Wars, Treks, and Gates...oh my.

[DurakkenX]

For a while now there has been a rivalry between the various licenses with the name "star" in them...I am curious which one people here think is best

Star Trek: The oldest of the 3 takes place in the future and is pretty much trying to give hope that there will be a day when most of our problems will be solved. It uses plausible technologies and most of which are a few years from being a reality or a possible in the future some time... It's more about peace and exploration than anything else.

Star Wars: The second oldest of the 3 takes place in a different time and different place. It's technologies are pretty much impossible and it's about war and politics than peace and exploring... It's an epic adventure, but it is hardly possible that much of what is in the story is possible in the way that it is stated. It's more a modern myth than anything else.

Stargate: the newest of the 3 takes place now and uses technology that are either possible or they explain it as we don't know because it is beyond us, but it is possible that many of the things shown is possible in the future. It also attempts to explore the galaxy and explain the mythologies of the world. It also adds a bit of hope with we are the second evolution of humans and look where the previous one has ended up, but also adds the wars between the various factions.

Personally my favorite is Stargate, followed by Star Trek, and then finally Star Wars... They're all pretty good though.

[NPCMook]

Does Doctor Who count?

Personally I prefer Star Wars over them all... just wasn't a fan of Stargate and Star Trek =

[Retehi]

Star Trek, all of them.

If just for this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmWtK9oTzoU

[Axispoint]

I was always into TNG myself. Partially I think it was because it was more contemporary for me then the OS (except for one episode, I've seen all of the OS). Otherwise, I just really got into TNG more then the OS, though I still watched that a lot, too (it's not quite a tie, since I liked TNG better, but it is almost a tie and I think, as I mentioned above, a lot of it has to do with the fact that I was a kid when TNG first began airing).



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Axispoint on 2007-05-31 06:02 ]</font>

[Weeaboolits]

I don't like any of them. ;]

[Solstis]

Did you just place Stargate over Star Trek and Star Wars?

One final season episode of Voyager (or whatever season they started using CG animation) far surpasses any catchy one-liner from O'Neil. SG1's Black person, er, Jaffar, is a pale imitation of the lovely Vulcan Tuvok. Also, 7 of 9 has much better script writing.

Yeah, Stargate is cute, and I did watch pretty much every episode, but, it kinda got "eh" after the 6th season.

Starwars has the best mythology, but details are a little murky compared to SG and ST. I still love the Jedi.

Star Trek focuses a lot on the corrupt bureaucracy that any society can have, and the Federation seems to be at war with the Klingons or the Romulans (or are escaping from the Borg, or some race that 7 revived, etc) every 10 minutes.

(SG: Atlantis is pretty good though)

[Edit]: Oh, hm, you forgot Battlestar Galactica. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_razz.gif



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Solstis on 2007-05-31 08:33 ]</font>

[Siertes]

I went with Star Trek: TNG, with Voyager at a close second.

[Allos]

Eternal hails for Star Wars, Grand Admiral Thrawn, and the Empire!

[xeku]

I'm gonna have to go with Star Wars - I like them all to some degree, but Star Wars was a source of creative inspiration as a kid...

[Weeaboolits]

http://imagecache2.allposters.com/images/pic/MG/189669~Starship-Troopers-Posters.jpg
;]

[Sinue_v2]

I voted for ST:TNG. Star Wars and StarGate were good - but they didn't have Captain Picard. The episode where he lives an entire life on an alien planet in the span of just 30 minuites is greater than anything either series had come up with IMO.

Also, it introduced the Borg. The Borg would have wiped out the Empire, and then we would have had Jedi Borg.

[ShadowDragon28]

Borg typically have no emotion and their bodies are barely alive. The key factors to using the Force are (other than high enough midiPlotDeviceitorians) I think: being mostly alive, emotions and Free-Will all of which most Borg are lacking IMO.

My personal favorite is ST:tNG but I enjoy all the series listed in the OP.

However in-my-view and in the view of
several hunderd-thousands of in-the-know Sci-Fi fans:
BABYLON 5 is > all other Sci-Fi series; ever.



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: ShadowDragon28 on 2007-05-31 12:40 ]</font>

[Allos]

On 2007-05-31 11:52, Sinue_v2 wrote:

The Borg would have wiped out the Empire, and then we would have had Jedi Borg.



Death Star > Borg Cube. Don't even get me started on this because I will argue it do death.

[Weeaboolits]

On 2007-05-31 12:40, Allos wrote:

On 2007-05-31 11:52, Sinue_v2 wrote:
The Borg would have wiped out the Empire, and then we would have had Jedi Borg.Death Star > Borg Cube. Don't even get me started on this because I will argue it do death.http://www.shadowshq.org/images/ark3.jpg
ARK, dood! ;]

[DurakkenX]

Battlestar galactica just sucks in my opinion >.> it just does.

and Starship troopers, whle awesome and the most realistic, i just forgot ^.^

babylon 5 has a few moments...but the series didn't interest me enough to watch

i also for got to list Star Trek: Enterprise which I personally like better than TNG. TOS, and DS9.

As far as SG-1 copying off of star trek... that's somewhat true as it's an inspiration point and they use a lot of it naturally due to star trek and stargate both trying to use the most current tech as inspiration.

[Axispoint]

On 2007-05-31 13:07, DurakkenX wrote:
and Starship troopers, whle awesome and the most realistic, i just forgot ^.^


The book is pretty good (even today, as I only recently read it for the first time). If you haven't read it, I'd recommend checking it out (it's by Robert A. Heinlein, if you can't remember http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_smile.gif ).

[Weeaboolits]

There was a book?
I must investigate this further. ;]

[Axispoint]

On 2007-05-31 13:45, Ronin_Cooper wrote:
There was a book?
I must investigate this further. ;]



http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_smile.gif Yup. Movie is based on it http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_smile.gif The novel was originally published in '59. Thought provoking book, too. Was considered controversial when it came out.

http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/I/51SpfZgt-DL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-dp-500-arrow,TopRight,45,-64_OU01_AA240_SH20_.jpg



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Axispoint on 2007-05-31 13:52 ]</font>

[Weeaboolits]

I'll have to remember to check for it next time I make it to the bookstore/library. ;]

[Skuda]

As much as I love my starwars, I'll have to say I loved StarTrek Voyager more.

[CupOfCoffee]

I've heard the book version of Starship Troopers isn't as cutesy or darkly funny as the movie, but that it was also much better (as the book often is). I've always wanted to read it but it always slips my mind every time I'm somewhere with books.

I didn't vote because I'm just not a big sci-fi fan. I remember watching Star Wars as a kid but not really caring much, and the only experience I've had with the many Star Trek and Stargate serieses is that "it came on after the show I was actually watching and I sat through half of it before wandering off" type experience. So... shrug.

[Sinue_v2]

Death Star > Borg Cube. Don't even get me started on this because I will argue it do death.

This could be fun. Death Star is by far cooler, but the Borg Cube is by far more technologically advanced. They still use lazers in Star Wars, right? The Borg Cube could sheild against that easily, fire off some proton/quasi/whatever torpedos at the sheild system on the surface leaving the Death Star defenseless. The Death Star's main firing cannon could easily cut through the Borg Ship - but it's a planet killer, not intended for ship-to-ship combat. It also fires in a streight line, whereas the Cube can fire from really any direction.

And if all else fails, they can send a ship back in time to when the Death Star was still under construction and destory it before it's even built. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif

[Blitzkommando]

On 2007-05-31 17:21, Sinue_v2 wrote:

Death Star > Borg Cube. Don't even get me started on this because I will argue it do death.

This could be fun. Death Star is by far cooler, but the Borg Cube is by far more technologically advanced. They still use lazers in Star Wars, right? The Borg Cube could sheild against that easily, fire off some proton/quasi/whatever torpedos at the sheild system on the surface leaving the Death Star defenseless. The Death Star's main firing cannon could easily cut through the Borg Ship - but it's a planet killer, not intended for ship-to-ship combat. It also fires in a streight line, whereas the Cube can fire from really any direction.

And if all else fails, they can send a ship back in time to when the Death Star was still under construction and destory it before it's even built. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif


Of course, to play Devil's Advocate, the Death Star always seems to have an armada surrounding it while except for a select few of the Cubes would dramatically outnumber the Borg in number of vessels. Still, that would just become a question of whether technology could overcome the gigantic quantity of speedy Imperial ships.

Also, as to the Force versus Borg would the Borg have a strong enough 'will' to resist the Force, if not get their collective nature destroyed through Jedi 'mind tricks'. Lots of fun could be had there of hand-to-hand combat. Especially if the Borg personal shields couldn't block the lightsaber attacks.

As for me, I enjoyed all the series. Personally though I grew up watching TNG so Picard is the captain I remember most. I've also watched Star Wars a number of times and it also holds a special place. Stargate, while a fun show has really gone down in quality over the years and I'm glad that the series is finally ending before it had a chance to lose all possible original content.

[Solstis]

I think that the Federation's (or Worf's, to be precise) scoffing at lasers is a direct dig at the Star Wars universe.

Star Wars technology, in general, really sucks. It's been stuck in the same place for millennia, so I suppose that's what happens when there's an intergalactic war every 40 years or so. Then again, an imperial star destroyer has about 300 guns or something on it, so I'm not sure if Star Trek (TNG era's) shields could really absorb all that, though the borg would probably just do something crafty and mean.

Also, Star Wars doesn't have any Q.

[Alisha]

wtf no votes for stargate? ive loved the franchise ever since i saw the original stargate movie as a kid. but im currently digging stargate atlantis more.

[Allos]

On 2007-05-31 17:21, Sinue_v2 wrote:

Death Star > Borg Cube. Don't even get me started on this because I will argue it do death.

The Death Star's main firing cannon could easily cut through the Borg Ship - but it's a planet killer, not intended for ship-to-ship combat. It also fires in a streight line, whereas the Cube can fire from really any direction.

And if all else fails, they can send a ship back in time to when the Death Star was still under construction and destory it before it's even built. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif



The main cannon on the death star was originally intended for planetary destruction, but as proven in Return of the Jedi at the Battle of Endor, it has no problem at all with capital ships and other large space vessels. It cuts through shielding with no problem (as it has almost infinite power). This of course is assuming that Vader/Palpatine aren't on the death star at the time. They would definitely sense a force disturbance while the Borg approach the death star, and it might just be my opinion, but I think that with their force powers they'd easily be able to take control of the Borg hive mind, being that it's a collective.

If it's a straight up battle between the Death Star and the Borg Cube, I see the Death Star winning due to the infinite power of the turbo laser. If either Imperial Sith lord is present, the hive mind will be the Borg's downfall.

Now if we were viewing the Imperial fleet in a fight with the Borg Cube, that would be a different story. It's easy to measure the Death Star's turbolaser against them because of it's sheer power, but the fact that Star Wars and Star Trek use different energy standards make this hard to predict. I personally think Star Wars lasers are more powerful, but that's totally a subjective view. If one assumes that they're equal, then I see a very messy battle. The Borg would be able to analyze and counter most of what the Imperials attempt against the cube. Any stormtroopers sent to board the cube would most likely kill a few of the Borg, but would then be assimilated. Where the battle would reach attrition depends on whether there are any Grand Admirals present. And once again, if Vader is aboard the Executor, it's over.

This is getting fun! http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif

[DurakkenX]

...
The borg have adaptive shields and they have no centralized power source nor weapons array. The Death Star would get one shot at a Borg Cube and it wouldn't destroy it. Further more the Cube would regenerate after that and be completely not effected by the Death Star laser again. Especially if you consider that most likely all the laser in the Star Wars world work with the same frequency and such.

The Death Star could conquer the shield as many times as it wants if it could aim the laser which it can't. It can't move at any fast rate and in general is extremely weak against unknown ships, small ships, and just about anything not huge.

As far as against various force powers...
#1 Light Saber - wouldn't work past as few attacks. They are made of energy and Borg shields block almost all energy.
#2 The hive is controlled from a very long way away in most cases and through technology that can not be effected by those types of things. The Force would be useless against a Borg Cube.

Star Wars civilization would pretty much be easily killed off by the Borg due to them only having energy weapons, no energy shields, and just no real way to fight back.

[xeku]

Heh...no contest when it comes to space combat.
You can argue all you like about which is more plausible (it's all fiction, any way you slice it).

It's all about star fighters - space/air superiority, in my opinion...
In the SW universe, they have classes of fighters designed to wear away shields (energy or physical), then additional fighters (and other vessels) to take them down once their defenses are lowered....not to mention drone/droid-fighters that work well as screens..

I've not seen any Star Trek weapon systems developed to handle swarms of individual space craft....just some off hand implications that this stuff exists....and some suggestion that they are deemed impractical due to cost/material/personnel concerns.

It's one thing to engage multiple capital ships...it's an entirely different thing to have to deal with other large warships, all the while countering dozens (if not hundreds) of smaller vessels that can hit you from any direction, at any given time..

Modern fighter aircraft were a major reason why battleships became obsolete...

And on a semi-related note - as much as giant-robot shows seem hokey - the concept of powered-armour designed for space combat (serious advantages in terms of maneuverability in zero-gravity environments) is intriguing for many of the same reasons fighters are so useful in the real world.

Ahh, let us bask in our collective nerdom.......

[Retehi]

Species 8472.

There, I win. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_razz.gif

[DurakkenX]

not true xeku... we just see a lot of the bigger ships simply because they hold more people, but there are many smaller ships that are specifically designed for combat. However federation ships, are not battle ships and are designed to handle many small ships. in fact ships that made for battle in the federation are banned. There is however one battle ship in the federation fleet and it's much smaller in size and such. The klingons also have many small battle ships.

fighters though, in the star wars world aren't really effective as even at high velocities and such it would easily trackable and blown up. The only problem is the number, but at those sizes they could eliminate a number of them at once.

[Sinue_v2]

The main cannon of the Death Star would be able o destory the Borg Cube, even with their adaptive sheilds. That's really a no contest. Any other weapons technology that the Empire could throw at them would be useless. Yes, the Borg Cube could take out a vast fleet of multiple Empire ships - one cube nearly destoryed the entire Federation fleet, who also have technology far superior to that found in Star Wars. It doesn't matter if the Empire has "sheild destorying" technology - if the Borg can adapt to it, then it will be rendered useless.

As for the Force affecting the Hive Mind - I don't think that's possible. While the collective makes an individual drone's will weak, as a whole the collective conciousness is increadibly strong. You're not just dealing with 200-500 Borg on a single cube, you're dealing with millions of them spread all throughout the Delda Quandrant and beyond. It's like the old kung-fu parable of one stick being easily broken, ten sticks tied together can be bent, but a hundred sticks being impossible to either bend or break. Or somehting like that.

I'm not sure weither or not the Borg adaptive sheilds could stop a Lightsaber - though I doubt it. I'm also not sure weither or not they could resist other Force powers. Though, if even so many as 2 Borg make it onboard, they're finished. Storm Troopers have horrible aim, and their lazers would be quickly adapted - if not already because it's such a primitive technology. Even if the Cube is destoryed, the Borg would transport teams over to the Death Star and begin assimiliation. The Empire wouldn't even know they were there at first - since they do not have sensors capable of sensing intruders.

After that, it's just a matter of time. The Death Star would be overtaken and assimilated. It would be modified to Borg Specifications - and by the time Vader or the Emporer could take action it'd be too late. They would be overwhelmed by sheer numbers.

Last but not least - There is only one Death Star. There are potentially thousands of Borg Cubes.

[Weeaboolits]

What exactly is meant when you say assimilate? (doesn't watch Star Trek)

[Siertes]

Ew those nasty Borg with those wires that come out of their arms into your neck...*Shivers*

[Weeaboolits]

Is that what it means?

[Siertes]

This is assimilation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assimilation_(Star_Trek))

Pretty weird stuff.

[Weeaboolits]

o_O

[DurakkenX]

assimilate is to take into one's self... in other words it's the borg creating more borg from those that are not borg...

also the death star could not destroy a borg cube based on the fact that it simply can not aim, nor does it have censors to locate the power core of a cube. The reason the federation is successful in beating the borg is because they have intelligence about how the cubes are created and where their systems are. The Death star is designed to blow up a structure from the inside out it cuts a hole into the planet and then blows the core up, causing a chain reaction of blowing the planet up. it is assumed that the power core of a cube is in the center but it's not and also it moves faster than the death star so not only could the death not fire on a cube's power source to blow it up, it could not aim at it at all and even if it could hit the cube it would only cut a part of it which would regen...thats if the borg allowed it to power the cannon up to begin with which takes quite a bit to fire and would be destroyed long before it fired ^.^

[imfanboy]

In comparing different technologies....

Star Trek has 'better' offensive technologies. Phasers and suchlike. They both have photon torpedos, though; and Star Wars has photon torpedos that can be carried on fighters - point to them.

Also, the Federation fleet that was destroyed by the Borg was only THIRTY-NINE vessels strong - sorry, but that's not reckoned a minor rumble in the Star Wars universe. Sure, the Borg might have been able to track and destroy that many simultaneously, but what about the hundreds of capitol ships and fighters that zoom about the typical SW fleet? (That's a major canonical problem btw; there's no way that the Federation could be as big as it is, and the loss of a mere 39 ships being the problem it's seen to be in episodes after Best of Both Worlds... just sayin' that ST isn't immune to the same canon problems SW is.)

Star Wars has better DEFENSIVE technologies. Nowhere in the Star Trek universe has it been implied that a shield generator can defend an entire planet, whereas in Star Wars it's apparently so commonplace that a Death Star had to be created to penetrate them. Remember, on Hoth the only reason the Empire was able to land troops was because the Rebels had a budget shield generator that only protected part of their planet.

Perhaps transporter technology was discarded because of the power of those shields?

Also, most ships aren't armed with lasers, they're armed with Turbolasers, whatever the hell that means. Since phaser technology is generally considered an advancement of laser technology, it could well mean that turbolasers are the same thing, just with a different application.

What it could also mean is that shields in the Star Wars universe are infinitely resilient against single-point weapons, like that of a phaser, so you have to use multiple points like many turbolasers to penetrate them.

Remember, too, one important bit of technology that almost certainly would fuck the Borg up no end: the Ion Cannon. Go watch Empire Strikes Back for a bit. That gun that disables an entire Star Destroyer so a Rebel transport can escape Hoth? Goes right through the shields? Yeah, that's an ion cannon. Disables communication and electronics - albiet temporarily, but how vulnerable would the Borg be to something like that?

But honestly, I voted for Star Trek, just because it's better. 5 series, 10 movies, and the only reason it's losing steam now is because Viacom sucks? George Lucas is an awful, awful, stereotypical writer. <_< And don't give me that "The books and the comics create a vibrant universe" because obviously Lucas doesn't give a RAT'S ASS what the people he licensed to advance his universe added to any possible canon.


And the book of Starship Troopers compared to the movie? Well, once, a long long time ago, I was at a barbeque my friend was holding. We were all walking around his yard barefooted, and I happened to step into some dog shit that at first resisted my foot, but then the hard outer crust cracked open wide and the insides oozed all between my toes with a horrid stench that I still can't describe today.

THAT feeling was the same feeling I had while watching the movie Starship Troopers. God, what a piece of shit. Read the book.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: imfanboy on 2007-06-01 15:01 ]</font>

[Sinue_v2]

Uh, according to the Wiki - The Borg don't use Photon Torpedos. Photon Torpedos are innefective against the Borg Sheilds also (without constant variance of the yeild - which has never been demonstrated in Star Trek. The Borg use Gravimetric torpedos, which are quite a bit more powerful than Photon Torpedos.

Unless the Death Star or it's docked fleet was equipped with Ion Cannons, you can't really count that as a plus to the Death Star. If they did have it, why not use it to knock out the Rebellion Capital Ships? The Borg are resistant to EMP and various other electronic destorying attacks - but we don't know about Ion Cannons. The Sheilds may block against it anyhow.

Also, Phasers aren't mentioned as an upgrade to Lazer technology. They're PHASed Energy Rectification. The Borg may not even use Phasers, I'm not sure - but whatever they use is quite a bit more powerful than Federation Technology. Turbo Lasers are extremely powerful, capable of vaporising asteroids, but they are still just lasers. Even the Enterprise scoffs at laser technology against Federation sheilds.

As far as sheilds, in Star Wars they use a form of Deflector Sheild. However these sheilds take a lot of energy to maintain. On smaller ships they only cover vital areas or arcs of the ship - leaving the main defense against attack being manuverability. These ships would be easy to destory by the Borg Cube. The larger and more complete sheilds are only found in Capital Ships, bases, planets, and space stations. However, they work both ways - and cannot be fired thorugh. (The sheild surrounding the Rebel Base on Hoth had to be lowered to allow ships to launch) According to Starwars.com. The Borg use adaptive modulating regenerative deflector sheilds which allow them to fire through their sheilds while still staying protected.

So in essence, what would happen is that the Death Star would likely have to drop it's sheilds (or portions of it's sheilds) to release it's fighters which would be ineffective and easily destoryed. The Borg would transport over dones to the Death Star to begin assimilation. The Death Star would begin powering up it's uber-cannon and turning to position. If the Borg onboard the Death Star can manage to assimilate enough people with knowladge of how the Death Star operates, or their computer systems, it would avoid the uber-cannon and use information on their sheilds either to bypass their deflectors completely or destory the ground based sheild system. Then it's game over, as they'd know the weakness of the Death Star and (even if as a last ditch resort) fire a guided Gravimetric Torpedo down it's exhaust vents. Then proceed to capture the planet and make a bunch of little Ewok Borg.

If the Death Star DOES manage to fire at the Borg Cube - it's likely that even their shilds couldn't withstand the blast from a planet killer. However the Borg onboard will still be present, and growing. They'd modify systems and slowly take over the Death Star little by little. The Empire's best hope at that point would be to just let Vader escape and destory the Death Star themselves (along with everyone else on board, cause they're just evil like that)... but not before the Borg sent out coordinates to that sector ensuring a future invasion by many MANY more Borg Ships.

[Jehosaphaty]

haha nerds http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_wacko.gif

I could never get into star trek; although lavar burton from reading rainbow always cracked me up. I wonder what became of him.

[DurakkenX]

he's taken on other roles... last time i heard of him was on a show honoring roots a few months ago...

[Sinue_v2]

I heard he was going to replace Dave Chappelle on Season 4.

[xeku]

not true xeku... we just see a lot of the bigger ships simply because they hold more people, but there are many smaller ships that are specifically designed for combat. However federation ships, are not battle ships and are designed to handle many small ships. in fact ships that made for battle in the federation are banned. There is however one battle ship in the federation fleet and it's much smaller in size and such. The klingons also have many small battle ships.

fighters though, in the star wars world aren't really effective as even at high velocities and such it would easily trackable and blown up. The only problem is the number, but at those sizes they could eliminate a number of them at once.

Oh, I realize there are many Star Trek vessels designed specifically for combat - I just always thought it odd that they rarely flesh these out, outside of the novels, games and side stories.
You'd figure that these would have turned up in some of the bigger battles that occurred in the TV series and films....I think the closest we saw of this was towards the end of DS9 (a series I really liked by the way), but I digress.

Plus, if they are banned then what's the point, really?
They don't exist in any significant quantity to put up much of a fight against an Imperial fleet.....

SW fighters ARE cannon fodder - but even cannon fodder requires resources, attention and personnel. Flies they may be, but you still have to take the time to swat them down at some point. It helps if you have fodder on your own to set aside for this task.....fleets in the Trek universe just don't have this....none of the major players in ST, as twisted as some may be, could realistically afford to throw lives away like the Empire could.

Evil dictatorial bastards are good like that..
This topic rules..

[DurakkenX]

The reason you never see them in star trek is because there is no "wars" per say there is never a large gathering of ships and military out there in the show. Most often the ships are very far into the outer perimeters of the federation or beyond. You aren't going to see many ships out there.

Also that is only the federation and it is because they view that if you build a military you are going to use it or be seen as an aggressor. However, It's stated by just about every new race they come across that for peaceful science vessels they sure are well armed. They also addressed this issue in Enterprise...Archer originally didn't want weapons on board, but when he returned the reoutfitted the ship with many new weapons and he gave recommendations that no matter what kind of ship it is it should be outfitted with the best weapons and defenses possible.

Also it's inefficient to carry "fighters" in space simply because the way they are you need to have more crew, bigger ships, and also take time to gather those ships and such. Noone in their right mind would bring fighters into space. They are only good for messing with sensors and you can do that with probes that have been used in multiple ST episodes. All you have to do is shoot the mainship and leave...fighters really can't do anything after that unless you have fighters of your own...

But...then there are Ori Battleships...that absorb all attacks and use it to power their own cannons and also have near infinate power.

[xeku]

Inefficient to carry fighters in space?
You know, I 've never seen it discussed one way or the other....it's just not ST cannon.
Never seemed to pose a problem for shuttles or ground craft though...

I've never really cared for the Borg...
Even the power of the Borg, like other's mentioned here...they really didn't have to deal with much resistance at all.......the whole resistance is futile remark was comedy gold, really..
I recall thinking....what resistance? You call this resistance? These losers are pushovers...that qualifies as a damned fleet??...but it made for interesting multi-episodic story lines...good TV wasn't it?

I actually let a similar rant off just to piss off a trekie bud back in the day.....cracks me up, as he thought I was serious:

What the hell would the borg do against fleets of capital star ships nearly as large as their damned cubes (with weapon systems designed to wipe entire sentient populations off the surface of planets), space stations the size of small planetoids, tens of thousands of fighter and support craft, and a nearly endless supply disposable, cloned foot troops?

Borg board room meeting: Oh fuck me - we can't possibly assimilate them all!....we haven't the damned real estate for this crap.
We would spend days phasing these little buggers and get absolutely nowhere...and then they would just send more..and not a one of them have anything useful to contribute to the borg collective...empty headed little droid bastards. And the mouth breather with the plastic shogun helmet...I don't want to see the skeletons in his closet..
Damned inefficient use of time, but hey, we don't get emotional about these things, so..

And I continue:
And the Feds? Pansies....oh, but they have humpbacks, and nifty spandex pant-suits, and George Takei, and San Franciscans of the future at their side, and a money-less economy!....my bad.

Klingons are cool, but their cheezy sword-can-opener thingies have got to go, and Romulan chicks are hot, but I don't wanna see anymore at the Ren fair this year dude....

And dude, the FORCE...don't forget the Force..it's all about the force....and the Oz's green muppet that speaks in tongues..

Back to reality http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_wink.gif
No mention of hyperspace technology? ...entire reinforcement fleets can arrive in a blink of an eye....not to mention the convenient escape tactic this provides..
I recall reading somewhere, that the Empire was experimenting with weapons that allow them to trap vessels within hyperspace - literally open the door to a random hell, then kick the helpless sap down the stairs.....slam goes the door, down goes the key....no combat required!
That's freakin' hardcore...lol..
Damn that would suck....I just got eternally, inter-dimensionally owned.

And remember folks, in Lucas-land, anything goes and probably will (if it hasn't already) because it's in a galaxy far far away...

Heh, I can't believe I'm actually discussing this stuff....but this is a Phantasy Star forum.
It's is stupid-fun though, so what the hell..

PS: Oh, and Dune and Blade Runner kicks all their asses!......and Patrick Stewart actually had hair in Dune, and Sean Young was fine..

[Solstis]

The Borg would probably just build some kind-of transwarp bomb and blow up everything in the Star Wars galaxy.

The problem with the SW universe is that it was never serialized (made for TV!) in any canon form. There really isn't any time to explain the technology of the SW universe in the time allotted per-movie.

Also, Sinue, I'm pretty sure that the Star Destroyers can fire through their shields, unless each gun turret has a tiny pocket of non-shielding.

Anyway, all the Galactic Empire would have to do is hyperspace jump its ships into the Feddie/Borg ships. They have enough of the things.

Link (I haven't actually read all the way through yet): http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Tech/Industry/Industry2.html, though it seems a bit fanboyish.

[Weeaboolits]

It's obvious who'd win.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v643/darth-jar/sig/the_ruiner.jpg

[DurakkenX]

the difference of carrying fighters in space vs fighters on a planet is a simple one... you leave fighters in space they have no way of getting around they just sort of die. On a planet they simply land and live there...

Fighters can only exist in space cultures where there are a lot of cannon fodder that doesn't matter to the culture whether they die or not. The only other time is when there very small elite military strike force fighters that can get back to their mothership fast or have the ability to travel at faster than light speeds alone. The federation's shuttles are very much fighters, but aren't built for maneuverability, however there are ships built for maneuverability in the ST universe shown in ST:TNG at the academy.

Also like i said fighters are still inefficient overall as if you got to make a retreat you can't until your fighters have all docked and such, they take up crew space, and launch space, and various other resources.

The best solution is drones that set up a network around the ship... they would provide extra shields, weapons, and throws off sensors. It also saves space, allows you to carry extra supplies, and doesn't need you to carry more resources for more crew.

So yeah over all fighters are just worthless in most cases.

But like I said I'd like to see Borg vs Ori... They are prolly the most equivilant overall between the enemies of the series.

[DurakkenX]

On 2007-06-01 18:30, Solstis wrote:

Also, Sinue, I'm pretty sure that the Star Destroyers can fire through their shields, unless each gun turret has a tiny pocket of non-shielding.



From what I have seen they don't have shields... no ships to my knowledge in the SW universe have shields

Also hyperdrive isn't an invention of the SW galaxy and is also dangerous to plot new hyperdrive routes. It's a very lack luster technology at best and the fact is it isn't a very reliable system of travel. So you have to get into federation space map it and send out the maps before you can just hyper drive in v.v

[Solstis]

Drones are banned in the SW universe nowadays (nowadays?).

Would suck for the Ori if the Borg assimilated the supergate.

Star Destroyers very much have shields. X-Wings have shields. A-Wings have shields. Every major featured ship aside from the majority of the Tie line have shileds (and some Tie fighters have shields and cloaking, but they weren't very popular). Anything that takes damage and goes blue and whatnot for a second has shields.

Pre-Galactic Empire capital ships may not have had shields, though I believe that they did.

Hell, the Gungans had shields.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Solstis on 2007-06-01 19:01 ]</font>

[Ketchup345]

The orbs on the Star Destroyers are sometimes referred to as shield generators (see Episode 6: Return of the Jedi). They double as sensors.

Another link from the site Solstis linked to, with a comparison of Star Wars and Star Trek ships in terms of firepower and travel:
http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Essays/FiveMinutes.html
To dispute Solstis's link a bit; the Empire probably may have hired some independent contractors. >_>

In Star Wars, carrying fighters is nothing for the Empire, as the pilots are probably similar to (at least some) stormtroopers in that they are cloned in very large numbers. Also, as seen in Solstic's link, the Empire has the ability to rapidly build very large ships.

[DurakkenX]

as i said ketchup... unless you don't mind losing your pilots, as in the case of the Empire, you will not be using fighters. It's beneficial to have human pilots, but at the same time it takes time to train pilots and it takes time to build fighters and most cultures don't want to lose people above all else. After all if you win the war but you are all dead did ya really win. The empire is a special case as are most other 'fighter' using space civilizations.

[omegapirate2k]

This topic needs moar battlestar galactica.

http://galacticaa.net/wp-content/images/legos.jpg

[Allos]

On 2007-06-01 18:56, DurakkenX wrote:

From what I have seen they don't have shields... no ships to my knowledge in the SW universe have shields





I guess you don't really know that much about the SW universe now do you?

[Weeaboolits]

Don't they all have shields? *has only watch Episode One all the way through*

[Allos]

On 2007-06-01 22:10, Ketchup345 wrote:

In Star Wars, carrying fighters is nothing for the Empire, as the pilots are probably similar to (at least some) stormtroopers in that they are cloned in very large numbers.




Imperial fighter pilots are not cloned, and rather are taken from human applicants to the Imperial Flight Academies. Also, contrary to what the movies imply (and proven wrong by the expanded universe in SW), not all Stormtroopers are clones. After a rebellion amongst a group of Jango Fett clones, the Empire decided that a larger pool of clone templates was needed for stormtroopers. Shortly thereafter, stormtroopers were a mixture of clones, human applicants, and transfers from the Imperial army.

It must also be said that contrary to what most people believe, stormtroopers aren't the Empire's main infantry units. They're shock troops, usually used in assaults and security keeping details on dangerous systems. To be promoted to a stormtrooper is an honor in the Imperial Army. The more specialized your stormtrooper unit is (i.e. Scout Trooper, Snow Trooper, etc.) is a general indicator of a further promotion, and a more elite status of the soldier. The same can be said of TIE Fighter wings and what particular TIE the pilot is using.

[imfanboy]

On 2007-06-01 16:11, Sinue_v2 wrote

(a lot of stuff about how the borg would win in an Empire vs. Borg situation

Wow.

Just... wow.

This site totally pwns your every argument: http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire

This guy took everything that I 'knew' loosely-based on technical specifications and everything else and then put it all on the board, laying it out point by point. Here's some choice bits, edited for length, the full versions are on:

http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Tech/Myths/Myths_SW.html
http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Tech/Myths/Myths_ST.html


3. The Borg can assimilate virtually anything they come into contact with.

This myth is unusually irksome. Unlike some of the myths described on these pages (particularly the various silly anti-SW myths), it is not restricted to a small minority of Star Trek fans. Instead, it is accepted by a lot of Star Trek fans, perhaps most of them.

Cracking the myth

First, the obvious question: is this really a myth? Or is it the reality of Star Trek? Well, it is pretty obviously a myth. The Borg were unable to assimilate Species 8472 life forms or bioships in "Scorpion". They were unable to assimilate Data when they captured him in STFC. The Hirogen border their territory and have resisted assimilation for thousands of years. The Dyson Sphere seen in "Relics" has undoubtedly been sitting around for millions of years, given the extent to which its star's aging process had progressed, yet it showed no signs of Borg encroachment. The Voth also border Borg territory, and appear to have no fear of Borg assimilation whatsoever. We have several concrete examples of their inability to assimilate biological life forms and/or technologies. Is any more evidence necessary? The Borg obviously cannot assimilate any and every life form or technology, and we have canon proof for this conclusion.

It doesn't matter how "special" their failures were; they were still failures. And as long as we know that they can fail to assimilate a life form or technological object, then we know that they cannot automatically be assumed to be capable of assimilating any and every alien race or technology that they encounter. They might be able to do it, but they might not. It certainly is not a foregone conclusion.

4. The Borg can adapt to any weapon, and become immune to it.

Where did this myth come from?

I'm still trying to figure out exactly how the idea spread that the Borg become godlike, invincible and immune to a weapon once they figure out what it is. While it is true that the Borg seem to be able to resist Federation weapons quite well once they figure out what they are, there is no indication that this means they are completely immune to any and all weapons once they figure out what they are.

I am guessing that the myth spread because the Borg were seemingly impervious to the attacks of a single Federation starship in "Q Who?". However, the clash between the scientific mentality and the superhero mentality again rears its ugly head. Rather than describe the ability to resist the weapons of a single Federation starship as a lower limit, the fans have instead decided that it is proof of godlike omnipotence!

Cracking the myth

This myth is clearly refuted by the canon films and episodes. In STFC (First Contact), we see that although a Borg cube can become seemingly impervious to the weapons of a single Federation starship, it cannot withstand the massed attack of dozens of Federation starships. This demonstrates that Borg "adapted shield" lower limits are somewhere above the firepower of a GCS and below the massed firepower of a fleet containing dozens of Federation starships. We can also see Borg cubes being blasted into fragments by Species 8472 bio-ships and destroyed by simple planetary debris in "Scorpion". And of course, we all know that Borg drones are helpless against any sort of physical attack, whether it's the claws of Species 8472, the bullets of Picard's tommy-gun in STFC, a well-thrown elbow, or one of Worf's various artfully sculpted slicin' and dicin' toys.


5. Imperial turbolasers are lasers, because they have the word "laser" in the name.

Amazingly, I routinely get mail from fans of both Star Wars and Star Trek, insisting that turbolasers must be lasers. The usual justification is that they have the word "laser" in the name, so they must be lasers, right? Well, this idea stems from an extremely simplistic and close-minded interpretation of language. A language grows over time, rather than being invented or created. As a result, it will invariably incorporate countless archaic meanings, holdovers, cultural references, etc. One could probably expend huge amounts of space describing the various archaic terms in the English language, but a few examples are easily applied to the turbolaser issue.

Cannons

Science fiction is replete with cannons. Phaser cannons, turbolaser cannons, isokinetic cannons, disruptor cannons, laser cannons, ion cannons, and various other permutations upon the word "cannon" are liberally sprinkled throughout various science fiction series such as Star Wars and Star Trek. But what is a cannon?

Cannons are primitive projectile weapons, which hurl projectiles through the air after being ejected from the barrel through gas pressure, which is created by combustion of explosive chemicals. Does this mean that we should assume that every science fiction "cannon" is therefore a primitive projectile weapon? Of course not- in the science fiction world, the term "cannon" obviously has grown to encompass beam weapons as well as projectile weapons.

Rifles

Have you ever noticed that Imperial stormtroopers carry blaster rifles, and Federation troopers carry phaser rifles? This may not strike you as odd, unless you ask yourself what a rifle is.

A rifle is a type of projectile weapon. By cutting spiral grooves into the inner surface of a gun barrel, it is possible to direct the bullet so that it has a significant spin as it emerges from the muzzle. This spin changes the aerodynamic characteristics of the bullet, and tends to increase its range and accuracy. Therefore, a rifle is a projectile weapon with spiral grooves cut into the inner surface of its barrel.

However, the concept of rifling is completely inapplicable to an energy weapon, or even a particle beam. Therefore, it is quite obvious that neither phaser rifles or blaster rifles can possible be rifles. In the language of the Empire and the Federation, the word "rifle" has obviously changed from the very precise, specific definition of "gun with grooved barrel" to a much more generalized, vague definition such as "large handheld weapon".

In conclusion, although there are countless examples of archaic terms in the English language, the above examples are highly applicable to science fiction and demonstrate the foolishness of trying to guess what something is, based entirely on its name.

It is actually very easy to determine that turbolasers cannot possibly be lasers. Lasers are merely a coherent assembly of photons, and photons have several important characteristics:

1.They always travel at the speed of light in vacuum, which is hardly surprising since they are light.
2. They do not interact with one another. If two lasers intersect, an interference pattern may appear in the region of intersection, but they will not impede one another in any way. The beams won't "bounce off" one another, stop at the collision point, or change direction or speed. They will continue as if nothing had happened.
3. They do not radiate energy in any direction other than their direction of travel. In other words, you will never see a laser in vacuum until it hits something. This is how laser pointers work- you can see the red dot but you can't see the beam. When lasers are filmed for dramatic purposes, they are invariably filmed in an extremely smoky or dusty environment, so the viewer will see the laser scattering off the dust and smoke. In a vacuum, a laser will always be invisible.

Obviously, turbolasers cannot possibly be lasers. They exhibit none of the characteristics of lasers. They travel much slower than the speed of light, they interact with one another (as demonstrated by the combining Death Star beam), and they are visible in vacuum. To put a twist on an old saying, if something doesn't walk like a duck, doesn't look like a duck, and doesn't quack like a duck, it probably ain't a duck.

BTW, Lasers ARE phased-rectified light, as you'd know if you had any basic science course; Roddenberry just made up "phaser" because it sounded phuturistic - er, futuristic.

...And the thing about shields is... well... there's a huge difference between ST and SW shields you don't know. In ST, shields are one big bubble, for the most part. In SW, they overlap, and individual shields can be dropped and raised at a moment's notice.

Read the website in its entirety; I didn't care much one way or the other about this argument but Wong SOLD me. Star Wars technology is thousands of years in the future; Star Trek is probably only a few hundred, even accounting for the Treknobabble.

[imfanboy]

Oh, and Sinue, it's my firm opinion that the guy who runs that website LOVES Star Wars AND Star Trek; he just has little tolerance for fools and poltroons... just like me. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_wacko.gif

[DurakkenX]

imfanboy, that's a nice read...

A lot of SW stuff is speculatory and also a lot of it seems pretty impractical in it's deployment. This is not to say it's less advanced, but that it's most likely not their own technology. It should be noted that most of SW's races are varied and it is known that their most advanced technology came from an outside source. I would say that The hyperdrive engine, gained through outside interference, would also bump their basic technologies up a bit due to power source upgrading. I feel that most of the cultures are from 20XX era with higher lvls of tech as it shows with their construction methods and such.

Based on the probability that their tech is based on a transwarp type system from another galaxy i'd say that the borg would dominate the empire due to understanding the tech more and having other techs beyond that. It is even shown that their ships aren't 100% reliable and break down in SW...and it also shows in ST that the Borg have similar travel abilities to that of hyperdrive.

It is also pretty apparent that the SW galaxy is stagnant at best and only escalating power outputs and sizes. They may be stronger as of right now in their history, but it is likely that the federation would over take the empire in the near future when counting on the scale of centuries. It is in fact shown that 29th century federation technology far excedes that of the borg, that of many other races, and even that SW.

But it must also be stated that the wars of ST are based of phase variances, frequency modulation, and tactics rather than pure brute force like SW is and also some technologies in the ST universe have been banned for various reasons...So whether or not they have the power to eliminate the more powerful and bigger ships in the much bigger empire is really unknown. It is known however that with relatively old obsolete technology a ship the size of around 8-10ft circumference has enough power to destroy the earth in 2160...and the current date of ST is 2373 or something like that. That pod takes a while to power up and destroy the planet, but it's small...I'd image these things could be fitted to many ships, but are not.

Another point is that in voyager they cracked the warp10 barrier and no how to be every where in the universe at once ^.^ so the speed of the hyperdrive is even obsolete in that sense too.

[Solstis]

I think that the point is that the SW Galaxy and the ST Galaxy would have a hard time invading the other.

The Federation has no real invasion force, the Borg probably wouldn't bother unless there was a convenient wormhole, and the Empire would have to spend centuries mapping new hyperspace cooridors. Only the Yuuzahn whatsthem in SW lore has no problem being in "open" space, and I don't recall any other canon-ish instances of extra-Galaxy travel in SW.

SW technology is ancient in most ways, though various races have their own innovations. Future Trek technology, yeah, could probably annihilate it easily.

Also, Zaphrod Beeblebrox was at every point of the Universe at once first. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_razz.gif

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Solstis on 2007-06-03 11:47 ]</font>

[Weeaboolits]

On 2007-06-03 11:46, Solstis wrote:
Also, Zaphrod Beeblebrox was at every point of the Universe at once first. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_razz.gif That settles it, the Vogons'd take 'em all out. ;]

[imfanboy]

*sigh* here's another quote from the website.


Myth 3. Imperial technology is primitive because it doesn' t have a slick, "modern" look.

General Appearance

"Appearances are only skin-deep". This maxim has always been true with respect to people, and it can also be true with respect to technology. In the 20th century western consumer markets of Earth, product performance was emotionally connected to product appearance. Vast sums of money were expended by industry to produce products that had just the right "look". But this "look" did not necessarily have anything to do with technological development or measurable performance.

In the military market, the outward appearance of warships, fighter aircraft, and ground vehicles changed very little from decade to decade. Those products were designed for performance, without regard to marketability. So too, are Imperial vessels. Smooth, polished finishes are irrelevant in the vacuum of space. Rounded, aerodynamic shapes are meaningless without an atmosphere. The demands of warfare require utilitarianism, not fashion statements.

And


The Death Star is an example of Imperial technology, not a stupendous leap forward from Imperial technology. There are strict limits to how far a new piece of technology can advance the state of the art, because of the inter-related nature of scientific and technological developments. Frankly, this should be obvious even to those with no experience in the field. It is not, as they say, "rocket science." One does not climb a ladder from the first rung to the second rung, and then suddenly leap to the twentieth rung. One does not leap from learning his ABC's to reciting Shakespeare. One does not jump from basic arithmetic to university-level calculus. And Leonardo Da Vinci wouldn't have been able to build a 1999 Corvette no matter how smart he was, and no matter what insights he had. In fact, the combined resources of the entire planet Earth at that time would not have allowed him to build one 1999 Corvette, even if you gave him complete blueprints. There are so many supporting technologies required that the blueprints by themselves would have been utterly worthless.
In order to get any real data that can actually compare the two, we have to treat the movies and books of both Star Wars and Star Trek as sober records of the various capabilities of those civilizations. Otherwise it's just going, "Nah nah nah, I can't heaaar you!" which I realise trekkies are capable of. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_wacko.gif

Let's see, in Star Wars they can:

Citify an entire planet (Coruscant, the central world of the Republic and the Empire) a feat barely matched by the Borg, and even then they destroyed the atmosphere in doing so (check out First Contact if you don't believe me). Supposedly there are several worlds like that in the Core systems.

Build two starships 120 and 160 kilometers in diameter (the Death Star was NOT a space station), an engineering feat not equalled by the Borg in any way, and they had a schedule to build the second station, in almost total secrecy, in less than a year. Not only that, but the way it was constructed (only raw materials were shipped to the Endor system, no finished products whatsoever) implies that the Empire possesses replicator technology; they just don't use it for anything so frivolous as making 'food'. Heck, in one of the early novels, they even name "Duplicators, which can make any object provided it has the raw materials" - novels which existed years before The Next Generation.

The flagship for the Empire, the Executor-class Star Destroyer, is 17.6 kilometers long - if it were a SOLID block, it would have to be 700 times stronger than the strongest material we currently possess today just to avoid breaking under its own acceleration! Since it's not a solid block, that means their best structural technology has to be hugely stronger than ours.

Travel from the Outer Rim of the Galaxy the Core, in a DAY. Unmapped jumps may take longer, but the fact is that they can travel across the Galaxy in a matter of days.

Have millions and billions of artificially intelligent androids that are so common desert scavengers can hawk them secondhand to dirt-poor farmers in an Outer Rim system.


Star Trek can:

Um, can't citify an entire planet. Period.

It took them 4 YEARS to build a Galaxy-class Starship, at a length of a mere 700 meters. In fact, despite many Trekky misconceptions, replicators NEED raw materials to transform into those 1,000 menu selections; why else would they have to pick up raw foodstock?

The flagship for the Federation, the Sovereign-class, is 685 meters long. It would take 25 and a half Sovereigns end to end just to equal the length of one Executor-class. Not only that, it would be something on the order of 80 Sov's to equal the VOLUME of the Executor.

It's going to take Voyager 75 years using maximum warp to travel across the galaxy, and the Milky Way galaxy is significantly smaller than the Star Wars galaxy. Even a Borg Cube using transwarp conduits takes months to move across the galaxy.

Data and his brothers are, to date, the only androids to match the performance in the same package of the billions in Star Wars. Note that the Federation cannot duplicate the technology Singh put into them; it's too advanced for them to mass-produce.


Federation technology ISN'T that advanced. Well, the various Federation species have had superluminal spaceflight for what, a thousand years at most? Less than 300 for the supposed major species. Kind of to be expected for now.

Remember, we know that the Old Republic stood for twenty-five thousand years, and who knows how long the various galactic civilizations existed before then, at war and peace with each other, developing their technologies?

I'm no great fan of Star Wars. But at least Star Wars generally doesn't consider itself to be anything more than entertainment. Star Trek is inflated with self-importance, and deserves to have that pompousity pricked.

Ironically, the older I get, the more I find that the Original Series was my favorite, because it doesn't have those delusions of grandeur. It's just entertainment, and knows that. I'm only in my mid-20's so I grew up with TNG and DS9, but those series stick in my craw these days.

I leave you with another quote from the website, this time on transporters:


Transporters

Federation transporters disassemble inanimate objects or living beings into their constituent subatomic particles, translate those particles through space to a destination up to 40,000km away, and reassemble them into a facsimile of the original. The working mechanisms of transporters are described in the TM, but they are not particularly important or interesting. We are more interested in the tactical and philosophical consequences and limitations of transporters:

1) Since the original living subject is essentially disintegrated and a functionally identical copy is manufactured from the resulting material, the process effectively constitutes a cycle of death and cloning. This was demonstrated quite clearly in Second Chances when William Riker was effectively duplicated twice, by a transporter mishap. This proved that transportation is actually a disintegration and cloning process rather than a process of intact matter translation, in spite of Federation cultist claims to the contrary. Although some might claim that life continues if a precise duplicate is created from the original, many feel that the discontinuity of consciousness represents death. This may be regarded as a mere philosophical issue, but our officers and scientists are unanimous in their condemnation of this process as an unconscionable concept.

2) Transporters cannot function through shields. Although Federation cultists repeatedly point out that transport has indeed occurred through shields in the past, it must be noted that defects, seams, or known weaknesses in the shields were exploited in these incidents, rather than a new method of simply transporting directly through a full-strength shield. This means that nothing can be transported in combat unless the target vessel's shields are dropped first.

3) Transporters require very precise information about the transport site. Without accurate scans, a transported subject is likely to materialize partially inside another piece of matter (the ground on a planetary surface, or a bulkhead, wall, or door in a starship). This would be instantly fatal, so sensor-jamming can effectively block transporters even in the event of shield failure.

4) The widespread acceptance of transporter technology is indicative of the strength of the Federation propaganda machine, since they appear to have indoctrinated all of their citizens to unquestioningly accept the transportation process without even considering the philosophical ramifications. Even Willliam Riker has never questioned the basic concept of the transporter even though he actually met his own transporter-created duplicate face to face. We know that philosophy and religion both thrived on the Federation homeworld centuries before the Federation came into being, so we can only assume that the Federation has used nonviolent indoctrination and conditioning techniques to discourage philosophy and social diversity.

In conclusion, transporters are a horrifying example of the ruthlessness of the Federation, and its willingness to disregard the issue of continuity of existence and consciousness, in favour of expediency. Some claim that the Empire is ruthless, but we do not expect our soldiers to willingly destroy themselves as raw fuel for a cloning process! The Federation is a plague upon their galaxy, and must be eliminated to free their people from horrors like the transporter.

[Akdov]

Well guys I think it's time to come out of the closet. I know I have been coming here for a long time and many of you may be shocked by this but...I AM A TREKKIE!

Wow it feels good to get that off my chest. I hope none of you will think any less of me.

Oh and DS9 is the single best show ever.

[imfanboy]

Oh, I don't mind trekkies - my mother's one, and I barely hold it against her.

Though she does kind of get annoyed at the way, 5 minutes in to ANY given episode, even one I've never seen before, I can predict what's going to happen. Gah.

[Akdov]

Hey imfanboy. Don't think we've been properly introduced. I am Tristan Akdov nice to meet you.

To be honest I would like to debate you on Trek VS Wars but unfortunately it represents a conflict of interest because it takes me into direct conflict with my superior officer Supreme pantless commander Allos. That and I don't want to turn PSO World into another Trek VS Wars site. So instead I'll give you a website to look at if you feel interested.

http://www.st-v-sw.net/

It is a pro Trek site but it is quite fair toward both the respective strengths and weakness of the UFP and Empire. It also use only Cannon material so no books or video games just the movies and TV shows.

I think the Federation would win or at least force the Imperials into a stalemate but I don't mind if others vote on the Empire.

In any case it's all just an exercise in debate. Just don't take too seriously.

[Thalui89]

starship troopers = good? 0.0 first time ever EVER heard that! xD its only 'good' to make fun of the FAIL acting skills that are in the film! =P Stargate Atlantis ftw http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_razz.gif

[DurakkenX]

Like I said, most if not all their tech is dead. It doesn't evolve in the SW galaxy. Sure it's pretty advanced in raw power, but beyond that it is unevolving. Having a material that can be 700times stronger is not a feat it is a coincidence. If a material was found on a planet that is like spider silk you wouldn't say that is a leap in technology, that's just a discovery.

Raw power, ship design, basic weapons, droid technology, hasn't advanced at all in 4000 years in the SW galaxy and the Hyperdrives have been in use for 30,000+ years without them having fully mapped the entire galaxy or improving the tech.

I'm not saying it's not impressive by our standards or the standards of the 24th century federation when looked at from a single point in history, but it is rather pathetic given the length of time that passes that no advancements are made or very few.

The SW galaxy shows all the signs of a primitive culture being given advanced technology it doesn't quite understand. As far as we know they have been warring for millenia. Their technology hasn't advanced in those millenia. And the uses of the technology all seem pretty primitive or used badly.

AS far as Star Trek having less advanced technology and such, that is a given. We know from a few lines in various episodes that even after a few hundred or so years the vulcans saw that many civilizations were "pre-warp" and that by the time that the Earth was Warp capable there were far more species that were also Warp capable and at an increasing rate. This would indicate that interstellar travel for most of te galaxy is fairly new and only a few species before say 0AD actually achieved it. There are a few galaxy spanning civilizations and incredibly impressive civilizations out there though, but they vanished or died out. This is not unreasonable to think of as if a civilization was the first in interstellar space it would be awefully easily to become galaxy spanning.

Another thing that needs to be considered is that in 22nd century 5 governments became the federation...by 23rd 150 governments joined and by the end of the 24th two major powers supposedly joined the federation, Romulan and Klingon. This shows in 200 years 1/4 of the galaxy is in the power of one civilization. It also of note that the Delta quadrant is largely underdeveloped and shows that their tech was somewhat rushed as in the alpha/beta quadrant teleporters are common place, but in the Delta quadrant it is more common to have warp drive or better than warp drives. This would mean that they just advanced very quickly due to a certain reason in warp tech, but they are also fairly unadvanced. And given that the Federation beat the dominant civs in both the delta and gamma quadrants it's not too much to view that the federation has more tech overall than any encountered race thus far, save for maybe the borg or those several species that tell them to go away... We know by the end of the 29th century the federation has mastered time travel and the ability to travel at much faster speeds. We also know that it is probable that the federation will one day reach the edge of the universe based on various quotes.

Also, that Wong guy I'm gonna say is a victim of being given a little bit of knowledge. As he argues saying "If you asked a scientist if (insert tech here) was possible, they'd say probably, but if you asked if we will ever be able to do them, they'd say no" This is just stupid. If it is possible it will eventually be figured out how to do it most likely. The ability of our current civilization doesn't reflect our future civilization. Hell, go back 100 years and if you asked most people whether or not flight was possible they'd say "probably but we'll never do it" and after we mastered flight and asked if reaching the moon was possible they'd say the same thing, yet we have proven that we are able to do it.

Knowledge without Wisdom is useless.

[Akdov]

starship troopers = good? 0.0 first time ever EVER heard that! xD its only 'good' to make fun of the FAIL acting skills that are in the film! =P

Yeah but the movie was just a satire of a Sci-Fi military novel that was filled with one dimensional characters.

The old Roughnecks cartoon show was really good though. I find it ironic that a TV show aimed for 13 year olds had more character development than the novel and movie combined.

[imfanboy]

On 2007-06-03 11:46, Solstis wrote:
SW technology is ancient in most ways, though various races have their own innovations. Future Trek technology, yeah, could probably annihilate it easily.

Here's the relevant quote from that page:


We Learn Faster

I find that this is a common argument among the more intelligent-sounding Trek debaters:

"The Empire may have faster propulsion and bigger weapons, but the Federation has superior research abilities. Look at how much they advanced in the last 80 years! They learn very quickly and adapt new technologies very quickly, and that would give them the edge in a war. It wouldn't take long for the Federation to reverse-engineer Imperial technology and start incorporating it into their own ships, but the Empire doesn't seem to have any R&D at all."

There are several problems with this argument:

1. It assumes that the technological stasis of Star Wars (and presumably, other ancient technologically static sci-fi groups like the Vorlons and Shadows from B5) must be due to incompetent scientists. It ignores the fact that everything has limits, and Star Wars may have reached the limits of technology. For all we know, the people of Star Wars (and the Vorlons, and the Shadows) might have discovered all of physics. Any technologies which they don't use would presumably be due to apathy or mistrust (eg. their established prejudice against droids, and the obvious philosophical problems with transporters).
2. It exaggerates the rate of technological advancement in Star Trek by confusing incremental improvements with genuine developments. Transwarp research began in the Federation during Captain Kirk's era (before ST3), but after nearly a century of work, they still haven't got a working prototype. In fact, if we look at the improvements of TNG over TOS, we find precious few genuine new technologies. Phasers, photon torpedoes, warp drive, impulse drive, and transporters all work the same, with nothing but incremental improvements between TOS and TNG. Replicators and holodecks are merely creative implementations of transporter technology. Data has sentient AI, but so did M5. Quantum torpedoes seem to be the only genuine new development, and their importance is questionable: in practice, they're just more powerful photorps.
3.It assumes that a war would drag on for so long that research and development would be a major factor. However, the delay between the start of research and the production of a working prototype is far too long to fit within the duration of the sort of monstrous blitzkrieg that the Empire would unleash upon the Federation. WW2 is often brought up as an example of wartime technological development, but we must remember that WW2 lasted for more than half a decade, and we must also remember that the most famous developments of WW2 (nuclear fission bombs, jet aircraft) were the fruition of research that began long before the war. It's not as if scientists suddenly started working on the entirely unfamiliar concepts of nuclear physics and rocketry in 1939! And since the Federation has been working on transwarp for more than 80 years without success, it's downright ridiculous to expect them to go from concept to prototype on hyperdrive in a few weeks or months.

Consider Voyager's "7 of 9." She's part of the crew, but she was a Borg drone. She understands all of the concepts underlying Borg transwarp drive. She knows how it works, and how it's built. But even with all of this formidable knowledge, the crew of Voyager have failed to incorporate transwarp into their ship after years of trying. Why? Because their technology isn't up to the task. Even when 7 of 9 modified the ship to support transwarp, it was found that their systems lacked the necessary precision and control to make it work. I can't imagine how someone could possibly believe that an advanced, alien technology could be reverse-engineered and then duplicated in a matter of weeks or months, either in real life or in Star Trek.


Number 2 is my favorite: Essentially, Star Trek technology has changed but little from TOS to TNG and beyond, probably because they simply don't have any urge to research military applications.

[DurakkenX]

that argument is illogical given that the Sith haven't a moral code the prohibits such things. Time travel over rules all other technology in our conceivable future. The federation has it in the 28xx and various other races have a form of it in 26xx if i recall correctly. The empire does not have time travel abilities (because logically the sith would use it if they did) and thus the federation wins out in the end.

This is not a matter of speculation as the specs of ships are not a speculation when comparing. Also the jedi code and sith code as far as known is very loose in most areas and as such allow time travel and such that would be developed and explored by that time.

Even if you want to argue you're comparing the empire vs the 29th cent federation so it's not fair. I say it is as human civilization has advanced and evolved to have time travel in roughly 6000 years as far as we know from absolutely nothing. The SW galaxy hasn't changed in 4000 years and started off from a higher base.

I'm not saying there isn't a limit to advancment, but if you look at it 29th century federation would massacre the Empire.

If you read his arguments he is not very open-minded or able to think abstractly.

And let's be honest, the argument of utilatarianism is Bull as we don't see anything but that and quite frankly a civilization with that much material and technology at their disposal simply wouldn't be purely utililitarionistic.

Another thing that people forget is that SW was made a movie...a char has to get around quicker and things have to blow up bigger. Star Trek was made for TV so it focuses more on other aspects and you want drama and the main point of the story is exploration and the sense of noone is out here if we run into trouble...It was also designed around an adventure on the high seas while SW was designed around the wild west the differences needed to resemble those two different genres are obvious so are some of the basic tech differences.

In the end this debate is more akin to MMPR vs TMNT or MMPR vs VRtroopers or TMNT vs Swat Katts..or better yet Sonic vs Mario. On the surface all of those sound cool, but if you look at how they are designed they really have little in common.

[imfanboy]

Funny, I just read a section on time travel there...

it's too long to cut and paste, so here's a link.

http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Essays/Trekkie.html#TimeTravel

Essentially, why doesn't Star Trek use time travel to solve everything?

The answer: It doesn't solve a thing.

why you don't see ships slingshotting around the sun every time they screw up - like at the battle of Wolf 359, don't you think the Fed would have liked to go into the past and warn their buddies?

The only possible explanation, assuming that "What you see is what you get," is that time travel can't fix a damned thing, and the Federation knows it. What time travel to change things quite possibly does (viewing the only canon accepted by Paramount, the TV shows and movies, as reality) is create a parallel universe.

Parallel universes are commonplace in ST, we've even seen them as far back as the TOS in "Mirror, Mirror." This is even acceptable by the terms of Star Trek IV. They didn't go into the past to CHANGE any significant historical events; all they did was pick up a pair of whales and an insignificant biologist and bring 'em to the future.

Using time travel to 'destroy the Empire' (assuming that the ST people would know enough to travel back to a point where they could, say, assassinate Palpatine, assuming that they COULD assassinate him) would only create an alternate universe wherein the Old Republic still exists, and in the main universe the Empire would still be marauding with their hyperdrive and capitol ships that put out close to 40 times the firepower of a Galaxy-class.

There is a probable upper limit on time travel; judging by the strain put on a Bird of Prey by a mere jump of a few hundred years, anything longer than that might destroy even the most advanced ships. This is further evinced by the way that the Borg only went back a few hundred years when they got to earth; why not just go back two thousand years and destroy humankind when they thought that thunderbolts were gods farting?


There are two ways to go about thinking about a subject as silly as this. One is that you can compare author intents, and the other is to take what you see in the movies and whatever else is considered "canon" to be historical records, rather than fictional accounts.

The second method is the scientific one, actually - observing a phenomena and accounting for it. Because the scientific method is more reliable than fanboyism (points at name), I use it, and come to the same conclusion: Star Wars would win.


Eh. Too bad, I'm not really entertained by either any more. Give me Futurama!

[Allos]

On 2007-06-03 14:47, Akdov wrote:

To be honest I would like to debate you on Trek VS Wars but unfortunately it represents a conflict of interest because it takes me into direct conflict with my superior officer Supreme pantless commander Allos.






I highly appreciate your considerate actions, though in this case I encourage debate. You get a promotion for this by the way. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_wacko.gif

[Akdov]

The second method is the scientific one, actually - observing a phenomena and accounting for it. Because the scientific method is more reliable than fanboyism (points at name), I use it, and come to the same conclusion: Star Wars would win.


capitol ships that put out close to 40 times the firepower of a Galaxy-class

Only when you use non Cannon sources if you compare just the Cannon the Federation Phasers are about 13.33 times more powerful than the ISD turbo lasers to say nothing of Quantum or photon torpedoes. Most of the pro wars sites use non cannon books to justify hyper inflated firepower numbers and then invent even more powerful tech such as planetary shields despite their being no evidence in the movies.

I could be wrong but wasn't it stardestroyer.net that stated Star Wars fighters can produce about the same amount of energy as an atomic bomb with one blaster bolt? Then how come R2-D2 gets hit and barley gets scratched.

I've even been to a pro Trek site that calculated a type 2 Phasers as being more powerful than capital ship turbo lasers.

You can't apply the scientific method to something like this especially if you pick and choose what you want. You can't keep base delta zero and then throw out another book that says an ISD shields can't last near an star despite the Enterprise doing it numerous times.

Don't take this stuff seriously.

Look I've been to a lot of Pro Trek and Pro wars sites and I've seen a lot of Trek and Wars. After seeing all these arguments my conclusion is that if you include the non Cannon Star Wars wins but if you use only Cannon Star Trek wins.

I'm tired so if you want I can explain my case tomorrow as Allos has granted me permission to debate.

May the force be with you and live long and prosper.

[DurakkenX]

ifanboy... that site is now discredited simply because it throws out much of the ST cannon and doesn't seem to understand it at all

Time travel is possible in 29th century federation... they do police time so that time does not destroy itself through various technologies. It also has a non-interference policy. Although I should mention 2 things... the federation doesn't quite exist as the federation in the 29th century as shown by the fact that the many encounters with the people from the future they they almost always skirt the issue of whether this is the federation or not by saying it is but in a different way... also they never talk about Empires, Alliances, Federations, or what not but rather FACTIONS. This means that all of these time travelers are from the Federation, but are factions of the federation that do not agree so much with the quantum accords.

Time travel in ST when traveling through time show that there are serious repercusions in the timeline and don't simply create a new timeline and everytime when there is time travel, LEGITIMATE TIME TRAVEL, where one goes back or forward in time the go along that same time path way and the member of that time line can not leave that quantum universe. However, there are also sperate quantum universes where all the other time lines take place and they are only experienced when there is a rip in the fabric of space or something like that.

If time travel were not able to change anything then there would not be a reason to police the timeline, nor would there be any attempts to change it, but we have direct proof that there is direct cannon that there is.

He is also outdated on his knowledge of real world physics as the current physics say that there are multiple universes that follow different timeline paths as well as multiple universes where the rules of physics are different.

He discredited himself 3 times in the same argument against the thing that he says everyone else is wrong about v.v

BTW that borg thing about assimilation. There isn't "myth" about it...just idiots and people that can't follow how ideas evolve or why something may be different. Such as Locutis' creation which is the reason the express for having a different form of assimilation originally... well think about this...could the borg assimilate people so quickly if they didn't have nanoprobes? no. So why would they use that for picard... cuz they made him into a different form of Borg so a normal borg nanoprobe injection wouldn't work the same. Also it is now SHOWN cannon that the borg do take a bit of time to take over different type of organisms so it is possible that some of the people of the delta quadrant are not immune but it takes just way too long for the assimilation to work so they don't attempt it. They also may have better medical techniques because of the fear of assimilation. Phlox beat the assimilation process I don't see why others can't.

Also the transwarp drive argument... you have to realize that most if not all the systems were damaged in some way or another over the previous 3-4 years and even the borg use trans-warp conduits when they are at optimal. Voyager is hardly the best for comparing technology, considering it was damaged and such from the very moment we first saw it. It's maiden voyage went directly up against the maquis and then got sent across the universe. No how sophisticated the system a few months later you will find something that's out of whack and needs to be adjusted. With that being said...it's obvious why transwarp drive would not quite work with voyager and why their stuff wouldn't be up to par.

[imfanboy]

Star Trek canon has been OFFICIALLY stated to be:

"The television series. And if a conflict comes up between TOS and TNG, TNG is considered the actual canon." This is from the mouth of the woman who runs the licensing department for novels, who was told this by Gene Roddenberry himself. In fact, Gene said that HE considered TNG to be more canon than TOS.

Somehow, it's hard for me to imagine anything more canon than THE FUCKING MAN WHO FUCKING CREATED THE FUCKING SHOW, Durakken.

How does he throw out any canon at all? He sites every episode that his examples are drawn from. Go and look for yourself. Check it. Look it up.

How is it that every example he brings up is "special" and "unusual circumstances", when anything Star Wars brings up is just discarded as being worthless?

You sound like a Scientologist I argued with on a picket. Everything I brought up that discredited Hubbard, showed that the 'technology' doesn't work, or invalidated his religion in any way was wrong, wrong, wrong.

Maybe Futurama wasn't too far off with the Church of Trek. Seems like a dogmatic religion to me.

I get enough of religous fanatics on pickets. I'll see you on the flipside, Durakken.

[DurakkenX]

#1 the reason Roddenberry said that is simple...much of ST: TOS was simply made up and had little to do with science or anything like that. Also TOS was made where the episodes were pretty stand alone and really much of it made no sense. Take warp drive for example there are cases where they go to warp 15+ and talk about the "time barrier" They also visit the edge of the galaxy in the pilot episode and pike is replaced by kirk in the second episodes and then there is the fact that spock magically increased in rank and originally the position of "1st officer" was called "number 2" and then as far as i know was never used after the first episode till TNG where it was changed to "1st officer"

#2. He simply throws out Voyager and Enterprise, both of which have many more occurences of time travel and show more about the ST series take on it. Like you said the Shows are cannon and the most recent show are the most accurate therefor Enterprise is the most correct and it deals heavilly with time travel.

#3. I am not presenting specific episodes because i don't have a list of every episode with me. However I do have a great memory and have seen almost every ST episodes, almost all the ST movies (some are just too god awful to watch all the way through) and all the SW movies. I read every occurrence he presents and they are well argued, but here's the thing his first example is from before anything really matters and is less cannon than further episodes. The second is stated and then he discounts what is said even though when time travel is ever mentioned in ST it is said to cause a temporal wake and it is also that protection is given to time travelers...this is an assumption of almost every fictional universe that takes up time travel. the traveler is always protected due to just basic physics or a device and this is shown in multiple ST episodes. His last example gives nothing to his argument and his one thing that he says give evidence is someone who would be more effected by a change in timeline than others. Guinan lives for 100s of years and also has existed outside the normal flow of universal time and has gained cerain abilities. OH did I mention he doesn't use any example from Enterprise...you know the series that deals with time travel more than any other series in cannon? Why wouldn't he since this would be the best example of abilities? Simple, read the site a bit more closely...he's constantly downing "trekkies." Given that he'd leave out things about ST to make his points. What he says may be true for a specific time, but not the overall as what he says only covers 10.5 of the 29years of ST content and most of it coming from the earlier years ^.^ and only uses anything from later series to back up his point and usually it's taken out of context.

#4. You are now attacking the person rather than the argument... This is called a logical fallacy. It is often spurred on by not being able to come back intelligently or logically. He has a 2 paragraph rant in the middle of one of his arguments about how trekkies do this and that.

Should i mention that there are a number of people that take offense to being called a trekky and prefer the term trekker and in these groups it is differentiated between what a trekky and a trekker are and if he has as much contact with these people as he suggests he should know this. This and the context in which he uses it many times gives it a very offensive tone.

I have read enough of his material to see where his opinion is coming from. Many of his points are valid in the context he is presenting them in, but in the larger scope of what is and isn't fact much of his federation breaking arguments are simply wrong and most of his SW galaxy facts are guesses and supposition rather than fact based on film cannon.

[imfanboy]

When he busts into a rant mid-page, it looks to be more out of frustration with people that can't use their eyes and evaluate data with an actual scientific viewpoint and detachment instead of letting their own personal desires get bound up in whether or not one has more 'advanced science.'

I liked his anti-Creationism rants too. I gonna use a lot of his stuff in my anti-Scientology work now. It's not that I haven't had these thoughts before, it's just that he's had the time and put the effort forth to organize them very well.


The guy likes Star Trek, pretty obviously or he wouldn't know it as well as he does.

So why do you see his website as a "Star Trek attack page" and not a "in a 'serious' discussion of Star Trek vs. Star Wars, using observable differences between the two universes, which would win?" and proceeding from there.

It's all a joke, obviously. There's nothing more silly than the idea that the Empire and the Federation would ever collide. Why do Star Trek fans take it so seriously?


Lucas considers the movies and the books canon.

Roddenberry considered (apparently) TNG, DS9, and the movies canon - many many many of the examples that this guy uses come from there.

Drawing from those sources, it's clear which society has the superior technological feats - in Star Wars, ships are regularly over 1 mile (1.6km), with fleets numbering in the thousands just for main capitol ships. They have droids like Data by the teeming billions. They have the ability to construct artificial planetoids in less than a year that can travel at superluminal speeds to destroy entire planets in a single shot, heal people from deadly injuries in a matter of hours, and can travel across a galaxy much larger than the Milky Way in days.

Star Trek can do none of those things. Even discounting Voyager, it's seen in TNG over and over and over that these things are feats beyond the Federation, and several of them are beyond the Borg, supposedly the most advanced society ever.


I see you ad homeneming and blanket dismissal'ing his observations all over. C'mon. Don't take it so serious. He observed and drew conclusions based on those observations. That's what real science is all about - not the pseudoscience babbled forth in every episode of Star Trek since the premier of The Next Generation nearly two decades ago.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: imfanboy on 2007-06-04 04:13 ]</font>

[DurakkenX]

See this is the problem... in his work he discounts voyager, almost never mentions DS9, and as far as I have seen does not mention enterprise.

You and a lot of his works says "I'm trying to base it off cannon." And as I have stated ST Cannon is TOS, the animated series, TNG, DS9, Voyager, Enterprise, and 10 movies. It is also well known that the latest incarnation over-rules the previous ones. This is the problem. I am using Enterprise and Voyager which has more cases of time travel than all the previous incarnations and continuously tells how things works and uses a set of rules consistently.

The major point though is that he, and by virtue of using his pages, trying to get across is that these events that most point to are special circumstances, but the thing is...he is confused about time travel and time travel related happening AND uses special cases rather than what is set down as cannon.

Enterprise is largely about the "temporal cold war." Think about that just for a second... The third season is about a race from a different dimension creating a expanding portion of space that is suited to their living style. They mention in this that the possible outcome timelines favor them, federation, etc and as time passes this changes. These are above the ability to travel to another dimension and they have the ability to see the timelines. Here's a question. If a race can do both of these why not go to a timeline that is favorable to them? It's a simple answer found within what i have said before.

I am dismissing him because he has incorrect facts and he is discounting huge portions of cannon favoring the other side, not because I'm bias.

And you...well there is no point inarguing with you because you admittedly don't have first hand knowledge and as far I have read the source of your info is largely biased.

I also will not dispute that I like ST more than SW, but I'm looking at the strongest argument I've seen using facts and such from what he considers cannon of the SW universe and what apparently others do as well as I see massive flaws in his knowledge of the ST side and real physics that he keeps referring to. I'm not discounting what he is saying in any case where it's valid. However I will not accept a invalid arguments and that is what a large portion of his trek beaters are.

[imfanboy]

Uh, what?

Now I KNOW you haven't read his site. These are just off the top of my head mind.

He mentions DS9 A LOT, especially when it comes to actual fleet combat, with multiple ships (which never took place in TOS or TNG onscreen, probably because of budget), he mentions the Marquis often, two of his examples citing the frailty of Star Trek vessels (Jem'Hadar ramming attacks) come from DS9, his stinging incitement of Star Trek ground tactics come from DS9, he brings up very specific episodes from DS9 that shows that Star Trek weapon systems hardly function at 100% efficiency, and in fact are pretty lousy (in a Klingon attack on DS9, despite the fact that the Klingons were moving in straight predictible lines to attack, DS9 MISSES as often as it hits), he mentions the self-replicating mine system that DS9 uses to block the wormhole, he states that the Federation IS ruled by Starfleet because the trial of a civilian in DS9 was presided over by a Starfleet officer (something you only see in military junta)...

From Voyager, he cites the figure that it would take 75 years at maximum warp to crawl across the rather diminutive Milky Way galaxy, brings up the Borg homeworld, mentions Seven of Nine's massive bosom several times http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_wacko.gif, informs that apparently there are severe limitations to Star Trek spacecraft by mentioning that it was impossible to retrofit a WORKING transwarp drive into Voyager, points up the flaws in the idea that the "Borg are invincible" because there's one race that's lived side-by-side with them for millennia and has no fear of being assimilated, and one race that is actively BEATING them and that they required Janeway's help to destroy....


I think he doesn't mention Enterprise because like any true fan, he LIKES continuity, and Enterprise violates that pretty heavily. Still, Enterprise really affects nothing, because an examination of the Star Trek universe for 'military capabilities' must necessarily take place at the MOST advanced point we've seen thus far, meaning we'd better examine the TNG/DS9/Voy timespan.

C'mon dude. Just READ the site in its entirety and enjoy it. It's not there as anything serious.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: imfanboy on 2007-06-04 12:08 ]</font>

[DurakkenX]

I have mentioned all of those points and defeated them but you haven't read apparently.

If he speaks about DS9 it's not on any of the major pages that I have read now the ones that you have proposed nor do they have any real bearing on federation technology as it's not federation technology, it's deep space, and it several different civs working together.

all the voyager points are idiotic at best as they are taken out of context and I already covered them.

Discounting Enterprise is illogical when you are speaking on cannon as it does follow continuity. In fact the only thing that it really isn't good about continuity wise is the look between the NX-01 looking far more advanced than the TOS's enterprise, but if you look at it the way he does and the way it is said to look that way is simply aesthetic and if you look at the ship layout and such the NX-01 is a lot more cramped and less advanced than that of the TOS... This is excluding computer monitors of course as if they were to make it less advanced than or similar to the TOS it'd look stupid... What about the klingons? That's explained...go watch the series.

Now as far as us seeing "most" advanced we are still forced to look at 29th century capabilities and with them come time travelling capabilities that ARE common place. No matter how you look at it 29th century Federation is far more advanced than the Empire. Also you cannot deny this even if you take out enterprise as it is spoken of in TNG, Voyager, and Enterprise.

He discredits himself by throwing out cannon and you are discounted by realizing your source material is someone who has discredited him, while my source is the entire series ^.^

[imfanboy]

*looks at the appropriate episodes*

Oh, for fuck's sake. They rip off Dr. Who and Time Cops and a half-dozen other much better scifi stories and you PRAISE THEM FOR IT??

That's it. I was going to buy The Original Series on DVD, but those scam artists at Paramount don't deserve one SLIM DIME from me. Hell with them, and hell with Trek.

(God, I thought Jar Jar was bad... Episode One is NOTHING compared to that... I'm actually disgusted. Physically disgusted. I'm going to go vomit now.)

[DurakkenX]

Wow... You've just lost more points on credibility. A person who decides on not liking something before they watch it has no credibility when it comes to having an opinion. Not only that but claiming a concept is ripped off is dumb as every series rips off other series and they go back and forth, but beyond that all story concepts are ripped off of each other and it's the mixture of how it's put together and how one tells it that makes the story good, not the story itself as more often than not you've already seen and heard it.

Also let me reiterate this... Your opinion according to you is based on what you have read on this Wong's site and Wong has misrepresented many of the facts or simply got them wrong or just didn't use them. This means your opinion is also wrong ^.^

Let me also state this... I have no need to say Star Trek is better than Star Wars, nor do i care which is "better" I simply think it's interesting, however I do not like when things are presented wrongly and further more presented wrongly while being against presenting them wrongly. I also do not care whether Star Wars technology is superior to any other technology. However, I always try to be as correct and fair about my opinions. As far as I am concerned those who are wrong are misinformed, misundertstanding, or being stubborn, often in combinations. I only get irritated at a person being stubborn as if you are dealing with the other two it is a matter of explaining better, but the third is a matter of understanding and being informed and denying what is fact.

He and you have both admitted defeat as you have both stopped argueing the full facts and defaulted to logical fallacies. Logical fallacies often tend to mean that you have no logical arguments left ^.^

[imfanboy]

I no longer care about the technology - in fact, I'm moving the debate back towards the ORIGINAL intent of your thread, and which is superior: Star Wars or Star Trek?


I watched several of the relevant episodes today - my mother has all the Enterprise episodes recorded, and she's working on Voyager (but it's still in Season 1, so not much hope of seeing that anytime soon.)

And man, what a ripoff.

While I still liked both Star Wars and Star Trek, I could look at that website and be entertained by the whole concept of a war between them. It's so outrageously silly that you can't help but smile. But now... now I actively dislike Star Trek, and not for reasons related to technology credibility, but related to writing credibility.

Borrowing ideas and reworking them is an entirely separate thing from what I'm talking about. Science fiction - hell, SCIENCE ITSELF - can't exist unless you borrow from the previous work of others. Star Wars borrows liberally not only from science fiction, but from Japanese samurai movies from the Kurosawa era. That's fine, because it puts all those things into a new whole and tells a story that just tries to be a story instead of a moral instruction on how to lead our lives.

But to outright steal an entire IDEA, file off the name of the previous authors, and put your own name in its place?

That's plagarism, and it's insulting to me as an audience and a fellow author. Now, if they'd've done something like name one of the ships Tardis, or in SOME way allude to the previous creators, I might have accepted it slightly.

But no. Their stolen characters waltz across the screen self-righteously, and their stolen plotlines unfold so predictably that you don't even need to watch the episode to know how it's going to end.


Star Trek writers have always had problems with credibility since TNG. Obsession with technobabble turned the show into a doubletalk scifi bullshit fest that the writers themselves can't keep straight, and don't seem to CARE to keep straight.

Any race but human is boiled down to a dull-as-paste stereotype. Ferengis are greedy, Klingons are violent, Romulans are wicked, Bajorans are religious, Vulcans are calm... it's only humans that show the typical variety you'd expect from ANY of the species.

The Federation is painted as a happy sunshine land, with Dianna Troi saying in First Contact that "In fifty years, disease and poverty will vanish..." when her own friend, Tasha Yar, grew up starving and fighting for food, and we SEE people dying of diseases, both short-term (space plagues) and long-term (like Doctor McCoy's father).

You'll cry 'that was an exception! that was an exception!' and you'll be right. However, the Federation isn't painted as almost perfect, it IS perfect - as perfect as the world of 1984. Disease isn't said to be just 'mostly' conquered, it's said to BE conquered - despite evidence to the contrary. Poverty isn't said to be 'mostly' eliminated, it's said to BE eliminated - despite evidence to the contrary.

So, which of the other constants in the Star Trek universe is another one of these 'exceptions'? Everyone being happy? Well, as long as you like music made before 1950 and plays written by Shakespeare. What happens to the people who like ska, or J-pop? As long as you like living on your own planet, with no chance to own your own starship to move around - all starships are Federation property in the TNG era. As long as you like being living under the farce of a democracy actually ruled by Starfleet - in any episode we see that the only people who matter worth a damn in the Federation are either Starfleet personnel, scientists, or administrators. What about independant businessmen and traders? What about people who aren't good enough to make it into the Starfleet Academy but want to visit the stars anyway? What about the people who just have that sense of wanderlust, the exploratory instinct that has marked the fringes of mankind for thousands of years?

Nope, none of that's possible - unless you're in Starfleet. Just like the Party is the only one who gets any luxuries in 1984, or just like the Sea Org is the only group that can actually exercise any control in Scientology, or just like... well, any other state where the good of the many smothers the good of the few.

Or the one.

Ayn Rand once wrote,

"Can you sacrifice the few when those few are the best? Deny the best its right to the top -- and you have no best left. What are your masses but millions of dull, shriveled, stagnant souls that have no thoughts of their own, no dreams of their own, no will of their own, who eat and sleep and chew helplessly the words others put into their brains? And for those you would sacrifice the few who know life, who are life? I loathe your ideals because I know no worse injustice than the giving of the undeserved. Because men are not equal in ability and one can't treat them as if they were.”
Ayn Rand knew all too well the injustice of Communism - she barely escaped from Russia before Stalin's great purges of the late 1920's, and she almost certainly would have been killed.

Any time you think to yourself, "The Federation is awesome, and it's really great that the Time Federation in the future is making sure that it'll exist to the far future," ask yourself: Where are the dissenters? Where are the people who think that this system isn't so great?

And what happened to them? Where are they now? Did the happy sunshine Federation gather them all together and ship them off to a world where they could be unhappy together?

The inconsistencies of the ST universe has bothered me for a decade. I'm the kinda guy who has a problem with C-3PO being built by Anakin, for Chrissakes. That guy who did that website actually put the whole ST universe into a framework that I can understand and started to think fondly of once more.

The entire Star Trek series is the glossy cover on a propaganda mag that's printed in the blood of those it dominates. It gave me such a quiet thrill to finally understand all the things that struck me as foolish, facile, ill-concieved, or outright lies.

I was ready to sit down with my mom and enjoy Voyager all the way through (I've still yet to see a single episode with the fabled Seven of Nine in it), then to bust out her Enterprise tapes and play them in the background.

But now to know that it's all just going to end up in a straightup ripoff of many other well done and brilliant stories?

It'd be like watching Kubrick's The Shining and he decides to rewrite it to include a scene where the maniac sneaks up on his wife in the shower with a knife and she sees his silhouette moments before stabbing her to death through the curtain - in other words, it shows a lack of creativity, a lack of intelligence, and a lack of respect for the audience.

And if they don't respect their audience, then screw 'em. I'll settle back with Episode 2; at least Lucas LISTENED to his audience and set up Jar Jar to be the fall guy.

And he gave us a fighting scene with Yoda in it.

[Akdov]

Imfanboy George Lucas has stated on several occasions that he took inspiration from old TV shows. Many of his plots are actually borrowed from Westerns and Samurai films.

I'm not saying Star Wars steals from other shows but it is very difficult to find anything that hasn't been done.

TOS may have borrowed from other sci-fi but at the time it was very unique groundbreaking television.

Star Trek is the yardstick by which all other sci-fi is judged.

[imfanboy]

If it was the yardstick, it deserved to be canceled, and all the writers rightfully should have been drug into the streets and publicly humiliated. :

See, now, Lucas ADMITS that - says it publicly. And then smiles about it and says, "But hey, at least I'm only doing this for fun you know?"

I don't mind adaptation. Like I said, it's been around for But for fuck's sake, the EXACT SAME PLOT, BUT WITH DIFFERENT CHARACTER NAMES, as those time-travel 29th century Federation ST: Enterprise episodes, have existed for better than twenty years - some of them for better than SIXTY as scifi pulp stories from the '30's.

Star Wars adapted and blended various ideas, plotlines, scifi themes, and western themes into one big pot - it's like a stew (no wonder it's tasty!) Star Trek, however, pretends to be an original creation through and through, and most of the time it did reasonably well, so when such blatant plagarism reveals itself, and then is held up by a Trekky (which I use intentionally) as a paragon of the series?

No. Bullshit alert.

Thanks, Durakken! If you hadn't pointed me in the way of those eps, I might never have realised why Star Trek is a crappy franchise.

[DurakkenX]

On 2007-06-04 18:31, imfanboy wrote:
I'm moving the debate back towards the ORIGINAL intent of your thread, and which is superior: Star Wars or Star Trek?


you forgot Stargate, and it's not which is superior, but which is best... 2 people fight and 1 wins, that doesn't mean the 1 who wins is superior, but rather that he is best for the moment



I watched several of the relevant episodes today


I believe I said you need to watch all the cannon and not throw any of it out. So thee first episodes of TOS is just as relevant as Enterprise.



And man, what a ripoff.

But to outright steal an entire IDEA, file off the name of the previous authors, and put your own name in its place?

That's plagarism

Their stolen characters waltz across the screen self-righteously, and their stolen plotlines unfold so predictably that you don't even need to watch the episode to know how it's going to end.


Example...that'd be helpful.



Obsession with technobabble that the writers themselves can't keep straight, and don't seem to CARE to keep straight.


again, i ask for examples of this. I seem to keep everything straight and so do many other people. And if there is something that doesn't make sense within the known constraints of things, such as ship names and systems and such the fans ask questions and argue about it. there is even a joke about it in Galaxy Quest.



Any race but human is boiled down to a dull-as-paste stereotype. Ferengis are greedy, Klingons are violent, Romulans are wicked, Bajorans are religious, Vulcans are calm... it's only humans that show the typical variety you'd expect from ANY of the species.


This only because you are not looking at the characters as they are presented, but there is a comment about this in Enterprise where T'pal or Seval says something to the effect of "Most of the people we have found are pretty one sided extreme, but Humans can be as logical as a Vulcan one moment and the next as violent as a Klingon. This perplexes us"



The Federation is painted as a happy sunshine land, with Dianna Troi saying in First Contact that "In fifty years, disease and poverty will vanish..." when her own friend, Tasha Yar, grew up starving and fighting for food, and we SEE people dying of diseases, both short-term (space plagues) and long-term (like Doctor McCoy's father).

You'll cry 'that was an exception! that was an exception!' and you'll be right. However, the Federation isn't painted as almost perfect, it IS perfect - as perfect as the world of 1984. Disease isn't said to be just 'mostly' conquered, it's said to BE conquered - despite evidence to the contrary. Poverty isn't said to be 'mostly' eliminated, it's said to BE eliminated - despite evidence to the contrary.


Once again you are confining yourself in thought and also not understanding what is being said.
Disease and Poverty have been conquered on Earth, not in the entire Federation. She was speaking ONLY about earth. It would be impossible to eradicate diseases in all space as much of the federation space encompasses pre-warp civilizations. Also in 50 years from that point all known diseases could have been cured considering Humans hadn't left their solar system by then. This is called evolution of a society. It encounters new things as it grows so obviously it can't permanently eradicate all diseases if it's going to grow.

As far as poverty goes. Once again it is speaking ONLY of Earth. The federation uses credits and trades. This is obviously another thing that can't be universal in the federation as the Federation is a group of planets that have simply signed a charter to work together and follow certain rules. The federation has very little to do with planetary economics and each new settled planet is allowed to develop how they will socio-economically but still being under federation laws due to standards and such.




As long as you like living on your own planet, with no chance to own your own starship to move around - all starships are Federation property in the TNG era.


This is wrong. You like TNG. Go watch some of the early episodes. I believe it's 1st season where they encounter a freighter crew who are not Starfleet and they are not under the jurisdiction of the Prime directive.




As long as you like being living under the farce of a democracy actually ruled by Starfleet - in any episode we see that the only people who matter worth a damn in the Federation are either Starfleet personnel, scientists, or administrators. What about independant businessmen and traders? What about people who aren't good enough to make it into the Starfleet Academy but want to visit the stars anyway? What about the people who just have that sense of wanderlust, the exploratory instinct that has marked the fringes of mankind for thousands of years?


refer to the same episode as said above. There is also many Non-starfleet ships mentioned, such as the one 7-of-9 and her parents were in.

Also...the reason you here about scientists and such so much is another simple one. The technology has advanced enough that much of manual labor really isn't needed and craftsmen are pretty non-existant due to natural civilization evolution. You can see this in the modern world. Obviously most people are going to be scientists of some sort.



Any time you think to yourself, "The Federation is awesome, and it's really great that the Time Federation in the future is making sure that it'll exist to the far future," ask yourself: Where are the dissenters? Where are the people who think that this system isn't so great?

And what happened to them? Where are they now? Did the happy sunshine Federation gather them all together and ship them off to a world where they could be unhappy together?


Hrmmm, where are they? Didn't I already answer this earlier... The factions in Enterprise are to be assumed to be part of the federation.

Where do they put them? Ummm jail, away from the ability to time travel. Use your mind a little, isn't this where you'd put them?



The inconsistencies of the ST universe has bothered me for a decade.


You're also the kind of guy who obviously doesn't pay attention as I have covered what you have said or one of the episodes I have to assume you've watched covered.



I'm the kinda guy who has a problem with C-3PO being built by Anakin,


You are supporting a guy who is supporting that the SW galaxy tech is advanced and with advancement comes higher knowledge at younger ages yet you have a problem with this?



The entire Star Trek series is the glossy cover on a propaganda mag that's printed in the blood of those it dominates. It gave me such a quiet thrill to finally understand all the things that struck me as foolish, facile, ill-concieved, or outright lies.

I was ready to sit down with my mom and enjoy Voyager all the way through (I've still yet to see a single episode with the fabled Seven of Nine in it), then to bust out her Enterprise tapes and play them in the background.

But now to know that it's all just going to end up in a straightup ripoff of many other well done and brilliant stories?

It'd be like watching Kubrick's The Shining and he decides to rewrite it to include a scene where the maniac sneaks up on his wife in the shower with a knife and she sees his silhouette moments before stabbing her to death through the curtain - in other words, it shows a lack of creativity, a lack of intelligence, and a lack of respect for the audience.


I have to point out that you do not understand it nor does the guy you are talking about as it is quite obvious by his and your many mistakes in arguments.



And if they don't respect their audience, then screw 'em. I'll settle back with Episode 2; at least Lucas LISTENED to his audience and set up Jar Jar to be the fall guy.

And he gave us a fighting scene with Yoda in it.



Jar Jar is considered the worst character in SW and the Yoda fight scene wasn't cuz he was respecting the audience. It was to boost sales. The SW prequel trilogy failed according to current standards and they did it to try to get more people to come see their movie.


You fail massively...Please don't try again until you have seen all 693+hours of the ST series or at least most of it as you are just making a mockery of yourself.

edit: haha i kept using quest instead of quote ^.^ galaxy quest has been on my mind too much

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: DurakkenX on 2007-06-04 19:31 ]</font>

[Akdov]

That's fine, because it puts all those things into a new whole and tells a story that just tries to be a story instead of a moral instruction on how to lead our lives.

I read an article not to long ago that accused George Lucas of putting ideological spins in Star Wars. This isn't the article I was talking about but it does offer an interesting taste of what I mean.

http://tomgriffin.typepad.com/the_green_ribbon/2005/05/the_ideology_of.html

I mean I didn't take it too seriously but when you over analyze everything then you run into these problems.


Any race but human is boiled down to a dull-as-paste stereotype. Ferengis are greedy, Klingons are violent, Romulans are wicked, Bajorans are religious, Vulcans are calm... it's only humans that show the typical variety you'd expect from ANY of the species.

I know what you mean but remember that the show is about the human condition all the aliens represent humans. It is a message about human nature. If you listen to DS9 audio commentaries they often state that the Ferengi were meant as one of the major human mirrors. Also I think DS9 did a good job of making the species more real and 3 dimensional especially with the Bajorian, Ferengi and Cardassians.

You've probably heard this as well but Lucas has been accused of making his aliens as ethnic stereotypes.

Oh and I remind you that yes the Homo Sapiens club thing about the federation is a problem but this stems from the difficulty of having so many aleins on a TV show. We do hear references to all Vulcan crews in Star Fleet in Take me out to the Holosuite(DS9).

Look I am really not trying to trash Star Wars here or anything but you can find faults with anything. I love Star Trek and Gene Roddenberry is one of my personal heros. I grew up with Star Trek and I take pride in knowing that the show was not just about entertainment but that it also carried a message of peace hope and equality. The show had the first Interracial TV kiss in the U.S. for goodness sake. Martin Luther King Jr. was a huge fan of the show. They even had a Russian on the bridge of the Enterprise during the cold war.

I know that some of the more recent Star Trek shows like Voyager and Enterprise have moved away from the original message but Star Trek has had a real cultural impact.

You don't have to like just please except the fact that other people can like it. I know it sounds stupid like when Fry gave Leela his speech about Star Trek teaching him great lessons and all but I feel this way. Star Trek made scientists and engineers into heros and I believed that it is because of this that Star Trek has inspired me to become and astrophysicists. I'm studying hard in college so I can one day work for NASA.

I know I'm a Nerd and I'm okay with that. I don't mind when people make fun of me or Star Trek but this isn't about making fun of a TV show it's out right insulting the good people who have been influenced by this show.

Star Trek is more than a show it means a lot to me and I'm really hurt that you feel the need to trash it like this.

[DurakkenX]

On 2007-06-04 19:40, Akdov wrote:
the Homo Sapiens club thing


When I read that I thought you were going to point out that a lot of the aliens in ST looked human... ^.^ which is a point of contention for some people, but it is answered in TNG or DS9 why a lot look like Humans... I won't say though.

[Akdov]

When I read that I thought you were going to point out that a lot of the aliens in ST looked human... ^.^ which is a point of contention for some people, but it is answered in TNG or DS9 why a lot look like Humans... I won't say though.


Oh yeah I know what you are referring to.

Incase anyone missed this I was referring to a scene in Star Trek VI when the Klingons made a comment about the federation being "A Homo Sapiens only club".

[Solstis]

The Federation isn't a paradise, aside from on Earth and some other main planets. People still die of disease. People are still poor in the colonies. Some technologies are a long way from being fully dispersed. Space is the final frontier. Watch the TNG opening! Living in the frontier sucks!

The Star Trek Universe is still a dystopia, which is why it is interesting--you don't think that the writer's realized this, imfanboy? If the writers had really screwed up, nothing in ST would ever go wrong. They encounter new diseases, new enemies, new social problems on the frontier.

Duh. ( I mean duh in the way someone would say it with a cute smile, not with a condescending smirk )



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Solstis on 2007-06-04 20:19 ]</font>

[imfanboy]

I'm bringing up specific examples out of the whole. You know, that's called scientific method, Durakken. You have to examine things in order to learn about it.

You don't just look at a forest and go, "Wow, there's a lot of forest there, don't you think?" and fail to give it another thought except to look at the forest. You go INTO the forest, examine individual trees, observe what you can, and draw conclusions on those observations.

You're looking at the entirety of Star Trek and going, "Wow, what a pretty thing that is!" instead of getting in there and examining what's both right and wrong about it.

The best example of that are the dissenters.

Just keep asking yourself, "Where are all the dissenters?" In any actual 'free' society, the gripers are prevalent everywhere, and even if we hate 'em, we've gotta deal with'em. That whackjob who goes and pickets funerals of soldiers who died in Iraq? Even if everyone thinks he's insane, it's his right as a free citizen of this country to do what he wants to and say what he wants to.

There is only ONE example of anyone who's ever disagreed with the 'perfect' Federation en masse: the Marquis. The moment they decide to defend their homes against the decisions of their 'benevolent' government and fight against the Cardassians, they are declared BANDITS, outlaws, and orders are to shoot on sight if the first ep of Voyager is anything to go by.

Whether or not the Marquis are right or wrong to practise guerrilla warfare on the Cardassians and kill women, children, infants by any means necessary, the fact is that the protests of the humans in those planets were IGNORED and laughed out of the Starfleet Command's tactical rooms. Several prominent Marquis were Starfleet officers, this is canon. Why weren't they listened to? Why did they feel so disgruntled, so pushed to the edge, that they rebelled against this perfect society that anyone would want to live in and go fight for their homeland?

What kind of nation suppresses freedom like that and reacts so violently to any flagration of its dictates? It's not like the Marquis were any more than a gnat's bite to the Cardassians or the Federation. I'll give you a hint: Dissent of any kind spelled death in the USSR for better than 50 years. Even mentioning that the system was flawed earned Leon Trotsky an ice axe in his skull.


Another good example of the flaws of Star Trek is the Prime Directive. This has given me fits for YEARS. If the Enterprise (assuming Picard were a different race) came to Earth in the middle of World War II looked down at the way that the Nazis were murdering millions of people, Picard would have shrugged his shoulders, said, "It's the Prime Directive, can't interfere with local planetary concerns," gone into his little office, read a detective novel, and listened to a little light dinner music while people's lives just as valuable as his were snuffed out.

Now I'm starting to think the Prime Directive has a darker motive. Look what happened to the Vulcans after THEY decided to come over and help out Cochran reunite his planet? Now the Vulcan race is subsumed into a Terran hegemony, an insignificant part of another race's plans and ambitions. A properly paranoid human council would fear something like that happening to them; remember that everything in Star Trek has the subtle idea that humans are the best, humans are the best, humans are the best.

If another race shows up that could possibly beat the humans at their own game, but that might wipe themselves out before then, what would you do? Just sit on your hands and watch instead of actually helping them.

Part of my personal philosophy is that the job of the strong is to not only protect the weak, but to teach them strength of their own so that they become your equals. The Federation doesn't believe that. They believe that the only strength in technology and advancement you deserve is that which you EARN, and that the only job of the strong is to stand there and watch unless their own strength is threatened.


Another thing: What happened to religion in the Federation, human religion at least? Oh, other races have philosophies and religions, but they're invariably portrayed as 'inferior' and 'limiting' - hell, Vulcans may be logical, but they refuse to feel emotions. How limiting is THAT?

The idea of a future with no religion appeals to me. As they say, "Stalin and Hitler are battling it out for second place for All-Time Genocides, with God in a commanding lead!" I've picketed against Scientology before, because I see them as a global scam disguised as a religion.

But how did this era of 'no religions' come to be? Sometime between Cochran's first flight and TNG, all religion 'vanished' because of beings from beyond the stars? Or is it that religious types are restricted from entering Starfleet? Or is it that they eradicated religion in the same way that Stalin and other Communist countries have tried before? Look it up - in China, the Church is an underground organism, and you can go to jail for worshipping as you please. It's all over, because religion teaches a different way of thinking than a totalitarian government, and when the two collide people usually go with their religion.

And people cling to their religion like molluscs cling to rocks. No truthfully 'free' society would have interfered with that, either; in an 'ideal' Federation, it might be seen as a bit silly, but still allowed. However,Starfleet has MET godlike beings on a regular basis! Who's to say that a 'free-floating sentient energy being' might not be influenced by prayer?

But since HUMAN religion isn't present at all, it must have logically been eradicated somehow. Re-education, shipping to prison planets (that you can't escape from because all the ships are Federation-owned), outright slaughter, pick your method because it must have happened SOMEHOW. Ah, the crime of destroying such treasures as the Vatican's Sistine Chapel... Michaelangelo, did you paint in vain, if the Federation rises to power?

It must have happened sometime between TOS and TNG, too; in the original series, there was a small chapel in the ship. Not so in the Enterprise-D! Apparently, everyone thinks the same way: That religion is shameful nonsense to be performed only in your own quarters.

Even MINOR variations from what "everyone thinks" are pooh-pooh'ed as nonsense. Barclay fears transporters, to the subject of much merriment from both his fellow crewman and audiences alike... but why isn't he free to fear transporters? He had pretty good reason to fear transporters, too.


The Federation is portrayed as a Communist paradise (not surprising, considering Roddenberry's extreme political views) with dissent a thing of the past... except when dissenters pop up.

Then, they're dealt with rather harshly - maybe more harshly than we know, especially since this "29th century Federation" could easily pop back and eliminate any serious threats to the rule of the military clique in charge of the Federation.


There's two kinds of equality: One is where every blade of grass is cut to the same length, and one where every blade is allowed to grow as long as it can. Now, the second way means that some blades of grass don't get any sun and die, but the first way means that you'll never know the heights to which some of those blades can grow.

The Federation's philosophy is a "one-size-fits-all" policy, and if you dare to grow in a way they don't like, they'll cut you down to size.


Now, me, I actually kinda like this idea of a dark underbelly. My initial outrage at the outright thievery of the "Time Lords" from Dr. Who, as the "29th century Federation", has faded a bit, and a lot more about the seemingly unworkable structure of the Federation makes sense, if a time travel organization has its own shadowy Prime Directive: to keep the Federation going, at any cost.

But still, I'm mighty pissed off.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Lord



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: imfanboy on 2007-06-04 21:49 ]</font>

[imfanboy]

The real bitch that I have is that the Star Trek writers have NO IDEA that they made this wonderful backstory, and no way to exploit it, because the 'Federation is perfect.' It's just incidental possibility arising from the unworkability of both Marx's and Roddenberry's dream.

[Solstis]

On 2007-06-04 21:46, imfanboy wrote:
The real bitch that I have is that the Star Trek writers have NO IDEA that they made this wonderful backstory, and no way to exploit it, because the 'Federation is perfect.' It's just incidental possibility arising from the unworkability of both Marx's and Roddenberry's dream.



I do think that the writers knew about it, otherwise Sisko wouldn't have had long conversations about the subjugation of the Maquis by the Federation. They also wouldn't ignore the cold, utilitarian Prime Directive whenever they want (though Picard generally sticks to it more often than the other captains).

There would be no dissenters to the Federation if the writers were not aware that it was flawed. It is not incidental. The writers were not all a bunch of idiots. They had limitations on the amount of discord they could show in the Federation, but it does exist. The Feddies wiping the floor with the Maquis shows exactly how flawed that is.

Oh, I'm sorry, that's an accident. I mean, the writers can't be as smart as you. Oh. wait. No.

The Federation has flaws! The flaws are written into the story on purpose! Oi! It is very obvious!

You are making me take Durrakken's side and this is unforgiveable. This is like me agreeing with Dangerous55 on a gun enforcement thread! :< There will be hell to pay!

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Solstis on 2007-06-04 23:29 ]</font>

[imfanboy]

On 2007-06-04 23:27, Solstis wrote:
There would be no dissenters to the Federation if the writers were not aware that it was flawed. It is not incidental. The writers were not all a bunch of idiots. They had limitations on the amount of discord they could show in the Federation, but it does exist. The Feddies wiping the floor with the Maquis shows exactly how flawed that is.

Doh, you're still not asking the right question!

The Federation is presented as perfect and ideal. Why isn't it? And what happened to other people who tried to leave it in the past?

I found another quote from that website that's relevant:


The standard Trekkie fanatic modus operandi is to find an alternate explanation for one event and then ignore contradictory events, often with weird excuses such as "that's an older episode so it's overridden by the newer episode." That's not how it's done; a mathematical analogy would be taking a set of three equations with three unknowns, and solving for just one of the three equations. There are an infinite number of possible solutions that will fit an equation with three unknowns, but the only one that's valid is the one that can also explain the other two equations.

Canon is ALL of the episodes, not just the newest ones. In order to get a relevant result, you have to examine the data from all of the episodes and then find a solution that explains all of them. Oftentimes that's kind of inconvenient for a Trek fan, so they don't do it.

Perfect example: Why do Picard and Troi and all the other TNG members praise the Federation's goodness, when later episodes show that it is distinctly not good, and that it must have in fact done some very wicked things in its past?

Trekkie answer: "Well, newer episodes overwrite older episodes, so we should just ignore what the intelligent and erudite Captain of the USS Enterprise-D said."

Flawed logic, there. You've got to find an answer that includes both Picard's and Troi's beliefs about the perfection of the Federation and the facts presented later on showing the flaws.

Logical answer: That the Federation isn't perfect, but that Picard and every Starfleet member has been so thoroughly indoctrinated that they BELIEVE it to be perfect - or bad things would happen if they said it wasn't.

What kind of military would do that? Not ours. I spent 4 years in the military, and I can tell you that we questioned it, and the wisdom of our government, CONSTANTLY. The only parallels I can point to today are militaries like (gasp!) Communist Russia, the Third Reich, and other militaries where control of EVERYTHING was very, very tight and done from the top-down.

Hell, even the Third Reich military was allowed to question battle tactics and strategies, and was encouraged to do so! Not so the Federation - even though it makes mistakes, it's not allowed to criticise those mistakes...

Either Picard's been brainwashed into believing it with all his heart, or he's intelligent enough to know that his career and quite possibly his life is dependant on presenting the perfect front of a model Starfleet captain.


Darn, now I want to get my hands on the Pegasus Games Star Trek RPG books again just to run a campaign where the characters find that out... it'd be awesome...

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: imfanboy on 2007-06-05 02:02 ]</font>

[imfanboy]

Maybe if I take this post apart point by point, you'll listen.


On 2007-06-04 00:26, DurakkenX wrote:
#1 the reason Roddenberry said that is simple...much of ST: TOS was simply made up and had little to do with science or anything like that. Also TOS was made where the episodes were pretty stand alone and really much of it made no sense. Take warp drive for example there are cases where they go to warp 15+ and talk about the "time barrier" They also visit the edge of the galaxy in the pilot episode and pike is replaced by kirk in the second episodes and then there is the fact that spock magically increased in rank and originally the position of "1st officer" was called "number 2" and then as far as i know was never used after the first episode till TNG where it was changed to "1st officer"

What roddenberry actually said was, according to the woman who ran the novel licensing department, was: "And – okay, I'm really going to scare you with this one – after he got TNG going, he... well... he sort of decided that some of The Original Series wasn't canon either. I had a discussion with him once, where I cited a couple things that were very clearly canon in The Original Series, and he told me he didn't think that way anymore, and that he now thought of TNG as canon wherever there was conflict between the two. He admitted it was revisionist thinking, but so be it."

Whenever there's a conflict between TOS and TNG, TNG takes precedence.


On 2007-06-04 00:26, DurakkenX wrote:
#2. He simply throws out Voyager and Enterprise, both of which have many more occurences of time travel and show more about the ST series take on it. Like you said the Shows are cannon and the most recent show are the most accurate therefor Enterprise is the most correct and it deals heavilly with time travel.

He doesn't throw out Voyager at all - he uses many examples from it, especially concerning time travel. He ignores Enterprise because he has a real life and he made the site before much of Enterprise came out.

But the thing with the canon is that we HAVE to reconcile the difficulties that we've seen in the other series with time travel and the apparent ease with which "29th century Federation" does it. Just like we have to reconcile the fact that it's CANON that "Romulans were the violent part of the Vulcan race which left Vulcan behind thousands of years ago, leaving behind the people who were devoted to logical thought" with the fact that in Enterprise the Vulcans are NOT peaceful, somewhat violent, and quite aggressive.

We could do just what you said and 'leave out the older episodes..."

HOWEVER, it says NOWHERE that "newer episodes take precedence over older episodes." The actual canon rule, taken from the official website FAQ, is: "As a rule of thumb, the events that take place within the live-action episodes and movies are canon, or official Star Trek facts. Story lines, characters, events, stardates, etc. that take place within the fictional novels, video games, the Animated Series, and the various comic lines have traditionally not been considered part of the canon."

That means that it all has to be considered canon, unless something is declared NON-canon. It all has to be possible, unless it's specifically said it's NOT possible. Data making a terrible mistake in basic math? Canon. We can try to explain that maybe he had a short in his brain at the moment, but we can't IGNORE the fact that he made a mistake, because it's canon: it happened in a TV episode.


On 2007-06-04 00:26, DurakkenX wrote:
(snipped for content) I read every occurrence he presents and they are well argued, but here's the thing his first example is from before anything really matters and is less cannon than further episodes.

Do you fail to know that it's all canon, and all has to be accounted for? I suppose so. Well, now you do know, and knowing is half the battle!


On 2007-06-04 00:26, DurakkenX wrote:
OH did I mention he doesn't use any example from Enterprise...you know the series that deals with time travel more than any other series in cannon? Why wouldn't he since this would be the best example of abilities? Simple, read the site a bit more closely...he's constantly downing "trekkies." Given that he'd leave out things about ST to make his points. What he says may be true for a specific time, but not the overall as what he says only covers 10.5 of the 29years of ST content and most of it coming from the earlier years ^.^ and only uses anything from later series to back up his point and usually it's taken out of context.

What did he take out of context? Generalization and strawman, my friend. Present examples; everything I'VE seen which he presented was spot-on.

I said earlier why he left out Enterprise so much: because it was after he made much of the site.

But we see in the Enterprise episodes that ships from the future are not immensely superior to the ships from even the 22nd! Hell, they can't even destroy the NX-01 in a single shot! Maybe they only wanted to play with poor Cap'n Archer, but there has to be limits to the power of time travel.

Why wouldn't the 29th Century Federation have sent a ship from THEIR time back to destroy the aliens who helped the Nazis take over the US? Why wouldn't the aliens send an invasion force back in time, or even one lone assassin to kill Cochran in his cradle, ensuring that no warp drive would ever come from his imagination?

(probably because that would have been 1) realistic, and 2) a very short show, but we're not looking for writing reasons, but observing what's there and drawing conclusions on those observations.)

Even using Enterprise continuity, we see significant problems with the 'power' of time travel. At most, it seems that a time operative can influence events, but not directly change anything. If the Empire came storming out of a wormhole and started stomping all over, it's interesting to say, "The future Federation will save them," but how?


On 2007-06-04 00:26, DurakkenX wrote:
#4. You are now attacking the person rather than the argument... This is called a logical fallacy.

And your blanket discounting of him, saying that he hates Trekkies, isn't a personal attack? Sounds to me like you're actually making a strawman, there: "A straw man argument is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position. To "set up a straw man" or "set up a straw-man argument" is to create a position that is easy to refute, then attribute that position to the opponent."

So, because I'm attacking 'you' instead of making further points (which you have yet to refute conclusively) you say, "you're attacking me! That makes you wrong!"


On 2007-06-04 00:26, DurakkenX wrote:
Should i mention that there are a number of people that take offense to being called a trekky and prefer the term trekker and in these groups it is differentiated between what a trekky and a trekker are and if he has as much contact with these people as he suggests he should know this. This and the context in which he uses it many times gives it a very offensive tone.

From his website:


Do you hate Trekkers?
No, just two categories of Trekkies:
1.Trekkie science-fakers. You know the type: they don't have any real qualifications, but they run around spewing Star Trek trivia and fringe-science jargon until everyone's eyes glaze over, they confidently predict that we'll all be flying around in warp-driven ships with transporters someday, and they read all of the cool science magazines and websites. They think they've memorized enough jargon to make people think they're scientific experts, but they don't get it. Science is not just a collection of arcane facts and terms! It is a method, with well-established ground rules.

2. "Trek is God" fans. You know the type- they believe that Trek is responsible for all that is good and beneficial in society. It promotes social growth. It inspires technological development. It explains to us how we should live our lives. All other sci-fi owes its existence to Trek. Every other sci-fi series has inferior technology to Trek. Every other sci-fi series has inferior acting to Trek. Every other sci-fi series has inferior writing to Trek. Every other sci-fi series has inferior social messages compared to Trek. How annoying! These people never have more than a passing familiarity with any sci-fi besides Trek, and their understanding of engineering is similarly weak, hence their childishly simplistic belief that things like cellular phones wouldn't exist if not for Trek. Their understanding of socio-economic principles is even worse, since many of these people believe the paternalistic TNG-era neo-Marxist society would actually work.

Mmm, which are you? Seems a bit of both. See? It says right there that he knows all too well the difference between Trekkers and Trekkies, and he uses the "Trekkie" label for a very specific reason: because the people who argue his points can't see past the end of their nose.


On 2007-06-04 00:26, DurakkenX wrote:
I have read enough of his material to see where his opinion is coming from. Many of his points are valid in the context he is presenting them in, but in the larger scope of what is and isn't fact much of his federation breaking arguments are simply wrong and most of his SW galaxy facts are guesses and supposition rather than fact based on film cannon.

*sigh* In the Star Wars continuity, the films AND the books are considered canon. Canon is established by the creator of the universe it's from. Lucas says, "The books and the movies are all canon." Roddenberry said, "The movies and the episodes are canon - except where I specifically say so."

And there you go with the blanket dismissaling again! "Much of his federation breaking arguments are simply wrong" is WAY too blanket to be justified by any stretch of the imagination.

And once again, from his website FAQ (underlines my own):


Your site is very one-sided. Doesn't this indicate severe bias?

Ahh, the "one-sided = bias" criticism. Sorry, but strength of conviction is hardly proof of excessive bias! Ask a mathematician about whether 2+2=4, and you'll get a pretty one-sided opinion. Ask a physicist whether E=mc², and you'll get a pretty one-sided opinion. Ask a doctor whether cyanide is bad for your health, and you'll get a pretty one-sided opinion. A one-sided method indicates excessive bias, but a one-sided conclusion, if it comes from valid premises and reasoning, is merely an indication that the data itself is quite conclusive.

Besides, obsessive attempts to "prove" bias are merely ad hominem attacks. Everyone has some bias, but if the method is valid and the observations sound, then the conclusions are valid regardless of the author's personal biases. If you want to attack an argument, find something wrong with the method. Failing that, find something wrong with the premises. If you can accomplish neither, then perhaps you need to rethink your own position.

If you want my straightforward opinion, I think it's pretty damned obvious that a resurgent Empire, with dozens of millenia of space exploration experience, a thousand to one numerical advantage, a thousand to one speed advantage, and astronomical energy-wielding capabilities would make short work of the Federation. I never really gave the whole silly "vs" concept much thought until I realized how many Trekkies were promoting the opposite opinion. That was mildly perturbing, but when I realized that their arguments were almost wholly based on pseudoscience, I decided that someone needed to publicize a more sensible approach. Pseudoscience is a mental disease.


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: imfanboy on 2007-06-05 04:08 ]</font>

[imfanboy]

Lastly, I leave you with a thought:

Who's to say that the 29th Century "federation" isn't really the Empire in disguise, having discovered the secrets of time travel from their conquest of our corner of the Milky Way, and their shadowy goal is to prevent the Federation from developing any ability to counter their inexorable invasion, or allowing a more powerful, more aggressive alien species to take what they see to be rightfully theirs?

We don't KNOW anything about the "future men" except that they like the Federation the way it is. That doesn't necessarily mean they're NICE.

Think about it.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: imfanboy on 2007-06-05 04:34 ]</font>

[Akdov]

Lastly, I leave you with a thought:

Who's to say that the 29th Century "federation" isn't really the Empire in disguise, having discovered the secrets of time travel from their conquest of our corner of the Milky Way, and their shadowy goal is to prevent the Federation from developing any ability to counter their inexorable invasion, or allowing a more powerful, more aggressive alien species to take what they see to be rightfully theirs?

We don't KNOW anything about the "future men" except that they like the Federation the way it is. That doesn't necessarily mean they're NICE.

Think about it.


This is sort of an argument from ignorance don't you think? You can't prove that an evil Empire that collapsed after a bunch of rowdy teenagers destroyed the second death star some how conquered the Federation. Well I for one find it illogical that a bunch of Trek writers got together and said wouldn't it be nice if we made a future that was controlled by an evil empire from another series of copyrighted movies.

Come to think of it you can't really "prove" that the Federation doesn’t gain the ability to travel to other galaxies and that they eventually admit the post-imperial galaxy into the federation.

The Federation isn't perfect but they distinguish themselves in one major respect: by trying to make it better.

[Solstis]

Of course Starfleet personnel are indoctrined. If they had no rigid guidelines to follow, it wouldn't be interesting to watch them have moral dilemmas.

It's written into the show. I don't know why you are so upset with it. Picard is intelligent enough to realize what is going on, but believes enough in the Federation (Earth is a nice, mostly utopian place by now) to support it. It is probably better than the way we live now, or considering how much the frontier sucks, exactly how we are living now.

Oh, and Rommel was forced to commit suicide, and the Nazi forces in Russia were not allowed to retreat (or, god forbid, surrender, though the remainders did). Wow! Lots of freedom in the Third Reich! "Sir, I have some reservations about these gas chambers."



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Solstis on 2007-06-05 08:32 ]</font>

[DurakkenX]

The Maquis are not just "dissenters". THEY ARE CRIMINALS. They attack federation and cardassian colonies. If someone in the US protests it's fine...but if they shoot someone in the head they are put in jail. Same thing happens in the federation. Also you can't say that the Maquis have a right to attack the Cardassians as those planets are Federation planets and the Maquis are part of the federation. If the federation allows the Maquis to attack the Cardassians it is thesame as the main fleet of the Federation attacking Cardassia. Stop being dumb and start using your mind.

The Prime directive was established post enterprise due to archer seeing that the directive from the vulcans was intelligent as shown in the episode. It also only limits interference with Pre-warp civilizations because those civilizations have no chance to interact with the entire galaxy and hence can be avoided. In a TNG episodes, early on Riker is given the opportunity to have a Ferengi vessel destroyed but he says not to do it because they have the right to grow the way they choose AND that they do that it would be like disapproving a part of themselves and not giving them a chance to evolve to a higher plain of thought. The Vulcans had monitered Humans for decades before making first contact and though they were a bit wary Vulcan is close to Earth and had they not come to Earth when they did it is probable that Earth may have grown more violent and eventually made it's way to Vulcan and they would have a had another war on their hands. It is also commented on several times by different captains why to follow the prime directive... and they make the case for it using examples from our history...

The Romulans have never been "violent" in the series. In fact it is said that not much is known about them because such sparse contact is truly ever made and the Vulcans who say that are simply stating a racist belief. Your saying that if I says that all blacks are dumb as a rock that they are all really dumb as a rock even if I've never had any contact with blacks. The Vulcans on the others side have always been shown to have conflicting points to them where they are intensely violent, paranoid, and crafty and use logic to back up what they are doing. We know logic is not always moral and that is how the vulcans are. And also the Vulcans are meant to be a bit different in Enterprise and it isn't till season four that they explain a bit how they change.

Humans are not religious now...our advanced tech and such has pretty much killed much of our religious nature...The reason Bajorians are religious is perhaps because it is more engrained in their culture or perhaps because...i dunno... they were just in a war and almost eliminated which tends to make people a bit more religious. Also it's not that Federation humans don't have religion but more so that they are religious per say. This is also commented on in TNG a number of times and in Voyager.

Lt. Barkly's fears are more about what it does and is laughed at because to them it seems silly. Many of them have gone through and it has become normal for them. Seriously, you've grown up with a camera so you don't believ it sucks your soul out, even if you explain to some who haven't grown up with it and even understand how it all works they still fear it sucks their soul. We think this is silly...why wouldn't we think the same about transporters?

the rest of your arguments, much like the ones above are directly related to you not understanding what is being said at all. This can easily be seen in the fact "I am saying you must take all of the series as cannon" and you saying the exact same thing, but then you are saying that I am not and that you are even though you are discounting over 10 years worth of the cannon and despite you having very limited knowledge.

I know his argument has several false statements. Any statement that is built on falst premises can not be true logically and so even if his or your conclusion is true it is logically invalid. I know his arguments, mostly the ST and real physics ones, are incredibly wrong, because I have seen most of the source cannon. I do not quite know as much about SW cuz I don't read SW books...I also would say that SW books are not credible, no matter what Lucas says simply for the fact that I doubt Lucas has read them all or approved of all that was in them. As far as I can tell he is just being lazy, but oh well. The problem then comes that all arguments based on the movie that was made is supposition... This means that all credible cannon on SW is invalid. So...his conclusion is invalid based solely on his arguments.

Also the Federation is a Republic as far as can be seen, but the Earth and many of the main planets are fascists... There are other planets that are dictatorships and some that are full democracies. This is shown in TNG and DS9...

Please stop arguing as all you are doing is ranting and making invalid arguments that are not supported by any fact whatsoever.

[imfanboy]

On 2007-06-05 08:06, Akdov wrote:
This is sort of an argument from ignorance don't you think? You can't prove that an evil Empire that collapsed after a bunch of rowdy teenagers destroyed the second death star some how conquered the Federation. Well I for one find it illogical that a bunch of Trek writers got together and said wouldn't it be nice if we made a future that was controlled by an evil empire from another series of copyrighted movies.

Come to think of it you can't really "prove" that the Federation doesn’t gain the ability to travel to other galaxies and that they eventually admit the post-imperial galaxy into the federation.

The Federation isn't perfect but they distinguish themselves in one major respect: by trying to make it better.



It's in the exact same vein as "If the Empire invaded, the Future Federation would save them." Both are 'what-ifs', nice to think about, but irrelevant to the basic premise because...

Nothing in ANY of the time-travel episodes says that this Future Federation has the power to do anything more than change a timeline BACK to its own course. DurakkenX's rather silly idea that they'd fix everything is countered by my silly idea that they wouldn't want to, and would actively work against it. We can whatif till the cows come home, but until we have a "29th Century Federation" Star Trek series, we don't know anything more about them than

1) they have time agents that go back to critical periods

2) they usually end up recruiting natives to do their dirty work instead of doing it themselves.

That's canon; what you see is what you get. Nothing more and nothing less. Until some other capability is added, we have to reason based from the premise that THAT is the limit of their abilities.

[imfanboy]

@ Solstis: The Nazi military was encouraged to question military problems and think freely about military solutions - anything evil that the Reich might be doing was slotted neatly into a mental box labeled: "Hitler is always right, and they're just enemies of the Reich."

The mental box of Starfleet personnel is similar, but any problems with the structure of the Federation is not only beyond questioning, but outright ignored!

That's not freedom. If you can't even look at the society you're living in, that's the worst prison of all, and calls into question everything about the Federation.


On 2007-06-05 10:38, DurakkenX wrote:
Please stop arguing as all you are doing is ranting and making invalid arguments that are not supported by any fact whatsoever.

pot/kettle/black much? You're projecting your arguments onto me.

If you have even vague descriptions of actual episodes from your memory to refute my claims, please, bring them up. You know, there's also the Internet; the Wikipedia pages on Star Trek are very well maintained by Trekkers with thumbnail descriptions of EVERY episode available.

The Maquis were human colonists put there by the Federation to cement its hold - and yet, when the time came to make a treaty with the Cardassians, did the Federation do anything to help them? Did the Federation listen to the protests of officers from those planets? Did it CARE about those worlds at all except as a pawn to be traded?

No.

Who committed the first crime here, the Federation or the Maquis?

Romulans are a warlike, manipulative, scheming, violent branch of the Vulcan race - this is canon. This is shown not only from the Vulcan point of view, but from their own actions. It's so canon that I can't believe you even have the stones to say otherwise.

Yes, human technological advancement may have killed most of our religious nature, but what about the die-hards? What about the people who stay with their religion no matter what? The only evidence we have that any human religion exists at all in Star Trek is Commander Chakotay from Voyager, and even he doesn't worship a god, just 'vision quests'.

What happened to them?

This is so laughable that I can't believe you said it.


I know his argument has several false statements. Any statement that is built on falst premises can not be true logically and so even if his or your conclusion is true it is logically invalid. I know his arguments, mostly the ST and real physics ones, are incredibly wrong, because I have seen most of the source cannon. I do not quite know as much about SW cuz I don't read SW books...I also would say that SW books are not credible, no matter what Lucas says simply for the fact that I doubt Lucas has read them all or approved of all that was in them. As far as I can tell he is just being lazy, but oh well. The problem then comes that all arguments based on the movie that was made is supposition... This means that all credible cannon on SW is invalid. So...his conclusion is invalid based solely on his arguments.

Physics is physics - there's no arguing with it. Physics is the central describer of our universe, and until we find a new theory that describes our universe, we use physics, real physics. All of the Star Trek and Star Wars equipment CAN be described by real physics; it's just that the ST stuff comes off a lot worse looking at it through a scientific light.

But your next sentences are laughable. By your argument, it isn't the ACTUAL CREATORS AND PUBLISHERS who decide what's canon and what's not, it's the fans - or the anti-fans who want to disprove whatever point someone else is making.

That simply isn't possible. Canon is decreed by the creators. Anything else is a slippery-slope; if you invalidate Star Wars books on the grounds that they're 'silly' and 'couldn't have been looked over personally by Lucas' (a generalization; for all we know he LOVES to spend his every free moment reading what someone else added to his universe in awe at the idea that it's HIS idea powering their books, I know I would!), then I can invalidate, say, Star Trek: Enterprise because it's 'silly' and 'rips off the Time Lords so badly that it makes me want to retch.'

Once we start invalidating other people's sources of canon, we end up with no canon at all.

So, to make a 'serious' attempt to look at this laughable subject, we have to treat all officially declared sources of canon as real.

Even discounting the books (a huge supposition), I'll trust the calculations of an engineer who went through college and actually put the time to think about things like tensile stress before writing a page over the argument of a trekkie who puts his fingers in his ears and goes, "Nah nah nah, that can't be right so I don't want to listen to it!"

It's a silly argument, of course (Star Trek versus Star Wars? Hah!), but his site actually uses the source canon to make an actual attempt to answer it by scientific observation. Please, bring up specific parts of his site where he's "wrong" and I'll look it over.

Another thing he mentions is that it's always, always, ALWAYS Star Trek vs. something else. Star Trek vs. Star Wars, Star Trek vs. Macross, Star Trek vs. Babylon 5, Star Trek vs. Transformers... you'd almost think that Star Trek fans were rabid fanatics that instinctively feel their series is inferior and need to compensate for that by proving it's better than anyone else.

That's a generalization, of course, but you don't see any rabid Macross fans asking, "Who would win, the Death Star or the SDF-1?"

'Cause the SDF-1 would whoop its ass. XD



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: imfanboy on 2007-06-05 11:44 ]</font>

[DurakkenX]

who said i'm saying the 29th century federation would save the 24th? first of all we know they are not whiped at any point between the 24th and 29th cuz if they were then the 29th century federation wouldn't exist now would it? This means that the empire would need to time travel, which we know they can't... but if they did then yes the 29th century federation would step in. I'm saying the 29th century federation could whipe the floor with the empire by virtue of their known technologies and abilities.

Also if the empire did attack the federation and can't time travel then they were defeated...otherwise the 29th century federation wouldn't exist.

I'd like to point out that his "trek breaking" theory is wrong by virtue of the fact that it suggests that the enterprise jumps to different timelines when the Enterprise does not travel through time at all, thus making it impossible for that to be a relevant example of what happens.

Stop being stubborn and ignorant. It is one thing to say I don't like something, it's another to say it's terrible based on ignorance v.v

[Solstis]

The Death Star would totally take out the SDF-1. That thing is like a floating garbage heap with a bunch of really powerful guns.

[DurakkenX]

What I said is the things he says about real physics is wrong. Not that physics are wrong. Once again, not paying attention.

I also said that much of SW "cannon" is debated simply by fact that almost all the fact that people argue about are from books that not everyone wants to take the time or patience to read through all the various authors who just think up stuff. Then by virtue of Lucas going "anything that is made up is cannon!" I could say that SW humans are flexible enough to lick their own butts and have it official cannon as long as I write it in a SW book v.v That is just stupid and that is why people discount that.

And yes FANS do decide what is cannon. A perfect exapmle of this is MMPR the official stand is that every series is all part of a single timeline and all cannon, but if you ask when the series stopped expanding most would say after PR in Space.

Romulans are warlike, manipulative, scheming, violent? Let's see... Violent? Nope, they are empirialists that want as much territory as possible however they aren't violent. In fact they are more humanlike than all those other races...scheming? True because they don't believe in attacking first because then they can say that you attacked them first and then discredit they can discredit you and is more likely seen as the victim by a third party if help is needed...Manipulative? it goes with scheming, but you must realize this is talking about their politics and no political body is free from scheming and manipulation now is there?... Warlike? Like i said their empirialists, but they aren't warlike. Warlike implies they want to fight everyone all the time like the kilingons which they don't.

As far as the maquis... the federation didn't drop them anywhere... those are those intrepid explorers you are talking about...gee i guess you just disproved yourself. Those colonies are federation planets claimed so, and colonists can go there and colonize, but that doesn't make those planets; governments part of the federation, which is really odd cuz the citizen all are part of the federation. the federation just said those planets are no longer federation space and they have the right to do that...however they also have to prosecute the griminals within their citizens...

[imfanboy]

*sigh* Fine. You've bored me enough that I've stopped caring. All you can do is strawman, strawman, strawman. I'm out, fo' realz this time.


My point above about the Future Federation devastates yours, because we really know NOTHING about the 'truth' of the future Federation until we see canonical episodes detailing the everyday life they lead. You say, "They're from the future Federation and would save it," but that's a what-if. We don't KNOW that for sure, we just have their word for it.

If they were Imperial agents wanting to ensure their target would remain weak, they'd lie through their teeth constantly, meaning they'd present themselves as a 'future Federation'.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: imfanboy on 2007-06-05 13:00 ]</font>