Spoilers Yeah... I give up - Star Trek has abandoned philosophical naturalism - it's depressing/juvenile

To be honest, I don't consider Star Trek to be science fiction at all. It's science fantasy, and always has been. Of course, the majority of television and movie "science fiction" is actually science fantasy by my standards--fantasy with the (usually technological) trappings of science fiction. To me, fantasy includes any work with integral elements, treated as valid in-universe, that are impossible in the real world. Period. No incantations or potions or spells required.

In true science fiction, you have to at least take basic real-world science seriously, even if you use a lot of bleeding-edge speculation for your more exotic elements, and you have to do so consistently. Star Trek has never fit that bill, despite what they might tell you in the footnotes of the TNG Technical Manual. Hard science fiction is more conservative with the speculation, soft less, but all of it always respects the basics.

Does this mean I like Trek any less for it? Heck, no! I'm also a fan of Doctor Who, after all, and that's even further towards the "fantasy" end of the scale.

But, I'm also a fan of science fiction literature--both the hard and soft varieties--and it's pretty easy to tell the difference between that and science fantasy like Trek, at least for me.

 

This.

All the way.

Trek has always had human reason front and centre bu the idea that it has any strong grounding in science or has never included what we might euphemistically term "mysticism" is just nonsense and barely warrants taking the time to address.

It's genuinely like @USS Einstein has never actually watched the show.

 

nah, that's still Voyager

 

Actually it was leading the chosen people (Bajorans) into the promised land (Federation), but you probably know this anyway

 

They're doing nothing of the kind. The show is slapdash, mediocre tittilation with a big budget.

 

Yes, it’s a TV show. Your point is?

 

While I've enjoyed bits and pieces of Discovery, it has yet to make me go "oh my GOD!!! I can't wait until next week!!!" Just something that gets tossed on the pile and I get around to. I'm enjoying Supergirl (watching season two on Netflix) and MacFarlane animated reruns far more.

 

I won't judge you for that, just.. a little bit

 

Thanks for educating us lowly plebs. What would we do without you to speak down to us? Good to see you renewed your CBSAA subcription.

 

You're welcome.

Nope. Never paid a penny for this show.

Supergirl and The Flash lost me a few weeks into the season this year. Grand Tour and The Orville are the only things I bother with now other than streaming movies. I'll give Doctor Who another look when Jody Whittaker starts her run.

 

Friendly fire!

 

Ah yes, the traveler... "In Soviet Russia, thoughts have you!"

I'll grant that Discovery is the first show in a while to handwave away the mystical stuff with a "Huh... that's weird... maybe we'll understand it someday?" But I suspect that's mainly because the weird shit is still going on and they haven't gotten to the "Huh... that was weird" stage yet.

 

Exactly so.

What apparently happened was that when CBS required big changes to the direction of the show, the casting - as well as assets on which a great deal of money had been spent such as all the Klingon sets and other elements - were locked in as stuff that had to be amortized through the first part of the season. A lot of that is being shed as they've improvised new storylines for the "arc" and for the characters beyond the two-part pilot which was itself revised.

 

I partially disagree with this. TOS was definitely about as rigorous as science fiction of its time was, with many of the episodes written by legitimate science fiction writers of the time (Theodore Sturgeon, Larry Niven, Harlan Ellison, etc). This was less the case with later Trek, which basically stuck its head up its ass with canon, becoming its own thing, but the original core of the series was based upon exploration of themes from relatively "hard" works of literary science fiction.

Also, I tend to reserve the term "science fantasy" for things like Star Wars which use sci-fi trappings but basically tell a heroic fantasy story. Star Trek doesn't fit this mold. With a few exceptions (like "the Sisko") there are no chosen ones/heroes. There are just ordinary people doing their best to make the world a slightly better place.

 

Well, no... Sisko treats actual gods as if they are super advanced energy beings. Which pretty much makes him a student of Starfleet history because we have at least two different incidents that seem to prove this.

 

When the story is done, I will judge their competence. I think they have a better understanding than they are given credit for, even if it isn't perfect.

 

Legitimate science fiction and "rigorous" science fiction are NOT the same thing. Larry Niven's "known space" novels are VERY soft science fiction and borderline fantasy; nothing he's written since then stacks up all that well (in terms of scientific accuracy) compared to Arthur C. Clarke or Robert Heinlein. Space Odyssey set the bar for "hard science fiction" just two years after Trek went off the air and the rest of the genre -- yes, even future writers of Star Trek -- took note.

I admit I have not read a huge amount of Harlan Ellison's stories, but the ones I've seen I would HARDLY classify as "hard" science fiction. And Star Trek flirted with being a hard scifi story in TMP before doing a full 180 and going "scifi-action/adventure" in all successive films, and then TNG ran back to scifi fantasy with its very first episode.