Firefly Fans vs. Star Trek Fans +

Back to Firefly vs. Star Trek for a moment. The question I'm asking isn't really about the absolute value of either franchise, or their relative values to each other. Both had good features and bad.

What I find interesting enough to pursue it is why serious Firefly fans in particular seem especially eager to bash Star Trek. It's puzzling. I don't see anyone arguing that Firefly is crap... so why get so defensive about it as to try to make it look better by snarking at Star Trek?

I find it interesting that Star Trek fans don't seem to have anywhere near the same need to try to make their science-fictional TV/movie entertainment of choice look better by devaluing some other SF. As I said, about the closest they ever come is the occasional Star Trek vs. Star Wars bull session where Star Trek fans describe Star Wars as "science fantasy"... a charge that even Star Wars fans generally don't rise to dispute.

As for whether regular entertainment critics level the same charges at Star Trek that the hardcore Firefly fans produce, with two exceptions to the list I provided earlier I don't agree that they do. Those two exceptions are the "social utopia" and "no money" (i.e., statist economy) objections, which do seem to give most people some amount of heartburn. (Though possibly Americans more so than others.) The other criticisms -- the accusations of hierarchicalism, militarism, paternalism, and in general an insufficiency of feminism -- these aren't perceptions that the general public have of Star Trek. But they are claimed over and over again against Star Trek by the really dedicated Firefly fans, along with the charges of "bad science" and "2D characters."

(Classic examples of this kind of stuff can be found in two volumes of essays edited by Whedon associate Jane Espenson: Finding Serenity and Serenity Found. Go read the stuff in these volumes and then tell me that the serious Firefly fan doesn't have it in for Star Trek to a strangely unreasonable degree.)

What this suggests to me is that there's something special about fans of Firefly. Perhaps Joss Whedon's work in general, or Firefly in particular, attracts a certain kind of person, the kind of person who naturally sees the world in terms of these sorts of utopianist socio-political beliefs? Would it really be surprising if that were the case?

But if that were so, why would they be so antagonistic toward the fans of a show -- Star Trek -- that is even more utopianist than anything that Whedon has produced?

Maybe the bottom line here is just that Star Trek fans should feel pleased that for all the criticisms that the uberfans in the Firefly community have for Star Trek, they can't seem to stop talking about it....

Firefly Fans Vs. Star Trek Fans

Hardcore fans of Joss Whedon's briefly-aired science fiction series Firefly tend -- loudly -- to regard Star Trek as a disastrously awful excuse for science fiction.

I've recently read a bunch of essays by dedicated Firefly fans, and pretty much every one of their authors went out of their way to punch Star Trek in the mouth. (With the exception of David Gerrold, and even he couldn't resist taking a few pokes at Trek.) Star Trek is held to be childishly utopian (and therefore not "real" science fiction), anti-feminist to the point of misogyny (not enough women behaving like men), militaristic (they wear uniforms), fascistic (the state controls the economy), impossibly antiseptic (they wear "Day-Glo" uniforms, and their starships are clean instead of being littered with dusty crap), hierarchical (they have a rank structure), culturally imperialistic (the Federation expects everybody else to respect individual liberty), paternalistic (can you say, "Prime Directive?"), scientifically implausible (the Trekiverse is full of aliens with bumpy foreheads and cute pointy ears), and the story-telling jejune to the point of being fit only for low-grade morons incapable of appreciating serious fiction.

In short, serious Firefly fans look down on Star Trek fans, and miss no opportunity to say so.

So, having heard how Firefly fans feel about people who like Star Trek, I naturally wonder whether Star Trek fans will similarly find so many things to dislike about Firefly. Somehow, I doubt that -- my guess is that Star Trek fans are more tolerant of other worldviews.

What does it tell us that plenty of Star Trek fans are happy to disagree with things that Gene Roddenberry said, compared to the defensiveness of Firefly fans when someone doesn't join them in deifying Joss Whedon?

It's important to understand that I enjoyed Firefly. I thought the characters and stories were generally very well done, and I respect many of the world-building decisions made in creating the Firefly 'verse. But there's something about the way the heavy-duty Firefly fans want to treat Star Trek that puts my back up. (Some Babylon 5 fans were the same way.) They remind me of powergamers who go onto forums to trash any change to "their" game, as though they enjoy competing to see who can say the most brutishly disgusting things about any creative act that doesn't fit into their personal beliefs about how things should be. Maybe I'm just not seeing it, but I can't recall ever hearing Star Trek fans run down anybody else's science fiction universe in this way. Even the old "Star Trek vs. Star Wars" debate seems like more of a fun bull session than an attempt to tear down somebody else's world.

So am I wrong? Or is there something about these two franchises that attracts different kinds of people?

What's wrong with enjoying both?