I have, in STO, a captain with a science background (like Janeway) whose probably hopeless task is to try to make sense of a universe whose underlying laws were literally written by committee, many of whom are/were scientifically illiterate.
Commander Zoom on
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JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
I love Star Trek, I have all my life, but anyone who calls it "hard sci-fi" is delusional.
I don't disagree, but does anyone call it hard sci-fi? I mesn, I guess someone somewhere must, but I authentically don't remember encouraging it.
Jacobkosh on
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Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
The only time Star Trek is hard is when something something penis.
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JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
edited June 2020
I guess here is what I think, in list form:
- Hard sci-fi is a literary game that author and audience agree to, like mystery stories that "play fair" so the audience has a chance to solve it before the detective.
- But there are stories you can't tell if you "play fair" with the mystery. Sometimes a killer really is just some random guy you've never met!
- Similarly, there are stories you can't tell if you exclude shapechanging or faster-than-light travel or whatever.
- Lots of stories that don't play these games still have value; they're entertaining or say important things about people, life, etc.
- Star Trek taken as a whole is obviously not hard sci-fi.
- Though many individual Trek stories have no issues once you accept the basic conceits of FTL, force fields etc.
- Lots of the rest could be rewritten with minimal effort. The "sonic weapon" in "A Taste of Armageddon" is dumb, but it could just be a laser and nothing would change.
- "In for a penny, in for a pound" isn't a storytelling rule; just because you allow one or two impossible things doesn't mean you have to allow EVERY impossible thing.
- The good word for this is parsimony. You can be parsimonious with your crazy impossible things.
- Mass Effect is a great example of parsimony; almost every conceit in Mass Effect is explained by the one thing, the mass effect. The other impossible thing is sexy aliens, and nobody needs an explanation for that.
- People have different standards for silliness, and that's okay. If they prefer Star Trek that stretches disbelief less, that's fine.
- To a point, anyway. If all someone can take away from a Trek story is "but force fields aren't real," they might be happier watching something else.
- "The Orville" shows that you can have a 100% Trek experience while being much more parsimonious - no made-up radiation or particles that I recall, for instance.
- I would love a Star Trek that is more careful with its out-there elements like The Orville. The fact that in one episode from 20 years ago they turn into lizards shouldn't be an argument against that.
- But I also don't think Star Trek should be The Expanse or SG-1 or Battlestar Galactica. Let those things be those things. Let Star Trek be Star Trek.
- Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
Usually I see it put more in the context of "Star Trek is science fiction, Star Wars is science fantasy". Which seems both nonsensical as an argument to me and like you are making up new genres just to justify the argument. But it's all based around this idea that Star Trek somehow is more grounded in science or something like that. Which is funny because most Star Trek fans will talk about technobabble, which is itself an implicit acceptance that most of what's going on re: science in the show is gobbledegoop to justify the plot. Which is fine and all but it is what it is.
Odo still looks at things with a solid's point of view. He spends a lot of time at his job when he doesn't even need a job at all. He doesn't need food, water, or shelter. If he wanted, he can just spend all his time shapeshifting on some random planet. He can easily book passage on any ship he wants with his skills or just stowaway by turning into a random object. When he's advanced enough, he can even shapeshift into a spacefaring creature like Laas. And if he wants, he can learn any skill or hobby he wants since he's immortal so it won't matter if he spends 50 years getting 10 PhD's or becoming the best painter or musician. He has practically unlimited freedom and choice to do whatever he wants.
Most humans can do a lot of that too though. Picard didn't sign up because he needed the GI bill benefits. They might not be quite as mobile but I imagine anyone born on Earth in the 2300s would probably have the opportunity to move or travel pretty much anywhere within Federation space.
People do things because they need jobs but people also do things because they think they're important, and when you take away someone's need for a job you find out what's important to them.
Humans still have far more limitations due to their physiology. They can only go to places with sufficient level of infrastructure to maintain their quality of life. They're much more dependent on technology. They have a limited amount of time to pursue their interests. Even in the 24th century, life expectancy for humans is maybe around 150 years. Picard choosing to serve as a Starfleet captain means he missed out on a lot of other things he wanted. Riker chose to put his career on pause to serve as Commander on the Enterprise. He was conflicted about choosing to stay on the Enterprise or getting his own ship.
That's not a problem for Changelings. If Odo wanted, he can be a security chief for 100 years. Then he can become a Starfleet captain for 100 years. Then he can become a musician for 100 years.
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JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
Usually I see it put more in the context of "Star Trek is science fiction, Star Wars is science fantasy". Which seems both nonsensical as an argument to me and like you are making up new genres just to justify the argument. But it's all based around this idea that Star Trek somehow is more grounded in science or something like that. Which is funny because most Star Trek fans will talk about technobabble, which is itself an implicit acceptance that most of what's going on re: science in the show is gobbledegoop to justify the plot. Which is fine and all but it is what it is.
Well, like, science fiction isn't characterized by being necessarily about science at all, much less about "correct" science. If someone has a rare medical condition where their skin burns and they bleed from the dick hole at the hateful touch of things that aren't 100% scientifically accurate then they'd best avoid the science fiction aisle at the bookstore altogether! Many/most acknowledged classics of the genre have fantastical elements such as
- FTL or things that are like FTL (Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, Dan Simmons, David Brin, James SA Corey, etc etc)
- telepathy or psionic powers (Asimov, Heinlein, Jack Vance, Ursula K. Le Guin, Frank Herbert, Roger Zelazny, Alfred Bester, etc etc)
- cosmic gods (EE "Doc" Smith, Roger Zelazny, Gene Wolfe, Arthur C. Clarke, Larry Niven, Greg Bear, etc etc)
- impossible feats of engineering (Clarke, Niven, Bear, Alistair Reynolds, etc etc)
- Time travel (HG Wells, Asimov, Heinlein, William Gibson, that weird subgenre where SCA nerds get warped back to the 1600s and invent automatic weapons, etc etc)
- Alternate universes (Asimov, Heinlein, Herbert, Philip K. Dick, Frederick Pohl)
- Aliens you can fuck (too many to count)
- THE ACTUAL BIBLICAL GOD (Aslmov, Clarke, Dick, Wolfe)
I'm just going down the list of Hugo winners for these names. These are authors that 70 years of science fiction fans agree are science fiction writers, writing things that are composed, marketed, and sold as science fiction. Star Trek, which has all of these things, is also composed and marketed as science fiction.
The point being, there's gotta be something to science fiction-ness beyond strict scientific plausibility, right? Or even being about science in any way. Lots of SF novels are just people having ordinary lives or doing things that are comprehensible to us - having relationships or solving mysteries or whatever - but in the future.
What exactly that unique quality is, is up for debate, and people have been debating it for almost 100 years, so nobody's gonna answer it here. But I personally feel that it's kind of... an attitude. All of those authors I listed, and of course the thousands of others I didn't, have wildly different worldviews and scientific backgrounds and interests but broadly, if you read a lot of things labeled "science fiction" at the bookstore, you'll encounter a common feeling that the universe is both explicable and ought to be explained, a concern with thinking about the second- or third-order consequences to society of a technological or social idea, and a lens through which to examine modern problems and controversies or just human ethics in general. I would say that Star Trek has those attitudes.
Star Wars, by contrast, is about movies. 100%. It's a guy who makes movies, and loves movies, making movies about how much he loves other movies. Star Wars is about film noir, gangster movies, war movies, cowboy movies, Errol Flynn movies, Flash Gordon serials, jungle adventure b-movies from the 50s, and samurai. The way to tell a good Star Wars story is to copy attitudes and gestures from those other genres. It's an exercise in artistic style using science fiction as a flavor in the stew, but it's not interested in being science fiction, or at least it's not more interested in that than in being a Kurosawa movie or a John Ford Western or whatever.
None of that means that Star Wars is bad or lesser, and if someone thinks that, they're being a dumb. It just means that it's not trying to play that game. It's over there, playing a different game.
For example, I was able to predict exactly what was going to happen during a certain sequence near the beginning of The Last Jedi, because I'd seen it in every single WW2 movie featuring formations of B-17 bombers being attacked by Messerschmitts over Germany. Just like the finale of the original, all the way back in '77, is taken almost shot by shot from The Dam Busters (1955). And somewhere in the middle you have pod racing, which is just the chariot race from Ben Hur et al but with the chariots pulled by jet engines. And on, and on, and on.
Commander Zoom on
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JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
For example, I was able to predict exactly what was going to happen during a certain sequence near the beginning of The Last Jedi, because I'd seen it in every single WW2 movie featuring formations of B-17 bombers being attacked by Messerschmitts over Germany. Just like the finale of the original, all the way back in '77, is taken almost shot by shot from The Dam Busters (1955). And somewhere in the middle you have pod racing, which is just the chariot race from Ben Hur et al but with the chariots pulled by jet engines. And on, and on, and on.
It's also how everyone has always known how a Star Wars "underworld" story should work, even decades before The Mandalorian came out, because we could just imagine The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly or The Untouchables but with Hutts in it.
Btw I 100% predict a big Odessa Steps shootout at the climax of a Mandalorian episode sometime. Baby Yoda's carriage is totally going to be rolling to certain doom as Mando fights stormtroopers.
Star Trek has bad science.
Star Wars has space magic.
No, come on now. I'm not even talking about how Transporters are such nonsense they're magic, I'm talking about fucking Q. There's a guy who snaps his fingers and does literally anything the plot requires, this isn't bad science, this is magic, he is a wizard.
The latter.
Two middle-aged guys in hockey gear hitting each other with pugil sticks is the ultimate martial art.
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JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
Almost nothing Q does couldn't be explained away, if someone wanted, by holograms, replicators, teleporters, and mind control, all of which already exist in the fiction and there are literally already Star Trek stories where a Q-like entity torments the crew and then they blow up his master computer or whatever.
More importantly, that's the kind of thing that happens in Star Trek. They see some impossible-seeming thing and then find out it actually is possible and has a rational explanation.
Star Wars isn't interested in that part. Star Wars fans aren't interested in that part, which is why people threw a fit about midichlorians - becuase it was an unnecessary explanation of something that didn't need to be explained. The point of the Force is that it's spiritual and emotional and intuitive, not that it's composed of self-organizing tachyons traversing a closed timelike loop.
That's what makes it magic.
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JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
Assuming the qualifiers are the same as with fantasy, where "soft" fantasy is talking dragons, wizards, and elves that live 1000 years, and "hard" fantasy is "this may have possibly happened back in the middle ages... so long as we put one fucking huge asterisk next to the whole thing". Then I don't have a problem qualifying Star Wars as soft and Star Trek as hard. Or at the very least, Trek is harder than Wars, despite the fact that Trek can be pretty dang squishy at times.
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
"Is Star Trek better than Star Wars" is the wrong question.
"Could Picard beat Chewbacca at that holochess game" is the question that needs an urgent answer.
TV-Picard is intelligent, calculated, and precise. He could beat Chewbacca at holochess. But it's more likely he'd make a compassionate and insightful speech in the middle of the game that would convince Chewbacca to join Picard's chess side.
Movie-Picard would Tarzan down some wiring into a dune buggy and drive-by shoot at the game with a phasor riffle while screaming at the top of his lungs.
There is a distinction in the way that a setting approaches crazy-ass science magic that makes it "soft" or "hard" scifi or "high" or "dark" or "low" fantasy or whatever
But ultimately these things are largely an aesthetic concern. Which is fine! Like that's totally cool. It's an aesthetic you select for your game
Almost nothing Q does couldn't be explained away, if someone wanted, by holograms, replicators, teleporters, and mind control, all of which already exist in the fiction and there are literally already Star Trek stories where a Q-like entity torments the crew and then they blow up his master computer or whatever.
Shit, in addition to all the TOS episodes like this, TNG had "Devil's Due." Ardra is virtually indistinguishable from a Q up until the end.
Star Trek has bad science.
Star Wars has space magic.
Star Trek has space magic. Telepathy, just for starters.
Like I said, I think it's silly to try and pretend the two aren't just different flavours of sci-fi, but it's an argument I've seen where the whole idea that one is "more scientific" then the other and that's where these kind of "who is doing real science" things come up.
I think the key difference in themes is that Magic is often hereditary, or locked in by secret knowledge or "chosen one" dynamic, while sci-fi is often far more practical technology that just about anyone can use with training or even without(see 40K).
Also in Magic rarely evolves, it's always a theme that the more ancient the magic the better it is, you rarely have some magic researcher come up with just plain better spells than what you had before.
Almost nothing Q does couldn't be explained away, if someone wanted, by holograms, replicators, teleporters, and mind control, all of which already exist in the fiction and there are literally already Star Trek stories where a Q-like entity torments the crew and then they blow up his master computer or whatever.
Shit, in addition to all the TOS episodes like this, TNG had "Devil's Due." Ardra is virtually indistinguishable from a Q up until the end.
The best part of that episode is the first thing the crew does is literally ask "Is this Q?". Picard basically dismisses it because he doesn't think Q would care that much about a planet.
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
I think the key difference in themes is that Magic is often hereditary, or locked in by secret knowledge or "chosen one" dynamic, while sci-fi is often far more practical technology that just about anyone can use with training or even without(see 40K).
Also in Magic rarely evolves, it's always a theme that the more ancient the magic the better it is, you rarely have some magic researcher come up with just plain better spells than what you had before.
in short, Magic is Republican.
You wound me. Though I agree.
Wheel of Time plays with the paradigm a bit. It has the standard "things were better 3,000 years later, and now it's all gone to shit," but the primitive contemporary magic users still come up with tricks the ancients never thought of. The series makes a point that technology, magical or not, is just reflection of a society's needs and desires. So, sure, the primitives don't have teleportation or effective mind control, but they can form a psychic bond that turns the recipient into a super soldier.
At least for me, "magic" is basically a prescriptive methodology (we've learned when you do a, b happens) which eventually becomes a technology based on rational understanding of the mechanics.
On the matter of sci-fi versus space magic, I'd say that Star Trek at least presents its space-magic (telepathy, cosmic superbeings, etc.) with an attitude of being confident that it can be explained and has a rational mechanism behind it. Telepathy acts using exotic forms of energy we haven't realized exist yet, the superbeings exist in high-dimensional spaces we don't have regular contact with, and so on. The Force (at least in the original trilogy) is not only presented as unexplained but on some level inexplicable. Han Solo and the Imperial meeting both explicitly call it out as hokum and sorcery.
This is not to say that Star Trek doesn't have its own flavor of mysticism, particularly in the "this individual has been selected by destiny to E V O L V E" theme that keeps popping up, but on balance its appendices to reality are presented as Explicable, if only eventually.
My favorite musical instrument is the air-raid siren.
Yeah, the way Trek handles stuff like evolutionary levels and the notion that there's some sort of fate or destiny normal course of development with which we dare not interfere, lest we be SMOTE FOR OUR HUBRIS, is outdated psuedoscience at best and outright superstition at worst. YOU NO PLAY GODS!
Star Trek uses a lot of outdated and misunderstood science but it's still sci-fi. A lot of older sci-fi use speculation that have since been proven wrong. H.G. Wells wrote "War of the Worlds" in a time when some people thought geographical features on Mars were evidence of canals. But they're still considered sci-fi instead of science fantasy.
JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
Susie Plaxon was unfairly hot. I wish they'd done more with Dr. Selar. It's not like having already played an alien character was ever an impediment to playing other alien characters.
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daveNYCWhy universe hate Waspinator?Registered Userregular
Susie Plaxon was unfairly hot. I wish they'd done more with Dr. Selar. It's not like having already played an alien character was ever an impediment to playing other alien characters.
It certainly wasn't in her case. Four different characters across TNG, Voyager, and Enterprise.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
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BlackDragon480Bluster KerfuffleMaster of Windy ImportRegistered Userregular
Susie Plaxon was unfairly hot. I wish they'd done more with Dr. Selar. It's not like having already played an alien character was ever an impediment to playing other alien characters.
It certainly wasn't in her case. Four different characters across TNG, Voyager, and Enterprise.
Her hair as the female Q on Vouager was amazing, though I feel her as Selar was the total package.
No matter where you go...there you are. ~ Buckaroo Banzai
Posts
I don't disagree, but does anyone call it hard sci-fi? I mesn, I guess someone somewhere must, but I authentically don't remember encouraging it.
- Hard sci-fi is a literary game that author and audience agree to, like mystery stories that "play fair" so the audience has a chance to solve it before the detective.
- But there are stories you can't tell if you "play fair" with the mystery. Sometimes a killer really is just some random guy you've never met!
- Similarly, there are stories you can't tell if you exclude shapechanging or faster-than-light travel or whatever.
- Lots of stories that don't play these games still have value; they're entertaining or say important things about people, life, etc.
- Star Trek taken as a whole is obviously not hard sci-fi.
- Though many individual Trek stories have no issues once you accept the basic conceits of FTL, force fields etc.
- Lots of the rest could be rewritten with minimal effort. The "sonic weapon" in "A Taste of Armageddon" is dumb, but it could just be a laser and nothing would change.
- "In for a penny, in for a pound" isn't a storytelling rule; just because you allow one or two impossible things doesn't mean you have to allow EVERY impossible thing.
- The good word for this is parsimony. You can be parsimonious with your crazy impossible things.
- Mass Effect is a great example of parsimony; almost every conceit in Mass Effect is explained by the one thing, the mass effect. The other impossible thing is sexy aliens, and nobody needs an explanation for that.
- People have different standards for silliness, and that's okay. If they prefer Star Trek that stretches disbelief less, that's fine.
- To a point, anyway. If all someone can take away from a Trek story is "but force fields aren't real," they might be happier watching something else.
- "The Orville" shows that you can have a 100% Trek experience while being much more parsimonious - no made-up radiation or particles that I recall, for instance.
- I would love a Star Trek that is more careful with its out-there elements like The Orville. The fact that in one episode from 20 years ago they turn into lizards shouldn't be an argument against that.
- But I also don't think Star Trek should be The Expanse or SG-1 or Battlestar Galactica. Let those things be those things. Let Star Trek be Star Trek.
- Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
Star Trek has bad science.
Star Wars has space magic.
Humans still have far more limitations due to their physiology. They can only go to places with sufficient level of infrastructure to maintain their quality of life. They're much more dependent on technology. They have a limited amount of time to pursue their interests. Even in the 24th century, life expectancy for humans is maybe around 150 years. Picard choosing to serve as a Starfleet captain means he missed out on a lot of other things he wanted. Riker chose to put his career on pause to serve as Commander on the Enterprise. He was conflicted about choosing to stay on the Enterprise or getting his own ship.
That's not a problem for Changelings. If Odo wanted, he can be a security chief for 100 years. Then he can become a Starfleet captain for 100 years. Then he can become a musician for 100 years.
Well, like, science fiction isn't characterized by being necessarily about science at all, much less about "correct" science. If someone has a rare medical condition where their skin burns and they bleed from the dick hole at the hateful touch of things that aren't 100% scientifically accurate then they'd best avoid the science fiction aisle at the bookstore altogether! Many/most acknowledged classics of the genre have fantastical elements such as
- FTL or things that are like FTL (Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, Dan Simmons, David Brin, James SA Corey, etc etc)
- telepathy or psionic powers (Asimov, Heinlein, Jack Vance, Ursula K. Le Guin, Frank Herbert, Roger Zelazny, Alfred Bester, etc etc)
- cosmic gods (EE "Doc" Smith, Roger Zelazny, Gene Wolfe, Arthur C. Clarke, Larry Niven, Greg Bear, etc etc)
- impossible feats of engineering (Clarke, Niven, Bear, Alistair Reynolds, etc etc)
- Time travel (HG Wells, Asimov, Heinlein, William Gibson, that weird subgenre where SCA nerds get warped back to the 1600s and invent automatic weapons, etc etc)
- Alternate universes (Asimov, Heinlein, Herbert, Philip K. Dick, Frederick Pohl)
- Aliens you can fuck (too many to count)
- THE ACTUAL BIBLICAL GOD (Aslmov, Clarke, Dick, Wolfe)
I'm just going down the list of Hugo winners for these names. These are authors that 70 years of science fiction fans agree are science fiction writers, writing things that are composed, marketed, and sold as science fiction. Star Trek, which has all of these things, is also composed and marketed as science fiction.
The point being, there's gotta be something to science fiction-ness beyond strict scientific plausibility, right? Or even being about science in any way. Lots of SF novels are just people having ordinary lives or doing things that are comprehensible to us - having relationships or solving mysteries or whatever - but in the future.
What exactly that unique quality is, is up for debate, and people have been debating it for almost 100 years, so nobody's gonna answer it here. But I personally feel that it's kind of... an attitude. All of those authors I listed, and of course the thousands of others I didn't, have wildly different worldviews and scientific backgrounds and interests but broadly, if you read a lot of things labeled "science fiction" at the bookstore, you'll encounter a common feeling that the universe is both explicable and ought to be explained, a concern with thinking about the second- or third-order consequences to society of a technological or social idea, and a lens through which to examine modern problems and controversies or just human ethics in general. I would say that Star Trek has those attitudes.
Star Wars, by contrast, is about movies. 100%. It's a guy who makes movies, and loves movies, making movies about how much he loves other movies. Star Wars is about film noir, gangster movies, war movies, cowboy movies, Errol Flynn movies, Flash Gordon serials, jungle adventure b-movies from the 50s, and samurai. The way to tell a good Star Wars story is to copy attitudes and gestures from those other genres. It's an exercise in artistic style using science fiction as a flavor in the stew, but it's not interested in being science fiction, or at least it's not more interested in that than in being a Kurosawa movie or a John Ford Western or whatever.
None of that means that Star Wars is bad or lesser, and if someone thinks that, they're being a dumb. It just means that it's not trying to play that game. It's over there, playing a different game.
"Could Picard beat Chewbacca at that holochess game" is the question that needs an urgent answer.
It's also how everyone has always known how a Star Wars "underworld" story should work, even decades before The Mandalorian came out, because we could just imagine The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly or The Untouchables but with Hutts in it.
Btw I 100% predict a big Odessa Steps shootout at the climax of a Mandalorian episode sometime. Baby Yoda's carriage is totally going to be rolling to certain doom as Mando fights stormtroopers.
No, come on now. I'm not even talking about how Transporters are such nonsense they're magic, I'm talking about fucking Q. There's a guy who snaps his fingers and does literally anything the plot requires, this isn't bad science, this is magic, he is a wizard.
Two middle-aged guys in hockey gear hitting each other with pugil sticks is the ultimate martial art.
More importantly, that's the kind of thing that happens in Star Trek. They see some impossible-seeming thing and then find out it actually is possible and has a rational explanation.
Star Wars isn't interested in that part. Star Wars fans aren't interested in that part, which is why people threw a fit about midichlorians - becuase it was an unnecessary explanation of something that didn't need to be explained. The point of the Force is that it's spiritual and emotional and intuitive, not that it's composed of self-organizing tachyons traversing a closed timelike loop.
That's what makes it magic.
I mean they literally call it the ultimate evolution of martial arts and who am I to argue with a Riker
EDIT: beaten
TV-Picard is intelligent, calculated, and precise. He could beat Chewbacca at holochess. But it's more likely he'd make a compassionate and insightful speech in the middle of the game that would convince Chewbacca to join Picard's chess side.
Movie-Picard would Tarzan down some wiring into a dune buggy and drive-by shoot at the game with a phasor riffle while screaming at the top of his lungs.
Nowadays Sci-fi generally refers to the setting.
But ultimately these things are largely an aesthetic concern. Which is fine! Like that's totally cool. It's an aesthetic you select for your game
Shit, in addition to all the TOS episodes like this, TNG had "Devil's Due." Ardra is virtually indistinguishable from a Q up until the end.
Star Trek has space magic. Telepathy, just for starters.
Like I said, I think it's silly to try and pretend the two aren't just different flavours of sci-fi, but it's an argument I've seen where the whole idea that one is "more scientific" then the other and that's where these kind of "who is doing real science" things come up.
Also in Magic rarely evolves, it's always a theme that the more ancient the magic the better it is, you rarely have some magic researcher come up with just plain better spells than what you had before.
in short, Magic is Republican.
The best part of that episode is the first thing the crew does is literally ask "Is this Q?". Picard basically dismisses it because he doesn't think Q would care that much about a planet.
You wound me. Though I agree.
Wheel of Time plays with the paradigm a bit. It has the standard "things were better 3,000 years later, and now it's all gone to shit," but the primitive contemporary magic users still come up with tricks the ancients never thought of. The series makes a point that technology, magical or not, is just reflection of a society's needs and desires. So, sure, the primitives don't have teleportation or effective mind control, but they can form a psychic bond that turns the recipient into a super soldier.
This is not to say that Star Trek doesn't have its own flavor of mysticism, particularly in the "this individual has been selected by destiny to E V O L V E" theme that keeps popping up, but on balance its appendices to reality are presented as Explicable, if only eventually.
could always be worse
TBH, I actually kinda dig Ishara Yar’s late-80s TV punk ‘do.
"The only real politics I knew was that if a guy liked Hitler, I’d beat the stuffing out of him and that would be it." -- Jack Kirby
Late 80s, yes. Punk, even TV-punk? Nah. That's a mullet, friend. It's a particularly stylish mullet, but a mullet nonetheless.
I did not know about this
Sigh.....
It certainly wasn't in her case. Four different characters across TNG, Voyager, and Enterprise.
Her hair as the female Q on Vouager was amazing, though I feel her as Selar was the total package.
~ Buckaroo Banzai