With The Force Awakens finally out, we have plenty of new technology to see on the big screen and geek out over. It may be a long, long time ago, but the Star Wars gadgets and weaponry blow our own out of proportion. Lightsabers, cloning, and ridiculously impractical AT-AT walkers are available to anyone with the credits in George Lucas’ universe. One of the only other franchises that can compete with their scientific advancements is Star Trek. They have a lot of their own sci-fi achievements that we can only dream about, but which universe has the better toys? We could spend all day debating the age-old question of Star Wars vs. Star Trek, but for now let’s just focus on the tech.
With Star Wars, you’ve got the aforementioned devices, and it doesn’t get much cooler than lightsabers. You can make them any color you want, add a laser hilt, and even make them into nunchucks. You’ve got the Death Star, which can take out a planet (once it makes its slow way around a bigger planet) and just needs a vent cover to make it impervious to attack. You can travel at light speed with a hyperdrive, and the droids are complex enough to almost make us feel bad that we’re basically enslaving them.
In the Star Trek universe, you have phasers, which don’t quite measure up to lightsabers, and the Star Wars blasters can do kinda the same thing. You’ve got the Borg Cube, a ship powerful enough to take on entire fleets single-handedly. You can also blow up planets, too, so the Death Star loses its muster. Trek‘s androids are more sophisticated and advanced than the laser-fodder droids and clones in Wars, so that’s another point for them. Plus, you can travel faster than the speed of light with the warp drive, leaving hyperdrives in the dust.
The latest Star Trek movies sort of end the debate, though. You can beam to traveling ships across the galaxy and to distant planets, making ships pretty much meaningless. You can also use Benedict Cumberbatch’s blood to basically live forever. So, I guess that means Star Trek wins.
Wait, Star Trek Beyond is forgetting all about those advancements. So, it’s back to being anyone’s game.
