Lensman: Difference between revisions

* [[Blue and Orange Morality]]: Recognized among the races of Civilization, to the extent that different races' Lensmen have entirely different codes of honor and conduct. However, [[Black and White Morality]] still applies between Civilization and Boskone.

* [[Boarding Party]] - many, many times. Justified in that the villains are space pirates by nature, and interested in loot as much as interruption of trade.

** {{spoiler|There are also hints at one point that Christopher Kinnison might harbor a few unfilial feelings for his mother Clarissa...and maybe it's mutual.}}

* [[Call to Adventure]]

** Where's it say that latter bit? The setting has independently working robots elsewhere – Whole space fleets crewed by them towards the end of the series!

* [[Deflector Shields]] - Usually referred to as "ether-walls" or "screens." Unlike their ''Star Trek'' successors, for ships these are almost always multi-layered (two or three layers is typical) and there's a final layer ("wall-shield") that's almost integral with the outer skin of the ship. When the wall-shield fails, that's it.

* [[Disintegrator Ray]] - Without the later trappings of safety and convenience. The beams used really ''do'' vaporize their targets, with all the attendant thermodynamics, so best wear a shielded suit when firing unless you want your front half to be blackened cajun-style.

** Depends on the weapon. Kim Kinnison fires his DeLameters while unarmoured on several occasions, and it's hinted that its ancestor, the Lewiston, can also be fired by an unprotected user. The Semi-portable projectors, on the other hand...

*** The DeLameters do have [[Holding Back the Phlebotinum|power settings]], also.

* [[Earthshattering Kaboom]] - In the third volume the bad guys' main base has a scuttling charge that [[Colony Drop|pulverizes the crust of the planet it's on]]. This being the origin of the [[Lensman Arms Race]], they have to find [[So Last Season|a way to beat that]]. So starting in the forth book, the superweapons of choice are ''planet-sized antimatter bombs'' and planets travelling in opposite directions and smashing the target between them. Yeah, beat that. (And they do, with colliding planets from [[Another Dimension|another universe]] travelling at fifteen times the speed of light.)

* [[Eldritch Abomination]]: Not only are the Eddorians already from a [[Hyperspace Is a Scary Place|horribly different other continuum]], but they have to disguise their appearances or [[Puny Earthlings|mere humans]] will [[Brown Note|go insane]] upon seeing them.

* [[Equal Opportunity Evil]]: Boskone dosn't really care what planet its mooks come from, as long as they don't screw up. On the other hand, the Eddorians ''are'' looking for the perfect race to be their front; and because of the very nature of the Eddorians, the more sexless, the better.

** The Kalonians got the job initially because the only function of their women is the production of men. The Lyranians, on the other hand, are a Matriarchal society to the same degree. Give them a few years and a little bit of help... {{spoiler|Helen of Lyrane and Clarissa Kinnison put a firm stop to that.}}

** The Patrol focuses it's efforts on thionite, which is really nasty stuff (and more importantly, whose dealers are part of the Boskonian food chain). Bentlam weed, on the other hand, seems to be the equivalent of marijuana - the Patrol doesn't even bother mentioning it.

* [[Everybody Smokes]]: [[Double Standard|Even the women]]. Tobacco is never once maligned in the series. Fine brand cigarettes are imported to Tellus all the way from Alsakan, all the way across the galaxy.

*** This is brought up by characters in the series, where they will mention how close to baseline Tellurians a particular alien is, often saying something like "Tellurian to within ten decimal places." However, it is unclear as to whether the decimal places part is meant to represent an actual mathematical formula, or is simply tongue-in-cheek.

* [[Humanity Is Superior]] - guess who runs Civilization? There were four species the Arisians selectively bred and eugenically improved for millions of years. The four races were the humans, the Velantians, the Rigellians and the Palainians. Humanity was considered the most desirable candidate of the four races because each of the others, despite being [[Puny Earthlings|superior to humanity]] in many qualities, had a [[Planet of Hats|significant flaw]]: the Palainians were intrinsically cowardly and very bad at multitasking, the Rigellians too nonaggressive and unambitious, and the Velantians deficient in resistance to mind control and in attention span. Humanity, on the other hand, while having [[Puny Earthlings|the fewest special strengths]], had ''[[Jack of All Stats|no specific weaknesses]]''.

** Subverted in that Roger {{spoiler|is actually an asexual alien who reproduces by binary fission and is mainly just trying to figure out what this "sex" thing is and why other races think it's such a big deal anyway.}} When he says he wants to use her for experiments pertaining to sex, what he means and what she... and [[The Hero]]... think he means are two entirely different things.

*** Earlier Roger mentions that he enjoys the "society of young and beautiful women," [[Fridge Horror|implying that Clio isn't the first]].

* [[Interstellar Weapon]] - The hyperspatial tube-launched planets are probably one of the more effective examples in play.

* [[Jack of All Stats]] - Of the five Children of the Lens, Christopher. More generally, humans compared to other races of the Galaxy.

* [[Lensman Arms Race]] - [[Trope Maker]] and [[Trope Namer]].

* [[Loyal Phlebotinum]] - The Lenses, which kill anyone other than their owners who tries to wield them.

* [[Mecha Mooks]] - Grey Roger's minions in ''Triplanetary''. Played with in that the escaping heroes unhesitatingly gun down both robots and humans on sight without a moral quiver (they are enemy troops after all).

* [[Mental Fusion]]

* [[Minovsky Physics]] - Ultra-waves, ether, {{spoiler|thought-waves}}

* [[Never Found the Body]] - The nature of high-energy space warfare means you usually don't have a body to find, which Grey Roger uses –''twice''– to his benefit.

* [[Nice to The Waiter]] - Even when he's infiltrating the bad guys' organization to work his way up the hierarchy, Virgil Samms refuses to take credit for work those under him did.

** Metal objects don't simply disappear - they glow, melt, and even evaporate if the beam is powerful enough.

** In the climactic battle of the last book, anti-matter projectiles are used, and Smith very explicitly states that when an electron and positron collide, they annihilate, giving to two photons of *very* hard radiation. The really ''big'' antimaterial projectiles can fill volumes with diametres best expressed in light-minutes with lethal levels of ionizing radiation.

* [[Outside Context Villain]]: The Nevians in ''Triplanetary'' - when they first show up wreck both the patrol and the pirate fleets. Once the ''Boise'' gets the proper upgrades, however...

* [[Pardon My Klingon]] - The Lenses assign random words to alien concepts with no direct human equivalent, and all the lenses use the same word afterwards.

* [[Power of Love]]: This is what enables Clarissa to {{spoiler|find and bring back Kinnison after he went through the [[Hyperspace Is a Scary Place|Hell Hole]] and was trapped in a far off dimension that not even Mentor and the children could find.}} The chapter's even ''called'' "The Power of Love".

** Given the early publication date, would that make this the [[Trope Namer]]?

{{quote| '''Kinnison:''' "With around a million fleets to handle we can't spend spend much time on any one."}}

** The starships of the Galactic Patrol use total conversion of matter to energy for their engines. At first, the power was conducted in meters-thick, liquid-helium-cooled silver busbars, because nothing less could handle it. It's specifically noted that to utilize their extreme power sources [[Beyond the Impossible|to their fullest]], they needed to go a step further than that and discover [[Unobtainium|room-temperature superconductors]].

* [[Shown Their Work]]: For such a dated series, Lensman can be surprisingly hard science-fiction at times.

** [[Two D Space]]: Averted hard. Englobement is a standard tactic, as is the Cone of Battle.

* [[Space Battle]]: While most of the action centered on the larger-than-life heroes as individuals, occasionally the emphasis shifted to the larger-than-life fleets of space battleships they commanded.

* [[Space Is Cold]]: During Virgil Samms's visit to a sub-zero planet, Smith takes pains to explain that vacuum is a very poor conductor. Heat loss to the metallic ground is a much bigger danger, on the other hand.

** Morgan can probably also be considered a mild [[Strawman Political]] against left-wing economic populism.

* [[Sleep Cute]] - Costigan and Clio Marsden

* [[Super Prototype]] - numerous [[Cool Ship|Cool Ships]], from the ''Brittania'' to the ''Chicago''

* [[Reverse Mole]] - one of Kinnison's usual tactics, successful to the point that he eventually ends up running the Evil Empire in time for their (at that stage in the story) climactic battle with Civilization.

* [[Telepathic Spacemen]] - The point of the story.

{{quote| '''Mentor''': "Inflated -- overwhelmingly by your warped and perverted ideas, by your momentary success in dominating your handful of minions, tied to you by bonds of greed, of passion, and of crime, you come here to wrest from us the secret of the Lens, from us, a race as much abler than yours as we are older -- a ratio of millions to one.<br />

"You consider yourself cold, hard, ruthless. Compared to me, you are weak, soft, tender, as helpless as a newborn child. That you may learn and appreciate that fact is one reason why you are living at this present moment. [[Mind Rape|Your lesson will now begin]]." }}

** Later, one of the lesser Guardians does the same to a couple of trespassing Eich.

** His race regards cowardice as a ''virtue''. At one point, he's acutely embarrassed by the fact that he personally faced and defeated three enemies in single combat, instead of manipulating them into killing each other.

** Eventually, the human penultimate, Kimball Kinnison, reluctantly comes to the conclusion that Nadreck is right about this, and that he has to adopt the same sort of ruthless, coldly pragmatic thinking to succeed.

* [[Evil Is Visceral]]: Boskone ships are purple organic-looking blobs, in contrast with the silver geometric shapes of Galactic Patrol ships.

* [[Recycled Soundtrack]]: The Harmony Gold dub used part of the score for the unreleased ''[[Robotech]] II: The Sentinels''.

* [[Take Up My Sword]]: Kim is given his lens by a dying Lensman he finds when he saves the ''Britannia'' from crashing. (Of course, Lenses ''just don't work that way'' in the original series.)

** The anomaly is immediately [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshaded]] in the film.