Top 20 Features of a Space Opera

Top 20 features of a Space Opera.
Bit of fun today. Here are the top 20 features of a Space Opera as I see them.

1. Spaceships
Obvious really. The bigger, the better. Or in many cases, the bigger, the badder since the larger spaceships are always on the evil side. Ships come in all sizes depending on the purpose. Some more thoughtful space operas have smaller ships for landing on planets and larger ships for travelling between orbits. Others just do away with that idea altogether and have all ships able to do all things. Merzo is a great starting point for understanding the relative size of a spaceship.

2. FTL Travel
The characters can travel between planets at faster-than-light speeds. The time taken to get from one planet to another seems to be about the same as us driving between one city and another, if not quicker.

To travel faster-than-light, the characters enter a zone (portal, slipstream, stargate). It always appear to be a tube connecting one place to another. Whilst in this zone, stars appear to move relative to the characters, often leaving trails, sometimes wobbling or vacillating. This is where the special effects are created once and reused many, many times. Various "whooshy" noises are played in the background.

3. Good and Evil
There will be two opposing sides. One of them will be evil, the other will be good, or at least righteous. The evil side will be most definitely evil, sometimes taking the form of a corrupt or over-lived government, sometimes it will be more supernaturally evil. More recently, I've seen Space Operas where the line between good and evil isn't so clear.

4. Love Interest
At least two of the characters will fall in love. The relationship rarely works out and usually spans a series or two as it develops and dwindles. This will drive a sizeable chunk of the plot, providing reason to traverse galaxies, start infractions, execute daring rescue missions and correct previous actions. The relationship may not be appropriate (think of the famous brother-sister scenario in Star Wars). This may go several routes:

completely inappropriate relationship
one on evil side, one on good side resulting in one character innocently betraying their love or their allies
manipulation by one side to leverage the love so that
misunderstanding of the love interest's actions will result in rebuff and a temporary shift of the good character to the evil side
they all live happily-ever-after (only on shows for younger people)

5. Space warfare
Despite the vacuum of space, we can hear:

lasers as they tear through the defenses and hulls of enemy spaceships
grinding, wrenching noises as hull scraping against hull during minor collisions
explosions as ships
the sounds of travelling faster-than-light
the sounds created as one ship flies through the wake of another
docking noises even though our perspective as viewer is usually from a point in space

We can also see lasers, despite the lack of atmosphere.

6. War to end all wars
The end of a series is usually preceded by a large space battle containing most ships in both fleets. There is at least one ship on the good side that is on an errand away from the main space battle.

7. Planet-destroying Weapons
It wouldn't be a Space Opera without one or both sides having a weapon capable of destroying planets, possibly even stars. If only one side has the weapon, then it will be the evil side. Despite the technological prowess involved in building such a weapon, it can be stolen, sabotaged, fooled or destroyed.

8. Lost Earth
Earth doesn't exist as it does now and is lost to humanity. Pick the one that suits:

The physical location of Earth is unknown
Earth's been destroyed, smashed to pieces
Earth's under slavery of an alien race
Earth's suffered massive climate change/atomic war.

9. At least one side has machined technology looking like insects
As a minimum, the Space Opera features spaceships modelled on insects, if not actually animate larger-than-life insects. Taking the concept further, some have other technology such as cars or guns also resembling insects.

It's one area that I can't think of Star Wars adhering to.

10. Fate of Humanity
Mankind may exist no longer if the evil side succeeds. Even though the evil lords are usually humanoid (and often human), they will want to destroy or enslave all humans. The Space Opera features mankind at a crossroads of existence.

11. Destiny
One of the characters will receive the ability to make a drastic difference to the future. It could be that the soon-to-be hero:

is in the blood-line of royalty or what amounts to royalty
inherits super powers from ancient races, either directly or being the only character capable of using the powerful technologies
is the last in line of his or her race. These are nearly always humanoid even if the opera features many aliens.

12. Medium-sized ship is the fastest
The good side will have a ship that is faster than any other ship in the known galaxy. It won't be the smallest or largest spaceship, but will have capacity to take the main group of characters to their destination, bypassing patrolled routes.

13. Engineer
The main ship on the good side will have a single engineer capable of fixing everything and anything given sufficient time and resources, regardless of what scientific or engineering discipline fixing the fault requires.

14. Pilot
The good side will have an incredible pilot, capable of taking a ship, usually the fast one from (12) through the tightest spaces, hurtling through asteroid fields, braking at the last minute for landings or flying craft that are supposedly not flyable.

15. Dead races
The Space Opera features races that have been extinct for some time. Their technology was more advanced than that in use at the time of the opera. There will be a method for interacting with the dead race or discovering their technology. It may be that the dead race isn't dead after all and:

have passed to a distant unknown part of the universe,
have passed to a different universe,
exist on a different plane of existence or
exist in a spirit or energy form only.

16. Mixed technological levels
There will be planets and civilisations that have spaceships and lasers, but harvest crops manually with scythes and use horse-and-cart for transportation. Goods will be bought, sold, exchanged or bartered and these civilisations are stopping points for refueling, picking up food suppliers and hiding from larger forces.

17. Ultra-Powerful Sensors
Sensoring systems will be advanced enough that they can sense and identify lifeforms on a whole planet including those on the other side of the planet from the spaceship. The sensors will be able to differentiate between the different lifeforms picking out a human in a forest.

18. Artificial Intelligence
Spaceships will be controlled by artificial intelligence. Robots/Androids will exhibit many human characteristics in speech if not looks.

19. Dead Government
Space Operas occur 2-3 centuries after the fall of a major intra-planetary government structure. The decline of the government is in full swing by the time the opera is set.

20. One seriously old character
There is always one character who is at least 2 centuries old. Even if humans are regularly surviving until they're 150, the oldest character will be at least twice as old as that if not into the 1000s.

Why?
I've been doing some "research" as part of the Space Opera side-project. This entailed watching Space Operas while doing accounts and other boring stuff. I wrote the above list because I wanted to understand what makes for the type of Space Operas I like and also discover what I wanted to avoid. In writing the list, I've collected together some of the clichés inherent in the genre.

What now?
By changing some of the rules, you can come up with new creations. The current trend seems to be blurring the gap between good and evil.

I stopped at 20, although I have more. I'll post the next 20 in a later article (when I've got there, I'm at 38 at the moment).
Edit: The next 20 are now published

Some other resources
Please check Peter's Evil Overlord list for pointing out cliches to do with overlords in any genre.

And for some rebuttals and rationale behind what seem to be quirks of Star Trek (and many other Space Operas)