Star Wars vs Star Trek by David Brin.

[frigidmagi]

Salon Article One

Salon Artilce Two

On Davidbrin.com

Okay the articles are to long to post in this thread for y'all to read. I feel your eyes will star blurring everything togather. However I truely would like to get the board's opinion on this.

Mine is... I fucking disagree. The elite Jedi aren't in charge, the Senate is. Things don't go downhill until an elitest trys to take charge. I'll expand in another post but I would like to note one Wars tread that bugs me.

The troops. They're drones, clones, or stromtroopers. Faceless, mindless, unquestioning thugs. If you can't guess why it annoys me you're not paying attention.[/quote]

[Destructionator XV]

The troops. They're drones, clones, or stromtroopers. Faceless, mindless, unquestioning thugs. If you can't guess why it annoys me you're not paying attention.

I've not read the links yet, but this is something that bothers me as well in Star Wars (and many other places)

In A New Hope, there was one scene with Ben deactivating the tractor beam, about an hour and a half into the film, that had two Stormtroopers talking.

"You know what's going on?"
"Maybe it's another drill."
...
"You seen that new VT-16?"
"Yeah, some of the other guys were telling me about it.
I hear it's quite a thing to see."

I liked that little scene because it made the Stormies look more like real people and less like faceless bad guys. Apparently, new Star Wars has forgotten about that though.

[Stofsk]

David Brin is one of those arsehole sci-fi writers who hates the fact that his boring, unintersting, uninspiring novels aren't as popular as George Lucas' big screen extravaganza. That colours his views somewhat (just a tad /sarcasm), and we see that he would excuse the socialist dystopia of TNG (notice how he criticises Kirk, for the cliche of talking supercomputers to their destruction? But what about Picard, who sits back and watches as a civilisation is destroyed from a cataclysm? And he refused to interefere because of the Prime Directive - where's Brin's moral outrage at that?), while attacking Star Wars because of monarchy and elitism... which really glosses over the Jedi being servants, Queen Amidala being democratically elected (meaning 'Queen' is more a ceremonial title than a literal one), and the Senate being in control (and being petty as well - like real life politicians).

He's full of shit, he misrepresents the two different universes in two different ways, and he even says some bullshit about how the naval theme of Star Trek shows greater heroism than the air force theme of Star Wars - if you can actually believe it. I suppose the concept of a 'carrier air wing' is foreign to him.

In short, before I read any of his views on ST or SW I hadn't really read any of his work beyond a cursory examination; now he's assured me of never touching his work.

[Narsil]

David Brin is one of these special people who can see the world in a slightly different version of reality. Either that, or he was watching a different film to the rest of us.