Bitter Trek Fan? :D

[Jon]

I've been enjoying reading over the attack on the federation and the whole Star Trek Universe that is stardestroyer.net- great theme for real exploration of the series/genre as a whole.

It seems the major disadvnatage trek has is; being based in our galaxy, not so far into the future, with comparitively slower displacement technology (warp seems to be nothing on hyperdrive) and is just too damn nice. It is also written by baffoons such as Brannon Braga.

Something which really peeves me also, which obviously is out of my control is that Trek canon can only come from live action- blame Paramount and various others I know, but instantly that puts it at a disadvantage. To be honest, I really don't think there should be 'versus' arguments between Trek and Star Wars at all.

Star Trek tries to explore our own (relatively close) future and *attempts* to integrate technologies which we could *possibley* attain. Star Wars is set in a fantastical galaxy where the only thing in common with our own is 'humans'- lucas and others have a license to introduce anything they like, and they do so brilliantly- but it isn't all justified by science, just like Trek- neither 'tech' is equally more plausible.

(why can't we all just get along )

The main content of stardestroyer.net is so unequivocally biased against Trek- "Trek says this, but ... " "Trekkies say that but...". Indeed, some people do get carried away in their defence of Star Trek against the massive world of Star Wars. With so many different writers, so many idiots who don't do their homework- and so many hours of live action recorded, Trek is unfortunately full of errors and contradictions- but they do try.... it'd be nice to see a little more balance out there, but I ain't here to say what it should and shouldn't be about

Star Wars, is fun- it's a fantasty, as much as Trek is, but it is unbound by our Physics, our galaxy- as far as I know (even though it obviously shares many similarities, light speed, gravity etc etc ) in that the people who write it have nothing to be bound to. Which is good I guess. I do enjoy talking about 'psuedoscience' - but I really do feel that the statement that Star Trek is polluting almost to science is quite false. It is Star Trek that is responsible for me becomeing a student of Physics, it's that show which provoked my interest in Science- books by the likes of Krauss are good fun, they attempt to justify Trek plausibilty but do something which I am sure most of you die hard star wars fan like, they totally rule it out. (as something with in our reach anyway)

Anyway, I've probably gone far off what I intended to write in this thread, but it is a Trek vs Wars piece, some of you obviously hate Trek/ Star Wars - is there any one who thinks of both with equal merit?

[RedImperator]

To tell the truth, I like Star Trek better. I think Trek at its best--"City on the Edge of Forever", "Yesterday's Enterprise", "Best of Both Worlds Part I"--is better than Wars at its best (TESB). But that's a purely subjective judgement based entirely on my own tastes.

And it should be noted that I also think Trek at its worst is worse than Wars at its worst, and Trek actually has a higher ratio of shit to gold than Wars does (I'm excluding the EU here). When Trek is bad, it can be really horrendous (think "Threshold" or "Dear Doctor" here), whereas at least TPM had cool eye candy and shit blowing up.

EDIT: As for the actual debate, it really doesn't bother me that Trek would get its ass kicked. When a civilization that's been in space 300 years goes up against one that's been in space for longer than Homo sapiens has existed as a species, of course the young one is going to get spanked.

What irritates me is how the sheer incompetence of the Trek writing staff has hobbled Trek more so than it needs to be. Okay, fine, the Federation doesn't have the metallurgical skills to duplicate Stormtrooper armor or the power generating technology to build a blaster. I can accept that. It's incredibly annoying, though, to know that they'd get slaughtered by a Napoleonic ground force because Trek writers did ZERO research on ground combat, and thus it's canon that the Federation has no body armor, no indirect fire weapons of any kind, no combat vehicles save a dune buggy with a rifle mounted on it, no discipline, and generally no chance against anyone except sci-fi ground armies written by equally incompetent writers.

[Elheru Aran]

I do like Trek's aesthetics; the Sovereign-class ships, especially, look pretty good.

They also have some good stories, and a few excellent characters which they bother to develop; for example, logical improbabilities aside, Data's development as an android striving to be more human is believable enough (although I have to admit that Q has a point when he says in I, Q-- a book by John de Lancie and Peter David-- that he can't understand why Data strives to be human when he is already better than human... but then, who are we to rely upon Q?).

The main problem I have with Star Trek is that they're wusses, plain and simple. And their tech just ain't all that realistic (highly explosive engines without even any safety precautions which a retard with one eye and half a brain could operate? hello!).

As for Star Wars, I definitely lean more in that direction. It could do with a little more development of the minor characters, which unfortunately only occurs to any real extent in the EU. It'd also have been good to have seen more of the Imperial society (incidentally, i'm talking OT here); the little we know is entirely inference from what we see of the military and from remarks by people onscreen (the idea that Imperials are racist, sexist, and xenophobic is primarily derived from an officer's calling Chewbacca a "thing" in ANH, I believe).

One of the things I like about Trek is that we see so much of their society. Admittedly, the society's not perfect (despite Roddenberry's, B&B's, etc.'s attempts to make it so)-- but that's the appeal of Star Trek for me. In the future, humans ARE human, with the attendant problems that are universal throughout human society. It shows that we, at least, will not change significantly, even though our technology may advance greatly. That's a pretty optismistic thought, one I appreciate.

[Robert Walper]

Actually, I personally love both Sci Fi universes. I love Star Wars overall, and in Star Trek I'm really fond of the concept of the Borg and their portrayal, along with alot of other elements. Naturally, there's problems with conflicting views on both sides, but I try to sit on the fence as much as possible rather than jump to any one side immediately. I think there's too much stupidity and stubbornness for the Trek side, and far, far too much masturbating of Star Wars all over Trek. But when it comes right down to it, it doesn't matter. I enjoy both and have my own vision of how such a crossover would come and go about, as does everyone else here.

[Atavarius]

I agree with RedImperator. Trek definitely is the better series when its at its highpoint. The problem is that those times are few and far between, especially now with a writing staff thats pissing on continuity and makes you want to hate the captain because he is responsible for millions of deaths by simply not lifting a finger.

[Chris OFarrell]

I would agree completly here.

The MAJOR problem Star Trek (especialy TNG +) has is that they use the technology AS the plot device rather then using it as a backdrop to the plot. Because of this, people can regularly redicule the Federations technology and abilities, simply because the writers are lazy people who can't build up suspense up any other way.

For example, look at the transporters. They need some reason to stop people beaming up or down. Well ok, lets just bullshit about the planets atmosphere having some EM radiation that blocks transporters. Again. Or we need the shields to be ineffective for some reason. So lets just have some technobabble partiacl penetrate the shields with no problem. Or we need to get from point A to point B to save someone, but not get there in time. So lets given an absurdly slow speed that contradicts the one we gave last week when we needed an absurdly high speed. We have a critical situation that we can't solve, even though we showed the perfect bit of technology last week, lets just pretend it didn't exist and never will again. We need to create a crisis situation, lets have someone take over or cripple the ship in a way that would appear to be impossible, but is made possible through the astonishing stupidity of the intrepid crew of heroes.

And I'm not even going to get started on their exploration on the surface of planets and their idea of ground combat. Thankyou Rodenbery for that one.

The sad offshoot of all this is that the poor writing makes Trek both annoying to watch for anyone who has even an inkling of scientific sense and makes it absurdly weak in terms of vs debates. Even though you can often see the writers try to show them to be very powerful, it simply falls through because the writers think twenty megajoules is a super powerful number...

[Tribun]

I would agree completly here.

The MAJOR problem Star Trek (especialy TNG +) has is that they use the technology AS the plot device rather then using it as a backdrop to the plot. Because of this, people can regularly redicule the Federations technology and abilities, simply because the writers are lazy people who can't build up suspense up any other way.

For example, look at the transporters. They need some reason to stop people beaming up or down. Well ok, lets just bullshit about the planets atmosphere having some EM radiation that blocks transporters. Again. Or we need the shields to be ineffective for some reason. So lets just have some technobabble partiacl penetrate the shields with no problem. Or we need to get from point A to point B to save someone, but not get there in time. So lets given an absurdly slow speed that contradicts the one we gave last week when we needed an absurdly high speed. We have a critical situation that we can't solve, even though we showed the perfect bit of technology last week, lets just pretend it didn't exist and never will again. We need to create a crisis situation, lets have someone take over or cripple the ship in a way that would appear to be impossible, but is made possible through the astonishing stupidity of the intrepid crew of heroes.

And I'm not even going to get started on their exploration on the surface of planets and their idea of ground combat. Thankyou Rodenbery for that one.

The sad offshoot of all this is that the poor writing makes Trek both annoying to watch for anyone who has even an inkling of scientific sense and makes it absurdly weak in terms of vs debates. Even though you can often see the writers try to show them to be very powerful, it simply falls through because the writers think twenty megajoules is a super powerful number...

Is this why you gave up SW vs. ST debating?

[Howedar]

I assume that he stopped SWvsST debating because there is no longer a debate to be had.

[Alyeska]

Is this why you gave up SW vs. ST debating?

We both gave up the primary debate long ago and we finaly gave up the 1v1 debate as well because there simply is no more debate.

[Darth Wong]

The only debates at this point fall into one of two categories:

1) Raving lunatics like Stewart Davies, Darkstar, or Andrew Joshua Talon
2) Rational Trek fans who accept that the Federation would get curb-stomped easily but object to some particular characterization that they feel makes Trek out to be weaker than it really is.

[Kuja]

I like Ye Olde Trek - back when Kirk sat in the chair, Klingons carried rifles, and big, mean, mini-Godzilla Gorns picked up torso-sized boulders and hurled them at people as though they were made of styrofoam ( ).

I also like Ye Olde Wars - when Vader ruled the roost, dead guys gave helpful advice, and Death Stars BLEW SHIT UP.

New Trek is good for eye candy, but even that's weak. Can you possibly compare the limp-wristed fight in Nemesis to the hellacious battle at the end of AOTC?

New Wars' plotlines and dialoge aren't the best, but they're still not as bad as some of the crap Trek's writers throw out.

[Lord Poe]

Hell, I hardly look at this part of the message board anymore. I doubt I'll update my SWvs St website again in the near future; it simply doesn't interest me as much anymore. Unless I feel like bitch-slapping Dipshit into next week, like my last update did so handidly.

[Ghost Rider]

Hell there really isn't a debate when I came in(around late 2002) and right now...it's all but a few whispers.

As for my feelings, Trek honestly can do some fantastic stories when the writers are up to it and not relying upon some diaster of the week that makes less sense the the technobabble bullshit they try to utilize to explain it in the first place. Trek at it's best is honestly first rate, at it's worst...it ranks somewhere between bad reality show and televangelist programming.

Star Wars is still great. I like the older stuff because it had more tension and a little less forced emotion or comedy. Yeah it was there in many regards but just TPM and AoTC rubbed me a tad wrong.

[General Zod]

i like both series, so for me there isn't really anything to debate. i used to be a rabid trekkie, but eventually got into the SW universe and started liking it to. So naturally i tend to not browse the Vs. forum a whole lot, as there aren't that many interesting debates left between the two really.

[Isolder74]

My brother started to try and prove to me that the enterprise could take on an ISD I got into it on the web so I could have the Info I needed to let him have it since his reasons were mostly based on semantics.

[MarkIX]

I used to like trek quite a lot and I really Like the original 3 in star wars as well but now I don't hold any hope for either of the franchises to be honest, any liking I had for star trek battered as it was after STTNG was taken out the back and beaten to death by voyager.

As For TPM well IMO it wasn't half the movie star wars was even though then SE where better they didn't make up for the things the film lacked. I only saw AOTC about 3 months ago and I can't say I really remember it that well so I won't say I thought it was good, but at the same time I had a chance to see nemisis and gave it a miss entirely.

As for VS debate I never have I came to this forum because I saw Mikes website when searching the net for Vapourisation energy values to use in a role playing game, I lie what I saw from a science point of view so I stayed.

[Sarevok]

I like both Star Trek and Star Wars. I like Star Wars more since it has more action and an epic story.

[Macunaima]

I like both universes, but I’m more a Trek fan, actually. However, even when I just first started to read about vs. debates, I already believed that Trek-based societies would face an almost certainly defeat on the hands of the Empire, if not by the technology, by the difference on the scale, industrial capacity, etc. After I read more about it, I saw there is even more that that.

[Xon]

Hell there really isn't a debate when I came in(around late 2002) and right now...it's all but a few whispers.

The debate was over before Mike got these forums up, and these forums were established somtime in early July 2002.

With the utter trash of Voyager, and Enterprise being crap, also it was a horrible Trek show; its no suprise that Startrek is so poorly recieved these days.

I used to like Trek a lot, but that rapidly changed when I found a critical analyse of it.

Stargate looks to be the next big Sci-fi series, but its fairly well established that as it stands they arent even a contest to the lowend calcs for Trek.

[Darth Wong]

It makes you wonder what people would think of Trek if they'd known when to quit, eh? The problem is that virtually everyone (including people who don't really care about sci-fi) has the general impression that Viacom is just milking the Star Trek franchise dry.

Even when you look at people who hate both the new Star Wars prequels and the new Star Trek TV series, there's a distinctly different tone to their criticisms. They dislike the Star Wars prequels because they think George Lucas basically doesn't know what he's doing any more, but they don't question that he thinks he's doing the right thing. But with Viacom, they're far more cynical; they see the studio as a bunch of soulless corporate suits who are using Trek as a shameless profit machine and dragging it to Hell in the process with no genuine interest whatsoever in the franchise.

[Xon]

But with Viacom, they're far more cynical; they see the studio as a bunch of soulless corporate suits who are using Trek as a shameless profit machine and dragging it to Hell in the process with no genuine interest whatsoever in the franchise.

Startrek: Voyager and Enterprise (renamed Startrek:Enterprise in season 3) hammer that home that viacom are just in for the milking of Trek.

[Sarevok]

But with Viacom, they're far more cynical; they see the studio as a bunch of soulless corporate suits who are using Trek as a shameless profit machine and dragging it to Hell in the process with no genuine interest whatsoever in the franchise.

Startrek: Voyager and Enterprise (renamed Startrek:Enterprise in season 3) hammer that home that viacom are just in for the milking of Trek.

The same goes for the recent trek movies like Nemesis and Insurrection.

[Xon]

But with Viacom, they're far more cynical; they see the studio as a bunch of soulless corporate suits who are using Trek as a shameless profit machine and dragging it to Hell in the process with no genuine interest whatsoever in the franchise.

Startrek: Voyager and Enterprise (renamed Startrek:Enterprise in season 3) hammer that home that viacom are just in for the milking of Trek.

The same goes for the recent trek movies like Nemesis and Insurrection.

Nemesis? There was no Nemesis, just a very very bad nightmare. Like there was no other Highlander movies beyond the original

[DaveJB]

I guess the current state of the ST franchise can be compared to that of the Halloween sequels. After the first film, Halloween 2 was made as a cheap cash-in, and to show Friday the 13th and the others who was boss. Then they at least tried to make something original in Halloween 3, but after that bombed, all the sequels from Halloween 4 onwards have been complete cash-ins.

[Enigma]

I liked ST because it's a universe in which you don't have to push hard to get what you want and life is relatively easy. I mean work enough for a personal holosuite and voila a nice quite life. Or if you want to travel among the stars then join Starfleet or the science council, etc..

If the Federation had bothered to keep and reverse engineer every single "tech of the week" devices, then they would be a force to be reckoned with in the ST galaxy and may even go toe to toe with the Empire. But alas B&B pussified ST and made it more pathetic than it was.

But what made me switch from being a Trekkie to being a Wars fan isn't the huge disparity between the two universes but the fact that there are a lot more vocal ass chomping trolls on the Trek side than Wars. In fact, I have yet encountered a serious Wars Troll.