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The Starlost: Difference between revisions
"series bible"->"Universe Bible"
Looney Toons (talk | contribs) (added trope) |
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Despite (or perhaps ''because of'') its legendary badness, a ''Starlost'' DVD box set was released in 2008.
And if you're morbidly curious about [[What Might Have Been]], a copy of the original [[
{{tropelist}}
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* [[Limited Wardrobe]]: Devon, Garth and Rachel almost never changed out of the clothes they were wearing when they left Cypress Corners.
* [[Liquid Assets]]: "The Pisces"
* [[Miniseries]]: The original concept for the show, as noted in the
* [[Myth Arc]]: The quest to regain control of the ship.
* [[Never Land]]: The simulated bridge in "Children of Methuselah", populated entirely by children whose aging had been halted at some point before the launch of the Ark.
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** Can't I scream a just a little bit that they missed the whole point of relativity entirely? Thank you. '''''THEY MISSED THE WHOLE POINT OF RELATIVITY ENTIRELY!!!1!!1 AAAAAaAAAuuUUUUggHHH!!11!!1!'''''
* [[Planet of Hats]]: The biospheres, and any other groups encountered outside them.
* [[Ramscoop]]: The ARK's drive system, as described in the
* [[Really Seven Hundred Years Old]]: All of the titular "Children of Methuselah".
* [[Schizo-Tech]]: Although the show was canceled ''long'' before it could have shown any, the possibility of societies with Schizo-Tech on the Earthship ARK was explicitly allowed for in the [[
{{quote|Each of the individual cultures inside the various environmental domes will, of course, have developed weapons consistent with their own cultures. But here too there should be not-too-subtle differences. For example, you can make a crossbow that will stop an armored personnel carrier out of a truck's leaf spring and some of the connecting rods from the steering System. it's been done, in Biafra.}}
* [[Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale]]: Every writer but Ellison and Bova. The broadcast version of the ARK is allegedly ''13,000 kilometers'' long, although the model ship seen throughout the series didn't look anywhere that big. The Earth itself is only 12,756 kilometers in diameter. (One suspects a couple numbers got swapped somewhere after it left Ellison's hands.) Worse, the domes are repeatedly described as fifty miles across, but as you can see from the image on this page, the domes on the model have diameters about a fifth or sixth of the ship's total length. So either the domes are actually over 2000 km across, or the ship's only about 300 miles (482 km) long. (According to the [[
** Similarly, despite being on a random course, the out-of-control ARK manages to be on a collision course with a star; given the sizes and distances involved, this is practically impossible.
*** To be charitable, the gravitational effects make it more likely -- if you go near a star then you will be pulled closer to it. If you manage to hit a high fraction of C so time dilation is very high, then the odds go way up since you'll go past a lot more stars. This is, however, being very very ''very'' kind.
* [[Series Bible]]/[[Universe Bible]]: Written at least in part by SF author [[Ben Bova]], who briefly served as technical adviser to the series, and who later wrote a comic novel about the entire disaster. Available [http://leethomson.myzen.co.uk/Misc_Bibles/The_Starlost_Bible.pdf here] (in mid-2019).▼
* [[Short Runners]]
* [[So Bad It's Horrible]]: Normally this is a YMMV trope. Not in this case. The only people who ever said a good thing about this show had a financial interest in getting people to watch it. And not even all of ''them!''
* [[Space Amish]]: The people of Cypress Corners. Literally. They are a Mennonite or pseudo-Mennonite culture.
* [[Space Is an Ocean]]: Implied by the design of the ARK model. There's no reason why the domes all needed to be only on one plane, "flat" relative to the rest of the ship; it would have been more practical (and realistic!) to have them radiating out from the central hull in all directions. The final design suggests that the modelmakers were unconsciously assuming gravity would always be "down", and that the domes all need to be pointing upward for a "sun" overhead -- and that the entire ARK would be floating on the surface of "space" like a raft.
▲*
* [[Writer Revolt]]: After watching the [[Executive Meddling]] get started, Ellison bailed on the project and forced the producers to use his "red flag" pseudonym "Cordwainer Bird" for all his credits.
* [[You Are Number Six]]: The "backup bridge crew" of immortal children in the episode "Children of Methuselah" don't have names, only numbers.
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