Trek vs. Wars, or, Who's the Better Star?

The original Star Trek bridge crew, sitting comfortably with their moral certainty

Throughout my lifetime, one defining debate in niche culture has been: which is better, Star Wars or Star Trek? Which franchise reflects what we latterly call “nerd culture” in the most practical, incisive way? I’ve always disagreed with the question, because it seemed to me that the two franchises served different purposes. Arguing which was better seemed like debating whether you loved your pancreas or liver more, as though removing one would kill you less.

Star Trek always tried to be more concrete, humane, and values-driven. The structure always featured a new encounter with an alien species, rampant technology, or breakaway sect. And each conflict was, each in different ways, solved by the characters applying Gene Roddenberry’s humanist philosophy. Exactly what that means changed over time—the original series was more swaggering and colonial than TNG, for instance—but it was built to change. It was designed to remain open-ended.

By contrast, George Lucas designed Star Wars to end. It intended to encompass Luke Skywalker’s transition from provincial peasant to galactic hero, and at least as Lucas outlined, it would then end. Whether we want that “original” ending to be the medal ceremony at the conclusion of the first movie, or the destruction of the Empire at the conclusion of the third, either way, the story intended to resolve with Luke assuming his mature role.

So Roddenberry wrote one franchise to continue, while Lucas wrote the other with an arc that resolved. Yet time hasn’t allowed either outcome. The recent release of The Mandalorian and Grogu, the twelfth canon Star Wars feature film, accords it with the MCU and James Bond for stories that just continue, long after the cultural milieu that created them has ended. And Star Trek has, if anything fared even worse, at least in fan accounting.

Recent Star Trek outings like Strange New Worlds and Starfleet Academy have received pummelings from fan critics. Admittedly, the internet has given cranky fans a nearly limitless platform to complain about virtually everything. Especially with popular franchises, new entries have suffered in the ratings because of advance fan opposition; outings like Captain Ake or the Fifteenth Doctor have been lame ducks before their episodes even appeared, because of closed-minded, hostile, and even violent fan reactions.

The Abrams movies resurrected Yoda, because Luke wasn't allowed to finish growing up

Put another way, Star Trek’s core audience doesn’t experience the show anymore, they revere it. Most current Star Trek fans weren’t alive when the original series aired, and even first-generation TNG fans are in their fifties and up. The most vocal and committed audience base didn’t experience Star Trek in its cultural context on Cold War belligerence and America’s struggle with its own imperialist history. Star Trek wasn’t an abstraction, it manifested America’s fraying conscience.

Like holy texts, like the Bible or the Koran, Star Trek seems (falsely) to speak for itself. The cultural conflicts it commented upon have become fodder for historians and schoolbooks, not something the audience is steeped in. You could say something similar about Star Wars, which certainly commented upon the post-Vietnam landscape. But Star Wars held itself aloof, a willingly timeless goulash of space wizards, samurai movies, and Flying Tigers splendor that pretended to neutrality.

J.J. Abrams, who sanded Roddenberry’s humanist morals off Star Trek, also snipped off Star Wars’ Jungian roots. He turned the Starship Enterprise into a Lucasian circus, while he rendered the Millenium Falcon into a time capsule that, somehow, must keep fighting. Admittedly, he didn’t do that alone. Besides the connivance of producer Kathleen Kennedy, the process included Lucas himself, who licensed new content in 1990 and flooded the market with novels, comics, and canon movies.

In other words, Star Wars, like LotR or Narnia, was always supposed to end. But, controlled by America’s largest media conglomerate, it can’t; not while money exists to wring from audiences. For thirty-six years (as I write), Skywalker and company have been forced to re-fight their original battles, amended only by meaningless set dressing. They never get to govern the galaxy they liberated, because they’re busy constantly resisting another apocalyptic empire that, somehow, never dies.

Meanwhile, Star Trek had no limiting arc. It had little canon continuity until The Wrath of Khan; it simply responded to surrounding culture. This fluidity reflects in how the franchise constantly moves Khan Noonien Singh’s birthdate: Trek isn’t designed to be consistent, it’s designed to be current. Yet fan reverence for its roots keeps the most strident audiences from seeing the story in the present, reducing it into a lifeless artifact, a fly in amber.