this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2025
590 points (98.0% liked)
TenForward: Where Every Vulcan Knows Your Name
5636 readers
873 users here now
/c/TenForward: Your home-away-from-home for all things Star Trek!
Re-route power to the shields, emit a tachyon pulse through the deflector, and post all the nonsense you want. Within reason of course.
~ 1. No bigotry. This is a Star Trek community. Remember that diversity and coexistence are Star Trek values. Any post/comments that are racist, anti-LGBT, or generally "othering" of a group will result in removal/ban.
~ 2. Keep it civil. Disagreements will happen both on lore and preferences. That's okay! Just don't let it make you forget that the person you are talking to is also a person.
~ 3. Use spoiler tags.
Use spoiler tags in comments, and NSFW checkbox for posts.
This applies to any episodes that have dropped within 3 months prior of your posting. After that it's free game.
~ 4. Keep it Trek related. This one is kind of a gimme but keep as on topic as possible.
~ 5. Keep posts to a limit. We all love Star Trek stuff but 3-4 posts in an hour is plenty enough.
~ 6. Try to not repost. Mistakes happen, we get it! But try to not repost anything from within the past 1-2 months.
~ 7. No General AI Art. Posts of simple AI art do not 'inspire jamaharon'
~ 8. No Political Upheaval. Political commentary is allowed, but please keep discussions civil. Read here for our community's expectations.
Fun will now commence.
Sister Communities:
Want your community to be added to the sidebar? Just ask one of our mods!
Creator Resources:
Looking for a Star Trek screencap? (TrekCore)
Looking for the right Star Trek typeface/font for your meme? (Thank you @kellyaster for putting this together!)
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I would argue that overt mysticism is what, largely, separates fantasy from science fiction. So something like Star Wars would, in my mind, be far more space fantasy than Star Trek.
Mind melds, Q magic, and the Prophets from DS9 are all overt magic. Like why can only Vulcans do mind melds? If it were science you'd be able to create a technology that would be able to do it. But nah in Star Trek, they don't even try to develop technology to do mind melds because it's something everyone knows only Vulcans can do... because it's magic.
When Q was temporarily human, he mentioned being able to change physics constants. Geordi wasn't like "holy shit that totally changes how we think about science" he's just like "we can't do that because we aren't Q."
The powers that aliens have in Star Trek is treated as being magic by the people in the universe. Some aliens just have magical abilities and nobody questions it.
Meanwhile in Star Wars, all of the powers the Jedi have are explained by microscopic organisms that can be measured with a device. Sure nobody likes that, because we actually do want Star Wars to be fantasy and not science fiction. But (for better or worse) Star Wars is more science fiction and Star Trek is more space fantasy.
There are human telepaths in Star Trek, too, Miranda Jones comes to mind.
There’s also Landru, who built a telepathic computer that controlled the entire population.
Pretty sure the universal translator and combadges all work off telepathy, but that could just be my head cannon.
I do agree it’s all basically space-magic; though.
Also, the engineering in Star Trek is largely more likely than in Star Trek. (For example, warp drive violates causality,)
Vulcans are telepathic and there are technologies in the Star Trek cannon that can allow mind reading or inhibit telepathic ability.
The Q and the Prophets are higher dimensional beings.
These powers are never treated as magic just not currently achievable. In fact there are whole episodes of each series (TNG’s Who Watches the Watchers is one) that deal with the idea that not understanding technology doesn’t make it magic. Most of the crew of Deep Space 9 refer to the Prophets as ‘Wormhole Aliens’ specifically because they don’t believe their powers are magic or godly.
They're both space operas, but Star Wars is pretty much pure "science fantasy" where Star Trek is soft science fiction, based in the idea of speculation and morality.
they arnt using magic lol, Q and prophets are multidimensional beings that can alter reality/change dimensions. its equivalent to a higher tier civilization like type 6-7 ish. also explains some of them like the prophets, organians, douwd are beings that were original organic but evolved to beings of pure energy and thought. star wars on the other hand uses actual magic, look at night sisters.