The following premise has most often been true: Star Wars fans despise Star Trek and vice versa.
Well, not always.
When I was a young boy (at the age of three), the first
Star Wars feature film (later to become episode IV) was released in the theatres. At that time, I didn't quite understand what it was all about, something I still didn't understand in 1980 and 1983, when respectively
Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back and
Star Wars VI: Return of the Jedi came out.
I saw numerous ads in magazines like
Donald Duck (magazine), and some of my few friends at the time used to play with Star Wars merchandise, but it didn't do very much for me. "What's with all the sandy planets (Tatooine) and that strange forest (on Endor)?" I thought, "Isn't something called Star Wars supposed to take place in space, with large battles on space ships and stuff?"
As far as SciFi went at that time, I watched
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (bidibidibidi) and
Battlestar Galactica, along with shows as The A-Team and Knight Rider and various anime like Heidi, Candy Candy and Nils Holgersson.
Later on (we're making a jump of several years here),
Spaceballs came, I discovered
Star Trek: The Next Generation and I was hooked. Combined with the stories I heard about Star Wars, I became a Trekkie; not as much as to go and suiting myself up in lycra, but I went practically out of my way to watch the show and even bought myself a VCR to tape the shows I would've missed otherwise. I enjoyed the reincarnations Deep Space Nine and Voyager as well, although Voyager lost its zest somewhere in the middle of the series. Star Wars was still something of a fairy tale to me; I liked the technical aspect combined with the storyline of the Star Trek series more than the storyline alone of Star Wars.
Half way during Star Trek: TNG, I re-discovered anime through
Akira,
Project A-Ko and later on
Ghost in the Shell, but that's something for another post.
We're jumping in time yet again, and in 1999
Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace was released. It was clear that George Lucas finally wanted to finish the opus magnum he started in 1977 with the release of Star Wars, so I decided to watch episodes IV through VI again (I had seen them once in 1991 or so, and thought they were reasonable at the time) and try The Phantom Menace.
While I enjoyed it, there was still something missing (quite obvious, as the tale needed at least two more chapters to fill the gaps), so I left it there.
Now, 7 years after The Phantom Menace, the gaps have been filled by
Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones (2002) and
Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith (2005), so I decided to give the whole thing another spin in its original release sequence, as there are some things that are given away in the first three movies that were released later. In that light, the Star Wars story is actually really something.
Although not very deep, it does capture you and as the story unfolds, move you as well, and I'm glad I watched the entire epos and liked it.
So there you have it; it's very much possible to like them both, it's just a matter of time, I guess. Now to see when the time comes for me to watch the Lord of the Rings trilogy; a friend of mine practically demands I go and watch the super-duper-extra-long extended versions, and I haven't even read the book...
Cheers, K.