Archived Discussion

This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.

Not a science-fiction or time-keeping example, but this editor has always been struck at how English characters in American television shows always seem to refer to American institutions as "your institution" — for example, Congress is always "your Congress", the FBI is always "your FBI", and so forth. It's particularly jarring when the institution being mentioned is both (a) very well known as an American body, meaning that there's no need to establish whose it is and (b) something which there is no equivalent of in Britain (or at least, where the equivalent is given a distinct name, so there'd be no confusion between the two anyway — the equivalent of the American Congress, for example, being the British Parliament).
- Because Viewers Are Morons. It's being assumed that the (normally American) audience is (a) too dumb to realize that the institution in question is unique to the US, and/or (b) too ignorant to realize that a foreign equivalent that does exist has another name.
  - And (c), because Americans are considered too ignorant/narcissistic about what goes on outside our/your borders to know what is well-known (even about us) in other countries. The inverse is when Americans assume everyone knows everything about America and its institutions. Unfortunately both are pretty justified, as far too many people this troper has met know squat about other countries.
- YES! Like in Hannibal, Clarice Starling calls up the police in Florence and identifies herself as "Special Agent Starling of the American FBI".
- I dissent and direct you to the FBI (disambiguation) page on wikipedia. Further, many countries model their government bodies directly on western institutions. There are many Congresses, many Senates, and many Houses of many Representatives. And lots of Presidents.

Tanto: Do not do this. It's off-topic and it's in violation of the Rule Of Cautious Editing Judgment.

Urgh... I'm sorry. Messed up the Microts page trying to write it as the opposite trope to this. Here's the text I've got so far, before I put a redirect on that page to this one and now can't get rid of the thing. Could somebody fix Microts with this? >_<
- Oooh. Finally got it working.
- The length of a second is standardised based on atomic clocks, yes, and the length of minutes and hours are extended from that. But it's also the other way around, with hours being based off celestial cycles and minutes, seconds and thirds being based off hours. That sentence just reads wrong for some reason.

Paul Power: "Unlike days and years, which rely on planetary rotation, seconds is based on the amount of time it takes for an atom to vibrate, hence atomic clocks. Minutes and hours are extensions of seconds." Uh... not really. Sure, that's what it's based on now, but as originally conceived it was "divide the day into 24, call each bit hours, divide hours into 60 bits called minutes, divide minutes into 60 bits called seconds". Then we decided to standardise the length of a second as so many vibrations of an atom of caesium. But if our days were a different length, we'd just have a second defined as a different number of vibrations of caesium (or whatever atom). So at the end of the day, seconds are still based on planetary rotation (well, and some nice numbers with lots of factors).

fleb: Yeah, I was pretty sure that the concept of seconds predates atomic clocks. Feel free to just fix errors like that next time you see them.
Cutting a bunch of stuff. When thinking about adding an example, you have to first ask yourself, "does anyone at any point say your Earth [unit of time]"? Because these are all resounding "No"s (plus a Not A Subversion). We need a wholly different trope for "alien units of time."

wholly misguided contributions

The 1970s Battlestar Galactica averted and played with this trope. When the Colonials, who use a decimal-based time system, come into contact with the Terrans, who use the familiar Earth system of time, it never occurs to either group that the other would use a different means of telling time. Much confusion arises when Apollo asks a group of Terrans to "wait just a centon."
- the time notes are done well enough that the viewer doesn't quite notice the different time system being used the the terrans until Apollo says "Wait just a centon!"
Subverted in Transformers, where the Cybertronians typically use their own terms: astro-clicks, cycles and nanocycles, for example.
Spoofed in Men In Black, where a Galactic Standard Week consists of one of our hours.
- Furthermore, Z announces that "The Twins keep us on Terillian time, it's a 37-hour day. You'll get used to it... or you'll have a psychotic episode."
  - I thought that was Centaurian time?
Possibly parodied in Doctor Who: Daleks in canon officially use "rels" rather than "seconds"...despite them taking the exact same amount of time.
- Likely because the Daleks are egomaniacs who believe that they are superior (and by extension, their units of measurement)
- And yet, in the First Doctor serial The Chase, the Dalek commander asks another Dalek to convert a measurement into Earth equivalents... for no good reason, as there's no humans around inside the fourth wall. (The Dalek asked takes quite a long time to answer, in what is meant as a joke but ends up mostly as weird.)
In Harry Turtledove's Worldwar and Colonization series, The Race uses what might be considered metric time, dividing days into ten sub-sections (which they call, of course, "daytenths").
Aahz from Robert Asprin's Myth series has a spotty understanding of Klahdish (AKA human) time units, and more than once has said "minutes" when he means "hours".
The Space Pirates of Metroid seem to use cycles as a standard unit of time, though it's left entirely unclear just how long a cycle might be. The fancomic Metroid Third Derivative deliberately plays with this, implying at various points that a cycle is equal to anywhere from an hour to a year.
Averted in Halo Expanded Universe the UNSC has a military calendar that keeps track of months, days, hours, etc. The Covenant sometimes refer to units and cycles for time, unclear exactly how long that is though. Units can also be used for distance and is roughly equal to a meter, give or take.

Lots42: This page confuses me. If an alien familar with the Federation wants Captain Picard to leave in an hour, he is not going to say 'Fourteen greblarks'. Captain Picard doesn't know greblarks.

Archived Discussion Main / TwoOfYourEarthMinutes