Favorite Sci-Fi (if you must, Fantasy as well) Universes?

[Caliga]

Why is Star Trek a favorite? Its so silly.  All the aliens somehow managed to evolve into near-perfect replicas of our own species and can breed with them, almost all alien species are ultra high concept, one note constructions, etc...at this point the best thing the universe has going for it is Retro-Future awesomeness.

That was explained in that Next Generation episode where most of the races where engineered by ancient alien superpowers to be based off of similar life.

I earlier explained this to Spellus in this thread.  Pay attention, both of you 

[Caliga]

Unless they are all of the same stock there is no way they could possible interbreed.  How would sperm survive in a Vulcan's vagina, or vice versa?  Let alone being able to, you know, enter the egg, start up, and be carried to term, and then not be retarded or sterile.

You're overthinking this (as usual).  Roddenberry and his successors never tried to pretend Star Trek was hard science fiction.

[Josquius]

All ST races evolving to be humanoid...Sure, I can believe that. With or without alien intervention. The inter-breeding though is silly even with these ancient aliens.

[Savonarola]

Unless they are all of the same stock there is no way they could possible interbreed.  How would sperm survive in a Vulcan's vagina, or vice versa?  Let alone being able to, you know, enter the egg, start up, and be carried to term, and then not be retarded or sterile.

You're overthinking this (as usual).  Roddenberry and his successors never tried to pretend Star Trek was hard science fiction.

In fact there is so much pseudo-scientific nonsense on the show that most egregious sort of technobabble is known as Treknobabble.  For Languish's amusement here is a Treknobabble Generatonr:

http://maycontainnuts.me.uk/treknobabble/default.htm

You just need to enhance the energy degradation of a photon torpedo warhead to generate more power to a chronoton particle leak in the plasma conduits.

You need to reverse the flow of graviton particles to the anti-matter injectors to prevent localised harmonic interference to the warp reactor.

You just have to recalibrate the transporter beam to initiate a feedback loop in the warp reactor.

[Caliga]

All ST races evolving to be humanoid...Sure, I can believe that. With or without alien intervention. The inter-breeding though is silly even with these ancient aliens.

[Savonarola]

All ST races evolving to be humanoid...Sure, I can believe that. With or without alien intervention. The inter-breeding though is silly even with these ancient aliens.

In Star Trek ships can travel 1000 times the speed of light with no relativistic effects on time.  Certainly a little alien inter-breeding is no less believable than that.

[Caliga]

All ST races evolving to be humanoid...Sure, I can believe that. With or without alien intervention. The inter-breeding though is silly even with these ancient aliens.

In Star Trek ships can travel 1000 times the speed of light with no relativistic effects on time.  Certainly a little alien inter-breeding is no less believable than that.

Methinks people like Spellus and Josq should not be watching scifi shows at all.

[Razgovory]

All ST races evolving to be humanoid...Sure, I can believe that. With or without alien intervention. The inter-breeding though is silly even with these ancient aliens.

In Star Trek ships can travel 1000 times the speed of light with no relativistic effects on time.  Certainly a little alien inter-breeding is no less believable than that.

Or that military vessel is compose almost entirely of middle age guys.

[Caliga]

Or that military vessel is compose almost entirely of middle age guys.

[Josquius]

In Star Trek ships can travel 1000 times the speed of light with no relativistic effects on time.  Certainly a little alien inter-breeding is no less believable than that.

Thats silly too of course but it wasn't the subject at hand.

[Darth Wagtaros]

In Star Trek ships can travel 1000 times the speed of light with no relativistic effects on time.  Certainly a little alien inter-breeding is no less believable than that.

Thats silly too of course but it wasn't the subject at hand.

I think you are missing the point by about a light-year.  Trek isn't about hard science or believability.  notice that outside of DS9 continuity of any sort is near non-existent.  Trek offers pop corn space opera in a relatively hopeful and idealistic setting. 

[grumbler]

In Star Trek ships can travel 1000 times the speed of light with no relativistic effects on time.  Certainly a little alien inter-breeding is no less believable than that.

Actually, the differences between those two statements are that (a) while we don't know any way in which something can exceed the speed of light, or that exceeding the speed of light can be done without relativistic effects, we cannot say that it is impossible; while (2) one part of the definition of a species is the ability of individuals to produce fertile offspring, so it is not possible for two beings to produce a fertile child without being of the same species.

There is a difference between speculating about the possible and speculating about the impossible.

[grumbler]

I think you are missing the point by about a light-year.  Trek isn't about hard science or believability.  notice that outside of DS9 continuity of any sort is near non-existent.  Trek offers pop corn space opera in a relatively hopeful and idealistic setting.

I think this is important to keep in mind.  I, personally, find this kind of "universe" boring, as the writers are never forced by the limits of their universe to be clever and creative (the same comment I would make about the Firefly and BSG universes).  That doesn't mean that the shows are boring, of course, just that one doesn't regret the loss of the universe when the show ends.

I enjoyed DS9, for instance, and watched most of the episodes.  Nothing in it made me want to watch Voyager, though, and I saw maybe the first half-dozen shows before bailed on it for good.

The B5 universe I miss because there were things there that had not been resolved and that were inherent in the nature of the universe.

[Josquius]

In Star Trek ships can travel 1000 times the speed of light with no relativistic effects on time.  Certainly a little alien inter-breeding is no less believable than that.

Thats silly too of course but it wasn't the subject at hand.

I think you are missing the point by about a light-year.  Trek isn't about hard science or believability.  notice that outside of DS9 continuity of any sort is near non-existent.  Trek offers pop corn space opera in a relatively hopeful and idealistic setting. 

I know that. Trekies still try to believe otherwise though.
Its rather funny really, TOS was just the American version of Dr.Who. A crazy adventures series with the Federation and all that merely being a framing device. With the latter iterations of Trek though it just balooned into something else...or at least it tried, it still had the early setting to try to salvage/build upon.

[Malthus]

Star Trek TOS was never about creating a coherent and believable universe, it was just the thinnest of fictional foils (guys in a spaceship traveling around to, well, discover stuff) for a series of otherwise unconnected sci-fi mini-stories whose charm was first that almost anything could happen and second the relationship between the recurring characters.

Only as it continued did its universe grow some substance, much in the same way that a ship's hull grows barnacles. Naturally this universe lacked coherence and realism - it was always a patchwork. No-one ever sat down a la Tolkien and dreamed up a setting in advance - that all happened later (and of course could never really be a coherent whole).