Abnormality: Star Trek vs. Star Wars

[alicemacher]

An installment of the webcomic Abnormality, a onetime Cracked.com feature by Winston Rowntree of Subnormality notoriety.

Comments

[halloweenjack]

It's all true.

[bruinsfan]

I still haven't seen someone try to wear a wookie suit for jury duty, so I think Star Trek fandom actually trumps Star Wars in the overly devoted category.

[kamino_neko]

Nobody's put 'Sarekism' in the 'religion' section on a census form, so...

[icon_uk]

That would be Surak-ism, wouldn't it? Surak was the philosopher logician, Sarek just happened to be Spock's dad.

Oh god I feel like such a nerd right now... well, nerdier than the norm.

[kamino_neko]

... I can't believe I committed that mixup.

[auggie18]

Why is "May the Force be with you" supposed to be worse than "Live Long and Prosper?" I mean, I guess it's a more obvious reference, but that doesn't seem quite scream and run away worthy. Unless you're shouting it aggressively at somebody, in which case I'd imagine it wouldn't matter what you were shouting.

[adnor]

Because "Star Wars is stupid and so are its fans"? Or at least I think that's what the comic is trying to say, can't say I agree with it.

[captainbellman]

It is weird that the movies that kind-of reversed the balance of quality in the two properties, turning Star Trek into a big brainless CGI-fest and Star Wars (it seems) into a practical FX, diversely-cast story...are directed by the same guy...

(I'm still expecting Star Wars VII to be 25% nostalgia, 25% unanswered/poorly-thought-out metaphysics and 50% Daddy-Issues as is the usual with Abrams. At least he's on a franchise that has a precedent for the latter this time.)

[ozaline]

People wee joking that he was directing Star Wars from the first Trek movie he did.

Hell he said he's not a Trek fan, and likes Star Wars better.

[captainbellman]

It's a damn shame, considering there's umpteen fantastic visionary directors who'd chew their legs off to get at Trek. Hell, they could have kept the same story for the first movie and hired Rian Johnson, it being his specialty (though then again, conceivably he wouldn't have made Looper afterward, which would be a shame).

I'm just glad they got whatsisname instead for the third film. Hopefully that'll be better. Idris Elba is involved, I hear!

[lilacsigil]

Also, if you say "May the Force be with you" to someone raised Anglican*, they will automatically say "And also with you," and that's fun at family gatherings. That doesn't work for LLaP!

*I was not raised Anglican but I went to an Anglican high school and had this drummed into me.

[icon_uk]

This would have been the same with Catholics, though we've recently been informed that the correct response to ".... be with you" is now "And with your spirit", which just doesn't work in English as it's almost a non-sequitur.

[cainofdreaming]

Same with us Evangelical Lutherans. That phrase has been included exactly all the times I've visited communion. In Finnish it kinda works.

[ozaline]

Lots of denominations I think... I'm pretty sure I've heard it at Alliance, and Mennonite Bretheran (not the low tech Mennonites).

[espanolbot]

Yeah... Roddenberry could be kind of a creeper when it came to women. He originally wanted Troi to have multiple rows of breasts, for example.

While Star Wars avoids sexism for the most part by having very few actual female main characters...

[reveen]

I don't know, I think there's a strong undertone of implied sexism running through the prequels where the Jedi are largely a boys club broken up by one of their number forming "attachments" with a woman.

For the OT it's more like bog standard damsel in distress crap. Which is actually kind of tame and retroactively refreshing in comparison to how toxic some modern works can get

[deh_tommy]

To be fair, a lot of Jedi were women, even if they only had small cameos in the prequel movies. Ahsoka Tano, Shaak-Ti, Luminara Unduli and Barriss Offee come to mind.

I don't know much about Star Trek, unfortunately, but I've heard some people like Janeway (myself included).

[captainbellman]

One of those is female Yoda, right?

[deh_tommy]

No, I think (based on a quick Google search) that's Yaddle. Ahsoka and Shaak-Ti are Togruta (humanoids with large tails on their heads, like Twi'lek except said tails are larger) while the latter two are yellow humanoids called Mirialans.

[shingi70]

Is it really Sexism if it goes both ways, the same rules would have applied to any female Jedi who joined the weird sexless cult thing.

Also while this comic is pro Star Trek I typically find Star Wars Nerdom to be more accepted by the average person. It doesn't help that Star Trek was so boring that to make it resonate with audiences again was to make the reboot more Wars than Trek.

[espanolbot]

Problem was that a lot of the rules ST's creator instilled in the franchise from the start hampered simple storytelling, thus creating a sterile atmosphere with smug characters (particularly in the TNG days).

Roddenberry once rejected a script where a grieving child is stalked by an alien posing as his recently deceased mother, for example, because in his mind "in the future humanity has evolved beyond the need to mourn the dead, and that even children are mature enough to accept it"...

...Which not only goes against the rules of drama, but also basic human behaviour too. In later works (not counting Enterprise, where humans are depicted as smug, closeminded racists... yet still in the right for some reason), other species are kind of creeped out by humanity because of things like that.

[ozaline]

And DS9 got away from it, by saying... "Okay Humanity has this super enlightened attitude, but only because they've got near unlimited resources, out here in the sticks how long can your morals last?"


Though the mid TNG episodes weren't bad.

[espanolbot]

I honestly don't think that DS9 would have been made if Roddenberry was still around.

[ozaline]

No, I don't imagine it would but it toed a nice line between a complete subversion , as I believe at least one of the show runners intended, and a continuation of the legacy.

"Computer, delete that entire recording."

[icon_uk]

Hmm, not really a fan of such unsubtle pot-stirring.. and this is no exception.

Star Trek has issues, more than a few, but just watch some of the TOS scenes where Shatner, a trained Shakespearean actor who is a good deal better than many assume from out of context clips, is allowed to show his acting chops.

Look at his scene in Charlie X where he talks to Charlie, a hormonal kid he hardly knows, but who has grown up completely isolated from humans for all 16 years of his life, about how to interact with women he's attracted to and which includes a message that could well do with repeating a dman sight more often in media presentations;

"Be gentle. It's not a one-way street, you know. How you feel and that's all. It's how the girl feels, too. "

[alicemacher]

Yeah, the one point (other than the silly, needless "Star Wars fans are creepyscary LOL" bit at the end) on which I strongly disagree with this comic is on Shatner's acting ability. The fact that he's made something of a second career in self-deprecatory performances based on Kirk's hamminess (e.g. the Big Giant Head in 3rd Rock from the Sun) tends to obscure his versatility. Anyone who's seen his performance as the charismatic racist anti-integration agitator* in 1962's The Intruder would be hard pressed to deny his talent.

To dismiss Shatner as a "weekend dinner theatre" amateur shows ignorance of his career at best, malicious selectivity at worst.


* Clip contains racist and anti-Semitic language

[ozaline]

Also Admiral Akbar is not corrupt... nor is Tarkin (who is acting with the authority of his Emperor). Also Tarkin is a Grand Moff

This is libelous!

Yes, for Shatner too.

[deh_tommy]

I liked the scene where he was talking to Bele, from 'Let This Be Your Last Battlefield', about the insignifigance of the racial split between him and Lokai.

[bradygirl_12]

I guess it's just easy shorthand to consider Shatner a bad actor. As you mention, he was Shakespearean-trained, for crying out loud! I love his speech in the Sargon episode when he's trying to convince McCoy and the rest about why they should take the risk of switching bodies with Sargon and company. "Risk is our business! That's why we're aboard her (the Enterprise)!" I've seen his work on Twilight Zone and other '50s and early '60s shows. He didn't keep getting those acting jobs on just his good looks!