^ Indeed, soft science fiction and hard science fiction.
Doctor Who is soft sci-fi. It's "soft" because it doesn't presume to be able to explain what the hell is going on, just that SOMEONE in the story understands it, and that their understanding is that some sort of well-known scientific principle is at work even if they can't plausibly explain it to anyone else (least of all the audience, but most importantly, the other non-scientist characters and/or protagonists).
Star Trek is soft sci-fi too, even though it pretends not to be. There's not a whole lot of difference between not being able to explain the science and pretending that you can, except the latter sometimes gets pretentious if you let it go to far.
Soft science fiction is more common because it is usually more character oriented and has less to do with science than it does with how the characters use it and interact with it. We don't, for example, need to know what powers the TARDIS to understand the Doctor's relationship with it; we have no idea how a sonic screwdriver works, but we know the Doctor loves it and always keeps it handy and we also know that it's very VERY cool. Least of all do we understand how the TARDIS' dimensional/spatial thingie works, we just know that everyone who sees it for the first time gets a really weird look on their face and runs circles around the box gasping to themselves "It's bigger on the inside..."
That's science fiction for you. It's "soft" because we don't understand it. And that difference is really kind of unimportant, because if you're honest with yourself you realize that you don't really understand HARD science fiction either and it's all very much the same to most people.
Doctor Who is soft sci-fi. It's "soft" because it doesn't presume to be able to explain what the hell is going on, just that SOMEONE in the story understands it, and that their understanding is that some sort of well-known scientific principle is at work even if they can't plausibly explain it to anyone else (least of all the audience, but most importantly, the other non-scientist characters and/or protagonists).
Star Trek is soft sci-fi too, even though it pretends not to be. There's not a whole lot of difference between not being able to explain the science and pretending that you can, except the latter sometimes gets pretentious if you let it go to far.
Soft science fiction is more common because it is usually more character oriented and has less to do with science than it does with how the characters use it and interact with it. We don't, for example, need to know what powers the TARDIS to understand the Doctor's relationship with it; we have no idea how a sonic screwdriver works, but we know the Doctor loves it and always keeps it handy and we also know that it's very VERY cool. Least of all do we understand how the TARDIS' dimensional/spatial thingie works, we just know that everyone who sees it for the first time gets a really weird look on their face and runs circles around the box gasping to themselves "It's bigger on the inside..."
That's science fiction for you. It's "soft" because we don't understand it. And that difference is really kind of unimportant, because if you're honest with yourself you realize that you don't really understand HARD science fiction either and it's all very much the same to most people.
