Hi Tom.
Well with voyager and ds9 I have some thoughts about strengths and
weaknesses of the series, but that's sort of outside the main focus of
discussion here.
I'm afraid I disagree that science fiction has! to rigidly follow current
scientific thinking for a story to work, indeed I've read a good few hard sf
novels which were! essentially just extrapolations of existing scientific
concepts, but did nothing for plot, setting or characterization. Isaac
asimov for instance, while I find his concepts such as the laws of robotics
and the idea of psychohistory intreaguing as ideas, I rarely find his
characters engaging, and his plots always read basically as mystery style
puzzles, ---- very clever puzzles, but essentially just problems that are
solved by fairly emotionnless, comparatively uninteresting people.
I also am a little more scheptical of our own scientific knolidge. For
instance, Fredrich pohl imagined something very close to the modern internet
in the 1950's, with everyone carrying personal computers and keeping in
touch, but he believed that such transmissions of large amounts of data
without them being corrupted by radio signals or the like would be
impossible without certain alien crystal technology.
Now of course, thanks to the digitizing of information and far more
efficient ways of receiving various transmissions, we know that no alien
crystals are needed to accurately share data across large distances.
So, I personally do not mind an alien race having transporters, faster than
light travel etc, provided! it is treated in a consistant and logical way
that the reader can understand within the context of the suspention of
disbelief of the story.
In doctor who for instance, one of my biggest problems with the current
series is how time travel is treated. the doctor is an alien from a highly
advanced civilization who have the technology of time travel. Yet, the
writers realized that a time traveling hero has the power to solve any plot,
sinse after all if anything goes wrong he can just go back and change it.
So, they introduced the concept of the blinovich limitation effect, by which
if the Doctor actually travels back to his own past to try to change events,
he will cause catastrophic damage to the universe, sinse obviously any
changes he made in the past might prevent him from going back in the future.
So, though the doctor can! travel around time and space, the abilities of
the tardis to solve plots or get him out of trouble are limited, and limited
in a way which we can all understand.
In the new series however, the writers seem to be completely ignoring this
and treating time travel like magic! indeed I've been extremely disappointed
at several episodes where a future doctor suddenly appears and goes "hay,
lets solve the plot!"
So, here is an advanced technology, probably impossible under current
scientific thinking, yet we can see it can be treated well or badly by a
story.
Like wise with genetics. Yes, Belana being half klingon doesn't make much
scientific sense, --- -but heck the idea of even mostly humanoid! klingons
doesn't make much sense either. It does however present some really
interesting opportunities for the character to come to terms with Klingon
culture and Klingon features.
On the other hand, when in the doctor who tv movie made by fox the doctor
claimed to be half human, it was just utter nonsense, sinse the doctor has
never made such a claime before, there is no evidence of half human, half
timelords, and indeed the classic series even implied that Timelords weren't
born naturally at all! Such a statement was simply the producers deciding
that the Doctor needed to be a less alien character, and making up a very
implausable reason.
So, while I agree consistancy is the key, I wouldn't want to be tied utterly
to science in the plot of a game or indeed fiction, provided that the none
scientific elements are consistant.
this is doubly true for a game, where certain elements of technology might
need to be considdered in light of game mechanics. For example, one idea I'd
heavily considder for an sf based game would be instant, ftl travel where a
ship could jump a vast distance very quickly, appearing somewhere else and
giving the player another encounter. Provided such technology could be
considdered in a reasonable light, and has at least an understandable basis,
this would I think be fine.
Beware the Grue!
Dark.
---
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