That’s true… but also in a different orthogonal sense Star Wars looks more “realistic” than Trek bc of its heavy leaning into politics. Slavery exists for example, instead of everyone living in a post scarcity society where people have suddenly decided to share resources.
But mostly yes ofc, bc laser swords wielded by space wizards is just the realm of high fantasy, as opposed to “reverse the polarity!”:-)
A bigger difference IMO was that Star Trek attempted to make commentary on real world social issues, whereas Star Wars did not. Star Wars was a fantasy story about good versus evil, it did not try to comment on the real world. Well, pre~2012 mostly, anyways.
Star Trek, I mean the old good Star Trek from pre~2012 and not its most modern iterations, could logically present an episode that was very obviously about X or Y real world social issue. So far, same as modern Star Trek so why do I differentiate them? Well, old Star Trek did not feel compelled to tell its viewers the “correct” answer, or how to think. The episode would present the viewer with an issue, and then it would usually spend time explaining both sides of the issue. Then, the crew of the Enterprise would make their choice, and explain why they chose that answer. It was not about “this is the correct answer,” it was mostly about getting the viewer simply to think. To use their brain. Form their own opinion just like the Enterprise crew did. If someone disagreed with what the Enterprise crew chose, they did not feel like the show writers were calling them unsavory names. The viewer simply felt like they didn’t agree with the Enterprise crews choice, but that did not make them stop watching the show because they felt insulted. They would tune in next week to see what happened next.
This is where I think modern Star Trek goes wrong. The last two or three episodes I tried to watch featured character assassination, bad writing in general, lore inaccuracies, but also it tried to tell the viewer how to think, or what the correct answer was, at the same time insulting the viewer if they chose any other answer than whatever was decided in the show. The only one that I didn’t get this feeling from and actually still liked a bit was the Lower Decks animated comedy.
One thing I disagree with there is that the OG Star Wars did seem to try to warn against the decadence of bureaucratic systems - their wastefulness, their slowness, their corruption, and especially vulnerability to takeover and being converted into authoritarian regimes, etc. I think the real, deeper message of Star Wars was that despite how it may appear to a naive view from a first glance, there really is not just one right way to do things. Again, as you said, in the older ones.
This ofc came across way better in the books, and you can strongly and probably successfully argue that George Lucas simply wanted money and fame and saw none of this himself. Except that it’s the tale of history, like Rome, so it’s not even his telling just his borrowing existing elements so that space wizards could have laser sword fights:-).
It is a fascinating thought to consider though: the Jedi were “good”, but turned a blind eye to evil and then were slaughtered, so ultimately what good were they? Conversely the Sith were “evil” and yet they brought order and stability to the galaxy… except they didn’t bc the Rebellion was disruptive (but was it though, or was it a counter force used to provide a reason to sell the masses on the need for order?) and then ultimately Vader turned to love and overthrew the emperor. So… ah… TLDR: Yin Yang saved the day?
I see an extreme amount of parallels with e.g. Trump, rising as an emperor out of the fallen systems of democracy, not in spite of but seemingly directly at the behest of The People. And not to fight a real enemy so much as a manufactured one. Star Wars was fortunately not all that relevant to the 1970s era, while the 1960s Star Trek and later renditions in like the 90s really inspired people, relegating Star Wars to mere fantasy. But looking back in hindsight… there was a lot that we could have learned from, if only we had been open to it.
Star Wars was not so obvious in its real world parallels as Star Trek was.
I did not mean that Star Wars contained absolutely no “message” about ethics or morals. All entertainment art contains a message. As humans, it is not possible to create entertainment that is completely void of this, as such a piece of media cannot entertain a human. (Just to clarify, I mean entertainment art that has a storyline. Tetris, for example, is entertaining as a puzzle game, but it does not have a story. Tetris would therefore be excluded). Rather, Star Wars did not present real world social issues to its audience in the way that Star Trek did.
The Jedi were good, but also demonstrated that a person that becomes too imbalanced can also become just as evil as a Sith. Star Wars also showed that even an evil Sith can change their mind and become good again. Fantastic messages that are easy to understand and applicable to any person, place, or time.
Star Trek, on the other hand, openly debated the benefits of something like religion or slavery. Still timeless messages, but presented in a very different way. An alien race would believe a religion or have slaves, and the benefits of such would be clearly presented. Maybe the aliens were happier with a religion or their economy was reliant on slaves to continue otherwise their world would fall into economic collapse or whatever. Then the Enterprise crew would talk about the down sides, maybe the religion was oppressive, or the obvious downsides of slavery. Usually, in the end the crew of the Enterprise would choose to not interfere with the aliens, for fear of damaging their culture or something. They never made an “evil” choice, but they never made a choice that caused the viewer to feel like the writers of the show were telling them how to think.
I will make an exception this one time, but I have a personal policy to block anyone talking about current world politics. I will not engage in that discussion myself, because I do not want to.
Well, considering much, if not most, of Star Trek takes place outside the Federation… no, not everyone is living in a post scarcity society. And slavery does exist. They just approach it from an analytical point of view, rather than an adventurous one.
I like that phrasing: Star Wars is more “dramatic”. Although it got fairly deep into politics too, which I think most people simply glazed over. The perils and vulnerability of democracies to authoritarian takeovers from within definitely sounds a tiny bit familiar these days, though would have fallen more on deaf ears ~50 years ago.
That’s true… but also in a different orthogonal sense Star Wars looks more “realistic” than Trek bc of its heavy leaning into politics. Slavery exists for example, instead of everyone living in a post scarcity society where people have suddenly decided to share resources.
But mostly yes ofc, bc laser swords wielded by space wizards is just the realm of high fantasy, as opposed to “reverse the polarity!”:-)
A bigger difference IMO was that Star Trek attempted to make commentary on real world social issues, whereas Star Wars did not. Star Wars was a fantasy story about good versus evil, it did not try to comment on the real world. Well, pre~2012 mostly, anyways.
Star Trek, I mean the old good Star Trek from pre~2012 and not its most modern iterations, could logically present an episode that was very obviously about X or Y real world social issue. So far, same as modern Star Trek so why do I differentiate them? Well, old Star Trek did not feel compelled to tell its viewers the “correct” answer, or how to think. The episode would present the viewer with an issue, and then it would usually spend time explaining both sides of the issue. Then, the crew of the Enterprise would make their choice, and explain why they chose that answer. It was not about “this is the correct answer,” it was mostly about getting the viewer simply to think. To use their brain. Form their own opinion just like the Enterprise crew did. If someone disagreed with what the Enterprise crew chose, they did not feel like the show writers were calling them unsavory names. The viewer simply felt like they didn’t agree with the Enterprise crews choice, but that did not make them stop watching the show because they felt insulted. They would tune in next week to see what happened next.
This is where I think modern Star Trek goes wrong. The last two or three episodes I tried to watch featured character assassination, bad writing in general, lore inaccuracies, but also it tried to tell the viewer how to think, or what the correct answer was, at the same time insulting the viewer if they chose any other answer than whatever was decided in the show. The only one that I didn’t get this feeling from and actually still liked a bit was the Lower Decks animated comedy.
One thing I disagree with there is that the OG Star Wars did seem to try to warn against the decadence of bureaucratic systems - their wastefulness, their slowness, their corruption, and especially vulnerability to takeover and being converted into authoritarian regimes, etc. I think the real, deeper message of Star Wars was that despite how it may appear to a naive view from a first glance, there really is not just one right way to do things. Again, as you said, in the older ones.
This ofc came across way better in the books, and you can strongly and probably successfully argue that George Lucas simply wanted money and fame and saw none of this himself. Except that it’s the tale of history, like Rome, so it’s not even his telling just his borrowing existing elements so that space wizards could have laser sword fights:-).
It is a fascinating thought to consider though: the Jedi were “good”, but turned a blind eye to evil and then were slaughtered, so ultimately what good were they? Conversely the Sith were “evil” and yet they brought order and stability to the galaxy… except they didn’t bc the Rebellion was disruptive (but was it though, or was it a counter force used to provide a reason to sell the masses on the need for order?) and then ultimately Vader turned to love and overthrew the emperor. So… ah… TLDR: Yin Yang saved the day?
I see an extreme amount of parallels with e.g. Trump, rising as an emperor out of the fallen systems of democracy, not in spite of but seemingly directly at the behest of The People. And not to fight a real enemy so much as a manufactured one. Star Wars was fortunately not all that relevant to the 1970s era, while the 1960s Star Trek and later renditions in like the 90s really inspired people, relegating Star Wars to mere fantasy. But looking back in hindsight… there was a lot that we could have learned from, if only we had been open to it.
Star Wars was not so obvious in its real world parallels as Star Trek was.
I did not mean that Star Wars contained absolutely no “message” about ethics or morals. All entertainment art contains a message. As humans, it is not possible to create entertainment that is completely void of this, as such a piece of media cannot entertain a human. (Just to clarify, I mean entertainment art that has a storyline. Tetris, for example, is entertaining as a puzzle game, but it does not have a story. Tetris would therefore be excluded). Rather, Star Wars did not present real world social issues to its audience in the way that Star Trek did.
The Jedi were good, but also demonstrated that a person that becomes too imbalanced can also become just as evil as a Sith. Star Wars also showed that even an evil Sith can change their mind and become good again. Fantastic messages that are easy to understand and applicable to any person, place, or time.
Star Trek, on the other hand, openly debated the benefits of something like religion or slavery. Still timeless messages, but presented in a very different way. An alien race would believe a religion or have slaves, and the benefits of such would be clearly presented. Maybe the aliens were happier with a religion or their economy was reliant on slaves to continue otherwise their world would fall into economic collapse or whatever. Then the Enterprise crew would talk about the down sides, maybe the religion was oppressive, or the obvious downsides of slavery. Usually, in the end the crew of the Enterprise would choose to not interfere with the aliens, for fear of damaging their culture or something. They never made an “evil” choice, but they never made a choice that caused the viewer to feel like the writers of the show were telling them how to think.
I will make an exception this one time, but I have a personal policy to block anyone talking about current world politics. I will not engage in that discussion myself, because I do not want to.
Well, considering much, if not most, of Star Trek takes place outside the Federation… no, not everyone is living in a post scarcity society. And slavery does exist. They just approach it from an analytical point of view, rather than an adventurous one.
I like that phrasing: Star Wars is more “dramatic”. Although it got fairly deep into politics too, which I think most people simply glazed over. The perils and vulnerability of democracies to authoritarian takeovers from within definitely sounds a tiny bit familiar these days, though would have fallen more on deaf ears ~50 years ago.
I mean, it wouldn’t have fallen on deaf ears to those it kept happening to, just not in the US.