We at the io9 Space Station debated the reason why there are so many elongated countdowns in scifi. Here are a few possible theories:

1) When your ship is traveling faster than light, time appears to be moving more slowly to a stationary observer (such as the audience.)
2) Similarly, if you're traveling through time, or there's some element of time-distortion going on, it's entirely possible that two or three of our seconds could equal just one second in our heroes' continuum.
3) Every alien planet will have a day that's much longer, or shorter, than our Earth days. And if your home planet's "day" lasts 40 Earth hours, then you might evolve a clock that moves quite a bit more slowly than our Earth clocks. And who's to say whether the spaceships of the future operate according to Earth time, or Rigelian time? Eh?

So without further ado, here are some examples of the "extra Mississippi" phenomenon in scifi:

Star Trek:

I feel like there are about a hundred countdowns in Trek that last way, way longer than they're supposed to. Here's one of them. I acutally timed it — the computer says there are 25 seconds left before the ship blows up. And then 25 seconds later, Kirk is still giving his chest-thumping speech about how nothing can stop the countdown except him. (Blame Shatner's trademark mid-sentence pauses.) A few seconds after the ship should already have blown up, the computer starts its ten-second countdown. (To be fair, this could be a feature deliberately built into Federation self-destruct sequences, given how often captains use them to bluff their way out of a jam.)

Doctor Who:

Here's the exciting climax from the Doctor's first ever encounter with the Daleks, who are like mutated Nazis in mini-tanks. The Daleks are going to launch some kind of neutron bomb that will kill off everybody who's not them, and give them the nice shiny radiation that they've gotten used to. So the Doctor and his friends launch a desperate last minute attack, as the countdown ticks down to zero... but it all just takes a little too long. The countdown reaches "4" and the guy waiting patiently in the background still hasn't swung down on his rope. Not to mention the Daleks still haven't been defeated, and there's a lot of pre-choreographed mayhem still to go. In those days, Doctor Who was recorded in one take, with little chance for retakes. So obviously somebody decided to just let the countdown stop, and let the last battle take as long as it needs to. You can't rush an apocalyptic final battle between humans and machine-creatures. You just can't.

Green Lantern/Green Arrow:

When Green Lantern and Green Arrow first teamed up, based on their color schemes matching so well, their comic was all about the mismatched duo traveling around and discovering America. It was one long civics lesson, about racial injustice and smack being bad for you. But low sales drove writer Denny O'Neill to reinvent it as a crazy space-opera, where Green Lantern fights aliens with his self-righteous buddy Green Arrow along for the ride. In this sequence, Green Arrow decides he can survive in the vacuum of space for ten seconds... which is enough time for him to jump from ship to ship, get inside the other ship's airlock, make himself some lunch, and invent a whole new space dance:

Spaceballs:

Watching this scene, I feel as though Spaceballs wasn't even trying to be taken seriously or something. I mean, what is up with this final self-destruct countdown? First the computer says it'll take two minutes and 45 seconds, and some three minutes later Mel Brooks is still goofing around. And then the computer skips the number 7 and goes straight to six — and has time to make a joke about it and restart the countdown at 6. And then when it reaches zero, it still pauses to wish the soon-to-be-incinerated people a nice day. At least it's a suicidal computer with manners. But seriously, it's almost as though they were mocking the genre conventions or something.

The Fifth Element:

This one doesn't take any longer than it's supposed to, but it's still a tad unrealistic to evacuate an entire huge pleasure ship in five minutes — and it actually only seems to take three minutes, since everyone's gone by the two-minute mark. And you can watch that awesome sequence here.

• My Favorite Martian: This series premiered in 1963 and starred Bill Bixby in his pre-Hulk days as a hapless human who takes in a Martian who crash-lands his spaceship near Los Angeles. He passes him off as his Uncle Martin, who proceeds to do wacky things with his Martian powers, much like Jeannie or Samantha would do with their magic. It's vintage 1960s-era television sitcom material and worth seeking out on DVD or watching on YouTube. Just ignore the horrible feature film version they made in 1999 with Christopher Lloyd, Jeff Daniels, and Elizabeth Hurley.



• Spaceballs: Mel Brooks lampooned Star Wars and a slew of other science fiction films in this 1987 movie that gave us quotes like "I see your schwartz is just as big as mine" and "Prepare ship for ludicrous speed!" Once you've seen this, it's hard to picture John Candy wearing anything except a giant furry dog suit. 20 years later, it's starting to show its age just a bit, but it's still a classic.



• Red Dwarf: This British series about the last human being in the universe and his annoying holographic shipmate was one of the best things the BBC gave us, after Doctor Who. After an accident kills everyone onboard the Red Dwarf except for technician Dave Lister, the computer keeps him in suspended animation until the radiation dies down some three million years later. The computer also brings his former bunkmate and boss Arnold Rimmer to life as a hologram to keep him company.



• Weird Science: in 1985 Anthony Michael Hall and Ilan Mitchell-Smith used science, computers, and wore bras on their heads in an effort to create the perfect woman. They end up with Kelly LeBrock, who helps them change from nerds to studs with her pseudo-magic "science powers." It's vintage John Hughes moviemaking that tried to build on the success of the previous year's Revenge of the Nerds, and succeeded. Except it gave birth to a terrible television series.

• Mork & Mindy: This Happy Days spinoff appeared in 1978 and helped propel Robin Williams to stardom by letting him improv most of his scenes as a wacky alien from Ork. Mork reported back to his boss Orson at the end of every episode, telling him what he'd learned that day on Earth, which usually involved something happening with Mindy. They eventually got married and had Jonathan Winters as a baby. No kidding. I still have my Mork from Ork action figure, complete with egg-shaped space capsule.



• The Ice Pirates: This 1984 movie starred Robert Urich as the heroic Jason in search of the universe's most precious commodity: water. They spoof other science fiction films while hamming it up in b-movie style. You can also catch Anjelica Huston and Ron Perlman in this thing if you don't blink.



• Galaxy Quest: Hands down the best send-up of the Star Trek franchise and its fans. In the flick, Galaxy Quest is a canceled television show that lives on through fan conventions and autographs signings. Tim Allen parodies William Shatner excellently, but it's Tony Shalhoub steals most of the scenes he's in as the fumbling head of engineering.



• Mystery Science Theater 3000: This show made comedy out of making fun of movies and television shows that tried to be serious. Broadcast for the Satellite of Love, lone human being Joel and his two robot friends Tom Servo and Crow offered up alternative commentary on the shows that mad scientist Dr. Forrester would beam up to them. It spawned a feature film and two new alternative movie commentary programs, Cinematic Titanic and RiffTrax, both from MST3K former cast members Joel and Mike.



• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: This series has been a radio series, a book, a television series, a computer game, a comic book, and a feature film. In it, lone Earthman Arthur Dent finds himself hitchhiking through the galaxy with a writer for The Hitchhiker's Guide after the Earth gets blown up. Although the effects aren't that stellar (thanks BBC), I actually prefer the television version to the movie. If that means I have to turn in my offical geek card, so be it.