With the release of the entire Star Wars filmography on Blu-ray this past week Mr. Star Trek, William Shatner spews some familiar tongue-in-cheek (and seriously thought-out) insights in the direction of creator George Lucas and the film’s actors ensuring the over 3 decade battle between the two franchises won’t be dying off anytime soon.
In Shatner’s most recent YouTube diatribe he has some direct and poignant points of discussion about the Wars.
“First of all, Star Wars was derivitive at best….derivitive!”
“Star Trek had relationships and conflict among the relationships and stories that involved humanity and philosophical questions,” he stated in his interview. “Star Wars was special effects, was ILM at its best.”
Talking about who was prettiest, Kirk or Solo, Shat spat: “God knows what those actors looked like in reality with all those special effects. There’s no telling what ILM did for those faces and hairdos. They may have walked around with nothing on.” And Shat ought to know. It is no secret that by Trek films number 5 and 6 the round man of the Enterprise was no longer hiding his or Scotty’s girth behind those infamous restrictive girdles worn on the early series and films.
Check out the entire Shatner video:
Wow, 30 decades. Hard to believe it’s been 300 years. Seems just like yesterday.
Well Necro, think about it. Star Wars took place a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. 😉
Man, when I first read that headline I saw it as, “Shat Shats On Star Wars.” Though I have to say that, when it comes to the way Lucas has ruined the series, I would have shat on it, too,.
No relationships? What about the whole father son thing? Or Han and Leia? Kenobi and Anakin?
And for the record, exactly what character growth occurred in TOS? Following the TV writing convensions of the era, TOS was a fire and forget show. What happened in last weeks episode was, more often than not, forgotten by the next episode. Even in the TOS movies, there is little character growth, beyond the addition of old age jokes.
Star Wars, original trilogy specifically, put tons of character growth and relationship development into 6 or so hours. Luke loses his innocence, finds out who his father is and redeems him. Han overcomes his self-serving attitude to rescue
Luke and eventually volunteering to lead the Rebel Commandos…and falls in love. Leia learns to love a schoundrel.
What character growth like that do we see in TOS? Does Spock change any after dealing with his Father? Is there any after effects of Kirk kissing Uhura? Even if it was forced, some things should have changed. About the only thing in all of TOS that might be considered a character arc might be Kirk’s son and his death, but other than some damning journal entries, what really developed there?
Let’s see. There is the entire character development and relationship issues over several decades between Kirk and Spock, as well as Bones. The 2nd & 3rd movie expanded on that quite extensively, even to the point of Kirk willing to put his own career and life on the line for a supposed dead friend, not to mention his caring enough for Bones and desperately wanting to relieve him of the mental and emotional pain he was experiencing by being the repository for Spock’s katra.
The movies mapped out those relationships very extensively, and the series (including the TNG/TOS carry-over episodes) dealt expressly about the relationship between Spock and his father Sarek.
Then there were those supporting character development stories concerning Spock and his brother Sybok, Scotty and Uhura, Sulu and his daughter (daughters if you take into account the Star Trek: Phase II episode).
There was a lot of relational development going on in 47 years of Star Trek if one cared to really look into it.
I agree that Bill was a bit rough on Star Wars when it came to character and relationship development, but I also know that he was being his typical tongue-in-cheek self and I wouldn’t take his remarks too seriously…I know he doesn’t.
Let me say that I love trek, too, but thought that Shatner’s commenst were short sighted, and maybe on the verge of hypocritical when you look at the TOS series. And I don’t think it’s quite Trek’s (writers, producers, etc.) fault. It was just the way things were done in the 60s.
Perhaps the movies made some improvement on character growth, but how much really? Kirk and crew willing to risk everything for each other? How is that different from how the characters were in the series? The only difference is the movies, 2-4, had a continuing thread.
Now, this is specific about TOS, and maybe early TNG, (sorry, ya can’t count Phase 2), TNG started to change all of that, and the Spock/Sarek episodes were some of the best in the series, but I can’t attribute that to character development in TOS. That be like attributing the Dark Knight’s Joker to the 70s Batman cartoon.