From: freier@mail.physics.utah.edu (rodney james freier)
Subject: Re: DS9 was very BAD
Keywords: STAR TREK NEXT GENERATION DEEP SPACE NIne
Organization: University of Utah - Physics Department
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 93 23:50:23 GMT

In article <1993Jan11.224713.4803@ra.msstate.edu>, slrosser@whale.st.usm.edu (Meredith) writes:
|> To those of you who are trashing DS9 because of poor science...
|> 
|> THAT'S WHYTHEY CALL THEM SCIENCE FICTION SHOWS AND NOT
|> SCIENCE -FACT- SHOWS!!!  
|> 
|> Geez.  I bet you guys -hate- Disney flicks.  Imagine, expecting
|> us to think Ali could fly around on a carpet that didn't
|> even have -thrusters-.  And that doesn't even -begin- to cover
|> the inconsistencies of that genie--!
|> 
    DS9 and Star Trek are NOT science fiction.  They are mostly fantasy.  
Science fiction, or more accurately speculative fiction,  attempts to
foresee technological developments and explore the consequences to 
society.  Star Trek explores some reasonable consequences (notably: meeting
other sentient species) but ignores much of the consequences of it's 
assumptions.  
     Fantasy simply assumes that whatever the story says happens can happen.
Magic works when the story needs it to.  The Warp engines work when the
script writers need them, and they are inexplicably ineffective when the
writers need the crew trapped somewhere.

|> And aside of the fact that these shows are meant to entertain us
|> and -NOT- to inform us, consider this:  IT'S TELEVISION.  As a 
|> culture, we should have long ago outgrown the belief that everything
|> on televisiohas to be true.  Your outrage is out of date by half a
|> century.

   I don't believe everything on TV has to be true.  I'd just prefer it
if SOME of it was well thought out and relevant.  Some of the episodes of
ST:TNG are very well done.  Others have their plots held together by spit
and bailing wire.

    For example:  I liked parts of "Relics", since it revealed a consequence
of the transporter... long term storage.  But ask yourself this:  Why didn't 
Geordi and Scotty just hail the Sphere, wait for the doors to start closing,
get near them, and then hail the Enterprise with this message:  "We know how
to open this door.  We'll open it again in 10 minutes. "  The Enterprise
could have traced the signal to the open hatch, flew to it, and just waited 
until Geordi hailed it again.  

    The answer?  Because then the story wouldn't have had a crecsendo or
a feel-good ending.  There are a few different ways to rewrite this script
so that it has both a feel-good ending AND fewer logic holes. 

|> Meredith
|> p.s.  Besides, how many of you really believe in dilithium crystals and
|> the matter-antimatter mix so vital to these ships?

   I don't BELIEVE it.  But I'm willing to accept their assumption that
humans may develop ways to get useful energy out of matter/antimatter
reactions.   Heck, we already can.  We just don't have a good source of
antimatter. 

|> -- 
|> +---------------------------------------------------------------------+
|> |Meredith                   "Adventure only occurs in the absence     |
|> |slrosser@whale.st.usm.edu   absence of safety.  Life is *fun*...     |
|> |                            but no one ever claimed it was healthy." | 
|> +---------------------------------------------------------------------+