One thing that irks my Nerdance to no end is when science fiction stories dealing with advanced science and galaxy spanning civilizations suddenly throw in stuff that technologically hearkens back to the good ole days of WWII or earlier. I don’t expect perfection in my cheese ridden space operas, but if something already exists that is better than the equivalent you are depicting in your show/movie/book, well you screwed up. Today’s continuation of my Star Wars vs Star Trek Series sees this retarded theme over and over again, as if the writers for both series couldn’t be bothered to check if man had learned to harness the power of electricity or even fire yet as they wrote crappy scripts in their Ted Kaczynski style mountain shack.

Today’s topic is the weapons displayed in the two biggest sci-fi franchises, and how horribly lame they are. I will be rating them based on how effective they would be deployed against the Army of the United States of America, God bless this mess. You think this is too nerdy for you? Well, then click that back button on your browser, you locker room dwelling, three-sets-of-ten doing, basketball dunking gym rat.

Ship Based Weapons

Federation ships are generally armed with a combination of phasers (lasers in Star Wars), Photon Torpedos (disembodied red Christmas tree lights) and whatever magical crap they can come up with for the deflector dish when they don’t feel like blasting away with the previous two.

The ship mounted phasers are cool, and seem to have a decent range as well. They seem to use pinpoint computer targeting like you would imagine a big ass particle weapon from the future would use. What’s more, you never see shots of cadets in star trek lining shit up with old tyme iron sights in order to guesstimate their target. The torpedoes are another story. While cool in theory, they never seemed to pack the punch they should. I see shots of torpedoes tearing through the hull of a ship, and I can’t help but think, “damn if that thing was a nuke they would have been toast.”

This brings up my major gripe with Star Trek ship combat. These guys have teleporters right? They don’t work through shields, but heck as soon as you knock an enemy’s shields down why don’t you just beam over Hiroshima’s “Fat Man” directly onto their bridge? Instead they continue to dodge and juke and scheme looking to get in a killing shot. I would have made a better captain than Kirk or Picard. All in all, The USA’s nuclear arsenal would do pretty heavy damage to the Federation.

Star Wars vessels are armed with Turbo Lasers (Phasers in Star Trek), Proton Torpedoes (What that pansy Luke used to blow up the Death Star), and whatever that big green thing is on the Death Star (maybe another Turbo Laser, I dunno)

What struck me about the weapon systems in Star Wars is how god damn slow the lasers move. Like, you can see the light crawling away from you slower than a Major League pitch. Combine that with the need to manually aim the turrets like something from a WWII era B-17 and I’m surprised they ever hit anything. I’m sure there are crew members who have manned those turrets their entire 30 year career in the Empire who have never hit a damn thing. The proton torpedoes are also manually aimed. Jesus, did all the computer technology in the universe go into making golden robots of questionable sexuality? I’m pretty sure an army guy in a Humvee could dodge Imperial Weaponry, so the US army wins again.

Winner: Tie! They’re both stupid!

Personal Ranged Weapons

Star Trek has Phasers (again) and that’s it. Some of the aliens with washboard foreheads have things called disruptors, but they are pretty much phasers.

Now Phasers are all power and no finesse. You know that part when Darth Vader blocks Han’s blaster with his hands in Cloud City? If he tried that shit to a Federation officer he would have a split second to look at his non-existent hand before the rest of his body vaporised. A tiny personal phaser can destroy shit at the atomic level, but the problem is use. Their rate of fire sucks! They emit a long drawn out beam that takes a half an hour to dissipate before they can fire again. So what you get in Star Trek is firefights identical to old westerns where the two sides huddle behind some rocks and take pot shots at each other. A trained squad of Marines would eat Enterprise security forces for breakfast.

The standard issue ranged weapon in Star Wars is the Blaster. Aside from having a ridiculous name these things are weak as shit. I’m pretty sure I could stop a blaster with my hand if I had black leather gloves like Vader. At most they throw a few sparks and make a little puff of smoke. Also they are horribly inaccurate. Maybe the Stormtroopers are retarded (a topic for later), but there has to be a reason they never hit anything. Perhaps the Empire needs tighter quality control to make sure blasters don’t fire a good 15 degrees off plumb. Forget the military, the Keystone Cops could take out a battalion of Stormtroopers.

Winner: Star Trek because Blasters are basically sci-fi airsoft guns.

Melee Weapons

Welp, The Best I could come up with for Star Trek is something called the bat’leth. It is a traditional Klingon weapon, and while it might look cool, it is most definitely stupid. Hard to use, weighting a good 20 lbs, and made of solid steel it looks like one of those cheesy fantasy knives you can get in the cutlery place in the mall. A baseball bat would be a better weapon. Hell, a paring knife might be superior based on how fast I imagine a bat’leth user would hurt themselves. What a joke.

The Light Saber is the holy grail of Star Wars weapons, and with this the series makes up for its stumbles in the other categories. I’m not saying it is the most effective weapon or anything. Unless the force lets you slow down time Matrix style I think a Jedi would have a hard time blocking all the rounds from a decent machine gun, but as a hand-to-hand weapon it is definitely better than anything we have these days. Imagine owning one… I could slice AND cook my vegetables all at once! I could get rid of half my power tools! I could finally open those plastic nightmare packages all electronics come in! I would be invincible!

Overall: Star Wars by a light-year!

-Andy