Star Trek vs Star Wars
- Thread starter AJTaliesen
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Re: Star Trek va Star Wars
Well assuming they have to meet to fight, also even Starfleet isn't really capable of traveling to other galaxies, so I dunno how these guys scrap with each other in the first place.
Well assuming they have to meet to fight, also even Starfleet isn't really capable of traveling to other galaxies, so I dunno how these guys scrap with each other in the first place.
Thinking hard now I've got the answer and it's the end game.
Batman. It's always Batman.
Yeah I know there was some stupid fan film!
Batman. It's always Batman.
Yeah I know there was some stupid fan film!
The biggest issue that Star Trek fans have discovered over the years is what we refer to as Peacenik Military Incompetence. Trek has HUGE advantages in tech and weapons delivery, but the mindset of the Federation is to just not use it in war. Basically, they do the equivalent of taking the US Navy and crewing the ships with a bunch of hippie Greenpeace scientists and a couple of token military guys in case someone gets any bad ideas.
War is an inevitable fact of life and should be avoided as much as is possible, but when the bad guys come knocking on your door loaded for bear, it's time to break out the shiny toys and show them why you don't mess with the quiet ones.
There's a whole laundry list of things that can be used in warfare in Trek, but PMI prevents it.
Transporters
My God, this is the biggest waste of potential military assets I have ever seen. Not only can you beam soldiers right into the heart of the enemy ship, but you can beam warheads there as well! The Death Star would have been a breeze to destroy with transporters! No trench runs, no flying through the superstructure of the DSII... just beam a couple of quantum torpedoes into the thing and fly away. Big Boom. Mission accomplished. Total friendly losses? 0 to Negligible.
Transporters have another use that we've seen canonically in Star Trek. Rapid cloning of troops. A transporter malfunction when he was younger split Riker into two separate copies of himself with no degenerative side effects to either. On top of that, the copied version had all the memories and skills of the original. The only thing you need to do is replicate the accident (it had something to do with atmospheric conditions, I believe) and use it on a highly trained soldier. Suddenly, you have two, then four, then eight, then sixteen troops. A single starship transporter pad could create an entire battalion of troops in a day.
Replicators
Another criminally underused tech. Given proper utilization and enough workers (a problem solved through the rapid cloning tech from above), a proper replicator-based industrial complex could churn out insane amounts of materiel for a war effort. We're talking about replicator systems that could replace the loss of an entire fleet in a week or less.
Then there are the one-off techs. The Genesis Device, Trilithium Missiles (the actual star killer from ST: Generations), Iconian Gateways, all the myriad methods of time travel, Isokinetic Cannons, genetic modification (like the Augments or Bashir's mods), the modified TR-116, all sorts of things we see once or twice and never again.
This is why the writers of Trek have them acting like neo-hippie pacifists all the time. If you placed Starfleet under the command of someone with Military Competence, gave them access to all the fun toys, and let them build up the infrastructure, Star Trek can become a VERY scary universe to go up against. They could easily steamroll the entire Milky Way Galaxy (yes, even the Borg and Species 8472) and could utterly destroy just about ANY other fictional universe's forces with ease.
War is an inevitable fact of life and should be avoided as much as is possible, but when the bad guys come knocking on your door loaded for bear, it's time to break out the shiny toys and show them why you don't mess with the quiet ones.
There's a whole laundry list of things that can be used in warfare in Trek, but PMI prevents it.
Transporters
My God, this is the biggest waste of potential military assets I have ever seen. Not only can you beam soldiers right into the heart of the enemy ship, but you can beam warheads there as well! The Death Star would have been a breeze to destroy with transporters! No trench runs, no flying through the superstructure of the DSII... just beam a couple of quantum torpedoes into the thing and fly away. Big Boom. Mission accomplished. Total friendly losses? 0 to Negligible.
Transporters have another use that we've seen canonically in Star Trek. Rapid cloning of troops. A transporter malfunction when he was younger split Riker into two separate copies of himself with no degenerative side effects to either. On top of that, the copied version had all the memories and skills of the original. The only thing you need to do is replicate the accident (it had something to do with atmospheric conditions, I believe) and use it on a highly trained soldier. Suddenly, you have two, then four, then eight, then sixteen troops. A single starship transporter pad could create an entire battalion of troops in a day.
Replicators
Another criminally underused tech. Given proper utilization and enough workers (a problem solved through the rapid cloning tech from above), a proper replicator-based industrial complex could churn out insane amounts of materiel for a war effort. We're talking about replicator systems that could replace the loss of an entire fleet in a week or less.
Then there are the one-off techs. The Genesis Device, Trilithium Missiles (the actual star killer from ST: Generations), Iconian Gateways, all the myriad methods of time travel, Isokinetic Cannons, genetic modification (like the Augments or Bashir's mods), the modified TR-116, all sorts of things we see once or twice and never again.
This is why the writers of Trek have them acting like neo-hippie pacifists all the time. If you placed Starfleet under the command of someone with Military Competence, gave them access to all the fun toys, and let them build up the infrastructure, Star Trek can become a VERY scary universe to go up against. They could easily steamroll the entire Milky Way Galaxy (yes, even the Borg and Species 8472) and could utterly destroy just about ANY other fictional universe's forces with ease.
The Vengeance is a good example of this, but not so much the Terran Empire. Much like Nazi Germany or the Galactic Empire, they were too militant for their own good and ruled through fear. They basically wound up burning themselves out and irritated enough people that everyone turned against them.
A better comparison would be 1980's era United States. We were definitely not expansionist by any stretch of the imagination and we like peace and quiet, but no other power in the world would dare screw with us because our military was enormous, well-trained, and far outclassed everyone except the Soviet Union, and even their own military was unbalanced because their basic infrastructure was crap.
Oh, I'm sure that Q would find some way to instigate a conflict...
Zombie_61
Master Member
This. I watch Star Trek and Star Wars, I enjoy Star Trek and Star Wars, so I don't have to choose one or the other. All of the people who sincerely believe people can't enjoy both franchises can line up to kiss my entire white backside.
To me it's like dc vs marvel... Don't most comic fans like both?
I think most people who love one also love the other and it's mostly a "for fun" argument that movie and tv writers get fooled into thinking it's a real rivalry.
Having said that, I'm enjoying the conversation.
Re: boy scout federation: only until ds9. Several characters there, including Sisko, played dirty more than once.
Watch "in the pale moonlight" sometime. The Sisko of that episode would not hesitate to use cloak and transporters to park a quantum torpedo in the death star exhaust port.
(The tlds of the episode: they make a fake recording to fool a Romulan senator into thinking the Dominion is going to attack Romulus, so that the Romulans will join the war. When the Senator isn't fooled, they assassinate him and plant the fake recording on him so the Romulans will find it and think the Dominion did it to stop the recording from being seen. Sisko admits all of it to his log, the erases the log, basically saying: no one will ever know the truth, and I'm not sorry. It's actually dark as hell for a trek episode.)
BlobVanDam
Sr Member
I've thought about this a lot, and I don't understand the comparison myself. Aside from both being popular genre franchises with spaceships and pew pew weapons, they're very different. Not similar enough to have to choose one over the other, nor different enough to appeal to opposing groups of fans.
Star Trek is primarily a television franchise (it works far more effectively on TV despite having twice as many movies as SW), classic style science fiction with a utopian view of humanity's future, that is often thoughtful and allegorical to make a statement about mankind and where we are headed. Even Star Trek fans agree that half of the movies are not very good, because that's not where Trek's strengths shine.
Star Wars is primarily a movie franchise (I don't care for the cartoons, so I only consider it a movie franchise), of space opera action fantasy that is fun for all ages, and is based around an entirely fictional world "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away", with what I consider a pretty straight forward story and meaning. But the movies are told in a very fun and iconic way.
I don't see it as one franchise or the other. Star Wars appeals to a broad demographic and is very accessible to the average person. I don't even consider it that nerdy/geeky a thing by today's standards to fit into the nerdy/geeky rivalry idea. I don't mean that in any kind of bad way, but the past half a year have proved that it's not some basement dwelling nerd thing.
I consider myself a big Trekky, but not a [whatever the Star Wars equivalent of a Trekky is], but I very much enjoy both for what they are, with little overlap for me. IMO Star Wars fails when it tries to be Star Trek (like elements of the prequels), and Star Trek fails when it tries to be Star Wars (that means you, JJ).
Ok, I admittedly felt a little guilty getting so excited about TFA, and feeling so overwhelming negativity on the current state of Star Trek, but that's my problem. :lol
Star Trek is primarily a television franchise (it works far more effectively on TV despite having twice as many movies as SW), classic style science fiction with a utopian view of humanity's future, that is often thoughtful and allegorical to make a statement about mankind and where we are headed. Even Star Trek fans agree that half of the movies are not very good, because that's not where Trek's strengths shine.
Star Wars is primarily a movie franchise (I don't care for the cartoons, so I only consider it a movie franchise), of space opera action fantasy that is fun for all ages, and is based around an entirely fictional world "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away", with what I consider a pretty straight forward story and meaning. But the movies are told in a very fun and iconic way.
I don't see it as one franchise or the other. Star Wars appeals to a broad demographic and is very accessible to the average person. I don't even consider it that nerdy/geeky a thing by today's standards to fit into the nerdy/geeky rivalry idea. I don't mean that in any kind of bad way, but the past half a year have proved that it's not some basement dwelling nerd thing.
I consider myself a big Trekky, but not a [whatever the Star Wars equivalent of a Trekky is], but I very much enjoy both for what they are, with little overlap for me. IMO Star Wars fails when it tries to be Star Trek (like elements of the prequels), and Star Trek fails when it tries to be Star Wars (that means you, JJ).
Ok, I admittedly felt a little guilty getting so excited about TFA, and feeling so overwhelming negativity on the current state of Star Trek, but that's my problem. :lol
Long live the rivalry! Without it, we'd miss moments like THIS:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQj_bwMf7DM
The Wook
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQj_bwMf7DM
The Wook
Love DS9. My favorite ST series by far.
I even love this ham-tastic part:
That episode ranks equally with the TNG episode "The Inner Light" which is, to me, TNGs finest episode.
And despite the awesomeness of Deep Space Nine, we were later subjected to Voyager, which holds the distinction of being the only Trek series with an episode being officially declared non-canon (Threshold). On top of that, instead of tapping into the badassery that was, well, EVERYONE on DS9 (yes, even Quark and his idiot brother Rom were badasses in their own right) and bringing them on board to, y'know, retool Starfleet into a lean, mean fighting machine, which EVERYONE could plainly see needed to happen, they decided to promote Captain Katherine Can't-Find-Her-Way to Admiral and assign her to Starfleet Headquarters, despite bumbling her way across the Delta Quadrant. In my own headcanon, they promoted Janeway to Admiral for PR reasons and to get her away from commanding a starship.
That's because ST hippie utopia is basically John Lennon's Imagine come to life.
No religion.
No money.
Ethnic diversity without ideologic diversity.
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