5 times???
by morgan on Jul.07, 2009, under Robert J. Sawyer
I feel like my geek cred is slipping because I’ve only seen Star Trek twice. C’mon there’s got to be somebody out there who can top Rob. How many times have you seen the new Trek?
Near-future SF is the cutting edge! Forecasting 21,000 AD is more fantasy than realistic SF exploration. Sure, you can set a space opera then, but it lacks the punch that comes with grounding the speculative in the famliar (ala the Matrix or Blade Runner). I’m enchanted by the wild divergence in technical and cultural possibilities in the next 50 years. The range of variance in 10,000 years is staggering.
The science doesn’t matter. Sorry, Rob. Story trumps science. All that research has been in vain. Think of all those hours wasted in the library. OK, somebody tell me why I’m wrong, please! I want to believe in science.
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July 7th, 2009 on 9:25 pm
Denied! Went to dinner with a group before the movie, and the meals took to long to come, so seeing STAR TREK for a fifth time has been postponed.
July 8th, 2009 on 11:02 pm
I’ve only seen it once. Ho Hum.
I agree, story does trump science. I’m willing to make certain concessions and suspensions of disbelief if the story is sound and engaging.
July 9th, 2009 on 9:00 am
I do believe that the story trumps science, but I also believe that as we get further and further away from *real* science–as we get into the realm of making things up, the story has to get exponentially better, to keep up our suspension of disbelief.
For me, the Star Trek movie was *that* good–it made up zero-depth event horizons, FTL supernovas capable of anything (they should have at least put in something like it was an artificial one–a plot by some Klingon on revenge? etc.), red matter that we really need to make a lot of, except we can solve the crisis by using only a teaspoon of it… But the story was good enough that for those precious 2 hours and 6 minutes, I’m hooked. I seriously believe the only reason those errors are there are because of the writer’s strike. I’m looking forward to a movie which is even better written next time…
Also, I’ve seen it *only* 4 times…