This is gonna be the thread where we talk about stuff

I remember in more than one grade school English class, we had class discussions on what a “classic” was. I don’t actually remember much about those discussions, but I think the class consensus more than once was basically “old enough that people are pretty sure it’s good”. In other words, what Internet video essayist Bob Case (MrBtongue) calls “Scholarly Consensus Lag Time”.

This was an introduction for studying a good deal of things that had, even in living memory, been genre fiction, including a lot of science fiction short stories. By 12th grade, we even got to learn a little bit about the genres that “literature” was, back in the day (with the side effect being that Anne is now my favorite Brontë because I never had to read her in class). Hey, sometimes the public school system is okay I guess!

Still got a D in that class, though.

Oh, and space opera. Wow. Thinking back on some of the more loved episodes of Star Trek[1], a lot of them were some combination of a neat tech/what-if puzzle and something touchingly human. You might be able to factor out the tech and come out with a story of similar or identical impact, but really it was the proper integration of the two that made it good SF as opposed to good anything else.

A lot of fans of these TV shows stereotypically like to obsess over the gizmos and special effects and all that, and yeah, it’s a good draw, seeing some fistfights and explosions and good-looking actors. But I think what made that particular franchise’s better shows was when it kept its focus on people problems (and when it did it well, obviously). Just that some of these people problems were only possible thanks to the far-flung SF environment[2], where for the most part, people are still people, and the only thing that’s changed is what’s now possible for people to do.

[1] For reference, a short, biased selection of these which I also think stand pretty well on their own—you know, for people wishing to remain only casually familiar and snootily avoid overmuch genre-ness:

SpoilerShow

(Original Series) “The City on the Edge of Forever”, “A Private Little War”
(movies) Star Trek II [optionally a trilogy, but III is merely okay and IV is more lighthearted], Star Trek VI;
(Next Generation) “The Best of Both Worlds” + “Family”, “Darmok”, “The Inner Light”;
(Deep Space Nine) “Duet”, “The Visitor”, “For The Uniform”, “Far Beyond the Stars”, “In the Pale Moonlight” (okay so maybe you can tell which series I like the most);
(Voyager, Enterprise) [I’m drawing blanks, plus it’s hard to tell which eps only looked good because of all the bad ones].

[2] Other than the existence of the Borg, I didn’t really catch anything profound these 21 seasons of TV had to say about our near-future issues of transhumanism and “the impending privaciless dystopia barreling towards us” [which is not a phrase I made up, but I already mentioned the guy who said it and I like that turn of phrase so why not]. It’s not hard to sympathize with this from a writer’s perspective, though; they vetoed it for relatability reasons. From the very beginning of the writer’s guide from TOS, they state “[...] believability of characters, their actions and reactions, is our greatest need and is the most important angle factor.” The same guide advised,

AND SO, IN EVERY SCENE OF OUR STAR TREK STORY...

... translate it into a real life situation. [...] Would you believe the people and the scene if it happened there?

IF YOU'RE ONE OF THOSE WHO ANSWERS: “THE CHARACTER ACTS THAT WAY BECAUSE IT’S SCIENCE FICTION”, DON'T CALL US, WE'LL CALL YOU.

I guess this is a good place to stop typing. I probably shouldn’t be allowed to type for this long.