Star Trek vs. Star Wars

Actually, it didn't work at lightyears distance. It was limited to normal transporter ranges. The advantage was being able to transport through shields. However, it did seem to be lethal to lifeforms and we aren't told what effect it could have upon solid objects, though they do seem to be much more resiliant, long term transporter effects could be dangerous.

 

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Also easily explainable.

They're all morons.

Honestly, Voyager's crew has shown far too many times (save for Seven, the EMH, and occasionally Tuvok) that they're all incredibly gulliable and absent minded. Honestly, something that even Dianna knew (ie, changing the passcodes of a starfleet officer who has been comprimised) wasn't even thouoght of when Seska betrayed them and used her codes months later to fuck them over.

 

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That's a load of garbage really.

There isn't any indication of high energy planetary shields. At most we see theater shields. Theoretically, one could use a series of them to protect a planet, but why?

No seriously, why have them? The only people who should have that sort of technology is the military and in a dicatatorship, only the military will have that kind of access. This whole planetary shield bullshit doesn't even make any sense. Palpatine was in total control before planets started to openly rebel. How would they mantain planetary control?

Also, the Death Star isn't a brute force weapon or at least according to the EU. Most of the mass is shunted into hyperspace. So as weapon to take out shields, it's rather nonesensical. Not to mention that why go to the trouble of building one massive Death Star when you could build smaller, more numerous ships with heavey firepower capable of just blasting down the shield? It would be large by ISD comparisons, but it would still be small enough to allow the shields to be taken down in minutes or seconds.

The DS was a weapon of terror. Its whole purpose was over the top destruction just to scare the piss out of everyone.

 

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This is not true, Wars planets have shielding. The thing is strange... Every system has a different government and these governments in turn are all under imperial authority at different levels.

 

As I said, it's in the various books.

Uh...maybe to keep some asshole from toasting your planet with warships???

There are numerous pieces of dialog in A New Hope indicating that Palpatine still has to answer to the Senate. He doesn't actually disband the senate and take total control until fairly far into New Hope.

And indeed they seem to do exactly that later on, with their Eclipse class SSDs.

 

I thought the Ferangi used it to transport a probe several lightyears? Maybe I'm not remembering it right.

Certainly not a good idea for every-day use, but the viewer is left wondering why they don't use it in emergencies. Or use it to just beam warheads onto enemy ships. Or, any time they're having a tense standoff with an enemy ship, simply beam the enemy captain over to the Enterprise so that Worf can punch him for a while.

Edit: Memory Alpha agrees...
http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Subspace_transporter

 

Hmm, that would seem to be correct.

Again, it's unreliable and energy intensive. Not to mention that we the UFP isn't warlike; they don't use transporters as weapons.

 

Which is certainly a good reason not to use it in routine situations. But one would think it would still be incredibly useful for emergencies. I'm guessing that if you reviewed the later episodes you would find roughly a billion situations where it could have easily saved the day, had everyone not inexplicably forgotten about it.

Maybe not as "weapons," but it seems like beaming the enemy captain over to your ship would improve your negotiation position pretty nicely. And we're also left wondering why no one else (klingons, romulans, cardasians, etc) takes advantage of it. According to the episode it's impossible to stop a beam-over. At best, you can figure out were the object/person was transported to, and that's only if you know the specific frequency (or whatever the hell) the transporter is set to.

Anyway, that's just one example of a "one episode wonder" that gets used once and forgotten. Remember the time we learned that the transporter can magically create exact duplicates of whatever you're beaming? You would think that would immediately spark a HUGE research project to figure out exactly how to repeat that. Or the warp-wave generator thing that's supposedly so powerful it can destroy planets? The phasing cloak? Admittedly they tried to explain away the lack of followup on the phasing cloak as a treaty thing, but it still strains plausibility to the breaking point to suggest that they would just give up on it. Or what about the time the Enterprise computer created a sentient artificial intelligence on demand? Is that not, like, the sort of thing you follow up on?

If the federation actually kept track of all the one-episode wonders they've had, they would have nearly god-like powers; transporting lightyears instantly, magically duplicating whatever they want, pass in and out of phase to make themselves invisible and invulnerable, AI any time they need it, destroy planets, destroy stars, immortality...

 

Except militaries don't work that way. No reasonably intelligent military force would arm something incredibly dangerous, unstable, and energy intensive on their warships.

They keep it in R&D until they find a use for it or make it work.

Assuming those powers have that technology. And even assuming they do, why would they use it anymore if the UFP has abandoned it?

No.

Why?

You mean the one that the Enterprise D took out with five well placed photon torpedoes?

How? It was the only thing keeping peace between the Romulans and the Federation.

And? They've had the ability to make artificial intelligent ships for over a hundred years, thanks to what we saw in TOS.

Subspace transporters are leathal.

They can pretty much do that now.

...and? Again, it was illeagle. The UFP not violating its morals is sufficient reason.

And they can do that whenever they want. They've shown as far as we can see that they just don't want advanced AI. Probably given the incident in TOS where it went nuts and started killing hundreds of Starfleet officers.

They can do that now.

They could theoretically do that now.

...What?

 

Well the Ferengi apparently have it, and they don't exactly seem like technical geniuses.

You really don't see any reasons why people would want to beam objects on or off of ships that are shielded? From lightyears away? Really???

A transporter malfunction resulted in the creation of two Rikers.

The usefulness is so obvious that it would be silly to explain it.

It's pretty obvious that they can be used without dying, since we see three people do it in the episode. Obviously because of the side-effects it would be something that you would only want to use on people in emergencies, but they seem to have plenty of emergencies.

No, things that can't be replicated are a recurring plot point. We don't see them replicating antimatter for unlimited free power, entire shuttlecraft, etc.

 

No that does not sound familiar. They've had more than a few technology-based ways of shortening their journey, and none of them seem to fit your description.

 

Star Trek FTW of course

IMO Star Trek kept the speeds slower, and even at their slow speeds, thats still blazing fast compared to real life capabilities. Crossing the galaxy is supposed to be a really tremendous journey, giving the viewer a better feeling of its actual size being quite incomprehensibly huge. Its probably more fitting for a series to have their typical speed slow enough that writers can develop species and star system ideas that were never mentioned before. A good example of why is that if the galaxy was a hop, skip, and a jump from one end to the other, the Borg would have assimilated everything already.

The firepower of the typical Trek ships also probably kept lower because its pretty goddamned uncivilized to have the levels everyone is reporting Star Wars has. Logically, if I get a better gun, you get better shields, I get an even stronger gun, you get even stronger shields... that gets old, FAST. Rather than repeat this dumbass back and forth crap, just get your better shields, I'll find a way through the shields, or find a way to disable your shields. I greatly prefer the use of tactical strategy.

Also, quite rediculous is the level of evil - again - completely over the top. To go around blowing up planets... and did I see/hear correctly that they were hurting or killing children? This method of enforcing an extreme level of evil so the viewer would want even more for the bad guys to lose is something I've hated for ages. They use this same bullshit on Walker Texas Ranger so he looks like an even better good guy for taking down a worse bad guy. LAME.

Star Trek has some pretty evil villains at times but quite often you find yourself torn between the morality of the situation and the benefit of ignoring it. In some cases, the bad guys are only slightly immoral, and for me, I'd rather be presented with higher levels of intellectual stimulation than higher levels of good vs. evil.

And sorry, but as I may consider Star Wars inventive, I also consider it over the top stupid too. Like Anakin in a pod racer traveling nearly 1, 000 KPH. Dude, a child? And the teddy bears and Jar-jar ? This stuff is obviously incorporated into the movies to appeal to kids, and that's a sell-out move that lost a great amount of respect from me. Even if there's tech specs for everything in those movies, the child-level intellect stuff just disgusted me.

 

I just want to point out somethings here for you on UNSC and Covenant.

1. Both UNSC AND Covenant use fusion. Go to SD.Net and calc the PoA when it went off... since when did normal fusion reactors reach 60-200 Teratons?
And the PoA would just run over nearly any Fed starship. And at that, Cortana in The Fall of Reach is stated to have thrown the PoA around like a sporting yacht.

2. The Covenant are not really stupid with their tech, its just there are factors against them using it to its fullpower.
The Covenant get nearly all of their tech from the Forerunner, which they can't use as will as humans since human=Forerunner. Also, the Prophets seem to keep higher end stuff out of the hands of the other Covenant races such as what we see with Regret-the only time we see a Slipspace transporter system used by any Covenant is when he uses it in the temple on Delta Halo.

 

No it's canon

Considering you NEVER see SW ships shields but they are there.....

Why have them? Can we say 'avoid invasion'? Nuetralize the treat of falling debris? Strictly regulate trade? I'm half asleep and came up with three great answers. Remeber in Episode IV it was feared without the Senate that planets would openly rebel becuase of the loss of bureacracy.

Actually from EU the DS is a Brute force weapon. The Superlaser provides more than enough energy to break the gravitational binding energy of a large planet. It does this by also overcoming shields that are known for vaporizing moons that fall out of orbit.

The DS was a massive symbol of Imperial might. It was supposed to be a indestructable weapon of mass destruction. Both a protector and a punisher. Play nice and the DS keeps you safe from the Rebel scum, Pirates, Mercenaries, and assorted badguys. Don't play nice and you are an asteroid belt. The Ultimate in coercion.

It is of note that Palaptine also had the Torpedo Sphere designed as well. A Siege weapon designed to take down Planetary shields by slightly overloading them with a Simultaneous strike of precision placed Heavy Proton Torpedoes then using Turbolasers to destroy the station. These were not unheard of technologies but were not as heavily armed, armored, or shielded as the Death Star. Where the DS was taken out by plot device, the only real defense a Torpedo sphere had were it's escorts. It could survive and even destroy small capital ships but larger ones like a ISD or Mon Cal 90 were way to much for this specialty vehicle.

No more so than a Nuclear and Fusion based weapons of today.

 

I would like to point out that according to much later non roddenberry trek the Borg have access to almost SW like speeds as long as they build the corridors first. They still have not assimilated everything. I think the reason is simple, before the Federation each of it's targets were actually much lower in the tech range. They each had specialities, but when it comes down to it. The Borg are a tacticall and strategically incompetent race with technology 30 years more advanced than the Federation, Klingons and Romulans. These three races are strategicall and Tactically gifted and thus make up for and actually overcome the 30 year tech difference. Since the Borg are slow at innovation in 30 years the Federation, Klingons and romulans will soon have wiped out the Borg completely.

Tactial strategy is great and wonderful as long as you are somewhat in the same league. Julius Ceasar with his Battalions would lose horrifically to a wet behind the ears US army Armor Lieutenant with his 4 M1-Tanks. Tactical and Strategic genius only gets you so far. Reason, you still need to be able to hurt the enemy and defend against the attacks. ST weapon powers are comparatively low vs St becuase it is only 400 years ontop of our technology. SW had Hyperspace for 25,000 years! Yes, they had far superior FTL for Longer our recorded civilization. They have been at war since before that time. So like reality people design better defenses and other people design weapons to defeat thos defenses.

Actually Blowing up a planet is nothing compared to designing a disease to torture and kill and entire race. After in SW there are very few races confined to one world. Now only once did the Empire take down children, though honestly Jedi padawans are the equivalnet of most humansd soldiers in ability. Remeber that the one 12 year old you saw fighting clone troopers killed several of them with little effort before he made a tactical mistake. The younglings had asked Anakin Skywalker what they should do, not where do they run, they were willing to follow what they thought was a good guy how they should fight back. I don;t condone the killing of the children, but i can see why Sidious ordered it, bc even one live Jedi was a threat to him.

Didn't quite watch Insurrection or Nemesis did you? Actually there were many very evil ST villians. You just never saw them victorious in their plots for even a moment. So you didn;t see how evil they were.

Okay, if Anakin was just a child doning 1000kph in a desert canyon you would have a point. But Anakin was a being with reflexes and thought processes fast enough to make Data look like an Atari 2600. So him driving a pod not so unbelievable.

The Ewoks were originally supposed to be Wookies, but Lucas realized even 500 wookies with stoneage tools would be more than a match for any Imperial legion on planet. Hell EU wookies are known for taking five or six blaster bolts before showing signs of injury and forget about wookie rage....So Lucas created a slight related race the inquisitive and engineering gifted Ewoks. That they were popular with kids was besides the point. Hell he created Boba Fett and never thought anyone would remember him.

As for Jar-Jar this comedy relief character was integral to the whole story. They brain deficient gungan was instrumental in Palpatine plans and did not even know it. With his help, Chancellor Palapatine came into power during a time where corruption was just being uncovered. Using his office he made sure the public saw him as a righter or wrongs. Palaptine then convinced Jar-Jar to motion to give him emergency power. Since not a single person would question Jar-Jars motivation in this the vote was almost unanimous. The reson nobody questioned the Gungans motive, everybody knew the Gungan had helped save naboo, but also that he was largely uncapable of scheming.

 

Ok, found it. The episode was called "Threshold". They figured out a way to make an incredibly fast engine, but it turned out that using it caused some freaky effect on human DNA that "caused evolution to speed up" and turned people into big newts. Which is incredibly stupid and demonstrates that the Voyager writers don't understand how evolution works, but whatever. Most of the episode was spent dealing with trying to figure out the problem and find a cure. By the end, they do find a cure; the effects can be halted by simply flashing people with some funky radiation that kills the mutated cells and restores people to normal. Then they completely forget about it, even though they now apparently know how to use the new engine safely.

Uh...you realize that the Startrek movies Nemesis, Generations, Insurrection (although there admittedly weren't many people living on the planet), and The Last One all featured villains who either exterminated planets or attempted to exterminate planets, right? Not to mention the many episodes from various startrek series where someone was planning to wipe out a planet with a bomb/virus/whatever. Vger from the first ST movie was going to wipe out the earth too, but to be fair it didn't see to actually understand what it was doing.

It was explicitly stated that humans generally aren't capable of pod-racing at all because our reflexes aren't good enough, and that Anakin was only able to do it because he had prescient jedi reflexes.

 

Actually they are known to have assimilated races that have much superior technology to the Federation. Species 116, for example, seemed to have near-magical technology (why we don't see the borg using any of it is anyone's guess). The reason the Borg didn't assimilate the Federation was shitty deus ex machina script writing.

 

I think what they are saying about that technology being unstable is there's a possibility you could blow something up, if that 'object' was an explosive. If it is that unreliable, then you won't want to use it even for emergencies but only as a last resort. And then just having and maintaining that technology would just be a burden because you'd hardly use it.

 

Ignore and delete this post, please.

 

Damn you make a good point. No, wait... that didn't make sense.

That statement wasn't in reference to tactics from ST against SW. It was a statement that I prefer ST because they show tactics over firepower.

The writers exploited chidren in this movie, purposely. There was absolutely no reason to write 'younglings' into a plot unless you planned to sacrifice them to make the bad guys looks worse. Otherwise they should have kicked a little ass and then escaped.

Fact is people were trying to kill him, and it was dangerous, period. Reflexes or not, kids in life threatening situations to me makes for a dumbass plot. There are other ways to show a kid is lightning fast. And if he was fast enough to make Data bla bla bla, they have a poor way of showing it. Reflexes that fast could better have been represented by the rest of the world going into slow motion to show comparisons of activity and his response time. But whatever. Apparently they went overboard with reflex time thought speed and how soon these traits are acquired.

(Ya know, the more people explain things about Star Wars, the stupider it sounds.)

(Ya know, the more people explain things about Star Wars, the stupider it sounds.)