[brandmeyer]

tvtropes covers so much ground, that I don't know where to start on this one, but maybe you can help me out.

There is a category of story device that goes so far as to become more of a storytelling crutch. Or a wheelchair. Some examples from Star Trek that come to mind (since I'm re-watching TNG right about now):

- Holodeck: Totally new environments on a whim! Just in case FTL travel wasn't enough!

- Troi's empathy sense. Why script and act your way to communicate a character's emotional state when she can just tell you!

- Multiple-universes time travel. Why stick with an existing world and its background when you can just replace it!

- Technobabble. Solves any problem! Causes any problem!

- The Q. Omnipotence itself! To be fair, Voyager did manage to tell some better stories with this one.

[ravenstine]

While those are plot conveniences, it's still possible to create a good story using those tropes. In fact, some would argue that some of those tropes are what make Star Trek great. Good episodes have come from including the holodeck, Troi(yes, I would say that "Face of the Enemy" was pretty good), time travel and multiple-universes, technobabble, and Q.

Chekov's Gun can rarely, if ever, improve a story. While a lot of people seem to fall for Chekov's Gun, I don't think that those who are aware of it usually consider it to be a mark of a good story. At worst, it's obvious that the writer is bullshitting its audience. Chekov's Gun is just one of the many reasons why Abrams/Kurtzman Star Trek is basically on fire right now.

> - Multiple-universes time travel. Why stick with an existing world and its background when you can just replace it!

I don't think people are bothered by time travel plots because of the infinite possibilities to change the setting. They dislike time travel because it's usually too easy to travel through time, and shows or movies rarely adhere to any consistent time travel mechanics. Time travel stories are good at conveying high stakes, but they almost always lack any real consequences. When someone brings up time travel as a solution, nobody ever says "You know, the last time we traveled through time, we all nearly got killed and almost destroyed the universe."

[maest]

A lot of good series have this "open sandbox" format where the context of the show is just a vessel for whatever story the writer wants to tell.

Examples:

* Star Trek Holodeck * The various worlds in Sliders * The infinite worlds in Rick and Morty means there are no limits to what can be written in. * In Community, in a lot of episodes Greendale magically transforms in whatever setting is needed for the story: a court room where the murder of a yam is debated, a western/space battlefield where players duke it out for a grand prize, an entire city made of pillows and blankets, a zombie infested Halloween party etc.

The upside is anything goes, the downside is the perceived lack of consequences (especially in the extreme case of Rick and Morty).

[brandmeyer]

That's it exactly. Its the difference between using stories to build the world, and using the world as a framework for hanging your stories on it.

[pasabagi]

>Chekov's Gun can rarely, if ever, improve a story

I guess I'd see Chekov's gun as a subspecies of a more broad range of tactics you can use to introduce themes and events so they don't completely come out of left field when the reader arrives at them. If you don't do this, you risk particular events appearing surreal - for instance, if a character shoots another with a gun, did they seem like the kind of person to own a gun? If so, you're basically doing a light form of Chekov's gun anyway, and if not, you either have to put up with the fact its presence is weird and jarring, or put a stutter right in the shooting scene, slow down, and explain why the gun is here. Seems very practical to me - when you require a gun, it takes about ten seconds to go back in the narrative and place one innocently in some corner.

[kbenson]

There's definitely a middle ground with tropes, but I think it's also era dependent (and likely cyclical). Some tropes have periods in time when they come into heavy use because people are enjoying them (or there's a new twist to be done with new technological, cultural or social changes), and then become overused a too "tropey" because everyone starts recognizing them. I suspect there may have been a different level of acceptability to some of those tropes (or those tropes in that genre) at the time that series first aired, possibly because of a dearth of good science fiction on TV.

[SilverCurve]

I agree. There may be tropes that right now we want to see more, but in a few years will be viewed as "tropey".

[DanBC]

> Technobabble. Solves any problem! Causes any problem!

There's a really nice interview with some of the writers about "Tech the tech". Charlie Stross has it on his blog: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2009/10/why_i_ha...

> At his recent keynote speech at the New York Television Festival, former Star Trek writer and creator of the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica Ron Moore revealed the secret formula to writing for Trek.

> He described how the writers would just insert "tech" into the scripts whenever they needed to resolve a story or plot line, then they'd have consultants fill in the appropriate words (aka technobabble) later.

> "It became the solution to so many plot lines and so many stories," Moore said. "It was so mechanical that we had science consultants who would just come up with the words for us and we'd just write 'tech' in the script. You know, Picard would say 'Commander La Forge, tech the tech to the warp drive.' I'm serious. If you look at those scripts, you'll see that."

> Moore then went on to describe how a typical script might read before the science consultants did their thing:

> La Forge: "Captain, the tech is overteching."

> Picard: "Well, route the auxiliary tech to the tech, Mr. La Forge."

> La Forge: "No, Captain. Captain, I've tried to tech the tech, and it won't work."

> Picard: "Well, then we're doomed."

> "And then Data pops up and says, 'Captain, there is a theory that if you tech the other tech ... '" Moore said. "It's a rhythm and it's a structure, and the words are meaningless. It's not about anything except just sort of going through this dance of how they tech their way out of it."

[kbenson]

I genuinely like Stross' books, but sometimes he comes out with blog posts that are so opinionated that I wonder if he just rabble-rousing for the hell of it.

> Star Trek and its ilk are approaching the dramatic stage from the opposite direction: the situation is irrelevant, it's background for a story which is all about the interpersonal relationships among the cast. You could strip out the 25th century tech in Star Trek and replace it with 18th century tech — make the Enterprise a man o'war (with a particularly eccentric crew) at large upon the seven seas during the age of sail — without changing the scripts significantly.

> even though it's the opposite of real SF (a disruptive literature that focuses intently on revolutionary change),

There are many aspects to and levels on which SF functions. One is to explore humanity through a lens of a vastly different society because of technology and how this changed society reflects our own current implicit biases and assumptions. Stross likes to write this type of SF.

Another type of SF is to use very similar sociological and cultural constructs to how we currently function, but use the SF dressing to sneak past people's implicit biases. Want to tell a story about interracial or inter-gender issues, or immigration, or any number of things, without immediately triggering people's cognitive biases about these issues? This type of SF can be good for that. When done well, people accept a premise and the underlying reasoning behind it, and later one think "you know, that's not all that different that this real-life situation", or even don't think that, but it still affects their reasoning and thought process, because you've snuck some rationality past our all to common human cognitive foibles.

I can't imagine Stross doesn't get this, so he has some other reason for taking his stance. Perhaps he thinks the more complex re-imagining of society can do a good enough job for both types, but I don't agree. There are people that just aren't as interested in that stuff, and you lose those people. Also, it's much harder to do (as he notes, it requires a lot of planning and thinking), which means there's likely to be less stories using it, and less people finding a story they like.

IMO, there's definitely a place for both types of SF. Just be aware of which type you're about to consume if you have a preference at that time.

[hpoe]

There is a wonderful humorous song about Star Trek and their solution to all problems.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwhAq3F8NCE