The Empire Strikes Out - Inside the Battle of Hoth

[Kleves]

I'm not sure anything George Lucas was responsible for can survive this much scrutiny. 

[Ed Anger]

I wish I could bully each and every one of you via the Internet. Several of you need wedgies.

[Neil]

I wish I could bully each and every one of you via the Internet. Several of you need wedgies.

Tough talk, brittle-bones. 

[Ideologue]

Star Trek rewards intellectual debate.  Babylon 5 rewards intellectual debate.  But Star Wars?  There's nothing intellectual there.  It is just a fourth-rate space opera concept carried out without any concern for continuity or logic or overall plot.  Debating Vader's tactics at Hoth is no more "intellectual" than debating Dorothy's tactics against the flying monkeys.

It's a lot more pleasing aesthetically, and the core characters of the original trilogy are more distinct and enjoyable than their equivalents in Trek.

I'll take Kirk, Spock, and McCoy over Luke, Han, and Leia.  Indeed, I was reflecting earlier today, and I think the original cast films may be my favorite film series of all.  (Now, the TNG movies are all pretty much garbage.)  But this may be a matter of preference.  And I guess if you're comparing the Star Wars films to the Star Trek show, yeah, I could see it, given that the show features about exactly zero character growth, and almost zero narrative continuity, and is dissimilar enough in its style that the movies are an almost entirely distinct, and superior, work of art.

I might give you aesthetics.  Star Wars had a broader scope (and generally more money), and featured two apocalyptic battles, whereas the Star Trek series labored to get more than two starships on screen at once (and the last of the two times they did it, one of them was invisible ).  Likewise, Star Wars' set design, and its on-location shooting, is obviously more lavish and more inspired.  ICompare anything in Star Trek to, say, the Death Star II observation deck, or Bespin, or just the endless desert expanses of Tunisia standing in for Tatooine, yeah, it doesn't really compare.  That said, I think the model work is just as good (which you'd expect, given ILM did both).  The Enterprise, the Reliant, or Starbase 1 don't compare too unfavorably to star destroyers, Rebel ships, or the Death Stars.  Except Star Trek V, of course, which looks kinda crummy, because ILM didn't do it.

[Ed Anger]

I wish I could bully each and every one of you via the Internet. Several of you need wedgies.

Tough talk, brittle-bones.

I'm one big piece of scar tissue. I won't feel a thing.

[Neil]

I wish I could bully each and every one of you via the Internet. Several of you need wedgies.

Tough talk, brittle-bones.

I'm one big piece of scar tissue. I won't feel a thing.

You'll be cowering in your home, clinging to your castle doctrine.  So long as I can avoid getting tricked into walking on any lawns in Ohio, I think I'll be safe.

[Ed Anger]

I wish I could bully each and every one of you via the Internet. Several of you need wedgies.

Tough talk, brittle-bones.

I'm one big piece of scar tissue. I won't feel a thing.

You'll be cowering in your home, clinging to your castle doctrine.  So long as I can avoid getting tricked into walking on any lawns in Ohio, I think I'll be safe.

I have a giant model of the HMS Iron Duke in my yard.

[Neil]

I wish I could bully each and every one of you via the Internet. Several of you need wedgies.

Tough talk, brittle-bones.

I'm one big piece of scar tissue. I won't feel a thing.

You'll be cowering in your home, clinging to your castle doctrine.  So long as I can avoid getting tricked into walking on any lawns in Ohio, I think I'll be safe.

I have a giant model of the HMS Iron Duke in my yard.

Telephoto lens.

[PDH]

I have a giant model of the HMS Iron Duke in my yard.

If it was one of those Austrian Pre-Dreadnoughts you would have him.

[Neil]

I have a giant model of the HMS Iron Duke in my yard.

If it was one of those Austrian Pre-Dreadnoughts you would have him.

Highly rare and exotic.  I always liked the Radetsky.

[Eddie Teach]

I'll take Kirk, Spock, and McCoy over Luke, Han, and Leia. 

That's a love triangle I'd rather not contemplate. 

[jimmy olsen]

the TNG movies are all pretty much garbage.

Star Trek: First Contact was great!

[CountDeMoney]

I'll take Kirk, Spock, and McCoy over Luke, Han, and Leia.

Star Trek TOS suffered from hackneyed 60's writing, incredibly obtuse morality, bad science and godawful storylines. ROMANS NAZIS AND GANGSTERS IN SPACE OH MY

But the interplay between Kirk, Spock and McCoy as characters was by far the best element of the series;  Spock's spiritual conflict between his humanity and his Vulcanism, his emotion and his logic, alone could've been a centerpiece, but the interaction between McCoy's moralism and Spock's logic--not just with one another on numerous occasions, but as equally weighted counterbalances to Kirk's command decision-making, not in a struggle for Kirk's soul but more as the Super-Ego and Ego to Kirk's Id--made for much better three party chemistry than Lucas' half-incestuous trilogy triangle.

And yes, I just dropped Kazantzakis' "dual substance of Spock" on you people, goddammit.  Spock as Christ figure, bitches.  Lucas couldn't come up with anything like that, even with all his cribbing of Joseph Campbell.

[Neil]

the TNG movies are all pretty much garbage.

Star Trek: First Contact was great!

I wouldn't go as far as 'great'.  It was certainly much, much better than all the other TNG movies.

[DontSayBanana]

I wouldn't go as far as 'great'.  It was certainly much, much better than all the other TNG movies.

It was a compression issue.  The "space opera" that TNG settled into only worked given the massive length of each season.  First Contact was entirely self-contained (yes, there was a callback to Best of Both Worlds, but it was adequately explained in the Moby Dick scene with Lily and Picard).  It wasn't so much a space opera as a zombie survival movie with Borg in place of walking corpses.