In Space Everyone Can See Your Face: Difference between revisions
Rescuing 1 sources and tagging 0 as dead.) #IABot (v2.0.8
m (update links) |
(Rescuing 1 sources and tagging 0 as dead.) #IABot (v2.0.8) |
||
| (3 intermediate revisions by 3 users not shown) | |||
Line 3:
In media depicting characters in environments requiring protective helmets, such as space or underwater, those helmets will be equipped with lights that illuminate the wearer's face. If you did this in real life, the wearer would most likely find that all they can see is their face reflected in the glass.
A variation, seen in the few science-fiction media that make some attempt at scientific accuracy, is to avoid the lights, but also omit [[One-Way Visor|the highly reflective metallic coating applied to the visors of real spacesuits.]] (It should be noted, though, that the reflective visors on real spacesuits are often retracted when not looking the direction of the Sun; [https://web.archive.org/web/20150509102345/http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/station/crew-14/hires/iss014e09795.jpg case in point].) Such scenes would often require contrived lighting. Then again, "[[Lighting Tropes|contrived lighting]]" has been a staple of filmmaking for ages.
[[Acceptable Breaks From Reality|Of course, the reason for this is that the makers want us to see the faces of the actors filling those helmets.]] A lot of body language and emotional cues are carried through facial expressions and reactions, so it helps the audience to be able to see the people in question while they [[Chewing the Scenery|chew the scenery]]. The same reasoning pops up in [[Faceless Goons]], where avoiding possible humanization is the goal.
Obviously, this is not a problem in literature, since there are no expensive actors or camera scenes involved at all.
This trope is probably related to the fact that pretty much all spacecraft are evenly illuminated from all sides, regardless of their distance from a star or the possibility of being shadowed by a planet or a bigger ship or whatever. Presumably they all have little lights attached to their outer hull for the same purpose as the helmet lights, though it isn't like there is any [[Stealth in Space]] anyway.
Line 16:
{{examples}}
== Anime and Manga ==
* [[Planetes]] - +95% averted. Spacesuits have faceplates with integrated [[HUD
* ''[[Gundam]]'' plays this one straight pretty much all the time, though in one episode of ''[[Mobile Suit Gundam 00]]'', Setsuna turns his visor into a two-way mirror in order to hide his identity.
Line 28 ⟶ 27:
** When Tony first switched from the Gold Plated Battle Tank Armor to the classic red-and-gold skin-tight model in [[The Sixties]], his lengthy introduction to the new suit specifically noted that he's made the eye-holes and mouth-slits bigger so his adversaries could see his expressions. In [[The Seventies]], everything narrowed to featureless slits again ... but there was a tendency for artists to draw the solid metal "shellhead" faceplate as an [[Expressive Mask]].
* In ''[[Tintin|Explorers on the Moon]]'', the faces of the spacemen can always be seen through their multiplex helmets, even when floating in outer space or walking through a dark cave on the Moon.
== Fan Works ==
* [[Justified Trope|Justified]] in ''[[Desperately Seeking Ranma]]'': When the cast visits the surface of the Moon, they do so wearing [[Imported Alien Phlebotinum|ultratech force-field-based spacesuits acquired from an alien civilization]]; the suits simply wrap a transparent protective field around whatever the wearer already has on. In this case, not only can everyone see your face, everyone can see your jeans and T-shirt, or your suit and [[Cool Shades]].
Line 47 ⟶ 50:
* [[Transformers Film Series|''Transformers: Dark of the Moon'']] does this a little oddly; the astronauts on the 1969 Moon landing have their iconic reflective visors at first, but while examining the crashed Ark up close, actually slide them up into their helmets to reveal secondary transparent visors with face-illuminating lights.
* ''[[Doomsday Machine]]'', a film featured on ''[[Cinematic Titanic]]'', actually averts this trope in the end, where the two astronauts who board the Russian spacecraft have black, reflective visors on their helmets. Unfortunately, this was mostly an attempt to (not particularly successfully) cover up the fact that the last part of the movie was filmed with different actors and different sets due to budget constraints.
== Literature ==
* Referenced in [[Larry Niven]]'s Known Space setting; because their faces can't be seen in their helmets, the setting's asteroid miners paint their individual spacesuits with bright, distinctive and elaborate patterns.
** Also used in [[Robert A. Heinlein]]'s
** [[Truth in Television]], as current ISS/Shuttle suits have velcro-attached color bands to distinguish between the different astronauts. Since there only two astronauts out in suits at a given time, they don't have to be that different.
*** This practice may have started with Apollo 12. After the first moon landing, it became standard procedure to put a bold red stripe on the Commander's suit, so that people reviewing lunar photographs could easily tell which astronaut they were looking at. This can be seen in ''[[Apollo 13]]'' when Lovell fantasizes about his landing.
Line 60 ⟶ 64:
** It should be noted that Wedge is not wearing a spacesuit but his pilot suit and helmet as seen in the films with a personal force field to keep a layer of air around him.
* The Toralii boarders in ''[[Lacuna]]'' have opaque visors, but one raises it to gloat to a wounded, fallen Captain Liao. {{spoiler|That proves to be his undoing.}}
== Live-Action TV ==
* ''[[Babylon 5]]'' - "Thirdspace"
* It has cropped up a couple of times on ''[[Doctor Who]]''. In "The Impossible Planet" and "The Satan Pit", the Tenth Doctor spends much of his screen-time gallivanting around a pit-and-cave-system wearing a pressure suit and helmet. The helmet features four tiny lights which are pointed directly at the corners of the Doctor's mouth and eyes.
▲** Justified in the original series - it was the emitters of a force field that kept the pilot's air in.
▲* It has cropped up a couple of times on ''[[Doctor Who]]''. In "The Impossible Planet" and "The Satan Pit", the Tenth Doctor spends much of his screen-time gallivanting around a pit-and-cave-system wearing a pressure suit and helmet. The helmet features four tiny lights which are pointed directly at the corners of the Doctor's mouth and eyes.
** also, "Silence in the Library" features helmets with blue lights shining into the face in the mouth area.
*** But those lights can be turned on and off at will so more likely the point was to let you hold a conversation while wearing in them.
Line 93 ⟶ 97:
** The introduction to ''Super Metroid'' has Samus typing up the events of previous Metroid games. You can see her face on the computer monitor.
** Explained in ''[[Other M]]''. The visor has a device that switches it between transparent and opaque.
* Avoided in ''[[
* Mostly averted in ''[[Mass Effect]]''. The human characters (and the alien Liara, who wears human-style armor) add a largely opaque facemask to their helmets when in inhospitable conditions. However they all include a transparent eye slit, and the area visible through that is well lit, thus their functionality remains debatable. The aliens Garrus and Wrex have only one helmet design per armor, all of which are face-concealing. The alien Tali is always wearing an environment suit with a mostly-opaque visor, but if you look close you can see her eyes and a few lines of her face. The artist who designed the helmets for the game noted the difficulty in still having characters be expressive while they're basically wearing masks.
** The sequel keeps the same design for the most part, but also includes several alternative bonus armors with full face visors that play it straight.
Line 100 ⟶ 104:
* ''[[Shin Megami Tensei]] [[Strange Journey]]'' plays with this trope by giving the character spacesuit-things for the hostile atmosphere where the game takes place... but only unnamed Strike Team members (which includes you) wear their helmets' faceplate down all the time. Important characters (Gore, Zelenin, Jimenez) keep the faceplate up even when out in the field, protected from the environment only by the transparent visor underneath.
* Deeply, for the disappointment of many fans, averted in the ''[[Halo]]'' series where it features John-117 and his Spartan Mjolnir suit, designed to work in every condition, including vacuum.
** You can't
** On the other hand, the [[It's Raining Men|Orbital Drop Shock Troopers]] from ''[[Halo 3: ODST]]'' do have transparent visors, but only when they toggle them to do so. In combat, though, they can't be seen through.
* The ''[[Wing Commander (video game)|Wing Commander]]'' series averts this trope, for the most part. At most one only saw the area immediately around the eyes of the pilots wearing the helmets, and it wasn't illuminated other than by the light in the cockpit (which just shifted the problem out of the helmet, but that's not this trope).
Line 106 ⟶ 110:
== Western Animation ==
* In ''[[Static Shock]]'', Gear's face mask, while hiding his identity, allows the viewer to see his face.
* ''[[Invader Zim]]'' had an air helmet that was a pink gooey bubble that turned invisible after forming around his head and pressurizing. It's also seen reappearing sporadically when damaged.
* In ''[[Star Trek: The Animated Series]]'', personal environmental force fields allow the crew to explore planets without Earth-like atmospheres while wearing nothing but a uniform. This was likely [[Limited Animation|so the animators wouldn't have to do much extra work on the characters]].
Line 114 ⟶ 118:
[[Category:Speculative Fiction Tropes]]
[[Category:Space Does Not Work That Way]]
[[Category:
| |||