Star Wars vs. Star Trek

They get their share of banging

 

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Not quite true. Go to Amazon and check out how many SW novels there are. At least as many as ST, I'd bet. They both have movies, roleplaying systems, about the only thing ST has that SW doesn't is a long-running TV series. They do however have a plethora of video games out. SW has gotten into technical aspects, however, since that was never the basis of the universe in the first place, they're a bit sketchy and prone to stretching to make things work. Somewhat absurd really.

ST is still using flatscreens for data display.

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Are phasers capable of full auto?

 

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SW uses levers and pullies as controls in their ships.

 

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Star Trek is getting kinda old for me. I havent seen any sense of a "main plot." Next Generation was probably the best for me but still didnt have a "main plot" to track at. Star Wars has a "main plot" - the rise and fall of Anakin/Vader

 

There's no contest....Star Wars is the holy trilogy that anyone cool grew up with....(Kevin Smith movies, Spaced, for cool points)

Star Trek is OK-ish over-rated geek nonsense...look at the conventions and the people that speak Klingon for God's sakes!!!

 

You guys keep forgetting that Star Wars is almost, if not just, as bad. They have conventions too, though I must confess there are no languages out there. I do know of at least two or three lesser known sci-fi universes that are just as bad. You guys keep singling out Star Trek for this, but if the competition were for fandom and related junk, it would probably be a closer tie than the conflict that was theorized for the beginning of this thread.

 

SW was good, but I grew up on Trek, my parents are nerdy. I watched Trek sinceI was a baby so I understand all the inner stuff that a casual watcher wouldn't understand. I have also watched all the star Wars movies and I enjoyed them a lot, I even own the books and I have read them. I just think that Star Trek has an almost believable universe that has been created. Star wars also really stared to suck with the past two movies, especially Episode II. After I left the theatre, I wanted to puke, it was just so horrible. The original Episodes IV, V & VI were good but *cringe* the others were horrible.

 

Ahh, the eternal question. A couple of points.

1. A much better question than star trek vs. star wars would be Empire vs. Federation. There's so much poorly understood peripheral stuff in both universes that it's nearly impossible to compare them meaningfully. And who knows if Q or the Borg would even care? Q would probably sit back and just watch the whole thing for entertainment, while the Borg likely wouldn't care which side won.

2. If you want the contest to be interesting, you would have to assume that both sides have roughly equivalent technology. Perhaps the capital ship turbo lasers in star wars are theoretically hundred times more powerful than the phasers in star trek, but it's pretty boring to decide the battle based on some random number that the authors of the technical manuals or script writers pulled out of thin air.

3. All that being said, I think the ruthlessness and militarism of the Empire would give them a big edge over the pansies in starfleet. The starfeet officers usually seem to be more like diplomats and scientists who also happen to carry guns, while the empire's people are real soldiers who are trained to fight and not especially interested in negotiations or scientific discovery.

Come on, you know I'm right about this. Every single time any sort of trained soldier gets lose on the enterprise they always end up taking out lots of crew members and security personnel before they finally get into a standoff with their phaser/disruptor/whatever poised to blow up the antimatter storage unit. Off the top of my head, I can think of at least four episodes where this happened – once it was a couple of renegade Klingon warriors, once it was an escaped prisoner who used to be a commando, once it was a terrorist strike team, and once it was a group of Farangi mercenaries. There are probably other instances that I don't recall or never saw the episode for. The starfleet guys seem to have a terrible time handling real military people.

By the way, a few people have made comments about how startrek is somehow more plausible or believable, while starwars is mainly fantasy. That's pretty silly, as both have absolutely no relationship to reality. Saying that a ship 'enters hyperspace' is no more or less ridiculous than saying it 'extends a warp field around the ship'. They're both just meaningless techno-babble.

I also wanted to respond to this:

As someone who works with lasers regularly, I assure you that it's quite possible to change the frequency of a laser.

 

Mind over matter the Jedi win.

 

Jedi vs Klingon... interesting

 

If there is one thing I agree with here ... it's this point made by Nasor

To compare the whole aspect of ST versus the whole aspect of SW is meaningless. There is too much discrepancies between the two universes that it's futile to compare them on an equal footing because there is no basis for comparison. In the end ... all we're doing is going in circles.

Though there's nothing wrong with posting your opinion on this topic anyways ... i just think the thread should have focused more on one area of both universes instead of pitting both universes as a whole against each other.

note: Thanks, Nasor, for the laser clarification ... I knew something wasn't right about it when I originally posted the statement

 

So, a few areas to compare.
ship-to-ship combat.
Ground combat.
Political intrigue.
technological sophistication.

Per individuals, say three duels:
A duel of steel.
A duel of strenth.
A duel of wits.

Any other areas to compare?

 

steel: as said in many threads, technology is fairly even, but ill give it to st since they can blast armies from orbit.
strentgh: sw has waaaaaaaaaay more people so the strecngh thing, they win via sheer numbers. plus they have jedi, and witty people who make one-liners and things, and that dont happen so often in st.
wits: jedi mind tricks, countless, and i mean countless politicians, all being trained in the art of being cleverer than other people.
st uses one small government to decide everything, and local authorities always need the help of guys like the enterprise to help out problems they have, etc.
2-1 to sw.

 

I've not seen much Star Trek, so the only places I can say they've used orbital bombardment was in the movie where they go to the center of the galaxy, and in first contact. I can't remember what the name was. If there are other instances, let me know.

The only times in Star Wars they would have, there was a force field to prevent it. Episode 5 is one, at Hoth, and the second is in Episode one, on Naboo. They also kind of wanted Naboo in one peice, and thus bombardment wasn't the best option.

Oh, BTW, I was thinking the duels, like say Picard(or the Voyager crew) had to match wits with some SW dude for an episode. Who would fight, who would win, and why. That sort of duel.

 

For what it's worth, orbital bombardment was used as a theme in a number of episodes of various Trek series. It was part of the theme of the first episode of TNG (Encounter at Farpoint), and a recurring theme in Deep Space 9 (the Maquis episodes with Eddington).

And of course it was the central theme of this past season of "Enterprise", which involved an alien race attempting to destroy the Earth.

 

There is the possibility that the Jedi would prefer to be part of the Federation rather than the Empire.

 

I've done a little research, and have come to the conclusion that the Federation would have zero chance of winning against the empire. Consider:

Enterprise-E:
Length: 685 meters
Width: 224 meters
Height: 88 meters
Mass: 3.25 million metric tons

Star Destroyer:
Length: 1,600 meters
Height: 460 meters
Width: 885 meters
Mass: 25 million metric tons
It also carries 77 small fighters.

Obviously the star destroyer is much bigger and nastier. Also, it's built entirely for war, unlike the federation starships that have half their space taken up by science facilities, holodecks, bars, etc. And the Empire has thousands of star destroyers, while the Federation has only a few hundred starships – most of which are not as large or powerful as the Enterprise.

 

This is nuts.
Obviously some ground rules need to be layed. That is, some paramaters for the battle.
If the Q are fighting they win, no contest, so we can't just have every concievable species etc., go all out at each other. At least omit the Q.
If you mean any species in an on foot battle, on a planet, then it's more interesting. ST has the Jem'Hadar which can turn invisible. There's also transporters. And changelings. Even Jedi get tired. If you have an army of Darth Mauls though, that would certainly be a sight to see. Or maybe Jabba could just roll over everyone.

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If we're going by a space battle, a star destroyer has no chance. It's too big and clumsy. It's supposed to destroy planets, not ships that are much smaller and more maneuverable. SW has speed though. But then, it depends on how much of the literature/story you're allowed to draw on, 'cause ST can counter that too.

Obviously some paramaters must be set to have a coherent debate/argument/flame war.
Wait - coherent flame war? Heh.

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well.. this is easy: of course STAR WARS!!

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besides, I haven't seen a StarTrek film

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but the characters from screenshots look kinda gay

 

It's true that star destroyers aren't as maneuverable as federation ships, but that wouldn't matter much. Star destroyers were the largest capital ships built by the Empire (with the exception of a few special command ships) so they were designed with fighting smaller ships in mind. And no, they weren't meant to destroy planets. They were for crushing small ships.

The heavy guns on star destroyers are arranged on turrets all over the hull, allowing them to fire in any direction. The Enterprise is over 1/3 as long as a star destroyer, so I don't see why a star destroyer would have any trouble hitting it. In the movies they're shown destroying rebel ships that are much small than they are.

Transporters never seem to play any significant role in war, since they're trivially easy to block. There was an episode of DS9 where they visited a planet that had a ground war going on, and neither side was able to use transporters because there were transport inhibitor fields set up everywhere.