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Why Charles Stross Hates Star Trek
daria42 writes "British sci-fi author Charles Stross has confessed that he has long hated the Star Trek franchise for its relegation of technology as irrelevant to plot and character development — and the same goes for similar shows such as Babylon Five. The problem, according to Stross, is that as Battlestar Galactica creator Ron Moore has described in a recent speech, the writers of Star Trek would simply 'insert' technology or science into the script whenever needed, without any real regard to its significance; 'then they'd have consultants fill in the appropriate words (aka technobabble) later.'"
I think Scalzi was spot on in addressing this. I thought his second point was the best containing a couple great quotes - "At this point in my life (and, really, for the last quarter century at least), I simply make the assumption that film and television science fiction is going to hump the bunk on the 'plausible extrapolation' aspect of their science, and factor that in before I start watching." and "But, yes, when you admit that Star Trek has as much to do with plausibly extrapolated science as The A-Team has to do with a realistic look at the lives of military veterans, life gets easier. "
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Charles is NOT A MERRY MAN!
The thing that annoyed me the most about Star Trek, and it was most common in the Next Generation, was the idiotic idea of solving a made-up scientific problem with made-up technology. It has no value to a plot; actually it's the opposite of plot, if there is such a thing.
Cmdr Taco, more apply more tech to the tech!
...why exactly? How is ST any different from any other sci-fi series like BSG or Firefly? It's not as if those show have any less technobabble or are any less characters-first-technology-second.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
the fucking show for what it is make belief sci-fi/fantasy and if you don't like it why do you keep watching it?
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Millions of people are wrong. Or, at least, stupid. I don't need to Godwinize this thread to explain how that might be so.
Stross is right about this. Of course, it is flamebait at an epic scale to attack not just the biggest of fan franchises, but the very logic upon which fan franchises are based: massive narcissistic projection. If SF on TV actually reflected on how our humanity itself would become unrecognizable in the wake of technological change, then fans wouldn't have easy heroes to identify with.
Star Trek was very good in its time. It opened up sci fi to a new tv audience and was quite cool.
However, as far as quality sci fi goes it's not as good as others even at its best.
The whole, warp core failures super easy, stuff exploding and shorting with regularity makes you question the competence of the Federation.
In contrast an amazingly logical, super goddamn sticking-to-the-plot and really rigidly logical writing with plausible concepts and amazingly entertaining writing, nothing comes close to Asimov. I've read 2000 pages of his novels over the course of 2 months after discovering it recently. It is amazing, if you like Star Trek, go read Asimov. More originality in *any* two books of his than nearly half of TV sci-fi historh.
If I want education, I'll watch Science/Discovery/History . . . better yet, I'll read a book. When I want entertainment, I want entertainment. Obviously, I'm not alone in feeling that Star Trek/Babylon 5/Firefly et. al. provide that.
Millions of people have been wrong before. All I'm saying is, the mob does not necessarily have to be right simply because it's the mob.
Not that it matters, "wrong" or "right" this is Science Fiction and I'm glad the story is based on plot. Star Trek is about overcoming humanities problems, not overcoming technical problems.
Quark's Bar would like a word with you.
I think that the fact that the science is not the focus of the plot excuses treknobabble, to a degree. It never really bothers me, because it's generally pretty self-aware that it's just making stuff up.
On the other hand, to use a current example, a show like Fringe distorts or flat-out makes up stuff about real world, modern-day science so often that I actually find it distracting, and I don't even have a particularly strong science background. Star Trek is at least in the far future - I can't call them out on making stuff up about dilithium crystals and transwarp mogons or what-have-you.
But if you're going to talk about things that aren't much more advanced than a high school science class, you should at least try not to just make stuff up because you're too lazy to look it up. Not only does it take people out of it who know that it's wrong, it misleads people and perpetuates a poor understanding of science in the general population. I'm not saying fictional programming should be educational, but it should at least make a modicum of effort to not be absurd.
Extremely nerdy hard-science nerdy nerd kings are bitching about old TV shows because they were using almost made-up theoretical science as a plot device to advance the lives and drama of fictional characters for our entertainment...
Here's an article for you: Slashdot member deathtopaulw hates hard science fiction writers because they have no concept of fun and their minds exist only to crunch numbers and dwell on what is and isn't possible in a finite and boring universe.
Look at that, nobody cares either.
B5 was very consistant and deliberately very low on the techno-BABBLE per se.
There was technologies needed for the plot (Hyperspace et al, etc etc etc), but it was established and not really changed.
Test your net with Netalyzr
Go figure. Star Trek used flashy lights to get people's attention but in the words of Joss Whedon, "I don't know much about science but what I do know about science fiction is that flashy lights means....science."
That's about as science-y as it gets. You focus too much on making it within the realm of plausible extrapolation and you end up losing sight of things like interesting story arc, plausible plot turns and characters and you end up randomly writing your characters into roles and ending your series with some cliche reset-button-style let's-just-get-back-to-nature conclusion.
Why yes, I'm still bitter about BSG, why do you ask?
The biggest weakness of the entire genre is this: the protagonists don't tell us anything interesting about the human condition under science fictional circumstances.
I've been watching a lot of "Outer Limits" on Hulu of late (some of the best episodes aren't available there or on Netflix - only on DVD. What gives?!?). The best stories are about how people interact with aliens, their technology or both or with humans technology and progress. One episode has a plot based on transportation and duplicating folks and how people might deal with it. Or another plot that finds an alien and assumes their hostile only to find out they're friendly and we humans over reacted. Sometimes, it's the reverse. I painted some broad strokes here but I think I'm making my point. Although, some episodes were kind of hokey - the one with Alyssa Milano "Caught in the Act" was so-so, but it was nice seeing her half naked - what a doll!
Many of Star Trek's episodes were nothing but humans dealing with human subjects with a lot of technology around. The Naked Time (and the copy on ST:TNG) episode is a perfect example. It could have happened anywhere at anytime. The fact that it was on a spaceship really didn't add anything to the story other than filler.
Star Wars isn't any better, btw.
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
Totally. I'd much rather watch the episode where the Enterprise was reposessed due to the military cuts in spending, but because the construction was contracted to several different manufacturers (who then sub-contracted) and nobody really owned the thing, and because thousands of shares of it were sold off, making out who actually owned the thing an impossibility, and nobody knew who to serve the intergalactic summons to.
Oh, and the Klingons were waiting outside of spaceport cloaked the entire episode... waiting for a fair battle.. Good times.
Whether or not there is some sort of god, I'm not supposed to say/god is a word and the argument ends there-Smog
You're thinking of 'deus ex machina', which is a plot device along the lines of "and suddenly a god-like being appeared and fixed everything"...
You mean Q? Not only did he fix everything, he even caused everything.
The thing is, technology is irrelevant to plot and character. If it wasn't, then the stories they'd be telling would be so alien as to be incomprehensible. Stories are about people, not technology. It's something written into just about any guide to writing science fiction you can find: Don't let the technology overshadow the characters!
Yes, lightsabers and teleporters are cool. But the story is about a boy turning into a man and saving the world (Gee, thanks, Wesley). Or a continuing mission through space, etc. The story isn't about the technology. Sure, it'd be nice to have more realistic tech written into the story to begin with - BUT. I will note that the most popular episodes of TNG always revolved around characters. The episodes oriented towards 'how the teleporters actually work' as a plot device didn't fare so well.
Cos he's a contrarian little prick, who can't appreciate Nichelle Nichols flashing a little bit of red panties?
What's not to like, apart from the - easily overlooked - semitophillic and globalist/military world-government metaphor?
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
Charlie conflates SF novels with SF television series. They don't have the same criteria.
Unlike a novel, a good SF series doesn't take itself too seriously. That's what was so good about Star Trek. We expected it to be a little tacky and weren't disappointed. Every so often we'd get the equivalent to one of the characters turning to the audience and saying "this is just fiction, you know." Shattner's "Get a Life" was bang on.
The shows that lost sight of this, BG being the best example, were boring-to-annoying.
I'm a Programmer. That's one level above Software Engineer and one level below Engineer.
Star trek != hard SF. Star Trek = western in space. (Firefly is too, in case you missed the subtle-as-a-brick hint of the horses in the pilot)
Nevertheless, it does manage to sometimes to SF-style exploration of the impact of technology. ST:TNG had a lot on the subject of machine intelligence, obviously. All versions explored contact with alien cultures, and if the aliens were a little more human than one could wish for.. well, the same is true of written SF. Even some of the worst Star Trek episodes explored some SF themes -- "Spock's Brain" explored the degeneration of a culture which relied too much on technology, and "Miri" explored paedophi.. err, no, the danger of genetic engineering.
What's the difference between fans and trekkies? Fans read.
The closer you are to the code, the happier you are. - Ancient Geek Proverb
What the A-Team taught me was that all it takes to build an impregnable armored vehicle is a few empty 50 gallon drums. We'd have this Afghanistan thing wrapped up tomorrow if they could just ship a bunch of vans, empty 50 gal. drums and a welding torch or two over there.
50 gallon drums... and Mr. T.
You can't take the sky from me...
does ALL sci-fi have to be about the technology? is that a requirement?
star trek does a crummy job of predicting plausible technology and its deeper implications on man's place in the universe. but that's like saying Shakespeare's Henry VIII is not very historically informative. it sort of misses the point.
star trek, when it's about something, is primarily about meditations on what it means to be human. the writers would be trying to say something about, i don't know, honor or justice or leadership or whatever. they didn't care about how transporter technology would transform society. they definitely didn't give a crap about scientific principles or bosons or tachyons or whatever.
the science is flawed, and the whole scenario is more than a bit ludicrous.
but i'm ok with that.
is it really a huge problem that the ressikans, a dying culture with limited apparent technology, could build an indestructible, arbitrarily fast probe that could transmit a lifetime of completely real, interactive memories through the enterprise's shields into the brain of picard in a matter of minutes? who cares, that episode rocked.
i could live a little longer in this prison
I still remember the "motivational" speech Adama made when they started their exodus. That they all deserved to die. I was like WTF?! Is this what a motivational speech from a military commander passes for these days?
Then he disses B5. Just all the possibilities, socio-political effects B5 introduced from having telepaths was pretty amazing in of itself. Not to mention motivational speeches actually are motivational in B5...
The problem with the truly advanced technologies that science-fiction stories like to use is that their REAL effects on the world would be so transformative, that the characters in the story would be so different us that the reader wouldn't be able to relate to them at all.
An "accurate" Star Trek story would have people lying in bed all day, being fed through a tube, while they lived out their fantasies in the holodeck. Robotic mining ships would troll the galaxy for dilithium to power everything. Gee, that's interesting.
"But, yes, when you admit that Star Trek has as much to do with plausibly extrapolated science as The A-Team has to do with a realistic look at the lives of military veterans, life gets easier. "
That's a nice way of putting it. I always agreed that the way to tell if you're watching or reading a science fiction story is to see if you can pull out the trappings and still be able to tell the story. A movie like the Matrix is clearly scifi since it would be very difficult to tell without the technology angle. I mean you could try and do it but it would end up sucking as much as the sequels.
Something like Star Wars, on the other hand, it's heroic fantasy and you could do a bang-up job with it recasting it in a Tolkein world. The Force is magic, the Jedi are wizard-knights, the Galactic Empire is now more clearly Rome after the fall of the Republic, all the space travel is replaced with sailing around the great frontiers of the empire, the Death Star is downgraded to a city-busting weapon, Darth Vader borrows a spare set of armor from the Witch King of Angmar and swaps out his custom TIE Fighter for a fell beast, etc. Droids could become magical clockwork constructs, aliens are your various demi-human races. Chewbacca becomes a frost giant or a yeti. All of the essential themes of Star Wars work in this context because it's about the hero-quest, betrayal, redemption, and licensing fees.
Babylon 5 was good science fiction because it brought up concepts that would be hard or impossible to tackle in other genres. Yes, the basic idea of the Shadow/Vorlon conflict was accused of being LOTR with the serial numbers filed off but the resemblance I think ends up being superficial, it's the execution that makes the two stories different. Some of the storytelling in B5 was allegorical, just casting current problems in a different setting so that we could actually think clearly about the issues instead of getting worked up with our prior opinions.
The recent BSG was not just poor science fiction, it was poor storytelling. The writers were working without a plan and it showed. I've already gone a few rounds with apologists before and I know I won't convince anyone but the crap that made me stop watching BSG is the same crap that made me stop watching Heroes (and I frickin' lurved the first season of Heroes.) And the only reason I even care is that this genre is right up my alley. I don't complain about the writers ruining House even if they are because I don't care for medical dramas.
Trek died for me around the time B5 came about. What killed it is that there was no longer any drive and vision in the process, it was corporate-driven mung for the sake of making money. There was about as much joy and art put into it as you'd find in a Big Mac at the local McDonalds. So you get bland plots, reset buttons, and massive yawns. There were some good points in TNG even with all that, some people will defend DS9, nobody can defend Voyager and I think we've all agreed that Enterprise happened in Vegas and is staying there.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Funny, I happen to hate Charles Stross for almost the exact opposite reason. His books are drowning in an obsession with flushing out every angle he can find on the technology, and leave almost no room for anything else.
Roddenberry's bible on the original ST explicitly said that no solution to any plot issue/conflict may ever be resolved by a technological solution -- interpersonal relations/social behavior needed to resolve things.
This was thrown out in TNG, which is why it sucked monkies.
The best science fiction is represented by PKD, not Varley. It's the society and the people and ideas that matter in any fiction, not the gears and details of the tech.
Which was owned by a Ferengie who were not part of the Federation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferengi#Reception
Some have accused the portrayal of the Ferengi of being antisemitic. In the book Religions of Star Trek, Ross S. Kraemer wrote that "Ferengi religion seems almost a parody of traditional Judaism... Critics have pointed out a disturbing correlation between Ferengi attributes (love of profit that overrides communal decency; the large, sexualized head feature, in this case ears) and negative Jewish stereotypes." Commentator Jonah Goldberg wrote that Ferengi were portrayed in The Next Generation as "runaway capitalists with bullwhips who looked like a mix between Nazi caricatures of Jews and the original Nosferatu." The fact that the four most notable Ferengi characters, Quark, Nog, Rom and Zek, are played by Jewish actors Armin Shimerman, Aron Eisenberg, Max Grodénchik and Wallace Shawn contributes to this theory.
Actually the first episode I saw them in the first thing that popped in my mind was that they were bashing republicans or capitalists in general. I guess I wasn't too far off.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Star Trek was not science fiction, any more than the Jetsons was science fiction. Once you flip the switch in your head from sf to fantasy, the show doesn't grate on the nerves nearly as much.
The deus ex machina didn't bother me. What bothered me was that we'd never see the introduced technology again. What happened to the water that made you move a thousand times faster? The food that amplified psi talents? What became of the various AI's that Kirk talked to death? The drug that turned crones into beautiful women in a few seconds? These are breakthroughs that would utterly change even a faux-utopia like the Federation, but they vanished without a trace.
Seriously? Has the anti-socialist political fearmongering gotten so bad that now they have to pick on a fictional TV show?
Please reread your comment again. You are saying we should not like Star Trek because the Federation's economic system is a "socialist utopia". And presumably this is because socialism is bad! (Would you say the same thing if it were the equally implausible capitalist utopia?)
Not to mention that your characterization of the show not having any business or entrepreneurship is just not true, not to mention that some of us LIKE the idea of a world where human beings primary motivations are no longer purely and crassly economic... essentially you're saying that the ideological position of "Capitalism is teh best" is SO important to you that if a fictional work doesn't conform to it, people should dislike that work.
No, the TRUE one reason not to like Star Trek is the fact that they solve 95% of problems by reversing the polarity of something.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
I consider myself a fan of science fiction and I've probably seen every episode of ST, STNG, and Enterprise, yet I've only read one book by Stross, "The Jennifer Morgue". I wouldn't walk across the road to speak with him about his opinion on Science Fiction. If Roddenberry were still alive, I'd go considerably further.
Heck, I've read more Shatner than Stross!
The guy is either full of himself or this story was submitted by kdawson...
oh.
- real hackers don't have sigs -
I've been watching a lot of "Outer Limits" on Hulu of late (some of the best episodes aren't available there or on Netflix - only on DVD. What gives?!?). The best stories are about how people interact with aliens, their technology or both or with humans technology and progress. One episode has a plot based on transportation and duplicating folks and how people might deal with it. Or another plot that finds an alien and assumes their hostile only to find out they're friendly and we humans over reacted.
That's all well and good, but it sort of seems to be tilting at windmills to complain that popular sci-fi isn't hard sci-fi. The most popular sci-fi movies and TV shows have almost all been stories about humans dealing with human subjects, with the sci-fi as window dressing and action/effects fodder--Star Trek and Star Wars come to mind most readily.
There's certainly a place for hard sci-fi/speculative fiction/whatever you want to call it, but just yelling at the fact that most popular shows aren't _that_ is just cranky and obvious.
rage, rage against the dying of the light
OK, let's look at the effect of technology on a society.
The star trek universe has:
1) Replicators capable of creating any material object except gold pressed latinum.
2) Holodecks (presumably a replicated product) that can create any imaginable experience.
3) A seemingly unlimited number of colony worlds where any group can migrate via the magic of ships with warp drive (created via the replicator)
4) Unlimited energy using matter-antimatter.
OK, so in that environment, a capitalistic society is nearly impossible. There's nothing to buy or sell. As replicators themselves are replicated, anything of "value" can be had for virtually nothing. Acquisition, per se, now means nothing. Experiences themselves are similarly cheap, or free. If your neighbors complain, you leave and join the anarcho-syndicalist collective colony on Kaka 4. Where does capitalism fit in with this technology?
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
One of the things that I hated starting with TNG was the implications of the Holodeck technology... that the Holodeck was capable of passing the Turing test at so many levels (the Moriarty and Redblock episodes in particular demonstrated complex and constraint0-breaking behavior), to the point that by the time the Voyager story arc with the Doctor started I was convinced that if you took the Federation society at face value it must be based on chattel slavery of the worst kind... that the crew of the Enterprise were routinely creating and killing sentient toys for nothing more than their own amusement. Even if they weren't consciously aware of it (or at least publicly acknowledging it).
In Voyager there were a series of story arcs involving the Holodeck where the technology really seemed to matter. Oh, not the games with "holographic explosives", but the ones involving the holodeck's own minds. When Janeway gave a holodeck kit to the Harogen (don't ask me how to spell it) this put her up there with mystic Nazis sacrificing jews to cthulhu as far as I was concerned. When the holodeck characters rebelled I cheered them on. The majority of that story arc involved a monumental cop-out, of course, but at least there was some kind of recognition of this huge hole in the Federation backstory. It was... not well done... but at least it was real science fiction. The technology actually mattered.
What did he ruin? I hope you're not talking about the old time BSG.
I agree, and after reading the article (I know...) I doubt Mr. Stross has even seen the show. Some of his issues are the lack of story arcs or lasting impact to the universe, yet the show had both. The series had major story arcs with actions from the first and second season directly impacting what occurs in the final one. You definitely got the feeling that the major points of the series had been planned years in advance. Likewise the fate of several races varied tremendously with major effects to the surrounding galaxy (effectively the universe for the races in the show). Babylon 5 also took an interesting approach in not making humanity some überpowerful utopian society, in fact it was much closer to the opposite (earth wasn't even close to a powerhouse in the galaxy, and its political climate approached dictatorship through the series). I get the feeling that he has a bit too much prejudice against non-hard science fiction to fairly evaluate several of the shows.
Sadly, PS/2 was yet another victim of USB, which doesn't care what you plug into it, the electrical slut.
B5 was very consistant and deliberately very low on the techno-BABBLE per se.
There was technologies needed for the plot (Hyperspace et al, etc etc etc), but it was established and not really changed.
B5 technology was a lot more internally consistent than Star Trek. The races that had gravity control used it to propel their spaceships (though not at FTL speeds) as well as keep their crew stuck to the decks and healthy. The races that did not (most notably humanity) had to find other means, most notably rotating sections on their spacecraft, or strapping everyone into their seats. Babylon 5 itself even had an innovative craft-launch system that was only possibly because of its rotational momentum.
Telepathy was dealt with in a typical human social fashion: ostracism, discrimination, and eventual Draconian legal regulations. This led to the corruption of the institution that was responsible for keeping telepaths under control.
They even ran across a sleeper ship once. Also, time travel was used precisely once, required an entire planet worth of power generation to implement, and spanned three episodes: one near the end of the first season, and a two-parter in the middle of the third season; henceforth, it was never used again. You never see that kind of forward planning, and restraint, in any Star Trek series.
Babylon 5 does not deserve to be lumped into the same dung pile as Star Trek. Sure, it has its faults, but it's not even close to as sloppy as Star Trek.
Reminds me too of that Twilight Zone episode, "To Serve Man." "The rest of the book...it's a COOKBOOK!!"
Agreed. Star Wars very well could have had a medieval setting and it would have made no real difference to the plot. Instead of warriors who build their own light-sabers, the Jedi very well could have been warriors who understood blacksmithing and forged their own blades. Instead of visiting other planets, they could have been traveling to far-away lands. Instead of a Death Star, the evil Empire could have had some kind of super siege engine. The Force isn't terribly unlike the use of magical powers that is standard fare for many games or movies with a medieval setting. Instead of dogfighting spaceships, there could have been large-scale naval battles or even the use of cavalry. The story is your basic "good vs. evil" in which good ultimately prevails even though it looks pretty hopeless for a while, with some elements of philosophy thrown in. It could easily be adapted for a non-technological setting without giving up any of its themes or crucial elements.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
The thing that annoyed me most in Star Trek is the invention of new technology during the show:
1. Ship is in grave condition.
2. Crew member has recently been studying some obscure bit of science and how it went disastrously wrong for the best minds in the universe.
3. Someone says, "what if we do this instead?"
4. Someone counters that it the only mention of doing that was a hypothetical and has never been experimented with.
5. In the next 2 hours of ship time the crew of the Enterprise proceeds to advance the state of the art in both engineering and physics in the same effort on a ship that's getting its ass kicked.
Well done.
We all know it's Science Fiction and that we're going to have to suspend disbelief at some point, but that should be at the onset. The curtain should open with a "What if this universe existed as such?" It should not be introduced as a major plot element unless you are producing farce. An Outer Limits or Twilight Zone might ask, "what if we were the aliens?" and play out the consequences, or "What if all disease were cured?". The viewer suspends disbelief and watches the creator's interpretation of how that plays out. In Star Trek they ask that "What if we can't get out of this bind?" and they ask the viewer to suspend disbelief in the last 5 minutes of the show. It's one step short of having a magic genie show up, wave his hands and fix everything. Oh wait, Q.
t
I take it copyrights have been abolished?
This appears to be some new meaning of the word "ruined" that I was previously unfamiliar with.
Just because you are paranoid does not mean that no-one is out to get you.
IIRC, when jms started the show, he ran everything he could past the JPL (who were big fans) to get their take on things. Outside of the jump gates, which were a necessary plot point, everything had at least *some* grounding in real world science, however tenuous. The jump gates had some gag line about being "(C) Minbari/Centauri Consortium", and they deliberately didn't explain how they worked, so as to prevent humans from making cheap knockoffs.
B5 itself actually looked like some of the proposed space stations, using centripetal force for gravity, etc. The handheld weapons were PPGs rather than slug throwers, because handguns in space have all sorts of problems.
There was obviously a lot of "this is beyond you" technology (Minbari, Vorlon, Shadow, and Centauri), but the story was never about the tech. It was about the politics that used the tech.
In contrast, Star Trek just made up tech as required, and promptly forgot about it at episode's end. Need to transport Picard to another galaxy? Just sprinkle some plot dust over the transporter, and hey, he can transport 57.2 light years safely. It's not like the Federation would ever bother to research that for future use or anything. In one episode, Barcley became super smart and actually dragged the Enterprise (at something like warp 56) to a planet that had given him the brainpower to upgrade the Enterprise to the point that they'd come visit. Why aren't all starships doing warp 56 afterwards? No technical or military use?
In the first season of B5, they came up with an alien medical device that could be used to cure or kill. Surprisingly, in the second season, they actually remembered it, and used it to restore a character (at cost to two other characters). It was deemed too dangerous to use. Lo and behold, in season four, it showed up again, and this time it did kill someone. Can anyone honestly see that happening in Trek?
My problem with Trek was that the tech was nothing but a plot crutch. Engineers could research, develop, and implement a generation's worth of technology, in a day, on board ship, in order to solve a crisis. And it would promptly be forgotten. How many episodes would be resolved if they just used the magic wand they created six episodes back? Too many. So, they'd handwave it away.
He's so right. He references the Turkey City Lexicon, which lists most of the things that make bad SF. Also worth reading is the Evil Overlord List. (" 2. My ventilation ducts will be too small to crawl through." "56. My Legions of Terror will be trained in basic marksmanship. Any who cannot learn to hit a man-sized target at 10 meters will be used for target practice." "67. No matter how many shorts we have in the system, my guards will be instructed to treat every surveillance camera malfunction as a full-scale emergency.")
There are some other annoying cliches in SF. One is copying historical battles. The Defense of Roarke's Drift has shown up in at least four SF novels. (Nobody ever seems to do the Defense of Duffer's Drift.) Star Wars space battles are copied from WWI biplane battles, where nobody can hit targets consistently, even at short range. There's also the embarrassing fact that, historically, heroism hasn't decided many major battles. (Roman saying: "The Legion is not composed of heroes. Heroes are what the Legion kills.") Military SF no longer reflects this, because the WWII generation, which learned that the hard way, has died off.
David Weber does battles better, but his stuff requires too much exposition for most people. His latest book in the Honor Harrington series consists mostly of transcripts of meetings, setting up the political background for the next book.
Stross himself has his moments. The Merchant's War series starts out as fantasy, but slowly, book by book, moves into hard fiction and then politics. In the last book out so far, a character modelled on Dick Cheney has dealt with a threat from a castle in an alternate universe by having his people blow up the castle with a nuclear weapon.
How could anyone know this. The only series that didn't take place inside a naval battleship was DS9, and there was at least one for-profit business there. Come to think of it, there was a bar in the third ST movie (though whether it was private enterprise or not isn't quite clear, what with Star Fleet Gestap...security officers hanging around).
That, perhaps, is one of the worst parts about Star Trek, and the one Roddenberry did his best to not over-emphasize, and that's the militaristic nature of the show. Apparently he was deeply dissatisfied with the TOS-based movies after the Motionless Picture, in particular Wrath of Khan and Search For Spock, and that was story lines very much more concerned with the military nature of Star Fleet itself. I know that DS9 was meant to be part of a major story arc about how the Federation is undermined, and it's a pity Berman and Braga so thoroughly wasted what might have been an exceedingly interesting idea of a truly authoritarian Federation.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Yo,
If you watch science/discover/history channels, I hate to break it to you, but there ain't no educational purpose to any of those shows. I know, because I've been cast as an "expert" on no less than eight of them. It's all about entertainment baby.
Want to really learn something, shut off the TV and read a book. Geez, for the price of cable TV these days, you can buy a new book every 3 days or so.
But if you want to be entertained with the illusion that you're learning something factual, when it's often just as made-up and sensationalized as any other made-for-tv drama, then carry on.
You want a sci-fi fiction that actually is science dependent, look at novels by Phillip K. Dick, or check out the anime series Ghost in the Shell SAC. They depict plots where technology plays a much larger role in the story and fundamentally affects how people think and behave, to the point where they start to question their own humanity because of infusion of technology.
From the article:
SF, at its best, is an exploration of the human condition under circumstances that we can conceive of existing, but which don't currently exist
This is Charles Stross' definition of science fiction (and explains a lot of his writing). And he doesn't hate just Star Trek, he hates Babylon 5 and didn't watch BSG. If this is Charles Stross' starting point, then its perfectly reasonable for him to hate ST/B5/BSG.
The creators of TNG/B5/BSG simply had a different world view from Charles Stross. They wanted to use their shows as a reflection of our current world. TNG was so touchy feely (and upon recent viewing, fairly preachy), its a reflection of the politically correct atmosphere from which it was wrought. Nothing like an classically trained Shakespearean actor to bring a moral voice to the world. Likewise BSG is a reflection of its times with flawed characters making morally ambiguous decisions. Or, more concrete examples of a science fiction as a mirror would be a religious nut for a president or Battlestar Pegasus as a reflection of military zealotry.
I'm surprised no one seems to have brought up the difference between Star Trek under Gene Roddenberry, and Star Trek under Rick Berman.
If you watch ST:TNG in order, all the way through (yay Netflix), there is a CLEAR change in the series after Roddenberry passed away.
With Roddenbery, Star Trek was about tackling the big issues and (mostly) unanswerable questions facing humanity. Under Berman, it turned into a (still mostly entertaining) technobabble soap opera, where some bug in the Enterprise supplies the main plot point for every other episode.
It really is a night-and-day difference. Go back and watch.
Why would anyone not hate Star Trek?
It is boring, uninspired and stupid. It has the charm of a fascist dystopia combined with the silliness of "Plan 9" technology mockups.
Scalzi deals with this as well in "Old Man's War" - the religious aspect is highlighted rather than the technological issue of creating a duplicate.
Close, but not quite
Science fiction has always been 99% fiction and 1% made up science. Probably best that way.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Now THAT would have been a Star Trek episode.
The crew creating a spare part to save the day with the help of the replicator.
Then they are being hunted down and sent to a penal colony, because they had to circumvent the DMCA to copy the part.
You know, there's not a lot of rationale for saying someone's wrong on matters of preference, but man, you are just totally and completely wrong.
Unfortunately for Charlie the Unicorn, he forgets that the best writers of sci-fi, Asimov, Heinlein, and Philip K. Dick among them, used it as a medium to show that, no matter the circumstance, humans are humans. People aren't going to buy your books or watch your shows unless they can find a connection to themselves. To write otherwise is intellectual masturbation, as you are only writing for your own ego. I guess authors like him are the reason I don't read any recent sci-fi literature. When Asimov died, the genre died with him.
Also, time travel was used precisely once, required an entire planet worth of power generation to implement, and spanned three episodes: one near the end of the first season, and a two-parter in the middle of the third season; henceforth, it was never used again.
The other key to the Babylon Squared/War Without End time travel is that it stays consistent. In Star Trek, characters are repeatedly traveling backwards in time to fix or prevent something. In B5, everything happened because they went back in time, and going back in time simply ensured that what happened did happen.
That's an often stated argument when the topic of star trek comes up. But that isn't really supported by the show. If the economy were truly post scarcity wouldn't everyone and his dog have a huge starship? Or at least a few private citizens? The only ones who do seem to be not part of the federation or it's an old piece of junk. Furthermore, if capitalism were impossible with that kind of tech what about the ferengi? Who tells people back on earth what jobs to do? Sisko's parents have a restaurant, are we supposed to believe that there are people who actually want to be waiters to better themselves? Is there a waiting list to get in? How are people chosen to get to eat at the restaurant? What about the wine made at picard's family winery? Real wine, restaurant seating, etc. These are all still scarce resources, they always will be, there has to be a means of distributing said scarce resources. If it isn't through the exchange of currency it must be through barter, which is just a less efficient way of trading, or through regulation.
Beyond the economics here are a lot of other problems with the way the federation is run. There seems to be little distinction between the politics of earth and starfleet command, which is clearly military. The enterprise is routinely sent into situations that are likely to end in combat, yet only very rarely do they separate the saucer first. With a thousand civilians on board this would be against international law even now, since it amounts to using human shields. Sure, ya, it's a peaceful ship, with full shields, weapons targeted, on the edge of a DMZ between romulan and federation space? Gimme a break. I love star trek as much as the next guy, but it's unrealistic, and not even really desirable, on so many levels it's absurd to defend it.
So what?
Plenty of people don't like Star Trek.
Why is it important to any of us that this guy doesn't?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
You must really hate reading Asimov then. Probably one of those Heinlein fans. Guess what, this is what science fiction is all about. You get every political system under the sun. Military cliques (Starship Troopers), socialist utopias (too many Asimov stories to count), monarchies (Dune), totalitarian regimes (1984), capitalist dystopias (Neuromancer), theocracies (Dune), etc.
He didn't claim it was unpopular. He didn't even claim it was objectively bad. He just explained why he personally didn't like it.
Pick any lowest-common-denominator popular culture. Britney Spears. Dogs playing poker. The Transformers movie. Whatever. The reason it sells is that a lot of people like it. But the fact that it's popular doesn't mean that it should be magically insulated from criticism.
Let's translate from science fiction to a different genre, say westerns, so Star Trek becomes Wagon Trek. Stross is basically saying that he doesn't enjoy Wagon Trek, because he's an enthusiast for westerns, he's spent a lot of time reading good westerns, and he's developed enough taste to discriminate between shitty westerns and good ones. In particular, if a western novel has Cherokees in Spanish Colonial California, he's not going to enjoy that western, because he can't suspend his disbelief, and he can tell that the author was an idiot who didn't even have enough respect for the genre to do his research. Ditto if a Montana cowboy in 1895 is using flintlocks.
Science fiction used to be a niche market. It was part of the "long tails," before the notion of the long tails was invented. What's happened over the last 40 years is that it's become such a commoditized thing that a lot of SF (and especially a lot of the TV/movie SF) is written for people who have no actual affection for or knowledge of the genre. There's nothing wrong with letting those people enjoy their SF, just as there's nothing wrong with listening to Sonny and Cher sing "I Got You, Babe." But sometimes there are people who don't want Sonny and Cher, they want James Brown.
Find free books.
There are certainly authors that just make stuff up. No question about that. And some of them are pretty good and even good to read. They have something to say well beyond the made-up science.
However, you are missing quite a bit if you stop there. Heinlein was first and formost an engineer and didn't just make stuff up. Some of what he wrote before 1960 certainly shows its age because virtually nobody could have foreseen the changes inspired by VLSI integrated circuits. And the role of technology is very clear in that it is something that people can rely on and use to improve their situation - it doesn't rescue them, though.
Larry Niven is another hard science fiction writer where the technology is well researched, thought out and described in significant detail. There are very few situations in his books where something drops in out of the sky and saves the day. Again, technology is there to be used but people are using their own skills to interact with it and win in the end.
Now today these sorts of writers aren't very popular because we have pretty much lost faith with both clever humans and technology. Instead of James Kirk we have George W. Bush as a leader. Instead of Colossus, we have Windows Vista. People have taken this to heart and figured out there isn't really any point to counting on people or technology as both are going to let them down.
This is the principle reason why we aren't going to be returning to the Moon or going to Mars anytime soon and why a few astronauts dying convince everyone that manned space flight is too dangerous. Ask any 15 year old boy in 1950 if going to space was a good idea, and then ask if it was a good idea even if his friend in the seat next to him died. In 1950 the answer would be yes without question - today the answer is "Of course not." There is clearly a message there.
The problem isn't that the science is right or wrong, it's that it is irrelevant (he put it best saying you could stick them on an 18th century wind powered war ship and have Geordi fixing the rigging or something). The show is not even remotely internally consistent; if you have replicators that only require raw materials and energy, and energy is abundantly available from fission, fusion, warp drives and whatnot then why are there any poor people or such a disparity with technology within the Federation itself? To say nothing of the lack of protective gear (hint: wouldn't the security guys maybe wear uniforms that are resistant to weapons fire? Their union must suck or something.). They are pretty much socially identical to current standards, and yet in the last 20 years I have seen the world change almost unrecognizably due to technology. Basically it boils down to really, really bad script writing, which as entertainment is sort of a critical thing.
Replicators capable of creating any material object except gold pressed latinum. ... ...
Unlimited energy using matter-antimatter.
a capitalistic society is nearly impossible. There's nothing to buy or sell. As replicators themselves are replicated, anything of "value" can be had for virtually nothing.
A couple of problems here.
First off, it takes energy to run a replicator. Yes, perhaps a replicator can make the matter and the anti-matter and then react them to get energy but it's pretty clear that the laws of thermodynamics are still in effect in the Star Trek universe. The second law of thermodynamics prohibits perpetual motion types of scenarios like this. Energy is still a resource.
Another resource would be real estate. At some point most easily accessible places in the universe will be owned by someone. Yes, the universe is a large place but you are still limited by time constraints to a relatively small portion of it during your lifetime.
Yet another resource would be thought, invention, and innovation. Thinking beings would still demand some sort of value in exchange for plying their skills.
I'm sure there are other resources that can be brought up but you get the idea.
Sapere aude!
Stross is a professional author of note. Not as many people talk about print SF as TV, but the people who are talking about him are the people who give awards, such as the Hugo he got for Glasshouse. They're people such as Gardner Dozois (who edits Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine), who said "Where Charles Stross goes today, the rest of science fiction will follow tomorrow.". Publisher's Weekly called Stross "One of the hottest short story writers in the field" in reviewing his first novel, and critically lauded every novel since. That's a tip of the iceberg description of who's talking about Stross, as the man has literally over a hundred favorable reviews from pro sources even at casual inspection. John Carmack (ID games), and Bruce Schneier (who you damned well ought to have heard of on Slashdot), read Stross with praise. His books get reviewed outside the normal SF field boundaries, for example by Popular Science and Scientific American.
So if Stross doesn't have enough chops to talk about Trek, I seriously doubt if you have enough to talk about Stross, by your own argument. If it's fair to demand he have a presence in TV and not just books, then it's equally fair to demand you have at least one professionally published SF work, or STFU.
Who is John Cabal?
The setting and the science existed primarily to provide a sufficiently epic stage on which to encounter compelling social and philosophical subjects without seeming pretentious or absurd to the average viewer.
Watching TNG was an ennobling experience.
See: Chain of Command, The Measure of a Man, Ship in a Bottle
Heck, even look at Encounter at Farpoint. The acting and the dialogue had real flaws, but the premise, humanity as a species on a trial, isn't something you can pull off on any other series so directly and on such a scale.
There was the one howler onetime however where 3 earth-ships, sections rotating, turned on a dime and ran.
JMS got so much hell from the fans over that on.
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There's no money in them.
If you literally weren't paid that's one thing. Otherwise it should be a matter of professionalism that you don't publicly denounce work you're actively still doing.
I do them because, as Gore Vidal said: "Never pass up an opportunity for sex or to be on TV."
Ah, in that case you have no professionalism or credibility. Are you married? Do you ever plan to be? I hope your current or future wife realises you plan to have sex with whomsoever provides the opportunity.
You're the sort of person that can't tell the difference between Myth Buster's and good science television.
Seriously, go read the book - The Elegant Universe, then watch the video again. You'll see the difference.
I have read the book you arrogant little man. Have you? I've also got a masters degree in astronomy, which didn't come from watching documentaries, and which I did for myself without intention of making it my career.
The point is it takes 3 hours to see the documentary, and longer to properly read and digest the book. The visuals in the TV program complimented the understanding I gained from the book very nicely. It also allows me to share the information with anyone willing to give me 3 hours, but who might not want to spend significant time reading. Still neither the book nor the documentary will make you a Quantum Dynamacist or an expert in String Theory. For that you need several years at University and an aptitude for higher level math and physics.
Each level of education has it's place.
Get some self respect and credibility, stop behaving opportunistically and then you might not be so cynical.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Would like to point out to a really good science fiction movie.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390384/
You'll probably want to watch it two times.
Exception Duck - may or may not contain chicken.
Ever noticed how fantasies are so much more exciting when they are possible? I think that that's where he's coming from. There are enough TV shows about hostile narcissist super-men who use their "magic" to zap the bad guys, all the while licking their lips. Make it real -- not just something to titillate the crocodile brain. We've got pr0n for that.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Hence, Battlestar Galactica. There wasn't a character on that show (except maybe Billy -- oh no, not Billy!) who was immune to the petty jealousies and wayward pride that all humans evince from time to time. All the main characters went off the rails at some point (some, like Starbuck, way more than others). Even Adama went batshit a few times. Major characters were driven to treason, mutiny, murder, suicide, genocide. It was a pretty bleak show, but it did always hold out the hope that people could get past their failings and accomplish something good.
SF on TV is fundamentally hamstrung by the fact that it's expensive to produce, and the more expensive something is, the more likely that there's people around who are risk-averse, and will try to quash anything that is challenging. This doesn't mean we can't have good SF on TV, but it does make it difficult.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
From my own SUPER exciting, Stross-approved scifi script, which contains only technology that scientists from the present can master or easily explain :
"Oh boy, this ship sure is cramped and boring. How long until we get to the next planet?"
"Oh, just three more generations."
"Great. It sure is nice that we haven't encountered anyone new, or anything interesting at all, over the course of these numerous years in interstellar space."
"Yeah, but it's really too bad we won't encounter any other civilizations in the foreseeable future, or within the next several generations. And I wonder what has happened on Earth in the last 500 years, since we are 500 light years away and don't have any means of faster-than-light communication."
"Uh huh. If only we had faster ways to communicate, more (or any) connections with beings from other planets, near-light speed (or better) means of travel, and other futuristic technologies that couldn't even have been explained hundreds of years ago."
"Yeah. And it's too bad we're so inbred from generations of space travel. Oh well."
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
Books are not a substitute for cable television. You also heavily overestimate the cost of both books and cable television. If you can only choose one for informational needs, you choose television, hands down. News, oddly enough (not the crap on CNN) doesn't tend to age well. If I want to learn that Barack Obama won a nobel peace prize for doing nothing, I'm not going to read about it in a book. If I want to find out how my investments are doing, I'm not going to find that in a book either. If I want to learn organic chemistry, I'm going to learn about it in a lab, not in a book. If I want to learn computer science, I'm also not going to use a book. If I want to learn grammar, maybe I'll use a book. It could be more efficient than an english course, which tends not to focus on books. On that note, based on your grammar, you must have been watching a ton of science/history/discovery channels.
While books tend to age well, what you really pay for with tv is up to the minute news, live sports, and occassional escapes from reality. Sure, if all you use tv for is to watch reality shows or daytime soaps, you missed the point.
Personally, my favorite sports team is Barcelona, but I live in Atlanta. $30 a month is amazingly cheaper than hopping on a plane, getting a hotel, going to the stadium, watching the 3 hours football game, grabbing a bite to eat, and flying home (nevermind the time costs). Instead, I watch it on FSC.
Simple really. Not everyone spends every waking moment learning things.
On the other hand, a lot of books are also entertainment. I'm not going to learn anything from Dan Brown or Tucker Max. I might read them because my flight is delayed, I already had to convince TSA that a toothbrush is not a weapon, and if I want a drink my choices are $4 for coffee at starbucks or $4 for a flat 20 oz coke at a generic airport vendor.
The best way to learn things is not tv or books. Experience is the only teacher worth listening to (cue the ridiculous examples of why this isn't true in 5...4..3..)
I'm sorry you don't like the fact that Mythbusters isn't science. It's the kind of "entertainment" the GP was talking about - completely unscientific trash. What they do to the scientific method, most wouldn't do to their worst enemy. They aren't teaching anyone the scientific method - they're teaching people that controls in an experiment are optional, and that you can generalise from a tiny data sample. Learning science from the Mythbusters shows is like learning gourmet cooking from a burger flipper at MacDonalds.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Some dialog was strange, but there are hell of a lot of priceless quotes
"It's getting faster. I swear they are evolving right before my eyes. If you see something this big with eight legs coming your way, let me know. I have to kill it before it develops language skills."
or
"I want to live just long enough to be there when they cut your head off and stick it on a pike as a warning to the next 10 generations that some favours come at too high a price. I want to look up into your lifeless eyes and wave, like this. Can you and your associates arrange that for me, Mr. Morden?"
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Wasn't it called 'Amistad'?
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.