Quote Originally Posted by Bohandas View Post
As a tangential aside to this, why do you think it is that Star Wars always gets called out on the matter of actually being fantasy rather than science-fiction, but Star Trek rarely gets called out on it despite being even worse in this regard?

Think about it. The number of people with supernatural powers in the original Star Wars trilogy can be counted on one hand (Luke, Yoda, Obi-Wan, Vader, and Palpatine. That's exactly five.), but in Star Trek you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a deity (Apollo, Charile X, The Q, Trelane, the Organians, the Pah-Wraiths, the Wormhole Aliens, etc) or a psychic (Spock, Tuvok, Diana Troy, etc) or a spirit (Trelane, Redjak, etc) or a creature from another plane of existence (The Q, Species 8472, etc.)
Thats not a useful metric for differenting Fantasy and SciFi. Both SciFi and Fantasy is fiction. That it includes Things that don't exist in the real world is part of that.

The difference between SciFi and Fantasy lies in the Outlook and themes of the stories told. SciFi is rooted in the real world. It is concerned wíth questions that People here and now have about what is to come. Thus the future is the natural Setting for a SciFi Story. The method is to extrapolate from the present and then add additional ingrediences to formulate the desired "what if" Scenario.

Fantasy on the other Hand does not concern it self with questions about the future of mankind. That is not to say that Fantasy can not be about important questions. Our very own Rich Burlew once expressed a Notion that fiction that doesn't tackle issues of our present existence is pure escapism and he finds no worth in writing it (implying that OotS is about issues that People in the here and now are facing). But this is optional for Fantasy. Exploring a set of conditions and the resulting intricacies without concerns of their realworld applicability and for the excersise alone is a hallmark of Fantasy. A classic would be the "What if" Scenario - set in the past. Using a Tokienesque Setting is another effective method for framing a Fantasy Story: it Severs neatly the Connection tó our present and our Futur by making the Setting "not our world anyway".


Applying this understanding on StarWars and StarTrek we see that StarWars clearly a Fantasy Story and Star Treck mostly SciFi.

Star Wars: First it is set in "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away". If that isn't enough, Star Wars does not tackle any questions about the future of mankind. Elements like AI and FTL are just there. They exist, they form the backdrop of the Setting, but they are not discussed in their Relations to our Society. They can't since our Society is not even present in the star wars universe. Instead different Society is created and the narrative follows the consequences and Problems of this other Society. Star Wars is clearly a Fantasy Story.

Star Trek on the other Hand IS set in our future. The Society of the Setting is defined in relation to the present (that is a necessary condition for a Utopia), sometime it is even defined in-universe in relation to the present. The other Elements like FTL and AI are part of this "what if" look on our future. Some of the recurring themes of Star Trek: the nature of Life, what it means to be conscious, and the applicability of rights derived by such qualities, are discussed with essentially the same asumptions we in the present have about these Topics*.
So, the General Outlook of Star Trek is that of SciFi.

Now, moreso then Star Wars, Star Trek is more then one Story. Each episode and movie could be seen as its own story. And thanks to beeing written by a large number of different authors it is not surprising that no all Star trek stories would qualify as SciFi. The majority of Deep Space Nine (especially the Story Arc episodes) are prettty much Fantasy: they explore the intricacies and political interations of the fictional world for those interactions itself and with no concern for our present. That the same world can be used to tell a SciFi Story is irrelevant.
Many TNG episodes on the other Hand are clearly SciFi.


Please note two Points here:

1. This is not about "good" and "bad", or "enjoyable" and "not enjoyable". I love Star Wars, I love Star Trek. I enjoy DS9 for its Story Arc etc.
2. At no point my distinction between Fantasy and SciFi relies on supernatural Elements. That is the reason I have not touched Jedi or the Things you mentioned for Star Trek.


And, as a closing remark: the way I'm using the Terms here is hardly universal. There are other models of categorizing works of fiction. One model I'm also familiar with is to categorize fiction into "speculative fiction" and "non-speculative fiction" and use the Terms "Fantasy" and "SciFi" only to describe aesthetics (or trappings).With this model in my undestanding Star Wars would be non-speculative fiction with SciFi aesthetics. Star Trek would be mostly speculative fiction with SciFi aesthetics and anything from Asimov would be purely speculative fiction with SciFi aesthics.

*There is a difference in questioning, say, the nature of the Soul from a persepctive that Matches our own, or from a persepective that includes additional author-defined rules about the nature of the Soul. For instance a Story about the nature of the Soul set in Setting using the classical D&D ontology has no bearing on real-world questions about the nature of the Soul because the results are influenced by rules the author made up.