Edit: this is meant to be a shitpost. I don't care about your favorite series/universe. You do you.
this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2026
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Star Wars is an action/adventure/drama series that happens to be in space (they called it “space opera” for good reason).
Star Trek is a science fiction series, at least until Fuller/Kurtzman (where it strayed more to action/adventure). You kind of have to bisect Star Trek into pre and post Roddenberry/Berman.
I think the best label for Star Wars is probably “Science Fantasy”. Personally, when it comes to this sort of differentiation, I draw the line at: is there magic?
Unpopular opinion of the day: "The Force" isn't any more magic than Betazoid telepathy, replicators, or transporters.
Not to mention
Q is more "magical" than anything in Star Wars.
even in Trek, it's openly acknowledged that there must be a scientific explanation for Q, even if it's beyond humanity's current understanding. they also mention several times that any sufficiently advanced technology would appear to be magic to those who lack the ability to rationally explain it.
Star Wars tried for a scientific explanation for the Force, too, with midichlorians.
They tried, but it’s kind of bullshit and magic anyway
Agreed, but so is Q.
Yeah, Star Wars is a fantasy that is set in space.
There are aspects of Sci-Fi but the galaxy often blurs the line between magic and technology.
It has space opera elements, but Star Wars anymore is a setting rather than a story.
It's not magic, it's midichlorians!
It's not midichlorians, it's heroin.
That explains much of the plot.
Auralnauts Explains It All For You, via the life of Larry Bonjo Ben Kenobi. They tried to make him to go to Grievous's rehab and he said no no no
That’s a great one. I’ll be using that!
There's not much actual sience behind the technobabbel of Star Trek tbh. It's just as much of a magic system as the force is.
Bormanis was given a hard task, to be fair. So many scripts just had (TECH) written where the writers needed help and Bormanis would have to shoehorn something in (and before Bormanis, the actors probably just made a lot of it up).
Thankfully most of the science fiction isn’t in that technobabble but in the plot lines; questioning what it is to be human, to be civilised, and what meaning there is to life, post-scarcity.
This point needs more acknowledgement. Star Trek isn’t a sci-fi show because it does or doesn’t have magic, it’s because it tends to follow the genre conventions of a (very soft, pop) sci-fi show. Easy example, Star Wars doesn’t tend to focus on questions like “hey are these robots sentient? How could we know?” while Star Trek can’t stop litigating that issue.
It's the best technobabble, full stop.