I think my complaint about a lot of Trek’s anviliciousness is not so much that it is anvilicious, or that they’re dropping anvils (some anvils do need to be dropped) but rather that the writing seems so obviously aimed at the viewer.
Like, what I mean by that is I love it when my fiction is thought provoking, about moral, ethical, legal, philosophical, political, etc questions. I love it when characters discuss those things, or stories explore them.
But what I don’t love is feeling like I the viewer/reader/player am being lectured at. What I don’t love is feeling like the big speech the character is giving about whatever situation is happening in the story isn’t aimed at the other characters in said story, but aimed at me, the real person. That rips me out of the story entirely, and is just pointless didactic.
I want a story where characters having these conversations about right, and wrong, and truth and justice and how to live with eachother and so on and so on feel genuine and organic to the story. Like something these characters would actually say, something they would actually do.
And I want to feel like the characters are talking to eachother.
