You devote twelve paragraphs to arguing that sci fi writers are incompetent. You use a lot of words because you know you don't really have the standing to do so and you hope that rhetorically, you can bury the lede on that one but fundamentally, you are arguing that science fiction writers don't know how to write. Then you hide behind

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.

Maybe you just don't like pentatonic scales.

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.

You're slagging on sci fi because you don't like unanswered questions. That's fine. But it's about you, not the medium.

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.

More evidence of the assertion that you're not willing to extend suspension of disbelief to science fiction... especially as you started down this road by singing the praises of Godzilla movies.

Nothing about this episode or all that I’ve seen of OG Start Trek or GS9 made me uncomfortable though.

It made you uncomfortable enough to write a thousand-word rant on how much you hated it. And then try to justify that rant with another 800-word rant about how sci fi writers suck.

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 didn't touch on it, I hit you over the head with it:

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.

BTW, your friend is mistaken. By the time Star Wars (episode IV) had been green-lit, Lucas had written Episode 1, Episode 2, Episode 3, and about five drafts of Episode IV. However, market forces forced him to revise and rewrite and revise and rewrite and revise and rewrite Episode IV, while Episodes 1-3 were unleashed on the world 25 years after the fact at a point where Lucas' fortunes were in the billions. Tolkien, on the other hand, crafted his own little world in his own little head and dripped the stories out as he fought in WWII and such. The Star Wars extended universe occupies millions upon millions upon millions of words and story lines and through lines and very little of it was directly crafted by Lucas; what consistency it has is a bit of a miracle. On the other hand, Tolkien's entire ouvre is about as long as a single volume of George RR Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire." It's a lot easier to be consisted across 500k words than it is across eight movies, two TV series, however many Lego spinoffs there are and the star wars books.

A great screenwriter (one of the most famous) once told me that the most efficient nine words in the history of screenwriting was "he fought with your father in the Clone Wars." There it is, 1977, and with those nine words, Lucas conjured an entire history that sits out there, evocative, buttressing up what you know with what you don't. HIs writing partner used the example of the letter Tolkien received from a fan once, asking what was beyond the mountains of Mordor. Tolkien explain that if he told her, she'd ask what was beyond that and the only thing that mattered was that he knew.

Tolkien died before anyone made him write about what was beyond the mountains of Mordor. Lucas? Lucas made millions elaborating those nine words out into a mediocre and uninteresting conflict.

It's okay to want the mediocre conflict instead of the mystery. But that doesn't make science fiction inherently flawed.