Star Trek Wars

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*cough*

Star Trek all day, every day, and I don't fuck with Trek beyond TNG.

At its best, Star Wars was good space opera/westerm with hints of great world-building/backstory. The problem is, the more the world was built or the backstory was told, the worse it became. Also, Star Wars has endlessly recycled the 1-2 plots from the first two movies. It is insane to me that by ROTJ they were already re-using the Death Star. Just a profound lack of imagination or confidence in what made the movies memorable.

I guess in the same way one could criticize Star Trek for re-using the "godlike being takes control of the Enterprise" plot which forms the basis for 25% of episodes, but they get so much more out of that template or at least the template tries to say more. There is something elemental and human about Star Trek. Like they are morality plays pulling from the tradition of Greek tragedy/Shakespeare. I mean so many classic TOS episodes. Star Wars has what 2 good movies at this point?

Star Trek by a million light years.

This is like choosing between a really good salad and a really good slice of pie. The argument is in favor of the salad on almost every rational level but...it's fuckin' pie, man.

ah yes, the simple simon argument

So weird, I've enjoyed hundreds of hours of Trek and really only highly rate like two Wars (the recent ones are fine but completely ephemeral imo) but this is still somehow a toughie. The worldbuilding and visual imagination of the latter can't be underestimated.

for a long time this would have been star wars in a walk but as i get older i’ve really come to appreciate trek’s endearingly earnest effort to present a humanist vision of a post-war, post-race, post-capitalist future

that’s why i’m posting this while dressed head-to-toe in commander worf cosplay

Anybody who votes Star Wars should be FPed for life

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Trek by a parsec

I’m with old lunch in that this isn’t easy, but if I imagine a scenario in which one channel is marathoning all the Trek movies and another channel is marathoning Wars, I’m putting on the Trek channel and leaving it there. Wars has a few incredible high points surrounded by seas of dudness. Trek is good clean fun for hours. Remember when Spock asked the punk rocker to turn his music down?!?

people think star trek v is a bad movie but it is roughly 1000x more fun than a bad star wars movie

An iteration of Trek production designed by the old school Lucasfilm crew would pretty much be perfection.

trek obviously, but they're different genres and mediums so not really a fair comparison

I suggest ST has never managed to communicate and thrill visually the way SW has and this explains my vote almost entirely.

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Star Trek. I only like the first two 'Wars movies and the first half of the third. With Trek I like all of TOS, one episode of TAS, most of TNG and DS9, I, II, IV, VI, VIII, 2009, Beyond, and the second half of the first season of DIS.

I regret not including Spaceballs in the Jill Stein slot.

i would've voted for spaceballs

Star Wars is pure escapism with high production values and a thin smattering of ideas. Star Trek has a very uneven history in terms of quality, but it covers a much larger swath of interesting ideas and characters, because, counting the many television series along with all the movies, there is so much more of it to consider.

I kinda wish Star Trek had its own answer to Clone Wars, i.e. an updated, stylized animated anthology series with 120+ episodes

could do Spaceballs versus Galaxy Quest next

xp Hell yeah

Dino Riders

Only area that Wars has an edge on is the games, right?

Anyway, Trek in a walk for me.

Novels probably go to Star Wars as well.

how about fanfic...?

p sure trek wins that in a landslide

Spock/Kirk slash is definitely hotter than Anakin/Mace Windu

I read the Thrawn trilogy/related novels and some Next Generation novels in junior high and even then the Next Gen novels seemed more like cheesy cash grabs.

K/S is a (the?) prototype for slash, so yes, Trek absolutely wins on that front

I keep saying variations of the same thing, I know, but: SW wins for style, ST wins for substance. Now I just need to assess how substantive I am before I vote.

Novels probably go to Star Wars as well.

Lol, anyone who reads a Star Wars or Star Trek novel gets what they deserve.

Though I read a thousand trashy early Heinlein novels when I was a kid so . . . .

"people think star trek v is a bad movie but it is roughly 1000x more fun than a bad star wars movie"

Now THAT is some old school ILX challops.

Trek peaked in the '90s, Wars was non-existent in the '90s and had its nadir in the '00s. This seems crucial to the aesthetic, visually and otherwise (I'll never not think of Jess & Ethan comparing the interior of the TNG Enterprise to a Saab).

That whole discussion is all time classic material

I have a lot of time for Trek novels! The best ones - YMMV at "best" - are some of my favourite ever comfort reads.

Anyway, my answer is Trek. I love Star Trek to my core and will excuse any old horseshit if it's got the Trek brand on it (apart from Voyager and Enterprise)

Who vs. Trek would be a much tougher choice.

Star Trek is a much better platform for stories. Half the writers on TOS seem to be alumni from Twilight Zone and Outer Limits, and essentially the familiar characters of Kirk/Spock/Bones eased us into the same sort of moral fables. Later series got a bit tied down ("what is human?" in TNG, "ethics of imperialism and resistance" in DS9), but the good parts hold up. I don't care to think about later Trek, which lost me as it became less inquiry/fable and more spectacle.

The Star Wars feature film franchise only has one good story, repeated ad nauseam, and attempts to deviate have been failures of one degree or another. There not much room for nuance in the themes "sociopathy can be taught", "fascists gotta fascist", and "taxpaying provincials don't ask enough questions". Can't comment on material that didn't feature the dysfunctional Skywalker family.

could do Spaceballs versus Galaxy Quest next

yes except I’ll be infuriated if spaceballs wins

John M. Ford’s two Trek novels are dope

There is zero chance Spaceballs would win that showdown

There is zero chance Spaceballs would win that showdown against almost any other movie I can think of offhand

"people think star trek v is a bad movie but it is roughly 1000x more fun than a bad star wars movie"

Now THAT is some old school ILX challops.

― Pete Swine Cave (Eliza D.), Saturday, December 21, 2019 9:15 PM (yesterday)

shatner screaming "WHAT DOES GOD NEED WITH A STARSHIP??" alone is better than anything in any of the star wars prequels

go climb a rock

Go fight a Gorn!

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Not surprising

Star Wars did better than I expected tbh

Are “Trekkies” even still a thing? It def seemed like a real culturally resonant thing in the 80s and 90s wrt the Shatner SNL sketch, the Trekkies documentary, the conventions before everything had conventions,the 3D chess thing sold in mags, people learning Klingon, Galaxy Quest spoofery, etc. Now it all seems really quaint and forgotten in the age of ppl committing suicide so they can live in Pandora or bust loads in an Equestria waifu, and “being a Star Wars fan” ultimately being like something as omnipresent as, like, Taco Bell that somehow connects the most banal Funko normies with the most drooling psychos

Trekkies spent the 80s and 90s as loathed creepers quietly writing Lieutenant Uhuru fanfic but if there was ever a black woman in a Star War they would have to shut down the internet for a day

i def lived with ppl who would happily identify as trekkies in the ‘00s. though sometimes it feels like practically everyone i know has some sort of comfort-watching relationship with tng (same)

Have you seen what autographs and photos cost? The purpose of fan conventions was to pay the mortgages and child college tuition of the actors. I might have been willing to do that for some of the writers, but none of the actors on ST merited that level of fandom from me.