There's the distinction I'm trying to make, put another way (keep trying, Fish )
I don't think there's a word for this, shona. For my sins I used to review science fiction (amongst other types of fiction) for the newspaper I worked for. There was some extremely dire sci-fi being produced in the 1970s. It was a bit like nearly all of the good plots had already been used and those that hadn't been had been grabbed up by Star Trek's script writers. Most of the books I read were simply recycling others' earlier ideas, usually badly expressed and written - which is, in my book, an even worse crime!
When it comes to film, it's easy to confuse bad special effects with the failure of imagination mentioned by others here. Remember Buck Rogers? And while the original Star Trek series uniforms were probably not simply a product of projection of their times, so to speak, the series production values were and they haven't dated very well either. I'm beginning to notice the same issue with Star Trek NG as well.
Yet consider the Alien movie series as a complete contrast. The clothes weren't all that way-out, but neither were they today's or yesterday's fashions recycled (no skintight catsuits) and the Nostramo sets were "timeless", i.e. they were understated but definitely "different" to anything current or past. And, of course, Ridley Scott commissioned an artist/sculptor to come up with the alien creature and alien architecture which won't date at all until someone actually finds some of the real deal. The only thing that disappointed me about the alien was that withall it was still bilaterally symmetrical, thus imposing earthly evolution on all of creation by implication!
Enough rabbiting. Great thread. Keep away from the desalination/fresh water stuff!
