I just feel that a lot of people get mixed up where the popular stuff fits. Like, the common instance that Star Trek is more “hard” than Star Wars, for instance. “But, space wizards!” they say. Yet how does the Jedi Order really differ from the Psi Corps in Babylon 5, a show most people agree is harder than Trek. The fact is, between SW and ST, one of them has rampant and inconsistent causality-breaking time travel, entire telepathic species, parallel universes where everything is opposite or filled with liquid, instantaneous travel via psychically linked mould, constant interbreeding between species that evolved separately and don’t even have the same blood oxygenation system, travelling at infinite speed and mutating into salamanders, people’s spirits being stored in other people’s minds until their bodies can be regrown on a planet created in seven minutes, touchable holograms, and… oh yeah… _GODS_ And that one of them isn’t the one with the laser sword fights.
Well you made quite a good point. Tbh, I was never a big Trekkie fan, mostly saw the movies, but if it is as bad as you describe, it will certainly fall lower than SW on sci-fi hardness scale 🤔 I am actually going to make a general video on SW one day, but the roadmap to that point is long (at the very least I’ll have to make one video on faster than light travel and one on alien anatomy and panspermia), so I’m not sure when I’ll get to that 😅
Ahh, yes, panspermia. The hypothesis that abiogenesis followed by life somehow launching into space, surviving a multi-light-year journey, and atmospheric entry is somehow more likely than just abiogenesis. 😂
@@CaritasGothKaraoke it always bothered me that all the alien races in SW are basically derivates from humans, with the same basic body plan and amount of limbs 🤔
It could be argued that it’s convergent evolution. And there are more or less divergent ones, like Ithorians, Toydarians, Geonosians, Duggs, and especially Hutts. It’s certainly a far cry better than ST where everyone can have babies with everyone else and most sapient species diverge only in the shapes of their ears or foreheads. B5 tried to specifically address this with N’Grath, a sleazy underworld fixer that resembled a large praying mantis. Alas, they only got a few episodes out of it before the puppet broke. Farscape definitely pushes the boundaries, what with being a Jim Henson production. Hynerians, Pilots, and the ship itself are all sapient lifeforms that are a far cry from the normal human body plan.
@@CaritasGothKaraoke you have quite a point here 🤔 it seems in sapient species diversity SW is also much harder science than ST. But I do not really agree that convergent evolution would lead all the sapient species to be humanoids. Human shape is not exactly the pinnacle of evolution - it’s got many problems, like placement of the brain high above the ground (which makes us lethally vulnerable to simple falls from our own height), we have just two manipulator appendages (I sometimes envy Indian gods with multiple pair of hands), our babymaking process has several serious issues - in short, I bet sapient lifeforms could have evolved in many other curious shapes. The amount of appendages basically boils down to how many had the species that left the water for land and doesn’t have to be always 4 (as well as it’s not given that a sapient life form cannot evolve in aquatic biome). The placement of head (and even its existence) can be optional and vary a lot. There are thousands of opportunities of how the sapient lifeforms can be constructed - it just needs manipulators, information processing structure and some sort of communication mechanism (which does not necessarily needs to be speech). We can find curious examples even on earth - like, say, sapient lifeform that would evolve from an octopus, crow or an elephant would be already curious enough.
quite an interesting scale that i think would work well for most sci-fi. One question though, when looking at older sci-fi should one rank its hardness based on what was known at the time, or based on what we have now leaned? i do think both methods have some merit to them and may be used in different contexts, but i would like to hear your thoughts on that.
That might sound rough, but I prefer to view things through the lens of modern science. I try to mention how the outdated scientific ideas influenced sci-fi concepts, but I also try to keep it all up to one scale in general - what we know of for now.
I was actually thinking of doing an episode on Expanse someday, to test how much is it really diamond. It is near flawless of course, but I have some issues with scientific plausibility of protomolecule 🤔
For all mankind is not that hard of sci fi dude 😭 it ignores all radiation, and the season 4 spacecraft looks way too “Star Treky” kind of sci fi to be considered hard
I personally would place the expanse and for all mankind in the lower tungsten-ish tier. Both of them ignore things like radiation and both lack radiators on their ships. The expanse also has the whole thing about the Epstein drive being way too efficient and the protomolecule being pure clarketech. Something I would really consider Diamond tier would be something like The lunar war or SAVAGES.
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Very interesting concept! Keep up the good work! 👍
I just feel that a lot of people get mixed up where the popular stuff fits. Like, the common instance that Star Trek is more “hard” than Star Wars, for instance. “But, space wizards!” they say. Yet how does the Jedi Order really differ from the Psi Corps in Babylon 5, a show most people agree is harder than Trek.
The fact is, between SW and ST, one of them has rampant and inconsistent causality-breaking time travel, entire telepathic species, parallel universes where everything is opposite or filled with liquid, instantaneous travel via psychically linked mould, constant interbreeding between species that evolved separately and don’t even have the same blood oxygenation system, travelling at infinite speed and mutating into salamanders, people’s spirits being stored in other people’s minds until their bodies can be regrown on a planet created in seven minutes, touchable holograms, and… oh yeah… _GODS_
And that one of them isn’t the one with the laser sword fights.
Well you made quite a good point. Tbh, I was never a big Trekkie fan, mostly saw the movies, but if it is as bad as you describe, it will certainly fall lower than SW on sci-fi hardness scale 🤔 I am actually going to make a general video on SW one day, but the roadmap to that point is long (at the very least I’ll have to make one video on faster than light travel and one on alien anatomy and panspermia), so I’m not sure when I’ll get to that 😅
Ahh, yes, panspermia. The hypothesis that abiogenesis followed by life somehow launching into space, surviving a multi-light-year journey, and atmospheric entry is somehow more likely than just abiogenesis. 😂
@@CaritasGothKaraoke it always bothered me that all the alien races in SW are basically derivates from humans, with the same basic body plan and amount of limbs 🤔
It could be argued that it’s convergent evolution. And there are more or less divergent ones, like Ithorians, Toydarians, Geonosians, Duggs, and especially Hutts.
It’s certainly a far cry better than ST where everyone can have babies with everyone else and most sapient species diverge only in the shapes of their ears or foreheads.
B5 tried to specifically address this with N’Grath, a sleazy underworld fixer that resembled a large praying mantis. Alas, they only got a few episodes out of it before the puppet broke.
Farscape definitely pushes the boundaries, what with being a Jim Henson production. Hynerians, Pilots, and the ship itself are all sapient lifeforms that are a far cry from the normal human body plan.
@@CaritasGothKaraoke you have quite a point here 🤔 it seems in sapient species diversity SW is also much harder science than ST. But I do not really agree that convergent evolution would lead all the sapient species to be humanoids. Human shape is not exactly the pinnacle of evolution - it’s got many problems, like placement of the brain high above the ground (which makes us lethally vulnerable to simple falls from our own height), we have just two manipulator appendages (I sometimes envy Indian gods with multiple pair of hands), our babymaking process has several serious issues - in short, I bet sapient lifeforms could have evolved in many other curious shapes. The amount of appendages basically boils down to how many had the species that left the water for land and doesn’t have to be always 4 (as well as it’s not given that a sapient life form cannot evolve in aquatic biome). The placement of head (and even its existence) can be optional and vary a lot. There are thousands of opportunities of how the sapient lifeforms can be constructed - it just needs manipulators, information processing structure and some sort of communication mechanism (which does not necessarily needs to be speech). We can find curious examples even on earth - like, say, sapient lifeform that would evolve from an octopus, crow or an elephant would be already curious enough.
quite an interesting scale that i think would work well for most sci-fi. One question though, when looking at older sci-fi should one rank its hardness based on what was known at the time, or based on what we have now leaned? i do think both methods have some merit to them and may be used in different contexts, but i would like to hear your thoughts on that.
That might sound rough, but I prefer to view things through the lens of modern science. I try to mention how the outdated scientific ideas influenced sci-fi concepts, but I also try to keep it all up to one scale in general - what we know of for now.
Asimov actually made a joke about that in Asimov's New Guide to Science, when talking about the nature of Venus not being a waterworld.
i wonder how Peter Watts work land on your tiering system.
For all man kind . Diamond.. expanse ... tungsten ... star trek/wars.. iron/glass
I was actually thinking of doing an episode on Expanse someday, to test how much is it really diamond. It is near flawless of course, but I have some issues with scientific plausibility of protomolecule 🤔
For all mankind is not that hard of sci fi dude 😭 it ignores all radiation, and the season 4 spacecraft looks way too “Star Treky” kind of sci fi to be considered hard
I personally would place the expanse and for all mankind in the lower tungsten-ish tier. Both of them ignore things like radiation and both lack radiators on their ships. The expanse also has the whole thing about the Epstein drive being way too efficient and the protomolecule being pure clarketech.
Something I would really consider Diamond tier would be something like The lunar war or SAVAGES.
@@CarlosAM1 this guy gets it