If you just compare technical manuals to see who could kick who's ass, Star Wars wins. The firepower and power generation of SW ships are so high they're almost ridiculous, so high that they might as well measure them in terms of bazillions or jillions of Watts. A yield of 45 quadrillion tons? Uh, yeah, whatever. Sounds like kids playing with model airplanes saying "My plane goes umpty-leven kerbillion miles per hour, so I WIN!"
But I generally prefer Star Trek. I like the vision of the future where the replicator and essentially free energy have completely transformed society and the nature of work into something I quite like (imagine being able to do what you like, what interests you, whether you can make a living at it or not). Apologists for capitalism tell me that this is the worst idea since plutonium. But there are no corporations in Star Trek, they complain. Yes, I reply. Exactly. (It isn't, as some have argued, a case that all corporations have been nationalized in Star Trek. Rather, it's that the replicator and free energy have made that whole model obsolete.)
Not that I'm dogmatic about it. I like both franchises, and I try not to get myself wrapped around the socio-political axle. But I tend to take Star Trek more seriously - it just seems to hang together better for me than Star Wars.
And I have to say, the three most recent Star Wars movies were really bad. God knows Trek has produced its share of clinkers, and I for one thought the whole first season of Next Generation was pretty reprehensible. And Voyager? Forgettable in its entirety. But nothing - nothing - in the entire Trek universe comes close to matching the epic badness that was Jar Jar Binks.
The great thing about Trek, from this fan's point of view, is its compartmentalized nature. Programmers might call it encapsulation. I didn't like Voyager, so I simply ignore it. I didn't much like Deep Dish Nine, what with its endless whiny Bajoran spirituality, so I simply ignore it. But it's a lot harder to ignore blatant turds in Star Wars, because it's all more or less of a piece.
5 comments:
The most attractive thing to me about Next Generation was the emphasis placed on negotiation and diplomacy. Because talking is better than shooting.
That's another good point. Problems are resolved (for the most part) with diplomacy, rationality, science... In Star Wars, it's mostly a matter of blowing something up.
Here's one thing that really bugs me about Star Wars. Darth Vader makes a career out of doing unspeakable things, but right at the end, he has a change of heart, so we're all supposed to think "Gosh, he's a swell guy after all; he's *sorry*." Sometimes sorry isn't enough for me - if Hitler was sorry, should we suddenly feel better about him too?
No, of course we wouldn't let Hitler off the hook. I also disliked Darth turning out to have a heart of gold. Anytime a writer manipulates his/her characters like that, I get skeptical.
BTW, "blantant turds" is my favorite expression for today.
I don't know if this ever happens to you, but sometimes when I reread something I wrote I think "Wow, where did THAT come from? I'm not NEARLY that funny or clever; someone smarter than me must have written that."
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