Poll: Star Trek vs. Star Wars?

[Catprog]

Out of the star series, I actually prefer gate over trek and wars.

Probably wars for my 2nd choice though.

[SuperSlayer]

LazarX wrote:

increddibelly wrote:

the thing I love about star wars is that everything isn't new; all the X-wing fighters have serious maintenance backlogs and yet their pilots go out in them. that's like a +5 DC and it's awesome.

Wasn't it "Alien" that first brought the "used" motif to star travel?

Alien came out in 1979, Star Wars came out in 1977. The visual credit mostly goes to late Star Wars conceptional artist Ralph McQuarrie who helped Lucas visualize the design of the Star Wars universe. I think one reasons the prequels were not as good is because they did not use Ralph McQuarrie for the Prequels. Ralph wanted younger artists to have the chance to design but in the end it was a mistake.

[darth_borehd]

I think the original trilogy was better because Lucas had tons of people challenging his ideas at every time. This provided him constant feedback and the chance to refine the movies before they were released. With the prequels, he just fired anybody that disagreed with him, thus the reason they feel like "rough draft" (at least to me).

[SuperSlayer]

Star Wars was finished at the last second. It was a hassle and mess to make. They fixed the editing up at the last minute before they released the film. It was clearly a team effort that succeeded with all the odds against them.

I do think it was a mistake Lucas did not work with original producer Gary Kurtz on the prequels. Gary knew what a Star Wars movie needs to make them better.

[SuperSlayer]

You can view some of Ralph's artwork through a slideshow at this location...

http://www.starwars.com/news/ralph_mcquarrie_remembered.html

[Jerry Wright 307]

I love Star Wars, because it brought space opera back to mainstream after it died out with 50's serials.

But I think I prefer Original Series Trek for the same reason I like gaming; it was a sandbox. 60's mentality and not-so-subtle social relevance aside, it was wide open and the stories could be about literally anything.

I believe it could have been better in many ways (Roddenberry kicked himself over and over for inventing the we-have-to-break-it-every-week-to-make-the-story-work transporter--only to figure out shuttles a couple of months later), but it was the first sci-fi RPG, long before RPGs were invented.

I don't like the directions Next Gen and later series took; too techy and too self-righteous, not to mention all the foam rubber butts on people's heads to make them "alien". And the series all became ve-e-ry formulaic; Picard the diplomat, Sisko the warrior/politician, Janeway on Gilligan's Island... and we won't talk about Quantum-Leaping Archer.

Give me macho, womanizing, shoot-first-and-justify-later Kirk any time! He was a space cowboy long before Firefly, when the final frontier was still a frontier.

[Marc Radle]

I love both, but if I have to pick ... I'd have to go with Star Trek.

[Jerry Wright 307]

SuperSlayer wrote:

..."used" motif...

I like the term "dirty tech" better. :)

[Misery]

Star Wars is like space D&D. I'm good with that. Space wizards with glowing swords? Sweet.

Nerfherders? Sweet.

The Old Republic Timeline? Super Sweet.

Plus you have the video games which I've just enjoyed a lot for Star Wars:

Top 3 being (in no order)

1) Star Wars: Force Unleashed 1 (Sorry, I just really loved what they did there)
2) Knights of the Old Republic (Given)
3) Jedi Knight Academy

Hell, my 8 year old daughter has used the Force-Persuade/Obi-wan'd me with the hand gesture and everything into buying her a candy bar and I was so F'ing proud, you bet it worked. Bad parenting maybe but I slept well that night.

[LazarX]

Jerry Wright 307 wrote:

I love Star Wars, because it brought space opera back to mainstream after it died out with 50's serials.

But I think I prefer Original Series Trek for the same reason I like gaming; it was a sandbox. 60's mentality and not-so-subtle social relevance aside, it was wide open and the stories could be about literally anything.

I believe it could have been better in many ways (Roddenberry kicked himself over and over for inventing the we-have-to-break-it-every-week-to-make-the-story-work transporter--only to figure out shuttles a couple of months later), but it was the first sci-fi RPG, long before RPGs were invented.

I don't like the directions Next Gen and later series took; too techy and too self-righteous, not to mention all the foam rubber butts on people's heads to make them "alien". And the series all became ve-e-ry formulaic; Picard the diplomat, Sisko the warrior/politician, Janeway on Gilligan's Island... and we won't talk about Quantum-Leaping Archer.

Give me macho, womanizing, shoot-first-and-justify-later Kirk any time! He was a space cowboy long before Firefly, when the final frontier was still a frontier.

Old Series Trek was so formulaic there were Column A, B, C type jokes on how to generate an episode. As for the Shuttle comment, remember that transporters were put into the series for the explicit purpose of not having to deal with shuttle scenes. Kirk was a set piece as much of his successors, he was as Roddenberry designed him, The Horatio Hornblower.

[Jerry Wright 307]

The reason the transporter came into being was because Roddenberry didn't want to "land a ship fourteen stories tall on a planet every week". He was talking about the Enterprise herself, not shuttles.

He said himself that if he'd thought of the shuttle idea two months earlier, the tranporter wouldn't have ever been considered, because it lacked any scientific foundation. (You can't disintegrate a person and expect to avoid a murder charge, even if you do manage to create a new person who seems identical in some other place! The transporter is a serial killer's wet dream.)

As to the formulaic nature of the old series, the same thing can be said of ANY episodic television show. Especially considering the tech-your-way-into-trouble, tech-your-way-out-of-trouble paradigm of Trek in all its versions.

I was just saying I prefer Kirk's formula to the formulas of the later series.

And I've always though Kirk was much less Horatio Hornblower and much more Paladin. (Don't think D&D. I mean Richard Boone's character from Have Gun, Will Travel. A show Roddenberry wrote for, by the way.)

[LazarX]

Jerry Wright 307 wrote:

The reason the transporter came into being was because Roddenberry didn't want to "land a ship fourteen stories tall on a planet every week". He was talking about the Enterprise herself, not shuttles.

He said himself that if he'd thought of the shuttle idea two months earlier, the tranporter wouldn't have ever been considered, because it lacked any scientific foundation. (You can't disintegrate a person and expect to avoid a murder charge, even if you do manage to create a new person who seems identical in some other place! The transporter is a serial killer's wet dream.)

Actually truth be told, there really isn't much of even old series Trek that had a scientific foundation. (the numbers derived for what warp factor translates out to speed did not even make sense!) There are things that spawned concepts but those are more of human engineering break throughs, like the iPad, as opposed to warp drive.

Also keep in mind that when it came to discussing various aspects of Trek, Roddenberry had a tendency to change his stories... sometimes on a weekly basis, as anyone who's followed the story of "City On The Edge Of Forever" can attest.

[sunshadow21]

Star Trek's biggest problem is that as actively produced tv programs, it ran longer than it probably needed to. Any tv show runs out of ideas after 5 years, and all of the iterations aside from the original had this issue. The early episoodes of TNG, Voyager, and DS9 were all quite good, but as sustainable storylines went, only DS9 had much to work with. TNG simply ran out of ideas. Voyager would have made a great movie, but was problematic as a tv show after the first 3 seasons. Enterprise, like most prequels, suffered from having a predetermined ending, and came too soon on the heels of the other iterations. The original series had the advantage of being the first, and was cancelled before it ran into the issue of recycling plots. I could see another iteration on tv eventually, but not right now.

[Jerry Wright 307]

LazarX wrote:

... Roddenberry had a tendency to change his stories...

My quotes from Roddenberry come from 1968, before he had much of a chance to "change his stories".

Check out Stephen Edward Poe (writing as Stephen E. Whitfield). He wrote The Making of Star Trek while the show was still on the air, at the request of Roddenberry himself. If you like Star Trek - especially TOS - you need to read the book.

Rumor has it Roddenberry wanted to chronicle the stupidity of network executives while direct interviews could still be made. For a book written in the late 60's, it's quite a social commentary about TV hypocrisy.

LazarX wrote:

Actually truth be told, there really isn't much of even old series Trek that had a scientific foundation.

Actually, truth be told, Old Series Trek hired the Rand Corporation to research almost every aspect of the show for scientific accuracy. It seems silly now, but in the 60's, the show was cutting edge Sci-Fi.

[LazarX]

Jerry Wright 307 wrote:

LazarX wrote:

... Roddenberry had a tendency to change his stories...

My quotes from Roddenberry come from 1968, before he had much of a chance to "change his stories".

Check out Stephen Edward Poe (writing as Stephen E. Whitfield). He wrote The Making of Star Trek while the show was still on the air, at the request of Roddenberry himself. If you like Star Trek - especially TOS - you need to read the book.

Rumor has it Roddenberry wanted to chronicle the stupidity of network executives while direct interviews could still be made. For a book written in the late 60's, it's quite a social commentary about TV hypocrisy.

LazarX wrote:

Actually truth be told, there really isn't much of even old series Trek that had a scientific foundation.

Actually, truth be told, Old Series Trek hired the Rand Corporation to research almost every aspect of the show for scientific accuracy. It seems silly now, but in the 60's, the show was cutting edge Sci-Fi.

Actually spent money to hire the Rand Corporation (which I doubt) or got some off the cuff verbiage from a Trekkie on staff? It doesn't matter. Rand's been considerably oversold as an authority.

I've read Whitfield's book. I read Gerrold's book. In turn, I'd suggest you read Harlan Ellison's book on the making of "City On The Edge of Forever". It's a less than flattering portrait of Roddenberry and Shatner and includes supplementary commentary from some of Shatner's fellow cast members and several key Trek writers, as well as a big spoiler on who actually rewrote the final broadcast version of "City". It's also a pretty damm tragedy when you read the script that SHOULD have been filmed.

[Kryzbyn]

Someone mentioned stargate?

I had a friend of mine ask once if I thought it would be a cool game to RP in, Stargate SG-1.
I said no thanks. When he asked why I said that almost every episode is them going through a gate, then getting stranded somehow, either through political intrigue, physicly stranded by lack of dialer, or becasue of enemy presence. Then, at close to the 20 minute mark, they figure out a way back, enact the plan and are usually sucessful unless its a season ender.
As a player, that would get old quickly, and as a character extremely frustrating.

There's a good reason Col O'Neil was so flippant and irreverant.

[Freehold DM]

Indeed. Did noone realize they were watching live action gi Joe with no code names and a competent cobra-like organization?

Kryzbyn wrote:

Someone mentioned stargate?

I had a friend of mine ask once if I thought it would be a cool game to RP in, Stargate SG-1.
I said no thanks. When he asked why I said that almost every episode is them going through a gate, then getting stranded somehow, either through political intrigue, physicly stranded by lack of dialer, or becasue of enemy presence. Then, at close to the 20 minute mark, they figure out a way back, enact the plan and are usually sucessful unless its a season ender.
As a player, that would get old quickly, and as a character extremely frustrating.

There's a good reason Col O'Neil was so flippant and irreverant.

[Jerry Wright 307]

LazarX wrote:

Actually spent money to hire the Rand Corporation (which I doubt) or got some off the cuff verbiage from a Trekkie on staff? It doesn't matter. Rand's been considerably oversold as an authority.

Yes, they actually spent money on Rand, and in the day, Rand was top-notch, a research authority on retainer with the Department of Defense. Harvey Lynn, one of Rand's top physicists, was the most-often consulted, and became a friend of Roddenberry's. But don't assume he wasn't being paid. Rand never came cheap.

As far as City is concerned, I agree with you that the original script was much, much better. It would have made an incredible movie. But the objection to it was the same as the objection to Star Trek's original pilot; too cerebral and impossible to do on a week-to-week basis. City's script had to be "dumbed down" to make it fit in with the requirements of a weekly television show.

The goal for an anthology series is to make the best episode ever, every time a script is written, and Emmy-award-winning episodes are awesome.

For a continuing show, the goal is to make an Emmy-award-winning series. You can't do that when most of your scripts are being compared to the one Harlan Ellison wrote and are coming up short every time. Individual quality has to be sacrificed for overall consistency.

It's a shame, but it explains most of the lame TV shows that get consistent ratings and awards every season, even these days. The ones that are superior have staff writers who never let outsiders mess with the show (Friends, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Big Bang Theory come to mind.)

But none of this matters. This thread is about preferences. And I prefer TOS because I find it more fun than the later series.

[Lord Fyre]

Misery wrote:

Hell, my 8 year old daughter has used the Force-Persuade/Obi-wan'd me with the hand gesture and everything into buying her a candy bar and I was so F'ing proud, you bet it worked. Bad parenting maybe but I slept well that night.

Not necessarily.

In moderation, Candy has positive health benefits.

So, your daughter was actually channeling the light side of the Force

Hope that makes you feel better. :D

[Grand Magus]

.

Vulcans are now proficient in light sabers.

.

[kmal2t]

While I think Star Wars is much more complex and better in concept (excluding the awful Ep 1 and 2) over cheesy fascism-land with goofy outfits (I do enjoy some TNG here and there) if it was a battle between the two using the various characters of both Star Trek would clearly win

While the force is great Star Wars doesn't have characters like Q. Jean Luc could call in a favor and wipe out the Empire and the Rebellion with a snap of his finger...or whatever that silly hand gesture was.

[MMCJawa]

15 years ago I would have definitely said Star Wars, but nowadays I would list Dr. Who, Farscape, and Babylon 5 as being better than both.

[Aranna]

I wonder about the made up numbers many shows use...
But there is a way to compare firepower. Just look at the effect of these weapons on objects that exist in both universes.

Between the two settings the biggest gun is obviously the main cannon of the death star. BUT if you include non standard weapons then red matter used in JJAbrams Star Trek is just as destructive as a charged shot from the death star... and far easier to move it around. It can be transported aboard a shuttle sized ship if you wish. So Star Trek wins the big gun fight.

What about the firepower of individual ships? Well no ship other than the death star has the firepower to wipe out a planet in the Star Wars setting, while nearly every ship in Star Trek has the firepower to destroy the entire biosphere of a planet by itself. Even since Kirk's era when he threatened to use it himself, or in the TNG era when the Klingons actually do use this tactic with a single shot. Mostly this is because of the chain reaction effect of Star Trek weapons, BUT when fired at an asteroid both settings ship weapons seem just as capable of blowing up the asteroid. To this end I suggest both settings weapons have similar RAW power (a possible slight advantage to Star Wars actually since their guns fire faster) but since Trek Weapons chain react they have a decidedly big advantage in fire power.

In man to man combat nothing beats the Jedi from the Trek side. BUT Wars showed clearly that raw numbers of far weaker troops can overcome that advantage. Still I would give the win in ground combat to Star Wars with Jedi and Shielded Destroyer Droids.

In Travel: Wars has a far faster drive system (hyperdrive) than Trek with it's warp or transwarp drives. AND Wars has observably faster sublight engines as well. Still Wars ships can ONLY fight in sublight while Trek ships are capable of limited engagements even at warp speeds. Also the ability to beam from place to place gives Trek the huge advantage in personnel movement. All in all this is a tie.

The biggest break in Trek's favor is Time Travel. While this capability is rare, requiring either very elite crew or specialized equipment. It is none the less a game breaker against the Wars forces.

Wars has a lot of super scalar ships and buildings but they always seem to have huge weak points. While much smaller Trek ships seem much sturdier for their size. Maybe it's because they have more advanced shield systems. Since without their shields up Trek ships seem quite fragile indeed. Just as fragile as a Wars ship with it's shields on. I am going to assume then that Wars shields are no better then the navigational deflector Trek ships use as non combat shielding during space travel.

If there was a war between the Empire and the Federation it would probably end in a stalemate. Neither side has a clear winning hand since Trek can't easily reach all the worlds in the galactic empire and Trek can cheat to win each incursion from the empire.

[Aranna]

As far as the settings story wise?

I have always seen Star Wars as a plot light Wushu style show set in space. Fun and often exiting to watch.

Star Trek has been a thinking show. Plot intensity varies wildly but Captian Sisco said it best in 2012. Trek has always tried to tell a message they think long and hard before making each show.

Both are good settings. I like them both.

[Lord Fyre]

Star Trek does have one advantage over Star Wars.

[b]Women[b]

Star Trek has always handled female characters better then Star Wars. ...Yes, I do recognize that Star Trek still doesn't do enough.

Even the 1960s show handled women relatively well especially for its time.

[Freehold DM]

There is always room for both at my table. My wife greatly prefers Star Trek.

[Kthulhu]

Firefly

[Drejk]

*splat*

Some bug was flying around...

[Kthulhu]

Every man there go back inside, or we will blow a new crater in this little moon.

[Freehold DM]

Drejk wrote:

*splat*

Some bug was flying around...

Hugs Drejk

I can't favorite this post enough.

[pres man]

Star Trek vs. Star Wars?

Keep your Jedi Mind Melds to yourself!

[R_Chance]

Ahem, and who was that, way upthread last year, who said George Lucas could not be removed from Star Wars :D Replaced by a man sized mouse, he was. heh heh.

[Mazra]

Like them both.

But the edge goes to SW. It has light sabers.

[Spanky the Leprechaun]

I just watched one of my favorite episodes on tvland: Mirror Mirror, and yet I can't seem to hate Yoda for some reason.

[DM_aka_Dudemeister]

They aren't even the same genre.

What's better: Twilight or Nosferatu?

They both have vampires but aren't the same.

Star Wars is space fantasy, which is all about storytelling and heroics and space wizards.

Star Trek is science fiction which is about thinly veiled allegory for modern society and technology.

If one was called Space Knights and the other was called Future Wagon nobody would even bother making a comparison.

They're both great.

I'd rather play in the Star Wars setting though because if you only treat the movies as Canon you have thousands of years to play with. Also the verbs are better. "I use the force to telekinetically throw a space ship at my enemy then attack him with my sweet lazer sword!" vs. "I sit in a chair and tell people to push buttons."

[ngc7293]

I like them both and I didn't bother to read this thread because this has been done to death in so many places it isn't even funny.

My money goes to Species 8472 to wipe out all of any SW ship and world. (They just need Voyager to rein in the leash)

Also it has never been said how big the SW galaxy is. (This is also a hotly debated topic) If Trek is 8000ly across, it is possible to have the SW galaxy to be a small Galaxy and there for easy for Trek ships to move from place to place.

Oh, as far as Stargate, loved everything except the last one. I could easily see a game being run in SG-1 or SG-A. It is not a matter of getting by at the last seccond. If you use those tropes, you are not being creative and being a GM is all about being creative.

Those are my two gold pressed latinum

[Poldaran]

Aranna wrote:

A rather interesting post comparing firepower and other technology.

I think the most important point in Star Trek's favor is that their technology evolves over time. Looking at the tech used in Star Wars across different eras via video games like TOR and the movies, what really changes? Aside from the occasional superweapon, I mean.

On the other hand, look at the difference in firepower and shielding between TOS Enterprise and something like Defiant or a latter series Enterprise. And that's not even getting into that armor Voyager gets in the final episode.

Give it a hundred years or so in series and you'd have a completely different ball game.

[Matthew Winn]

In Star Wars, even a slovenly slug-like crimelord can own his own Tarrasque.

The Enterprise was nearly destroyed by a vibrating nymphomaniac lint ball.

[R_Chance]

Poldaran wrote:

Aranna wrote:

A rather interesting post comparing firepower and other technology.

I think the most important point in Star Trek's favor is that their technology evolves over time. Looking at the tech used in Star Wars across different eras via video games like TOR and the movies, what really changes? Aside from the occasional superweapon, I mean.

On the other hand, look at the difference in firepower and shielding between TOS Enterprise and something like Defiant or a latter series Enterprise. And that's not even getting into that armor Voyager gets in the final episode.

Give it a hundred years or so in series and you'd have a completely different ball game.

I enjoy both ST and SW btw. But...

Actually there was a steady evolution in weaponry, ships and armor throughout the Clone Wars. The progression in capital ships from the Acclimator class assault ship to the Victory class star destroyers for example. The difference between Mk. 1 clone trooper armor and later versions. And so on.

There doesn't seem to be huge differences in tech between the different eras but there is no way to determine the relative effectiveness / power / speed of the different ships / weapons across the different eras in SW. And of course civilization in SW is far older than in ST with probable increases and collapses in technology, etc.

In short, looking the same doesn't mean being the same. It's a continuation in ideas / design tropes over time based on the technology available in the given era.

Or: "It's not your Granpa's blaster son..." But it's still a blaster. Like the difference between a Springfield 1906 bolt action rifle and an M-16 assault rifle.

[Electric Wizard]

I've heard the new Star Wars movie comes out Dec 2015. I hope
it's better than the last three releases.
Also, the most recent Star Trek movie was Ok (:review) but the
beginning scene with Spok in a Volcano using "cold fusion" almost made me
walk out of the theater.

.

[I'm Hiding In Your Closet]

Star Trek - as I once heard someone else say for it relative to Star Wars, you've generally got more peace and more people getting laid.

Also, there's the little matter of being an optimistic guiding vision for the future that's practically unique in contemporary culture - there's actually a more profound reason that many would dare to guess as to what makes it The Show That Refuses To Die....

[Ivan Rûski]

Star Wars. Though I enjoy Star Trek, I'm a Star Wars fan at heart.

[Hama]

Both. I love both.

[Eben TheQuiet]

Star Wars. All the way.

[Set]

I like Star Wars for the Force stuff (big fan of psi and mysticism, which is less prevalent in Trek). The space battles and stuff were pretty epic in scale to much of what Star Trek could afford on a TV budget (at least until the later seasons of DS9, which got awesome, during the Dominion War). The effects budgets available also led to some more distinctive aliens, with Trek aliens often being stuck as 'dude with a bump over their nose.'

I like Star Trek for the brighter future and the egalitarianism, where a farm boy from Kansas can become a legendary decorated captain, and it has nothing to do with being the secret child of a space princess and / or midichlorian Jesus. There were more aliens and alien characters built into the show (at least, with speaking lines, unlike poor Chewbacca), and, starting with Amok Time and really coming into its own in DS9 with the Cardassians, Bajorans, etc., seriously explored alien cultures and societies.

And yeah, lots of other shows had great stuff as well, like Stargate (Egyptians in spaaaace!) and Babylon 5 (Psi-Corps for life!) and Firefly (a show that I would have loved even more if Mal got sucked into a jet engine and Zoe ran the ship...) and even Farscape. They all have their cool elements.

I might consider Trek my absolute favorite, but it's never been a zero-sum game for me, and I love a lot of Expanded Universe Star Wars stuff (whether or not George Lucas agrees with me, I don't even care), just as I've enjoyed a lot of Star Trek novels that aren't really 'canon' either.

[Haladir]

For me, Star Trek wins hands-down. From the beginning, the world of Star Trek was far more complex and nuanced.

In the Trek universe, the good guys use many different approaches to solve problems (diplomacy, deception, threats, violence, etc).

In Star Wars, just about every problem is solved by blowing something up.

Well, at least that was Trek before the reboot.

While the reboot movies are decent and enjoyable sci-fi action films, I think Abrams missed the whole point of what makes Star Trek special. In short, the movies are far more akin to Star Wars in tone.

That said, Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope remains one of my all-time favorite movies. In 1977, it was the first non-Disney movie I ever saw. In the days before VCRs and cable TV, it was one of the very few movies I got to watch multiple times.

[Terquem]

Gilligan's Island FTW

[Lincoln Hills]

Wow, there's something I would have bet money that I would never have read in my entire lifetime.

I always rub my forehead wearily when the Trek vs. Wars debate comes up. It makes fans of both series look bad to have a Nerd-Slap Civil War in front of the mundanes. It's not as if they're attempts at the same kind of sci-fi, and they never have been. Consult this handy table:

STAR TREK (ORIGINAL): Teaching alien women of Earth luv
STAR WARS (ORIGINAL): Mythic struggles of good and evil... but in space!

STAR TREK (CURRENT): Awful lot of crazy dystopians around for a supposed utopian future
STAR WARS (CURRENT): Future unclear, continuity under reconstruction: odds of effete metal butler and super-competent trashcan 100%

[Orthos]

Never cared for Star Trek much. Wars all the way.

[Tequila Sunrise]

Wow, didn't know that raise dead could be used on a sci-fi thread!

I originally voted for SW because at best it was much more exciting than ST, and at worst it was Natalie Portman in entertainingly absurd costumes. But with the ST reboots in mind, I think it's a wash.

So I change my vote to New BSG, which is still the only sci-fi thing that I'll recommend to a non-sci-fi fan!