Untrue for: - The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly - High Plains Drifter - High Noon - Tombstone - Unforgiven - Pale Rider I mean, you can slag on Star Trek all you want but you don't get to argue against it comparatively by making shit up about Westerns. Gene Roddenberry pitched Star Trek as "Wagon Train in space" and that's exactly what it is. Deep Space Nine is Bonanza in Space. The tropes you're bitching about aren't related to sci fi or anything about sci fi, they're related to poor writing and an unsettled production team, which your friend explicitly warned you about. The moral dilemma you're griping about is directly confronted: How do you respond to an ethical situation that does not match your ethics? It's the precursor to every single tedious tawdry female genital mutilation storyline we've been dragged through for the past ten years (lookin' at you, Call the Midwife). The "hand waving" you're bitching about is called a "reveal" and it happens at the midpoint. That's so structurally conventional it might as well be in the style guide. 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. For the record: Season 1 of DS9 is shit. Season 2 has some moments of brilliance. Season 3 is really good for about half of it, then it descends into shit. Season 4 and beyond are a waste of time. But I'll say this: If you do not have the fortitude to explore moral ambiguity, thought experiements and social metaphor, stay the fuck away from science fiction. Science fiction, done correctly, is fable, is a substitution game whereby sensitive cultural issues can be examined in an environment where they are less raw. Star Trek leveraged this substitution in culture-changing ways. Kaiju films? Those are about the predation of Japanese culture and society by Western imperialism. They are the loser's lament for the end of the Meiji Restoration. They are morally simplistic because that which is old is good and that which is new is bad and the exploration of anything - society, culture, science, knowledge - leads to catastrophe. They are Confucianism as entertainment with dudes in rubber suits. But if you're gonna come, come correct.You know what I love about Westerns? Same thing is true for Usagi Yojimbo comics by the way. Near the very beginning, the viewer is given all of the information needed. You know who the good guys are, who the bad guys are, and the conflict that is going to exist between them.
Now, I'm not a writer or a critique or anything of the sort
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. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 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. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 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?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.
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 Maybe you just don't like pentatonic scales. You're slagging on sci fi because you don't like unanswered questions. That's fine. But it's about you, not the medium. 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. 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. I didn't touch on it, I hit you over the head with it: 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.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.
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.
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.
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.
Let me say it outright then. In comparison to their peers in the media, IE, television, I do not see strong writing skills from the writers of the sci-fi episodes I have seen. I see flaws in pacing, logic, and execution. The fact that those issues come up a lot less in other genres in the same medium means that, comparatively speaking, television sci-fi writers are weaker. But only television sci-fi writers in this instance. Not novel writers. Not movie writers. Not comic book or short story writers. Only sci-fi writers. I get the sense it's because they have a hard time finding ways to adapting their stories to the medium. Just because I don't know how to qualify or quantify it in an intellectual manner, it does not mean that assumption of mine is wrong. It just means I lack the skills to accurately convey what I'm experiencing. I can suspend disbelief, I'm willing to suspend disbelief, but I need good writing and something in the execution to make the suspension of disbelief worth while. If it's not there, I feel like I'm being cheated because I don't think I'm being respected by the writers. There's a difference between suspending disbelief, enjoying something that's somewhat silly for the sake of its charm, and being expected to enjoy a sub-par product. Why are you being harsh? Because we're in disagreement? How many conversations have we had on Hubski over the years? Hundreds. How many times have you ever seen me try to play a game of rhetoric, misdirection, or some other kind of debate "gotcha?" Never. I come to these conversations always honest and as open as possible, even when we're in disagreement. Knowing that, if I say "That's not why I didn't like this episode" what I am saying is literally "That's not why I didn't like this episode." I am not trying to trick you. I'm not trying to pull a bait and switch. I am having a conversation about an episode of a television program that I thought was frustratingly sub-par. Let's be fair here. I'm trying to have a conversation where at the end of the day, I express my views, maybe learn something, and it all takes place on the internet. There is nothing for me to win or lose, so there's no reason for me to be conniving about what I'm trying to say. Well, I think in regards to Star Wars, both he and I knew he was talking about the original core six films. We both know that extended universes add a lot. By Return of the Jedi, there already was some pretty big back tracking and side explaining in regards to Darth Vader being Luke's father, Leiah being his sister, etc. Regardless as to the mechanisms that lead to it, they're still there. Could he have used better examples? Probably. Does he still have a point in his explanation? I think so.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
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.
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.
BTW, your friend is mistaken.
I'm being harsh because you didn't come into this saying "I don't get why I don't like science fiction, somebody help me out here" you came into this saying "Star Trek sucks, fight me." You literally held DS9 to be worse than Brooklyn 99. And your justification is "the writing sucks and the writers suck." You're not wrong. The bar is generally lower for science fiction. Much like a certain segment of the population likes music better if you replace "baby" with "jesus", as Cartman would say, there's a segment of the audience that just wants their tropes and doesn't care about the rest. ‘Needs more NaCl-based SupaFlav flavour enhancer,’ he muttered to himself. The meal had been prepared to his exacting standards by the ship’s Cyber Hospitality Electro-Famulus, but there was always room for improvements to the AI’s food preparation algorithms. He made a subconscious neural-jack-formatted mental note to update the C.H.E.F. unit’s programming. Just then, the A.A.A. (Audio Alert Alarm) began emitting the high-pitched ringing noise known as “spidiffling.” ‘Zakradav grakhl!’ swore the Colonel. But at the same time, the arena of science fiction exists to explore concepts in ways that conventional literature or television cannot. Given an hour in which everything about the world is known (Brooklyn 99) or an hour in which a new concept must be explained, explored and then resolved (DS9), much less of the hour can be devoted to the decorum you so crave. You see this as bad writing. I suggest you go watch Philadelphia again, in which 70% of the film is given over to "Here is your AIDS F.A.Q." Two Oscars, five nominations. The biggest beef the intelligentsia had with Philadelphia? It spent way too long on AIDS 101. Yet for Middle America it was the movie that made that whole Magic Johnson thing make sense. I don't think you're being duplicitous. I think you're blind to an aspect of your personality, namely that some things just straight-up make you uncomfortable. And that's fine. At the end of the day most people would agree that science fiction is sub-par and not worth their time. There's a reason 99% of it these days is fuckin' superhero dreck. But most people wouldn't accuse science fiction of being crap but Kaiju films of being great. That's all you.Lifting his vibro-fork to his mouth, Colonel Daringman watched the exquisite spectacle of planet-rise through the plexi-viewport. He took a bite of his lightly marinated nutribeef simsteak.
I mean, I kind of want to avoid further arguing, but yeah. I really feel that. I could have sworn I talked about that, but looking back at my ranting, I must have left that out. So I'll say I completely acknowledge that westerns and sitcoms and dramas and the like have the luxury of not being bogged down by world building. They have both a visual as well as a literal vocabulary that we're all familiar with so the ball can get rolling much quicker. That said, maybe part of the flaw in sci-fi writing is that the writers are a bit too worried about world building sometimes? I mean, how hard is it to say "It's a fucking spaceship with anti-matter engines. We're not going to take the time to explain it because that's what it is and fucking deal with it so we can get on to addressing whether or not it's morally acceptable to tell this stone age civilization that gladiatorial combat is immoral." I mean, at this point, I'm beating a dead horse but I'm honestly not concerned about space ships. I'm concerned about characters being compelling and realistic. Dude. Maybe it's because DS9 is literally brand new to me, but I would easily watch it, frustrations and all, over the majority of the shit being pushed by Marvel and DC right now. Shit, it's getting to the point where I think I'm gonna stop keeping track of The Valiant Universe. I don't know if you're actively reading anything right now, I'm assuming you're not, but let me tell you, it's baaad. That's all you. I know what tickles my imagination. :)You literally held DS9 to be worse than Brooklyn 99. And your justification is "the writing sucks and the writers suck."
Given an hour in which everything about the world is known (Brooklyn 99) or an hour in which a new concept must be explained, explored and then resolved (DS9), much less of the hour can be devoted to the decorum you so crave.
There's a reason 99% of it these days is fuckin' superhero dreck.
But most people wouldn't accuse science fiction of being crap but Kaiju films of being great.
So long as we're clear that we're talking about your imagination, not an objective assessment of science fiction as a genre, we're all good. You have to worry about the world-building. You need to build enough of a universe where aliens have been bred to relish their role as prey for a hunting species for the audience to accept it and confront the implications thereof. You? You get wrapped around the axle on O'Brien the military man who Would Never Do That (perhaps that's part of the world they're building...). You also come into this with a hell of a detriment: nobody watched DS9 without having been sheep-dipped in two series of Star Trek before hand. There is literally no one on the planet except you who said "you know what? I think I'll ignore the two series that the nerds actually like and focus on the one in the universe that people think is ehh at best before moving on to Voyager, the series most people hate so I can talk about how much sci fi sucks." There are great swaths of TNG that suck. There are many episodes of the original Star Trek that fans would rather forget. But DS9 will always be "another series in the Star Trek Universe" that completists watch and nobody else cares about. If you really wanna get your dork on, go sit through The Animated Series and try and wrap canon around that. The Federation vs. Kzin. "Any script in a storm."
Complaints about those two episodes aside, I don't think I'm struggling too much with DS9 just because I've learned from comics to just take shit as it's thrown at you. The major reason I'm watching it is because I've been told it's gonna explore themes that interest me as an individual (war and religion apparently, from what I can gather). I have no intention of watching Voyager or Enterprise because if they're series that even the fans of the universe don't like, then there is no way, I as a non-fan, can expect to appreciate them. That said, one of my work friends said, in terms of OG and Next Gen, that if you just watch random episodes at random times, with no schedule commitment, and not binge watch them, they're much easier to appreciate. What are your thoughts on that? Oh. Wow. A Star Trek cartoon. What is the consensus on that? I have to know. I can't imagine I'd enjoy it. As for watching the rest of the series of DS9, I promise to try my best to be more malleable and not let my complaints draw me out of the fun. If you really wanna get your dork on, go sit through The Animated Series and try and wrap canon around that.
I have to head out for the rest of the day. As usual, I'll be mulling over your response and I'll try to respond thoughtfully as soon as I can. I will say, really quick though . . . Every time he brought the series up, he had that caveat. I have been thoroughly, thoroughly warned. :)which your friend explicitly warned you about.