William Shatner revives the "Star Trek vs. Star Wars" debate everyone already stopped having

By Sean O'Neal | September 15, 2011 | 9:26pm

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William Shatner revives the "Star Trek vs. Star Wars" debate everyone already stopped having

The debate of Star Trek versus Star Wars was once the primordial fire that forged the Internet, but it’s long since been doused by years of disappointment with both franchises, its smoldering embers scattered to form burning affections for newer geek devotions. But leave it to William Shatner to come and poke at it with a stick, and start puffing all over it to see if he can get it started again. Readying himself for battle, Shatner donned his very serious Affliction shirt and posted the following video to his YouTube channel, in which he comes out—surprise—firmly on the side of the franchise that’s given him all those designer tees and YouTube channel subscribers in the first place. To wit, to Shat, “Star Trek had relationships and conflict among the relationships, and stories that involved humanity and philosophical questions,” he says, whereas Star Wars was just about the “special effects.” (But what about the trade regulations?!)

Visibly grimacing every time he simply says the words “Star Wars,” he derides its hollowness so deep that he imagines Industrial Light And Magic engineered everything right down to the costumes—and now that J.J. Abrams has been “piling on the special effects” with his take on the franchise, “Star Wars has nothing to stand on.” And while he also says Star Trek has hotter ladies, Shatner does, however, reserve some kind words for Princess Leia, which is to say he gets sort of creepy about the idea of his Captain Kirk and Princess Leia riding off into the sunset and forming “the perfect union,” complete with hand motion, and thereby bringing peace to the imaginary galaxies. So if William Shatner and Carrie Fisher finally do it, we can stop talking about this? Maybe that can be a panel at next year's Comic-Con. [via Vulture]