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To prove a point. Please give me as many reasons and character comparisons as to why Star Wars is better than Star Trek. — Page 2

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ray_afraid said:

The only Star Trek I saw much of while growing up was Next Generation and Deep Space Nine. Both were beyond dull. Characters so bland and dialog so stiff I've always wondered what attracts anybody to the franchise. I saw the Original Motion Picture when I was about 10 and it was the first time I saw a film in which the special effects shots were what bored me out of the film. Shots of the Enterprise floating through space at a snails pace and seemed to last hours. Recently I've checked out the original series and found it much better. Very groovy and full of retro cool. I'm actually kinda excited to check out more!

So, for me, Star Wars is better because of the 'real' and interesting characters and effects that dazzle rather than bore. Also a story and characters that are identifiable and exciting are much better than a story and characters that are unrelateable and dull.

it's all opinions.

For me -

Star Trek TOS - brilliant, as soon as you get to the 60's way of storytelling.

Of course there are a couple of very stupid stories like Spock's brain but most of them are pretty good.

The Animated Series - started as a great sequel to TOS but turned into a cartoon for 6 year old kids VERY soon.

The Next Generation - has great episodes and also pretty bad episodes. However I REALLY went into TNG with the later seasons, which had much darker and scarier stories.

Deep Space Nine - boring. I started to like it only when they came up with th e war arcs in the last seasons.

Voyager - piece of shit. Never liked it as a kid, and only last year I made myself to watch it completely, and the only thing I like about the series are Seven Of Nine's boobs. Other than that the show sucks.

Enterprise - great season 1, good season 2, great season 3, very stupid season 4. No wonder it got cancelled.

Movies - every second movie is great. The reboot movie sucks. It's even worse than the Star Wars prequels

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If we're talking about the OT vs TOS, it's difficult to compare because of how different they are, as everyone has been saying. Star Wars had better special effects obviously, and better music. Overall the acting was better as well. TOS was more serious and realistic though. Star Trek was also 'deeper' in my opinion, with more philosophical and psychological elements, though Star Wars had those too, just more subtle. Both had great characterization, but with the exception of Spock, I'd say Star Wars has just a slight edge in that department.

With the franchises as a whole, I think Star Trek is consistently better written, better acted, smarter, and more believable. But in the end, I agree that it's completely pointless to argue about it.

I'm somewhat surprised by the negative views of the Star Trek 'reboot'. I loved it.

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 (Edited)

KazolOrajia said:

I'm somewhat surprised by the negative views of the Star Trek 'reboot'. I loved it.

 

Because it's the best STAR WARS movie since JEDI.

 

But it sure as heck ain't STAR TREK.

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Anyhoo, it's apples and oranges.

 

I will say that I think TREK (and by TREK, I mean TOS, which, for me, is the "real" TREK) is much better-constructed in terms of the overall concept.

With TREK, you can tell any sort of story imaginable, and can go anywhere. WARS worked best with the story of the Rebels vs. the Empire, and the core group of OT characters. Sure, it's a big galaxy in SW, with lots of room for creativity, but the Enterprise and her crew served as an anchoring point for exploring the human condition. There's much more story potential and room for creativity, there. There's also no problem in terms of getting bogged down by continuity (in TOS, at least).

 

TREK is a Rolls Royce. WARS is a racecar.

TREK is sci-fi. WARS is sci-fantasy.

TREK is character and plot-driven. WARS is action and pace-driven.

TREK is theatrical-style space opera. WARS is (or was, at least) whiz-bang fun.

TREK has well-defined and relatable characters (in terms of the main trio of Kirk-Spock-McCoy, at least). WARS has character archetypes made fresh by the actors' charm.

 

Love 'em both dearly, but they really are different beasts.

 

And all Abrams did was turn TREK into WARS. I was quite appalled by the "reboot". The inteligence and dignity was sucked out of TREK, and replaced by sophomoric humor, plot/logic holes galore, a complete misunderstanding of what makes TREK TREK, and lots of pointless action setpieces.

Abrams' TREK is essentially a STAR WARS movie with every last well-know TREK bit from pop-culture's collective memory thrown in for the identifiability/branding factor (Kirk banging green women, "I've givin' it all she's got, Captain!", etc.).

The film, unlike TOS, was clearly made by people who had no understanding of the military whatsoever. And, of course, it's another pointless origin story that didn't need to be told.

What's the origin story of TOS? The Enterprise was built. It had several Captains, and crew members came and went over the decades, as in any military organization. The crew of TOS came together in exactly that way--promotions, transfers, retirements and deaths led to that particularly group of people coming together on that ship.

It's laughable that Abrams' Enterprise was built at exactly the same time that all of these cadets (who, despite wildly varying ages and career histories in TOS, somehow mostly went to the Academy at the same time in this version) came together to serve aboard her.

 

One of my very favorite elements of TOS is the believability factor that went into the creation of that world and its backstory. A lot of thought went into the concepts and the technology, even if it wasn't always explicitly shown on-screen. The Enterprise was sleek and simple (unlike the hideous Abramsprise) because that made sense, from a futuristic point of view. The Enterprise had a long history, with different Captains and crewmen coming and going. The world and backstory of TREK were believable.

And, timeline change, "get out of continuity jail free", reboot nonsense aside, James Kirk was a stack of books with legs, and a serious commander with wit and nobility. He was not womanizing pub-brawler who got promoted from cadet to Captain by Madea within a period of several days.

 

 

 

An entertaining popcorn movie? Sure! STAR TREK? Not a chance.

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 (Edited)

Agreed.  As I've always said, Abrams Trek is the Star Trek version of Muppet Babies.  Entertaining, but the laws of continuity and logic are twisted so hard in order to get kid versions of themselves interacting in a kid world version of their original haunts.  It's basically a less believable version of the TNG episode "Rascals," because at least there you knew it was the same people only de-aged.  And at least Muppet Babies knew it didn't make sense and didn't waste two hours of technobabble to try and justify itself.

There is no lingerie in space…

C3PX said: Gaffer is like that hot girl in high school that you think you have a chance with even though she is way out of your league because she is sweet and not a stuck up bitch who pretends you don’t exist… then one day you spot her making out with some skinny twerp, only on second glance you realize it is the goth girl who always sits in the back of class; at that moment it dawns on you why she is never seen hanging off the arm of any of the jocks… and you realize, damn, she really is unobtainable after all. Not that that is going to stop you from dreaming… Only in this case, Gaffer is actually a guy.

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zombie84 said:

I'm pretty sure the slave owning southern elite sending young men fighting to the bloody death to defend their right to hold a human being as property are the bad guys of the American Civil War, and not simply guys with "a different point of view."

 

The Civil War was not all about slavery. First and foremost it was about states rights and the fact that the states in the north wanted to put an end to the way of life for the south. Simply saying it was all about slavery demeans the whole war.

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I'm old enough to remember Star Trek vs. Space:1999 arguments. ;)

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I Love Star Wars.....I Love Star Trek....end of comparison.

:)

 

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What I don't get is when people say you aren't allowed to like both. It's just silly. I love both Star Wars and Star Trek. It's like when they say that you can either like Adam West's Batman or Michael Keaton's/Christian Bale's Batman, I like both iterations of the character

<span style=“font-weight: bold;”>The Most Handsomest Guy on OT.com</span>

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Agreed.  I remember getting flack in my Star Trek videos because I was wearing a Star Wars t-shirt.  How dare I!  How dare I violate the sanctity of nerddom.  You just can't mix them!  Those damn, dirty Trekkies.  Would you let a Starfleet marry your Rebel?

There is no lingerie in space…

C3PX said: Gaffer is like that hot girl in high school that you think you have a chance with even though she is way out of your league because she is sweet and not a stuck up bitch who pretends you don’t exist… then one day you spot her making out with some skinny twerp, only on second glance you realize it is the goth girl who always sits in the back of class; at that moment it dawns on you why she is never seen hanging off the arm of any of the jocks… and you realize, damn, she really is unobtainable after all. Not that that is going to stop you from dreaming… Only in this case, Gaffer is actually a guy.

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They are similar because they both begin with "Star", both set in space, both have one man that mastermined it all (Lucas and Rodenberry), and both have a really huge, nerdy fanbase. 

Although, Star Wars nerds have historically been a lot cooler than Star Trek nerds.

I wish that I could just wish my feelings away...but I can't.  Wishful wishing can only lead to wishes wished for in futile wishfulness, which is not what I wish to wish for. 

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 (Edited)

There's an interesting parallel between Lucas and Roddenberry.

Both were "typecast" as "Mr. STAR WARS" and "Mr. STAR TREK".

Both receive most of the credit for being the genius visionaries behind their respective franchises.

Both were/are lousy writers. Of the few TREK episodes Roddenberry actually wrote, only the original pilot was an out-of-the-ballpark-good script. His other scripts ranged from so-so ("Mudd's Women") to utterly lousy ("The Omega Glory", "Turnabout Intruder").

 

 

The original SW trilogy was very collaborative, with the first film, in particular, being saved in post-production by editing and window-dressing (music, FX, etc.). EMPIRE's creative success was largely due to Kernsher and Kasdan.

And Roddenberry, being a notorious credit-stealer, was more of a guiding influence than anything else. Gene Coon was perhaps the person most responsible for the feel of TOS as we know it, having served as producer after the first dozen or so episodes, penning many great episodes, and rewriting others.

 

Both Roddenberry and Lucas later came back to their respective franchises, with mixed results.

Lucas made the prequels, without a system of checks and balances.

Roddenberry came to believe the hype being repeated to him over and over again by fandom, with the result that STAR TREK-THE MOTION PICTURE depicted a boring, bland, "perfect" future--which was not at all what TOS was about.

The critical failure of that film led to his removal as creative controller, and it took two outsiders (Harve Bennett and Nick Meyer) to get back to the heart of TOS with THE WRATH OF KHAN.

And then Roddenberry went off and created TNG, which, at first, was in the vein of ST-TMP: bland, with no conflicts between the main characters. That first season is just horrible.

 

Both Lucas and Roddenberry, after being hailed as visionaries, decided that their franchises needed to be IMPORTANT, to the detriment of said franchises.

STAR WARS went from the ultimate popcorn movie to a "deep", mythic, multipart "Saga", which resulted in the 6-film patchwork quilt we know today. The original film is the only one that doesn't fit within that framework.

STAR TREK went from a fun action-adventure-drama series to a talky, bland, preachy series about how perfect man will be in the future. The original series is the only one that doesn't fit within the framework of the spin-offs. And ENTERPRISE went out of its way to erase TOS and steal many of that show's "firsts" (by showing an Enterprise before Kirk's, having first contact with many races that were originally first contacted in TOS, etc.).

 

Far and away, for me, TOS (third season aside) and the original SW film are the best incarnations of those franchises. Almost everything that has come after has served to undermine and/or erase/supplant those original, iconic versions.

 

Talk about biting the hand that feeds!

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Gregatron said:

Both Lucas and Roddenberry, after being hailed as visionaries, decided that their franchises needed to be IMPORTANT, to the detriment of said franchises.

In other words, they finally started to believe their own hype. 

Ego is the enemy of good entertainment.

I wish that I could just wish my feelings away...but I can't.  Wishful wishing can only lead to wishes wished for in futile wishfulness, which is not what I wish to wish for. 

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<span style=“font-weight: bold;”>The Most Handsomest Guy on OT.com</span>

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Star Trek never went into unadulterated, infant-focused products such as Episode I, II, and The Clone Wars.  Yeah, there was TAS which was a Saturday morning cartoon, and the boring Motion Picture and elements of TNG and its successors that were also a bit boorish, and the new reboot was crap...but Trek has never had a "Jar-Jar" moment.  In that sense, the franchise is "better".  

However, as is acknowledged here, there really is NO COMPARISON of the franchises beyond their similar sounding "Star" titles, space-themed settings, and use of spaceships and high technology. etc.  Star Wars is "Space-Fantasy" and Star Trek is Science-Fiction, yet both are, in their own ways, equally enjoyable and similarly faltering.  

Personally, I think the Trek franchise is, in total, better, but nothing is as enjoyable, "fun", and influential (to my own daily life) as "Old" Star Wars. 

-Someone, someday, needs to bring back the LIGHT SIDE to Star Wars.  Has anyone else noticed striking similarites between the character of Anakin/Vader and George Lucas, or is it just me? 

-It's called STAR WARS. NOT "Episode IV: A New Hope". Kids, get this straight.  

-Please read the Archie Goodwin daily SW comics: Too good to be forgotten! 

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doubleofive said:


Wow, Gaff, show me on the Kirk figure where JJ touched you. ;-)
This is the funniest thing I've read in a looooong time.

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Star Wars Purist said:

Star Trek never went into unadulterated, infant-focused products such as Episode I, II, and The Clone Wars.  Yeah, there was TAS which was a Saturday morning cartoon, and the boring Motion Picture and elements of TNG and its successors that were also a bit boorish, and the new reboot was crap...but Trek has never had a "Jar-Jar" moment.  In that sense, the franchise is "better".  

However, as is acknowledged here, there really is NO COMPARISON of the franchises beyond their similar sounding "Star" titles, space-themed settings, and use of spaceships and high technology. etc.  Star Wars is "Space-Fantasy" and Star Trek is Science-Fiction, yet both are, in their own ways, equally enjoyable and similarly faltering.  

Personally, I think the Trek franchise is, in total, better, but nothing is as enjoyable, "fun", and influential (to my own daily life) as "Old" Star Wars. 

 

To its eternal credit, TAS, despite being a Saturday morning cartoon, still did much to retain the intelligence and seriousness of TOS. It didn't have cute sidekicks added into the show, and the characters were all in-character.

 

Anyway, there really is no comparison. WARS is whiz-bang fun, TREK is intellectual drama, with a healthy dose of action and fun. Two sides of the same coin, which are perfectly capable of coexisting.

 

I'll try to compare them, though. It's more than a little unfair, because TOS had three seasons, a cartoon, and six movies to develop the characters and concepts.

 

Concept:

TREK: The Enterprise explores the vast reaches of the galaxy, encountering anything you could imagine.

WARS: A farmboy is swept up into a battle between the Rebels and Empire, and saves the day.

Winner: TREK, simply because the concept allows for limitless possibilities and stories, whereas WARS, in its original form, was a one-shot story with an ending.

 

Characters/actors:

TREK: Three fantastic and well-developed main characters, played by three great actors (and, yes, Shatner is great in TOS--this was before he became the Shatner we know today, after all). The secondary characters are mostly just bit players.

WARS: The characters are archetypal, and don't have a whole lot of depth, but that's not really the point. The performances are solid, for the most part.

 

Winner: TREK. You can't get more iconic than Kirk-Spock-McCoy. They're much easier characters to get a feel for, because we got to know them so well in so many episodes. TREK is more about the characters than WARS is.

 

Visual effects:

TREK: Cutting-edge for their time--movie-quality effects on a weekly TV budget. They only look bad now because better compositing techniques and motion control came along years after the show ended, and because TOS was never meant to be seen in HD on giant TV screens.

WARS: The films' effects revolutionized the industry. 'Nuff said!

Winner: WARS.

 

 

Production design:

TREK: The Enterprise, its interiors, the uniforms, props, etc. are all iconic, and very logical and futuristic. Setting aside the limits of 1960s materials, the designs themselves are timeless and unsurpassed by any other iteration.

WARS: Dazzling visual eye-candy, with designs drawing inspiration from many disparate sources, in such a way as to make the audience feel at home in an unfamiliar universe.

Winner: Draw!

 

Music:

TREK: Many TOS episodes have fantastic, powerful, and highly memorable scores created by great composers ("The Cage", "The Naked Time", "Amok Time", "The Doomsday Machine", etc.).

WARS: Williams' score reignited the popularity of orchestral scores in film, and the original movie's score has often been considered the best movie score of all time.

Winner: WARS

 

Impact:

TREK: Created the idea of modern sci-fi fandom as we know it. It's had more conventions, fanzines, and parodies than one could ever count. It launched the first movie series ever made because of fan demand. It's had a massive influence on real-world science, and has influenced countless artists and scientists.

WARS: Revolutionized the film industry, and cemented the idea of the blockbuster. A merchandizing empire unmatched in film history. A pop-culture juggernaut with a massive, cult-like fanbase which has led to "Jedi" becoming an official religion in some countries!

Winner: Draw!

 

 

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This is closer to my original vision of that scene :

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Gregatron said:

There's an interesting parallel between Lucas and Roddenberry.

Both were "typecast" as "Mr. STAR WARS" and "Mr. STAR TREK".

Both receive most of the credit for being the genius visionaries behind their respective franchises.

Both were/are lousy writers. Of the few TREK episodes Roddenberry actually wrote, only the original pilot was an out-of-the-ballpark-good script. His other scripts ranged from so-so ("Mudd's Women") to utterly lousy ("The Omega Glory", "Turnabout Intruder").

 

 

The original SW trilogy was very collaborative, with the first film, in particular, being saved in post-production by editing and window-dressing (music, FX, etc.). EMPIRE's creative success was largely due to Kernsher and Kasdan.

And Roddenberry, being a notorious credit-stealer, was more of a guiding influence than anything else. Gene Coon was perhaps the person most responsible for the feel of TOS as we know it, having served as producer after the first dozen or so episodes, penning many great episodes, and rewriting others.

 

Both Roddenberry and Lucas later came back to their respective franchises, with mixed results.

Lucas made the prequels, without a system of checks and balances.

Roddenberry came to believe the hype being repeated to him over and over again by fandom, with the result that STAR TREK-THE MOTION PICTURE depicted a boring, bland, "perfect" future--which was not at all what TOS was about.

The critical failure of that film led to his removal as creative controller, and it took two outsiders (Harve Bennett and Nick Meyer) to get back to the heart of TOS with THE WRATH OF KHAN.

And then Roddenberry went off and created TNG, which, at first, was in the vein of ST-TMP: bland, with no conflicts between the main characters. That first season is just horrible.

 

Both Lucas and Roddenberry, after being hailed as visionaries, decided that their franchises needed to be IMPORTANT, to the detriment of said franchises.

STAR WARS went from the ultimate popcorn movie to a "deep", mythic, multipart "Saga", which resulted in the 6-film patchwork quilt we know today. The original film is the only one that doesn't fit within that framework.

STAR TREK went from a fun action-adventure-drama series to a talky, bland, preachy series about how perfect man will be in the future. The original series is the only one that doesn't fit within the framework of the spin-offs. And ENTERPRISE went out of its way to erase TOS and steal many of that show's "firsts" (by showing an Enterprise before Kirk's, having first contact with many races that were originally first contacted in TOS, etc.).

 

Far and away, for me, TOS (third season aside) and the original SW film are the best incarnations of those franchises. Almost everything that has come after has served to undermine and/or erase/supplant those original, iconic versions.

 

Talk about biting the hand that feeds!

TMP showed an Enterprise of unknown class between the space shuttle and the tv series' version in the rec deck scene. There's never been anything I can recall being said on screen that the name had never been used for a spacecraft prior to the 1701.

All the important first contacts I saw on ENT were with species well known in Kirk's time or races we didn't see until Next Gen originally. Not counting aliens of the week that are never seen again.

And when the heck did we turn into a Trek board? ;)

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 (Edited)

It's not so much that there was an Enterprise before Kirk's (after all, the TMP rec room scene featured an earlier iteration--the "ringship"/starliner version), it's the concept--one of Earth's most important and famous ships was called Enterprise. Before Kirk's. And Archer is said to be one of the greatest explorers of his time, later becoming Federation President.

Because ENTERPRISE--the show and the ship-- are IMPORTANT, don't ya see?!?!

A long-lost notion of TREK was that Kirk's Enterprise was just another ship which eventually became distinguished, but was not at all the "flagship of the fleet". Famous and historic? Sure. But not the end-all, be-all of the fleet. Throwing in a prior Enterprise which did all of these great and important things retroactively makes Kirk's the only one in the franchise that wasn't IMPORTANT from the start.

The deification of the Enterprise and her crew is a classic example of fan-think creeping into the writing, and writers having the characters know or believe things that only viewers should be privy to.

 Just like fans asking why people don't figure out Superman's secret identity. Except...why would Superman even LET ON that he has another identity? Sure, WE know he has one, but why would anyone else in the DC universe know that?

 

 

Anyhoo, the NX-01 stole a number of "firsts" from TOS, and other iterations, too--a katra transfer with a human, first meetings with the Organians, Borg, Ferengi, genetically-engineered supermen from the 20th century, etc. To say nothing of goofy retcons, like female Vulcans going through Pon Farr.

 

All in all, ENTERPRISE suffers from massive doses of "prequelitis", and does everything in its power to overwrite or sidestep TOS. The look and feel of the show brings to mind a TNG-era prequel, more than TOS.

We also see "phase pistols", the first real starship (NX-01, which can be taken as the very first "NCC"-type ship), the first use of a transporter aboard a ship, first contact with Romulans, Klingons, etc. All of these historical and technological events are conveniently centered around one ship called Enterprise, which was incredibly famous and important long before Jim Kirk's ship. And, of course, Kirk's ship would now have a legacy to uphold, as the second starship in the series, rather than being just another ship which eventually stood out on its own merits, thanks to the events of TOS.

 

Granted, this level of coincidence isn't anywhere close to Abrams' film, but...

 

Really, a casual viewer might very well watch ENTERPRISE and then move on to TNG, without even realizing that TOS is supposed to fit in-between.

And, now, we have Abrams' TREK to replace TOS. In fact, that film does a halfway decent job of filling the gap between ENT and TNG (aside from certain elements, like the destruction of Vulcan).

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I kind of like evil bearded Spock. And IMHO, Uhura should have worn that revealing uniform all the time. ;)

The Enterprise two parter revisiting the Mirror universe, complete with "evil" opening credits and theme music is probably my favorite episode of that series.

The MST3K parody of Mirror Mirror is hilarious.

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Gregatron said:

....

Music:

TREK: Many TOS episodes have fantastic, powerful, and highly memorable scores created by great composers ("The Cage", "The Naked Time", "Amok Time", "The Doomsday Machine", etc.).

WARS: Williams' score reignited the popularity of orchestral scores in film, and the original movie's score has often been considered the best movie score of all time.

Winner: WARS

WHAT!!1111!!!2!!!!1!!!!!ONE!!!?!!!!!

D:<

RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

 

 

 

 

;)

<span style=“font-weight: bold;”>The Most Handsomest Guy on OT.com</span>

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Given the other genre series Williams was working on in the 60's, (especially Lost In Space) I'm surprised he never scored a TOS episode.

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