I don't care... Star Trek is Awesome!

[languid]

I saw this link today on slashdot by SciFi author Charles Stross entitled Why I Hate Star Trek.  He references a video in which Star Trek writer/producer Roger Moore talks about how they added technobabble to Star Trek scripts for the sole purpose of furthering the plot.

 

"I use a somewhat more complex process to develop SF. I start by trying to draw a cognitive map of a culture, and then establish a handful of characters who are products of (and producers of) that culture. The culture in question differs from our own: there will be knowledge or techniques or tools that we don't have, and these have social effects and the social effects have second order effects — much as integrated circuits are useful and allow the mobile phone industry to exist and to add cheap camera chips to phones: and cheap camera chips in phones lead to happy slapping or sexting and other forms of behaviour that, thirty years ago, would have sounded science fictional. And then I have to work with characters who arise naturally from this culture and take this stuff for granted, and try and think myself inside their heads. Then I start looking for a source of conflict, and work out what cognitive or technological tools my protagonists will likely turn to to deal with it.

Star Trek and its ilk are approaching the dramatic stage from the opposite direction: the situation is irrelevant, it's background for a story which is all about the interpersonal relationships among the cast. You could strip out the 25th century tech in Star Trek and replace it with 18th century tech — make the Enterprise a man o'war (with a particularly eccentric crew) at large upon the seven seas during the age of sail — without changing the scripts significantly. (The only casualty would be the eyeball candy — big gunpowder explosions be damned, modern audiences want squids in space, with added lasers!)"

 

I can see where he is coming from, but this doesn’t make me hate Star Trek. I still LOVE Star Trek. It’s probably because I understand that Star Trek is not Ray Bradbury. It’s not 2001: A Space Odyssey. 

 

Star Trek is not truly Science Fiction. It is a soap opera. That takes place in space. And all that technobabble might not mean anything, but it gives the series a unique ambience, and Star Trek is so much more than its technical details. It is about new worlds, and species, and ultimately… the human condition.

 

If I were more literate, I’m sure I could expound further, but I’ll just leave it at this—Star Trek is fun!

 

So.. Charles Stross can go ahead and hate Star Trek. I still luuuuurve it!