On Genres: Why Sci-Fi Constantly Out-Performs Fantasy

Why does fantasy always fail where sci-fi succeeds?

In recent years, I finally started exploring the well-known science fiction series of yore. Before 2015, the only sci-fi series I had ever watched was Firefly. I loved it, but I always preferred swords and sorcery to lasers and spaceships, which is why I didn’t watch shows like Stargate SG-1 in their prime. For me, it was more aesthetic than thematic… sci-fi’s whole vibe is future-tech, while fantasy is natural-traditional (which appeals more to me).

The reason for this shift was not because I suddenly developed a love of tech, but rather, because I gave up on finding good fantasy shows to watch. After the amusing but otherwise awful Legend of the Seeker, the painful Shannara Chronicles, the embarrassing fumble of House of the Dragon, and the laughingstock that was The Rings of Power, it’s not hard to imagine why someone would give up and try something else, is it?

All this time, I was missing out on the Shadow War in Babylon 5, the battle of wits between Janeway and the Borg Queen in Star Trek: Voyager, and nearly everything about Battlestar Galactica, which now ranks among my all-time favorite shows. I denied myself great sci-fi for years because the aesthetic didn’t appeal to me. But isn’t it odd that I was forced to visit the sci-fi scene because I couldn’t find good storytelling in fantasy?

Sci-fi Succeeding Where Fantasy Fails

If you asked me to name the best fantasy shows or films I’d seen between 1986-2015, I’d have exactly two answers: the 2000s Lord of the Rings trilogy (and even then, they botched Faramir’s story in The Two Towers), and the first five seasons of Game of Thrones (which ended its first episode by ruining Dany & Drogo’s arc). That’s it. That’s the best we got from fantasy.

Consider the more recent fantasy series out there:

1. Legend of the Seeker: Started with a strong adaptation of the first half of Terry Goodkind’s book in a solid two-episode pilot, then immediately fell into generic filler. For some baffling reason, it shoved the first book’s ending onto season two, and its worst episode actively contradicted the book’s lore while doing zero work to prove the point it tried to make.

2. The Shannara Chronicles: Visually stunning, full of attractive people, and utterly hollow. Terry Brooks’ source material was already Generic Fantasy 101, but this adaptation did nothing to modernize or deepen it. Instead, it leaned on tired tropes and forgettable romances, while merely skimming its own world’s most interesting lore.

3. House of the Dragon: Possibly an unpopular opinion, but I felt like the showrunners looked at what made Game of Thrones popular and decided that it was unlikeable characters, gratuitous violence, and incest. Personally, those were the least interesting parts of GoT, so this series had nothing to offer me. There was no escapism at all, it felt too much like the real world (and I get enough of that by living in it). Dragons alone did not make up for the lack of white walkers.

4. The Witcher: This actually started out decently, with excellent casting of Geralt and Jaskier among its merits, but kept fumbling the ball until they lost their lead actor and me as a viewer by proxy. There were some great moments in the first season, but they made too many poor character choices, too many story arcs that didn’t mesh with the source lore, and put too much focus in the wrong places that the show petered into an embarrassing mess.

5. Harry Potter (film series): The first two films nailed the feeling of magic: bright, whimsical, immersive. Then, everything went off the rails. The endless director swaps wrecked thematic (and setting) consistency, Dumbledore’s recasting completely flipped the character’s whole vibe, and the time constraints of the later films butchered most of the story’s depth while the final films felt bloated. By the end, the movies weren’t even adaptations, they were half-assed highlight reels.

6. The Rings of Power: The definition of corporate writing: painfully expensive, visually stunning, narratively bankrupt, and offensive to the source material. Yikes.

I didn’t even bother giving The Wheel of Time a chance, because I just inherently knew it wasn’t going to be good.

Meanwhile, the sci-fi genre—Battlestar Galactica, Firefly, Star Trek (TNG, DS9, Voyager), and Babylon 5—has delivered consistently solid programming. Sure, each has its flaws, but their successes far outweigh their missteps.

Why Does This Keep Happening?

I can only theorize, of course, but there are quite a few potential explanations for why sci-fi can keep its nose out of the water while fantasy continues to drown.

• Poor Execution of Worldbuilding: Whether it’s starships or castles, a world doesn’t feel real until it feels lived in, and even the best costume designer in the world can’t create that on their own. Too often, fantasy shows rush their magic systems, contradict their own geography, abandon integral plot points, or rely on cheap-looking CGI that shatters immersion.

  Sci-fi, by contrast, tends to keep pace with modern times. Sure, Star Trek in the ’60s didn’t predict today’s tech perfectly, but it still felt futuristic at the time. The Marvel Cinematic Universe builds on real-world advancements (Tony Stark’s tech mirrors actual engineering trends). Fantasy doesn’t have that built-in familiarity (unless it’s already trope-level generic), so when it fumbles its worldbuilding, audiences are left grasping at unclear rules, inconsistent landscapes, or magic that seems to work whenever the plot demands it.

• Lack of Dedication to Character Development: For whatever reason, fantasy series consistently struggle to maintain long-term character arcs. Too often do I see a brilliant, in-depth, unique character, only to see them flattened into a caricature, rush their growth, erase their flaws or need for growth, or in the impressive case of Danaerys Targaryen, forget their own arc entirely.

  Take Battlestar Galactica’s Starbuck in contrast to Galadriel from The Rings of Power. Starbuck is a deeply flawed, self-destructive, but undeniably skilled pilot who spends the series on a cosmic existential journey that explores who she is, how she’s been shaped, and who she has become. She makes countless mistakes, faces dire consequences, and evolves in ways that feel deeply earned.

  Galadriel, by contrast, has no flaws, no struggles, and no depth. Her goal is set from the beginning and at worst she faces temporary setbacks, making her feel less like a believable person and more like a hollow caricature of a preordained deity.

  Sci-fi thrives on character evolution, as seen in BSG, Babylon 5, and even serialized Star Trek at times, while fantasy too often festers in the usual tropes of kings, queens, warriors, and chosen ones, who feel unoriginal, overpowered, or completely inconsistent.

• Original vs Loaned Lore: Sci-fi media has made room for fresh storytelling, while fantasy often leans heavily on pre-existing lore. I have no idea why that is, but the result is clear: sci-fi character arcs are flexible, while fantasy is constantly forced to sacrifice depth, continuity, or coherence.

  Take Legend of the Seeker, my aforementioned example. The first two episodes do a decent job of opening Terry Goodkind’s novel, but the entire rest of the story—including the genuinely cool trick Richard plays to defeat the villain—is left out and replaced by nonsense filler. Now, it’s fair to say that the book alone might not have been enough to sustain a full season, but it did have themes, character beats, and a structured narrative, all of which the show ignored after its pilot.

  Fantasy adaptations have to justify every deviation from canon, while sci-fi stories just have to justify themselves. That makes for more dynamic, fluid storytelling, while fantasy often gets bogged down in its own mythology.

• Challenging Story Structure: Fantasy and sci-fi both require incredible worldbuilding and the practicalities of television and film affect how well these worlds translate to the screen. When it comes to budget limitations, sci-fi has the edge, because showing modern tech through CGI is far easier than making believable beasts or magical environments. This means sci-fi can stretch its budget toward storytelling, while fantasy often crumbles under its own ambitions.

  Take the modern Star Trek films. Whatever else you might say about them (a lot, I’m sure), they clearly put effort into enhancing the old designs from the ‘60s and ‘90s, from the sleek, over-engineered starships to the gritty, industrial feel of deep space. Even the hugely over-the-top villain ship in the 2009 reboot at least felt consistent with the film’s aesthetic and tone.

  Now contrast that with Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, a film that miraculously managed to make a hippogriff look more real than a generic black dog. It’s a perfect example of how fantasy’s common use of creatures, magic, and non-human elements often results in immersion-breaking inconsistency. So much of it needs to be created from scratch and that inconsistency hurts immersion more in fantasy than it does in sci-fi, because sci-fi can lean on familiar structures (ships, space stations, technology), whereas fantasy has to build everything from the ground up.

A Case Study of Battlestar Galactica and Game of Thrones

If Game of Thrones was the closest show to getting it right for a while, Battlestar Galactica is the sci-fi show that more or less did stick the landing. Both shows were character-driven with conflicting morals and dark political and military intrigue, with themes of morality, power, and betrayal. Both portrayed characters as heroes and villains both, based on the choices they made in the situations they faced. So how did one of these shows succeed where the other outright failed?

Commitment to Long-Term Character Arcs

One of Game of Thrones biggest failings was forgetting to treat their characters like real people around the same time the source material ran out. In the first few seasons, the characters all had logical, organic reasons for the decisions they made that often threw the overall narrative into exciting chaos (like Tyrion going to the Eyrie), but by the end, they were just being shoved into circumstances without the plot helping things along (King Bran the Broken? Seriously?).

Contrast this with Battlestar Galactica. The characters are messy, foolish, biased, and stubborn, and it’s what makes them real. Take Kara “Starbuck” Thrace, who has one of the most genuinely complex journeys in the sci-fi genre: she starts out as a reckless, senseless hotshot pilot, but evolves through trauma, existential crises, and deep personal losses. Even when the show took some mighty swings with her and they didn’t always hit, they never betrayed the core of who her character was.

Now compare that to GoT…

• Jaime Lannister spent most of the show on a beautiful redemption arc, only to baselessly revert to his original state in the final episode.

• Jon Snow was built up to be a leader, revolutionary, and the true heir to the throne, and the answer to the looming threat of the white walkers, only to be shuffled away with no resolution to any of his arcs.

• Danaerys Targaryen had one of the most compelling slow-burn arcs that still wasn’t clear if it was leading her toward tyranny or benevolence when it forced her into madness.

BSG, on the other hand, was loyal to most characters, even when things got messy. Gaius Baltar’s spiral into selfishness and reluctant redemption was incredible. President Laura Roslin's increasingly harsh decisions for survival made us bleed. And Lee Adama’s struggle with duty against morality? That resulted in what might be the best courtroom scene in anything, ever. These arcs felt earned. Even when the show slipped once in a while, it never threw its characters under the bus for cheap thrills.

Thematic Consistency & Narrative Cohesion

While both shows explored morality, war, leadership, and survival, one of these series actually committed to these themes from the beginning, while the other abandoned them for the sake of spectacle.

• BSG was a story about finding meaning, finding home, and finding yourself as a species in the face of genocidal destruction. Every character on that show wrestled with the weight of morality in survival situations, fate against their own free will, and duty in the face of questionable morals.

• GoT was meant to be about power, consequences, and the continuing cycles of vengeance and violence… until it threw all of that out the window in a mad attempt to subvert expectations that didn’t make sense (I repeat: seriously? Bran as king?).

One of BSG’s greatest strengths is in the way it kept the central conflict equally philosophical and physical. The Cylons weren’t just an enemy on the battlefield, they were a reflection of humanity itself. It never lets the audience ever comfortably side with one of them over the other—their history is too complex and everyone’s take has a personal stake in it that affects their judgment.

Meanwhile, GoT started off by exploring power and its consequences beautifully, until it decided that power was a joke, war didn’t matter, and the ending didn’t need to have a point or meaning.

Pacing & Structure in Slow-Burn Stories

BSG and GoT both thrived in slow-burn settings where actions would play out long-term before the viewers’ eyes, but one of them clearly kept pace better than the other.

• GoT’s first few seasons let the character choices ripple out into the world and there were always consequences. But after the source material ran out, the pacing fell apart and by season 8, entire character arcs were treated like speed runs rather than natural progressions.

• BSG likewise played the long game with its underlying mysteries and character conflicts, which ensured that even the strangest moments (of which there were many) had some sort of thematic or emotional payoff.

The debates over their finales are interesting too: BSG’s ending was divisive, it still made thematic sense in the context of what they had built, while GoT’s was nearly universally hated for failing to pay out any of the viewers’ investments.

Ultimately, Battlestar Galactica is a solid example of the way long-form stories can thrive on television, as long as there is respect for character arcs and thematic integrity. Game of Thrones is a solid example of how fantasy still has the potential to bring in an enthusiastic crowd, so long as it doesn’t collapse under its own weight.

Where Does This Leave Fantasy?

Lack of audience is clearly not the problem here, as shows like Game of Thrones and The Witcher have proven. Yet, time and time again, it fails to deliver on worldbuilding and character depth. Weak understanding of existing lore peeves pre-existing fans, while poor use of budget might chase away potential new viewers.

Meanwhile, sci-fi tends to thrive as a genre whenever care is given to the immersive worlds, character arcs, and themes. Battlestar Galactica, Firefly, Star Trek, Babylon 5… all of these series created deep, immersive worlds, largely respected character development, and committed to their initial themes, while fantasy keeps tripping over its own feet.

But fantasy doesn’t need to always suck. That new Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves was actually a lot of fun (especially with all the nods to real-world DnD lore!). It’s just a matter of learning to prioritize the right aspects of production. If fantasy shows would put more emphasis on unique characters with interesting personal challenges, sticking with their themes, and making sure their worldbuilding makes sense, we might finally get the television series we deserve!

Until then, I guess I’ll go watch Battlestar Galactica again…

And hey, if you’re equally disillusioned with fantasy, or if you’re interested in the sort of fantasy I like, consider checking out a sample of my novella series, The Vitmar Chronicles!