Top Ten Reasons Why Star Wars Characters Are Better

It’s hard to say who the original author of this list is, but I found it at ComedyCorner.org while browsing randomly. Star Wars characters better? Well, ignoring the fact that several items on this list have little to do with the actual characters, I still have to say hardly! So here’s my act of Trekkieness for the night: a point-by-point reply to the craziness. Enjoy.

10. In the Star Wars Universe weapons are rarely, if ever, set on “stun”.
— True, but in the Star Wars Universe, weapons rarely, if ever, hit an actual target. The Principle of Evil Marksmanship comes to mind!

9. The Enterprise needs a huge engine room with an anti-matter unit and a crew of 20 just to go into warp — The Millannium [sic] Falcon does the same thing with R2-D2 and a wookie [sic].
— Large crews, and even large ships, aren’t a necessity, as the Federation has ships capable of faster-than-light travel ranging in size from a little larger than a truck to the ~kilometer long flagship.

8. After resisting the Imperial torture droid and Darth Vader, Princess Leia still looked fresh — After pithy Cardassian starvation torture, Picard looked like hell.
— You’re right, Darth Vader and the Empire are less impressive than the Cardassians.

7. One word: Lightsaber
— A sustained phaser blast is quite like a lightsaber, only of potentially endless length. With a phaser, Darth could have cut Luke’s hand off from a hundred yards away. Much safer.

6. Darth Vader could choke the entire Borg empire withone glance
— If that’s even remotely true, he could have choked all of the ordinary rebel pilots prior to them destroying his Death Star. While Darth is working on choking one Borg — which probably don’t even need to breathe — ten more would be behind him, ready to assimilate.

5. The Death Star doesn’t care if a world is “M” class or not.
— Neither would any of a number of planet or star destroying devices, ships, and creatures that the Federation had to content with, all of which posing more of a challenge than an exposed self-destruct button disguised as an exhaust port.

4. Luke Skywalker is not obsessed with sleeping with every alien he encounters
— No, he just wanted to bed his sister. Big improvement.

3. Jabba the Hutt would eat Harry Mudd for trying to cut in on his action.
— It has been established that Jabba can be strangled to death by a human female, of which Harry was often well-surrounded. Advantage, Harry.

2. The Federation would have to attempt to liberate any ship named “Slave I”
— Assuming the Klingons hadn’t already destroyed it for sport.

1. Picard pilots the Enterprise through asteroid belts at one-quarter impulse power — Han Solo floors it.
— The Falcon is a fraction of the size of the Enterprise, so it is obviously more maneuverable. Still, one quarter impulse is 4,142,474.6 miles per hour.* That’s still outrageously fast.

But what really makes Star Trek characters superior? You don’t have to look back twenty-six years to find a good Star Trek film!

* Acceleration based on information from the “impulse drive” article on Memory Alpha. Shuttles on board the Enterprise-D were estimated to be able to go 1,000,000 kilometers in 3 minutes at ¾ impulse. In an hour, that’s 20,000,000 kilometers. Converted to miles, we get 12,427,423.8 miles (per hour at ¾ impulse). Assuming the impulse scale isn’t logarithmic like warp, we can divide that acceleration by three to get the acceleration at ¼ impulse: 4,142,474.6 miles per hour.