How Important is Science Fiction to Trek?

[Lapis Exilis]

I was thinking about this last night - seems to me most of the very best Trek episodes engaged at least some sort of SF concept, but there's so much Trek it's hard to test the idea by myself. I was just going through the first season of TOS:

Man Trap - alien salt vampire
Charlie X - human boy endowed with alien powers
WNMHGB - human man endowed with extreme mental powers
Enemy Within - technology splits man into Ego and Shadow selves
What Are Little Girls Made Of? - androids to replace humans
Miri - engineered virus has horrific consequences
Corbomite Manuever - alien test of honor
The Cage/ The Managerie - aliens experiment on humans

But then - even though aliens are involved in stories like Balance of Terror, there's not really a major SF concept that makes that episodes intriguing. It's more about character and human nature (racism) - just set in space.

Still TOS is still heavily SF, but I'm not sure the SF part holds up for the later series in the same way. What do you think?

I'll admit that the main reason I was thinking about this was someone was quizzing me on why I didn't care for Star Trek 2009, and I finally came down to - it just didn't have any interesting science fiction in it. I'm not really trying to start one of those endless debates on ST09, but I am curious how important others feel having an intriguing SF concept has been or should be to Trek.

 

[C.E. Evans]

IMO, there are different levels of science-fiction and each have their fans. You can have very "hard" or very "light" sci-fi, and the fans can range from those who prefer more science than fiction to vice-versa.

Trek tends to have a bit more science than most sci-fi shows, but it's always a drama first and foremost, and science will definitely take a backseat if it gets in the way of a story...

 

[BillJ]

Very. It's what drew me to Trek in the first place.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Very little importance. They based a lot of the tech on what they considered plausible gadgetry 40 years ago, but nothing's ever done with that except to slap fresh paint on it every couple of years and change the terminology. The astronomy and science extrapolation was schoolboy stuff in 1964 and hasn't kept up.

Aliens who can pass for human is a bit of outdated foolishness as well. Basically, Trek is a fossil in all of these respects.

 

[scotpens]

To make it possible to tell a wide variety of stories, Star Trek was conceived as an action-adventure TV series with a science-fiction background. So we got a lot of episodes like the aforementioned "Balance of Terror," a reworking of the World War II destroyer-vs.-submarine drama The Enemy Below. Or "Friday's Child," a straightforward 18th-century adventure story with the Klingons and the Federation subbing for rival European colonial powers. Or the even more obvious "A Private Little War." Or "The Conscience of the King," which could just as easily have been an episode of a typical Western, or a quasi-anthology like Route 66.

Of course, this wide latitude in storytelling did at times veer into concepts that were pretty silly -- a planet of 1920s-style gangsters, f'rinstance.

 

[Lapis Exilis]

To make it possible to tell a wide variety of stories, Star Trek was conceived as an action-adventure TV series with a science-fiction background. So we got a lot of episodes like the aforementioned "Balance of Terror," a reworking of the World War II destroyer-vs.-submarine drama The Enemy Below. Or "Friday's Child," a straightforward 18th-century adventure story with the Klingons and the Federation subbing for rival European colonial powers. Or the even more obvious "A Private Little War." Or "The Conscience of the King," which could just as easily have been an episode of a typical Western, or a quasi-anthology like Route 66.

Of course, this wide latitude in storytelling did at times veer into concepts that were pretty silly -- a planet of 1920s-style gangsters, f'rinstance.

Well, sure - but I'm curious about people's opinions about how the presence or lack of SF concepts affected the quality of the episodes. Balance of Terror is great, but Friday's Child, Private Little War and The Conscience of the King are pretty much stinkers IMHO. And while A Piece of the Action is funny due to the character work, I wouldn't call it one of the stronger episodes.

 

[stj]

Very important. Some of the concepts were in the story premises but in the long run some concessions to basic science did the most to let the viewer make the willing suspension of disbelief in an extremely improbable (if not outright impossible when closely examined) future, to accept it as our future for an hour.

Things like realizing antimatter was the only reasonable fuel, or the unexpected look of the Enterprise, whose ungainly structure eschewed aerodynamics and even gravity gave us a straw to cling to. Even little things like communicators or a functional bridge helped. Not even hard science fiction ever pretended to be actual science, but not actively insulting our intelligence (usually) helped tremendously.

Also, the whole idea that the future will be different gave Star Trek a peculiar kind of relevance, not in detail (the science was fictional, after all,) but as an invitation to imagination. You might think such an elementary proposition so powerfully attested to be fact by all of human history which is just as different as tomorrow will be couldn't be forgotten. You would be underestimating the philistinism and ignorance of the Hollywood hack.

The outdatedness of the science is far and away the most important factor in the outdatedness of Star Trek, which shows how important the science fiction is.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

What's vital is the premise - "optimistic future of humanity in space" - if "future" and "space" automatically mean sci fi, then sci fi is vital to Star Trek. But if you're talking more specifically, about episodes that hinge on sci fi concepts, then no. A lot of the best episodes are stories that at their core don't require sci fi at all for them to work.

Amok Time, Doomsday Machine, Balance of Terror, The Trouble with Tribbles could all be retold in a non-sci-fi setting. Even something like A Taste of Armageddon where the sci fi element seems essential could be told in a non-sci-fi context - two nations who map out theoretical battles and conduct human sacrifice according to the results. That story could be told in ancient Babylon 3000 years ago!!!

 

[Anji]

Trek to me has always been more about sociology more than science fiction.

 

[LOKAI of CHERON]

I feel the Sci-Fi/Action Adventure aspect of Trek was ramped down quite a lot after season two of TNG - somewhat to the detriment of the show IMO. I do feel the touchy feely "character development" facet of Trek became the dominant modus operandi.

TOS had the balance perfectly - cool concepts, colourful, exciting with just the right level of the aforementioned character development. A real sense of adventure.

 

[WillsBabe]

I think SF is essential to Trek. It lets it tell some great stories. It's the vehicle to put characters in positions to ponder "the human condition" in ways that they couldn't have done without the sf element. Alternatively, if those stories could be told, I think the sf element makes the stories new and interesting. I seem to recall Gene saying that sf was important in the early days because it allowed him to tell stories that TPTB might not have allowed on air if they hadn't been disguised by the trappings of sf.