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Why Did The Stars Wars and Star Trek Worlds Turn Out So Differently? (marginalrevolution.com)
HughPickens.com writes: In the Star Trek world there is virtual reality, personal replicators, powerful weapons, and, it seems, a very high standard of living for most of humanity, while in Star Wars there is widespread slavery, lots of people seem to live at subsistence, and eventually much of the galaxy falls under the Jedi Reign of Terror. Why the difference? Tyler Cowen writes about some of the factors differentiating the world of Star Wars from that of Star Trek: 1) The armed forces in Star Trek seem broadly representative of society. Compare Uhura, Chekhov, and Sulu to the Imperial Storm troopers. 2) Captains Kirk and Picard do not descend into true power madness, unlike various Sith leaders and corrupted Jedi Knights. 3) In Star Trek, any starship can lay waste to a planet, whereas in Star Wars there is a single, centralized Death Star and no way to oppose it, implying stronger checks and balances in the world of Star Trek. 4) Star Trek embraces egalitarianism, namely that all humans consider themselves part of the same broader species. There is no special group comparable to the Jedi or the Sith, with special powers in their blood. 5) Star Trek replicators are sufficiently powerful it seems slavery is highly inefficient in that world.
Yes, because slavery definitely doesn't exist in Star Trek...there's definitely no Orion Syndicate or Orion Slavers or slave girls.
Shit happens and it's usually caused by assholes
Why I thought it was because one was science fiction and the other was science fantasy.
Would have been more interesting to do a comparison between two science fiction universes.
Episodes of Star Trek were quite often, if not always, morality tales, and a relatively peaceful, morally advanced society provided a good backdrop for those tales. Star Wars was a tale of high adventure, and those sorts of stories are best served by heroes dealing with unseemly characters and places, by power-mad leaders, and by huge imbalances of power.
The writer(s) made it so.
There is no special group comparable to the Jedi or the Sith, with special powers in their blood.
What about the Q?
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
The main difference is that star wars actually happened, while star trek is science fiction.
Gene Roddenberry and George Lucas have very different world views.
It's pretty simple, because they both came from the imagination of two different people.
Gene Roddenberry imagined what he thought was as close to the most perfect universe as could possibly exsist. In the case of TOS, he also tried to use fictional races and themes to make people think about how silly we are as a species too. Basically to make its viewers think about being better people.
George Lucas created a universe out of themes from various genres he probaby enjoyed as a child. He wanted to create a universe full of awe and spectacle. The story was the framework for presenting it. George was more artistic and wanted people to leave the theater thinking, "wow, that was cool".
There's nothing wrong with either, they are just different. And both franchise had their ups and downs. The current Star Trek movies have been more about being shiny than they were in the past. And I don't think I need to say much about the prequel Star Wars trilogy.
In Star Trek we see good government in the form of the Federation. Promotions are by merit. Large undertakings are done for the betterment of the entire Federation. But we never see how that is achieved. How is the leadership of the Federation selected? How incentives in place to prevent corruption, to prevent factionalism, to prevent special interests from gaining too much power? Why doesn't a Ferengi of questionable character ever become the leader and make himself a dictator? Roddenberry just wished those problems away! We see from most Star Fleet officers a certain desire to serve and to better themselves (there is the famous episode where Picard claims that people are no longer motivated by money). If that isn't limited to Star Fleet, then how are people's human instincts suppressed? Is it indoctrination when they're children? Drugs? Medical procedures? Again Roddenberry just wishes for it and it's there! Of course as a work of fiction, that's what we expect. Faster than light travel? Maybe some future technology will make it possible. A large happy prosperous communist society? Maybe some future technology will make it work. We suspend our disbelief so we can enjoy the story. That's why it's called 'fiction'.
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
One person's terrorists are another person's freedom fighters. Even George Washington et al were terrorists in their day. But because they fought on our side, and because they won, they are instead considered freedom fighters.
there is a very important distinction between a rebel and a terrorist to be made. George Washington et al never resorted to terrorising attacks on soft targets. Terrorists are more like ineffective rebels that then resort to horrible acts of violence on women and children because they
a) they are a bunch of faggots
b) they cant actually fight directly and win.
Star Wars universe is dominated by religious belief and power, at least by those at the top. The Star Trek universe is diverse but most of our view is through the dominant power of the Federation, which is a pluralistic, tolerant, and non-secular.
This tells the story. The Federation is successful because it's guiding philosophy is humanism, not worship of Midi-chlorians.
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
Star Trek if you notices they are not concerned about power in the ability to do work. Transporters and their replicator brethren make it practical to produce nearly anything at will coupled with abundant energy. If you notice the big driving issue for strife is expansion space for people to spread out.
Star Wars is a much more populated place with scarce resources.
No sir I dont like it.
Funny, but also pertinent -- perspective matters. While in a horrible disciplinary/authoritarian environment and despite being assholes, the empire's soldiers were well fed, well equipped, and probably had holodecks, where conditions were depicted somewhat worse on rogue Klingon vessels opposed to the federation, or on prison planets in ST. Just, less time was spent in those settings in ST. Not to say that the OP does not have a point nonetheless, but life could quite possibly have been more horrible for the larger population in ST because the larger population would have been civilizations that were pre-lightspeed and thus each suffering from their own private wars and atrocity, or not in federation space where some other large interstellar power was enslaving them.
Someone had to do it.
You missed by a bit...
Obviously Roddenberry purposefully populated his cast with a multi-racial/ethnic cast, but there is much more complex thinking going on, mostly relating to the politics, issues and attitudes of the TOS era:
Sulu isn't a 'token Asian' he is not by coincidence, Japanese. Just 20 years after WW2 it was all much more fresh in peoples minds: Pearl Harbor, Rape of Nanking Internment of Japanese American Citizens etc. This is Roddenberry addressing all that head on.
Uhura isn't a token Black Female either, she is an Officer. Back in the early mid 60's these types of characters didn't exist. The country was having race riots, the cities were burning. Much worse than Baltimore or Fergison today. Add these facts with the fact that Roddenberry staged the first interracial kiss ever shown on TV, and it becomes more clear she isn't there as a token. You cheapen her accomplishment and influence by labeling it token before there were even tokens.
And yes Chekov is a nod to the cold war mindset. Just a couple years after the Cuban missile crisis where we REALLY did almost blow our selves up. The cold war was a real thing and on peoples minds. His presence on the bridge was a loud statement. Also Chekov is always wrong in his Russian superiority, but his character is saying: there is still Russia after the Soviet Union, in the unified post racial/nationalist earth of the future, don't worry, we wont shed our unique cultures/histories.
The Klingons are not the 'violent, savage blacks' they are actually rather articulate in TOS and represent the Russians. the Romulans were the Chinese (this is before Nixon went to China, it was a secretive closed society, nothing like now). Also its easy to forget that even though they were both communist party oligarchies they were also opposed to each other, just like the show.
What all this really was: a vehicle for discussing the tensions, issues, and politics of the day, some of which were too taboo to be straight forward about on the TV of the day. Which itself was a simplistic 42 minutes of a very repressed medium.
This isn't to say star trek TOS had no flaws, especially regarding women: no women Captains in TOS (except the aliens) Women's 'Uniforms' were really just miniskirts. etc.
Overall you missed the original intent of these characters and the real world that inspired them by a Kilometer.
Given the fallout from all our meddling in other countries' affairs (particularly the middle east), the prime directive is looking better and better every day.
The same reasoning was given for the prime directives several times in TNG -- the federation encountered several another species that weren't technologically as advanced, they interfered, and everyone was the worse for it.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
In the Federation, the inferior (non-Human) races do not for the most part enjoy all the technological advances Humans do; and are massively under-represented in the high-ranking positions in the military.
That's what happens when you're shooting a series with a limited SFX and makeup budget. ;)
Ezekiel 23:20
It's like dropping a couple of nuclear bombs on cities: it's okay if you're doing it to end the war and prevent a potentially much larger number of deaths. By blowing up Alderaan, the Empire hoped to end the bloody rebellion once and for all and thus save innumerable innocent lives that would've been lost if the rebellion were allowed to expand to an all-out galactic civil war.
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