And that's fair but I don't think SNW is moving towards the second one. It is leaning heavily towards the character drama as they go through the SF stuff, starting with Pike and his dealings with the time crystal.
Is SNW getting too goofy?
- Thread starter ELCHawk
- Start date
This is an old debate in SF circles. There are SF readers (I'm friends with some of them) who like their SF to emphasize "ideas," not characterization or personal dramas.
But I'm not sure that ever really described STAR TREK. Going all the way back to TOS, sure, there were plenty of heady high-concept SF ideas, but the show generally took pains to root them in emotional human-interest dramas: Pike is in a funk and thinking of quitting Starfleet, Kirk has to kill his best friend, McCoy discovers that his old flame has been replaced by a salt vampire, Charlie X tries and fails to rejoin humanity, Lenore Karidian is driven to madness by her father's guilty past, Spock must choose between duty and his father's life, "Edith Keeler must die," etc.
Star Trek is at best when it engages the head and the heart, mixing cool SF concepts with relatable human drama, often on an operatic scale. Stories that are mostly about just the weird anomaly/alien of the week are thin soup, IMO.
But I'm not sure that ever really described STAR TREK. Going all the way back to TOS, sure, there were plenty of heady high-concept SF ideas, but the show generally took pains to root them in emotional human-interest dramas: Pike is in a funk and thinking of quitting Starfleet, Kirk has to kill his best friend, McCoy discovers that his old flame has been replaced by a salt vampire, Charlie X tries and fails to rejoin humanity, Lenore Karidian is driven to madness by her father's guilty past, Spock must choose between duty and his father's life, "Edith Keeler must die," etc.
Star Trek is at best when it engages the head and the heart, mixing cool SF concepts with relatable human drama, often on an operatic scale. Stories that are mostly about just the weird anomaly/alien of the week are thin soup, IMO.
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.....Ah this about making shows...."intelligent"....
It is almost impossible with that medium.
You need to be blessed beyond how most normal people function to make that work.
And this world is swimming in average.
If you want stuff that really goes beyond...read!
And if you could...it would probally fly over the collective heads of most people!
Besides in this modern world of shorter and shorter attention spans...nah!
It is almost impossible with that medium.
You need to be blessed beyond how most normal people function to make that work.
And this world is swimming in average.
If you want stuff that really goes beyond...read!
And if you could...it would probally fly over the collective heads of most people!
Besides in this modern world of shorter and shorter attention spans...nah!
Yeah, the only time that Trek really introduced a science fiction idea in order to explore it was Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
It wasn't much of an idea. Certainly not by science fiction standards of the time, anyway.
"Doomsday Machine" and "The Ultimate Computer" are not about the dangers of automation.* "City On The Edge Of Forever" is not about the ramifications to causality of time travel. "A Taste of Armageddon" is about civil disobedience, not computer war.
Star Trek used sf conceits often to explore other kinds of ideas. "The Enemy WIthin" is, if anything, a rumination on certain aspects of human nature. That's not a science fiction idea, but a philosophical/moral/psychological one.
So what's up with all the "Where are the new civilizations and new worlds" stuff, anyway?
Bruce Sterling once gave an address in which he said that the one thing science fiction really did that no other popular genre did was to evoke a sense of the weirdness of existence. His advice to a group of game designers was this: "Follow your weird."
"Children of The Comet" and "Charades" both had more than the Trek-standard dose of strange new aliens. Only once or twice in TOS were aliens that were very weird and different anything more than catalysts to motivate human characters and their adversaries in outlandish costumes into more prosaic conflicts.
I think some fans are just hungry for more weird. Maybe when Trek was new the very nature of the genre - look, people in a spaceship, and aliens! - was sufficient to provide that, given that the storylines almost never did. But we're all way past used to that, now, and think that Star Trek has lost something when really, we have.
*More than anything else, they're both character melodramas. Decker and Daystrom are men tormented by responsibility for their mistakes, each in his own way.
It wasn't much of an idea. Certainly not by science fiction standards of the time, anyway.
"Doomsday Machine" and "The Ultimate Computer" are not about the dangers of automation.* "City On The Edge Of Forever" is not about the ramifications to causality of time travel. "A Taste of Armageddon" is about civil disobedience, not computer war.
Star Trek used sf conceits often to explore other kinds of ideas. "The Enemy WIthin" is, if anything, a rumination on certain aspects of human nature. That's not a science fiction idea, but a philosophical/moral/psychological one.
So what's up with all the "Where are the new civilizations and new worlds" stuff, anyway?
Bruce Sterling once gave an address in which he said that the one thing science fiction really did that no other popular genre did was to evoke a sense of the weirdness of existence. His advice to a group of game designers was this: "Follow your weird."
"Children of The Comet" and "Charades" both had more than the Trek-standard dose of strange new aliens. Only once or twice in TOS were aliens that were very weird and different anything more than catalysts to motivate human characters and their adversaries in outlandish costumes into more prosaic conflicts.
I think some fans are just hungry for more weird. Maybe when Trek was new the very nature of the genre - look, people in a spaceship, and aliens! - was sufficient to provide that, given that the storylines almost never did. But we're all way past used to that, now, and think that Star Trek has lost something when really, we have.
*More than anything else, they're both character melodramas. Decker and Daystrom are men tormented by responsibility for their mistakes, each in his own way.
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For the most part, I am LOVING SNW. It is a breath of fresh air after Discovery and the first two seasons of Picard. I didn’t even mind the crossover episode, even though I only tolerate LD. That said, I feel a musical episode is jumping the shark. I’ll watch it, of course - I watched the Grey’s Anatomy musical episode more times than I should have, after all, but musicals are NOT my thing. I do feel that it’s getting a little overly goofy this season. How many goofy episodes do we need?
At least as many as Mickey episodes...
I mean, we were pretty serious until 5 and 7. So 3 out of 10 is ok by me.
It has people running around in pajamas shooting plastic ray guns at green monsters while hiding behind styrofoam rocks. There are a wealth of fantastical technologies accompanied by an absurd vocabulary.
"Goofy" is the trend. There is no limit.
"Goofy" is the trend. There is no limit.
I think the complaint is due to emphasis. In episodes like “Charades”, the personal drama is the A-plot and the alien or mcguffin of the week is the B-plot. Previous episodic Trek shows usually had the personal drama as the B-plot, and only a few episodes per season where it was the A-plot. Since SNW has fewer episodes per season, episodes where personal drama is the A-plot take up a bigger share of overall episodes.
This may be another reason SNW is so entertaining. On the rare occasions that the Roddenberry/Berman shows featured anything like a science fiction plot, they were pretty weak tea.
You hit the nail on the head with "macguffin." Trek's science fiction became just that pretty early on in the majority of cases - a gimmick to incite the action of the plot. Very few memorable stories are about the macguffin.
BTW, just because something's weird doesn't make it intriguing science fiction. Having Picard and his crew turn into children isn't science fiction; it's a fantasy contrivance to build some fairly uninspired comic business on.
You hit the nail on the head with "macguffin." Trek's science fiction became just that pretty early on in the majority of cases - a gimmick to incite the action of the plot. Very few memorable stories are about the macguffin.
BTW, just because something's weird doesn't make it intriguing science fiction. Having Picard and his crew turn into children isn't science fiction; it's a fantasy contrivance to build some fairly uninspired comic business on.
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"Fairly uninspired" is one way to put it... like calling a large plate of rancid meat "less than appetizing".
One can't be wrong when one uses a formal pronoun to refer to one's self. That's just grammar science.
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No.
And I do not buy the idea that Bernan era Trek was too serious. Q-Pid? Trials & Tribble-lations? Bride of Chaotica? Profits & Lace?
Now, I do think SNW is looser with their language & interactions on the bridge than the other shows. That was an adjustment for me, and I can see why it bothers some folks.
But a comedy episode or two is the norm. Even an occaisional song or two (Picard & Data, Seven & The Doctor, Vic Fontaine, Pill in Pic) has been done before. Not to mention Romjin in a Short Trek.
And I do not buy the idea that Bernan era Trek was too serious. Q-Pid? Trials & Tribble-lations? Bride of Chaotica? Profits & Lace?
Now, I do think SNW is looser with their language & interactions on the bridge than the other shows. That was an adjustment for me, and I can see why it bothers some folks.
But a comedy episode or two is the norm. Even an occaisional song or two (Picard & Data, Seven & The Doctor, Vic Fontaine, Pill in Pic) has been done before. Not to mention Romjin in a Short Trek.
A Fistful of Datas
Exactly. "The Enemy Within" is not actually about the mechanics of how the transporter works, or the scientific properties and composition of the alien orange dust that messes up the transporter, or even the biology of doomed unicorn dogs. The transporter mishap is just a sci-fi pretext for doing "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" in space, while making literal a metaphor about the duality of human nature. It's about how we need both our positive and negative qualities to be fully human, not a hard-SF look at the possible drawbacks of molecular transportation.
It's often been observed that a lot of the power of SF, written and filmed, comes from making metaphors literal, as a way to dramatize various aspects of the human condition. Just like Star Trek has often used futuristic gimmicks and settings as allegories for current events.
"Science FICTION" instead of "SCIENCE fiction."
One thing I appreciate about SNW is that the show is willing to not explain things, or to keep technical explanations short. I'm rewatching DS9, a show I love, and I nonetheless find scenes where characters spout paragraphs of gibberish a real waste of time. There's little suspense in solving a magical problem with a magical solution. It's all capricious and arbitrary.
I reckon SNW will remain popular for a long time because it puts its characters first, and doesn't pretend that its science-fictional artifice is the main point of interest. And when it gives us a high concept like "Children of the Comet," it handles it deftly and with an elegant simplicity.
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Yep.
It didn't help that as time went on technical dialogue on those shows was, increasingly, gibberish - as you say. "We've detected an anomalous surge of verteron particles" is exactly the same as "a wizard did it."
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