Kevin's Watch

Enterprise was among the biggest disappointments ever seen on TV. (Finding someone who gets PPV boxing, looking forward to the Tyson-Holyfield fight for weeks, getting all set in front of the TV, and watching Tyson bite Holyfield's ears twice is another...) Outright stupidity. Of all things, having holodecks!! I don't know what idiotic explanation they came up with for why TOS didn't have them, or even if they did attempt an idiotic explanation. But if they did, I'm sure it was quite idiotic. That kind of thing was all through the few episodes I could stand to watch. And the time-travel!!! My God, the time travel!!!

Fist and Faith wrote:And the time-travel!!! My God, the time travel

Worst. Idea. Ever: Vossk - the alien from the 29th century who collaborated with Nazis to build a time portal. Jesus.

Glad I missed that one!

I saw Archer's first meeting with some future guy, maybe this Vossk person. Always a horribly risky thing, but it can sometimes be acceptable. Next thing I know, Archer's being taken to the future every few episodes for meetings or something... *sigh*

There was a two-part Voyager where some guy with an outrageously powerful time ship lost his Love *ahem* and used the ship to change one tiny little thing, hoping it would change the past only to the degree that she would live. Well, the Butterfly Effect, and all that. So he keeps making changes, little ones, one at a time, always trying to get things back to what they should have been, but with his Love surviving. The concept wasn't a bad one, and watching how things changed each time was really fun. And, in the process, Voyager was destroyed. Janeway had everybody go wherever they could in lifepods, and promised they'd all be picked up when she had the ship running again. Eventually, she couldn't prevent Voyager's destruction, and she rammed it into the time-ship, destroying it, Voyager, and herself.

At which point, everything was reset to the beginning, and nobody ever had any knowledge of all the crap, because it never happened. It was one of the more fun time-travel stories I'd seen, then they wimped out so everybody could be warm and cozy again. Crap.

My god!

MAYOR OF SIMPLETON wrote:What I think would be very cool is to have some enterprising young CGI artitst create a fan flick that pits Star Wars craft against that of the Federation. Something about the way weapons are handled in each universe suggest to me that Star Trek may have an advantage (sans the Death Star of course. I don't see too many mobile space stations in Star Trek destoying entire planets) It just seems to me that Federation Star Ships are better protected with shields and have more effective offensive weapons (phasers, photon torpedoes and anti matter torpedoes as apposed to blasters and ion cannons etc. HOWEVER. The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the force. Even the vulcan's mind meld can't compare to the throat crushing terror that is wielded by the Sith.

Just for the fun of it...

I'd say SW has ships that are greater in scale than those in ST, and more of them. We in this galaxy simply can't compete with the resources that a Galactic Empire in that other galaxy has at its disposal. Starfleet would go bankrupt if it tried to construct something the size of the Death Star. Of course, if you want to bring in alien races, then maybe if the Borg were so inclined, they might be able to build one. The Borg cube is kinda like the Bizarro version of the Death Star, though much smaller. And Star Destroyers? Methinks the Imperial Fleet has the kind of firepower that would make Starfleet look like third rate amateurs.

ST makes up for its lack of firepower with grace and beauty - in the form of the Enterprise, the most majestic ship in all of science fiction, in my opinion. (Well, besides the Cygnus from The Black Hole, but I digress...)

The Millenium Falcon may be the fastest hunk o' junk in its galaxy, but even if Han Solo's personal modifications make his baby fly "0.5" past lightspeed, the Enterprise would still smoke its butt as Captain Kirk orders Sulu to hit Warp 2...3...4...5...6...7...

Having said that, I think that in Star Wars Lucas wanted to emphasize the sheer speed of faster-than-light travel...thus the perspective from behind ships as they "slingshot" into infinity away from the camera. Whereas in Star Trek (at least in the first few movies) it's the sheer power of the process that is emphasized. As the Enterprise, particularly in ST:TMP, engages the warp drive, the star field around the ship explodes in a prismatic light show, emphasizing the magnitude of what is happening.

So in some respects Star Wars technology seems way beyond that of Star Trek, but in other areas Trek seems much more advanced. Like how Scotty can beam people around with transporters (when they work!) while Vader must patiently wait for shuttles to move him from ship to ship.

In terms of telepathic/telekinetic mumbo-jumbo stuff, I guess it's the Vulcan mind meld versus Jedi mind tricks, heh. Obi-Wan could sway the weak-minded, but I imagine Spock would easily and disdainfully dismiss the Jedi from his mind. On the other hand, Obi-Wan would easily win in a contest to move large, heavy objects with his mind, while Spock would be grunting to no avail.

Man, I'm getting carried away...

Great post MM!

Methinks the Imperial Fleet has the kind of firepower that would make Starfleet look like third rate amateurs.

You may be right about the sheer number of ships in the IF vs SF, but yet to me it doesn't seem like star destroyers are as powerful as Galaxy class cruisers (like the TNG Enterprise.)

dlbpharmd wrote:Great post MM!

Methinks the Imperial Fleet has the kind of firepower that would make Starfleet look like third rate amateurs.

You may be right about the sheer number of ships in the IF vs SF, but yet to me it doesn't seem like star destroyers are as powerful as Galaxy class cruisers (like the TNG Enterprise.)

Go to the Star Wars versus Star Trek website (Star Destroyer dot net, I think). It has interesting technical discussions, from an engineering point of view). The guy says the Empire would win. But given that Star Fleet has teleporters, what's to stop them teleporting nuclear bombs into a Star Destroyer or the Death Star?

Great post, MM!

Okay. I guess I'd have to concede that the SW universe seems to have more ships but they are combined in one giant galactic empire and then of course the rebels broke away and that conflict probably forced both sides to build yet more ships but if we're going to be fair to the ST universe we'd have to combine all of the Federation, Romulans, Cardassians, Klingons, Ferengi and a host of outer worlds that would have been drawn into a ST galactic empire similar to that of SW. Given those resources things would probably fall into more of a balance. Loremaster makes a great point. Star Trek technology rarely takes advantage of the full potential of its abilities. Running injured crewmen back through the transporter buffer to repair serious wounds. Transporting a photon torpedo onto the bridge or engine room of an enemy ship. A coordinated attack of this kind by ST would be very tough to beat whether you are SW or B5 or whatever.