Star Wars vs. Star Trek, Using Math

Arguing about whether Star Wars or Star Trek is better is a pointless exercise, because nobody who matters or is good at life really cares. But people are going to do it anyway, so with all these new Star Wars movies coming out now seems like as good a time as any to answer the question once and for all, using math, because you can't refute math, end of discussion. Keep in mind I have no preconceived agenda here: I like both series a little bit, enough to watch most but not all of their installments, not enough to buy the action figures, but enough to buy the Lego sets. There's only one Star Wars character I'd fuck (Shira Brie) (look her up) and only one Star Trek character I'd fuck (Sulu). There's only one person involved with either franchise that I want to punch in the face. (Walter Koenig and George Lucas. Plus J.J. Abrams, of course, but he worked on both so he cancels himself out.) So from my standpoint Wars and Trek are pretty evenly matched going in. Now let's see what happens when we apply the numbers.

I would ask Shira Brie to wear this though, obviously.

First off, let's throw out all the novels, video games, comic books, and so on and so forth. First of all, most of it doesn't "count" anyway, because it's like imaginary to the second power or some stupid shit, plus there's just an assload of it and I don't have the rest of my life to write this article. Math is supposed to save people time. We'll stick to the material everyone pretty much agrees on, the movies and the TV shows. Since some crybabies will insist that some of these also "don't count" (The Star Wars Holiday Special) we'll do it like this: everything good "counts" and everything bad will simply be ignored, accruing no negative points. This couldn't possibly be more fair, so I don't want to see any whining in the comments section, got it? We'll begin with Star Trek, because alphabetical order.

So there are plenty of solid episodes of the original Star Trek TV series, but I'm gonna lowball it and say that ten of them are way above average. Taking commercials into account, that's about 450 minutes of quality Star Trek action. The old cartoon was pretty good too, so let's assume there are also ten of those worth seeing, giving us a grand total of 675 minutes. So far, so good.

Of course there has been a lot more Star Trek since then, but it actually gets easier from here. There were only two good episodes of The Fake Generation (the one where the Borg went bananas and killed nearly everybody, and the one with Mark Twain), but they were both two-parters so that adds 180 minutes to our total. There was only one decent episode of Deep Throat 69 (the tribble one) (+45 minutes), and I've never seen the one where the captain of the starship was a chick (Star Trek: Vagina?) and I'm not gonna start now (+0 minutes). Despite suffering from a slew of politically-correct bullshit (where are the short skirts?) Star Trek: Quantum Leap was criminally underrated though, so let's lowball it again and assume that five of those were pretty good (+225 minutes). There were a bunch of movies too, but only three of them don't suck (Wrath of Khan, Search for Spock, Voyage Home) so we'll add two hours for each of them. Grand total: 1485 minutes or 24 hours and 45 minutes of quality Star Trek. You could watch Star Trek for a solid day, without a break, and none of it would piss you off. You'd be a total loser though.

Luke Skywalker vs. adorable space bunnies!

Now let's see how rival series Star Wars fares. The original is great (120 minutes), and so is The Empire Strikes Back, even though that's a really stupid, clunky name for a movie (+120 minutes). The Holiday Special sucks though, and so do both of the Ewok movies (+0). Nothing happens in Return of the Jedi after they rescue Han Solo, but his rescue is pretty cool so I'll give them 30 minutes for that part. The Prequels were all total shit, The Force of Bacon was just a remake of the first one with a Death Star that went to 11, and everything since is basically disposable crap because J.J. Abrams (+0). There have been a shitload of Star Wars cartoons from the 1980s on (Droids, Ewoks, Clone Wars, Teenage Mutant Yoda Turtles, Han Solo Meets the Fonz, etc.) ranging in quality from "kind of crappy" to "mercifully short" so that's +0 again. So we're stuck at 270 minutes, 390 if the next movie is any good, which, may I remind you, J.J. Abrams. That's only six and a half hours, and then it still only works of you stop one of the movies a third of the way in. That's fucking pathetic. Star Trek for the win.

See, because Vulcans bottle up their emotions? It's a metaphor.

There you have it. Comments welcome, as long as you agree with me. Posting pictures of your hot girlfriend in a metal bikini is also encouraged.

I write books about movies. They're brilliant and you can buy them here.

Starstruck (1979)

One of the most memorable settings in the original Star Wars was the bar on Tattoonine Tatoowien Tat-2-Ween Luke Skywalker's planet, popularly known as the "Creature Cantina" until an entire generation of obsessive-compulsive hypernerds came along and gave it -- and every single goddamned alien drunk in it -- a proper name, while also insisting that every single one of these aliens was of fundamental importance to the central storyline in some harebrained, convoluted way, revealed in one of the 37,487 Star Wars novels (approx. count) published between 1990 and 2010, all of which have been unceremoniously flushed from current continuity by subsequent Star Wars rights holders the Walt Disney Company. Ha ha! Fuck you, nerds.

Eat shit. Eat an entire bucket of shit.

Anyway, the Creature Cantina was so popular that Kenner made a (crappy) toy out of it (it was constructed almost entirely of cardboard and the tears of disappointed children), and it reappeared in the first Star Wars sequel, The Star Wars Holiday Special (1978). (It was official. It was produced. It aired. It was the first sequel. You can't deny this.) What you probably didn't know though is that the Cantina's "bar chock full o' aliens" concept was ripped off wholesale by this show, a goddamned sitcom about a dim-witted space frontier family who runs a space diner/bar/hotel in the far-flung, well-hung future of space, where children eat exploding cereal, tribbles pee in your lap before being accidentally sucked up by the vacuum cleaner, and the main guy forces everyone at his table to say grace, even the aliens, who undoubtedly worship gods of their own and seriously, how insensitive can you get? Of course there's a robot maid (programmed to sound like a British nanny), plus a second robot who looks like the result of a drunken tryst between C-3PO and the short-lived 1970s incarnation of DC's Robotman. And don't be too quick to dismiss the possibility: at one point, Not C-3PO thanks the robot maid for "last night", making it abundantly clear that these robots, at least, are entirely capable of fucking.

And paired off, the two of them are in no way reminiscent of C-3PO
and R2-D2. Who, by the way, I'm also convinced are fucking.

This first (and, thankfully, only) episode begins with auditions for the bar's new band, and it's easy to imagine the famous Star Wars "Cantina Band" landing their own gig in much the same fashion, although for some reason I picture the Cantina Band doing a lot more coke. And who knows, maybe they passed through this place, as it tries its non-infringing best to look like it exists in the Star Wars universe proper: there's a second cousin to Return of the Jedi's Ree-Yees milling around (Christ, just look him up, I had to), plus aliens that look like the Cantina's Rat-Face and Fetus-Head. (I'm sure those are the names Kenner would have come up with, if they'd thought to make toys out of them.)

Ree-Yees' cousin, Rick-Dees.

Later in the episode (the content may have sucked, but these old shows managed to pack a lot of it into 26 minutes) a shady businessdude shows up and tries to steal the family's apple pie recipe (Star Wars!), leading to a clumsy sci-fi fight, but as you can imagine the special effects here aren't exactly impressive, about on par with the music video for Billy Ocean's "Loverboy". Which, come to think of it, made considerably better use of this concept overall. Ultimately, there's little here that Earthlings would consider "humor", although the laugh track, clearly inserted at random, tries its best to convince us otherwise. Starstruck is a horrible, detestable footnote in Star Wars's history and influence, but it's one that's worth seeing, just so future writers and directors will know what NOT to do. Or they could just watch The Phantom Menace.

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