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