Man. This is a tall order of a response to go through. So let's get a few things out of the way. So, to clarify some things. I kind of shot myself in the foot by not comparing focusing on Western TV shows. The movies you mentioned are more complexed and nuanced, and if I don’t get derailed in thought, I'll get to that in a bit.

Similarly, in regards to Kaiju films, I bring those up not for the sophistication in the story telling, but the lack of sophistication in presentation. With Kaiju films, things like scientific accuracy and special effects are put on the back burner a little bit, because first and foremost the creators are worried about the story they want to tell. When I watch Kaiju films, I know I'm not gonna get scientific accuracy, I know I'm gonna get cheesey special effects, and I'm okay with that because the stories are so damn fun and there's a charm and earnestness in the execution that make them great.

Now, humor me for a second because I want to go back here and try to rephrase what frustrates me about sci-fi television and expand upon it a bit. In a nutshell, what frustrates me about sci-fi television is that it is often strikes me as poorly written and I feel like that shouldn't be the case.

I love TV. I watch a lot of TV. I love everything from classic sitcoms like The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show to I Love Lucy to Andy Griffith. I like M.A.S.H., Barny Miller, Night Court, Grace Under Fire, That '70s Show. I like modern sitcoms like Superstore, Brooklyn 99, the first two seasons of Community before it got boring. I like old school westerns like The Rifleman, Gunsmoke, The Big Valley, and Laramie, though I could honestly never get into Bonanza. I like children's animation shows like Looney Toons, Animaniacs, The DC Timmverse, Samurai Jack, Adventure Time, Clarence. Some of the more serious dramatic stuff I stay away from, just because it's not my cup of tea, but I've seen good episodes of NYPD Blue, ER, House, and once I found myself stuck at a friend's place watching N.C.I.S. for about three or four episodes though it could have felt like all day. I can go on and on, but you get the idea.

My standards for entertainment honestly aren't that high. If I came to your place and said "Hey man, I got bad news. I'm babysitting this kid all day and as a result you're stuck here watching Airwolf with me and him all day," I'd say "Cool as shit, bro. Bring it." I like a good story. I want a good story.

Here's the thing. In all of the shows I listed, and tons I didn't, a large reason they’re at least passable, if not good, is because the writers are very aware of the constraints they’re working with. They know they have 10, 25, or 50 minutes to tell a story or double or tripple that if they are willing to work with a cliffhanger. They understand the pros and cons between telling stories that reset their universe to the status quo at the end of every episode versus having consequential story archs that might take multiple episodes if not a whole season to resolve. They understand their budget constraints, their target audience, what networks and censors will and will not allow, what advertisers do and don’t like, and on and on. This is an industry that’s been going on for almost a century now and sometimes it feels like these guys have shit down to almost a science.

It’s formulaic. Yes. Some people use that as a pejorative when it comes to story telling. But when you’re working with something constraining like television, understanding those constraints and why they’re there and understanding the formulas and why they work, gives the writers the tools they need to tell the stories they want to tell.

Then we get to science fiction television and all of the sudden a lot of that knowledge and experience just seems to go out the window. If we go back to how I described the episode and my frustration with it, I talked about it feeling awkward and forced, irrational and unfulfilling and it seems to happen in a lot of the sci-fi episodes I watch (though what I’ve seen of both Cowboy Bebop and Firefly were actually pretty well done). To put things metaphorically, I may not know how to sing, but I know when a singer is offkey, and if sci-fi television was music, a lot of it sounds off key to me.

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I was talking to my friend last night, the one that is currently rediscovering his love for guys like William Gibson (I had to look him up to make sure I was getting that right) and who gently prodded me over the years to check out DS9 and we touched on a few other points that may or may not play a role in those whole thing.

We talked about how sometimes it feels like by resolving conflicts through feats of science, a lot of the times the conflict suddenly seems trivialized and it robs the protagonists the satisfaction of an earned victory and/or robs the situation of the seriousness it deserves. To put things in comic book terms for example, in the hands of the wrong types of writers super heroes like Superman could get boring real quick because their arsenal of powers allows them to overcome almost any threat without a real sense of peril.

We talked about how sometimes writers are more concerned with world building and it bogs them down in terms of story telling. He actually did an amazing job comparing and contrasting Tolkein and George Lucas to me. He said that Tolkein had made a world full of languages and history and to show it off, he decided to make a bunch of people go for a stroll in the woods. As a result, sometimes instead of character development, you’re gonna have to read a page and a half about the history of yet another sword. George Lucas on the other hand just wanted to tell a story and was making a world up as he went along. As a result, you get an easy to absorb story at first, but as things go along, there’s a bunch of back tracking and side explanations to try and fill in the gaps.

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You do this thing where you see something that makes you uncomfortable and then you refuse to confront it and you spin around and slag an entire genre because it's easier than confronting the thing that makes you uncomfortable. Knowing you, your beef with "sci fi" is that in this particular episode you vehemently disagree with the choices of the characters and you refuse to confront the issue presented because you do not see it as a choice.

Yeah. I kind of get your point. There’s a ton of stuff I won’t touch for the reason that it does make me uncomfortable and I think as a consumer, I have that right. If something makes me uncomfortable, I’m not going to enjoy it. If I’m not going to enjoy it, then why would I pursue it? That said, I don’t think I’m slagging on sci-fi because I keep on wanting to try and explore it more but just find it so emotionally unfulfilling sometimes. In a lot of stories, I don’t see myself connected with the characters presented, moved by the dilemmas that they’re in, or find the rules of the worlds that the stories take place in as sensible. Nothing about this episode or all that I’ve seen of OG Start Trek or GS9 made me uncomfortable though. In fact, going back to said friend, to kind of paraphrase a conversation we had a few years back, he said “You’ll appreciate GS9 for the grey areas that come about in later seasons. We’ll have some good talks about them.”

That said, you did kind of touch on something I haven’t considered, in that I am much more of a moral absolutist than I am a moral relativist so that might color how I receive the stories presented. I mean, shit, in my OP I almost blantantly said “Part of the reasons I love westerns is because a lot of times, there’s no moral ambiguity.”

So, you kind of got me in a box there, huh?