Spoilers Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 3x09 - "Terrarium"

[Mudd]

"Egregiously bad" by that standard = Star Trek. One has to grade a show featuring interbreeding with extraterrestrial species, machines that dissolve and rebuild people instantly at a distance, and FTL spacecraft on a steep curve.

If one can buy creatures made of pure energy that disable technology in real time over interstellar distance, objecting to a "salt vampire" on scientific -rather than narrative - grounds is a pointless cavil.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

I refer you to Clarke's Laws.

 

[fireproof78]

With regrets all around.

And action. No understanding, no diplomacy. Just basically "shoot her."

 

[Mudd]

Clarke's "Laws" are, diplomatically, wishful thinking.

More bluntly, they're hot air.

Late in the so-called "Golden Age of Science Fiction," writers and editors and fans got very wrapped up in pushing what was really a vibrantly imaginative genre of pulp fiction writing as profound, meaningful and - most importantly - respectable. They leveraged the space programs of the 1950s and 1960s, among other things. But overall, a lot of printer's ink was expended on the subject of what was "true science fiction" as distinct from merely fantasy.

But, you know, they were still writing what they were writing, which was the kind of stuff editors would by and that the kids wanted to read. And not a lot were willing to give up the bag of magic tricks that had become so important to the adventure aspects of the craft.

Some did. Sometimes. Generally...no.

Stuff like Clarke's Laws are a fig leaf for sorcery masquerading as fictional science. But they sound wise, coming from someone like Clarke who actually did understand technology very well but didn't want to be bothered with facts that got in the way of a good yarn.

 

[Ray Hardgrit]

"Egregiously bad" by that standard = Star Trek. One has to grade a show featuring interbreeding with extraterrestrial species, machines that dissolve and rebuild people instantly at a distance, and FTL spacecraft on a steep curve.

If one can buy creatures made of pure energy that disable technology in real time over interstellar distance, objecting to a "salt vampire" on scientific -rather than narrative - grounds is a pointless cavil.

This has never been true. People can let a few necessary things like FTL, translators and transporters slip in order to have a story in the first place, and then be taken out of the story by something relatively innocuous. The closer things are to real life experience, the harder they have to work to make them seem real.

 

[fireproof78]

So, Star Trek being more fantastical makes it more believable?

 

[Mudd]

This has never been true. People can let a few necessary things like FTL, translators and transporters slip in order to have a story in the first place, and then be taken out of the story by something relatively innocuous. The closer things are to real life experience, the harder they have to work to make them seem real.

That's a better way of analyzing the question, yes. Skiffy stories lean into a lot of textural stuff to buy plausibility in stories built on impossible premises.

Someone using an energy weapon to heat coffee during a crisis probably doesn't make a fuckload of sense - the existence of these gadgets as shown raises all sorts of questions on its own - but it feels real, somehow. People would do that if they could.*

That said, it's still problematic to nitpick a plot detail on the grounds that it's "unscientific" in an overall environment of technobabble.

And, just for the record, "necessary things like FTL" and teleportation (or telepathy, for that matter) do break the universe we live in more fundamentally than extraterrestrial life that craves table salt.

And it's not like the creature conceived a child with a human, after all. Now, that would be a bridge too far even for Star Trek.

Right? Right?

*In fact, they'd be especially delighted to do it to solve a little problem if it were a nonapproved use of equipment.

 

[cooleddie74]

It's Star Trek. If I want hard science I won't watch Star Trek.

 

[Paul755]

this one held up pretty good on rewatch. It’s a shame they waited so long to really do an Ortegas episode. Wasn’t a big fan of the Metron showing up at the end though.