Space Combat (Strategy and Tactics)
If you've viewed enough hours of SW and ST you'll quickly understand there are striking differences between the strategies and tactics in space combat of the franchises. I've already touched on this subject above so this shouldn't take too long to explain.
It's not too hard to understand what happens during SW space battles. Every movie has massive capital ships slugging it out with their massive and countless turbolasers while fighters are launched and battle each other. As previously stated, capital ship combat does not seem to be overly intellectual. It seems more like a ships of the line slugging it out. Basically you've got overly massive and barely maneuverable ships shooting as much as they can at each other. I doubt any sort of tactics are involved since sub-light speed and maneuverability seem to not have any effect on combat effectiveness. Heck, Han Solo made two Star Destroyers run into each other! How dumb are those commanders! That was a cool scene though.
I'm not sure what fighter tactics are. In fact, I don't know why fighters exist because it seems as if capital ships are absolutely impervious to most anything fighters can throw at them. Fighters are good for taking out Death Stars though.
I don't know what more to say about SW space battle strategies or tactics. We see a lot of battles but basically nothing to explain how they are done. This isn't necessarily a fault of the movies, as they didn't focus on the "whats" and "hows" of their ships and space combat, but it certainly doesn't help SW's (I guess that should actually be without the "s" but then that'd look weird) case for having superior war strategy and battle tactics.
ST, on the other hands, has countless examples of strategy and tactics. In ST the captain is highlighted and is often the one who is the reason why their ship survived and the other didn't. Granted, ST often involves only two ships, and rarely more than that, in a battle but at least we get to see the intelligence, courage, and cunning of captains (and their crew). I can provide many examples. In
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country Spock figures out how to
fire upon a cloaked Bird of Prey, in
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan Khan is as cunning as ever but Kirk delays Khan while they figure out how to
take down the Reliant's shields and later they have a great battle in the Mutara Nebula where a
three dimensional maneuvering is key, there is Picard's...
Picard Maneuver (getting bested by Data is nothing to be ashamed about), the
Riker Maneuver (don't ask me why the idiot who posted the video dubbed his own idiotic voice for the dialogue [and just don't pay attention to the obvious video game joystick Riker uses to manually steer the
Enterprise ]), and many more examples. Needless to say, space combat in ST at least shows that the captains and their crews are very intelligent and use their intelligence to live for one more day.
The Picard Maneuver? Oh, oops. Wrong one!
Perhaps the best example of space combat tactics in ST is seen in
Star Trek: Nemesis where the
Enterprise (and later two Romulan Warbirds) has(have) to fight against a much more formidable ship that has a virtually perfect cloak.
Here is a video that's the best I can find of the battle that shows what happens, including: using phasers to hit the cloaked ship and then firing torpedoes according to the phaser hits, flipping the
Enterprise so that the ventral shields can take hits because the dorsal shields were failing, and showing the ship crews, including captains, understand a three dimensional battlefield (as well as ramming when all else fails
). I also stated before that in ST ships can target specific areas or parts of an enemy ship. For example, perhaps you wish to capture the enemy, so you take out their engines and weapons instead of simply destroying the ship. This is something lost in SW, or at least it's not shown at all. Add to this the maneuverability of ST ships. They're big starships themselves, most of them being a few or several hundred meters long, and yet they are also like giant fighters that are constantly maneuvering at hundreds or thousands of kilometers per hour. This makes one wonder if SW capital ships could adequately target and hit ST ships because of the superior maneuverability of ST ships compared to SW ships and their turbolaser turrets.
As far as space battle strategy and tactics are concerned, ST ends up on top. SW may have a gargantuan advantage when it comes to ship numbers, size, and firepower, but the franchise lacks entirely in other areas where ST excels such as crew and commander competency, battle creativity, ship maneuverability, and inherent tactical possibilities because of ship design.
That about sums up starships and space battles! PHEW!
Ground Combat
This is another difficult area to compare and argue simply because SW is rife with land battles whereas ST hardly shows any sort of large scale land battles throughout the entirety of the franchise, and I
do mean the entirety. There are certainly huge and devastating wars (in space and on land) but the biggest number of combatants on land I've ever seen in an episode or movie was never more than a few dozen. In SW we see hundreds and thousands of troops and huge land battles, especially in the prequels. I am not too certain but my best guess is that SW's numbers for armies and their power is greater than that of ST. After all, the Empire controls most of their entire galaxy so they must have billions upon billions, and probably trillion, of troops. So automatically SW wins as far as land battles are concerned...
The clone army kicking butt on Geonosis.
...except for this:
Ewoks! Now, I understand pretty much everyone who likes SW, including myself, loathes seeing stupid fur balls taking out what the Emperor himself deems, "An entire legion of my best troops," but the fact remains that the movie has it and it can't be ignored. Maybe the forest got to the troops, maybe they were dressed poorly for combat in a forest (walking around in shiny white armor isn't the most inconspicuous way of marching around), or maybe the Ewoks took some crazy drugs before they attacked, but that's no excuse for an elite fighting force (of 10,000?) that is touted by the Emperor himself and is part of a military force that has conquered most of the galaxy to be defeated by Han Solo, Leia, Chewbacca, and hundreds(?) of Ewoks. I don't care if there were a billion Ewoks. The legion should have turned them all into foul-smelling lumps of burning fur.
One minor note about troop weapons: In SW there is no explanation or presentation of how powerful
blasters or
blaster rifles or...whatever are. In
Ep. IV a stormtrooper uses the stun setting to disable Princess Leia. In ST phasers have multiple settings that range from stun to kill to "maximum setting" which can incinerate targets. They can also be used to warm rocks for warmth in the wilderness or can be overloaded to create a large explosion.
There isn't much more to say here. The SW franchise clearly dominates as far as land power is concerned, even though ST hardly touches on the subject in any significance and there being a case where an Imperial legion is defeated by a pre-industrial race of furry mammals. Beating an obvious dead horse? Yeah...I know I am.
The Fantastic
I've now gone over what I think is the "meat" of the SW vs. ST debate. So what's left? We've got the fantastic, as in things in both universes that is more fantasy than science fiction. After all, this epic nerd debate is so "big" that it'd be ridiculous not to include the fantastic...no matter how ridiculous it is.
The most obvious example is the
Force. Over the six movies we've all seen various uses of the force like telekinesis, the ability to have a
non-corporeal self after death, enhanced physical abilities,
choking someone without physical contact, and
shooting lightning out of the body, among other abilities. Certainly this makes some SW individuals very powerful. That is why many SW fans will use the existence of the Force as an argument to say SW could/would best ST. I will admit that ST does not have the Force, or at least there is no mention of it whatsoever.
Emperor Palpatine using force lightning, much to his evil pleasure.
But does ST not having
Jedi or
Sith mean that SW has the advantage? That's a difficult judgment. Why? Well, there is one glaring question that must be asked. Does the Force even exist in ST? There is no mention of any similar force or power in all of ST. The Force is never directly referred to nor is anything resembling the Force. And to be more specific, and I hate to use this example, the Force is supposedly related to
midi-chlorian count in the body. We see constantly the incredibly advanced medical devices in ST that can detect the most minute and incredible variety of micro-organisms in a human or alien body and yet midi-chlorians are never detected. So if the Force does exist in ST it is virtually undetected by known science as well as...anything else. If the Force does not exist in the ST universe then that certainly means the Force can't be of use in the ST universe (the Milky Way galaxy).
Picard has no patience for the Force on his bridge.
So, if you're a Star Wars fan and wish to use the Force in the SW vs. ST debate then they have two problems to consider:
1) If the Force exists in SW does it also exist in ST?
2) If it does exist in ST then is it exclusive to only SW characters? In my opinion SW fans can't have a "yes" for the first question and a "yes" to the second question as well. It's one thing to point out obvious advantages of SW but it is another to use SW-exclusive powers and restrict it from ST even though it technically does not exist in ST.
But for argument's sake, I'll accept the Force does exist in ST. If that is to be assumed then I will also assume the Force exists in different ways. My point is that the Force is SW's fantasy power but ST has its own examples of fantasy powers itself. So, if the Force is allowed in SW vs. ST then so should fantastic ST examples. Force-like powers or abilities of ST races include mental telepathy of
Betazoids, shape-shifting of
Changelings, using illusion via mental powers of
Talosians, the ability to heal someone or bring them back to life of
Zalkonians, as well as many other examples of
telekinesis and
telepathy, among other abilities. With all of these examples I think it is safe to say that, while ST may not have the Force in its universe, there are many powers or abilities in ST that are comparable.
But if we're talking about things fantastic, there is one thing that is the most glaring...to a Trekkie/Trekker:
Q. He is an omnipotent being, actually a member of a race of omnipotent beings, who one day decided that he would mess with humanity because he thought humans had progressed beyond their limits. I talked a bit about him in
Helios 55. Some would say that Q wouldn't interfere with a SW/ST clash but I differ in opinion. If Q had enough interest or curiosity to interfere with humanity just because he thought they had progressed too much then certainly the entire galaxy at war with another would be more interesting to him. What are Q's powers? Basically he can do anything he wishes. He can manipulate both time and space, matter...anything. So, if the SW universe was at war with the ST universe then Q could decide to wipe out all of SW....if he wanted to (and if the
Q Continuum agreed as well [I think]). If there is one trump card Trekkies wish to pull it is that of Q.
Q as God.