mojo wrote:I know that it's generally agreed that the Force and the Jedi and Sith would not make that much difference in a Trek/Wars battle. But in the first contact between them, couldn't Darth Vader make a huge difference? For instance, if they found some way to actually communicate with each other, what's to stop Vader from just force-choking (I know, I hear you all groaning already) Worf when he tries to press the buttons to launch weapons against whatever ship Vader happens to be in? We know he can do the old force-choke from one ship to another already. How long would it really take an Empire ship to annihilate the hell out of a Federation ship that was momentarily unable to fire back? Since we can probably assume that the Federation would almost certainly at least attempt peaceful communication first, and we can assume that the Empire would attack in short order, isn't it possible that with just a little bit of luck the Empire could destroy the first Federation ship it came across before it could even send out an SOS? Since Federation ships seem to travel around on their own a lot of the time, couldn't many ships be destroyed this way?
Also, I've been watching a LOT of TNG, and those hallways are pretty narrow. If Vader found a way to enter the ship, which at least the first time would probably be fairly easy since Picard is constantly letting people he doesn't know beam aboard, what's to stop him just rampaging through the ship, light-saber blazing? You couldn't fit more than four or five people side by side in those hallways, and Vader could easily deflect their phaser fire. Since he could melt the doors and whatnot, what's to stop him just slashing his way onto the bridge and massacring everyone there? At that point, they'd have a working Federation ship and could analyze the tech and weapons to better defend themselves, and find weaknesses and all that.
Maybe both those ideas are retarded, I don't know everything, but they seem fairly possible if improbable to me.
Our friends here already addressed most of this point so no need to add anything else.
mojo wrote:Another thing that sort of bothers me is that both the original SW trilogy and the original ST series aren't really hard sci-fi in the strict sense in the first place. The original SW trilogy is of course just a western/samurai story told in space, and the original ST series is mostly a fantasy series set in space, imo. In both cases the technology is there to take the place of magic - gadgets and weapons do what they do because it's what's needed to advance the story rather than because it's a bit of well-reasoned and thought out equipment or weaponry.
You’re absolutely correct here, man. It’s the simple truth that somehow manages to elude most of us in general. The sad point is that most of the more hardcore fans on both sides insist on treating them as hard sci-fi shows and cling to very small details and lose sight of the big picture.
mojo wrote:The writers of both are just writers trying to tell stories, not nuclear physicists or rocket scientists. I would be willing to bet a paycheck that some of the debates that happen on this very forum would be just about incomprehensible to Lucas and many of the writers of ST: TOS. Stephen King said in an interview about the Dark Tower series that he sometimes hears people discussing his series with talk of quantum physics and other types of hard science, trying to figure out how King himself expects things in his books to be possible, when the truth is he knows nothing of any of those things and just wanted to advance the story. Isn't it possible, no, probable that Roddenbury came up with the idea of the phaser by thinking 'Hey, what if their weapons shoot lasers that can be adjusted from simply knocking someone down all the way up to, oh, I don't know, melting freakin' rocks?! That would be awesome!' rather than drawing out some technical manual about how the things work? And even when it comes to the later stuff, like TNG and DS9 and beyond, and the SW prequels, isn't it likely that the huge difference in opinions about how strong the weapons are and how fast the ships are is there because the people who are creating this entertainment don't know themselves, and just make the weapons as strong as they need them to be for the plots they are working with, and just make the ships zip from one place to the next without really worrying about how long it takes to get there? Granted, the later ST series are MUCH better about being consistent with the tech, since by the time TNG came out the people involved knew that the fans were going to dissect every detail and at least put forth some effort to have standards. The SW prequels I think do this as well to a lesser extent, and fail more often. Lucas simply doesn't seem to care how fast his ships go or how strong his weapons are, as long as he can give us people fighting with light-sabers and blowing each other up in absurd but fun dogfights. For me personally this makes for a more enjoyable viewing experience, as I'm a light-saber and absurd dogfight kind of guy, and never even considered how fast the ships were going until I found this forum.
I agree with this too.
mojo wrote:But what I'm saying is that trying to analyze and dissect something when it's made of nothing at all simply doesn't work. For example, there's this huge debate going on right now about shockwaves and whether explosions occurred under the crust of a planet and all this stuff. Sort of interesting, but you're all pretty much guaranteed to be giving this about 3,000,000,012 times more thought than the guy who wrote the scene itself. Isn't it completely likely that the guy just went 'Well, let's just have them shoot the planet and we can make a big explosion. Sound good? Let's go to lunch.' Then the special effects guy makes the explosion in the way he thinks looks the coolest, knowing nothing about how planets would explode in real life, and years later you find yourselves arguing vehemently over the real-life science behind it and how it works with the internal pseudo-science of the series!
I see you noticed that our friends here like to dwell on small minutia, semantics or how something is suppose to look like with a passion and they really put a lot of thought into it, many times more than anyone involved with those two shows ever did and I don’t think that that is a particular bad thing, some good rationalization of certain events might come in handy but at some moment excessive hair splitting can get really annoying, like the example you mentioned, the one regarding “The Die is Castâ€, I cant help but cringe when people get into extensive debates of how the visuals can’t be used to support high firepower figures for phasers and photon torpedoes because of how inaccurate those visuals are without noticing that those weapons weren’t even used on that bombardment, as neither the Romulans nor the Cardassians use that kind of weaponry, they use disruptors and plasma torpedoes and maybe they are similar but clearly are not the same (Note that I’m not referring to this forum particular debate but the ones on other less friendly and on average not so bright forums).
mojo wrote:I'm sure some effort is made to make things consistent, especially in later Trek, like I said. I'm sure you've got guys checking scripts for crazy things like the Enterprise blowing up whole solar systems or phasers blasting mountains out of the ground. But lesser things probably just slide through. 'No, Fred, you can't have Picard shoot a laser through the center of the planet and hit someone on the other side. What's that? Can he beam to the other side of the planet and shoot the laser right through his eye, making a hole no bigger than his pupil? Sure, why not.' I just have a lot of doubt that some kind of Star Trek Bible exists anywhere on Earth that describes the exact power levels of weapons and the exact speeds of the various ships, and I'd just about wager my lifetime savings that no such Star Wars Bible exists. These guys are just making things up as they go along, I think, trying to keep things within reason compared to what's come before in their respective series while still offering us the best stories they can. And if that's the case, and no Bible exists which can show us finally which side is stronger, beyond doubt, then how can any kind of debate about Star Trek vs. Star Wars tech and weaponry even fairly begin, let alone at some point conclude with an agreed upon outcome? It's just going to be an eternal pointless battle, with people basically just picking sides based on which series is more their type of entertainment and then trying to find ways to justify their position that yes, their side will win, when it's not finally about science or facts and statistics at all, but whether you personally think Picard or Skywalker is cooler. My dad can beat up your dad.
I'm sure you guys have heard all that twenty times at least, and in the end I'm honestly not trying to hurt or demoralize the debate itself, I'm just trying to find a way to make it make sense for me to spend time thinking about something that can't be finally solved. Is there even a remote chance that at some point someone will strike upon something that will end the debate one way or another? Because otherwise, why bother?
You’re right, again. That’s pretty much how I feel about this issue and one of the reasons I try to don’t get involved into discussions trying to prove the superiority of one over the another. However I can’t help it when someone starts using unsupported claims, long debunked myths or just plain disinformation, whether is an honest mistake or not, I just feel like I need to address those points, even if doing so doesn’t change the general outcome. Anyway, it can be a lot of fun at times so don’t feel discouraged to express your point of view, maybe you’ll see something that we don’t.
