"Mirror, Mirror" Thoughts

[fireproof78]

I honestly think TOS-Prime takes place in another universe, and we in real life are living in their "mirror universe." This is a world where clever, evil people lead the stupid, while those in opposition are consistently outmaneuvered, framed up, and boxed in. It's an interpretation of Star Trek I never dreamed of as a kid, but here we are. I think our future government looks more like tyranny than the ideals of liberty we older Americans grew up believing in.

I believe the saying goes, "Freedom is always one generation away from extinction," or something like that. Star Trek cannot rest on it's laurels and expect people to appreciate what it was in the 60s when it was made, or that people view it all the same way. It has to update and tell relevant stories or face irrelevancy.

 

[Kor]

This is where the question of what sci-fi is comes into play.

Stepping away from that for a moment, the issue is that if we said, "Kirk has still become a captain in this universe, but on a totally different ship with a totally different crew," or "Kirk is a restaurant owner in this universe," we would have a very different story, though not necessarily better or worse, just very different. The idea of a very similar, other universe has to be accepted to tell the story the writer apparently wanted to tell.

So is it sci-fi or fantasy and does it matter? In my opinion: Firstly, if a person likes the story, it may not matter to that person; secondly, in my view, we can look at it like Joe Jennings said in an interview about ST:II. He said that in sci-fi you need to create your own rules and be honest to those rules. Does "Mirror, Mirror," do that? If so, it is sci-fi to me. In my mind it does, since the "rules" are that a storm and a transporter accident got them here, and that if they survive they have a short time to get back to their home, and in the meanwhile they see similar, but evil, versions of their friends.

I would say that good fantasy fiction also has some level of consistency and/or internal logic when it comes to how things work within the world being depicted. Having some totally unexpected 'deus ex machina' type phenomenon show up out of the blue can take the audience out of the narrative no matter what genre it happens in. And just as SF has its 'hard' and 'soft' varieties, fantasy has different approaches to world-building with 'hard' and 'soft' magic systems.

Kor

 

[Mres_was_framed!]

I would say that good fantasy fiction also has some level of consistency and/or internal logic when it comes to how things work

That's true, too. But I think that sci-fi really has to follow its own rules to be taken as such by readers, who might otherwise claim it has not met that requirement.