Science Fiction

Language drives me nuts too. I believe in Star trek the badges translate in real time? Best explanation I ever saw (read) was hitchhikers guide. The babel fish "eats" language and poops out brainwaves or whatever to the receiver. I probably got the details wrong but it's close enough and hilarious to boot.

Camera thing is another I hate. Obviously for the drama but I mean they can pull up video on the main window of the enterprise to the engineering room, captains room, even other ships but can't see the biggest point of entry??

Becky Chambers wrote 4 books that did a really good job of exploring different species getting by with their differences not just in culture, but also in things like how they speak (one species has 5 vocal chords, so you literally cannot speak their language) or 'how does publich transit account for different butt shapes?'

But on to your question on pet peeves:

• throwing science-y words out there that make no sense is probably my biggest.
• deus ex-machina - getting saved at the knick of time by something showing up without warning, but that's just bad writing. I actually like how the Orville series removed transporters as a tech. It's actually a bad plot device.
• but yeah, like you said, things that are obvious but are removed from the show, like cameras

Making a second comment to answer your actual question:

For me it's when technology is very uniformly high tech. So for example in the real world technology advances but it doesn't advance everywhere at the same speed. There might be high tech versions of things in cities while you still find old or ancient equivalents out in the countryside (or just both types existing alongside each other all over). I really like it when SciFi can capture this nonlinear pace of technological advancement.

What do you think? Do you know any good examples of SciFi-Worldbuilding, that solve some common inconsistencies?

There's some good stuff in Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time series about non-human intelligence and societies that I found compelling and very thoughtfully composed. It comes from a grounded place, and especially the first two books do a great job of building up concepts of civilizations that feel truly foreign but make a lot of sense in the universe. The difficulties in cross-species communication are addressed and made to be a focus and feel realistic. I'm being deliberately vague because part of the fun of the books is seeing how far things go.

Since Stargate is my go-to scifi I'm kinda offended at the "doesn't take itself too seriously". Sure it's not as hard on the science as The Expanse (you know, except for the magic portals to other stars), but it feels like it takes itself pretty seriously. There are obvious bottle episodes that were probably written for other shows and shoe-horned in because they were cheap to buy and produce.

For #2, I think this would get pretty old pretty fast, not to mention that they have to fit everything into runtime constraints. Every new planet the team spends months researching the new language. Sure, you could handwave it (we found a Goa'uld translator just laying around), but that would be back to just one language. Since the Stargate presents an instant transportation rather than the days/months/years of starship travel it would make sense that languages stay fairly consistent as people move from planet to planet.

For #3, they pretty much handwave this in SG-1 as the majority of planets in the Milky Way were repopulated by the ancients in their image, and others were transferred from Earth.

You might enjoy the book "Blindsight" by Peter Watts.

It does a phenomenal job telling a very unique first contact story. I can't remember if cameras are much of a plot point (I think they use them occasionally), but one of the characters is a linguist, and the aliens are distinctly non-human.

I can still enjoy far-future science fiction of the "humans in space" sort but I can't take it seriously as a portrayal of what the future might be like unless there's an explanation for why people haven't been modified by technology to the point where they're hardly recognizable as human. I really like Alpha Centauri (the video game) as a portrayal of a future where everyone is either a cyborg or a Luddite. The best part is that the game does this gradually until at the end the player realizes (or doesn't) that the annoying Luddite faction (which usually gets eliminated early) had a point.

I really appreciate a lack of ansible tech. Having to account for the speed of light in communication makes for better story telling, IMHO

My favorite examples of limited communication speed are the Lost Fleet books by John G. Hemry writing as Jack Campbell, and the Battletech franchise.

In the Lost Fleet, they are limited to realistic communications. When they jump into a star system, they gather Intel but it's often pointed out that what their telescopes see and radios hear is X hours old based on the distance. There's a lot of talk in battles about predicting where something will be at a certain time or trying to device the enemy by pulling fake maneuvers. When they want to communicate back home, they need to send picket ships to carry the message.

In Battletech, there is a common method of FTL communication between worlds, but not at smaller scales. When the writers remember it, we hear about the same kind of delays in Intel as in the Lost Fleet. The FTL comms are monitored by a sometimes hostile polity, so top secret stuff will be communicated by spacecraft pony express, and there have been some attempts to some up with other comm methods.

We live in a time where live action adaptations of classic sci-fi literature are now possible - both technically and financially. But now TBH I find most of it super boring. Been trying to plow through that Foundation series and got to say it just doesn't hold my attention. Same with the William Gibson adaptation the Peripheral. I liked the books but just can't hang with the vids.

There is stuff I like but its rare. Arrival, Raised by Wolves, the Dune movies, a few others.

If you read books, check out Embassytown by China Mieville. As far as I could tell the point of that book was to envision a truly alien species and how diplomacy would work with them. Super interesting book and unlike anything else I've read in scifi

Translator Microbes

I understand why they do this with language but when it happens for the first time in a show I can't help but get distracted by it. I don't have a better solution though...

The writing of Julie Czerneda is very creative when it comes to alien species.

I haven't read anything by her, where do you recommend I start?