For this week in our Lit. of Horror, Sci-Fi, and Fantasy class, we dove into the subject of Space Opera. Our class watched part of the movie “The Forbidden Planet”, “Star Wars: A New Hope”, and I have read the short story “The Star” by Arthur C. Clarke. Space Operas are stories taking place in space, with common themes such as intergalactic battles, melodrama, and other futuristic adventures. All three medias I attained really made an impression to me of what Space Operas are. A couple of notes I wanted to take are the set design and tone/setting of these stories.
Within the subject of set design, these stories usually had some sort of starship to travel with. Also being in a different planet, or space alongside futuristic sci-fi technology. Many of these concepts vary from each media.
From what I researched, Space Operas sometimes sought inspiration from soap operas thus why they are called “space” operas. Needless to say, there are many themes I saw in these stories, but adventure and romance were the most important. In adventure, stakes were always high. In Star Wars, there were countless times where the characters get caught into battle. A lot of exploration was taking place as well, being in new planets and areas. Another example is in the short story “The Star”- as the space explorers find a vault on a planet, in which a destroyed civilization kept their most important artifacts in there.
Another key factor within adventure are, in my terms, “other worldly society”. We can see the characters in “Star Wars” engage in new cultures that are different from ours. Like I said before, there are new environments they step into and different types of lifeforms they interact with. It could also be societies similar to ours, in “The Star”, the space explorers perceived how the alien civilization was very like ours.
On the other hand, romance is shown a lot in “The Forbidden Planet” and “Star Wars”. In “The Forbidden Planet”, many of the characters were attracted to Morbius’ daughter. And as a result, drama had taken place because of the morals the crew had along with the jealousy they had from each other.
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