Starfleet Jedi

I think so. During the heyday of ST, under the ST:TNG days, the ST v SW fight broke rather decisively towards ST, with "trektards" making ICS-ish statements about how ST would easily smash SW. Even the DS blast didn't mean much as the Borg can simply adapt to it and render it moot. Of course, some of these claims were rather absurd, and any honest assessment will produce at least competitive matchups between the two.

However, as of right now, or at least the era start from 2002, the fight is breaking out decisively out on the other side. SW will easily, because of the ICS and other claims of "wank". As we can see during this period, ST was suffering from a long decline due to the lackluster nature of ST:Voy and the totally uninspired ST:Ent, whereas SW had a revival due to the prequel trilogy.

So is the popularity of the franchises the main source of these more lopsided outcomes? Would a massive revival in ST totally flip the STvSW fight in the other direction?

I think part of it also comes from the popularity and treatment of the Expanded Universe. Ever since the Holocron happened, and the way Licensing has attempted to try and bring everything under one roof, so to speak, it has led more to accept what tech manuals and official literature state, as opposed to Star Trek, which has always treated their EU with much more separation. Had Star Trek had a sort of "Holocron" where they called the different levels in their hierarchy "canon", and there had been ICS-like Trek manuals, things might have been perceived quite a bit differently.

While popularity is certainly part of it, it is a much smaller part than push for the expectance of the SWEU by Saxtonites. After all, the ICS's written by Saxton had figures that were even higher than pro-Wars debaters had been putting forward, so if the EU - and by extension the ICS - is canon, then not even examples like the one in "Masks" can't save the Trek side and the debate is in essence over.

An interesting thing to note about the popularity of the two series: while crappy writing, almost non-existent plot, and flashy visuals rejuvenated SW, they have done a great deal of harm to ST. I guess the prequel trilogy has brought Star Wars to a new generation. Funny, I thought that was what the Special Edition of the OT was supposed to be for.

AnonymousRedShirtEnsign wrote:An interesting thing to note about the popularity of the two series: while crappy writing, almost non-existent plot, and flashy visuals rejuvenated SW, they have done a great deal of harm to ST. I guess the prequel trilogy has brought Star Wars to a new generation. Funny, I thought that was what the Special Edition of the OT was supposed to be for.

It should be noted that had the kind of SW Prequel-quality been given to a full fledged SW TV series, the results very well could start to quickly turn into what they were for Enterprise. With Voyager, Enterprise, and two lackluster movies, ST really had no chance. The Prequels on the other hand, were only three movies. Going to see a SW movie at the theater was still a special event for most people. But if Star Wars cranks out the equivalent of a Blade TV series, it would not be surprising in the least if it were met with much different results.

AnonymousRedShirtEnsign wrote:
While popularity is certainly part of it, it is a much smaller part than push for the expectance of the SWEU by Saxtonites. After all, the ICS's written by Saxton had figures that were even higher than pro-Wars debaters had been putting forward, so if the EU - and by extension the ICS - is canon, then not even examples like the one in "Masks" can't save the Trek side and the debate is in essence over.

Well, all except for examples like TDiC, of course. :-)

Not that anything like that ever matters to the ICSers. They'll find a way to worm around it as they always have. I'am still really interested in seeing if the upcoming ICS collection book will delete the Saxton uber-wanking numbers for all the AoTC ICS ship entries as was done with the RoTS IsC

AnonymousRedShirtEnsign wrote:
An interesting thing to note about the popularity of the two series: while crappy writing, almost non-existent plot, and flashy visuals rejuvenated SW, they have done a great deal of harm to ST. I guess the prequel trilogy has brought Star Wars to a new generation. Funny, I thought that was what the Special Edition of the OT was supposed to be for.

Now that I have to disagree with. Most of the fans you're refering to were already lined up and ready to go see the PT movies. If you actually look at AoTC box office take, for instance, you'll see that, while impressive at first glance, it was not only the lowest all-time gross for an SW movie, but it is the only SW movie never to hold the #1 box office take in a year! Spiderman and LOTR: The Two Towers kicked it like a red stepchild. Not to mention, AoTC did not win anything at the Oscars. The Phantom Menance of all the movies should have been the movie to beat Titanic's box office gross record, but failed when audiances found it to be a marginal movie at best. Mostly what I see in the PT box office take is momentum; fans going because they're hoping for the lightning to strike twice again as it did for the OT. Going to each movie after another and getting somewhat disappointed. It also does not help that we are living in the DVD and home theater age, either.
-Mike

AnonymousRedShirtEnsign wrote:While popularity is certainly part of it, it is a much smaller part than push for the expectance of the SWEU by Saxtonites. After all, the ICS's written by Saxton had figures that were even higher than pro-Wars debaters had been putting forward, so if the EU - and by extension the ICS - is canon, then not even examples like the one in "Masks" can't save the Trek side and the debate is in essence over.

It's not that clear cut, because of the EU sources that directly contradict the ICS' wank.
Basically, you have the stories on one side, and the guide on the other.
I treat the stories with more importance that what guides tell or reveal, because the guides are there to explain things that were left unexplained by those stories, not contradict them. Besides, it's those stories that drive the saga, not guides.

Too many people, notably those rabid warsies, would want you to think that the ICSes weight much more than the other story books, but it's not the case. All of them use higher canon material, often by using film locations, characters, vessels, vehicles, weapons or names, so that's not even a good argument to propel the ICS to a higher canon level above those EU stories.

Even more when those same warsies often forgot that when they were quick to refer to Chee's statements, they were equally as fast to forget that he said that the ICS was on equal levels with other EU material.

An interesting thing to note about the popularity of the two series: while crappy writing, almost non-existent plot, and flashy visuals rejuvenated SW, they have done a great deal of harm to ST. I guess the prequel trilogy has brought Star Wars to a new generation. Funny, I thought that was what the Special Edition of the OT was supposed to be for.

It's probably because Star Trek never ventured into multi-episodes story arcs based on feature films. It's quite weird, considering the power of the franchise and the fact that nowadays, most deals are signed with a least one sequel or prequel planned, and it's not surprising anymore to even hear reports about three films signed at the same time, and even from time to time, shot very closely to each other.

Mr. Oragahn wrote:
It's probably because Star Trek never ventured into multi-episodes story arcs based on feature films. It's quite weird, considering the power of the franchise and the fact that nowadays, most deals are signed with a least one sequel or prequel planned, and it's not surprising anymore to even hear reports about three films signed at the same time, and even from time to time, shot very closely to each other.

Actually, the ST movies did go into a multi-movie story arc with "The Wrath of Khan", "The Search for Spock", and ending with "The Voyage Home".
-Mike

Yeah, funny how I forgot that. Probably because it doesn't feel like a real series of episodes the way they're done these days.
But you're right. However, those films are quite old, and besides Khan, I prefer the first MP and First Contact, which are just plain independant stories.

Well, above all, I guess the ST would stand up rather finely if the latest films had been better.

But Trek has never really been about space opera in the way Wars creates epic stories that feel like greek plays.

Ahh my first post here, I was a regular back on spacebattles.

The entire Trek/Wars debate has been one of my favorite subjects for the last 12 or so years. My personal perception of the quality between the two is basically, Wars has always been more popular that Trek, I think thats due to its inovation and imagination. Even after getting a bigger budget for its films, Trek never showed quite the same kinds of worlds or imagination as Wars did. Star Wars of course was rooted in mythology and various storytelling generas, but Trek also relied on similar themes but presented them in a very different way (sci-fi vs fantasy).

I recall someone some time ago stating that the quality of the Star Trek movies can't come close to equaling the quality of the Star Wars movies (first 3), thats not entirely true. Trek has existed as a TV show as well as in the movies, all the quality episodes and movies can easily equal the quality (and in some cases surpass) in Star Wars. Trek began to go down hill with Deep Space 9, although I really liked DS9 simply because they tried to do something different in Star trek. I initially did not care for it durring the first couple of seasons but the inovative ideas with the introduction of the Dominion in my opinion at least tried to do something new with an old franchise. And of course came Voyager. Voyager had its moments but they were few and far in between, at this time other shows were experimenting with sweeping storyarcs that can take up an entire season if not several seasons of a TV show. Star Trek stayed with its familiar episodic formula instead even when there was plenty of chances to do sweeping story arcs that would have made the show better (note; I consider DS9 as having done exactly this but to a very moderate degree, Voyager on the other hand while it did have some storys that were extreamly loosely conected, pretty much ignored this formula). This brings us to 'Enterprise.' Ent had a good concept, a prequal that showes how the Federation came to be, it's too bad they never made that show. I have my own problems with the continuity of Ent and I'm not going to bring all of that up here, the problem wasnt just the continuity, it was the stories themselves. Berman and Braga just love time travel stories, but that does not mean they can write good ones. the main story arc was about a temporal cold war, I'm sorry but that just sounds stupid, I thought we were supposed to be learning how Starfleet and the Federation came to be. The time travel stuff unnecessarily distracted from those stories. Berma and Braga had what I always called 'Khan envy' where they were constantly trying to create their own Khan (see all their movies), while TOS and TNG could get past whole seasons without the ship getting into titanic space battles, Ent was getting into fights every other week. Thats not so bad considering the timeframe but it could have been done better. I would have had two rival earth ships both trying for the same Starfleet contract, two ships, two crews with different ways of dealing with situations, but thats just me.

Star Wars is in a different league, more imaginative, more epic than anything ever seen in Trek. But Star wars I think is hampered by the main theme of the stories, which is right there in the tital; War, conflict. That has always been the main theme in Star Wars, where Trek could tell stories with minimal conflict or no conflict at all, Star Wars has always focused on some type of life or death struggle and as of right now, it's wearing a little thin for me. Any new story that comes out (EU) invariably focuses on some new (sort of) conflict, that galaxy has never been at peace; separatists threaten the Republic, Empire takes over and fights the Rebellion, rebels become new republic and continue to fight the Imperial remnants, Yuzhan Vong attack and spread more conflict. I feel so sorry for Luke, Leia and Han, they cant find a moments peace.

That is partly why I like good Trek/Wars stories, they open both franchises to new ideas you probably would never get from either alone. I would be classified as a Trekkie who likes Star Wars and that is how my bias lies, originaly I was a typical Trekker, certain that Trek could easily defeat Wars. I owe my change of mind to Wayne Poe and his site, I dont agree with any of his conclusions but his arguments allowed me to see more nuance than I originaly was familiar with. I dont buy the idea that a single ISD could take out a fleet of Federation Starships, but I no longer believe that a single starship could easily handle an ISD. The debate over the ICS is interesting because there is not one single scene in any of the movies that even hints at that level of firepower, the only time I've ever seen the results of a planetary bombardment was in the comics and they were never that impressive. As things currently stand the Warsies think that they have won the debate simply by pulling out the ICS and ignoring any lower numbers based off the movie FX or the EU even when it flys in the face of all evidence to the contrary, go figure. Has Star Wars won because of the perception of better quality? Not so much no, but because so much of the EU is considered a part of the official story they do have much more to work with than Trek. I dont know if Trek will ever rise again, even I view it as being well beyond popular interest now with the debacle of ENT, only the true die-hards remain. Wars still has a pretty good following even though the last three movies cant hold a candle to the first three, all I know is that I will continue to root for Star Trek because I like the ships better.

I disagree with Star Wars being more creative, especially in light of the PT.

Well I was refering to the more imaginative locals and general design of the movies, When was the last time you saw a planet like Naboo or Coruscant in Star Trek after all. And of course the aliens are more than bumpy foreheads as well (even though Treks aliens all have more history to their culture than anything from Wars).

By sheer enormity of the ST franchise, it's probably the more creative of the too. However, SW has much more "density" to its creativity, allowing for the more effective concepts like the Death Star, Star Destroyers, Jedi, the Force, etc.

Perhapse, Star Trek has better ideas about their ships and the nature of a long running TV series has allowed them to flesh out the cultures of various alien races seen in the shows. But when it comes to location shooting and surrounding your actors with a green screen (which I think takes away from the actors ability to act based on a location rather than imagining everything), I still have to give it to Star Wars.

No shuttle model for the first six weeks, no problem just make them appear out of thin air and call it a transporter. In the mood for extreme sports, well then you'll love orbital skydiving. How about a floating city, a genetically bread dictator in cryo-stasis, or a race of xenophobic dinosaur people. As for imaginative locations, I don't expect to see many of those in the Star Wars live action TV show due to a reduced budget. Though I'm pretty sure Trek does have city planets, some of them are just sort of rundown, probably more like Nar Shada than Coruscant. I'm just wondering what is so creative about Naboo, other than it is impossible for it to have formed naturally with that ocean through the center of the planet.

I was refering to the city on Naboo, has a nice old-world feel to it. The budget obviously has allowed them to depict things in SW with more artistic flair than Trek ever has, what it comes down to is that I think Naboo is a very pretty planet, as long as you dont go swimming. Trek has never really presented any of their planets as being so pleasing to look at as Wars has (mostly). Although I must admit, that many of the enhanced effects in TOS recently is making me change my mind a bit. In that vein, Trek has presented the beauty of the universe more than Wars ever has. The only nebula ever seen in any Star wars movie was a thin wispy little thing off in the distance as Obi-Wan arrived on Bail Organas ship in ROTS.