Friday Face Off: Star Wars Fanboys vs Trekkies

They're like the Crips and the Bloods of Sci-Fi fandom. Their weapons of choice are light sabers and phasers. Both are the subject or ridicule and the butt of a myriad of jokes. Both are openly mocked and scorned. But now we at Fish & Spaghetti have taken it upon ourselves to determine which fanbase is geekier; Star Wars or Star Trek.

Those goose bumps you feel on your arm? It's just the latest edition of the Friday Face Off. So set your phaser on nerd, the Farce is strong with this one.




In this week's Friday Face Off the two fanbases will face off in three simple and easy to understand categories; Source Material, Rabid Quotient and "the mysterious Curveball".

Source Material
(For the sake of our own sanity we limited the scope to the original source material. In the case of Star Trek it's the original series. No flicks, no Next Generation and no Affirmative Action hires for Captain. For Star Wars it's Episodes I-VI. No cartoons, comics or Christmas Specials.)

Star Trek was conceived in the 1960's and is very much a product of the era. Whether you're talking about the Public Access quality special effects or the heavy handed attempts at social commentary (the Kingon's are a thinly veiled analogue for Soviets), or the inane technobable, the show reeks of the 60's.

The show ran for three years before getting cancelled. But it lived on in syndication and became a cult (and camp) classic. It was a show that put the "T" in "subtle" with overacting that was so historic it still haunts William Shatner to this day, despite the fact that he's had two successful series since. It also helped reinforce the coolly dispassionate alien archetype that's rather common in Sci-Fi.

Though it should also be pointed out that the series did feature morality parables, albeit ham-fisted ones. Sure, there was good and bad, but there was also a gray area.

Star Wars hit the theaters in the late 1970's and gave birth to the "blockbuster with merchandise".

Like Trek, it also featured questionable acting but while the special effects may look lame today they actually won an oscar and were clearly years ahead of the original Star Trek series.

The series reached it's creative peak with The Empire Strikes Back and devolved into a cartoon from that point on. For every Wookie it introduced it also gave pop culture a dozen Ewoks. And for every Darth Vader or Boba Fett, there was a Jar Jar Binks or a General Grievous (a robot with bronchitis? word?). Sure it had cool light saber battles, but it also had pod races, plot holes and Jar Jar Binks.

Also it should be noted that Star Wars was "influenced" (or bit from) a variety of sources including the Wizard of Oz, Dune, 2001:A Space Odyssey and Akira Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortess.

With all of those things factored in, Star Trek is the better source material.

Disadvantage: Star Wars.

The Rabid Quotient:

We've been to a comic convention or three, so we know a thing or two about rabid fanbases. In our travels we've seen our fair share of Klingons and Jedis, Borgs and Storm Troopers. Sometimes we marvel at the craftsmanship. Other times we shake our heads in disgust.

Originally we were going to give this one to Star Wars. Firstly because Star Wars fanboys come up with way more obscure characters to dress up as. We know for a fact that we've come across half a dozen randomly dressed weirdoes who turned out to be background characters from Mos Eisley Cantina who never had a line of dialogue or even someone from the litterarry expansions of the story or a god damned video game exclusive character.

When you pick a character to dress up as, solely on the basis of obscure they are, in an attempt to out-geek someone, there's something wrong.

Also, apparently Monday was Star Wars day and Twitter was a flurry with Star Wars tweets. It was disgusting. Fictional holidays for works of fiction? Pretty geeky.

Case closed? Wrong.

Y'see Star Trek fans went above and beyond when they went and created the Klingon language. We don't know how you can possibly top creating a real language for make-believe aliens.

There are plenty of adequate languages that aren't being used, like Sanskrit, Aramaic and especially Latin.

Yet Trekkies went out of they're way to create a new language, one that's going to be ignored by almost everyone. Except this girl.

And her friends, these guys.

Creating a language to make your fictional life more realized than your real one? Supremely geeky.

Disadvantage: Star Trek

And now for the Curveball, in this case it's a simple question; who would we rather hang out with and have as a wingman?

It's really a no win situation. What's more embarrassing, someone trying to pick up a chick with a Jedi Mind Trick or a Vulcan Mind Meld? Are Vulcan ears more of a fashion faux pas than a Jedi rat's tail?

Your wingman's got to have your back, no matter what. He's got to help you score and possibly help you out of a jam. A Jedi is for some reason forbidden to date. Seriously. That's the whole basis of the 2nd triloy. Anakin hiding his relationship from the Jedi's.

So they're like space priest who fight every now and then. Which is just as creepy as hanging out with a priest right here on Earth. We'll pass.

Meanwhile, James Tiberius Kirk is one of the flyest dudes in outer space! He was road space tested for real.

He could shoot a fair one and score with the ladies. We'd much rather have someone using Kirk as a role model to be on our side. Someone following in Luke Skywalker's footsteps would probably be a whiney wuss of a weirdo who's not going to help you get laid at all.



Disadvantage: Star Wars.

There it is, in plain black and white; Star Wars fans are the bigger geeks. It's why they're catered to by Robot Chicken and The Family Guy. It's why they've got cooler toys and collectibles. It's why they've got no worries about STDs. Despite Trekkies creating a language, Star Trek still has nuance and is just a pinch cooler while Star Wars is a muddled mess bitten from superior sources.

Next Week on the Friday Face Off: The Dreaded Oklahoma Steamboat vs The Velvet Porkpie Hat.

Don't miss it.