Star Trek vs Star Wars

http://www.castaliahouse.com/what-is-the-appeal-of-star-trek/

I'm 45 (have been since January.)  I was 5½ when Star Wars came out.  It's literally the first movie that I remember seeing on the big screen.  It's been with me almost as long as I can remember.

Compared to Star Wars, Star Trek is flimsy.  It's hoaky.  It's corny. Read the comments; nothing that they posit as the reasons for its success weren't done better by Star Wars.  I can accept that people who were older than me and remember Star Trek from before Star Wars came out feel nostalgia for it.  Especially the Original Series.

I can also accept that Leftists, and globalists, and busybody nannies and totalitarians and commies and pinkos and fascists and r-selected rabbits (but those all mean the same thing) like Star Trek, because it flatters their sensibilities.  I'm always shocked when normal, psychologically healthy and functional people, especially men, aren't seriously turned off by Star Trek for that same reason, though.

I can accept that other people have other nostalgic reasons for liking Star Trek, if they grew up watching reruns of it as a kid, I suppose.  I can accept that people like it because they flatter themselves into believing that it's somehow more "serious" than Star Wars, and therefore they feel smug and superior, or something.

But otherwise, I struggle to understand, as the author of the blog post linked above does, why anyone would prefer Star Trek to Star Wars on it's intrinsic merits. Most of the comments on the post there talk about the chemistry between the actors (hardly a novel achievement), the swashbuckling fun (in which it's vastly inferior even to the old Republic serials) and the comfortable Utopian setting (which is nonsensical and actually kind of sinister in a Brave New World kind of way.)  When even its fans can't comment on what they like about it without referring to aspects of it in which it's clearly inferior and even they admit it, then it makes me wonder what's up.

Of course, sometimes people just like things and there doesn't have to be a reason.  I could probably wax eloquent on why I like 80s New Wave music, or the anthemic epic arena sound of hardstyle, but the reality is: I just like it.  I don't have to explain it, and I probably can't in a way that really makes any sense.  It just is.  But hopefully I have enough honest clarity of vision and ability to self-evaluate to recognize that that's me.  I liked the 80s music that I did because I'm an ornery iconoclast who grew up in a modest sized central Texas town, and I rebelled against the ubiquitous country music by listening to urbane, European, stylish electronic music, and I still like it now due as much to inertia and nostalgia as to any actual musical merits.  It's part of my identity to like that kind of music, and I doubt I could change it if I wanted to.  Which I don't.

So, I'm OK with people liking Star Trek, even if I don't.  I'm even OK with people preferring Star Trek to Star Wars (especially as Star Wars has... stumbled, to put it charitably, a number of times in the last twenty years or so, and looks on track to do so spectacularly in the near future again.)  Even though when one of my friends told me that, I've had to tell him since that I'm trying not to think about that so that we can still be friends.  But just own it.  Don't try to excuse it.  You like it, just like it.  Other people don't have to accept it.  Nobody at home accepts my love of hardstyle dance music.  My wife says it gives her anxiety, and she'd probably have a panic attack halfway through the second song.  My daughter and my youngest son just quietly get up and leave the house, and if pressed tell me that they feel like they're about to have a heart attack.  My oldest son, who's no stranger to unusual electronic music fandom himself, can tolerate it, but still says it's weird.  And Young Desdichado #3 tells me that listening to it causes cancer.  Whatever.  No excuses; I like it, and if nobody else around me does, that's OK.