Kaijuu's Blog

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.

For startrek, I watched the original series on TV befre any of the others.
I thought those people were really cool.

Then I got to see Starwars, when The Empire Strikes Back was in the local cinema. They had it as a double bill, so I went to see it.

The next time I saw Startrek, I thought it was kinda daft, because all aliens looked like humans or humans in costumes. In Starwars there were some alternative lifeforms too.

Anyway, I still watched Startrek, but not with as much enthousiasm as I used to.
When they started TNG I started watching it again only to discover, nothing was learned from the show's earlyer lack of non-humanoid characters.

I stopped watching it halfway through. I just couldn't be arsed.
I did enjoy some of the later startrek movies with the old cast though.

But for the most, I turned away from it....
Untill... Enterprise!

I really loved that show, especially the conclusion in season 4.
Them not encountering anything but bipeds was kinda logical, because they just started out and weren't looking for them. It was well written and nice to watch. So, i my case as well, I can enjoy both Startrek and Star Wars. Though, my preference still goes to wars, because the evil dude was just so likeable to a 8 year old kid at the time.

Star wars wins hands down against star trek in my opinion. star trek just dosent have enough darkside for me.But all sci -fi is better than no sci -fi .
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Niels:
To be completely honest, Star Trek does on occasion run into non-humanoid life forms. The original series had the Tribbles and those yellow, slimy creatures that incapacitate you to suck out your life (or whatever). And TNG had those plasma-cloud creatures.

But your point is actually quite close to my biggest nag with Star Trek: its take on "the future" is way too clinical. Everything is uber-sparkly and clean and there is zero grit to be found.

Star Wars comes a lot closer to what I like and it's just a classic.

But were I allowed to extend my choice past these two series, I'd have to go for Firefly and Space:Above&Beyond.

As for me, I liked both Star Wars and Star Trek. I was also hooked on ST:TNG at the time. The old Star Wars movies where before I started visiting cinema's. Watched them later and enjoyed them immensely though.

These days Star Trek is totally down the drain: it went down hill halfway ST:Voyager and Enterprise was no improvement. Same story for the newer Star Wars movies: they're not that bad, but to me it was more a rollercoaster ride of CGI and special effects. It just lacked the 'magic' of the older movies.

The two USA tv-series I'm currently following are Heroes and Supernatural. Supernatural is a fantasy/horror series about two brothers who are hunting vampires, demons and other evil things. Not that spectacular, but still entertaining. Heroes is a scifi/suspense show about a near future in which various people develop super powers. This leads to various parallel stories, conflicts, mysteries, etc. This series is simply awesome HQ stuff: once you see the first episode you just have to see the rest. To illustrate: one protoganist is Japanese (name: Hiro, ability: bending space/time). He actually speaks Japanese and is filmed in Japan at first! Anyway, again: brilliant stuff and a must-see.