Star Trek goes out of its way, to the point of creating the term technobabble
What’s the difference between technobabble and a magical incantation from the perspective of story telling. Geordi Laforge casts +1 technobabble and it’s super effective.
You also say the classic Tolkein races. Not sure why.
Really? Put a photo of an Tolkien Elf next to a Star Trek Vulcan. You don’t see any resemblance there? None at all? Besides that Elves are an elder race that are at times disconnected from the affairs of humans. Despite this, there’s an alliance formed between Humans and Elves. It’s not all that different from the relationship between Humans and Vulcans in Star Trek is it? In story terms Vulcans serve the same role as Elves and Klingons are a violent adversary to the Human and Vulcan alliance, aka the Federation. How did that war end again? Wasn’t there magic sorcerers involved in ending the war between the Federation and the Klingons? Oh beings of pure energy (nothing at all like a sorcerer) that they basically never talked about later. Did someone even try to contact the Organians to get them to help sort out the Dominion war? I guess that was a one time thing. There’s literally Gods that can force adversaries to end a war in Star Trek, but only that one time because the existence of such beings didn’t have any long term consequences for how diplomacy was conducted in that Galaxy.
Sorry, but in story terms, it’s just plain magic. Science is repeatable and studied. Star Trek just substitutes “a wizard did it” with “an alien did it” but there’s no meaningful difference.
There’s nothing in Star Wars that doesn’t exist in Star Trek. Telekinesis, telepathy, mind control, prescience, all appear in Star Trek with the only explanation being “because aliens.” And in Star Wars with midichlorians, the explanation is “because microscopic aliens.” Nobody really likes that in Star Wars because technobabble explanations are silly.
The princess doesn’t choose to chill with anyone, she’s rescued by a teenager and a drug smuggler with his talking dog, a group that already does not make a single ounce of sense to be together.
Of all the things in Star Wars that’s poorly explained you chose an example that actually was explained. Teenager found a distress message from the princess, and the smuggler was there because money.
They’ve got flying machines and can go to space but are using swords.
If you have prescient abilities you’re able to see were a blaster will be fired before it’s fired and be able to move the sword to exactly where it needs to be beforehand to deflect it. Something that makes sense if you consider the relationship between the abilities and technology. Also traditions are a big thing in a lot of religions.
Also George Lucas uses the term “science fantasy” when talking about Star Wars, not science fiction.
Of course there’s no doubt a lot of fantasy elements in Star Wars. But not nearly as many fantasy elements as in Star Trek. If you were to say both Star Trek and Star Wars are fantasy, then sure. But saying Star Trek is sci-fi while Star Wars is fantasy is just ignoring how much fantasy Star Trek has going on. There’s no real definition of what makes something fantasy and what makes something sci-fi, but where ever you choose to draw that arbitrary line Star Trek is going to be on the fantasy side of that line if Star Trek is, because there’s way more fantasy going on in Star Trek than in Star Wars. Just Star Wars doesn’t do as much meaningless technobabble and doesn’t hand wave away the significance of some people having telekinesis, telepathy, prescience, etc.