that is the new defense by youtubers that make their money complaining about the newest entries in legacy IPs as to why new Trek shows are the worst now that the shows are starting to get good by a growing number of the fandom., that and the new shows are too emotional.
I clicked on this thinking "somebody thinks Star Trek was RELATABLE, therefore MORE POPULAR than more scientifically accurate films with nowhere near the following.or conventions" It is brilliant in that its relatable, and it deals with social science and moral questions. not any of that other stuff. it was social effects of advanced cultures and entities in interaction , not based on the real science at all - this is also done in the context of 40 years - and Star Trek RETORT , is flip phones - Communicators and countless other predictions of Star Trek.
@@gorilladisco9108 Fair, but they seem to be able to control it, which implies a power setting. Honestly it was just too expensive to film simulate zero G, and I realize that. Never noticed it back then, definitely notice now that I have The Expanse ;-)
The other major miracle exemption being "inertial dampers". The Expanse does an excellent job of demonstrating the dangers of rapid acceleration (or deceleration)
The Expanse makes some overtures towards Newtonian mechanics, but doesn't give much thought into the actual mathematics of it all. But at least they do a better job than simply saying "we have devices that dampen inertia and compensate for the Heisenberg principle."
@@jolan_tru yeah, I'd say the travel times count as a second miracle, seems like we should be talking about dozens of years of travel time so far in the story, even with the Epstein drive. But I can allow the artistic license.
@@jolan_tru yeah. The Expanse uses the physics to add to the story, to ratchet up the stakes and the tension in the scenes. In that way it's fine and what else can anyone really expect from a tv show shot mostly in downtown Toronto 😛
@@maxwellschmidt235 Nah, the travel times are accounted for, but the reasoning being used entails three miracle exemptions, not one: • The Epstein drive miracle efficiency • The classic tiny magical fuel tank that never empties itself despite very frequent acceleration and deceleration phases. • The almost mandatory compact landing crafts with regular chemical thrusters that somehow don't need boosters and huge fuel tanks to takeout and leave atmosphere once the ground miasion is done. An unrelated fourth miracle is obviously everything protomolecule related. That thing doesn't just propose highly advanced alien tech, it straight up violates a number of physical laws for narrative purposes.
There was a phrase I thought of a other day when I was contemplating Halo that might be applicable. Crème brûlèe sci-fi. A very thin seemingly hard layer on top of a lot of soft gooey material.
Good way to put it, especially since many scientific concepts are very counterintuitive. That and the idea that "sciency" words make something scientific. Oh, if only I could bullshit physics courses on intuition, instead of studying...
I thought the most famous quote in Star Trek was "Live Long and Prosper." When I think Hard Sci Fi, I think "The Martian" with Matt Damon. I don't know if other people liked that movie, but I enjoyed it. I think the consequence of Hard Sci Fi--of sticking as closely to known science as possible, is that it limits the storyteller's ability to go into allegory. For example, you can't have an alien culture as a stand in for some form of humanity if the tech in your story has no way of travelling to another star system.
When it comes to The Martian, I switched my science-brain off when the storm started. A huge Martian storm would be about as destructive as a mild spring breeze.
@@jolan_tru Why exactly do you think that? Everything I've seen says the low gravity and low air density can lead to atrociously high winds, with even the average wind speed being 20-30 mph and peaking at 60mph. Add martian grit to that and the dust storms would be awful.
@@declanbennett1085 The air is FAR thinner. That actually demonstrates the big problem with hard SF: the author can't know everything. You may have a PhD in astrophysics and 30 years of experience in structural engineering, but how much biology do you know? What about human psychology under extreme conditions? Even if it's a big budget movie that can hire some scientific consultants, you're going to muddle up some science somewhere.
@@declanbennett1085 The Martian wind speeds are generally high, but because of the thin-ass air density, there's precious little energy in a Martian windstorm by comparison. Think about getting hit by a cyclist moving at 30 MPH and compare that to getting hit by a pick up moving at 30 MPH.
@@gorilladisco9108 Except Trek's UT works even with previously unknown languages (aside from a handful of notable exceptions, like of Enterprise, when the tech was still in development, and the famous "Darmok" TNG episode). Over the course of TOS and TNG, I'm pretty sure they had multiple first contacts, and the translator worked pretty flawlessly. DS9 added the Dominion races (though IIRC most of them had handwavium on their end too). And then there's Voyager... Modern machine translation relies on huge corpuses of existing text as training data and, while impressive, is still imperfect. Trek's UT would require, at minimum, a new, radically different approach. Even the fan-theory that it relies on a brain scan of the speaker requires making a lot of hard-to-justify assumptions about alien neurology. Though maybe easier to justify in the presence of a reason for the near-ubiquity of humanoid body plans... But maybe that ubiquity itself deserves a spot on the list of "miracle exemptions"...
@@solarshado Yeah, Star Trek relies on an awful lot of both background and foreground miracle exemptions. The 'nearly everyone is a humanoid' trope is partially accounted for though, in a few ways. For one, similar evolutionary contexts will lead to similar naturally occurring evolutionary solutions, but this 'solution' to the humanoid problem only get us back a step, leaving us wondering why there are so many M class planets with so similar evolutionary hurdles and evolutionary paths taken. A second solution offered in Trek is the TNG episode revolving around the existence of an ancient humanoid species, which allegedly seeded a bunch of M class planets that became the homeworlds of most of the humanoids of Trek.
@MGazT Oh, inertial damper, even superluminal speed are pure fantasy. Also energy weapons that disintegrate you with minimum energy use. And I'm not even gonna go near how many godlike beings are there in the series, Q perhaps being the most notorious (or nefarious).
@@alexandresobreiramartins9461 Energy weapons on Trek in general. Starship phasers can bore to the core of a planet in seconds, trillions of times above the fusion threshold. Every time a phaser is fired at a planet, it should go off with a massive supercritical fusion reaction. Starships that explode without blinding everyone. And don't even get me started on the complete lack of quantum mechanics and relativity.
@MGazT There's no vacuum of space in Tolkien. His world is just a pizza under a glass dome with the stars scattered around by Vardka, which the Sun and Moon circle above in flying ships.
"Inertial Dampeners" my arse. May as well call it the physics switcher-offer. Oh wait, they already have one of them don't they? The Heisenberg Compensator?
I think you hit the nail on the head when you say that all too often hard sci fi is seen as inherently better than soft sci fi. It seems plenty of people railing against their work as softer, think that softness is a bad thing, an unfair label they have to rip off. I've seen similar stuff with fantasy, where, supposedly mature, realistic works are talked to the moon and back as inherently better. But if realistic is better, why write fantasy, or indeed soft sci fi at all? After all that'd just be lowering the quality of your work. Even hard sci fi by its very nature as imagining a future could get things wrong, like if an accepted theory is overturned after the work is published. Saying realism is better, is essentially saying all spec fic is inherently lesser quality than stories set in our current world, and the more different they are the crappier they are. Way to stand up for the genre. That and why are so many supposedly "realistic" fantasy works, filled with sex and violence? Sure these sorts of things *could* happen in real life, but considering the massive infant mortality of the premodern era and crude food growing techniques, it's probably lead to the ultra violent society in question getting wiped out. 80%+ of the medieval population was dedicated just to growing food,(1) yet apparently society is strong enough to survive bloodthirsty kings and nobles and giant ravenous hellbeasts killing said peasants? And how come we se what amounts to a very special episode on 80% of the population, then back to the scheming gilded nobles. It's almost like medieval farming is boring or something... In short I agree that realism is all too often used as term of approval, in fantasy as well as sci fi, when it should be neutral. Having watched most of BSG re season 1, I'd like to say that the whole thing really came off as pretentious compared to Star Trek. While BSG has a harder setting when it comes to physics and natural science the plot came off as a silly Hollywood soap opera with the Cylons not so cryptically implying they were going to ally with the humans... after their genocidal unprovoked invasion. I suppose that's possible according to scientific laws- but it's incredibly stupid. That and the tired prophecy stuff to tell us this isn't a massive unprecedented time- it's Tuesday. Every Tuesday the humans get kicked out of their planets and have to go on a big voyage to find Earth. You'd think they'd keep a map of where the damn planet is. I think you somewhat overstepped the scienciness of Star Wars. Sure, the droids (presumably) work via electricity and such, but I wouldn't call it scientific at all, what with the mystical telekinesis granting Force being central- and that's okay. The entire point of fiction is making things up and I actually like Star Wars more than Star Trek. It doesn't have to be scientific to be good. (1)www.bl.uk/the-middle-ages/articles/peasants-and-their-role-in-rural-life
Realism is not inherently good. how could it be? why would we want excessive realism in a temporary escape from reality? it's good in limited amounts to maintain suspension of disbelief.
I've heard the argument that existence of humanoid aliens, or even just intelligent life within the ballpark of modern human society (give or take a few ten of thousands of years) is a miracle conceit.
There's not enough data to say. We don't know how likely life was to develop on this planet at all. We don't know how many variables there are. It could be crazy likely or crazy unlikely.
I'd grant that, though TOS actually gave an explanation that the humanoid species were seeded throughout the galaxy and share common ancestry. Not sure that hardens it much, but hard doesn't strictly equal good.
The way I like to think of "Hard" SF vs "Soft" SF is the relation of the technology in the setting versus our known science. If a technology is created for narrative reasons and then justified using science, even if it's not "real" science, it's likely softer, but if the technology is created by extrapolating known science, it's likely harder. These approaches are equally valuable and have their place in storytelling, which I think is often glossed over in discussions about hard vs soft Sci-Fi. There's always this attempt to justify hard Sci-Fi as being more mature or more adult-oriented, but at the same time sometimes you need soft Sci-Fi to explore certain concepts that can't be done with known science. The most important part about Science Fiction is the Fiction; the Science is just the vessel in which it is told. Some people prefer freighters, others like their single-person starfighters.
Hard scifi is basically how detailed the attention to science technology and understanding is, as well as how much the narrative of the story depends on that science technology and understanding. Soft scifi is just using the themes of science technology and understanding as a backdrop for a generic story... meaning you can re-tell that story in a variety of other genres and it has zero effect on the narrative.
From my personal experience often then when I hear people saying Star Trek is Hard Scifi is to imply it's therefore better then Star Wars, Babylon 5, BSG (either version), ect. Anyone who I know whose ego isn't bound to Star Trek being the absolute best thing ever, consider Star Trek little harder then Star Wars aka very Soft Scifi. That's not a bad thing though, after all the quality of the story isn't dependent on the "hardness" of the universe.
Star Trek has done quite a bit to inspire it’s “soft” science to become today’s reality-cell phones, tablets, medical equipment. Who knows, Trek fans may eventually create a warp drive. What is the point of hard science fiction if it lacks the fiction element and operates according to what we believe is possible today? Hard science fiction of a few decades ago would seem terribly dated now. I care less for scientific accuracy than for the stories they tell.
Most Sci-Fi can't even adhere to internal logic, let alone hard scientific principals - the enjoyment is in the storytelling, and I really enjoy "Star Trek"!
I have been reading SF for 55 years and I think classifying SF is somewhat ridiculous, especially if people try to argue that their favorite SF series is more "realistic" (hard) and therefore better than another. SF is a vehicle for the story and if the story is good and the science is self consistent it will work. In their time, fantasy stories told tales in the terms we used to understand the world - magic, gods, and supernatural events. SF re-clothes those stories using our current understanding of how the world works to speak to us in a voice we are more receptive to hear. Neither fantasy or SF is better or is a universal language. Fantasy is still a vibrant genre and can tell stories in ways standard SF cannot and so thrives as a story telling medium. It is important to place SF in its place and not get too invested in it. These are just stories, for pity's sake. Enjoy them, learn from them and then go about the rest of your life thankful for the creativity and hard work that gave you such gifts.
I think understanding hard vs. soft is valuable in enjoying sci fi, as long as it is kept in the context that hard doesn't equal good or more nor does soft equal bad or less. One area I disagree with Rowan is the idea that hard sci fi is less accessible. In fact, I think that to some extent, harder sci fi can be more accessible to audiences for whom the illusion of reality is more easily broken. I digress to say that in evaluating arts, the medium often is the message. The language of hard vs. soft changes the weights we assign to different elements in giving our opinions. The important thing is not that the work is hard or soft- the important thing is that we accentuate different things as we think about and discuss works at different ends of the spectrum. If someone said that they wish the expanse had cooler laser blasters, I'd say they were completely missing the point of how the expanse is trying to do sci fi. If someone said they wish star trek had more realistic depictions of directed energy fire, I'd say they as well are missing the point. Both great sci fi stories, but both need to be evaluated in contradictory ways.
@@maxwellschmidt235 hard or soft, what's important to me is that it's at least entertaining to watch. The Berman Braga Trek is boring and tedious to me so what ever science is there I'll miss because I'll have already turned it off.
@@m.e.3862 taste is subjective. I'm not arguing all star trek is perfect, I'm arguing that if you provided a critical review saying you didn't like nuTrek because of scientific inaccuracies, you would have said nothing because you missed the point.
@@RowanJColeman would it be considered one exception if all the different tech in a sci-fi series is based on one principle. For example how mass effect has one new scientific principle, the mass effect, is used to explain Ftl, ant-grav, and psychic powers. Or is that multiple exceptions.
@@Nostripe361 That's actually a really good point. I think Mass Effect does a brilliant job of explaining its technology. I could see it being argued as hard sci-fi for sure. Not sure if I'd agree, but it's certainly interesting to ponder.
@@RowanJColeman I don't really see it as hardsci either. The all female race that mate with any species, majority of species being the standard humanoid design, psychic powers, the fact that in millennia not a single dominant race looked at the mass relays and the citadel and thought, "this is suspicious. Perhaps we shouldn't blindly trust all the technology that just fell into our laps". I see it a Star Trek in a similar are on the hard soft scifi scale; kind of in the middle with enough hard scifi ideas and concepts to be believable at first glance but a lot of issues when you investigate it further. A place I usually think of as Neutral scifi since its not hard enough to be hard scifi but its a little to hard to be soft scifi/space fantasy. I kinda asked about if it counts as a singular exception since that kind of idea has become kind of popular in recent time with things like mass effect or how gundam usually explains everything with a single scifi energy/particle that powers all the new tech. I even used it myself when I designed a scifi world for fun; basing it on the idea that when humans discovered how to breach subspace and use it as a power source and ftl, they found multiple new particles and types of radiation that made it up and all the new tech is basically based on researching them and the weird affects they have on real space. I think it helps you bend the rule of limiting the exceptions for believability because all of the exceptions you make are just smaller parts of one big exception everyone focuses on when watching/reading your story.
@@RowanJColeman A good example of this concept is the Orthogonal series by Greg Egan. He changes one principle slightly and builds a universe from it. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthogonal_(series) www.gregegan.net/ORTHOGONAL/00/PM.html So a novel that seems pure fantasy - talking plants and clockwork generation ships is very much hard sci-fi.
Very well said. Comparing it to the Star Wars OT and Prequels, Star Trek has more "magic dressed as science" moments and concepts. It's definitely soft scifi
This is such a great video!!! I kind of can't believe you did this! It'll sound odd but I actually did my 2nd year dissertation analysing the scientific inaccuracies of Star Trek, Star Wars and some others. I thought it'd be a fun idea but as always, maths and physics and 30,000 words can make any topic boring 😂
Additional miracle exemptions: - The universal translator - Matter/antimatter power plants - A plethora of Vulcan superabilities - Psionics - The positronic brain - Humanity evolving beyond interpersonal conflict - All these and much, much more!!!
"Miracle exemption" is another restating of John Campbell, who was more of the guiding force for science fiction than Stan Lee was for superhero comics. It was John Campbell who insisted back in the 1930s that good science fiction should have only one miracle exemption, although he did not coin a succinct phrase for it.
I am rewatching this video and I think one of the most important/brilliant points is thinking of Scfi in terms of a Spectrum from Hard to Soft.... It clears everything up from the old model of more fixed genres taught at University......... I would be very interested for some young literary majors to explore this spectrum.... Excellent video by the way, very clever...
Some more miracle exemptions: inter-species mating compatibility, force fields, radiation shielding, the miniaturization of the galaxy (even with warp drive, you couldn't get to and from all the places they depict in the time frames they imply), sub space communication (instantaneous across many light years), cloaking (works across the entire EM spectrum, including visual), time travel, telepathy, a whole array of miraculous medical technology...there's probably over a hundred that are either currently inexplicable, or worse, known to be completely impossible even in principle.
I wonder if Blade Runner would qualify as hard sci-fi? My initial thought is yes, but the more I think about replicants, the less inclined I am to believe that it truly is. Blade Runner is also far more sci-fi in general than we see. One of the coolest things about it in my opinion is that the more fantastical space ships and space stations and whatnot exist in that world, but we never really see it. I think that’s neat.
IIRC in TNG the holo deck was referred to as ‘simulated matter’. In Voyager I think they were pretty consistent in referring to it as photons and force fields (wasn’t that the name of the Doctor’s holonovel?). Then there was one alien that had a ship disguised as a Federation ship and he called the technology ‘particle synthesis’, and he implied that it was more advanced than holographic tech. In Enterprise some alien refers to a holodeck like technology as ‘resequenced photons’, whatever that means. In all of these, I get the impression that holodeck tech is significantly different from transporter/replicator tech.
I've often though that Star Wars is slightly softer than Star Trek, but that doesn't make one better than the other any more than The Expanse is better because it is so hard. I love that The Expanse tries so hard to keep the science realistic. It's a wonderful angle. But it's not better because of it. I actually hate that so many now compare any sci-fi to The Expanse like it's some kind of gold standard everyone "must match" to be good. Star Trek, Star Wars, Babylon 5, Dune, Starcraft, Honor Harrington, and many others aren't anywhere close, but are still loved because of their story. At the end of the day, if The Expanse had been a terrible story, I doubt it would be getting the attention it's getting. People want a good story first, second, and third. They want characters to connect to. The world at large only needs to feed that, which any good sci-fi does. So we really need to stop judging sci-fis on how hard or soft they are. All that matters is the story and how it's executed. How hard they are is just what kind of gravy goes with it.
The Expanse is good mainly because of the characters. In most ways the technology and social issues are more on-line with what we can expect in the next few decades rather than the 200 years, barring the Epstein Drive. AI, overpopulation, environmental issues, and absurdly powerful corporations are all notable examples.
I like it because I like the characters and the story. It's actually entertaining ( for example the music enhances the action and isn't bland wallpaper in the background.) The science serves the story and isn't there as a device to make references that the viewers recognize so they can congratulate themselves on how smart and scientifically savvy they are
I love The Expanse, but the way they handle inertia and momentum is only mildly better than Star Trek having a device to dampen inertia. Star Trek just says "we don't need to worry about it because of this fabulous device" and the Expanse says "Newtonian mechanics work differently in this universe."
I think star trek really shines in social science, not the tech science, that might be why its percieved as harder, it takes more focus on the social effects (to a degree its still slightly fantastical and idealistic)
Star Wars doesn't have time travel, teleporters or universal translators (pre-Disney at least, I don't know what bullshit the mouse has shoveled into the franchise recently as I gave up on it after The Force Awakens.) A Star Wars blaster's effects are more-or-less consistent with what would happen if you shot a glob of super-hot matter at a target, compared to phasers which can cause a target to simply disappear without affecting anything around it. The Force is treated as magic in-universe, but beings with mental powers similar to the Jedi show up regularly in Star Trek, going back as far as the second episode ever shot. Even Force ghosts aren't that different from Vulcan katras as a mechanism for allowing someone to live through death. Star Wars is harder sci-fi than Star Trek. It just uses less technobabble.
I really like that thing about "miracle exemptions" i think that gives words to an idea that has been bouncing around in the back of my head. Thanks for sharing that.
**Supplemental** Hey Tale Foundry, fuck yeah, they're awesome! Since I learned the definitions of hard Sci fi and soft Sci fi and the thousands of branches in between. I never saw Star Trek as hard Sci fi. Probably because I knew and seen things like the Martian and Alien, which are far harder Sci fis than Star Trek. However genre can aid and hinder just like tropes and expectation. I just think of Star Trek as fairly soft scifi with its wibbly wobbly stuff, but when it wants to it can get harder. Much like non euclidean fluid! A joke I made before and will make again!
I agree with you on this. Star Trek in my eyes has always been more of a morality problem solving type of show that is very loose on the science explanations. However when I think Sci Fi I still think Trek being a life long Trekker.
I've never understood why some people will reject a story just because it has some fantastical elements. Isn't the purpose of fiction to be fictional? Story is more important than accuracy, even when story relies on accuracy to work.
A classification of different types of sifi I've heard about is the Moh's scale of sifi hardness. The name is borrowed from the Moh's scale of rock hardness, but the basic concept is the same. There are 6 categories of sifi. 1. Science Fantasy These sifi are typically set in a futuristic or space-like setting, but the technology has absolutely no basis in science and doesn't even attempt to give explanations. In many cases, these sifi even have literal magic. Examples would be Star wars and Warhammer 40k. 2. Babble Sifi These sifi aren't much different to Science Fantasy, however, they at least pretend to be hard sifi. They tend to dial back any mystical elements and often provide lengthy, yet convoluted and nonsensical explanations for their technology. It's in this category, where Star Trek sits. 3. Science + This is a strange middle ground. This sifi has a lot of fictional elements, however they do try to make a genuine attempt to explain it. These sifi have too many soft sifi elements to be hard and too many hard sifi elements to be soft. The only example I can think of for this category is Halo. Maybe also BSG. 4. One Big Lie. This is the first category of what could truly be considered hard sifi. Sifi in this category are often mostly hard sifi with only one or two exceptions. This is where sifi such as the Expanse and Mass Effect would go. The last two categories are basically reality. With category 5 being stuff that humanity doesn't have or haven't done, but could soon. Such as the first manned mission to Mars. And category 6 are sifi about stuff that humanity have or can do. Like a movie set on a space station in Earth's orbit .
I think you are wrong here. I think once you grant an exemption for one sci-fi Star Drive you've exempted all. If the protomolecule is okay and all of its various Incantations, then so are cylons and replicators. You get a thumbs-up because you make a video. I appreciate a video.
Yeah, just admitting that the laws of physics work differently sometimes is enough to imply that if the humans figure out how it works, they could have FTL, artificial gravity, transporters, etc.
Alternate take. The term "hard science" might be also used relatively ("Series A is more hard science than Series B"), That is, going to more pains of fitting story details within current research/accepted models. Some, myself included, see TOS Trek as more "hard science" than other Trek series. Open to debate, sure, but we don't have a homogeneous view of Trek rather than relative one per Series/movie.
Firstly, thank you. This needs to be said more loudly and often than for most shows because of how effectively the technobabble has convinced even the nerd collective. Secondly, the Alcubierre Drive is not Trek's FTL miracle and it's not really that similar to Warp Drive in the first place. They both bend something as part of their propulsion, what that something is is pretty damned important. A lot of Trekkies just hear the word warp and stop listening. SUBSPACE is the Trek FTL miracle allowing numerous levels of intensely faster speeds between vanilla Warp and the variously handicapped Transwarp systems like the Borg network. Almost more important is the subspace communication relay system and that's probably the first bit that should make it clear how wildly it breaks from the regular-space squeezing Alcubierre concept.
Others have mentioned that Star Trek also has inertial dampeners. It also has shields. How do those work? How about tractor beams? And structural integrity fields. And while matter/antimatter annihilation is theoretically possible, where do they get their antimatter? Star Trek is just *loaded* with Miracle Tech. It's also loaded with blatant mistakes: like, the Enterprise loses power, its orbit starts decaying immediately. That doesn't happen. You don't need power to maintain an orbit, except perhaps tiny amounts applied very infrequently.
_"Star Trek has often been called, "Hard Sci-Fi" by a lot of Trekkies"_ Really?! That just astonishes me. They may as well call it "softcore porn" because of all the kissing Kirk does.
Reminds me of those “intellectuals” who claim Star Wars and Doctor Who are fantasy and not scientifically accurate, like Star Trek. Don’t get me started on the one with the hate boner for Titan AE
It was nice hearing you discuss the devaluing of Star Wars as a sci-fi property. I have heard the “Star Trek is a hard sci-fi” and that did turn me away from trying Trek for quite some time. I like both of them now for their own individualities.
Perhaps LL&P is more popular among casual and hard-core trekkies, but for the fast majority of people who have never seen Star Trek, I think "Beam me up, Scotty" wins.
It's actually a real challenge for me to come up with memorable one-liners from Star Treks that aren't TOS. Picard has a few with "Make it So", "Tea, Earl Grey, Hot" and "Shut up, Westley". Maybe "Please state the nature of your medical emergency" from Voyager. I feel like the one-liner went out of fashion by the time we got Voyager, DS9 and Enterprise.
Definitely not hard sci-fi, however the writers and showrunners (pre-JJ/Kurtzman), always took care for things to make sense in their universe and had their own set of rules (like with the tech). Even if it was just a throwaway line or vague technobabble. Plus it’s the future, principles can change from today’s scientific understandings. I’d say there’s been definitely more care than a lot of other franchises and there’s nothing wrong with that IMO. Sacrificing the show’s rules for potential new fans as we’ve already seen post 2009, isn’t great and just leads more to the realms of Space Fantasy. Besides, Trek at its heart, has always been it’s narratives and characters.
Star Trek also has a lot of ghosts and gods. Also their economic system is a big mystery people try to reason about. Star Trek is not hard at all, but the things are still relatable so that it is an inspirational future that looks kind of plausible and something you can work towards.
About the teleportation... I recently read in a science article that it _might_ be a possible in the future, but that you would have to destroy the original body in order to do it (dematerialize) and then to re-materialize you would create *a copy* of the body ─ each time you used the device. Therefore that may take its toll on the body, sort of like if you take a copy of a photograph in a copy machine, then copy the copy, repeat... (Same thing that happens with our body as we age. All cells in the body are replaced each 7 years...but I digress) ;) My biggest problem is that science generally rejects the idea that we have a soul. What would happen to the soul if what I wrote above will be the case? Will it be attached? 🤔
Don't forget universal translators that for some reason doesn't translate Klingon. Speaking of Universal translators, those things were obviously invented by the English because they translate Frenchmen to speak with an English accent.
Star Trek is soft sci fi lol. very much so. The only thing that's even remotely plausible scientifically in any way I can immediately think of, is the basic concept of the warp drive is consistent with the real theory of an albiecurre drive, which still would require things we dont even know exists.
Most of the Star Trek miracle exemptions were created simply because it started out as a one hour, episodic TV show. They didn't have the time in a one hour show to take shuttle crafts back and forth between a planet and the Enterprise, so they invented transporters. The same goes for artificial gravity. They didn't have the time to explain how people stay stuck to the deck. Also, in the 1960s, "ray guns" were just classic sci-fi weapons and needed to be in a space "western." Therefore phasers appeared. And the Vulcan neck grip was just invented to get an unarmed Spock and Kirk out of tight situations. So, I agree. Star Trek is not hard science fiction, but it could not be given the demands of the one hour TV show format of TOS and TNG.
Not sure how I feel about trying to fix it now though, there's a lot of things I like about Discovery but when she is using the Universal translator in one of the first episodes and you can hear the translation over the original voice, just makes me miss the nonsensical way old Star Trek just skipped past all that and got to the story. That said I do like the Progenitor episode when you find out why there are so many humanoid races, so I guess some explanations after can work for me, kinda funny how they tried to explain the Klingons changing over the seasons, but then they go and change them again.
Just because budget constraints and time caused them to have to do these things, doesn't mean they suddenly become hard sci fi. Hard sci fi is about scientific accuracy not quality. Hell, I like Star Wars a lot more than Star Trek.
Don't forget the universal translator that's able to instantly perfectly translate languages on the fly that have never been studied or even heard before
Warp drive, Gravity plating, replicators, transporters, phasers. "On the Enterprise alone, there are five miracle exemptions!" I'd like to add that they have a friggin' telepath on the bridge!
I hadn't considered this so deeply as you just presented it. Well said. It is kind of a shame that the most well-known quote from Star Trek is not one of the more meaningful ones, of which there are many.
Star Trek is easy to classify. It is a western military-esque space opera with elements of hard and high minded sci fi with dramatic aspects and bits of horror and mystery woven into an ensemble series with great comedic timing.
RE: the goerge lucas cartoon - actually the core philosphy of star wars is that good and bad are constructs and we always can choose good and redeem ourselves regardless of what has happened in the past
When counting Miracle Exemptions on the enterprise, don't forget the universal translator that can usually translate species languages the first time you meet them.
Yeah. I would say that universal translators are possible. Though in it's infancy, such technology does exist today, however getting the translator to work for a new language would require years of studying that language.
No mention of forcefields? Also, the Impulse Drive (slower than light travel) is pretty miraculous in terms of the speed achieved with the small amount of fuel carried
Im a sci-fi fanboy, and love both Trek and Star Wars - just for different reasons. And for all those Trek snobs out there, of which sadly - there are many, who make fun of SW's the force and say it can't be classified as sci-fi because of this, might i remind you of The Q and the abilities that the Q race have. Not to mention the tons of times they go to parallel dimensions or go back in time, all that shit is every bit as magical/fanciful as the force is in SW. And that doesn't mean that Trek is bad or somethin, it just means that it is far from hard sci-fi. In fact it's almost as far from hard sci-fi as SW for that matter.
@@jolan_tru Doc 10: We're both reversing the polarity Doc 11: Yeah, so? Doc 10: You're reversing it, and I'm reversing it back again - we're **confusing** the polarity ...
Why is this even a thing? When the conversation gets into how flaccid or erect science fiction is, I think people would be better off doing something else with their day.
You'd be surprised. There's even people arguing The Last Jedi is heretical for daring to have hyperspace ramming. We can deal with a mystical energy field that gives people superpowers, but a fudging of our magical ftl- now shit's real!
@@adams13245 The funny thing about The Last Jedi is that a third of the plot is based on a poor understanding of how space works, but everyone only complains about Luke being a hobo or the Hyperspace Ramming scene. It's ridiculous.
@@optillian4182 I'm not to up to date on the nature of space, and so would be interested in knowing which of the plots has the misunderstanding of how space works. Is it the chase between the First Order and Rebels? Also I agree, most realism complaints are highly selective, like how medieval history nerds will complain about the detailing on weapons and armor, but the enormous flying firebreathing lizards get a pass.
Star Trek was never hard science fiction, but it at least made some small effort at scientific realism, when it first premiered, unlike other (cough) “science fiction” shows at the time (Lost in Space, Gilligan’s Planet, etc.). It was also unique in that it employed some of the top science-fiction authors of the time to write some of its scripts. Unfortunately, Star Trek stopped stopped carrying about science long ago, and each sequel series has been worse than the last (not only in terms of science but writing in general). But the special effects have gotten shinier, and the actors hotter, and that’s all the fans seem to care about.
My girlfriend is a sci fi fan and says that The Dragonriders of Pern is Sci Fi since all of the dragons were created genetically and there are science explanations for some things (all of about 10 pages in the series). I think it is Fantasy with Sci Fi elements. We both like the series. Good enough for both of us.
I think in times of tablets and touch screens, making paper vs. PADDs a measurement of hard vs soft sci-fi doesn't really work anymore as much as it did before touch screens were widely used or even possible at all.
As far as the universal translator, today we can speak into a smartphone, play the translation to someone immediately in their language, have them speak into the phone, and hear their answer immediately in our language. Close, but no cigar. We can still hear each other speaking in our own language. And there are the antigravity units for moving heavy objects. Maybe they could be considered the same technology as gravity plating, just turned around. But they work in any orientation. They work not only horizontally, but as in "The Changeling," when held vertically. No, I don't have a life.
Addendum: It is very difficult to write hard science fiction, as it rules out so much that is worth delving into. The temptation is to invoke a technological miracle here and there to open our fictional world for our characters. The question becomes how much is too much? It is interesting that no one seems to question that the fantasy genre can make up whatever is convenient to their story. Science fiction requires more discipline, and hard sci-fi the most of all. It should be remembered that many sober physicists who "discover" new phenomena could find them first within the confines of an "imaginative" story. Sometimes it requires someone to suggest some technology is not impossible before real scientists will even consider it. As Arthur C. Clarke said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." and we, with our 21st century arrogance, make claims about what will never be possible? I'll cut Star Trek a little slack; they got a lot right and they were far better than what came before, and they made every effort to make their technology seem reasonable within the confines of the show they wanted to do. I can enjoy both ST and the Expanse and a lot in between. I don't have as much interest in someone being able to fly or turn invisible merely because they mumble some incantation.
I used to think of Star Trek as hard scifi, but that was before I knew the true meaning of the term. Back then I thought it meant that Star Trek was of a high quality and was a quintessential example of scifi as a genre. By that logic, soft scifi would encompass poorer quality works or those that might represent a different genre better than they do for scifi. I later discovered that the soft - hard spectrum in scifi refers to how much of the concepts and plots are rooted in scientific concepts already proven or in development in real life. By this measure, Star Trek is most definitely soft, and the stories set further and further away from the present day are softer than those set closer to our current time. Star Trek speculates on a lot of science and technology, and is wonderful for that exact aspect, but I can't call it hard scifi.
The Star Trek energy fields are also interesting - might be related to the gravity plating, seeing as how they include 'integrity fields' which basically explain how the ship has a lot less worry about being able to hold together statically, let alone in acceleration, see also the inertial dampeners.
Using energy fields to maintain ship integrity during a crisis always bugs the hell out of me because it's a really dumb idea. If the hull is breached then the ship is in some serious trouble and 9 times out of 10 needs to get its shields, weapons, medical and/or engines running at peak efficiency ASAP or lose more of the ship. Diverting power from these critical systems to maintain internal air pressure means you're on a negative feedback loop - the ship gets hulled, you divert power from engines (for example) and you then can't escape or evade as well meaning more of the ship gets hulled, forcing you to divert even more power from critical systems and so on until you're using all the ships' power just to stop everyone from getting spaced. Installing a load of big ol' blast doors (like you see in the engine room in Wrath of Khan) makes so much more sense from a damage control perspective.
While I think counting "exceptions" is a somewhat useful exercise, I'd have to also say that as you try to expand past near-future SF, you end up needing more and more exceptions. To me, "hardness" is more a measure of consistency to a set of physical rules. In terms of mathematics, it's more of defining hypotheses that you then build theorems out of. For example, the hypotheses of non-Euclidean geometry build useful and interesting geometrical systems that are not immediately translatable to our more relatable Euclidean geometry. That's not to say that Star Trek has a strong track record in this either, though. But for example, if you hypothesize that transporters work, then replicators are a natural extension of this (and not a separate exception). Replicators "work" by using stored patterns to take raw matter that is decomposed by the transporter and then re-assembled to the desired form. Realistic? Probably not, but it is a logical extension to me. So, it would be interesting exercise to me to examine "worlds" in a similar vein to Star Trek--worlds that are built around the concept of "world-hopping" FTL. Comparing to shows like the Expanse are not to me a direct comparison due to the near- vs. far-future aspect. I'm trying to think of others to compare with, and Niven's Known Space series comes to mind (and one of it's major exceptions being the GP hulls...)
Did anyone actually think Soft-Hard Scifi, wasn't a spectrum? I think the 'rating' of soft-hard that you are doing is more subjective than you think; for instance; Expanse seems to have a notable lack of sufficient radiation shielding -they really should be going blind and getting cancers. How 'Hard-Soft' something is; has a lot of dependence on just how critical you are, or perhaps on how critical your knowledge allows you to be -a neurosurgeon would likely have a different 'realism rating' on a brain surgery scene than my non-neurosurgeon self. I don't disagree that Trek is 'softer' than something like Expanse or BSG but I think it is 'harder' than most 'mainstream scifi'. Trek utilizes a lot of theoretical science and possible technological extrapolation -things that I considered extremely important to scifi, the very first time; long before wikipedia or my uni textbooks/classes; I heard about 'gravitons' and 'tachyons' on Trek.
I've classed it as more hard sci-fi when compared to a lot of the modern sci-fi, especially the crap Netflix is putting out. The Expanse really is the exception atm with good sci-fi going through a period of hibernation.
I'm an SF writer, and the general definition I use is "Science Fiction is that which has not happened yet, might," whereas Fantasy is "That which can never possibly happen." As for defintions within SF as to subgenres, I generally assume "Plausibility" is the dividing line. The more plausible something is, the harder the SF. The less plausible it is, the softer the SF. And then of course there's the very fuzzy low-end like Star Wars, where you've got completely implausible SF *AND* Space Wizards. To my way of looking, Trek as a whole is only slightly harder than SF. No Space Wizards. Well, there are space wizards but they're generally dicks who only show up to irritate people, like Q, and then head off. But honestly the technology is every bit as silly as Star Wars, and horribly internally inconsistent. I would say the original Trek was *harder* slightly, in that they had actual SF writers writing many of the episodes, and they were really interested in telling cool ideas, even if the broader universe was nonsense. B5 has nearly as many miracles as Trek, but they're scattered unevenly, which at least makes the playingfield more interesting. In Trek, everyone seems to shop at the same Wallmart and all have the same number of miracles. (My own stuff tends to be semi-solid SF. You've got starships, but you have to take chemical rockets to orbit to get into the starships, there's no artificial gravity, etc, just because I find the limitations of physics make a nice framework to tell stories in, so I bend them a bit here and there, but try not to break 'em. To me, a story is generally only as good as its limitations, so you can't just handwave any problem away, and Trek just *loves* to handwave those kinds of things away.) My dad, who was an aerospace engineer, used to laugh every time Scotty said "I canae break the laws of physics," since he did just that like 10x an episode. Personally, I think Trek as a whole falls more into the "Sociological Fiction' subgenre, in that much/most of the time, the SF stuff is just there as a framework to tell clunky social metaphors or preach to the audience.
Problem is, in science, "that which can never possibly happen" is very difficult to pin down. Erwin Schrödinger described the idea of a superposition of quantum states to be impossible, and many people agreed. But tell that to a quantum computer.
Thank you @@jolan_tru ... televisions would have been thought to be impossible to our ancestors, now we get to debate tv show nonsense over the internet... Who knows what will be possible in the future... NO ONE. That's one of the things Star Trek does best, keeps your hopes up and mind open, who knows what's out there, what knowledge we may one day gain etc.
The expanse is, relatively speaking, an exception in the genre rather than the norm. A lot of science fiction is pretty soft on science, which is fine. The genre is so diverse that it always has something new to offer. Star Wars is, at its core, about hope and leans heavily on what it means triumph over our demons. Star Trek is about discovery. Stargate is kind of an exploration of the Astronaut Effect but owes itself to Star Trek's sense of exploration and the wonder of the unknown in each episode. The Terminator is a critical look at the dangerous ignorance of man the species propensity to destroy itself in the pursuit of forever distant goals. They're all good, but all pretty 'soft' on science. They're all different and they're all the same, that's why we love them. Anyone touting objective merits of one over the other is kind of being a Star Trek Parable about dangerous tribalism haha
With all this info in mind, a LOT of series and franchises I grew up with make a ton of sense now. For example with Halo, its miracle exception was its version of Faster-than-light travel, the Shaw-Fujikawa Slipspace drive.
I like this look of miracle exemptions. Another one for Star Trek is DEFINITELY force fields. I would say you could also include the Universal Translator. Not that we don't have computers that translate, but how they visually speak the same language and the sentence keeps the same length.
Gecko climbs wall using forcefield, generated by its feet. Google is trying to build universal translator. Don't kill me. I'll jump out the window myself.
During quarantine I dug up an old Trek-inspired sci-fi story and decided to work on rewriting and reworking a lot of the in-universe lore while trying not to directly copy off of Trek or Star Wars. It's not easy and trying to explain how it works it kind of pointless. As long as the characters understand it you kind of just have to go along with it. For me fun/entertaining is more important than trying to explain it in detail. Explaining things too much takes away the mystery.
"Beam me up, Scotty" really became part of vernacular of the culture at large, known to people even unfamiliar with the show. Like "Just the facts, ma'am" or "Kiss my grits!"
I think the misconception comes from when the relatively niche star trek Fandom felt insecure next to the sudden and huge star wars fandom. In looking for "objective" justification for why star trek was better, even with less emotional appeal and spectacle, they wanted to claim star trek was hard sci fi. Yes, star trek is hard sci fi when compared with a space fantasy, but it is still soft. The problem in that time is that the Fandom bought into its own bs, and it still echoes around today.
@@maxwellschmidt235 As much as I dislike SW, your explanation makes much sense! As for the very concept of fantom, I'm dumbfounded people can take an entertainment product so seriously as to need to build such complex narratives around their favourite shows, wage cyberbulling campaigns because they dislike IP owner's ideas or seek complex explanation for every plothole, that's downright crazy!
@@IcekPanNaPolin I'd say I'm a lukewarm fan of both- I really like the parts of each media empire that I like, but can't commit to the lifetime required to consume the media they put out. I can't guarantee the historical accuracy of what I laid out, it could also be the case that fans of harder sci fi looked down on trekkies, and the trekkies wanted to be taken seriously in the larger sci fi community. Even if this is the case, I think competition with the star wars fandom amplified the claim.
The personal definitions I use are as follows: ¤ Science-Fiction: genre focuses on scientific themes, phenomena, and technologies; • Hard Sci-Fi: realistic Sci-Fi, i.e. fiction drawing from known physics, applied physics, and realistic feasibility; • Soft Sci-Fi: futuristic Sci-Fi, i.e. fiction drawing from known physics and applied physics, yet foregoes realistic feasibility (such as commercial feasibility) in favour of cool yet doable impracticalities; ¤ Pseudoscience-Fiction: genre focuses on pseudoscientific themes, phenomena, and technologies; • Hard Pseudo-Sci-Fi: credible Pseudo-Sci-Fi, i.e. fiction drawing from known physics yet either speculative or fictional applied physics, with only fictional feasibility concerns; • Soft Pseudo-Sci-Fi: plausible Pseudo-Sci-Fi, i.e. fiction drawing from either speculative or fictional physics, with fictional yet hopefully coherent fictional applied physics and feasibility concerns. ¤ Science-Fantasy: genre focuses on Fantasy themes, phenomena and technologies/magic, using scientific or futuristic looking elements merely as set dressing. • Hard Science-Fantasy: everything is fictional yet presented with internal consistency within the setting's lore and fictional science; • Soft Science-Fantasy: everything is fictional and all the science-y stuff is kept as vague as possible, so as to avoid consistency constraints (thereby mirroring the difference between hard and soft magic systems, since technology is basically treated as just a more mundane form of magic).
The exact words, "Beam me up, Scotty!" are said in the show as often as, "Play it again, Sam," is said in Casablanca. Like never. And I thought "trekkie" had been obsolete and even an insult for years, with the accepted term being "trekker."
From a storytelling standpoint, I think the protomolecule works so well is due to the otherwise very realistic physics of The Expanse's setting. It violates everything the characters know about how the laws of physics, etc. work, yet they cannot explain it except in vague metaphors supplied by a voice in one character's head. It is both really powerful and really destructive, making it terrifying yet seductive to the different societies fighting over it. I don't think the protomolecule would be so dramatically compelling in setting with a lot of space wizardry like Star Trek.
The only thing that really bothers me about the Enterprise is that the way the impulse drive is configured on the ship, the only way to slow down fast would be to flip the entire ship around so that the Impulse Drive is facing forward in that it appears to be for the most part some sort of really fuel efficient rocket. This is entirely plausible and has been done in many hard science fiction stories but has never been shown in any iteration of the series, probably because when using large scale models it would take too much time and money to maneuver the model around in that way, or because no one gave it all that much thought, or maybe because I am wrong and the impulse drive is a bit more than a glorified rocket and can somehow both pull and push on the fabric of space time even without warping space: but then that would be another "miracle problem" that they have solved in the 24th century so just add that one to the list.
I think while Star Trek is softer sci-fi, it is intimately interested in science, and that might be why people mischaracterize. Characters regularly use the scientific method, approach fantastical circumstances with skepticism, use and trust tools designed by people to accomplish specific tasks, and hold specialized expertise in high regard, and for the most part are rewarded in the narrative for those behaviors. That in itself is pretty rare, since hard and soft science fiction alike can often be indifferent to or sometimes even hostile to science. There are immediate examples that come to mind from the Expanse, Battlestar Galactica and Star Wars (Luke cutting off his targeting computer, Holden comparing humanity to monkeys playing with dangerous things they can’t understand, the Colonials rejecting technology for a romanticist agrarian ideal) and I’m sure I could find more if tasked with it.
I don't think science is bashed, it's just the way it was used in the stories. Holden says that because he's seen what scientists did with the protomolecule- weaponized it, experimented on children and exposed the population of Eros to it. In Galactica humans were the victims of their own hubris in creating AI robots. Star wars was a fantasy film that was made in the 70s where Americans were desperate to escape from the reality of Vietnam, Watergate, the oil crisis, terrorism etc. and the theme of some power bigger than themselves to inspire hope was stressed. So I don't think it's anti science as much as how people use it
I clicked on this title thinking, "somebody thinks Star Trek is hard sci-fi? wow"
that is the new defense by youtubers that make their money complaining about the newest entries in legacy IPs as to why new Trek shows are the worst now that the shows are starting to get good by a growing number of the fandom., that and the new shows are too emotional.
I see people claiming this all the time.
My reaction exactly
Hah! Yeah, I think they say that only in comparison to Star Wars.
I clicked on this thinking "somebody thinks Star Trek was RELATABLE, therefore MORE POPULAR than more scientifically accurate films with nowhere near the following.or conventions"
It is brilliant in that its relatable, and it deals with social science and moral questions. not any of that other stuff. it was social effects of advanced cultures and entities in interaction , not based on the real science at all - this is also done in the context of 40 years - and Star Trek RETORT , is flip phones - Communicators and countless other predictions of Star Trek.
My favorite with "gravity plating" is that every time a ship has "no power" the f'ing gravity still works.
Maybe it's tied in with the life support systems meaning it has several backups and is the last to go.
One would think that would be a pretty important system.
It can be like permanent magnet, still work even after the electricity is stopped.
That's cause sitting down beats breathing.
@@gorilladisco9108 Fair, but they seem to be able to control it, which implies a power setting. Honestly it was just too expensive to film simulate zero G, and I realize that. Never noticed it back then, definitely notice now that I have The Expanse ;-)
The other major miracle exemption being "inertial dampers". The Expanse does an excellent job of demonstrating the dangers of rapid acceleration (or deceleration)
The Expanse makes some overtures towards Newtonian mechanics, but doesn't give much thought into the actual mathematics of it all.
But at least they do a better job than simply saying "we have devices that dampen inertia and compensate for the Heisenberg principle."
@@jolan_tru yeah, I'd say the travel times count as a second miracle, seems like we should be talking about dozens of years of travel time so far in the story, even with the Epstein drive. But I can allow the artistic license.
@@jolan_tru yeah. The Expanse uses the physics to add to the story, to ratchet up the stakes and the tension in the scenes. In that way it's fine and what else can anyone really expect from a tv show shot mostly in downtown Toronto 😛
If they already have gravity generator, inertial dampener is just another application of it.
@@maxwellschmidt235 Nah, the travel times are accounted for, but the reasoning being used entails three miracle exemptions, not one:
• The Epstein drive miracle efficiency
• The classic tiny magical fuel tank that never empties itself despite very frequent acceleration and deceleration phases.
• The almost mandatory compact landing crafts with regular chemical thrusters that somehow don't need boosters and huge fuel tanks to takeout and leave atmosphere once the ground miasion is done.
An unrelated fourth miracle is obviously everything protomolecule related. That thing doesn't just propose highly advanced alien tech, it straight up violates a number of physical laws for narrative purposes.
There was a phrase I thought of a other day when I was contemplating Halo that might be applicable. Crème brûlèe sci-fi. A very thin seemingly hard layer on top of a lot of soft gooey material.
This is gold
Good way to put it, especially since many scientific concepts are very counterintuitive. That and the idea that "sciency" words make something scientific. Oh, if only I could bullshit physics courses on intuition, instead of studying...
Halo is just 1960 fps with led lights.
UNSC: Hard
Covenant: Middle
Flood: Soft
Forerunners: Paste
I thought the most famous quote in Star Trek was "Live Long and Prosper." When I think Hard Sci Fi, I think "The Martian" with Matt Damon. I don't know if other people liked that movie, but I enjoyed it. I think the consequence of Hard Sci Fi--of sticking as closely to known science as possible, is that it limits the storyteller's ability to go into allegory. For example, you can't have an alien culture as a stand in for some form of humanity if the tech in your story has no way of travelling to another star system.
When it comes to The Martian, I switched my science-brain off when the storm started. A huge Martian storm would be about as destructive as a mild spring breeze.
I think the 100 handled tht well, its neither especially hard, epecially later, but the allegory works really well.
@@jolan_tru Why exactly do you think that?
Everything I've seen says the low gravity and low air density can lead to atrociously high winds, with even the average wind speed being 20-30 mph and peaking at 60mph. Add martian grit to that and the dust storms would be awful.
@@declanbennett1085 The air is FAR thinner.
That actually demonstrates the big problem with hard SF: the author can't know everything. You may have a PhD in astrophysics and 30 years of experience in structural engineering, but how much biology do you know? What about human psychology under extreme conditions? Even if it's a big budget movie that can hire some scientific consultants, you're going to muddle up some science somewhere.
@@declanbennett1085
The Martian wind speeds are generally high, but because of the thin-ass air density, there's precious little energy in a Martian windstorm by comparison.
Think about getting hit by a cyclist moving at 30 MPH and compare that to getting hit by a pick up moving at 30 MPH.
As for “miracle exemptions” in Star Trek, two glaring examples you didn’t mention: inertia dampeners and the ever-so-convenient universal translator.
Agree with inertial dampener, but universal translator is not so farfetched. Google translator ftw.
@@gorilladisco9108 Except Trek's UT works even with previously unknown languages (aside from a handful of notable exceptions, like of Enterprise, when the tech was still in development, and the famous "Darmok" TNG episode). Over the course of TOS and TNG, I'm pretty sure they had multiple first contacts, and the translator worked pretty flawlessly. DS9 added the Dominion races (though IIRC most of them had handwavium on their end too). And then there's Voyager...
Modern machine translation relies on huge corpuses of existing text as training data and, while impressive, is still imperfect. Trek's UT would require, at minimum, a new, radically different approach. Even the fan-theory that it relies on a brain scan of the speaker requires making a lot of hard-to-justify assumptions about alien neurology. Though maybe easier to justify in the presence of a reason for the near-ubiquity of humanoid body plans... But maybe that ubiquity itself deserves a spot on the list of "miracle exemptions"...
@@solarshado Yeah, Star Trek relies on an awful lot of both background and foreground miracle exemptions. The 'nearly everyone is a humanoid' trope is partially accounted for though, in a few ways.
For one, similar evolutionary contexts will lead to similar naturally occurring evolutionary solutions, but this 'solution' to the humanoid problem only get us back a step, leaving us wondering why there are so many M class planets with so similar evolutionary hurdles and evolutionary paths taken.
A second solution offered in Trek is the TNG episode revolving around the existence of an ancient humanoid species, which allegedly seeded a bunch of M class planets that became the homeworlds of most of the humanoids of Trek.
" It's just a television show !!".
William Shatner.😅
Also, the holodeck and shields.
I think you forgot the universal translator as a miracle exception
@MGazT And shields.
@MGazT Oh, inertial damper, even superluminal speed are pure fantasy. Also energy weapons that disintegrate you with minimum energy use. And I'm not even gonna go near how many godlike beings are there in the series, Q perhaps being the most notorious (or nefarious).
@@alexandresobreiramartins9461
Energy weapons on Trek in general. Starship phasers can bore to the core of a planet in seconds, trillions of times above the fusion threshold. Every time a phaser is fired at a planet, it should go off with a massive supercritical fusion reaction.
Starships that explode without blinding everyone.
And don't even get me started on the complete lack of quantum mechanics and relativity.
@@AndrewD8Red Yeah! Totally.
@MGazT There's no vacuum of space in Tolkien. His world is just a pizza under a glass dome with the stars scattered around by Vardka, which the Sun and Moon circle above in flying ships.
"Inertial Dampeners" my arse. May as well call it the physics switcher-offer.
Oh wait, they already have one of them don't they? The Heisenberg Compensator?
More like the "shooting budget conservation manifold." :P
I think you hit the nail on the head when you say that all too often hard sci fi is seen as inherently better than soft sci fi. It seems plenty of people railing against their work as softer, think that softness is a bad thing, an unfair label they have to rip off. I've seen similar stuff with fantasy, where, supposedly mature, realistic works are talked to the moon and back as inherently better. But if realistic is better, why write fantasy, or indeed soft sci fi at all? After all that'd just be lowering the quality of your work. Even hard sci fi by its very nature as imagining a future could get things wrong, like if an accepted theory is overturned after the work is published. Saying realism is better, is essentially saying all spec fic is inherently lesser quality than stories set in our current world, and the more different they are the crappier they are. Way to stand up for the genre.
That and why are so many supposedly "realistic" fantasy works, filled with sex and violence? Sure these sorts of things *could* happen in real life, but considering the massive infant mortality of the premodern era and crude food growing techniques, it's probably lead to the ultra violent society in question getting wiped out. 80%+ of the medieval population was dedicated just to growing food,(1) yet apparently society is strong enough to survive bloodthirsty kings and nobles and giant ravenous hellbeasts killing said peasants? And how come we se what amounts to a very special episode on 80% of the population, then back to the scheming gilded nobles. It's almost like medieval farming is boring or something...
In short I agree that realism is all too often used as term of approval, in fantasy as well as sci fi, when it should be neutral.
Having watched most of BSG re season 1, I'd like to say that the whole thing really came off as pretentious compared to Star Trek. While BSG has a harder setting when it comes to physics and natural science the plot came off as a silly Hollywood soap opera with the Cylons not so cryptically implying they were going to ally with the humans... after their genocidal unprovoked invasion. I suppose that's possible according to scientific laws- but it's incredibly stupid. That and the tired prophecy stuff to tell us this isn't a massive unprecedented time- it's Tuesday. Every Tuesday the humans get kicked out of their planets and have to go on a big voyage to find Earth. You'd think they'd keep a map of where the damn planet is.
I think you somewhat overstepped the scienciness of Star Wars. Sure, the droids (presumably) work via electricity and such, but I wouldn't call it scientific at all, what with the mystical telekinesis granting Force being central- and that's okay. The entire point of fiction is making things up and I actually like Star Wars more than Star Trek. It doesn't have to be scientific to be good.
(1)www.bl.uk/the-middle-ages/articles/peasants-and-their-role-in-rural-life
Realism is not inherently good. how could it be? why would we want excessive realism in a temporary escape from reality? it's good in limited amounts to maintain suspension of disbelief.
I agree that Star Wars is better if you are referring to the original trilogy, revenge of the sith, rogue one, andor.
I've heard the argument that existence of humanoid aliens, or even just intelligent life within the ballpark of modern human society (give or take a few ten of thousands of years) is a miracle conceit.
There's not enough data to say. We don't know how likely life was to develop on this planet at all. We don't know how many variables there are. It could be crazy likely or crazy unlikely.
I'd grant that, though TOS actually gave an explanation that the humanoid species were seeded throughout the galaxy and share common ancestry. Not sure that hardens it much, but hard doesn't strictly equal good.
@@maxwellschmidt235 I thought that was in TNG
@@factualopinion4275 you're probably right, either way it's been addressed
@@factualopinion4275 In fact, I think the picture in this video showing the Star Trek races was that very episode!
The way I like to think of "Hard" SF vs "Soft" SF is the relation of the technology in the setting versus our known science. If a technology is created for narrative reasons and then justified using science, even if it's not "real" science, it's likely softer, but if the technology is created by extrapolating known science, it's likely harder. These approaches are equally valuable and have their place in storytelling, which I think is often glossed over in discussions about hard vs soft Sci-Fi. There's always this attempt to justify hard Sci-Fi as being more mature or more adult-oriented, but at the same time sometimes you need soft Sci-Fi to explore certain concepts that can't be done with known science. The most important part about Science Fiction is the Fiction; the Science is just the vessel in which it is told. Some people prefer freighters, others like their single-person starfighters.
Same I never understood the notion only sci fi that uses known science is considered mature
Hard scifi is basically how detailed the attention to science technology and understanding is, as well as how much the narrative of the story depends on that science technology and understanding.
Soft scifi is just using the themes of science technology and understanding as a backdrop for a generic story... meaning you can re-tell that story in a variety of other genres and it has zero effect on the narrative.
From my personal experience often then when I hear people saying Star Trek is Hard Scifi is to imply it's therefore better then Star Wars, Babylon 5, BSG (either version), ect. Anyone who I know whose ego isn't bound to Star Trek being the absolute best thing ever, consider Star Trek little harder then Star Wars aka very Soft Scifi.
That's not a bad thing though, after all the quality of the story isn't dependent on the "hardness" of the universe.
Star Trek has done quite a bit to inspire it’s “soft” science to become today’s reality-cell phones, tablets, medical equipment. Who knows, Trek fans may eventually create a warp drive. What is the point of hard science fiction if it lacks the fiction element and operates according to what we believe is possible today? Hard science fiction of a few decades ago would seem terribly dated now. I care less for scientific accuracy than for the stories they tell.
I've never heard star trek called hard sci fi. It's been said to have some scientific realism but never hard.
I've heard it. Too often. By idi ots.
Q: How many miracle exemptions are there in Star Trek?
A: Yes.
Kosh.
@@continuumastra1018
😂
That's not how the math joke works. Why do so many people keep getting this wrong?
Most Sci-Fi can't even adhere to internal logic, let alone hard scientific principals - the enjoyment is in the storytelling, and I really enjoy "Star Trek"!
I have been reading SF for 55 years and I think classifying SF is somewhat ridiculous, especially if people try to argue that their favorite SF series is more "realistic" (hard) and therefore better than another. SF is a vehicle for the story and if the story is good and the science is self consistent it will work. In their time, fantasy stories told tales in the terms we used to understand the world - magic, gods, and supernatural events. SF re-clothes those stories using our current understanding of how the world works to speak to us in a voice we are more receptive to hear. Neither fantasy or SF is better or is a universal language. Fantasy is still a vibrant genre and can tell stories in ways standard SF cannot and so thrives as a story telling medium. It is important to place SF in its place and not get too invested in it. These are just stories, for pity's sake. Enjoy them, learn from them and then go about the rest of your life thankful for the creativity and hard work that gave you such gifts.
I think understanding hard vs. soft is valuable in enjoying sci fi, as long as it is kept in the context that hard doesn't equal good or more nor does soft equal bad or less.
One area I disagree with Rowan is the idea that hard sci fi is less accessible. In fact, I think that to some extent, harder sci fi can be more accessible to audiences for whom the illusion of reality is more easily broken.
I digress to say that in evaluating arts, the medium often is the message. The language of hard vs. soft changes the weights we assign to different elements in giving our opinions. The important thing is not that the work is hard or soft- the important thing is that we accentuate different things as we think about and discuss works at different ends of the spectrum. If someone said that they wish the expanse had cooler laser blasters, I'd say they were completely missing the point of how the expanse is trying to do sci fi. If someone said they wish star trek had more realistic depictions of directed energy fire, I'd say they as well are missing the point. Both great sci fi stories, but both need to be evaluated in contradictory ways.
@@maxwellschmidt235 hard or soft, what's important to me is that it's at least entertaining to watch. The Berman Braga Trek is boring and tedious to me so what ever science is there I'll miss because I'll have already turned it off.
@@m.e.3862 taste is subjective. I'm not arguing all star trek is perfect, I'm arguing that if you provided a critical review saying you didn't like nuTrek because of scientific inaccuracies, you would have said nothing because you missed the point.
@@m.e.3862 I had to search what "Berman Braga" trek is. Apparently it's TNG, DS9, VOY and ENT, I didn't know that they were so similar to each other.
Hmm. I never thought about the marcial exception in defining hard Scifi. This supplement format could work for talking about books.
I have considered that :)
@@RowanJColeman would it be considered one exception if all the different tech in a sci-fi series is based on one principle. For example how mass effect has one new scientific principle, the mass effect, is used to explain Ftl, ant-grav, and psychic powers.
Or is that multiple exceptions.
@@Nostripe361 That's actually a really good point. I think Mass Effect does a brilliant job of explaining its technology. I could see it being argued as hard sci-fi for sure. Not sure if I'd agree, but it's certainly interesting to ponder.
@@RowanJColeman I don't really see it as hardsci either. The all female race that mate with any species, majority of species being the standard humanoid design, psychic powers, the fact that in millennia not a single dominant race looked at the mass relays and the citadel and thought, "this is suspicious. Perhaps we shouldn't blindly trust all the technology that just fell into our laps".
I see it a Star Trek in a similar are on the hard soft scifi scale; kind of in the middle with enough hard scifi ideas and concepts to be believable at first glance but a lot of issues when you investigate it further. A place I usually think of as Neutral scifi since its not hard enough to be hard scifi but its a little to hard to be soft scifi/space fantasy.
I kinda asked about if it counts as a singular exception since that kind of idea has become kind of popular in recent time with things like mass effect or how gundam usually explains everything with a single scifi energy/particle that powers all the new tech.
I even used it myself when I designed a scifi world for fun; basing it on the idea that when humans discovered how to breach subspace and use it as a power source and ftl, they found multiple new particles and types of radiation that made it up and all the new tech is basically based on researching them and the weird affects they have on real space.
I think it helps you bend the rule of limiting the exceptions for believability because all of the exceptions you make are just smaller parts of one big exception everyone focuses on when watching/reading your story.
@@RowanJColeman A good example of this concept is the Orthogonal series by Greg Egan. He changes one principle slightly and builds a universe from it.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthogonal_(series)
www.gregegan.net/ORTHOGONAL/00/PM.html
So a novel that seems pure fantasy - talking plants and clockwork generation ships is very much hard sci-fi.
For a show that began in the mid 60s, Trek was streets ahead of the competition in terms of scientific detail. 🖖
"Forbidden planet a decade earlier had video communicators that were attached to the belt (hard to steal).
@@GoranXII Roddenberry's inspiration, of course. 😊
When you're competing with mentally disabled you're bound to win
"Streets ahead" isn't a thing, no matter how hard you try to make it one.
Very well said. Comparing it to the Star Wars OT and Prequels, Star Trek has more "magic dressed as science" moments and concepts. It's definitely soft scifi
This is such a great video!!!
I kind of can't believe you did this! It'll sound odd but I actually did my 2nd year dissertation analysing the scientific inaccuracies of Star Trek, Star Wars and some others. I thought it'd be a fun idea but as always, maths and physics and 30,000 words can make any topic boring 😂
Additional miracle exemptions:
- The universal translator
- Matter/antimatter power plants
- A plethora of Vulcan superabilities
- Psionics
- The positronic brain
- Humanity evolving beyond interpersonal conflict
- All these and much, much more!!!
"Miracle exemption" is another restating of John Campbell, who was more of the guiding force for science fiction than Stan Lee was for superhero comics. It was John Campbell who insisted back in the 1930s that good science fiction should have only one miracle exemption, although he did not coin a succinct phrase for it.
I am rewatching this video and I think one of the most important/brilliant points is thinking of Scfi in terms of a Spectrum from Hard to Soft.... It clears everything up from the old model of more fixed genres taught at University.........
I would be very interested for some young literary majors to explore this spectrum.... Excellent video by the way, very clever...
Some more miracle exemptions: inter-species mating compatibility, force fields, radiation shielding, the miniaturization of the galaxy (even with warp drive, you couldn't get to and from all the places they depict in the time frames they imply), sub space communication (instantaneous across many light years), cloaking (works across the entire EM spectrum, including visual), time travel, telepathy, a whole array of miraculous medical technology...there's probably over a hundred that are either currently inexplicable, or worse, known to be completely impossible even in principle.
Wait, someone thinks that more scientifically accurate stories are better just because of said accuracy. That's so wrong on many levels.
I wonder if Blade Runner would qualify as hard sci-fi? My initial thought is yes, but the more I think about replicants, the less inclined I am to believe that it truly is.
Blade Runner is also far more sci-fi in general than we see. One of the coolest things about it in my opinion is that the more fantastical space ships and space stations and whatnot exist in that world, but we never really see it. I think that’s neat.
The replicator and the transporter is the same miracle IMHO.
IIRC in TNG the holo deck was referred to as ‘simulated matter’. In Voyager I think they were pretty consistent in referring to it as photons and force fields (wasn’t that the name of the Doctor’s holonovel?). Then there was one alien that had a ship disguised as a Federation ship and he called the technology ‘particle synthesis’, and he implied that it was more advanced than holographic tech. In Enterprise some alien refers to a holodeck like technology as ‘resequenced photons’, whatever that means. In all of these, I get the impression that holodeck tech is significantly different from transporter/replicator tech.
@@wuhteva9805 is that the Beowulf episode? I’ll have to rewatch it lol
I've often though that Star Wars is slightly softer than Star Trek, but that doesn't make one better than the other any more than The Expanse is better because it is so hard. I love that The Expanse tries so hard to keep the science realistic. It's a wonderful angle. But it's not better because of it. I actually hate that so many now compare any sci-fi to The Expanse like it's some kind of gold standard everyone "must match" to be good. Star Trek, Star Wars, Babylon 5, Dune, Starcraft, Honor Harrington, and many others aren't anywhere close, but are still loved because of their story. At the end of the day, if The Expanse had been a terrible story, I doubt it would be getting the attention it's getting. People want a good story first, second, and third. They want characters to connect to. The world at large only needs to feed that, which any good sci-fi does. So we really need to stop judging sci-fis on how hard or soft they are. All that matters is the story and how it's executed. How hard they are is just what kind of gravy goes with it.
The Expanse is good mainly because of the characters. In most ways the technology and social issues are more on-line with what we can expect in the next few decades rather than the 200 years, barring the Epstein Drive. AI, overpopulation, environmental issues, and absurdly powerful corporations are all notable examples.
I like it because I like the characters and the story. It's actually entertaining ( for example the music enhances the action and isn't bland wallpaper in the background.) The science serves the story and isn't there as a device to make references that the viewers recognize so they can congratulate themselves on how smart and scientifically savvy they are
I love The Expanse, but the way they handle inertia and momentum is only mildly better than Star Trek having a device to dampen inertia. Star Trek just says "we don't need to worry about it because of this fabulous device" and the Expanse says "Newtonian mechanics work differently in this universe."
I think star trek really shines in social science, not the tech science, that might be why its percieved as harder, it takes more focus on the social effects (to a degree its still slightly fantastical and idealistic)
Star Wars doesn't have time travel, teleporters or universal translators (pre-Disney at least, I don't know what bullshit the mouse has shoveled into the franchise recently as I gave up on it after The Force Awakens.) A Star Wars blaster's effects are more-or-less consistent with what would happen if you shot a glob of super-hot matter at a target, compared to phasers which can cause a target to simply disappear without affecting anything around it. The Force is treated as magic in-universe, but beings with mental powers similar to the Jedi show up regularly in Star Trek, going back as far as the second episode ever shot. Even Force ghosts aren't that different from Vulcan katras as a mechanism for allowing someone to live through death.
Star Wars is harder sci-fi than Star Trek. It just uses less technobabble.
I really like that thing about "miracle exemptions" i think that gives words to an idea that has been bouncing around in the back of my head. Thanks for sharing that.
**Supplemental**
Hey Tale Foundry, fuck yeah, they're awesome!
Since I learned the definitions of hard Sci fi and soft Sci fi and the thousands of branches in between. I never saw Star Trek as hard Sci fi. Probably because I knew and seen things like the Martian and Alien, which are far harder Sci fis than Star Trek.
However genre can aid and hinder just like tropes and expectation.
I just think of Star Trek as fairly soft scifi with its wibbly wobbly stuff, but when it wants to it can get harder.
Much like non euclidean fluid!
A joke I made before and will make again!
I agree with you on this. Star Trek in my eyes has always been more of a morality problem solving type of show that is very loose on the science explanations. However when I think Sci Fi I still think Trek being a life long Trekker.
And so neither was my favorite movie, "Forbidden Planet". Love that movie!
I've never understood why some people will reject a story just because it has some fantastical elements. Isn't the purpose of fiction to be fictional? Story is more important than accuracy, even when story relies on accuracy to work.
A classification of different types of sifi I've heard about is the Moh's scale of sifi hardness. The name is borrowed from the Moh's scale of rock hardness, but the basic concept is the same. There are 6 categories of sifi.
1. Science Fantasy
These sifi are typically set in a futuristic or space-like setting, but the technology has absolutely no basis in science and doesn't even attempt to give explanations. In many cases, these sifi even have literal magic. Examples would be Star wars and Warhammer 40k.
2. Babble Sifi
These sifi aren't much different to Science Fantasy, however, they at least pretend to be hard sifi. They tend to dial back any mystical elements and often provide lengthy, yet convoluted and nonsensical explanations for their technology. It's in this category, where Star Trek sits.
3. Science +
This is a strange middle ground. This sifi has a lot of fictional elements, however they do try to make a genuine attempt to explain it. These sifi have too many soft sifi elements to be hard and too many hard sifi elements to be soft. The only example I can think of for this category is Halo. Maybe also BSG.
4. One Big Lie.
This is the first category of what could truly be considered hard sifi. Sifi in this category are often mostly hard sifi with only one or two exceptions. This is where sifi such as the Expanse and Mass Effect would go.
The last two categories are basically reality. With category 5 being stuff that humanity doesn't have or haven't done, but could soon. Such as the first manned mission to Mars. And category 6 are sifi about stuff that humanity have or can do. Like a movie set on a space station in Earth's orbit .
I think you are wrong here. I think once you grant an exemption for one sci-fi Star Drive you've exempted all. If the protomolecule is okay and all of its various Incantations, then so are cylons and replicators. You get a thumbs-up because you make a video. I appreciate a video.
Yeah, just admitting that the laws of physics work differently sometimes is enough to imply that if the humans figure out how it works, they could have FTL, artificial gravity, transporters, etc.
@MGazT you have concisely restated the exact argument that was in the video. Do I need to restate that I also disagree with you?
Alternate take. The term "hard science" might be also used relatively ("Series A is more hard science than Series B"), That is, going to more pains of fitting story details within current research/accepted models. Some, myself included, see TOS Trek as more "hard science" than other Trek series. Open to debate, sure, but we don't have a homogeneous view of Trek rather than relative one per Series/movie.
Firstly, thank you. This needs to be said more loudly and often than for most shows because of how effectively the technobabble has convinced even the nerd collective.
Secondly, the Alcubierre Drive is not Trek's FTL miracle and it's not really that similar to Warp Drive in the first place. They both bend something as part of their propulsion, what that something is is pretty damned important. A lot of Trekkies just hear the word warp and stop listening.
SUBSPACE is the Trek FTL miracle allowing numerous levels of intensely faster speeds between vanilla Warp and the variously handicapped Transwarp systems like the Borg network. Almost more important is the subspace communication relay system and that's probably the first bit that should make it clear how wildly it breaks from the regular-space squeezing Alcubierre concept.
Others have mentioned that Star Trek also has inertial dampeners. It also has shields. How do those work? How about tractor beams? And structural integrity fields. And while matter/antimatter annihilation is theoretically possible, where do they get their antimatter? Star Trek is just *loaded* with Miracle Tech. It's also loaded with blatant mistakes: like, the Enterprise loses power, its orbit starts decaying immediately. That doesn't happen. You don't need power to maintain an orbit, except perhaps tiny amounts applied very infrequently.
_"Star Trek has often been called, "Hard Sci-Fi" by a lot of Trekkies"_
Really?! That just astonishes me. They may as well call it "softcore porn" because of all the kissing Kirk does.
very little .only a few episodes. like 12.
If I want a hardcore Science Fiction series, I'll watch a porn parody, thank you very much.
Reminds me of those “intellectuals” who claim Star Wars and Doctor Who are fantasy and not scientifically accurate, like Star Trek. Don’t get me started on the one with the hate boner for Titan AE
It was nice hearing you discuss the devaluing of Star Wars as a sci-fi property. I have heard the “Star Trek is a hard sci-fi” and that did turn me away from trying Trek for quite some time. I like both of them now for their own individualities.
I'll say this: "Beam me up Scotty" isn't the most famous Trek quote. The most popular (and defining) is "Live long and prosper."
"Tea, Earl Grey, Hot."
Perhaps LL&P is more popular among casual and hard-core trekkies, but for the fast majority of people who have never seen Star Trek, I think "Beam me up, Scotty" wins.
"Live long and prosper." is only well-known among Trek fans. People who have never seen an episode know "Beam me up".
It's actually a real challenge for me to come up with memorable one-liners from Star Treks that aren't TOS. Picard has a few with "Make it So", "Tea, Earl Grey, Hot" and "Shut up, Westley". Maybe "Please state the nature of your medical emergency" from Voyager. I feel like the one-liner went out of fashion by the time we got Voyager, DS9 and Enterprise.
@@Bastian227 I think that's probably been overtaken by the Picard face palm these days
Great video! Your channel is rapidly becoming my favorite hub of trek content :)
Definitely not hard sci-fi, however the writers and showrunners (pre-JJ/Kurtzman), always took care for things to make sense in their universe and had their own set of rules (like with the tech). Even if it was just a throwaway line or vague technobabble. Plus it’s the future, principles can change from today’s scientific understandings. I’d say there’s been definitely more care than a lot of other franchises and there’s nothing wrong with that IMO. Sacrificing the show’s rules for potential new fans as we’ve already seen post 2009, isn’t great and just leads more to the realms of Space Fantasy. Besides, Trek at its heart, has always been it’s narratives and characters.
Star Trek also has a lot of ghosts and gods. Also their economic system is a big mystery people try to reason about. Star Trek is not hard at all, but the things are still relatable so that it is an inspirational future that looks kind of plausible and something you can work towards.
About the teleportation... I recently read in a science article that it _might_ be a possible in the future, but that you would have to destroy the original body in order to do it (dematerialize) and then to re-materialize you would create *a copy* of the body ─ each time you used the device. Therefore that may take its toll on the body, sort of like if you take a copy of a photograph in a copy machine, then copy the copy, repeat... (Same thing that happens with our body as we age. All cells in the body are replaced each 7 years...but I digress) ;)
My biggest problem is that science generally rejects the idea that we have a soul. What would happen to the soul if what I wrote above will be the case? Will it be attached? 🤔
Don't forget universal translators that for some reason doesn't translate Klingon.
Speaking of Universal translators, those things were obviously invented by the English because they translate Frenchmen to speak with an English accent.
"Star Trek is an unemotional cold franchise."
Me: (thinks back to the ending of Wrath of Khan and begins sobbing at the thought)
Star Trek is soft sci fi lol. very much so. The only thing that's even remotely plausible scientifically in any way I can immediately think of, is the basic concept of the warp drive is consistent with the real theory of an albiecurre drive, which still would require things we dont even know exists.
Most of the Star Trek miracle exemptions were created simply because it started out as a one hour, episodic TV show. They didn't have the time in a one hour show to take shuttle crafts back and forth between a planet and the Enterprise, so they invented transporters. The same goes for artificial gravity. They didn't have the time to explain how people stay stuck to the deck. Also, in the 1960s, "ray guns" were just classic sci-fi weapons and needed to be in a space "western." Therefore phasers appeared. And the Vulcan neck grip was just invented to get an unarmed Spock and Kirk out of tight situations. So, I agree. Star Trek is not hard science fiction, but it could not be given the demands of the one hour TV show format of TOS and TNG.
Not sure how I feel about trying to fix it now though, there's a lot of things I like about Discovery but when she is using the Universal translator in one of the first episodes
and you can hear the translation over the original voice, just makes me miss the nonsensical way old Star Trek just skipped past all that and got to the story.
That said I do like the Progenitor episode when you find out why there are so many humanoid races, so I guess some explanations after can work for me,
kinda funny how they tried to explain the Klingons changing over the seasons, but then they go and change them again.
Just because budget constraints and time caused them to have to do these things, doesn't mean they suddenly become hard sci fi. Hard sci fi is about scientific accuracy not quality. Hell, I like Star Wars a lot more than Star Trek.
Live long and prosper is the most famous Star Trek quotes. According to google anyway.
It's an alright quote
also "boldly go where no man has gone before"
Don't forget the universal translator that's able to instantly perfectly translate languages on the fly that have never been studied or even heard before
I believe the ST:E had a crew tasked with building the translator database.
Warp drive, Gravity plating, replicators, transporters, phasers. "On the Enterprise alone, there are five miracle exemptions!"
I'd like to add that they have a friggin' telepath on the bridge!
Deanna Troi was an empath, not a telepath (then again, some of the writers seemed to forget the distinction)
I hadn't considered this so deeply as you just presented it. Well said. It is kind of a shame that the most well-known quote from Star Trek is not one of the more meaningful ones, of which there are many.
Star Trek is easy to classify. It is a western military-esque space opera with elements of hard and high minded sci fi with dramatic aspects and bits of horror and mystery woven into an ensemble series with great comedic timing.
?? Space opera?? Maybe later but the early shows certainly weren't.
@@ZlothZloth
Yes... and....
"Star Trek is not hard sci-fi?"
Astronaut with a gun behind you: "Never has been."
Aren't we kind of at the 'writing on electric pads' stage now?
As I type out my response on my phone screen, you're exactly right.
RE: the goerge lucas cartoon - actually the core philosphy of star wars is that good and bad are constructs and we always can choose good and redeem ourselves regardless of what has happened in the past
I honestly didn't realize anyone thought Star Trek was hard science fiction. :-0
When counting Miracle Exemptions on the enterprise, don't forget the universal translator that can usually translate species languages the first time you meet them.
Yeah. I would say that universal translators are possible. Though in it's infancy, such technology does exist today, however getting the translator to work for a new language would require years of studying that language.
No mention of forcefields?
Also, the Impulse Drive (slower than light travel) is pretty miraculous in terms of the speed achieved with the small amount of fuel carried
Gecko climb the wall using forcefield generated on their feet.
Im a sci-fi fanboy, and love both Trek and Star Wars - just for different reasons. And for all those Trek snobs out there, of which sadly - there are many, who make fun of SW's the force and say it can't be classified as sci-fi because of this, might i remind you of The Q and the abilities that the Q race have. Not to mention the tons of times they go to parallel dimensions or go back in time, all that shit is every bit as magical/fanciful as the force is in SW. And that doesn't mean that Trek is bad or somethin, it just means that it is far from hard sci-fi. In fact it's almost as far from hard sci-fi as SW for that matter.
Think we would have an entire video listing the miracle exemptions of Doctor Who
Isn't that the show where they reverse the polarities of neutron flows?
@@jolan_tru its D.W. answer to turn it off and on again
@@jolan_tru Doc 10: We're both reversing the polarity
Doc 11: Yeah, so?
Doc 10: You're reversing it, and I'm reversing it back again - we're **confusing** the polarity
...
I think that the most recognisable Star Trek quote is „Live long and Prosper”
Why is this even a thing? When the conversation gets into how flaccid or erect science fiction is, I think people would be better off doing something else with their day.
You'd be surprised. There's even people arguing The Last Jedi is heretical for daring to have hyperspace ramming. We can deal with a mystical energy field that gives people superpowers, but a fudging of our magical ftl- now shit's real!
@@adams13245 The funny thing about The Last Jedi is that a third of the plot is based on a poor understanding of how space works, but everyone only complains about Luke being a hobo or the Hyperspace Ramming scene. It's ridiculous.
@@optillian4182 I'm not to up to date on the nature of space, and so would be interested in knowing which of the plots has the misunderstanding of how space works. Is it the chase between the First Order and Rebels? Also I agree, most realism complaints are highly selective, like how medieval history nerds will complain about the detailing on weapons and armor, but the enormous flying firebreathing lizards get a pass.
Star Trek was never hard science fiction, but it at least made some small effort at scientific realism, when it first premiered, unlike other (cough) “science fiction” shows at the time (Lost in Space, Gilligan’s Planet, etc.). It was also unique in that it employed some of the top science-fiction authors of the time to write some of its scripts.
Unfortunately, Star Trek stopped stopped carrying about science long ago, and each sequel series has been worse than the last (not only in terms of science but writing in general). But the special effects have gotten shinier, and the actors hotter, and that’s all the fans seem to care about.
My girlfriend is a sci fi fan and says that The Dragonriders of Pern is Sci Fi since all of the dragons were created genetically and there are science explanations for some things (all of about 10 pages in the series). I think it is Fantasy with Sci Fi elements. We both like the series. Good enough for both of us.
I think in times of tablets and touch screens, making paper vs. PADDs a measurement of hard vs soft sci-fi doesn't really work anymore as much as it did before touch screens were widely used or even possible at all.
Other shows are space operas. Star Trek is a series which uses space opera as a storytelling vehicle while flirting with a variety of other genres. 🖖
Red Dwarf has elements of hard SciFi.
So does Star Trek.
As far as the universal translator, today we can speak into a smartphone, play the translation to someone immediately in their language, have them speak into the phone, and hear their answer immediately in our language. Close, but no cigar. We can still hear each other speaking in our own language.
And there are the antigravity units for moving heavy objects. Maybe they could be considered the same technology as gravity plating, just turned around. But they work in any orientation. They work not only horizontally, but as in "The Changeling," when held vertically.
No, I don't have a life.
Star Trek is not hard Sci-Fi, as much as I love it. The Expanse is the closest series I have seen to hard Sci-Fi.
Addendum: It is very difficult to write hard science fiction, as it rules out so much that is worth delving into. The temptation is to invoke a technological miracle here and there to open our fictional world for our characters. The question becomes how much is too much? It is interesting that no one seems to question that the fantasy genre can make up whatever is convenient to their story. Science fiction requires more discipline, and hard sci-fi the most of all. It should be remembered that many sober physicists who "discover" new phenomena could find them first within the confines of an "imaginative" story. Sometimes it requires someone to suggest some technology is not impossible before real scientists will even consider it. As Arthur C. Clarke said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." and we, with our 21st century arrogance, make claims about what will never be possible? I'll cut Star Trek a little slack; they got a lot right and they were far better than what came before, and they made every effort to make their technology seem reasonable within the confines of the show they wanted to do. I can enjoy both ST and the Expanse and a lot in between. I don't have as much interest in someone being able to fly or turn invisible merely because they mumble some incantation.
the term "hard" or "soft" is stupid to say, because it is just sci fi, period
I think that in general it’s not hard sci fi but the concept of a United federation still seem like something humanity should still strive for
I used to think of Star Trek as hard scifi, but that was before I knew the true meaning of the term. Back then I thought it meant that Star Trek was of a high quality and was a quintessential example of scifi as a genre. By that logic, soft scifi would encompass poorer quality works or those that might represent a different genre better than they do for scifi.
I later discovered that the soft - hard spectrum in scifi refers to how much of the concepts and plots are rooted in scientific concepts already proven or in development in real life. By this measure, Star Trek is most definitely soft, and the stories set further and further away from the present day are softer than those set closer to our current time. Star Trek speculates on a lot of science and technology, and is wonderful for that exact aspect, but I can't call it hard scifi.
99% of Trek is just "Use the Force, Luke" in a different context
Reverse the polarity of The Force and route it through the main deflector array, Luke!
@@kevingriffith6011 "make it so!"
The Star Trek energy fields are also interesting - might be related to the gravity plating, seeing as how they include 'integrity fields' which basically explain how the ship has a lot less worry about being able to hold together statically, let alone in acceleration, see also the inertial dampeners.
Using energy fields to maintain ship integrity during a crisis always bugs the hell out of me because it's a really dumb idea. If the hull is breached then the ship is in some serious trouble and 9 times out of 10 needs to get its shields, weapons, medical and/or engines running at peak efficiency ASAP or lose more of the ship.
Diverting power from these critical systems to maintain internal air pressure means you're on a negative feedback loop - the ship gets hulled, you divert power from engines (for example) and you then can't escape or evade as well meaning more of the ship gets hulled, forcing you to divert even more power from critical systems and so on until you're using all the ships' power just to stop everyone from getting spaced. Installing a load of big ol' blast doors (like you see in the engine room in Wrath of Khan) makes so much more sense from a damage control perspective.
This is one of those “well, duh!” Titles 😆
I think that the most famous quote for Star Trek is, Live Long and Prosper.
What you're saying is that Star Trek isn't a sci-fi show, it's a philosophy show. I agree.
While I think counting "exceptions" is a somewhat useful exercise, I'd have to also say that as you try to expand past near-future SF, you end up needing more and more exceptions. To me, "hardness" is more a measure of consistency to a set of physical rules. In terms of mathematics, it's more of defining hypotheses that you then build theorems out of. For example, the hypotheses of non-Euclidean geometry build useful and interesting geometrical systems that are not immediately translatable to our more relatable Euclidean geometry.
That's not to say that Star Trek has a strong track record in this either, though. But for example, if you hypothesize that transporters work, then replicators are a natural extension of this (and not a separate exception). Replicators "work" by using stored patterns to take raw matter that is decomposed by the transporter and then re-assembled to the desired form. Realistic? Probably not, but it is a logical extension to me.
So, it would be interesting exercise to me to examine "worlds" in a similar vein to Star Trek--worlds that are built around the concept of "world-hopping" FTL. Comparing to shows like the Expanse are not to me a direct comparison due to the near- vs. far-future aspect. I'm trying to think of others to compare with, and Niven's Known Space series comes to mind (and one of it's major exceptions being the GP hulls...)
Did anyone actually think Soft-Hard Scifi, wasn't a spectrum?
I think the 'rating' of soft-hard that you are doing is more subjective than you think; for instance; Expanse seems to have a notable lack of sufficient radiation shielding -they really should be going blind and getting cancers.
How 'Hard-Soft' something is; has a lot of dependence on just how critical you are, or perhaps on how critical your knowledge allows you to be -a neurosurgeon would likely have a different 'realism rating' on a brain surgery scene than my non-neurosurgeon self.
I don't disagree that Trek is 'softer' than something like Expanse or BSG but I think it is 'harder' than most 'mainstream scifi'.
Trek utilizes a lot of theoretical science and possible technological extrapolation -things that I considered extremely important to scifi, the very first time; long before wikipedia or my uni textbooks/classes; I heard about 'gravitons' and 'tachyons' on Trek.
I've classed it as more hard sci-fi when compared to a lot of the modern sci-fi, especially the crap Netflix is putting out. The Expanse really is the exception atm with good sci-fi going through a period of hibernation.
I'm an SF writer, and the general definition I use is "Science Fiction is that which has not happened yet, might," whereas Fantasy is "That which can never possibly happen." As for defintions within SF as to subgenres, I generally assume "Plausibility" is the dividing line. The more plausible something is, the harder the SF. The less plausible it is, the softer the SF. And then of course there's the very fuzzy low-end like Star Wars, where you've got completely implausible SF *AND* Space Wizards.
To my way of looking, Trek as a whole is only slightly harder than SF. No Space Wizards. Well, there are space wizards but they're generally dicks who only show up to irritate people, like Q, and then head off. But honestly the technology is every bit as silly as Star Wars, and horribly internally inconsistent. I would say the original Trek was *harder* slightly, in that they had actual SF writers writing many of the episodes, and they were really interested in telling cool ideas, even if the broader universe was nonsense. B5 has nearly as many miracles as Trek, but they're scattered unevenly, which at least makes the playingfield more interesting. In Trek, everyone seems to shop at the same Wallmart and all have the same number of miracles.
(My own stuff tends to be semi-solid SF. You've got starships, but you have to take chemical rockets to orbit to get into the starships, there's no artificial gravity, etc, just because I find the limitations of physics make a nice framework to tell stories in, so I bend them a bit here and there, but try not to break 'em. To me, a story is generally only as good as its limitations, so you can't just handwave any problem away, and Trek just *loves* to handwave those kinds of things away.)
My dad, who was an aerospace engineer, used to laugh every time Scotty said "I canae break the laws of physics," since he did just that like 10x an episode.
Personally, I think Trek as a whole falls more into the "Sociological Fiction' subgenre, in that much/most of the time, the SF stuff is just there as a framework to tell clunky social metaphors or preach to the audience.
Problem is, in science, "that which can never possibly happen" is very difficult to pin down.
Erwin Schrödinger described the idea of a superposition of quantum states to be impossible, and many people agreed. But tell that to a quantum computer.
Thank you @@jolan_tru ... televisions would have been thought to be impossible to our ancestors, now we get to debate tv show nonsense over the internet...
Who knows what will be possible in the future... NO ONE. That's one of the things Star Trek does best, keeps your hopes up and mind open,
who knows what's out there, what knowledge we may one day gain etc.
The expanse is, relatively speaking, an exception in the genre rather than the norm. A lot of science fiction is pretty soft on science, which is fine. The genre is so diverse that it always has something new to offer. Star Wars is, at its core, about hope and leans heavily on what it means triumph over our demons. Star Trek is about discovery. Stargate is kind of an exploration of the Astronaut Effect but owes itself to Star Trek's sense of exploration and the wonder of the unknown in each episode. The Terminator is a critical look at the dangerous ignorance of man the species propensity to destroy itself in the pursuit of forever distant goals. They're all good, but all pretty 'soft' on science. They're all different and they're all the same, that's why we love them. Anyone touting objective merits of one over the other is kind of being a Star Trek Parable about dangerous tribalism haha
With all this info in mind, a LOT of series and franchises I grew up with make a ton of sense now. For example with Halo, its miracle exception was its version of Faster-than-light travel, the Shaw-Fujikawa Slipspace drive.
I like this look of miracle exemptions. Another one for Star Trek is DEFINITELY force fields. I would say you could also include the Universal Translator. Not that we don't have computers that translate, but how they visually speak the same language and the sentence keeps the same length.
Gecko climbs wall using forcefield, generated by its feet.
Google is trying to build universal translator.
Don't kill me. I'll jump out the window myself.
During quarantine I dug up an old Trek-inspired sci-fi story and decided to work on rewriting and reworking a lot of the in-universe lore while trying not to directly copy off of Trek or Star Wars. It's not easy and trying to explain how it works it kind of pointless. As long as the characters understand it you kind of just have to go along with it.
For me fun/entertaining is more important than trying to explain it in detail. Explaining things too much takes away the mystery.
"Beam me up, Scotty" really became part of vernacular of the culture at large, known to people even unfamiliar with the show. Like "Just the facts, ma'am" or "Kiss my grits!"
Who was so delusional to ever call ST a hard sci-fi???
The 15 people who disliked this video.
I was, and I was wrong
I think the misconception comes from when the relatively niche star trek Fandom felt insecure next to the sudden and huge star wars fandom. In looking for "objective" justification for why star trek was better, even with less emotional appeal and spectacle, they wanted to claim star trek was hard sci fi. Yes, star trek is hard sci fi when compared with a space fantasy, but it is still soft. The problem in that time is that the Fandom bought into its own bs, and it still echoes around today.
@@maxwellschmidt235 As much as I dislike SW, your explanation makes much sense! As for the very concept of fantom, I'm dumbfounded people can take an entertainment product so seriously as to need to build such complex narratives around their favourite shows, wage cyberbulling campaigns because they dislike IP owner's ideas or seek complex explanation for every plothole, that's downright crazy!
@@IcekPanNaPolin I'd say I'm a lukewarm fan of both- I really like the parts of each media empire that I like, but can't commit to the lifetime required to consume the media they put out. I can't guarantee the historical accuracy of what I laid out, it could also be the case that fans of harder sci fi looked down on trekkies, and the trekkies wanted to be taken seriously in the larger sci fi community. Even if this is the case, I think competition with the star wars fandom amplified the claim.
The personal definitions I use are as follows:
¤ Science-Fiction: genre focuses on scientific themes, phenomena, and technologies;
• Hard Sci-Fi: realistic Sci-Fi, i.e. fiction drawing from known physics, applied physics, and realistic feasibility;
• Soft Sci-Fi: futuristic Sci-Fi, i.e. fiction drawing from known physics and applied physics, yet foregoes realistic feasibility (such as commercial feasibility) in favour of cool yet doable impracticalities;
¤ Pseudoscience-Fiction: genre focuses on pseudoscientific themes, phenomena, and technologies;
• Hard Pseudo-Sci-Fi: credible Pseudo-Sci-Fi, i.e. fiction drawing from known physics yet either speculative or fictional applied physics, with only fictional feasibility concerns;
• Soft Pseudo-Sci-Fi: plausible Pseudo-Sci-Fi, i.e. fiction drawing from either speculative or fictional physics, with fictional yet hopefully coherent fictional applied physics and feasibility concerns.
¤ Science-Fantasy: genre focuses on Fantasy themes, phenomena and technologies/magic, using scientific or futuristic looking elements merely as set dressing.
• Hard Science-Fantasy: everything is fictional yet presented with internal consistency within the setting's lore and fictional science;
• Soft Science-Fantasy: everything is fictional and all the science-y stuff is kept as vague as possible, so as to avoid consistency constraints (thereby mirroring the difference between hard and soft magic systems, since technology is basically treated as just a more mundane form of magic).
If Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is the birth of science fiction, what label does that fall under?
Scientific Romance?
Hard, according to 18th century science.
It doesn't fall under either label.
Humans and ferrets have a common ancestor. It is neither a ferret nor a human.
The exact words, "Beam me up, Scotty!" are said in the show as often as, "Play it again, Sam," is said in Casablanca. Like never.
And I thought "trekkie" had been obsolete and even an insult for years, with the accepted term being "trekker."
I've actually never heard someone use the word trekker except when bringing it up in comparison to trekkie.
From a storytelling standpoint, I think the protomolecule works so well is due to the otherwise very realistic physics of The Expanse's setting. It violates everything the characters know about how the laws of physics, etc. work, yet they cannot explain it except in vague metaphors supplied by a voice in one character's head. It is both really powerful and really destructive, making it terrifying yet seductive to the different societies fighting over it. I don't think the protomolecule would be so dramatically compelling in setting with a lot of space wizardry like Star Trek.
The only thing that really bothers me about the Enterprise is that the way the impulse drive is configured on the ship, the only way to slow down fast would be to flip the entire ship around so that the Impulse Drive is facing forward in that it appears to be for the most part some sort of really fuel efficient rocket. This is entirely plausible and has been done in many hard science fiction stories but has never been shown in any iteration of the series, probably because when using large scale models it would take too much time and money to maneuver the model around in that way, or because no one gave it all that much thought, or maybe because I am wrong and the impulse drive is a bit more than a glorified rocket and can somehow both pull and push on the fabric of space time even without warping space: but then that would be another "miracle problem" that they have solved in the 24th century so just add that one to the list.
I think while Star Trek is softer sci-fi, it is intimately interested in science, and that might be why people mischaracterize. Characters regularly use the scientific method, approach fantastical circumstances with skepticism, use and trust tools designed by people to accomplish specific tasks, and hold specialized expertise in high regard, and for the most part are rewarded in the narrative for those behaviors.
That in itself is pretty rare, since hard and soft science fiction alike can often be indifferent to or sometimes even hostile to science. There are immediate examples that come to mind from the Expanse, Battlestar Galactica and Star Wars (Luke cutting off his targeting computer, Holden comparing humanity to monkeys playing with dangerous things they can’t understand, the Colonials rejecting technology for a romanticist agrarian ideal) and I’m sure I could find more if tasked with it.
I don't think science is bashed, it's just the way it was used in the stories. Holden says that because he's seen what scientists did with the protomolecule- weaponized it, experimented on children and exposed the population of Eros to it. In Galactica humans were the victims of their own hubris in creating AI robots. Star wars was a fantasy film that was made in the 70s where Americans were desperate to escape from the reality of Vietnam, Watergate, the oil crisis, terrorism etc. and the theme of some power bigger than themselves to inspire hope was stressed. So I don't think it's anti science as much as how people use it
Okay we'll try this cool but so is wormholes teleportation right
"Live long and prosper"? Far more common than "Beam me up Scotty" IMHO
That's exactly what i said, lol
I just can't do it captain. I Don't Have The Power!!!!!
"Beam me up, Scotty!" Is like, "Play it again, Sam." Never said at all.
Being the same time across the galaxy at the same time. Travel at warp speed to get there on time.