Star Wars vs. Star Trek : Part 7 of 7

Fans get mad when people confuse Star Wars and Star Trek. They get mad because outsiders don’t understand the fundamental differences between the two shows. In the past several week I have made these differences clear.

Star Wars is an action / adventure based on old war movies and pirate films. It is full of strange aliens, mythical planets, and you can enjoy it without having to philosophize.

Star Trek is about exploration, science and ethics. It has a multi-ethnic cast and gives hope for the future of humanity. Star Trek is science fiction at its purist, it predicts the future.

Both shows are great at what they do and comparing them is pointless… except when it isn’t.

Today J.J. Abrams gave us a little tease of the new X-Wing model from Episode VII set (Which seems to be based on an old Ralph McQuarrie X-wing design from the mid-seventies). In the wake of this I would like to present my final battle between the franchises: Spaceships.

This is a good finale because both franchises have some cool spaceships. It’s a enough fair fight. Let’s examine Star Wars first.

In the first film alone you have such iconic ships as The Millennium Falcon, the Star Destroyer, the X-wing, the Y-wing, the Tie Fighter, and the Death Star. Even people who haven’t seen the films probably could recognize these ships as being from Star Wars.

Admittedly, the shapes of the ships are pretty basic. The X-wing and Y-wings are just what they say. The Tie-Fighter is pretty much an H. The Star Destroyer is a triangle and the Death Star is a sphere. People say Lucas designed the Falcon by attaching a olive and toothpick onto a half-eaten hamburger. It may be these basic designs that make these ships so recognizable and iconic.

Beyond the first film Star Wars gives us Slave I, the Snow Speeder, the Cloud Car, the A-wing, the B-wing, Jabba’s Sail Barge, and many more awesome designs.

So can Star Trek compete with this wide-range of vessels? The Enterprise is certainly iconic. It’s so iconic that they reused the exact same design when they re-launched the show in 1987. And again in 2001. And in all twelve movies. Enterprise is so iconic that most other Starfleet ships, including Voyager, look very much like Enterprise.

Beyond the enterprise Star Trek gives us the Klingon Bird of Prey (Which is not a metaphor, the ship literally has feathers) and the Borg Cube (Though the Borg Cube seems to be pretty much a rip-off of the Death Star)

I said that this was going to be a fair fight and I think it was. Both franchises have had decades to provide audiences with really, really cool ship designs. Yet even though the fight is fair, I don’t think it's that close. Star Trek tends to use the same design over and over again and kind of squanders opportunities. Star Trek doesn’t take any risks and therefore loses this battle.

It doesn’t matter much that Star Trek loses this battle, or the war overall. This is a Star Wars blog, so the contest was rigged from the start. But it was nice to compare these franchises and really understand what makes them unique. And perhaps you now have some ammunition to use when debating your Star Trek friends.

Next time I want to spend some more time looking at that new X-Wing design and talking about Ralph McQuarrie in general. See you then!

Final Score:
Round 1 -Aliens & Robots (Star Wars)

Round 2 -Human Characters (Star Trek)

Round 3 -Action (Star Wars)

Round 4 -Science (Star Trek)

Round 5 –Planets (Star Wars)

Round 6 – Cultures and Languages (Star Trek)

Round 7 – Spaceships (Star Wars)

Overall Score:

Star Wars = 4

Star Trek = 3

Star Wars vs. Star Trek Part 6 : Cultures and Languages

It is almost essential for epic Sci-Fi stories to have races of aliens. It is equally essential that these alien cultures have a well-developed culture or their existence seems frivolous and flat or even fake. But which franchise does it better? Trek or Wars?

Developing cultures of alien species is something Star Trek excels at. The most well known are the Vulcans, who seek to live by reason and logic alone with no emotional interference. There are the Klingons, a gruff warrior race. The Ferengi who obsess over trade and profit.  The Borg function as a hive-mind and seek to assimilate others to their ranks.

Each of these Star Trek species are unique. They hail from different planet and have unique languages. They have specific abilities, rituals and symbols. They are well-developed, even down to their mating habits, and many having existed in the Star Trek universe for almost 50 years.

The culture which has gone through the most developing and changing is undoubtedly the Klingons. The species originated in the 60s. They were portrayed by white actors who covered their faces in bronze shoe-polish. Some people thought they represented a prejudice view of the Japanese culture in a time when World War II was still fresh in the minds of Americans.

It wasn’t until 1979 that Klingons got face-ridges, sharp-teeth, and their very own language. The language was developed by Marc Okrand, an American linguist who wanted to make it unique. It purposely betrays many common traits of spoken languages on Earth including the fact that it has no “ah” sound. The devotion Trekkies have to the Klingon language is actually pretty phenomenal. There is an opera entirely in Klingon called “Klingon Christmas Carol”, Shakespeare has been translated to Klingon, even parts of the bible have been translated to Klingon. There are a few dozen fluent speakers worldwide.

One could try and make a case that the Star Wars alien cultures and languages are also fairly fleshed out. The Hutts, for example have their own language, Huttese. Like the Ewok language it was based on a real dying tribal language. But its hard to take a language seriously when one of the curse words is “Poodoo”.

The sad truth is that the Star Wars cultures are not developed as well as the Star Trek ones. You don’t learn much about wookiees by looking at Chewbacca. He is loyal and often angry and wears a bandoleer full of ammunition pouches. Yet beyond the fact that it is unwise to upset a Wookiee, we don’t know much about them. It’s not that we need to have Chewbacca flashbacks that show his native land and people, we just need some kind of items, clothing, or props that gives the audience some clues to who he is, where he comes from.

WETA Workshop

Let’s be honest, Lucasfilm is no WETA. When watching Lord of the Rings you subconsciously pick up hundreds of traits from the Hobbits, Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs in every single frame. There are some Star Wars species that get this kind of focus but unfortunately they are Ewoks and Gungans.

Many Star Wars races are just too simplistic. The Hutts are evil crime lords. The Nemodians are evil merchants that speak in Chinese accents. The Tusken Raiders are wandering violent desert folk and are probably an allegory for Arabs. The Ewoks are simple forest-beings with little understanding of technology. The Gungans are weird fish things that appeal to 4-year-olds. Can we really compare any of these cultures to Star Trek or Lord of the Rings or the Wizard World of Harry Potter. There is little complexity in Star Wars cultures because many are designed with preschoolers in mind.

This is another example of why Star Trek fans and Star Wars fans clash. Star Trek fans love learning about the facts and nuances of the cultures in their universe, where Star Wars fans just want to see things blow-up. I have to admit that this is something that Star Wars can work on. After all, wouldn’t it be amazing to actually see the art and architecture of Alderaan before watching it explode? Wouldn’t this have raised the stakes and made the loss of the planet more tragic? Perhaps this was the reason I actually felt terrified when Vulcan was destroyed, but continue to feel nothing for Alderaan. Certainly this is something that J.J. can work on in Episode VII.

Klingon Opera

Today's winner is STAR TREK. Here is the score sheet so far.

Score so far:

Round 1 -Aliens & Robots (Star Wars)

Round 2 -Human Characters (Star Trek)

Round 3 -Action (Star Wars)

Round 4 -Science (Star Trek)

Round 5 –Planets (Star Wars)
Round 6 – Cultures and Languages (Star Trek)

Overall Score:

Star Wars = 3

Star Trek = 3

Star Wars vs. Star Trek: Part 5

Planets

If you give a five-year-old child a box of crayons and tell that child to draw an alien planet, they will probably draw something way cooler than any planet that you’d ever seen in a science fiction film or TV show. An alien planet can have purple trees shaped like corkscrews. It can have orange oceans of liquid methane and strange creatures that crawl across weird exotic landscapes.

The sad thing about science fiction films is that there are still limitations, even in the 21^st century. Computer Imaging can be expensive and it can only go so far.  For a TV show, even on a large budget, you’ll never get a great alien world (Though Doctor Who comes close at times).

Dagobah being built

Forty years ago, Lucas could build a planet two ways. He could shoot on location or build one in a studio. Planets such as Tatooine, Hoth, and Endor were shot on location. Dagobah and Bespin were built in studios.

Even though planets such as Tatooine are shot on Earth, it certainly doesn’t feel like Earth. Skeletons of giant dragons are sprawled over the blowing sands. There are twin suns in the sky. Jawas and Tusken Raiders feel very real, and it’s hard to imagine the humans beneath the costumes. Even harder to imagine are the elephants beneath the Bantha costumes. 

Lucas and his team have the nuisances nailed down. Children and adults don’t look at Tatooine and think “Hey, that’s just some place on Earth,”. Movie magic takes over and the viewer is convinced that Tatooine really is somewhere out there in a galaxy far, far, away.

Vulcan

Star Trek also has alien planets, a lot of them. Go ahead, name them. There’s Vulcan for one. That’s the planet Spock’s from. It has volcanoes because what else do you expect from a planet called Vulcan? The people who live there are called Vulcans. What else do we know about Vulcan? Are there any other species living on Vulcan other than Vulcans? You'd think there would be, because of evolution and stuff.

Qo'noS

Beyond Vulcan what planets can you name? What can you tell me about said planets? What about the Klingon homeworld? What’s that one called? Originally it was called Klinzhai, but according to Next Generation its called Kling. Yet in Star Trek 6 they call it Kronos, which later became Qo'noS. But what does Kronos look like? Are there any other creatures there other than Klingons?

This is the difference between Star Wars and Star Trek. Words like Tatooine, Hoth, Endor, and Dagobah can be immediately recognized by many people- fans, casual viewers or people who have never seen Star Wars. These planets have entered our culture and lexicon. They have "street cred".  When someone says Hoth you can imagine an icy world inhabited by Wampas and Tauntauns. When someone says Dagobah you can imagine mynock flying through the sky, monsters swimming in swamps, Yoda’s hut with smoke billowing out. 

When someone says Ferenginar the homeworld of the Ferengi what do you imagine? According to the Star Trek memory alpha it’s an M class planet and that its star has a magnitude of +5, which was the same brightness as Sol. That’s the kind of crap Star Trek fans care about. Facts and figures and classifications. 

When a five-year-old child imagines an alien world they don’t care what class star it orbits or if the beings there are warp-capable. They just want to see cool landscapes with some monsters and aliens and stuff. Lucas does a good job of entertaining the five-year-old in all of us. Star Trek does a good job entertaining the organic-chemistry students inside of us, but the problem is that not all of us took o-chem and even if we did, some us did not find any joy in it.

Todays winner is STAR WARS. Here is the score sheet so far.

Score so far:

Round 1 -Aliens & Robots (Star Wars)

Round 2 -Human Characters (Star Trek)

Round 3 -Action (Star Wars)

Round 4 -Science (Star Trek)

Round 5 –Planets (Star Wars)

Overall Score:

Star Wars = 3

Star Trek = 2