What do you consider good vs bad Sci Fi?

[Nobody700]

I decided cause of some heavy topics here, we need something lighthearted and nice, a good talking with each other on the aspects of Sci-Fi. I could go into a 10,000 word thing, but I wanna keep this brief. Remember, everything SHOULD be subjective, and don't bring in examples of bad sci fi like 'poor acting' or 'plothole storytelling', that is BEYOND obvious. What I mean by good and bad sci-fi, should be things you look forward too in Sci-Fi but stuff you also don't wanna see. For myself, here are a few examples.

Good:
Diversity. Not just the obvious thing of racial, I mean full blown diversity. Not just aliens who look and act exactly like us, but how far society can look and be. Aliens who are literal gas bags who have adapted technology to fit them, robots who think entirely different from organic life but wish to be part of it, and all differents kinds of cultures that would not work for humanity but do for them.
Discovery: One of the greatest aspects of Sci-Fi is creating your setting, and than saying 'we have discovered the horizon, now what is beyond it?' Don't just settle for here, go out more and discover more, to better yourself and others with what you find.
Ever changing storylines: The best aspects of Sci-Fi to me is how it quickly evolves and changes more than almost any genre, because of how expansive and huge it is. Only in it can planets blow up and we only care cause ONE guy lived there. Storylines that are constantly changing because the universe changes with it.

Bad:
Dated politics: This is self explanatory, all of Picard Season 2 and the like. Just remind us that 'current year is happening' and refuse to go into it. When Babylon 5 did it, it served a major purpose and was part of the shows themes, not just to say something now.
Junk science: Yes you'll have fake science, we come here for it... but don't techno babble us with your fake science, please. Multi Model reflecting indeed.

[Thebestoftherest]

Agree, I am not against them explaining out science works for stuff that haven't been invented yet but one it needs consistenty and use sparingly.

[hammerofglass]

Babylon 5 has the advantage that its politics get less dated every year.

Something I'll add under Bad: dark for the sake of being dark, or worse for "realism". The first seasons of Picard and Discovery were really bad for this. With an exception for things like Lexx and Warhammer 40k where it's so deliberately far over the top depressing that it loops back to comedy.

[Thebestoftherest]

Here another bad: Money over brains. I don't care what new toys you got, they can't hide if the characterization is weak, the plot is dull, and your banking on nostalgia over story.

[clearspira]

I agree with this list wholeheartedly and yes, B5's politics are timeless. That's kind of why season 5 and Crusade isn't as well regarded - the show probably would have done well in finishing with President Clark dying and being done with it.

And I think that is ultimately the key to a good sci-fi: being timeless. Most people don't care if their old show set in 2005 has spinning rolls of magnetic tape, flashing lights and monitors with Atari-level graphics. If the story is good, the plot isn't full of holes, the characters are relatable, people will watch it even if the whole concept is absolutely bizarre.

Originality is also missing from a lot of modern sci-fi. Most of today's stuff (to paraphrase Pratchett when he was talking about Lord of the Rings knock off's) is written by the people of the people of the people who watched the Battlestar Galactica Reboot. Where is the truly original, balls-to-the-wall stuff? Where is the modern Space 1999 with the Moon flying off on an adventure?

[Riedquat]

Originality is also missing from a lot of modern sci-fi. Most of today's stuff (to paraphrase Pratchett when he was talking about Lord of the Rings knock off's) is written by the people of the people of the people who watched the Battlestar Galactica Reboot. Where is the truly original, balls-to-the-wall stuff? Where is the modern Space 1999 with the Moon flying off on an adventure?

When it comes to film and TV the temptation is to play it safe, the more so the more expensive it is to make, and sci-fi's usually expensive.

[Riedquat]

Agree, I am not against them explaining out science works for stuff that haven't been invented yet but one it needs consistenty and use sparingly.

IF it's establishing some rules in world-building that are then used consistently it's OK. Occasionally random nonsense is OK just as part of setting the atmosphere (e.g. Star Wars had a little technobabble that served no further purpose than "we're fixing the Falcon.")

[Thebestoftherest]

Agree, I just don't want it like Voyager where it used almost every episode and doesn't even pretend to be consistent with it.

[Nealithi]

As someone that reads and occasionally writes to HFY, I ask this question often. What I have determined is make a good story first. Scifi/fantasy are only the setting if that is what is needed for context. A good story is simply that. George Lucas, as Chuck has described, borrowed heavily from Japanese stories and happened to set them in science fiction. And I still love A New Hope. It, worked. Simple as that.

A similar question was asked on HFY about poor or over used concepts. Bad to me was humans so alien by existence (They breathe?) or Earth as a Deathworld being way over used. Humanity being too strong or scientifically advanced that nothing could stand in their way. It is, meh.
Good by contrast I think humanity should be on par more or less from everyone else. We succeed through human means. A sort of self plug, but I wrote a short story where in a war an alien race bombed a world and it would choke out the life on it. No one had a fleet to spare to go to the aid. Then human ships began to appear. Not warships, any ship that could get there. Just showing up to help. I was thinking of those that went to New York after 9/11. Everyone else said I wrote space Dunkirk. But those are the stories I love.

There was a Justice League: Unlimited episode. J'on had his telepathy expanded and could not turn it off. Listening to everyday humans and little issues was maddening. Going to the forest to escape the noise he again hears a group of humans. People searching for a missing child. They didn't even know the girl, but they put down their daily lives to find her.

This is story telling that can move you.

Another HFY example that got me into reading there. An alien warrior race intervenes in a war between humans and another alien race. When the invaders are pushed back, the warriors ask if this answers the blood debt. No one knows what they are talking about. It takes talks to find what happened. Years ago one of their troop transports came out of FTL to close to a planet and were going to burn up in the atmosphere. The warriors began their chants for the end of their lives when a bang went through their ship. A human asteroid miner had dove his ship under theirs and nudged them back up into orbit. But the act wrecked his ship and he died. To the alien warriors this was incredible. An act of martyrdom so rare it was like saintly to them. So they took it as a true racial blood debt. Humans didn't remember it, because we do that sort of thing often. Running to a burning building to rescue people not our families and not as fire fighters. An entire race of martyrs. . .

But that is my opinion on good.

[stryke]

As someone that reads and occasionally writes to HFY, I ask this question often. What I have determined is make a good story first.

That's my take. There's no hard rules, there's only the question of execution, and how much people like what you're doing.

There's plenty of truly excellent sci-fi to pick one example mentioned so far about the politics of the day, and that shouldn't come as a surprise as a lot of speculative fiction is used as a lense to examine the world we live in.

The problem with Picard s2 was not that it was a takedown of ICE, but how they did that takedown could have been handled better, and that it felt like it had been clumsily inserted as a topical sideshow when it didn't really fit with the rest of what was going on in that season.

And I still prefer that to TNG glorifying the IRA and predicting they'd be victorious.