Star Wars, Star Trek - Technology, ethics, and social impact

[Ghost Rider]

Is there a way to find out where someone is copying text from? There's no way that this is coming from a 23 year old who posts pictures of lolcats all day...

To be honest stop trying to debate him, make it for the audience...because as Mike, Connor and many older posters have said; only the retarded are left and they will never change their opinions about this matter.

So play to the audience and reveal how much a fool he is.

Let's just toss out all novelizations, fan fiction, apocrypha, and other such bullshit, shall we?

Have him show two things.

1. That Novelizations aren't an admission of losing. They are considered below the movies in terms of canon for Star Wars. If he cannot show this then he's lost anything of real ground because he is then going "My rules!!!!", which in any debate is all but conceding your position is higher.

2. Have him demonstrate what you've said is Fan fiction and/or apocrypha. Again not demonstrating this and using broad strokes is appealing to an audience. But this isn't two people speaking, this is written word where one can force the other to pony up. Burden of Proof is and should be enacted to get him to admit his weaker position or demonstrate that he is all bluster.

And by famous, I meant obviously that those ethics were common with academics, not popcorn sucking zombies.

Again, have him demonstrate this. Enough with broad strokes have him put something of substance or keep needling him. He's the one who should be proving to everyone why ST has better ethics(or whatever, he cannot even demonstrate that). Not just brushing it away.

The Maquis do not show a "failing" in humans, but rather a condition of human life. The Maquis plot had a complex socio-cultural message. You could write an essay on the topic, and I think that's really my point. The Maquis, compared to say the Rebel Alliance, brought a lot of threading, layering, and nuance to Star Trek's plot. The Rebels in Star Wars, are merely the "good guys" fighting against the "bad guys." Their reasons were obvious. You didn't have to think about it. It was a convenient and necessary plot device.

Heere again he is brushing away what he should be proving. He's doing nothing intelligent and the fact he posts lolcats is easy to see. Long winded diatribes are no sign of intelligence. Here, he should be proving, if he had any, why the Maquis are what he says they are. Instead you can easily demonstrate that for a fact the Federation ABANDONED their own citizens to a hostile power and in fact cooperate with the hostile power against said citizens. That is a gross and disgusting thought. Something one can easily show for the audience.

As you stated-- the Maquis had multiple rivals-- the Federation, the Cardassian government, the Cardassian colonists, and ultimately the Dominion. The Maquis origins come from the already messy regional politics, and reaches further into the individual cultural differences between Bajor, the Federation, and Cardassia.

Here demonstrate the Maquis are in fact Federation citizens abandoned by their government and then chased down by the self same government to appease a hostile power.

As for Yoda's realization, this doesn't change the dualistic nature of Star Wars' most fundamental premise-- the good vs. evil dichotomy. This broken philosophy confines the story and the audience into rote archetypes. Will the hero turn evil? Who will win-- good or bad? It's as hackneyed as He-Man and Skeletor.

Again he needs to demonstrate this. Giving broad and loud strokes are for presidential debates and bad court room drama.

Now even though I said I wanted to cast aside all apocrypha, I think the only good example of Star Wars breaking out of this psychotic pattern was in the Jedi Outcast games. Kyle Katarn was able to use both "good" and "evil" Jedi powers, thus enabling him to defeat Desann. His padawans, Jaden and Rosh both flirt with the dark side, enabling them to also utilize both powers. But even in this instance, there is that cliched moment of choice where Jaden must choose to be good or evil. The only thing missing was Bob Barker asking what the actual retail price was.

Again it's not apocrypha and the fact he acknowledges as such is demonstrating his level of knowledge of what is and is not canon. It's lower then movies or novels, but it does have an existence in canon.

I thought the novelization was canon, so wouldn't that be legit as part of an argument?

Again, make him pony up that. He's been leading you around. Force him to either demonstrate proof or make concessions.

[Darth Wong]

I actually agree that the Maquis were a pretty interesting idea. Unfortunately, the more complex message of the Maquis was ultimately buried beneath rah-rah militarism as DS9 went on, or perhaps this fool didn't notice. In fact, the burgeoning "Federation isn't all it's cracked up to be" message of the Maquis was literally buried along with the Maquis themselves, who were completely wiped out as an afterthought in the beginning of the Dominion War. The Maquis are merely another entry in the large "could have been something" file for Star Trek. The movie Insurrection is the same way: it takes what could have been an interesting moral argument and simply declares that we should get behind one side and forget the moral conflict. It even kills off Admiral Dougherty in order to make sure that the battle lines are clearly drawn now, just as DS9 killed off the Maquis. The Maquis are a perfect example of what's wrong with Star Trek's moralizing, not what's right with it.

As for this idiot's mischaracterization of Star Wars, he doesn't seem to realize that in Star Wars, you're actually better off combining elements of Dark Side and Light Side. Mace Windu was able to channel the Dark Side, and he could have killed Palpatine if not for Anakin's interference. Yoda, on the other hand, was pure Light Side and was defeated by Palpatine. Similarly, Luke defeated Vader by using the Dark Side, and then Vader defeated Palpatine by using the Light Side. But oh no, we have to use the "apocrypha" to find anything like that in Star Wars, right?

PS. At the end of the day, the biggest problem with Trek's treatment of ethics is that it is consciously trying to preach at you. Even when the writers create a moral ambiguity, their desire (or directive) to preach at the audience causes them to ruin it, thus making it worse than it would be if they had never created it in the first place.

[Sidewinder]

Star Wars is an incredible story, but it is weighed down by its own self-importance and lack of vision.

I'm assuming this guy never saw 'The Next Generation' (Picard as God?), 'Deep Space Nine' (Sisko as Jesus?), 'Voyager' (Janeway as Satan?), or 'Enterprise' (Archer as... what the hell did he do there, anyways?). I almost envy him.

[Darth Wong]

He accuses Star Wars of "self importance" because it is a subjective accusation. So even though virtually anyone who watched both series would agree that Star Trek is vastly more guilty on this count, he can say it and you can't strictly refute him. You can only state an opposite claim, which ends up looking like a stalemate.

[Darth Wong]

I don't know where you're debating this idiot, but do people there take his bullshit seriously? How can anyone actually accuse Star Wars of self-importance with a straight face when he is defending Star Trek, a show so full of itself that it routinely has characters giving onscreen soliloquys about morality? Hell, they've got their heads so far up their own asses that they once wrote an entire episode about the business problems of a holographic character on DS9, who himself was only created to fill dead air-time between plot developments.

[NetKnight]

What's wrong with self-importance, per se? Blade Runner, the Terminator films (well, Cameron's, anyway), and Babylon 5 certainly aren't mindless campy action flicks, and know it. If this moron wants to claim this makes them bad... then pistols, siah, at thirty paces at daybreak.

[Terralthra]

I don't know where you're debating this idiot, but do people there take his bullshit seriously? How can anyone actually accuse Star Wars of self-importance with a straight face when he is defending Star Trek, a show so full of itself that it routinely has characters giving onscreen soliloquys about morality? Hell, they've got their heads so far up their own asses that they once wrote an entire episode about the business problems of a holographic character on DS9, who himself was only created to fill dead air-time between plot developments.

The truly sad thing is that the episode in question (Badda-Bing Badda-Bang) is probably one of the best-written and executed episodes in the series.

As far as self-importance goes, one need look no further than In The Pale Moonlight. The entire episode is Sisko attempting to reconcile his actions to get the Romulans into the war with the moral code he's sworn to uphold. Not just one, but several monologues and voice-overs of self-righteous, preachy moralizing.

[NetKnight]

As far as self-importance goes, one need look no further than In The Pale Moonlight. The entire episode is Sisko attempting to reconcile his actions to get the Romulans into the war with the moral code he's sworn to uphold. Not just one, but several monologues and voice-overs of self-righteous, preachy moralizing.

And yet, IMHO, said episode is one of the best in DS9, and in fact, the entire franchise. While this is of course a disputable opinion, it does serve my point: "self-importance" is not a bad thing if well done, and can even make for a good episode/show/movie in such a case. Even if ROTS, say, contains comentary on current events, this is only a bad thing if it gets in the way of the story, like how pretty much every Rodenberry lecture in TNG does.

Of course, I'm really preaching to the chior here.

[Darth Wong]

I can't understand how anyone can think of those episodes as good ones. They sucked so hard that in both cases, I changed the fucking channel in disgust. Apparently, some people actually like Star Trek: The Soap Opera.

[Terralthra]

Because if you managed to skip the scenes that reminded you it was a Star Trek episode, it was a passable half-hour Ocean's Eleven.