How I Came to Prefer Star Trek over Star Wars

[Deck of 51]

I spent my entire life as a Star Wars fan. I watched them on VHS with my
father when I was quite young and then we saw the special editions
together in theatres when I was a teenager. All throughout high school,
my friends were Star Wars guys, we saw the prequels and while they
weren't that good, we maintained that the original trilogy was special
and nothing could touch it. The sequels? Same thing.

We always viewed ourselves as nerdy, but not as nerdy as the guys who
watch Star Trek. I had never given Star Trek a chance. I assumed it was
this highly serialized thing, kind of like a soap opera in space, where
if you watched the episodes out of order you'd be confused. I don't know
why I had that impression. I had never seen an episode of Star Trek. I
don't know what it was based on. I carried that belief for decades.

Cut to Christmas 2019. My wife, who has never seen any Star Wars, says
she wants to watch it. So over the holidays after the kids were in bed,
we watch all nine movies in order of release. She had the same reaction
as most. Original Trilogy was gold, prequels were meh, sequels were meh.

Fast forward to the Covid-19 lockdown. Looking for something to
entertain myself, I randomly torrent Star Trek TOS. My wife decides to
watch it with me. Keep in mind, she had just watched Star Wars for the
first time a few months ago. We start watching and get more and more
into it. It's not at all what I thought it would be. Every episodes is
like a self-contained mini-movie driven by a pulp science fiction plot,
and I love me some pulp science fiction.

When we were around the middle of season two, she says to me, "You know,
I think this is better than Star Wars."

My first reaction was, "No, of course not, what about The Empire Strikes
Back!"

Of course nostalgia from my childhood clouds my judgement about Star
Wars, so I tried to think about it more. When I say I love Star Wars,
what I really mean is I love the Original Trilogy and a dozen or so of
the books. Therefore I decided to compare the Original Trilogy to TOS.

Each movie in the Original Trilogy is around 2 hours, so the whole
trilogy is six hours and change. Each episode of Star Trek is 50
minutes. If I were to pick my seven favourite episodes of TOS(The Enemy
Within, Balance of Terror, The City on the Edge of Forever, Mirror,
Mirror, Space Seed, Errand of Mercy and The Changeling), they make up
roughly six hours. We're dealing with a half hour or so variance here,
but the point still stands, seven episodes of Star Trek TOS has roughly
the same running time as the original series.

So the question I asked myself is, do I like those combined seven
episodes of Star Trek TOS more than the Original Trilogy? The truth is,
I do. If I had the choice between watching the Original Trilogy or my
favourite seven episodes of TOS, I'd pick TOS.

And that's not even factoring in stuff like other good episodes of TOS
and stuff I haven't seen like The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine or
the movies. Out of all the additional Star Wars media created over the
years, I think the only things beside the OT and a handful of novels I
actually liked was the Mandalorian and Rouge One.If I never saw any of
the rest of it again, I wouldn't even bat an eye.

So yeah, that's the story of how a 36 year old man came to realize he
was wrong after well over 20 years of assuming Star Wars was better than
Star Trek. We're going to watch the six movies next. We were so
entertained by TOS, I actually went out of my way to order the Star Date
Collection on Blu-Ray to watch those, as I felt the obligation to
purchase something in exchange for the hours of entertainment.

[Daniel65]

Deck of 51 wrote on 21/06/2020 11:15 PM:

<Snip>

> So yeah, that's the story of how a 36 year old man came to realize he
> was wrong after well over 20 years of assuming Star Wars was better than
> Star Trek. We're going to watch the six movies next. We were so
> entertained by TOS, I actually went out of my way to order the Star Date
> Collection on Blu-Ray to watch those, as I felt the obligation to
> purchase something in exchange for the hours of entertainment.

As a ten'ish year old kid, I had watched Star Trek in its original T.V.
run .... and one HAD to love it, it was sooooo "out-there" ... mankind
going to other planets, other Stars! WOW!! (Remembering this was
probably in the NASA Gemini series timeframe, certainly Pre-Apollo moon
landings)

As with your opinion of the Star Wars Trilogies, the Star Trek movies
are a bit "up and down" in storyline. Star Trek:The Motion Picture was
welcomed by a lot of "Trekkies", even though the storyline was, sort of,
a re-hash of the storyline of one of the T.V. series episodes.

Prior to its release, I heard a rumour that the opening of the film
would feature a Holographic U.S.S. Enterprise flying from the back of
the Theatres down onto the screen! WOW!! That would have been
spectacular ... but, unfortunately, it was not to be!! Technologies let
us down.

Of the series of six TOS films, it is generally considered that the even
numbered Films are the better films.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek

Looking forward to reading what you think of the Monies!
--
Daniel

[Daniel65]

s/Monies/Movies ;-(
--
Daniel

[monero909]

Nice story.
While I grew out of my VS phase (we used to debate what ships are more
powerful back in the DAY !) I say that I recommend you watch Star Trek
Voyager.
Simply start in S4 and keep going.

If you don't know Star Trek is divided into series like
TOS
TNG
DS9
VOY
ENT
and then you get into the new stuff of Discovery and Picard.

The new stuff (Discovery and Picard)
Are like every other modern show where you need to watch every episode
to get 1 story. They are terrible. I liked the episodic nature of the
old shows.

Most people know about the TNG era (TNG, DS9 , VOY)
TNG and VOY are basically the same and episodic however they have a
light continuity. Meaning if characters die they die for good (you know
it when you see it) excluding all the fake outs and resurrections the
show has.

There is some continuity since when a faction or character shows up
episodes later the characters behave and refer to the previous events.
Only its not super crucial I think even if you did not watch the episode
you can understand it from context. Think of it like Jabba the Hutt and
Solo talking about previous events in Star Wars you don't really need to
know what happened there.

Most people will recommend you watch TNG however the first episode of
TNG can be boring so you either skip them or power thru them to get to
the important stuff.


There are 2 parter episodes however I don't see anything wrong with that.

DS9 is different so be warned.

ENT is episodic however deeply problematic and in later seasons it gets
more continuity based story.

For the movies I recommend you watch Star Trek 2 The Wrath of Khan its a
really great movie only watch the original 1982 movie not the after 2009
stuff.

The Wrath of Khan refers to a TOS episode however its not that
important. You seriously can watch the movie alone and realize what its
all about from what the movie says (bad blood between 2 characters one
did something to the other).

I argued for Star Trek back in the day because I grew up on Star Trek
(TNG era) I watched the Star Wars movies however Star Trek was the
series I watched so it was more prevalent in my life. I agree on your
opinion that the OT is good.

[Deck of 51]

Since that post I have watched the rest of TOS, the first six movies and
a huge chunk of TNG. I find I don't like the characters in TNG as much
as TOS. Outside of Data and Worf, I find they don't have a lot of
personality imo. Picard does have his moments though.

[monero909]

> Since that post I have watched the rest of TOS, the first six movies and
> a huge chunk of TNG. I find I don't like the characters in TNG as much
> as TOS. Outside of Data and Worf, I find they don't have a lot of
> personality imo. Picard does have his moments though.

True this is why I was recommending you watch Voyager the characters are
far more memorable in VOY only start like in s4 and simply go with it.

Did you like the Id Ego and super ego nature of TOS ? Spok = super ego
Bones = ID Kirk = ego ?

Its something unique to TOS.

>the first six movies and

Did you like wrath of Khan ? I like to know your review of it all.

[Deck of 51]

Yes I thought Wrath of Kahan was a masterpiece. The first one was OK,
but it felt like an episodes worth of TOS material stretched into two
hours. The next three movies were brilliant. V was a train-wreck, but a
fascinating one, in that it eschews most Hollywood conventions such as a
three-act structure. The Undiscovered Country wasn't bad, but II, III
and IV were undoubtedly the peak. Wrath of Kahan is far and away my
favourite and is probably one of my top ten favourite movies of all time
now.

I never though of the Super Ego/Ego/ID angle of TOS. I think you're
really onto something though. That dynamic is what makes it. I find Next
Generation very procedural. I'm going to watch the four Next Gen movies
then I'll check out Voyager. I don't find DS9 very appealing.

[Daniel65]

Deck of 51 wrote on 04/12/20 14:19:

IMO, the first movie was ........ O.K., well, could have been better,
but, still, it was STAR TREK but it was better than nothing!!

It would have been mind-blowing if 'they' had been able to get the
opening credits done as they had, apparently, planned .... with a
hologram of NCC-1701 flying down the middle of the Picture Theatre to
appear on the screen! Well, at least that was the rumour I heard, way
back when, pre-Internet!!

2, 3 and 4 were the main storyline, 5 was Garbage and six was O.K.'ish

I had all six on Beta tape, still do, I think, and have them on DVD as
well, along with one of the TNG movies (9, I think) which I got on the
cover of some magazine!
--
Daniel