Star Trek or Star Wars?

I agree with your overall point, but Picard is very good. Also, it's Patrick Stewart, dammit.

 

Picard had all the feels

 

We'll sic Species 8472 on you...

 

I don’t want to choose. I never participate in the social media games “you have to eliminate one...”

They’re both sci-fi but totally different. Really enjoy both.

Trek has so much more material with all the tv shows. I’m still a sucker for the original-cast movies.

Star Wars as a cultural touchstone for my generation probably gets the nod.

 

I'm sure there are people out there who have seen all of the content for one or both. I'm not that far off in Star Wars, but I have no real desire to fill in the gaps. Maybe I'll give Clone Wars or Rebels a shot at some point. As it is, I've seen episodes here and there from both. The same is true of Star Trek. I keep meaning to try Voyager again. I bailed on that one after a season or two. I'm not sure if or when I'll get around to it. The point is, there is a lot of content for both, especially if you read the novels. The problem with both is they have thrown out the novels as canon in both. Picard completely ignored everything that happened in the Star Trek novels. Disney officially tossed the existing Star Wars novels, making them "Legends," after decades of Lucas claiming that they were canon. Those stories were so much better than what we got in the last three sequels, which kind of shit on the original protagonists.

 

The Star Trek novels were never supposed to be considered to be canon. That changed after Nemesis flopped. Paramount was done with the Next generation universe, and told the book editors to write it like they owned it. And that's when Riker went off on Titan and Picard married Crusher and the books moved their lives forward along other storylines. So when they came back with Picard they had to throw the books out. It's also worth noting that after 2018, the production of novels ceased for a while and is still considerably slower. And just about every other book out is in the Discovery world. There have also been a couple of Kelvin universe books, one, by Allan Dean Foster, was perhaps the worst Star Trek book I have ever read.

 

I didn't know they started that way, but I do remember closer ties around the time of Nemesis. I believe they mentioned Riker taking over the Titan in that movie. I am a big fan of those books, though some of the relentless darkness became frustrating. I became a big fan of some of the characters created in the novels, especially Federation President Nan Bacco. If you've read the books, you know the very moment I strongly considered never picking up another Star Trek book.

 

I was super into the TNG extended universe books when I was a kid.

My favorites off the top of my head, I have no idea what the titles are after all these years:

1) The one where a young Q, implied to be Q's son, tries to merge three timelines to see the chaos it would cause

2) The one where Wesley from his Star Fleet dorm room creates a way to counterfeit latinum with a modified replicator and gets kidnapped by Ferengi

3) The one that tells the story of Riker and Troi meeting on Betazed, mostly because I was 12 and it had very slightly dirty parts, also involves some time travel where a future Riker tries to stop another future person from assassinating present-day Troi

4) There's an ancient relic that people keep fighting over and it turns out that it's a piece of the Guardian of Forever and it's manipulating people to fight over it so it can be transported through a wormhole and plant itself like a seed in another galaxy

5) The one where Q and Lwaxana date for a bit

 

Give Clone Wars a shot. It does a much better job at telling a prequel story than the movies. The characters are better. Even Anakin is better. The hardest part of watching it is knowing it comes between episodes II and III so these awesome stories ate going away.

As for Voyager, it suffers the same problem as TNG had and needed three seasons to really find its grove. Basically once the Kazons are in the rear window. The Hirogen are cool bad guys. There's a time line two parter that asks some good questions. And the Borg and Seven of Nine. I would give it a go.

 

I've given both series a shot before. I did watch the final season of Clone Wars when it came out this year. I may try one of them again once I finish my current binge.

 

Found this thread late, but ... Trek, big time.

A lot of it has to do with timing (I was introduced to Trek in the late 90s, so after the original Star Wars trilogy was long in the past but before Phantom Menace came out), but I think one big reason I continue to be on that path is that Star Trek had the wisdom or good fortune, perhaps, to grow out of their creator's vision. So many of the original series episodes are 2-by-4 to the head levels of subtlety, and Gene Roddenberry's vision of the future (such as basically banning all conflict between main characters) was simply not feasible in the modern era of television writing. I mean, you realize that the first couple seasons of TNG have episodes that are just as horrible as some of the worst of the Kirk era. On the other hand, it took much longer for the Star Wars universe to divorce itself from George Lucas's head, and you could argue that there are significant factions that are still there.

In terms of the '21st century' series, I really like Discovery for a variety of reasons (I kind of feel like Sylvia Tilly could be my great*9 grand-daughter because our personalities are that similar). I'm not sure I'm down with the whole 31st century, or as I have called it, "Time Voyager," thing, both because a 900-year jump in both technology and just overall culture should be impossible to depict on screen but also because I'd rather continue exploring the current continuity rather than basically just create an entirely new one to give the writers a break on canon.

I kind of liked Picard, but I feel like it got made 10-15 years too late and it drags the pacing into the mud. It would have made a lot more sense if this had happened when Patrick Stewart was capable of doing more ... things. Now it seems like whole plots in the first season got held up so the writing could place a sidekick next to him to fight on his behalf.

I've been slowly rewatching the various series in reverse (not counting DS9, which I watched 4-5 years ago because no one syndicated it where I grew up). I feel bad for Enterprise because it was a half-decent concept, but you could tell the whole franchise was out of ideas at that point and the technological chops to make a series like Discovery didn't exist yet. I think it would have worked if it had been made about 10 years later than it was.

Just re-starting Voyager now. I didn't get into Trek during until after those early bad seasons (already dreading the lizard episode), so many surprises await.

 

It's a bit much with the Star Wars, at this point. Its fan base is getting closer to regarding the franchise as something close to cultural religion, and Disney's control of the franchise will only deepen that obsession.