For Amy & Penny: Star Wars and Star Trek, Here’s the Difference

An Example Essay for my students:

Charles Brent Oliver

Dr. Rodenberry

ENGL 1010 SA1

21 February 2019

For Amy & Penny: Star Wars and Star Trek, Here’s the Difference

“[It’s] Star Wars, [not Star Trek].  They get all cranky when you mix the two up.”

“What’s the difference?”

“There is absolutely no difference!”—Amy Farrah Fowler & Penny, The Big Bang Theory 5.19

           

            I seem to be made to suffer; it’s my lot in life; and I’ve got a very bad feeling that one of the things I am fated to suffer is the repeated refusal of some people to see the obvious: Star Wars and Star Trek—despite the surface similarities of their names—are very much not the same; and thinking such a thing, like wishing a thing, does not make it so.

            Now, shall we begin?

            Okay, to begin with, I admit that to the ignorant and the unlearned these two fictional franchises and their respective universes may appear, at first glance, quite similar.  They are each about adventures in the depths of space; they even both have the word “star” in their title, a clear reference to their common celestial setting.  But what here appears true is only true from a certain point of view.  As we take our first steps into a larger world, we see that these two franchises are in reality fundamentally different.

            Let us take a second look at the settings.  At the very beginning of the Star Wars mythology, words flashed on the screen to assure us that what would follow took place “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.”  These words mix the language of the fairy-tale with a word (“galaxy”) taken rather unexpectedly from the realm of science.  We are thus immediately tipped off that this text will mix elements of fairy-tale or fantasy with elements of science and science fiction.  The tale that follows draws more on old myths than science and technology (one of George Lucas’ major inspirations was The Hero with a Thousand Faces, by mythologist Joseph Campbell).  We find a princess and an evil emperor; a white knight (Luke Skywalker), a black knight (Darth Vader), a desert-dwelling warrior monk (Obi-Wan Kenobi) who mentors the hero, and later, a mysterious wizened wizard (“When 900 years old you reach, look as good you will not, hmm?”) who dwells in a magical swamp (Yoda on Dagobah).  There are prophecies and visions, and a set of long-lost twins with a strong psychic bond.  The Princess flies (remember Episode VIII?), rocks levitate (lots of rocks levitating) and heroes return from death in spirit form to continue to counsel their pupils.  To quote Nyota Uhura, “This isn’t reality [or science fiction]—this is fantasy.”

            Star Trek is quite different in setting and genre.  The Federation is in our own galaxy, with its capital on Earth (Paris, France), and the time is the comparatively near future (2063-2387, give or take).  Some of its best stories take place on Earth, perhaps during or near the present time (my top two favorites of the films, 4 and 8, are set in 1986 and 2063, respectively).  Whereas the Star Wars galaxy appears fully explored (Han Solo claimed to have flown from one side to the other), the whole point of Starfleet (and so Star Trek) is “to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man—where no one—has gone before.”  The key word there is new.  In Star Trek, Our galaxy is still largely unexplored, and that exploration is what the franchise is all about.  Everything is explained using science and technology, even if they are so advanced as to be “indistinguishable from magic” (to quote Clarke’s Law).  Our heroes are not princesses and knights and monks, but commanders and captains, admirals, ambassadors, and engineers.  They are not from Alderaan or Tatooine, but Iowa and Alaska, France and Florida, Africa and Scotland.  Even Spock has a human mother, and Vulcan is only 16 light-years from Earth, anyway.

            Along with their very different genres and settings, these two franchises show us two very different cultures.  The world of Star Trek is a shiny, clean, high-tech future where all the food is “perfectly synthesized [and] ingeniously enhanced” (“The Price” TNG 3.8) to be healthy (Okay, so the Federation is a bunch of food fascists—but they’re fit fascists.).  It is a nerd’s dream, where everyone takes “basic calculus” in grade school (“When the Bough Breaks” TNG 1.16; Superman set the same joke on Krypton in issue 53 in 1948), and anyone can hack a positronic brain with an iron filing (as Picard does to Data in the two-part “Time’s Arrow”).  In “The Vengeance Factor” (TNG 3.9) we see that Wesley Crusher’s math homework is advanced tensor calculus done on a Riemannian tensor field.

            On the other hand, in the Star Wars universe,  while a young Jedi may make his own lightsaber, writing appears to be so rare, we wouldn’t even know Luke Skywalker was left-handed if we hadn’t seen him eat (yes, he fights right-handed at first, but he goes left after losing his right hand—and he’s much better fighting left.).  There is technology, but it is all very old, very tradition-bound (like lightsabers).  Star Trek shows us a world where technology is still progressing or has just recently plateaued (remember how lost Scotty was onboard the Enterprise-D when he woke up 75 years in the future in “Relics”?); whereas one gets the sense that in Star Wars, the technology plateaued centuries ago, and a droid is to them a technology as old as saddle and stirrups are to us.  Star Wars marries fantasy to science to create a techno-magic world reminiscent of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (another favorite of mine, so, no insult is intended).  The great warriors fight with “lightsabers” (“not as clumsy or random as a blaster”) and Chewbacca has an energy-bolt-firing crossbow (Trapjaw had one too).

            Their genres are very different, and so also are their cultures.  The final major difference between these two franchises is their scale.  Honestly, Star Wars is really only about one family: the Skywalkers; all their canonical material consists of three trilogies of films (one yet to be completed), and two smaller gap-filling films (I could included the animated Clones Wars series and film, but then I would feel obliged to include the animated Star Trek series, and then things really get messy).  It is still almost possible to discuss the entire Star Wars canon by simply referring to episode numbers using roman numerals that climb no higher than IX.  On the other hand, the original always-struggling-to-avoid-cancellation Star Trek series alone had 79 episodes.  Today, 50 years later, the entire canonical franchise spans four centuries internally and, externally includes 13 films and 28 seasons of television (and counting) spread over six series (and counting).  There are several very important characters, but there is no way to claim that the whole story centers on one small group of characters.  Which one?  Kirk’s Enterprise?  Picard’s?  Archer’s?  What about Benjamin Sisko?  Katherine Janeway?  Michael Burnham and the crew of the Discovery?

            I rest my case.

            I have been and always shall be a fan of Star Trek (that much is certain), and there will always be a special place in my heart for that strange galaxy far, far away.  I love them both (though I do have a preference), but I love them as a man might love both orange sherbet and chocolate ice cream: Troi knows they are different, and anyone familiar with both cannot possibly confuse them, or think them the same.  You could be forgiven for confusing Star Wars with The Masters of the Universe, but not with Star Trek.  And yet, I remind myself that, though simple logic should allow anyone to see the difference, we must remember the rhetorical wisdom of Dr. Gillian Taylor: whoever said the human race was logical?