Why Charles Stross Hates Star Trek 809
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.'"
Scalzi on Stross on ST (Score:5, Insightful)
I think Scalzi was spot on [scalzi.com] 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. "
hmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
And ST is being picked on.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Just enjoy... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Millions of fans disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Scalzi on Stross on ST (Score:3, Insightful)
Star Trek, Asimov (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:And ST is being picked on.... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not unique to ST and Stross doesn't claim it is, but it's probably the worst culprit. It tended to play a kind of Deus ex Machina with $RANDOM_TECH_DEVICE to solve the problem.
Given the enduring popularity of Star Trek, et. al (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Millions of fans disagree (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:utopian socialism (Score:2, Insightful)
Ultratech technobabble I'm okay with, but... (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Uh, B5 "technobabble"? Hardly... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:hmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
> 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.
"contrived" is probably the word you're looking for.
However, how contrived the plot is isn't really the point; the real question is whether or not it makes good TV, and the proof is in the pudding (especially for TNG). TV shows are, after all, entertainment and not great literary works. (Indeed, the two don't frequently go hand-in-hand...)
Regardless, sci-fi generally means made-up technology, and made-up technology problems. Sometimes these can be/are solved by going back to human ingenuity or 'old-school' tech, but sometimes they need to be solved with more made-up technology. That's just kinda how things go. For example, if you had someone hacking your critical (pulling the plug isn't an option) system, you may have to, say, "reconfigure the firewall". If this were the 1920's and computers were made-up technology, then the whole situation would appear contrived, though from our perspective it's not.
Re:Let me get this straight (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:utopian socialism (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, and the Klingons were waiting outside of spaceport cloaked the entire episode... waiting for a fair battle.. Good times.
Deux ex machina? (Score:3, Insightful)
You're thinking of 'deus ex machina' [wikipedia.org], 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.
Technology is cool, but... (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:hmmm (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Different people are satisfied with different levels of explanation. I'm not surprised a sci-fi author is dissatisfied with another sci-fi writer's work. Possibly could explain the great divide between Star Wars and Star Trek fans. Rarely was a hyperdrive or the force explained in great detail in Star Wars but Star Trek seemed to like to take it a couple steps further. And when they got into midichlorians [wikipedia.org] just to measure the force it presented a possible science to the force or an explanation and the fans revolted. I liken it to cheerleaders at football games. From a distance and on TV they look great but if you've ever got up in one of their mugs during a game they are caked -- I mean caked -- with makeup. To a disgusting degree. It's so you can see it from a great distance in the stands but up close they're circus clowns. Similar to this a lot of sci-fi plot devices fall apart upon closer inspection. Those that hold up are allowed deep introspection before the readers/viewer/listener gets upset. Personally I cannot stand the way magic is explained in Harry Potter yet I eat up "The One Power" from the Wheel of Time like a fanboi ready to forgive Robert Jordan for purple prose, "light" oath taking and hair tugging. I guess it's just the way I am and how those authors deliver to me.
Oh, and my biggest beef with Star Trek is the stretched analogies (after I just made one about cheerleaders) in the original series. I feel this has caused a lot of nerds to stretch for analogies when explaining something complicated. That analogy allowed for little explanation to be made and since it was made to something real in real life we were more likely to swallow it. Now, let's say you're trying to explain something complicated in real life and you're a Star Trek fan. You're probably tempted to stretch to an analogy but, in the end, what have you really taught that person? Nothing but a (possibly) problematic association a la Ted Stevens' Tubes.
In the end it's fiction. It gets scrutinized because it's such massively popular fiction. A lot of this criticism is really stupid stuff and nitpicking. My advice is just relax and enjoy it or simply find something else to watch.
"Why Charles Stross Hates Star Trek" (Score:4, Insightful)
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?
Re:Scalzi on Stross on ST (Score:5, Insightful)
So essentially, he should repeat to himself "It's just a show, I should really just relax"?
I think the point was "It's a TV show about something besides the daily life of being a writer for a TV show: odds are it's going to get nearly everything wrong, it's nothing specific to science." Look at CSI: anything. The science AND the justice system in that show only vaguely resemble real forensic science or our real justice system. Or how our cops actually look or act for that matter.
To get even more ridiculous, look at MTV's "real world" and tell me that anything in the actual real world (outside of wherever they're filming) shares anything in common with it.
Anyway, of course the science is going to be an absurd prop in star trek. That said, star trek did often take even bigger liberties with reality than most other shows. I occasionally watched episodes of various star trek series until I saw on Voyager an episode where a virus takes up Klingon growth hormones and suddenly the things are the size of flies flying around, infecting all species with stingers. That oddly was a line too far.
Novel not equal TV (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Old SF Fan saying... (Score:3, Insightful)
the magic ingredient (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
i think there's room for both approaches (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Charles Stross is trolling (Score:5, Insightful)
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...
He's right, but so what? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Ron Moore???? (Score:1, Insightful)
From description: "...Battlestar Galactica creator Ron Moore..."
Ron Moore didn't create Battlestar Galactica...he just took a very good pre-existing idea and ruined it.
Seriously? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Scalzi on Stross on ST (Score:5, Insightful)
The "red matter" schmaltz was the absolute worst part of what wasn't all that bad a film. Couldn't they have come up with something better than that? In a movie that was trying explicitely to move away from the way Trek had been treated since ST:TNG, it went an invoked the absolute worst aspects of the later TV series and movies. As technobabble BS goes, "red matter" may actually have been the very worst.
Re:utopian socialism (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Re:Ron Moore???? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:hmmm (Score:1, Insightful)
There is an internal consistency to star trek tech though. You can't just solve *any* problem by re-aligning the warp matrix... or well, re-aligning the warp matrix will fix a lot of problems in star trek, but most of the problems are with the warp matrix to begin with.
That's just writing. Invent a problem, let the characters solve it. Roll credits.
It may not be your cuppa, but essentially all TV writing works that way.
Re:Uh, B5 "technobabble"? Hardly... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Scalzi on Stross on ST (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem isn't the weakness of the science, actually. It's the weakness of the sociology! It's inconceivable to me that a creation like the transporter wouldn't radically transform human culture and society into something unrecognizable. There are technologies of bio-technological intervention that get trotted out regularly, yet we still are told that people would be quite satisfied with a 100-year life span, more or less. I won't even mention time-travel.
An interesting speculation about an improbable or even impossible technology is more compelling to me than cliches and failures of conjecture wrapped around sound technologies.
Re:Uh, B5 "technobabble"? Hardly... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Scalzi on Stross on ST (Score:3, Insightful)
http://www.rhjunior.com/QQSR/00023.html [rhjunior.com] Been liking this guys take on it:P
Re:Ok.. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Scalzi on Stross on ST (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing is that popular TV is not designed to make you think. It is designed to entertain the masses who generally just want a bit of light bubbly stuff with some flesh and a bit of drama/action. That's why a great film like Bladerunner never really made it at the box office. It actually makes you think.
In the book world it's the same. Ask the general public if they've ever heard of Arthur C Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Fred and Geoffrey Hoyle or Ray Bradbury. Outside of Sci-Fi, ask them about Rudyard Kipling or even Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Negative again. Dan Brown? Yeah they know him. Badly researched badly written brainless rubbish, but he sells books in the millions. That is the way of the world.
Re:And ST is being picked on.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Ok, here's a crude (and not necessarily accurate) chart of series' technobabble quotient, with 100 being equal to a typical pop sci program on Discovery. (Technobabble that is consistent in the series is not considered true technobabble, as it becomes part of the workings of that universe.)
Star Trek - TOS: 500
Star Trek - TNG: 600
Star Trek - Voyager: 500
Star Trek - DS9: 600
Doctor Who - Original: 200
Doctor Who - New Series: 300
Blake's 7: 200
Sapphire and Steel: 125
The Omega Factor: 150
Day of the Triffids: 110
Survivor - Original: 110
The Stone Tape: 125
Quatermass II: 125
A For Andromeda: 120
Space 1999: 300
The Tomorrow People - Original: 150
The Tripods: 140
Project Icarus: 115
Moondial: 120
Other than Doctor Who (which I like despite the problems, not because of them), every single series I've named is far more solid, far less fluffy, than Star Trek. And even Dr Who is well below ST fluffiness.
This not only shows that ST IS different from other sci-fi series.Maybe not different from, say, Firefly, but it's not where the real heavy-hitting series are.
Re:Just enjoy... (Score:5, Insightful)
One reason to critique stupid media is that it contributes to a culture of stupidity. When people who congratulate themselves on their intelligence are often devoted to work that fails on so many levels, it's symptomatic of other problems.
I think that your "leave it alone, it's just entertainment" is also myopic, in that I bet you don't feel any compunctions about feeling superior to those who like professional wrestling and monster truck rallies.
Re:Ron Moore???? (Score:4, Insightful)
This appears to be some new meaning of the word "ruined" that I was previously unfamiliar with.
Re:Scalzi on Stross on ST (Score:3, Insightful)
Come on, if it were TNG-style technobabble, it would have been called "red tachyon transflux material" and had a five minute long exposition of how it was produced. I won't defend the plot point, but it's clear by picking a 'dumb' name they were explicitly avoiding that sort of thing.
Re:Given the enduring popularity of Star Trek, et. (Score:4, Insightful)
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 ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Lets define Science Fiction (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Rodenberry vs. Berman (Score:2, Insightful)
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? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Warning: May contain traces of science. (Score:3, Insightful)
Close, but not quite
Science fiction has always been 99% fiction and 1% made up science. Probably best that way.
Re:Scalzi on Stross on ST (Score:5, Insightful)
Star Trek wasn't really about science, imo, so much as about society. Most episodes were about taking some modern social issue and turning it on its head to illustrate a point.
Star Trek did a good job on a few modern issues but the society portrayed in Star Trek is really hard to swallow. No greed, no economy, no (or few, depending on which show/episode you watch) enlisted personnel, etc, etc. I rather liked when Eddington ripped the Federation apart: "I know you. I was like you once, but then I opened my eyes. Open your eyes, Captain. Why is the Federation so obsessed about the Maquis? We've never harmed you. And yet we're constantly arrested and charged with terrorism. Starships chase us through the Badlands, and our supporters are harassed and ridiculed. Why? Because we've left the Federation, and that's the one thing you can't accept. Nobody leaves paradise. Everyone should want to be in the Federation. Hell, you even want the Cardassians to join. You're only sending them replicators so that one day they can take their rightful place on the Federation Council. You know, in some ways you're worse than the Borg. At least they tell you about their plans for assimilation. You're more insidious... you assimilate people and they don't even know it. "
Re:Scalzi on Stross on ST (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Scalzi on Stross on ST (Score:5, Insightful)
As Scott Adams says; "The Holodeck will be mankind's last great invention". I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to work out why we'd never ever want to leave.
Re:Scalzi on Stross on ST (Score:3, Insightful)
That is what is missing from so much science fiction. The really great science fiction isn't just about gadgets and aliens, it's about how humans and human culture will adapt to the new landscape. We've been doing it for thousands of years, and we'll just keep on doing it! So many people miss that, and I'm glad I'm not the only one that doesn't.
Re:Scalzi on Stross on ST (Score:5, Insightful)
The "red matter" schmaltz was the absolute worst part of what wasn't all that bad a film.
You thought that was the worst part? I thought the worst part was the cliched "Give us the secret defense codes that render Earth completely helpless" subplot after Pike gets captured. I would have stood up and cheered if he had spit in Nero's face and said something along the lines of "Do you really think Starfleet is stupid enough to entrust that sort of information to a mere Captain?"
Just consider the idea of capturing a O-6 from the US Military. Do you really think he has information on the arming codes for all our nuclear weapons? The disposition of all forces deployed to defend CONUS? Not very likely.
Re:Scalzi on Stross on ST (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, I think your thought exercise makes my point more clearly than you know. The automobile has radically transformed human culture - transportation technologies are partially to blame for the erosion of extended families, for the dominance of the nuclear family, for the distinctive separation between living places and work places, etc. The entire landscape in America has been transformed by the car and the road.
If you look at how people used to respond to disease before contemporary medicine, and even to mortality itself - how the family has been profoundly transformed by the rarity of death-in-childbirth, that's also a profound change.
That is why good historical narratives are almost like science-fiction in reverse.
Re:The ST bible (Score:4, Insightful)
DS9 had its problems (the whole Sisco is the Chosen crap I found pretty abysmal), but it was still a lot more interesting than the later seasons of TNG, and far more watchable than Voyager and the even more repugnantly awful Enterprise. The latter two left me cold. They were made up of uninteresting, flat characters, dull and derivative story lines, and where they did try to get philosophical, unlike TOS and TNG, simply came off as preachy and banal. By those two series, it was definitely Trek From A Tomb.
Re:Charles Stross is trolling (Score:3, Insightful)
It was obvious there was something else going on from episode one titled "33". Where Baltar repents and suddenly the ship is destroyed ... you start to wonder if it was all just coincidence. Then "The Hand of God" episode and Baltar realising he is an instrument of God. There is so much bizarre manipulation of the characters going on through the series that it becomes pretty clear there is another 'player' beyond the humans and the cylons. So when Head Six says to Baltar, "I am an Angel of God sent here to protect you." --- I took it as the truth. From then on the story got more interesting not less so.
Re:utopian socialism (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:the magic ingredient (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, even more than most other sci-fi, B5 isn't about technology. It's about a bunch of people walking around a space station and talking to each other; how much technology could possibly be involved?
Sci-fi is a medium that lets writers make up circumstances and situations that are impossible in real life in our current time, and dream up totally fantastical situations, and then explore what happens to people in these situations. The inclusion of aliens also makes things interesting because then we can explore how humans interact with other intelligent beings who aren't even human like us, and deal with the inevitable conflicts between cultures, traditions, etc. Obviously, it's an allegory for our own struggles with problems between races or cultures or classes, but it lets the viewer step outside his own worldview and look at the situation more objectively since none of us (except those who have been allegedly abducted) has actually met a non-human intelligent being, and has few preconceived notions about them.
I think "hard sci-fi" writers who fail to recognize that not all sci-fi is about technology and its effect on humanity are rather short-sighted.
Re:Scalzi on Stross on ST (Score:3, Insightful)
I think the guy is extremely short-sighted. Not all sci-fi is about technology and its effect on humanity; much (most?) of it is about how humans behave in different situations, and by using sci-fi instead of trying to fit the story into a historical setting or the present day, the writer gets an easy way to create his own world that's however he designs it, while still being plausible (unlike pure fantasy works with dragons and knights and swords and magic and such, which is also rather limiting). Writers of this "soft" sci-fi aren't trying to be exact about technology, and some of it, like B5 (which is all about a bunch of people running around in a space station), has very little to do with technology. For most sci-fi, the tech is just a plot device, and this guy seems honestly rather dumb to not recognize this.
There is good sci-fi that does explore the effects of new technologies, such as Arthur C. Clarke's "Light of Other Worlds" which describes how society is transformed when someone invents a machine that allows people to look into any point in the past, and suddenly people figure out who really killed Kennedy, that their religion is a sham, etc. That can make a very interesting story, but I never heard of Mr. Clarke putting down other genres of sci-fi because they didn't focus on tech enough.
Maybe the difference is that Arthur C. Clarke had no trouble selling tons of books with his hard sci-fi stories, so he never felt like he needed to trash popular "soft" sci-fi, and this guy, whatever his name is, is such a crappy writer that he has no sales and feels like he needs to attack someone.
Re:Sadly, he's right. (Score:3, Insightful)
Star Wars space battles are copied from WWI biplane battles, where nobody can hit targets consistently, even at short range.
YES! We have technology today that can keep a laser pointed at a car hood for multiple seconds, from a plane flying by. Why can't they have targeting computers IN THE FUTURE that can do anything like that????
Big pet peeve right there. Best episode though from DS9 was the season finale when Sisko tells Warf to enable auto-targeting and all the photon torpedos just start sailing out of the station. Great battle.
Re:There have been occasional exceptions. (Score:2, Insightful)
I agree with you in that those episodes where generally good.
However, for each one of those there are at least 10 in which someone mentions "some kind of dampening field" that "can't be overriden by realigning the teleporter matrix"... :(
Seriously... (Score:3, Insightful)
So what?
Plenty of people don't like Star Trek.
Why is it important to any of us that this guy doesn't?
LK
Re:Given the enduring popularity of Star Trek, et. (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Scalzi on Stross on ST (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think ignoring the technology in movies and shows like Star Trek altogether is a good idea. The fact is that a lot of the technology in Star Trek was plausibly extrapolated. When TOS (or even TNG) was written, people could only dream of personal communicators, computing devices that automagically talked to each other, or a high-speed data network that spanned an entire planet. To a nerd, imagining that those things could exist, and that they might exist in his/her lifetime, that's a pretty moving idea.
But the technology *has* to be mostly separate from the plot. If you try to wrap the story too much around the technology, you A) have to go through the tedious process of explaining it to the audience and B) lose all of your mainstream viewers. Think about what would happen if you tried to write a sit-com around a snippet of C++ code. That's pretty much how it would turn out. In Sci-Fi, the fiction has to come before the science, otherwise it stops being a genre of entertainment and more like a genre of documentation. Even Gene Roddenberry didn't beat around the bush about his vision of Star Trek: he saw it as a western in space. His train just used a warp drive instead of a steam engine.
If you want entertainment, drama, and a smidge or two of comedy, watch Star Trek.
If you want science, read a journal.
Complaining that contemporary sci-fi is either too technical or too little is just a waste of time.
Re:Scalzi on Stross on ST (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, the reason why it's hard to write a screenplay about this is that it's hard to write roles for smart people in general, especially by Hollywood screenwriters. Tell me, when was the last time a character that was supposed to be smart talk like a genuinely smart person in a movie? (Seriously, reply with tips; I'll watch all the movies that have a chance at succeeding in this, I promise.) I work at a university and I've met genuine geniuses, and you can tell when you talk to them how smart they are. Hollywood pretends that geniuses talk like Hollywood genius-stereotypes, whose "great (onscreen) epiphanies" are ideas that ordinary geeks watching the movie had thought of fifteen minutes before. I honestly don't want to see Hollywood handling supra-intelligent people, because they'll butcher it so horribly. So I say that this sort of story is better left unfilmed.
I should also add that I think you're exactly right about not only transporter technology, but basically the utopian end of material need on which Star Trek is premised. In a society like that, are people really going to be enlisting for the space navy, to spend a career wiping the asses of their "commanding officers" and drinking synthohol in the lamest bar in the galaxy? If so, those people would be nothing like you and me.
Re:utopian socialism (Score:1, Insightful)
intellectual property will be the only way for people to make money
You fail at thinking.
Why would you need money?
the science is irelevant and the writers are lazy (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Scalzi on Stross on ST (Score:3, Insightful)
Just as you cannot spend all day watching porn on the internet, and you can't spend all day having holosex.
Re:utopian socialism (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Star Trek TNG wasn't about the science (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Make it real (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Scalzi on Stross on ST (Score:3, Insightful)
Isn't that just FANTASY rather than science-based fiction?
No, we're not talking about "science-based fiction" here, we're talking about "science fiction" ("sci-fi"). Like it or not, the term "sci-fi" has evolved so that it now means a type of speculative fiction which generally involves people living in the future, and frequently involves space ships but not always. (BSG is an interesting exception since it involves the remote past, as does Star Wars, but since it involves people in space ships, it still fits.) And, in the same way, "fantasy" means a type of speculative fiction that generally involves people living in some type of fantasy world resembling pre-industrial earth, with a Medieval level of technology at best, with horses, swords, but also magic, wizards, and mythical creatures like elves, orcs, and trolls. Call them stereotypes if you like, but when you use the terms "fantasy" and "sci-fi", this is what people think of.
I'm sorry, but you don't personally get to define broadly-used terms for the rest of English-speaking society; you have to accept words the way they're used by most people.
Here's scifi Stross would approve of: (Score:3, Insightful)
"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."
Re:Given the enduring popularity of Star Trek, et. (Score:2, Insightful)
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..)
Re:Scalzi on Stross on ST (Score:2, Insightful)
Similarly:
Someone claims they don't like Christianity and gives examples of why.
Christians (especially fanatics) interpret his words as a hostile attack on their beloved icon, no matter what his intent, and generally engage him in robust debate or smile tolerantly and take pity on him.
Similarly:
Someone claims they don't like Islam and gives examples of why.
Muslims (especially fanatics) interpret his words as a hostile attack on their beloved icon, no matter what his intent, and engage him by cutting his head off, blow him to pieces or shoot him.
Anyway, I love Star Trek, and anyone who dislikes it is a fucking heathen and deserves to die.
Re:The Measure of a Man (Score:3, Insightful)
Wasn't it called 'Amistad'?
Re:Scalzi on Stross on ST (Score:3, Insightful)
It's inconceivable to me that a creation like the transporter wouldn't radically transform human culture and society into something unrecognizable.
It'll change the way we look at traffic forever. We'll just get out of bed, go through our morning routine and hop on the transporter to beam to work. No more traffic jams on the roads, but photon jams in the fiberoptic cable as billions of humans teleport to work at the same time. And every now and then some idiot will be trying to break the speedlimit, and you'll get a horrible accident. From what I hear, the fiberoptic switch between node 353 and node 295 is hell. I'd pity the poor sobs who have to go to work through those cables.
I won't even mention time-travel.
Yes, please don't. It'll upset the natives and they'll be arguing about paradoxes, self fullfilling prophecy type of time travel, etc ad nauseum. It's not pretty when that happens, and at the end of the day tears will be shed.
Seriously though, I'd rather have a look at a universe that didn't have a nicely wrapped up happy end every 45 minutes (or 90 minutes if it's a two part episode). The technology really doesn't matter that much. Every scifi show solves the faster-than-light problem with a lot of hand waving and a magical device (warp engine, jumpgate, hedge drive, chocolate-doh-doh-wave-accelerator), so in my opinion it's better to ignore the actual technology-aspect and focus on the story. With "ignore the technology" I don't mean to say that you can't focus on the impact of said technology on society, but I'd rather not have "particle of the week"-type of episodes that Star Trek loved so much.
I'd much rather have a story driven Star Trek like many of the episodes in DS9. In the pale moonlight [wikipedia.org] is a perfect example of what I mean. Again a lot of hand waving about "optholithic datarods" (blah blah blah), but you really get a feel for the dilemma Sisko is facing, and how he learns to accept his choice as being for the better despite it not being in his nature. I'd rather have more of that kind of storytelling, than another 3 seasons of "Neutrino emissions from the port nacelle have ruptured the fabric of subspace, so let's bomb it with tachyon emissions from the deflector dish and hope this show gets a lot of money from commercial slots. Ensign Redshirt, you go to the airlock and make sure it's sealed properly."
Re:Scalzi on Stross on ST (Score:3, Insightful)
Communist? No. It's just that the matter replicator makes money unnecessary. And no mistake, when we do actually get matter replicators, the rich and their idiot lemmings (the same ones against unions) will fight it tooth and nail.
They have elected officials and private property, and the nice thing is nobody's going to steal your bike when they can just replicate their own. How are they in any way communist? They're past both communism and capitalism.