The validity of Star Wars vs Star Trek in Five Minutes

[Who is like God arbour]

Just one point you may want to consider Who is like God arbour, the Founders world was probably 95% liquid.

Says who?

That's why I said it was probably, E1701 on spacebattles once suggested that it was cloud cover. I only ment it as another possibility to explaining the scene. The original Founders world did have a land mass that Kira wandered around when they first found them. After that we always saw a wide liquid vista with a very tiny island proruding up. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't , what could it hurt to consider it?

It couldn't hurt to consider it.

But the first homeworld of the founders, the rogue planet in the Omarion Nebula has - as you say it yourself - a land mass.

Sure, we don't know how big the land mass was or how big the "lake" of founders was. But I haven't got the impression, that the whole planet, respectivly the whole surface of the planet consisted of founders. My impression was that the "lake" of founders was like a great lake - and nothing more.

The scene on the second homeworld of the founders is not able to convince me otherwise. If the "lake" of founders is as big as a great lake, one could see it from the island in the middle of the "lake" to the horizon only the lake and no other land mass. But that doesn't mean that the "lake" covers the whole surface of the planet.

You would have to give some convincing arguments before I really consider that the lake has covered the whole planet but the small island we have seen.



That we have seen only a cloud cover at the attack on the rogue planet, is a sound notion. That would mean that the observed shock waves were only shock waves in the clouds and we haven't seen what really happens on the surface of the planet.

[AFT]

First of all, Welcome to the Forum, mojo! I look forward to hear more of your refreshing point of view on the old and tired ST vs. SW debate.

Thanks all very much. What I've realized over the course of the last couple of days is that my exposure to Star Trek (which is mainly having seen about 75% of the original series and MAYBE 25% of what came after that) is woefully insufficient for me to be taking part in this debate. I'm dling the entire TNG series as I type this, and once I've finished that I'll move on to everything else (except DS9, I can't stand that show). Once I've seen.. well, everything, I'll come back and reenter the conversation here. Thanks again, guys, for bringing my interest level up this high.

Then you’re on about the same position I was a few years ago, around the end of the 2002, so you can benefit from not having preconceived ideas about ST or SW and get into the debate with some out of the box thinking and ideas.

[AFT]

(except DS9, I can't stand that show).

Don't give up on it too quickly. I know a LOT of people who thought the first couple seasons of it were incredibly boring, but later went on to REALLY like the later seasons (especially once the Dominion War started).

He’s right, the first two seasons are really boring but after that it gets quite good. I would recommend you to start with the second season finale “The Jem’Hadar” and skip the two first seasons altogether, although you might want to see also the series pilot “Emissary” if only to get a glimpse of the Wolf 359 battle.

[watchdog]

I always thought that it takes at least three years for any star trek series to really take off, then along came Voyager and destroyed that idea. I liked DS9 after season 3, I think they at least tried to do something different from what we had seen up to that point. They had some interesting twists in story and characters, I think it could have been even better if it did not have all the baggage that comes with trek (dissapointed in how quickly they wrapped up the war and the series). It's interesting to note that the shows main writer (cant remember his name) goes on to make the excelent Battlestar Galactica, and his former friend Branon Braga goes on to make Star Trek Enterprise........:p

[AFT]

I always thought that it takes at least three years for any star trek series to really take off, then along came Voyager and destroyed that idea. I liked DS9 after season 3, I think they at least tried to do something different from what we had seen up to that point. They had some interesting twists in story and characters, I think it could have been even better if it did not have all the baggage that comes with trek (dissapointed in how quickly they wrapped up the war and the series).

Personally, I think that seasons 4-5 are the best of DS9, the first two seasons were plain boring, the third one had some very good episodes and the last two seasons, well, I have very mixed-up feelings about those seasons that I don’t even know how I could ever rate them. As you said, the way they wrapped up the war was disappointing and I could never forget that the last space battle (One of the only five we get) had so many stock footage into it, I mean what the hell they were thinking? The worst part was that on previous battles they were able to include some stock footage so skillfully that is hardly noticeable, but not in that battle, they simply made a shameless copy - paste and no more. I guess they ran out of VFX budget but still…

It's interesting to note that the shows main writer (cant remember his name) goes on to make the excelent Battlestar Galactica, and his former friend Branon Braga goes on to make Star Trek Enterprise........:p

I don’t know about Battlestar Galactica, it’s certainly different and there are some good episodes but as a whole I just can’t buy the religious angle of the plot and frankly it gets more and more absurd as the story progresses, I’ll take Voyager’s technobabble everyday of the week. Also, they tried so hard to make the characters more realistic and close to the ground that they over did it, I cant believe just how messed up all of them seem to be, even before the fall of the Colonies, sure as hell humans aren’t perfect but we aren’t that bad either.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Actually, having started by DS9's first season, I think it's very interesting.
It's slow paced, sure, there's no main enemy, really, but it's seting itself interestingly, and is about a community of so various cultures.
The fact that the station has a tenuous history, it's interesting to see Kira's reactions thorough the seasons. It had some moving episodes, like the Bajoran who doesn't want to leave his house, and globally the religious stuff was good to look at.

Somehow, maybe that would tend to make this season of Trek one of the most highbrow rated. Doesn't mean I don't like my dose of battles against Kahn and whale probes! :)

[Mike DiCenso]

watchdog wrote:

The arguments that he uses in the 5 min page are one-sided; He compares the Death Star's abilities to the 25 ship bombardment from The die is cast, A totally unfair comparison.

Actually the Tal-Shiar/Obsidian Order fleet only had 20 ships, not 25.

The Death Star is way more powerful than even 30 ISD’s after all.

Well yes, that much is obvious. But the fallacy that Wong is making is comparing a one or two off ship (battlestation) to common military assets (D'Deridex warbirds and Keldon class cruisers). More direct comparison would be the two Death Stars to Dr. Solian Toran's trilithium nova-inducing torpedoes.

On another note, after the first weapons bombardment and the shock waves that accompany it, the planet is not seen for the rest of the episode, also of note is the long forgotten fact that the Founders world was mostly liquid as I mentioned above.

That's not quite true: after the bombardment, when it is discovered the lifeform readings are false and there is a fleet of 150 Jem'Hadar attacks ships closing in on the fleet , Tain asks for a tactical display: right before the display comes up, we see again the planet with the explosions and shockwaves still erupting across the surface. This would tend to suggest that holes had indeed been punched through the planet's crust, and material was being ejected out in the shockwaves.

He compares Jango Fetts weapons to the Enterprise to prove that Fett desroyed larger asteroids than the Enterprise could. What movie is he watching, there is no way that shockwave destroyed objects beyond 1 km.
Notice how he ignores the many instances throughout Trek where they destroyed asteroids of various sizes with just one shot (take a look at ST the motion picture for one) in order to focus on one single incident that makes them appear weak (coincidentally the Romulans in this same episode effortlessly melted closed the entrance to said asteroid, the Enterprise being INSIDE the asteroid at the time. Riker was thinking about destroying not just the asteroid, but the ship inside as well).

Woa, woa.... Careful here, it's getting hard to follow you when you go off on a disorganized train-of-thought kind of ramble like this. Please take the time to write everything out in a more orderly manner. It's difficult to understand what you are trying to get across here.

Now then...

Why is it not possible for Slave-I's mines to not have an effective range beyond 1 km?

What scaling shows that asteroids destroyed by the seismic mines are smaller in volume than any potential asteroid the E-D can destroy with a single one of it's photon torpedoes?

I'am not sure I understand you completely, but are you stating that Riker suggests destroying the Pegasus asteroid along with the Pegasus herself while the E-D is trapped inside the large asteroid? If so, that would be incorrect as Riker suggests it before Admiral Pressman orders the ship to enter the asteroid, and the Romulan warbird seals up the fissure by melting the entrance closed with it's disruptors.
-Mike

[watchdog]

Well yes, that much is obvious. But the fallacy that Wong is making is comparing a one or two off ship (battlestation) to common military assets (D'Deridex warbirds and Keldon class cruisers). More direct comparison would be the two Death Stars to Dr. Solian Toran's trilithium nova-inducing torpedoes.

Well what MW is trying to do is compare firepower between the Federation and the Empire, What he really should compare the Death Stars with is Species 8479's planet busting ability. Him and others use the Death Star's as a trump card and its a very good trump card, but it would make more sense to compare the ships of the line firepower rather than exotic super weapons to ships, what good is that (can't recall but I think they infered on TNG once that the Romulan Warbird was actually a bit more powerful than the Enterprise-D).

That's not quite true: after the bombardment, when it is discovered the lifeform readings are false and there is a fleet of 150 Jem'Hadar attacks ships closing in on the fleet , Tain asks for a tactical display: right before the display comes up, we see again the planet with the explosions and shockwaves still erupting across the surface. This would tend to suggest that holes had indeed been punched through the planet's crust, and material was being ejected out in the shockwaves.

Hmm, well I havent seen the episode in a very long time, I always thought that the planet bombardment was seen once and not again for the rest of the episode, but hey I even think the planet is probably all liquid.

Woa, woa.... Careful here, it's getting hard to follow you when you go off on a disorganized train-of-thought kind of ramble like this. Please take the time to write everything out in a more orderly manner. It's difficult to understand what you are trying to get across here.

Pardon me please, almost this entire paragraph comes from a personal rant that I wrote out for myself, pointing out all of my own personal positions on this old debate. I tried to clean it up because my original wording was much more beligerant and I dont like to post blatant flame-bait but I suppose my rant was a bit all over the place at times.

Why is it not possible for Slave-I's mines to not have an effective range beyond 1 km?

I never said that they didn't, I was mearly pointing out that the blasts seen on film were not 5 km.

What scaling shows that asteroids destroyed by the seismic mines are smaller in volume than any potential asteroid the E-D can destroy with a single one of it's photon torpedoes?

I never do scaling, I dont know how others manage to pull that off. I base it off of visual cues, the size of Obi Wans fighter next to those big rocks that were shattered. None of those rocks were nearly that big, the only one that was over a km was the one they flew into and they never used the siesmic charges around it.

I'am not sure I understand you completely, but are you stating that Riker suggests destroying the Pegasus asteroid along with the Pegasus herself while the E-D is trapped inside the large asteroid? If so, that would be incorrect as Riker suggests it before Admiral Pressman orders the ship to enter the asteroid, and the Romulan warbird seals up the fissure by melting the entrance closed with it's disruptors.
-Mike

Well as I stated above, this was from a personal rant that I did and I simply refered back to the incident that occured before the incident that I brought up. I was refering to Rikers claim that they would need most of their torpedos to destroy the whole thing pointing out that they were looking to destroy the asteroid and the ship inside the asteroid as well. It depends on what they wanted to do, I'm assuming they would want to reduce the entire thing down as much as possible shy of vaporising the whole thing.

[Mike DiCenso]

Well yes, that much is obvious. But the fallacy that Wong is making is comparing a one or two off ship (battlestation) to common military assets (D'Deridex warbirds and Keldon class cruisers). More direct comparison would be the two Death Stars to Dr. Solian Toran's trilithium nova-inducing torpedoes.

watchdog wrote:

Well what MW is trying to do is compare firepower between the Federation and the Empire, What he really should compare the Death Stars with is Species 8479's planet busting ability. Him and others use the Death Star's as a trump card and its a very good trump card, but it would make more sense to compare the ships of the line firepower rather than exotic super weapons to ships, what good is that (can't recall but I think they infered on TNG once that the Romulan Warbird was actually a bit more powerful than the Enterprise-D).

In essence, that's what I'd already said. He's comparing two rare battlestation/superweapons to common ships-of-the-line, and then infering that the Empire is more powerful, rather than a comparision of the ISD to the D'Deridex warbirds. When you chose the former, the Empire is not so bad.

Species 8472's bioships are another matter altogether. They're a unique superweapon using the combined firepower of 9 relatively small ships to blow up a planet. However that's not the point of the page he wrote, which is to show that the Empire would solidly lay the smackdown on the United Federation of Planets.

That's not quite true: after the bombardment, when it is discovered the lifeform readings are false and there is a fleet of 150 Jem'Hadar attacks ships closing in on the fleet , Tain asks for a tactical display: right before the display comes up, we see again the planet with the explosions and shockwaves still erupting across the surface. This would tend to suggest that holes had indeed been punched through the planet's crust, and material was being ejected out in the shockwaves.

Hmm, well I havent seen the episode in a very long time, I always thought that the planet bombardment was seen once and not again for the rest of the episode, but hey I even think the planet is probably all liquid.

But that's the way it's shown. There is almost a minute's passing before we see the devastated planet again, and the explosions (eruptions?) do not seem to have abated in the least bit, which in turn suggests that the phaser and torpedo strikes have done something to the planet's crust.

Why is it not possible for Slave-I's mines to not have an effective range beyond 1 km?

I never said that they didn't, I was mearly pointing out that the blasts seen on film were not 5 km.

Okay, but it's still good to know how you reasoned that out. Otherwise you become like certain pro-Wars militants who just pull convienent numbers from out of nowhere.

What scaling shows that asteroids destroyed by the seismic mines are smaller in volume than any potential asteroid the E-D can destroy with a single one of it's photon torpedoes?

I never do scaling, I dont know how others manage to pull that off. I base it off of visual cues, the size of Obi Wans fighter next to those big rocks that were shattered. None of those rocks were nearly that big, the only one that was over a km was the one they flew into and they never used the siesmic charges around it.

It's not hard, really. You have already demonstrated the basic ideas behind it: use a fairly well understood object's size as it passes close to the item you want to scale as a point of comparison to determine it's approximate dimensions.

I'am not sure I understand you completely, but are you stating that Riker suggests destroying the Pegasus asteroid along with the Pegasus herself while the E-D is trapped inside the large asteroid? If so, that would be incorrect as Riker suggests it before Admiral Pressman orders the ship to enter the asteroid, and the Romulan warbird seals up the fissure by melting the entrance closed with it's disruptors.
-Mike

Well as I stated above, this was from a personal rant that I did and I simply refered back to the incident that occured before the incident that I brought up. I was refering to Rikers claim that they would need most of their torpedos to destroy the whole thing pointing out that they were looking to destroy the asteroid and the ship inside the asteroid as well. It depends on what they wanted to do, I'm assuming they would want to reduce the entire thing down as much as possible shy of vaporising the whole thing.

I would agree that Riker wanted to see the Pegasus utterly destroyed so that not only would the Romulans not get their hands on it, but more importantly Admiral Pressman could not get his hands on the experimental cloaking device the ship was carrying as well, and restart his illegal experiments again. In that context it only makes sense that at the very least the asteroid must be fragmented down to tiny pieces, and at the extreme upper end completely vaporized in order to absolutely guarantee that nothing of the Pegasus would be left for anyone to get ahold of.
-Mike

[watchdog]

Basically I think that we are in pretty close agreement on this. Like I said I havent seen TDiC in a long while, I'm planning on finding a bit-torrent of some of my favorite episodes and I guess I'll add that to the list. As for the scaling...UGH...Math! I have a lot of trouble with math, but I can recognize sizes pretty well, and I dont see that scene as affecting five kilometers at all considering how small that Jedi fighter was and the shot of the blast close behind. I dont think any more than one kilometer was affected and the rocks (I dont think they are true asteroids being part of a planetary ring) all easily fit into that area. I suppose he could have meant that all the rocks affected put togeather equaled out to five km but I highly doubt that.

[Mike DiCenso]

But the math is really rather simple once you have your point of reference and a suitable, common-reference measuring stick (milimeters, pixels, fractions of an inch, ect) to work with. A hypothetical example using pixels:

1.) Asteroid of 60 pixels is closely flown by a 10 pixels long X-wing starfighter.

2.) Simply take 60 pixels of the asteroid's long axis and divide that by 10 pixels of the starfighter's length for an approximate scaling of the asteroid.

3.) Thus 60 divided by 10 = 6 for a ratio of 6 to 1.

4.) Most fans commonly would accept that an X-wing is no longer than 12 meters based on published offical material as well as examination of humans seen walking around and sitting inside the cockpit.

5.) So in turn we have 6 x 12 = 72 meters.

Simple enough? :-)
-Mike

[watchdog]

For you maybe, I'm dyslexic when it comes to numbers. How exactly do you count pixels?

[AFT]

My opinion of the "five minutes" page is that it is a reasonably well constructed sales pitch. That, I am afraid, is all it is.

If we take a closer look into the main website we’ll find out that this pretty much applies to all of it, IMHO. Sadly the general feeling of the site remains me of a recruitment program or something like that and the picture of Darth Vader with the slogan “The Emperor Wants YOU! For the Galactic Empire!” doesn’t help things out. Of course, that’s only my subjective impression of the site.

To make things worse the site doesn’t analyze the available evidence at all except the one that suits the main purpose of the site ignoring everything else. When someone makes an argument by cherry picking the available evidence automatically losses a lot of credibility in my eyes no matter how flawless his math is but everybody is saying pretty much the same thing mojo, in short he uses a double standard to achieve his goal of making SW look “superior”. Our friends here are kind of subtle to simply say it but I’m more of the straight forward type. But don’t take my word for it, go ahead and look into the site yourself. After you’re done come back and we’ll talk about it.

[mojo]

As unpopular as it is, I'm afraid I would still take the ICS book at it's word and consider it worthwhile simply because Lucas must've at least signed off on it for it to exist in the first place. I know it gives irrationally high numbers and whatnot, but unless Lucas himself comes out and says 'no, that's not right' I'd accept it as evidence. I freely admit, however, that even now that I'm really enjoying Star Trek: TNG I still maintain a pretty strong pro-Wars bias because I just enjoy it more.

[Mike DiCenso]

For you maybe, I'm dyslexic when it comes to numbers. How exactly do you count pixels?

One at a time? :-)

But seriously, just put the image into Adobe Photoshop, then look for the measurement tool bar. Set the tool to pixels (the smaller the increment of measurement, the better), then drag it across the width (or length) of the object and you will have the approximate pixel count. Alternatively, you can enlarge the image, and count each individual pixel by hand.
-Mike