Should Star Trek be considered Science Fantasy?

[Stark]

Any large body of work has this feature, which is why I mentioned it ages ago. In a regular piece of fiction nobody cares if book 12 has more detective than book 11 which was more romance; it doesn't mean people make PERSONAL CANON that ELIMINATES THE INFERIOR DETECTIVE NOVEL. People just deal with it. Indeed, this even happens in fantasy; its basically only the people who are super concerned about factual realism science that give a shit. Even many of those people probably care more insofar as inconsistency weakens or cheapens the drama as opposed to FERMI DISPROVED THIS THEORY OMG BOOK SUCKS.

[Connor MacLeod]

This comment will sound sarcastic but it is not. I would really like to see a different thread with a link available to a more proper discussion on the issue like you've pointed out. The discussion is worth having and I'd like to continue. Again, not being sarcastic, I'm wanting this discussion to continue because it is an opinion that is being limited by the original opinion put forward, which happens to be my own.

I dont think there is really a need for a different thread. This thread can stand as a testament to learning. We should learn from our mistakes, especially visible ones, as they will enable others to learn and change as well. Its contrary to the adversarial nature of this board, but there is nothing wrong with making mistakes. Its just a horrible thing here because all too many people see it as a weakness to exploit, rather than something to embrace and learn from as part of development. Way too many newbies get driven away because their weaknesses are used to verbally beat them, rather than to teach them that there are other ways of thinking.

If you wnat to make another thread that's fine, I don't really intend to as this one can carry plenty of discussion and analysis as it is, its all tied together after all, because what is at stake isn't just what categories Trek may fall into (or analysis of Trek at all) but how we regard (or should regard) such analytical approaches, categorization, etc.

Heck the only difference is that Trek can be more than just one or two things (unless you deliberately narrow it down to keep it simple) and we just have to realize and allow for that complexity and difference of viewpoint. Its fundamental to any sort of detailed discussion.

I can add I have personal reasons for disliking the 'narrow' approach, because I feel words and context do matter in these things and peopel quite often base their judgements off of other people's words. For example, for many people I've encountered the concept of 'soft' sci fi, or hard opera means a bad thing because of the connotations it carries - illogical, arbitrary, big-numbers loving shit (eg star wars, or anything vs debate related) and this gets contrasted with 'hard' sci fi (realism, consistency, hard numbers that aren't always big, etc.) and there are people who will through association make such distinctions. Likewise, I've all too often seen people argue 'fantasy' and 'magic' as being arbitrary (EG not LOGICAL or REALISTIC) and thus being 'less good.' Its actually true of man yother words or concepts - I for example have traditioanlly viewed 'trope' in a negative light because I associate it strictly with the Tvtropes site (which I consider horrible.) But I've had it (Correctly) pointed out to me that 'trope' is not limited strictly to Tvtropes, and that my own definition is, in its own way limiting and arbitrary, and that can skew judgements. Which is why context matters.)

In the case of trek, nothing by itself makes 'science fantasy' bad compared to science fiction, but I know that it would be all too easy to make value judgements that denigrate trek based on the SCIENCE FANTASY terminology. And I think we can agree Trek does not need further bashing, especially here.

[mr friendly guy]

Why should people object to other people categorizing a piece of fiction as sci fi or fantasy if its useful for the "pro categorizing" crowd? Certainly if a work is labelled sci fi or fantasy or science fantasy its certainly useful for me to know what the fictional universe would be broadly like. It of course won't tell me if the work is going to be necessarily something I will enjoy, but then I suspect no amount of classification can do that 100%.

So far I've seen
1. Some of the terms are secretly supposed to be derogatory to a piece of fiction. Frankly that's the problem of those who think this and not mine, since I interpret those terms from a purely classification point of view.

2. Other people have different classification systems which they might find more useful. Great. There is nothing to stop you guys inventing your own classification system either. In fact arguably if we have more than one classification system to describe a piece of fiction, its more helpful in allowing us to decide whether we should invest our time in it.

[StarSword]

Examples of why it would classify as SciFan:
• Dilithium crystals, a fictional crystalline structure that is matter, yet can channel matter/anti-matter reactions.

Mass Effect has a fictional substance that can create negative mass zones from an electrical impulse and has an atomic number of zero. I don't see anybody calling ME science fantasy.

• Disastrous engineering failures with a complete disregard for safety to satisfy the need for story convenience.

Hardly something unique to Star Trek (see Stargate SG-1, I believe the episode "Tangent", where Daniel wonders how a race smart enough to travel across the galaxy isn't smart enough to install seat belts).

• Phase cloaking, the ability to phase through matter without interaction.

Again, not unique to Star Trek. It happened to members of SG-1 twice and raised just as much fridge logic (and they even hung a lampshade on it in "Wormhole X-Treme!").

• Subspace, an unknown dimension of space/time that behaves in a strange manner that is inconsistent.

Again, fictional (as far as we know) dimensions of spacetime and inconsistent writing are not unique to Star Trek (the latter isn't even unique to science fiction).

• Transporters, the ability to ignore the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle when transporting atoms across space.

Ref: Physics of the Impossible by Michio Kaku, especially recent experiments with quantum entanglement. It's beyond our capabilities now but there's actually nothing in the laws of physics to prevent something from getting from point A to point B without traveling through the intervening space.

40k is science fantasy. Pokemon is science fantasy (seriously, they had an actual witch in one of the Johto or Hoenn episodes). Numenera is science fantasy (though only by way of an invocation of Clarke's Third Law; Monte Cook says there's at least a science fictional, if not scientific, explanation for all the exotic elements of the setting). Star Trek is just really freakin' soft sci-fi.

EDIT: Quote tag fuckup.

EDIT 2: Ack, didn't see the date on the thread. Sorry about the necro.

[Channel72]

At this point we probably shouldn't be classifying fiction as sci-fi versus fantasy based soley on the superficial visual elements used to tell the story. Star wars has lasers and spaceships, but it has more in common with Lord of the Rings than Star Trek. We also shouldn't classify something as fantasy just because it involves technology that isn't explained. Who cares if Star Trek doesn't "explain" transporters - that's why it's called fiction.

seriously, the most useful way to distinguish between scifi and fantasy is to look at the *themes*. Scifi stories explore how science and technology affect the human condition. Gattaca is about how genetic screening could affect society, for example, whereas star wars is just a fun adventure story in space mostly.

I know it's cool these days to make fun of Star Trek, but Trek is definitely more sci-fi than fantasy. (At least TNG is). Episodes like "Who Watches the Watchers" are explicitly about how technology positively effects societies. "First Contact" (the episode, not that shitty movie) is about how space travel and contact with extraterrestrial life could affect a society. "Measure of a Man" and "Quality of Life" are about the implications of sentient AI living amongst humans.

Granted, I'm cherry picking episodes here, and Star Trek is harder to classify due to the immense variety of material. But in general, the TNG characters use science and technology to drive the plot forward and solve problems. In contrast, Star Wars is about mysticism, adventure and good vs evil. Again, Trek has those elements as well, but the primary focus is science and technology.

I'll qualify this however by adding that most of my arguments here apply tp TNG. DS9, which is mostly just politics and religion in space, probably has less a claim to being sci-fi.

[FedRebel]

I'd say VOY is "fantasy" given that tecnhobabble is used like Harry Potter spells and the laws of the universe are ass raped on several occasions.

TOS was 'hard' Sci/fi, space battles were portrayed somewhat realistically calling out ranges and maneuvers and beyond visual range firing) and offenses against science were far fewer (not including the "made in 1960's" waiver.)

Everything else is a case by case basis.

[SMJB]

I don't really care how hard the science is, I just care about how realistic people's attitudes towards it is. Have you got any idea how many new technologies or ancient, powerful artifacts from long-dead civilizations random people on Star Trek pulled out of their ass? Now, how much of it was ever reused? One of those white-on-one-half-black-on-the-other guys took control of the Enterprise in TOS and lead them to his long-dead planet, so why didn't the Federation spend, just, all of their resources trying to get their hands on all that tech before one of their many rivals learned of this place's existence? In any logical universe this would lead to no one daring to mess with the Federation because Captain Picard would immediately own any Klingon ship he walked aboard, at least until the Klingons picked up one of the other ancient superweapons that are just lying around. Why does none of the computers on the bridge have surge protectors? Why does the warp core threaten to explode whenever anyone thinks impure thoughts? If there's no money, how do you convince anyone to be the Enterprise's janitor? And oh my God, the Prime Directive! This one has nothing to do with plausibility, unfortunately for the species, but still--If I were locked in a room with a gun with two bullets, the Prime Directive, and two Wesleys...

And hey, Stark, what happened to you leaving? Try not hanging out on a sci-fi board if you hate science fiction, you fucking troll.