Miscellaneous Damage

One of my favorite sci-fi tropes is the “miscellaneous damage” one. This is when the writers need to add stakes to a space battle but don’t want to actually endanger plot-armored characters. Só they write dialogue about the ships being damaged, yet said damage seems to have no consequences.

Probs the best example of this is all the times in Star Trek when the Enterprise gets hit & we’re told “shields down to X%.” Apparently, the shields lose strength over time, só the more damage, the lower the percentage. But this seems to have dubious significance. Does a lower percentage mean the shields don’t protect the ship as much? Or just that they’re closer to going offline? The writers never say, presumably because (GASP) they don’t know!

Another example is that scene in the first Star Wars when Luke’s X-wing flies into a cloud of Space Fire. Luke tells the other rebels “I got a little cooked but I’m okay!” His x-wing then proceeds to fly normally for the remainder of the battle. Só “cooking” his ship appears to do nothing, other than to tell the audience that There Are Stakes Here!

One thing I love about Battlestar Galáctica is how [SPOILERS] it appears to follow this trope, only to subvert it in the end. For 3.5 seasons, we see the Galáctica get rocked & rolled by endless missile explosions, seemingly with no consequences. But then in season 4, we learn that all these attacks have slowly worn the ship down, producing massive metal fatigue that eventually renders her dead in the water. Space battle, then, had its consequences— just because they were invisible didn’t mean they were any less severe!