Top 5 Reasons Why Star Trek Is the Better Franchise (And 5 Why It's Star Wars)

Star Trek debuted in 1966. My father was an original Trekkie. I wasn't born until 1969, a few months after "The Original Series" was canceled, but he taught me well, showing me the reruns on New York's WPIX-Channel 11, and taking me to the 1st 7 movies.

Star Wars debuted in 1977. I was an original fan. My father took me to the Original Trilogy.

I was a 2nd-generation Roddenberrian, and an original Lucasian. So you might think that I prefer Star Wars. In fact, I prefer Star Trek. Is that because I was exposed to it first? Maybe.

Here's 5 reasons why Star Trek is better, and 5 why Star Wars is:

10. Star Wars: Better Movies

The original film's original crawl

before it was renamed Episode IV: A New Hope

Star Trek fell victim to a curse: While its even-numbered movies were all good (yes, even the 10th one, Nemesis, if you think it's bad, you're wrong), it's odd-numbered movies weren't (although The Search for Spock and Insurrection kind of have bum raps).

Whereas even the bad Star Wars movies have their moments, and it wouldn't have taken much to fix them -- even The Phantom Menace.

9. Star Trek: Better TV Shows

Younger fans will tell me that The Clone Wars and Rebels are awesome. Even if you agree, there have now been 7 Star Trek TV shows, and even Discovery has found its footing. Yes, there's been some garbage on each of them, but so much more has been good.

8. Star Wars: Better Toys

Star Wars seemed to be invented to provide little boys with toys, and, in the late 1970s, I was their target audience. Even though the action figures, made by Hasbro, were small, they were the right size for a child's hands.

Mattel made Star Trek action figures, much bigger, but they left a lot to be desired. The likenesses were good, but the phasers and tricorders were light blue, a color not seen on either. Also, they were easily losable, and the tricorder snaps easily broke. And, for some reason, they got Uhura's hair very wrong: It was a puffy, outward, 1950s style, instead of the 1960s beehive she usually had, at least in her official capacity on the Bridge.

7. Star Trek: Better Catchphrases

Okay, nobody ever actually said, "Beam me up, Scotty." But the Star Trek catchphrases are many. Warp factor one. Highly illogical. Fascinating. I'm a doctor, not a (fill in the blank). He's dead, Jim. I can't change the laws of physics. Hailing frequencies open. It was inwented in Russia. Engage. Make it so. They are without honor. I can live with it! There's coffee in that nebula.

In this regard, Star Wars just doesn't measure up. I find your lack of faith disturbing. These aren't the droids you're looking for. Your powers are weak, old man. Laugh it up, fuzzball! I... am your father. Good, let the hate flow through you. This is podracing! I hate sand! And, of course, I've got a bad feeling about this!

6. Star Wars: J.J. Abrams Couldn't Screw It Up

When J.J. Abrams was assigned the 2009 Star Trek reboot movie, he made a Star Trek movie for people who loved Star Wars but hated Star Trek. And yet, it had all the things people hated about Star Trek: Overacting, Jim Kirk being a horndog, dopey special effects, impossible technology, technobabble. It was horrible. Abrams' production company is called Bad Robot, but old-school Trekkies called his Trek movies "Bad Reboot."

You could tell that he didn't respect Star Trek, but that he both loved and respected Star Wars -- so much so that the Sequel Trilogy is essentially a remake of the Original Trilogy.

5. Star Trek: It Survived J.J. Abrams

Since Abrams thankfully moved on, we have gotten the 1st season of Star Trek: Discovery, and that dug the hole even deeper. But the 2nd season brought the Enterprise, complete with Captain Pike, a younger Mr. Spock, and Pike's First Officer previously known only as Number One into it, and that saved it.

We have also now had Season 1 of Star Trek: Picard, bringing back much of what we loved about the Next Generation period (2364 to 2379 for them, 1987 to 2002 for us). Yes, it had problems, but, like the Synthetics, it was more than saved at the end, and restored to the Gene Roddenberry vision of "seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before."

And also the David Gerrold vision: "The final frontier is not space. The final frontier is the human soul. Space is merely the place where we are most likely to meet the challenge."

In 2009, and even more so, in 2012, after Star Trek II II: The Re-Wrath Of Not Khan Okay I Lied He's Khan -- excuse me, Star Trek Into Darkness -- it looked like Abrams had managed to do what NBC, Stanley Kubrick, Fred Freiberger, William Shatner's directing, and, yes, Star Wars couldn't do: Kill Star Trek. 

In 2020, Star Trek is back, and with at least as much hope for the future as Star Wars. And isn't that what Star Trek is all about, hope for the future?

4. Star Wars: Better Music

Alexander Courage composed the music for Star Trek: The Original Series, including the iconic opening theme, and the "Captain Kirk Fight Music." Jerry Goldsmith composed the music for Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and its theme became the opening theme of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

But the opening themes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager were not particularly memorable. And "Faith of the Heart," the theme song for Star Trek: Enterprise, written by Diane Warren and sung by Russell Watson... I liked it, a lot, but a lot of Trekkies still despise it.

John Williams composed the music for Star Wars. We remember the opening theme, the Imperial March, and the Cantina Band's number, and we remember them all fondly. And has there ever been a better use of music in a movie, ever, than the muted Imperial March played when Darth Vader told Luke Skywalker the big secret?

3. Star Trek: Better Prequels

Go ahead, make your jokes about Star Trek: Enterprise. But not only did it clear up some mysteries we'd had for decades, it delivered few retroactive plot holes. Discovery, at least in Season 2, has also done a good job. The Star Wars Prequel Trilogy? Holy bantha.

We didn't need to know who built C-3PO. (After all, we still don't know who built R2-D2, and we're very much okay with that.) We didn't need to see young Jabba the Hutt or kid Greedo. We didn't need to know that Jango Fett was as overrated a character as his "son" Boba.

Yoda was a big plot hole. Learned a whole lot more in the 20 or so years between Episodes III and IV than he did in the 1st 900 years of his life, he seems to have, hm? The Jedi as a whole seem to be far less worthy of Luke than he was of them. It almost got to the point where the people who think Darth Vader is the coolest character ever had a point, as he betrayed the Jedi.

And yet, Anakin Skywalker still seems more like a petulant kid who got in over his head than the great warrior old Obi-Wan suggested he was. You know, before we knew that Anakin had become, rather than had been killed by, Darth Vader. Vader, the most iconic thing about the Original Trilogy, becomes the biggest letdown of the Prequel Trilogy.

2. Star Wars: The Villains Are More Fun

And yet, there is an appeal to Darth Vader. Even to Emperor Palpatine. People who like gangster movies can appreciate Jabba the Hutt. Kylo Ren was a compelling figure, even if he was every bit as petulant as Grandpa Anakin. Peter Cushing as Governor Tarkin in the Original Trilogy, and Domhnall Gleeson as General Hux in the Sequel Trilogy, outvillained the intended villains. And, while even he couldn't save the Prequel Trilogy, Christopher Lee is one of the alpha human beings of all time.

Star Trek? There was Khan Noonien Singh, and later Data's "brother" Lore. But the original Klingons and Romulans weren't that interesting, and needed the sequel series to flesh them out. The Borg were hopelessly two-dimensional. V'Ger didn't even think of itself as a villain. Tolian Soran? The Son'a? Roger Moore's version of James Bond faced villains with more depth.

1. Star Trek: Brains

No, this is not a reference to how "Spock's Brain" is better than The Phantom Menace. Besides, "Spock's Brain" isn't even the worst Original Series episode. "The Lights of Zetar" was considerably worse. (Sorry, Shari Lewis.) So was "And the Children Shall Lead." So was "The Way to Eden," Herbert.

Admit it: The Galactic Empire is the dumbest set of villains in movie history. I'm not just talking about how Emperor Palpatine's "foreseeing" never foresees that he's going to lose. Or about how the Stormtroopers do a lot of shooting and missing.

Han Solo practically spells it out in The Force Awakens, during the meeting about how to handle Starkiller Base: "So, it's big... Okay, how do we blow it up? There's always a way to do that." And while they've had shields since at least Return of the Jedi, they're still too easily disable-able, and still nothing like the shields of a starship in Star Trek. As Riker would say, "One photon torpedo ought to do it."

The Empire learned nothing in the 30 or so years from the time a single damaged Rebel ship crashed into the bridge of a Star Destroyer, sending it tumbling into the surface of Death Star II, to the construction of Starkiller Base.

All those Star Wars fans who say a Star Destroyer would wipe Picard's Enterprise out with one shot? They've got it totally backwards: Kirk's Enterprise would destroy the Death Star. Fast-forward 100 years, and Picard's Enterprise would end the Empire in 5 minutes.

Whereas, in Star Trek, you need brains. You have to be able to out-think your opponent. Hell, in "The Best of Both Worlds, Part II," Riker had to out-think a Borg-assimilated Picard, who thought he knew every move Riker could make. And in Star Trek: Nemesis, Picard had to out-think Praetor Shinzon, a clone of himself, who thought he knew every move Picard could make. Think about that: Picard's a very smart guy, and both Picard himself and Riker had to out-think a Picard... and both did, and both won.

How many times did Kirk -- described by former First Officer Gary Mitchell as "a stack of books with legs" -- out-think a computer? Several. All that logic from Spock. All those diseases cured by Dr. McCoy. All those "miracles" worked by Scotty. And that's just on The Original Series. Throw in the moves made by those guys in the movies, and the ones made by Picard, Riker, Data, Sisko and his crew, Janeway and her crew, Archer and his crew...

Sure, some scripts were dumb. But name me another TV franchise, in any genre, that has celebrated brainpower more than Star Trek. Go ahead. I'll wait. NUMB3RS? A good try, but not on the same level. The Big Bang Theory? Don't make me laugh. (It couldn't.)

Hell, I could wait for as long as it takes to watch Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Or The Last Jedi.

True, the Rebels in Star Wars often required great skill. But rarely was that skill analytical. The smartest people in the Rebellion would have been considered average in Starfleet.