Star Trek versus Star Wars

Let me open my big bag of geek here for a sec­ond. I always pre­ferred Star Wars to Star Trek, but Deb­bie is a Trekkie, so when I decid­ed to watch every episode of MST3K, she coun­tered with a request to watch all ten of the Star Trek movies. I groaned, but agreed. Deb­bie was orig­i­nal­ly a fan of The Next Gen­er­a­tion, but watch­ing the movies con­vert­ed her. The orig­i­nal series char­ac­ters are more com­pelling, with more agency, and more inter­est­ing adven­tures than the lat­er films, some of which just seem like stretched tele­vi­sion episodes.

I read some of David Brin’s crit­i­cism of Star Wars around this time as well. It turns out that I’ve grown up enough to real­ly enjoy orig­i­nal series Star Trek. Star Wars is easy for a child to appre­ci­ate, but the Star Trek uni­verse demands a more mature under­stand­ing of the way life works for full appre­ci­a­tion. After watch­ing all of the films, and forc­ing Deb­bie to watch Trekkies and Trekkies 2, I went ahead and start­ed scroung­ing Orig­i­nal Series episodes. So far we’ve seen two; the pilot episode [sans Cap­tain Kirk, but with Spock] and “Where No Man Has Gone Before” in which a cou­ple of the ship­mates basi­cal­ly turn into Jedi/Sith, com­plete with telekine­sis and Force light­ning. In 1966, mind you.

I’m lik­ing that the char­ac­ters have back­sto­ries, have to wres­tle with the emo­tion­al con­se­quences of their deci­sions, and have their inner weak­ness­es thrown at them in every episode. It’s meaty, and kind of makes me want to see the new Star Trek flick com­ing out this sum­mer.

5 thoughts on “Star Trek versus Star Wars”

  1. Oh no, my secret is out on the inter-web! ♥ You for­got to men­tion that while we enjoyed the movies and show for plot, top­ics & char­ac­ter devel­op­ment I was sur­prised to see an addi­tion­al enter­tain­ment fac­tor of the TV show: hand­some young faces.

  2. Down in the base­ment I’ve got The Trou­ble with Trib­bles and Amok Time in film can­is­ters in my base­ment. We were clean­ing out an old media rack in the base­ment of an old build­ing on cam­pus and I found them sit­ting there. I’m not sure if they are in watch­able shape, but I’ve tak­en care to pre­serve them and keep the con­tain­ers in a cool, dark, dry place.

    I can’t say that I favor the orig­i­nal series over next gen for their TV runs, but the orig­i­nal series made vast­ly bet­ter movies.

    You should get Baby­lon 5 on Net­flix. It was a very good series in the mid-90’s and I liked it bet­ter than DS9 (though I did watch both). You can learn more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylon_5 Beware of spoil­ers though.

  3. I total­ly for­got that you had those episodes, jmay. They’ll be worth some seri­ous cash if they are in good con­di­tion.

  4. This is the best entry you’ve ever made. The entire orig­i­nal series is now out on DVD, if you’re will­ing to rent or buy. I was a fan of the orig­i­nal series (TOS) first, but even­tu­al­ly got into The Next Gen­er­a­tion (TNG). My favorite is eas­i­ly Deep Space Nine (DS9). TOS is good for social dis­course, TNG for char­ac­ter devel­op­ment, and DS9 for all the above plus polit­i­cal intrigue. Hap­py view­ing!

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