You Are Not Ready: Difference between revisions

'''Harry:''' We weren't ready, Norman.

'''Normal:''' We have what's called an imagination. I mean, look what we're capable of. We can... ''(sighs)'' We're not ready. }}

** Usually in reference to some [[Dangerous Forbidden Technique]].

* Similar to the above, [[Star Wars|Yoda]] informs Luke of this when he goes to face Vader on Cloud City.

** Played even more straight with Anakin's accession to Jedi Master in Episode 3. [[Samuel L. Jackson]] knows a thing or two about ready, and You Are Not Ready.

* At the end of ''[[Gremlins]]'', Mr. Wing shows up to claim Gizmo and berates the Peltzers for not following the rules of proper Mogwai care and states "You are not ready!" When he sees how much Gizmo has come to care for Billy, Mr. Wing decided Billy may be ready "one day". (Did somebody say "sequel"?)

*** {{spoiler|Technically, Gizmo didn't find Billy. After Mr. Wing's store was knocked down, he was captured by a mad scientist and was found by Billy in a science lab.}}

* This is the attitude of the Autobots towards technology sharing with humans in the ''[[Transformers (film)|Transformers]]'' movies. They won't give us weapons to fight Decepticons with because they know we'll end up using them to kill each other, and they don't give us non-weapons technology because [[Humans Are Warriors|they know we'd find a way to weaponize it]].

* The excuse used by all of [[Bruce Coville]]'s aliens for why they don't swoop down and end all disease and strife on Earth. His last few books just had them as merchants who wanted stuff in return - they got peanut butter and ketchup.

* In [[Iain Banks]]' novella ''The State Of The Art'', a [[The Culture|Culture]] Contact ship spends several months snooping about on Earth in 1977, before deciding not to contact us. Not so much because the Culture has any [[Alien Non-Interference Clause|qualms about influencing]] the Earth—it is just that the [[Deus Est Machina|Minds]] have decided to use Earth as a control group.<ref>In ''Inversions'' the Culture subtly guides a ''medieval'' civilization onto a more enlightened path.</ref> A passing reference in the appendix to ''[[The Culture/Consider Phlebas|Consider Phlebas]]'' does suggest that Earth has been Contacted by 2110 AD, at least. Humorously in ''[[The Culture/Excession|Excession]]'', {{spoiler|when the Culture inadvertently becomes the victim of the trope, it is played completely straight.}}

* Inverted in ''Speaker for the Dead'', where it's the humans telling the piggies that they are not ready for all the fancy human technology like spaceships and ansible communication—mostly just because the humans are afraid that the piggies will pose a threat to their superiority in space. This is a disputed policy and is one of the central conflict points of the novel.

* In Vernor Vinge's novel ''A Deepness in the Sky'', it's the humans hiding from the aliens while they wait for them to become Ready, and ''they'' are the ones who require technical assistance from the more primitive aliens.

* In ''[[Farscape]]'', John is given information about wormholes. The catch? It's behind a mental lock, and the [[Sufficiently Advanced Aliens]] who gave it to him state that if he isn't capable of unlocking the information on his own, he's not smart enough to use it wisely.

* ''[[Babylon 5]]'' did this rather well in the first-season episode "Deathwalker". A notorious war criminal has created a serum that gives the user immortality. Despite the heinousness of her crimes, Earth's government pardons her in return for turning over the formula. As she leaves the station, she reveals to the characters that had reacted to her in disgust the evil twist involved: every dose of the formula required killing another person of the same species. She intended to give the formula to everyone, and watch as they all fell into self-destructive chaos as a result to prove her twisted reasoning right. However, as she's leaving, a Vorlon ship appears through the jump gate and destroys the ship with her on it. When questioned about it, Ambassador Kosh says simply, "You are not ready for immortality."

* Basically the reason the Vulcans gave for not giving humans the technology to go to Warp 5 pre-''[[Star Trek: Enterprise]]''. The NX-01 is the humans' Warp 5 prototype, nearly 50 years and much emnity between humans and Vulcans later.

** Many instances in ''Star Trek'' media where the Prime Directive is invoked revolve around this trope; Starfleet crews are on occasion conflicted between moral pressure to help those in need and complying with the Federation's rules about "interfering" with less-advanced cultures.

 

== [[Tabletop Games]] ==

** Well, not so much "You are not Ready" as "What, are you crazy? You'd just try to kill us with it."

*** [[Humans Are the Real Monsters|And they're right.]]

 

== [[Web Original]] ==

 

== [[Western Animation]] ==

[[Category:Stock Phrases]]

[[Category:Skills and Training Tropes]]