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.

• The Black & Decker Food Hydrator from Back fo the Future II: This is something you'd expect to see Ron Popeil infomercializing to you on late night TV, especially since he invented the electric food dehydrator, "You can make your beef jerky for $3 a pound!" We'll take the BTTF version though. Pop in a miniature dehydrated pizza, and seconds later you're enjoying a fresh pie.
• The Super Microwave from The Fifth Element: Leeloo has the biggest case of munchies we've ever witnessed since a Cheech & Chong movie, and as she barrels through a digital encyclopedia full of knowledge about Earth, she keeps popping chicken dinner pellets into the microwave and zapping out full-sized steaming dinners in the blink of an eye. We'd hate to see what it could do to Hello Kitty.
• The Toasting Knife from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: This one may be too far-fetched; a knife that toasts your bread as it slices. Maybe if Toshiba would just finally can their HD-DVD division and put them onto cool home kitchen gadgets, we could see something like this on store shelves within six months. Plus you could reenact lightsaber battles at home a lot easier by just nabbing this from the cutlery drawer.
• The Replicator from Star Trek: I'm sure some of the Trekkies out there will know the answer to this, but why did they employ cooks on ships in Starfleet when a replicator could just give them anything they wanted, ready to eat? The Next Generation used it to replace the food slots from the original series, and Picard himself used it to whip up piping hot Earl Grey tea on numerous occasions.
• The Nutrimatic Drink Dispenser from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Not to be outdone by Star Trek's replicator, this thing would actually analyzes your brainwaves and taste buds and give you what would your body was craving, although it never gave poor Arthur any proper tea. In the film there's a similar device that Trillian says detects what your body is craving and gives her a donut. These things would put convenience stores out of business.
• J.F. Sebastian's Hard Boiled Egg Beaker from Blade Runner: Okay, so it's really just a tall beaker full of boiling water and eggs, but that doesn't mean someone like Proctor-Silex couldn't slap their name on a glass container and stick a heating element on the bottom. It would just look cool if you had bubbling hard boiled eggs ready whenever you wanted one, and it sure beats the briny jar full of pickled eggs that's a fixture at dusty dive bars.
• The Hanging Garden Center in Back to the Future II: One reason to double dip in the well of BTTF is that they nailed the cheesy plastic era of the future better than those black and white "The Kitchen Of Tomorrow!" pieces. The McFly dining table sports a voice-activated hanging hydroponic garden that can drop down to give you fruit on demand, then retracts when you're done unless you're a spaz like Marty Jr.
• Rosie the Robot Maid from The Jetsons: Rosie had to be the ultimate kitchen and home gadget. Not only would she cook and clean, but she's also keep your kids and husband out of shenanigans. Although she had a little bit of programmed sass because she was modeled after Hazel from the 1960s. She's a lot less creepy than the sweet potato pie-baking bots in I, Robot, and less annoying than Mr. Belvedere.
• Honorable Mention: Pee Wee's Breakfast Machine from Pee Wee's Big Adventure: This is something you could actually build in your kitchen today, it you had a lot of time and patience. But who wouldn't want a Rube Goldberg device that would make them bacon and eggs every morning? Although you have to add the Mr. T cereal on your own. The closest thing we've ever found to it is this Egg McMuffin machine, but it doesn't incorporate Abraham Lincoln at all.

• Alien: Blowing up the Nostromo in order to kill one single Alien was one of the biggest (and best) sacrifices in movie history, and the resulting explosion as Ripley flees in the shuttle still stands alone as a perfect example of why you don't need 40 billion rendered polygons showing you just how the ship would look as it broke up into its component atoms. (You can see video of it above.) Plus, you have the audible countdown over the ship's PA system literally beating a ticking clock against Sigourney's ass every step of the way. It worked so good that they decided to repeat it in Aliens.
• Battlestar Galactica — "Exodus Part 2": Lee Adama's emotional outbursts might not win him another command anytime soon, because when he took over as the helmer of the Pegasus he got complacent and fat. However, he redeemed himself by sacrificing his superior ship (with its fighter-building ability) in order to save the Galactica, his pop, and everyone on the planet below. This still stands as one of the most powerful moments in the show. Just when you think everything is hopeless, the camera pulls extremely far back, and... boom. Pegasus to the short-lived rescue.

  
  

• Star Trek III: The Search for Spock: Captains of the Enterprise sure have been careless with their ships. What are they on, Enterprise-Q by now? However, the first time the Enterprise was sacrificed was probably the best. Faced with insurmountable odds, Kirk proves he's best at surviving by activating the ship's self-destruct sequence and letting it take out some nosy Klingons. As he watched it burn to cinders from the planet below, he asks Bones "My god, what have I done." Nothing that Starfleet will court martial him for, apparently.

  

• The Fifth Element: Even cruise ships aren't safe in this film, especially when carrying blue-skinned singing divas with stones buried in their stomachs. The poor luxury spaceliner Fhloston Paradise survives an attempt by Zorg to blow it to smithereens, only to find itself blown up moments later by someone with the sense to use a very short timer and not a wonky thing that you deactivate with a hotel cardkey. Cool escape pods, though.

• Tron: While fleeing Sark and his troops, Tron and his girlriend Yori narrowly escape on a Syd Mead designed Solar Sailer, which rides beams of light around Tronworld. Sark's massive carrier eventually catches up with it and opens up a ship-chomping hole, reducing it to pieces. The best comparison would be if a modern-day aircraft carrier chewed up a catamaran. Sark and the others leave the ship, and he orders it to be derezzed, which is what is really cool about Tron. If you need something, the system can rez it up, and when you're done, you just recycle it.

  

• Lost in Space: Bonehead Joey, er... Major West uses remote control to ignite the engines on the superior Proteus, full of futuretech and possibly life-saving equipment in order to get hull-burning space spiders off the Jupiter 2. However, not content to just let them burn up in the engine's wake, he also makes the ship self-destruct. Even though his ship has had its systems majorly trashed by the malfunctioning Robot, he still blows up the first sweet ride they find. Oh, and it manages to make their own ship crash. Genius.

• The Last Starfighter: When video game expert turned space pilot Alex keys the "Death Blossom" onboard his Gunstar, it turns into a hypersonic laser death machine. However, once it's in the post-orgasmic glow it's rendered dead and useless. They can't even steer out of the way of Xur's approaching ship, which shipicides itself into a moon. However, that bastard Xur got away, never to be caught since the movie didn't get a sequel.

  

• Independence Day: This is more of a shipicide from within, but when Jeff Goldblum and Will Smith fly up to the alien mothership and plant the virus, they're basically giving the thing a huge case of indigestion, which it doesn't quite recover from. Sadly (or maybe gladly) I couldn't get a clip from this since three of the Blockbuster stores I visited in Los Angeles don't carry ID4. Lame. But as a bonus, enjoy this clip mashing up Star Wars with Independence Day. Randy Quaid uses the Force.

  

• Return of the Jedi: While this one wasn't done on purpose, it's sort of a hilarious "Oops" moment as a rebel A-Wing pilot banzais into the bridge of the Imperial Flagship Super Star Destroyer Executor. This causes the ship to veer out of control and crash right into the the new and improved Death Star. Either that was one extremely lucky hit on the bridge, or whoever built the windshield of that thing needs to be fired. It can withstand the rigors of laser fire and hyperspeed, but can't take the impact of a measly A-Wing? I wonder if that have a transportation safety board that investigates these things.

  

• Vanilla Sky: Cameron Diaz gets an honorable mention in this film for tanking her "ship" (okay, a Buick Skylark) off a bridge in an effort to die in a warped suicide love pact with Tom Cruise. Let this be a note to you love 'em and leave 'em types out there: if you scorn someone, they may seek revenge, fuck up your face, and force you to go into a bizarre cryogenic freeze / lucid dreaming / virtual reality state of existence. Just so you know.

  

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Why do so many science fiction characters bust out their dance moves? Is it because they're men and women of action, and they need to get physical? Or is it because rhythm is the last, greatest boundary of science? Whatever the reason, we love scifi dance routines, and these are our favorites.

Buck Rogers in the 25th. Century. There are so many great dance sequences in this series, like the disco skating ambassadors. And Buck teaching Princess Ardala to get down. But the greatest may be this scene from "Space Rockers," where the band plays their glowy instruments and a ton of space-ravers dance around with light-filled ropes. Twiki's robo-dancing is just the icing on the cheesecake.

Galaxina. We already celebrated the awfulness of this movie, but here's another great moment. A gang of mutant bikers have our heroine tied up and helpless. So of course their next move is to swing-dance around her, with elaborate dips and twirls. Because that's just how mutant bikers roll. (Eventually they decide to sacrifice her to Harley Davidson, but swing-dancing comes first.)

Star Trek, "Plato's Stepchildren." Power-mad philosophers need entertainment too. So first they make Kirk and Spock dance a jig together, and then they make Spock do a flamenco number around Kirk's head. Spock's footwork is so nimble and passionate, he had to have a dance double

Doctor Who, "Last Of The Time Lords." The new Master won us over totally when he whirled the super-aged Doctor around to the strains of the Scissor Sisters' "I Can't Decide." Creepy and sexy. How could the Sci Fi Channel have cut this incredible scene out of the episode in the U.S.?

It Came From Beyond. This 1950s-ish stage musical features "Mind Power Dance," a Culture Club-esque dance number about using your telepathic powers to overcome alien invaders, no matter how cheesy their gold capes. Do this dance routine in front of any evil aliens, and they'll tumble for ya.

Flash Gordon, "Infestation." Flash's best friend Nick has been infected with an alien parasite that will kill him if he gets too happy... and he's at a wedding. Oh noes! It's up to Dale Arden to keep Nick depressed while dancing with him. I love that the most scarring thing she can think of to tell him is that he's a terrible dancer. He yells "Stop!" and the audience is yelling right along with him. She does succeed in keeping him alive, but he's apparently eaten by a monster off-camera, because we pretty much never see him again.

The Fifth Element. Ummm... There's a blue opera singer whose voice covers like 28 octaves, doing a zany quasi-belly dance. And meanwhile, Milla Jovovich is kicking the asses of a bunch of Vogon-looking aliens in a very dance-y way. Here's the clip:

Seaquest DSV, "Destination Terminal." Guarding an undersea super-train, Commander Jonathan Ford decides to prove to Lt. Lonnie Henderson that he really does have a "feminine side," by busting out his dance moves.

The Batmobile from Batman Begins. This was the first on-screen version of Batman's muscle car that didn't just look like a cheesy toy car. Instead of the stretched-out roadster of previous movies, director Christopher Nolan opted for a compact, tank-like design. In "attack mode" the driver shifts to the middle of the car, in a more secure prone position. This car doesn't look like it's only designed to impress Kim Basinger.
Top speed: 110 mph, plus jet engine and adjustable control surfaces let it jump 30 feet without a ramp.

The DeLorean from the Back To The Future movies. This car's main superpower is making those movies look incredibly dated. But it also travels in time if you feed it enough plutonium. And after a visit to the year 2015, it also gains the ability to fly, with wheels that turn sideways and become thrusters.
Top speed: A regular DeLorean could reach 124 mph. It needs to reach 88 mph to time-travel.

The flying taxi from The Fifth Element. It looks just like a regular cab, but it can fly. It handles amazingly well, judging from some of the teeny openings Bruce Willis manages to steer it through during the high-speed cop chase. And it can stop on a dime to hide behind billboards.
Top speed: Unclear, but it's fast. The original movie script says: "Korben and his flying taxi are absolute masters of the air. The cops have trouble following him."

The self-folding car from that SciFi Channel ad. Long after people have forgotten Flash Gordon and Tin Man, they'll still be passing around this ad. It looks like a regular pick-up truck, until the driver presses a button. Then it folds up to the size (and weight) of a golf ball.
Top speed: no clue.

The Whomobile on Doctor Who. Stranded on Earth in the early 1970s, the Doctor started dressing like Prince. Except instead of driving a little red Corvette, he pimped out an antique roadster named Bessie to go super fast. Then he built his own spaceship-looking car. With huge honking fins! Because, of course, an alien trapped on Earth has to stay incognito at all costs.
Top speed: 150 mph (in real life), plus the Whomobile can fly (using dodgy greenscreen.)

The Spinner from Blade Runner. Deckard's cop car flies, but also has vertical take-off and landing (VTOL). It uses regular internal combustion, plus antigrav and a jet engine. It also directs air downwards to create lift. And it has a pretty sweet glass cockpit.
Top speed: Deckard mentions a fellow cop was going 150 mph when he went off a cliff.

KITT, from the Knight Rider TV show and TV movies. KITT was a Pontiac Trans AM with a super-computer that could talk to Michael (its driver) and even drive itself. (Plus KITT prints money in one episode, which could be handy.) The new Knight Rider, airing in February, will feature a new KITT that can launch a mini-car drone and fire a rocket launcher
Top speed: 300 mph, plus a "turbo boost" lets you jump over obstacles.

The Lexus from Minority Report. Lexus designed a special flying car for Tom Cruise to zip around the city of 2054 in. The car includes an electric engine, body panels that change color at a voice command, doors and ignition that require a DNA match, and "auto valet."
Top speed: According to Lexus, this car can get up to about 350 mph. We have a winner!

In fact, the bible itself is often called a work of fantasy, although there sadly isn't much scifi in it. Unless of course you count things like the Ark of the Covenant laying waste to armies as science fiction. After all, who knows what that baby was packing for its punch ... maybe that sucker was nuclear? Although the bible is full of savior figures itself, even if you discount the son of God. For instance, Moses led his people to safety, even parting the Red Sea for them (maybe his rod concealed some sort of a force-field generator?), at times putting his own life in dire jeopardy. So who is really stealing from whom?

At any rate, there are dozens of saviors in science fiction, such as Leeloo from The Fifth Element, ready to sacrifice herself to save the human race and gets saved by love, Roy Batty in Blade Runner, dying after saving Deckard's life (and releasing a lone white dove into the air), and don't forget Ellen Ripley's terrible sacrifice scene in Aliens III, where she gives birth to a queen chestburster while throwing herself into something that resembles the flames of hell. Holy dramatic biblical undertones, Batman.

They don't just stop with the movies, which is evident since some of these films are based on classic works of science fiction. Even novels like Ender's Game and 2001 have savior figures at the heart of their stories, proving that there might be some truth to the fact that all stories can basically be boiled down to three, eight, nine, or 36 plots, pick your poison. It's probably true that at some point a caveman painted a scene on a wall of a victorious hunter bringing home a big kill amidst insurmountable odds, unknowingly creating one of the first savior stories. In fact, it's surprising that Hollywood hasn't optioned that story yet.

Christ Figures in Sci-Fi [Fantasy & Sci-Fi Lovin' Blog]
Christ-Figure in Movies/Books: Grace or Redemption? {The Alien Next Door]
Jesus in Outer Space: Messiahs in Sci-Fi [SciFi Scanner]

Famous names: Luc Besson, Bruce Willis, Milla Jovovich, Gary Oldman

Crunchy goodness: 2

Design breakthrough: Sometimes a breakthrough is a beta test that turns out to be woefully wrong. The Fifth Element demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that nobody wants the future to look like it was designed by aging French fashionistas who still think it's racy to reference the Virgin Mary.

Copycats: Thankfully there was no Sixth Element, but Fifth Element did launch the career of the world's first-ever female action star - Milla Jovovich. Sure there have been other women who played action roles, but Jovovich is the only one to play solely action heroes (see her wildly popular Resident Evil series). Hopefully her action hero career will not follow the trajectory of Arnold Schwarzenegger's, because that would mean she'd have to star in a series of terrible comedies before becoming a homophobic politician.

Sights you'll never unsee: The costumes.

Fifth Element - Script, Multimedia, Character Descriptions...