donor. So we don’t have to end up with a world full of fake clones living underground.

2.)           The Cloaking Device (from Star Trek shows and films)

"They'll never find us!"

The Star Trek franchise has many different technologies associated with it. Teleporters, holodecks, replicators, etc. And at one point in any given Star Trek TV episode or movie, a story revolved around a particular piece of technology breaking down (nearly half a season could be put together of Next Generation episodes in which holodeck characters come to life). But technology failing doesn’t necessarily make it inefficient. Unless of course if that technology failing COMPLETELY NEGATES the purpose of that technology.

"Oops."

The Star Trek device that seems to happen to most is the cloaking device. The cloaking device appears to be the best tactical advantage ever conceived. A device that renders your ship invisible to all forms of detection. Except it doesn’t! Cloaked ships are constantly being detected by the Federation in any number of episodes and movies. Star Trek VI, the last of the films to feature the original Star Trek cast, had a cloaked vessel as one of its central plot points (a Klingon bird of prey that can fire its weapons while cloaked). During the final battle the ship is targeted by tracking its exhaust fumes. Essentially a high tech version of Axel Foley shoving a banana in a car’s tailpipe (Uhura even says “Well the thing’s got to have a tailpipe.”).

3.)           Mega laser (from Real Genius)

The movie Real Genius makes the idea of being super smart really fun. Honestly, this college seems like Hogwarts except no one has a magic wand. And like Hogwarts, of course it turns out one of the Professor’s is evil (in fact, the only Professor we even see, except the one who replaces himself with a boom box). And instead of trying to resurrect He Who Must Not Be Named, the evil Professor uses the brilliant students at his disposal to create a super weapon for the military.

Now it is when the students find out what they have been doing that the main plot of the story gets going. Before then they had been goofing off and playing pranks and doing things that we all assume smart people do all the time. The students break into the army base and program in new coordinates to the super laser, using it to destroy the evil professor’s house with a giant popcorn popper (apparently the evil Professor hates popcorn, though he really only says so in passing). And here is why the mega laser is inefficient. Because it is used to make popcorn. Not just blow up the professor’s house. This is supposed to be a doomsday weapon that can eliminate an enemy from space and it takes multiple minutes to pop a tray of Jiffy Pop (a giant tray, which shows that classic aluminum bubble we all know and love and remember fondly).

4.)           Rag Dolls (from 9)

"This will save the world… somehow."

Be completely honest, none of this movie makes sense. How a bunch of living potato sacks are supposed to repopulate and save the human race is never explained. True the little potato sacks (the movie really doesn’t give them a particular name, so “little potato sacks it is) do defeat the evil computer eye thing that wants to absorb their souls. But there are no humans left and (SPOILER) more than half of the potato sacks die.

5.)           David (from A.I.)

It makes complete sense that such a flawed movie would have at the center of it such a flawed piece of technology. David is a little android boy designed to replace a real child for parents who might have lost their child (a very morbid concept in and of itself). David’s programming is so complex that it even has the ability to love its owners. But in truth it doesn’t. David is programmed to imprint on someone when they say the correct sequence of code words. WHICH IS NOT HOW LOVE WORKS. Had David shown affection towards his “parents” without those words being entered then we the audience could believe that he genuinely loved them.

Also, David is supposed to be a substitute for a child. But David is an android. He is permanently locked in the form of a kid. Which negates his entire purpose if he is supposed to be a substitute for having. The joy of children is watching them mature and grow and learn. To teach them and prepare them for the world. Parents get joy from seeing their child go through milestones of life. If David is perpetually a boy, then his parents get no such joy of watching him grow. Even dog owners get the satisfaction of seeing their puppy learn a new trick every now and then.

No going off to college, no getting married, no grandchildren. Just a creepy kid that never gets older and can’t take care of you when YOU get old, and that you have to take care of forever because the thing never breaks down (honestly, they show David being unfrozen thousands of years in the future working fine). And since it is programmed to be a child which means it has the ignorance and naiveté of a child, permanently. The robot child actually thinks Pinocchio is a true story and spends most of the movie looking for “the Blue Fairy.”

6.)           T-800 (from the Terminator films)

After four Terminator films it seems pretty obvious that all T-800 robots look like Arnold Schwarzenegger (although he wasn’t in Salvation they screen grabbed his face and digitally placed it on another actor for a brief scene). Now there is no denying the lethal ability of a these killer robots. In brief scenes in both the original Terminator film and T2 showed scenes of robotic exoskeletons gunning down humans in a brutal death march to victory. But the point of the T-800 is not to be a just a mindless killing machine. It’s meant to infiltrate the human ranks and then take out a particular target.

Now it may not seem like the humans have the most organized military communications system but I’m pretty sure they could pass a message among their ranks, “Hey, if a big Austrian guy tries to get into your base, kill that dude.” Which is what any sane person would do if all the enemy soldiers trying to sneak into your camp looked EXACTLY THE SAME. Plus it’s a big six foot muscular guy who is pretty easy to spot in a crowd and doesn’t understand basic human behavior and mannerisms. 

Granted the Terminators in The Sarah Connor Chronicles suggest that Terminators come in all shapes and sizes (Every fanboy out there would gladly let a Summer Glau robot murder them) but as far as the movies are concerned the basic Terminator looks like Arnold. There was a deleted scene from Terminator 3 that explains why all the terminators look like Arnold (and sound like him in a bizarre act of ADR) but none that explains why that is a good idea. Because it isn’t.