Star Trek and Star Wars
A Comparison
By Patrick McCray, MFA

The comparison of TREK and WARS is, perhaps, inappropriate. One is about man's past and one is about man's future. One is about emotions, one is about reason. One is about the spiritual life of the individual, one is about the social life of mankind. One is about warrior castes, and one is about democratic meritocracy. One is spiritual, and one is political. One is about ancient images and adrenaline, one is about familiar characters and evolving stories.

Still, it is tempting to compare them, but I think one might as well compare Das Kapital and the Bible. Yes, both offer blueprints for life, but the approaches are so different, and the areas of the brain stimulated by them are so divergent that a comparison must be focused. However...

This difference in neural stimulation is key to note, and it reflects some key issues. In the ten years between the end of JEDI and the publication of the Timothy Zahn novels, there was virtually no media output of WARS anything. And the fandom really died down. I know, because I was in the thick of fandom, as a comic book writer and editor. There were few fanzines. No STAR WARS conventions. Little outcry for more trilogies. No toys. STAR WARS was well on its way to becoming a footnote in media history. Trek, on the other hand, flourished in the period between its syndication and the debut of STAR TREK:TMP (a film made possible, ironically, by STAR WARS' success). Conventions, fanzines, novels, toys, records, clothes, etc. all grew to tsunami status in the time between 69 and 79. It didn't make a big splash when it originally aired. But it stayed deep in the minds of those who watched it. It made them want, crave, and demand more. The less they got, the more they wanted. It just would not go away.

I have a theory about this. I think spirituality is - at a painfully slow rate - on the way out. Gently, with definite backsliding, it is nevertheless on the decline. We are simply too advanced as a culture to continue to rely upon superstition to answer the Big Questions. We are still a thousand years away from the total withering away of religion, but Gene Roddenberry was right; if we are to evolve as a race, we must tackle the Big Questions with our minds active and eyes open, rather than by worshipping shadows with heads bowed in dreary humility. Spirituality always wins the battle. It always appeals to our most primal fears and wishes. It's comforting. It feeds our essential desires for quick answers. But we don't survive that way; man isn't designed to. Man is a technological animal. It is our ability to adapt our environments that makes us unique. Given our physical limitations, it is also what gives us our very capacity to survive, tantamount to a bear’s fur or a crocodile’s rugged hide. Ultimately, I believe that reason speaks to us even more deeply than religion or desire does. It is what makes us human. Reason is the monkey on the back. We can ignore it, and often do. But it *is* our conscience. It is a harsh, cruel world. Reason is the most reliable guide, protector, and friend. Pray in one had, build in another, and see which fills up, first.

Our desires are so potent that reason is often ignored, but it is never eliminated. I believe that the embracing of reason as our most beautiful, definingly human attribute will be the most important paradigm shift of the next thousand years. Passions, madness, and the servitude of Gods start wars. Never reason. In fact, war is the supremely irrational act. Ironic and telling that we should be attempting to compare a war versus a trek. I realize that reason is blase, too Enlightenment, and not at all postmodern. And when a postmodernist cures cancer with the deconstruction of an icon, or whatever it is they think they're contributing, I'll pay attention to them. So, STAR WARS, with its ancient symbols, heroic anthems, and brilliant imagery grabs us at a very primal level. It arrests our attention, and makes our hearts pound, and wells tears in our eyes.

It nourishes our need to see good and evil clash. But it presents evil in a very story book way which is thrilling, but with few of the intricacies of the incredibly baroque reasons behind conflict. If only man's ills could be reduced to a creepy old guy with lightning flying out of his hands. Star Wars appeals to the most surface qualities in all of us. And that's fine. It affirms our sense of life in a very rudimentary fashion, and there's a place for that. It does it so well that it inspires immediate emotional rushes, and heated debate. It calls upon those ancient images which order the stages of our lives. In this, it is nothing new. But the passion for this burned hot and fast once, and it is burning hot and fast again. And, after Lucas is finally done, it will inspire nostalgia. Fond remembrances. But it will be much like a childhood love of Greek myths. Rarely do the passions for those tales accompany us through life with the tenacity they had in our childhoods. Nor do they *continue* to answer our questions as we age.

Those myths become footnotes for adults, because life isn't that simple. I think myths order the process of living and dying for formative children, and serve as points of nostalgia for adults. But the questions - the Big Ones - that continue to plague us, that deal with the nuances of life's challenges, are too complex to be so easily satisfied. I believe that STAR TREK does satisfy that, and not just because it has more media hours devoted to it. Its open-ended format and sense of life are based on the notion of change, growth, evolution, and learning.

So, what we're really looking at is a comparison of the utility of the parts of the brain stimulated by the two stories. STAR WARS seems preoccupied with who we are - or, arguably, were. STAR TREK seems focused on who we must become. STAR WARS is perhaps more for children, like Greek myths. Ordering the universe. STAR TREK perhaps is more for adults. Asking the Big Questions. Does our morality work on different cultures? What are the limits of humanity? What does it mean to explore? How do we get along, once we're out there? If I want to feel good, I'll watch STAR WARS. But feeling good has its limits. I can also have a drink if I want to feel good. If I want to begin to understand my world, I'll turn to STAR TREK. Ultimately, it is by thinking that we change our lives to improve them. A hug might comfort me when I have a headache, but it is a chemical compound that eliminates the actual pain.

I think it is for this reason, as much as any other, that Trek has been so enduring. Its flame is not nearly as hot as STAR WARS'. But it burns longer, because I believe it speaks to that faculty which is uniquely and most enduringly human. Our reason. Both epics have their place. But STAR TREK seemingly endures a bit more, and with greater subtlety. It refuses to die. In fact, it has grown and changed shape with us. Reminding us of what is best in us now, and what we will become, through every political season. It speaks to our future, taking place there, rather than long ago, in a galaxy far, far away. It says we will survive and prevail as explorers -- man's quintessential identity. Explorers of technology. Explorers of space. Explorers of ethics. Explorers of the human heart.

Obi Wan sums up STAR WARS's essential message: The Force will be with you. Always. Comforting, but vague. Suggesting a bit more than it delivers. But probably good for children to have to help them endure an adult world beyond comprehension. We constantly thrust alien morality on children and insist they adhere to it long before they have the cognitive ability to understand the abstract reasons for the existence of ethics. So, something like "The Force will be with you" is a comfort that it all will make sense if I just trust what my Obi Wans tell me. Everything will be okay. Which is the one thing a child wants to hear most. It certainly is more effective a response than, "because I said so."

But adults need more. They understand morality. And they need more than simple faith in a Force. How does the Force help us grow? How does that accompany us through life? How does that help us deal with Hitlers? Well, it doesn't. So, then we come to the summation of the STAR TREK philosophy, in the thrilling words of Jean Luc Picard: Let's see what's out there.

Man lives by technology. Technology grows from science. Science grows from asking, “Why?” It grows from exploring. As a species we must explore, learn, and grow, or else we stagnate and die. Exploration -- on all levels -- is what makes us human. Treks are our bold future, fulfilling our destiny as the thinking ape. Wars constitute our past. So, I believe that, by definition, STAR TREK will never set the world on fire. But it will also never fade. Rather, it will grow. And it will be waiting to embrace the children of Star Wars and guide them into their human future. Theodor Herzl said that if you will it, it is no dream. STAR TREK gives us something to both dream and to will. In the midst of all its questioning, it is still about the finest in us, banding together, putting our best foot forward, to discover and to relish in all that life has to offer. (In that sense, Kirk's libidinous exploits are celebrations of living, rather than shameful excesses.) I can't help but think that the copy of the ST6 teaser sums it up best:

 

And these paragons of reason are not unfeeling robots. They balance love, emotion, passions, a zest for all of life's possibilities, and reason to perfection, just as Roddenberry envisioned for man's future. All without religion. With faith in nothing but the essential benevolence of reason in man's heart and mind. In the realm of man's evolutionary destiny, as well as his technological fate, STAR TREK inspires us with our potential. And if you will it, it is no dream.

It is the child's job to look backward, and understand how our heritage -- the wars, the gestures made out of sacred honor -- makes us who we are. It is the job of the adult, standing on the shoulders of history’s giants, to look ever forward. With that in mind, the human adventure really is just beginning.

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Ron's note: You may find that Patrick's comment on the demise of spirituality is odd given the nature of this web site. Well, it is, and I hold to the contrary of his assertion; however, I also strongly advocate free speech, and I know that he has thought about what he wrote and "believes" as strongly as I in his own experience and understanding.

 

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