Hi, everyone. And welcome back to Geek Time, 欢迎回来【Geek时间】. Hi, Brad.

Hey, Lulu.

Quick question: Star Trek or Star Wars?

I'm kind of in the middle. I love both. I know a lot of people when they think of Star Trek and Star Wars, there is always this divide where you're either a Trekkie or you're a Star Wars fan. But for me, I really, I love both.

Now to our listeners for 70-75% women, I know this is probably a very geeky topic. Now, I know many of you watched things like Big Bang Theory or some other comedy where you constantly hear the reference to Star Wars and Star Trek. Star Wars星球大战和Star Trek 星际迷航, 这两个都成了一个梗了, 经常能在很多喜剧里面看到.

Whenever they appear in comedy, it's always people who are into them, they're really, really into them. And people who are not into them, just don't get it; and they are like the “geek tag” right? That’s the geek badge of honor, almost.

They are the kings of geekdom.

Yeah. In these 2 episodes, we're gonna talk to Brad, a seasoned geek, 资深geek. What is the big deal about Star Wars and Star Trek?

I think with Star Trek that came first. Well actually when you look at sci-fi, Doctor Who 《神秘博士》of course came before that, but Star Trek in the U.S. at least started in the 60s in a kind of in the late 60s.

But it's been on TV for the majority of the time since then or in a movie format one way or the other. Star Trek was originally kind of like this show was a one-off adventure every time they were going to a new world.

Like a self-contained, right?

Right. A new civilization, like the whole tagline was “to boldly go where no man has gone before,” right? They have this whole idea where you could watch any episode and you wouldn't really be lost. You'd be able to understand what was going on. Nowadays, it's kind of moved into this more serial nature where you have to watch from the beginning to the end. And that's one of those things that has kind of...it’s a developing plot. Right. That's kept people more focused on the show rather than just being casual watchers. It gets people to watch it from week to week.

Okay.

But it's Star Trek, this whole idea is that it's about the scientific journey. There might be some things that seem really fantastical and you're like this must be magic. But the end of every episode they show you how it somehow has to do with scientific and there's a scientific reasoning behind it. That's kind of like the magic of Star Trek.

This is why it's sci-fi. It’s not a fantasy, because everything is somewhat based on scientific reasoning, right?

Yeah. Now, I just make you watch it sometime.

All right. But can you give us a very, very brief summary of the plot? You did say that is about going to maybe different places in the universe, different planets and explore different civilizations. But are there any main plot lines?

The basic idea is that there's the earth and we've created the federation of planets, which is a group of human and other humanoid aliens who are working together to protect each other.

And at the same time, travel around and using spaceships that can travel faster than the speed of light using what's called “warp”. But like basically, they go around in search of new life and new civilizations. And the whole idea is that they try not to interfere with the less developed worlds because they're afraid that if they give technology to a world that's still developing, that they're gonna do what most worlds do and try to use that technology to destroy each other. So they have this idea of the prime directives. The major prime directive is that you don't interfere with less developed worlds.

Prime directive就是叫做最高指导原则, 如果他们旅行的时候到一个没有他们的文明发达的这样的世界, 他们就不会interfere. Like Brad says, they will not give them technology because they're worried about the consequences.

You know what this reminds me of, although this is supposed to be intergalactic but almost feels like history because if you think about what people did on planet earth, in history where between countries, between civilizations on earth, they were similar explorations, there were similar distractions.

So like the whole idea is that like we understand the damage that technology can create and that's why we're wary about giving it out. And there is actually one of the main characters in Star Trek is a Vulcan. He's actually half Vulcan half human. Like if you've watched Big Bang theory, you'll see... Spock. You'll see like the guy with the pointy ears, Spock, right. And so like they're the ones who came to earth when we first created warp technology, right? And so once we were able to go faster than light, they came here and we kind of went with that whole ideal is like, yeah, we'll visit other planets and interact with them when they are capable of star travel, right?

Now what makes the Star Trek world kind of special is that it's society where we don't use money anymore, we can create things with a replicator. Food isn't a big deal. Up until this point there are some when you watch the TV series, they do go back in time on occasion.

They also time travel.

You can see the problems that were on earth in the past and the reason why they went away from this the money economy. But when you look at the more modern Star Trek, there's been this whole idea of like the multiverse and so like the newer movies were created because of a rift in time. And one of the more recent series Star Trek Discovery. They actually went to an alternate reality, right? And so they found like the evil version of the federation.

Okay. So with obviously endless possibility if they are just visiting really different planets, even different universe. 所以Star Trek星际迷航里有一句话叫to boldly go where no man has gone before, 叫做勇踏前人未至之境.

So this is Star Trek. What about Star Wars?

So what makes Star Wars different from Star Trek is that it's this mixture of sci-fi and fantasy. Now it's kind of like a sci-fi western in a sense with a mysticism. Originally it came out in about a decade after Star Trek did. But it came out as a series of three movies. And then later on, more movies came out. It was quite a while in between, but more movies came out and now there's like a ton of TV series that don't focus so much on the mysticism aspects, but they show more of the other world that you can see, but the whole like the Star Wars rather than focusing on all this technology, they have the Force and that's the ability to control things with your mind.

翻译成“原力”. So this is basically a created idea in this series, right?

So when they first show you the Force, you can use the Force to influence people's minds. You can use the Force to push or to carry things. And when you first see it, it's described of as like witchcraft.

It does sound like magic.

They actually refer to the dark side of the Force as an old mad sorcerer.

By the way, is that why they say, “May the Force be with you”?

Exactly, because whether or not you can use the Force, sometimes you can feel the Force. There's like different levels of Force users within the Star Wars universe.

I see. What about the story line in this? In Star Wars they are quite clear like two camps, right?

There's the light side which are the Jedi and then there's the dark side which are the Sith. So there is kind of what's known as a grey Jedi as well, which is someone who is kind of in between. But the Force is often referred to as the Force is the thing that binds the universe together, kind of like duct tape, right? Has a light side and a dark side and it binds the world together.

Okay.

So there's like two when you look at Star Wars, there's the war aspect, there's the Empire which is controlled by the Sith and then you have the rebels which aren’t controlled by the Jedi in the later episodes but they are helped by the Jedi.

所以一边是the Empire银河帝国, 就是西斯, 一边是the rebels, 就是义军同盟, the rebel alliance right? 然后这边是Jedi, 被翻译成绝地武士.

But there’re also robots in this, right? And actually watched parts of I don't know which particular one but I think I watched one or two Star Wars, I might have fallen asleep while watching it.

Yeah, so like one big difference between like Star Trek and Star Wars is Star Trek does have robots in it, but there are few and far between there is in the next generation, there is one character that is as sentient robot, but in Star Wars, most of the robots are sentient to some degree like all the robots have their own emotions, their own personality.

It's quite interesting, but like there's lots of robots that are completely autonomous. They do things on their own. One of the most famous bounty hunters is a robot that goes around and does everything on its own doesn't have a master.

Are they almost like the comic roles in Star Wars, these robots?

Yeah, in some extent, they are comedians. But in some cases they're very serious. They can make something feel a little bit less serious. But at sometimes when they're being hurt or destroyed, you actually feel like you feel sad.

All right, I think that's enough to get us started on these two series and basically these two almost like sagas, Star Wars, Star Trek.

Definitely.

Leave us comment in the comment section if you have watched these two series and what do you want to share about them? And in the advanced episode, I will ask Brad more questions about why is this such a big deal in geekdom and also why do you particularly enjoy it, Brad?

All right. Sounds good.

On that note, we're gonna say goodbye to you now, and see you next time.

See you next time, everyone.