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William Shatner on why Star Trek is better than Star Wars

September 22, 2011, 6:51 AM PDT

Takeaway: The geek debate Star Trek v. Star Wars is discussed by none other than the original Captain James Tiberius Kirk in this three-minute video.

In a humorous and heavily tongue-in-cheek interview, William Shatner shares his thoughts about how Star Trek differs from Star Wars and which one is better. Much of the commentary Shatner makes is pro-Star Trek, which is no surprise because of his association with the franchise and because of his desire to be in the next reboot movie. Several of his arguments are valid, some points are obvious jokes, and other statements are incorrect in my opinion. One example is his statement that Star Wars is a derivative of Star Trek, which is not true, as their respective sub-genres are completely different. Star Wars is very action-adventure whereas Star Trek is more about the human equation. Babylon 5 is a better example of being derivative of Star Trek.

Watch the video and then share your thoughts in the comments section below.

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About Wally Bahny

Wally currently works for a medium-size healthcare company in southeast and central Michigan providing network administration and end user support.

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4 Votes

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Apples and Oranges

sissy sue 23rd Sep 2011

Comparing Star Trek and Star Wars is being unfair to both. They were both great, in my opinion. However, I do find discussions of both series "fascinating."

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3 Votes

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moralism

pgit 23rd Sep 2011

Star trek was more lowbrow moralism, "slavery is bad," "having computers run everything is bad," "lying is bad." Star wars encompassed the classical, epic struggles of the Gods, the whole story one moral tale write very large. (and expensive)

The one thing star wars did that broke with ancient mythology was the "first" episode, the prequel "revenge of the siths." It showed the very human invention of the Hegelian dialectic at work. The empire was built out of an artificial "necessity." The ones who wanted the empire as the "solution" to the "problem" of "terrorism" were the terrorists themselves.

They created the problem to which empire was the solution, which is how governments really operate for the most part. Government doesn't want a real fix to anything, it wants power.

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2 Votes

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The Unseen Hand

Solenoid 26th Sep 2011

"They created the problem to which empire was the solution, which is how governments really operate for the most part."
Brilliant.

The Unseen Hand is a 1985 book by A Ralph Eppersen, subtitled An Introduction to the Conspiratorial View of History. I just started reading this rare book that I acquired a couple years back.

This book details greatly what you speak of. It describes the opposite of the commonplace view of history, known as the Accidental View, wherein leaders are known only to react to circumstance, and the reaction is apparently a true reaction and unrelated in causality to the occurrence that preceded it.

The conspiracy of the Empire is the great twist of history in Star Wars, perpetrated by Palpatine using the Dark Side. A true modern morality tale, disguised in an intricately detailed universe of action adventure.

Star Trek rarely achieved this epic scale of depth in storytelling, with the popular exception of Abram's re-boot. I think we all agree that Abrams' work was superb.

I also agree with others that there is no direct comparison between the two on their own merits. However, popular culture has taken each title to its own semi-convergent paths (ala Comicon, etc)

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0 Votes

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I'll grant him American Graffiti

hippiekarl 20th Oct 2011

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0 Votes

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Why was Star Trek:TOS only 3 seasons?

DHOLYER@... 5th Oct 2011

Sci-Fi was a new concept (kind of) to TV back then, for most if you wanted something semi decent in SciFi you read a book, rarely was there a decent movie and TV was kind of unherd of. You would see movies every now and then but they were the cheap and poorly done Japanese types. Mostly Monster movies.

And then NBC almost killed it off only after 2 seasons, but the fandum crowd with letters gave it a 3rd year of life. Star Trek:TOS in it's first year had a good and large budget, Second year it was reduced to an average budget, this partly due to it's viewer base was not growing in large numbers. The third year the budget was on a shoe string ranking, missions exterior to the Enterprise came fewer and harder to make with no real budget to do creative works visually with.

As the other shows came about the FX effects were now easy and no costly thanks to the Sci-Fi popularity of Star Wars.

Todays shows have a new restrictive factor and that is the Network profit factor. The time slot for Star Trek:TOS was a 50 mintue to 48 minute period. As time goes on TV shows today are getting as low as 28 minutes per hour, okay that's reruns but prime time gets about 36 minutes and special ones will get 40 minutes. This is a result from editing out the commercials to record shows I like to DVD, and I count those 15 second to 45 second buffer promo logo spots.

I computed back in 1991 that by 2018 a TV show will be less than 50% of it's used hour time slot. When I got my DVR in 2004 Ad time was then shrinking shows to 42 minutes and to watch TV I was already using the jump forward/back buttons to avoid the ads. In the next 5 to 10 years if Prime time TV is not to dye a Commercial time death they are going to need to find a new source of pay.

I know I drifted off the Star Trek is better than Star Wars them, but Star Trek is why I started removing ads and on my S-VHS Video tape recording. the GO dual deck VCR helped much. Now my Panasonic DVD recorder with frame by frame editing makes ad removal not easy but better. Now if they would require one totally black picture frame between ads and show it would be nice. But instead they fade from show to ad mixing the two into one video feed so you lose show time and have to by the DVD's.

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0 Votes

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TOS really didn't really run that long

Xennex1170 4th Oct 2011

3 years of episodes.. Not much compared these days with SciFi series running 7-years average.. Stargate being a nice exception at about 10years..

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