By now, you've probably seen the note I sent regarding the ideas by
some who work in the space community that there *is* sound in space, in
a limited fashion (as when a ship, containing lots of atmosphere, blows
up in the seconds prior to the atmosphere vanishing, and within that
brief bubble). One person in the space program told me that when the
last satellite was fired from the space shuttle, they could feel the
vibrations of its thrust inside the shuttle. One poster here, at JPL,
commented that the space probes get a shock wave when they pass the sound
barrier in space (though I'm going to check this one out before I take it
as fact).

That SF fans have for years insisted that there is no sound in space
does not mean *de facto* that it's correct. I've asked more people in the
space community to look into this, and we'll see what they have to say. I
think the issue is greyer than you insist it is.

(And the attitude of, if there's sound in space, "we're being talked
down to, we're idiots," is one that I find personally offensive. If a
story is complex, challenging, innovative, fresh...to then toss all of that
out the window because it has some sound element in it seems to me rather
narrow.)

There's no soundtrack in space, either. Also no camera. Also no
actors. Also no space station (along the lines of B5).

But to take another tack...you just come out of watching a cop movie.
The characters were well rounded, the story interesting. Do you feel
they made you an idiot? That they talked down to you? You should.
Because to use your criteria, they did the same thing.

The sound of a gunshot you hear in the movie is *nothing* like the
real sound of a gun; it's been magnified and boosted and had the lower
range boosted up; it's probably been mixed with some other sounds to make
it louder, so you can hear it half a block away. The sound of a fist
hitting someone's jaw is nothing like the real thing; what you heard in
the film was likely a cross of various different sounds, from wood
breaking to meat being slammed to synth material. (There are some folks
who work in town who've formulated punch-sounds and carefully protect
the "ingredients" that went into it, each saying theirs is dramatically
better.) The sound of a knife entering someone's body is nothing like
the real thing.

The footsteps you hear have usually been added by foley artists.
Sometimes footsteps are removed because they're dramatically inconvenient.
That group of people standing in the background talking? You shouldn't
be able to hear them from here, for starters, and in addition, that isn't
THEM you're hearing; for filming purposes, the background extras say
nothing, with the voices added by walla groups after production.

Just a reality-check here. If you take the attitude that any time
fake sound is added, one should feel insulted, then one must end up
feeling insulted 100% of the time, in any movie or TV show ever made.
Which seems just a tad silly to me....

jms