I've always wanted to see Star Trek completely re-imagined to be much more "hard" sci-fi.
But, here's the other side of that: We all roll our eyes at stuff like warp drive, transporters, subspace communications, etc. But, the fact is that we have absolutely NO IDEA what will be possible 3-400 years from now. Hell, even our "absolutely certain scientific reality" of how the universe formed is now in question with the James Webb telescope making some fascinating discoveries.
But the point of hard SF is not to attempt to predict the future correctly. It's to offer speculations that use known science as a starting point. It's not about the results, it's about the
process. All science fiction is conjecture, but hard SF is conjecture that works the same way science does, by beginning with known facts and principles and making logical deductions and extrapolations about their possible ramifications. Or else it takes existing theories about things that aren't yet proven and explores what would happen if those theoretical phenomena proved true. (For instance, my new
flash fiction piece in
Amazing Stories is set in a multiverse that's based in a conjectural ramification of some principles from string theory.) People often forget that science isn't just about cataloguing what exists, but making testable predictions of things beyond what is known.
Also, sometimes hard SF
does make arbitrary postulates with no basis in current science, when it's necessary for the sake of the story. But here's the key: When it does postulate something unreal, it otherwise evaluates it in the context of known physical laws and realistically depicts how it would be affected and limited by those physical realities if it existed. It doesn't use it as an excuse to avoid playing by the rules, but as an opportunity to explore how the rules would apply to it if it did exist.
I think science in general has become very arrogant, and we feel like we know where the limits and rules are.
That is profoundly misunderstanding what science is and how it works. It's the exact opposite of assuming you know the rules. The whole point of science is literally to search for new rules, new knowledge beyond what we know. The whole point of the Scientific Method is to question our perceptions and hypotheses and only give them credence if we fail to disprove them. A century and a half ago, quantum physics would've seemed like magic and been denounced as absurd. But since science is about testing assumptions and following the evidence, it was able to prove quantum physics real, and now it's the foundation of modern physics and much of modern technology (e.g. transistors, diodes, etc.).
I never saw "hard" science fiction as any better than "soft" science fiction. So I see no point in "re-imagening" Star Trek as what is now commonly held as "hard science fiction".
It's not about "better" or "worse." Differences don't have to be value judgments; the difference is valuable in itself. Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations, remember? The core philosophy of Trek is that differences are something to be welcomed and embraced, not feared or judged inferior. Nobody's suggesting replacing Trek with something "better" -- just exploring an alternative that could exist alongside it, because it's good to be able to explore the world from multiple alternative perspectives.
Different people like different things. That's not a competition or an argument, it's just giving everyone an equal opportunity to have what they enjoy. Many of us enjoy both
Star Trek and hard science fiction, so we would like to see something that combines the two. That's not judging or devaluing the regular approach to Trek, it's just saying it would be interesting to explore an alternative approach.
