Physicists Agree! SW can kick Trek's @ss!

[Patroklos]

That is a hilarious video, definetly sharing that at work tomorrow.

[snoopy369]

Arthur C Clarke most definitely had more impact/influence/etc. on the scientific community than ST. He had direct, concrete impacts on things that actually happened (such as the aforementioned communication satellites) and that mattered. Star trek gave us ... the flip phone? It had a reasonable level of predictive power, but nothing more. It affected the marketing gurus (encouraging development of models more similar in appearance to ST things) far more than the scientists.

Beyond that, Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke, and a few others had a substantial impact on the development of new scientists. Thousands went into science because of reading these three writers alone. Even when their ideas didn't pan out - or haven't yet, anyway - they succeeded through simply engaging the minds of young scientists-to-be, to think of new and interesting things that could be done through science. While Star Trek and Star Wars were entertaining the masses, Heinlein, Clarke, and Asimov gave a few the gift of a dream.

Ultimately it comes down to this: ST and SW both share in common the fact that they make no effort to explain their science in meaningful terms (not throwing around buzzwords, but actually thinking like a scientist), and that they make no effort to put forth feasible technology. Hard Science Fiction proper does both - puts forth technology that's feasible, even if they do use a lightspeed trick that of course is not, and explains the technology in scientific terminology in a way that makes the reader think about (some of) the technology rather than simply positing it.

[Proteus_MST]

Originally posted by Asher

Star Trek's human race and its technology are largely science-based,

Hm,
I don´t think ST technologie is so much more science based than the one in SW.

Let me see:
Beaming, Phasors, Warp-Drive and Replicators and of course the constant .

Especially beaming and replicators don´t seem very plausible to me.

Although the instant information exchange between source and destination may be possible via entangled atoms, beaming in real life would still mean that you have to kill the person at the start point of the transporter beam and recreate her at the destination.

This would mean that with every beaming process a person gets killed and a clone of the person who exactly looks like the person and acts like the person is created (there was a nie SciFi short story about this )

And replicators, well, they would need vast amounts of energy to recreate even a few atoms.

Warp Drives, Phasors and photon torpedoes in ST on the other hand have their equivalents in Hyperdrives, Lasers/Turbolasers and Proton torpedoes of SW, same goes for protecive shields that are used in both universes.

Of course ST doesn´t have a magical "force" but SW on the other hand doesn´t have omnipotent Q like beings as well as constant travels into the past.

So lets move on to the society:
I cannot see that one scenario seems to be more realistic than the other.
Look at our own society. Society may have changed a little bit from the past, but still ist isn´t so different from, for example the society in medieval european cities and also not so much different from the society people living in the greek city states enjoyed.
And even today we have dictatorships and more backward societies all over the world (often it is a mix of backwards forms of government and modern technology).

There has always been a large discrepancy between social development and technological development (with the latter being much faster growing )

Therefore I fail to see why a future society has to be a utopian form of communism where you don´t need any money anymore and everything is supplied via replicators by the state

Nope, although I like both, ST as well as SW, I fail to see why one of them should be more based on reality than the other. Both have things that IMHO are really implausible.

[Main_Brain]

Originally posted by Asher
I was horrified when I heard they were making a female captain. Then when I heard the ship was lost, I saw the wisdom.

[Ari Rahikkala]

Originally posted by Tattila the Hun
B5 trumps them both.

QFT

[Proteus_MST]

Battletech trumps all of them,
but sadly there are no Battletech movies or series to date

[Sandman]

In all honesty, Star Trek is notable in that it doesn't showcase all the impact of advanced technology. The Federation is never really scrutinised in the show at all. Despite almost constant war, and enormous casualties, there's barely a whiff of militarism or dissent.

[DinoDoc]

I thought Section 31 was a major arc during the Dominion War.

[Sandman]

It appeared in fewer than a dozen episodes. More time was given over to the main characters fannying about in the holodeck.

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by Tattila the Hun
B5 trumps them both.

[Elok]

They're both ridiculously speculative. And Star Trek started sucking hardcore when it stopped being escapist fantasy with a lot of sci-fi elements (as in TOS) and turned into "true" sci-fi (about halfway through TNG). Lots of people spewing catchphrases like "tachyon" every third word, and a billion geeks waiting to write in and complain every time they stretched what supposedly was physically possible--though really, none of it ever was. Just how the hell is a warp drive supposed to get enough energy to distort space and time over a distance of several light-years? Plus shields and all the other crap mentioned already in this thread, and every third planet having humanoid life with basically human thought processes and beliefs.

The original ST had ridiculously implausible stuff; in one episode, the Enterprise got shot with a sonic weapon while in orbit--as in, through the vaccuum of outer space. Furthermore, that same sonic weapon was said to be some massive number of decibels, so big they gave it in scientific notation ("8.5 x 10^17 dB, captain"). And nobody gave a damn, because it was understood that, whatever Gene said, this was all just a thin scientific veneer over a universe where virtually anything could happen (which was what made its exploration so fun), and the phony science might let us kid ourselves that it was possible.

Then people started taking that shpiel seriously, and it all went downhill.

[Arrian]

I haven't watched Star Trek much since DS9... I didn't even watch the end of DS9.

SW was only good for Episodes IV, V and VI (especially Empire, of course), and a couple of the books (Timothy Zaun, I think?). Episodes I, II and III were awful. When a friend of mine - a rabid SW fan - made me watch III, I literally laughed my way through it.

-Arrian

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse

I'm not sure what's so implausible about the political organization, unless you think that a dictatorship couldn't emerge at all.

I think any future dictatorship with much further advanced technology would have a much firmer grip on subject planets than the Empire does.

QFT

As technology advances there is eventually a point beyond which if a dictatorship gains control of society it will be impossible to overthrow from within.

[Lorizael]

Originally posted by Arrian
I haven't watched Star Trek much since DS9... I didn't even watch the end of DS9.

SW was only good for Episodes IV, V and VI (especially Empire, of course), and a couple of the books (Timothy Zaun, I think?). Episodes I, II and III were awful. When a friend of mine - a rabid SW fan - made me watch III, I literally laughed my way through it.

-Arrian

Zahn.

I can't make any other contribution to this thread; my opinions are too volatile.

[Patroklos]

Zahn still suffered from the same thing all EU SW authors do, as well as ST EU authors for that matter, which is they take this beautifully crafted world and break every rule in it for some lame character development/drama.

Lucus is the wors of them.