Re:The Rise of Dismal Science Fiction
by lostcolony on Saturday March 24, 2018 @09:37AM
(#16666527)
The key thing about all of those is that the technology (and techobabble) is just the setting. The real story is interaction. It always is in good scifi. We may find the technical underpinnings interesting, they may be worth an article or two, they may even help influence the direction science takes (due to the choice of problems that researchers choose to tackle, and the vision they have for the possible solutions), but what makes it compelling as a consumer is the human element. Sci-fi and fantasy are grouped together as genres a lot for a reason, being essentially just constructed settings to explore the human condition.
I'm binge-watching Voyager and DSN and the truth is that we are treated to quite a bit of made-up science, like subspace physics and the like. Everytime an away team has to be trapped at the far end of a mission to advance the story, someone jumps up to explain why they can't be beamed up in "technical" terms (then someone is ordered to "remodulate"). Everytime a technologically superior enemy corners the Voyager, one hit brings the shields down to 0 because they've been "rotating their weapons frequency" (then someone reports they're "compensating"). Almost every episode of Voyager at least has some made-up-on-the-spot techno-babble like that. It's been a while since I watched TNG but I think it wasn't different there, either.
It's not like the series skirts away from made-up science is what I'm saying, at least when it comes to "physics". They could just as well make up some "sociology" or "history" if they wanted.