The pendulum has sung too far in the other direction in the last 20-30 years in my opinion. Now its a race to have the hardest sci-fi and anything less than a master's thesis on why the macguffin is plausible is rejected by fans. Its quiet tedious and misses the forest for the trees. At least Star Wars and Blade Runner had ideas and weren't just a regurgitation of Wired.
Just thinking about TV alone-- Foundation, ongoing Star Wars, ongoing Star Trek, Silo, The Expanse, For All Mankind, Stranger Things, 3 Body Problem, etc.
Some of these are harder; some are galactic empires; some are weird.
