Star Wars vs. Star Trek: Could the Empire Kick the Federation's Ass? And Other Galaxy-Shaking Enigmas [Paperback]

While Matt Forbeck's knowledge of ST and SW is formidible, I just couldn't wrap myself around this book. The "Who'd Win?" scenarios got real repetitive after the fourth or fifth one that started with "Captain 'so-and-so' beams down to some cantina on some world... Gets into a fight with...." or Grand Moff Tarkin takes a transport to another bar... gets into a fight with..." or "Worf beams into another bar and greedo challenges him....." Okay, we get it. Unfortunately there is too much of "it.." and not enough other information to settle this so-called argument. If I could return it, I would.

This book kind of misses the point of both Star Wars and Star Trek. The "who'd win" matches pitting Star Wars and Star Trek characters against each other come across as silly and vapid. Mixing the two genres doesn't really work. Star Wars is about, well, wars, while Star Trek is about, well, exploration. While I love both franchises, pitting them against each other seems odd. Who really cares if the Sith would defeat the Temporal Cold War aliens from Enterprise? Even within these scenarios, the author spends only a few lines on each, providing for superficial treatment. Overall, you're better off spending your money on an actual Star Trek or Star Wars novel.

When both of the only actors you can find from each movie (Jeremy Bulloch who played Boba Fett and Tim Russ who played Tuvok) who were prepared to do intros for your book are telling your readers that the concept of Star Wars characters fighting Star Trek is ridiculous as one was set in a war atmosphere and the other was about space exploration, then you probably should rethink your idea. That's not to say many of us haven't had these sorts of conversations at parties, around the staffroom lunch table and places like this. Incidentally Matt Forbeck has Boba Fett fight Tuvok, Fett wins, probably because Bulloch was a lot less critical of the concept than Russ was.

The whole who would win a fight between Star Wars character A and Star Trek character B is the whole reason you've decided to pick up this book. However these analyses are the most disappointing part of the book. They are basically just paragraph long short stories of a Star Wars character walking into a bar, accidentally bumping a Star Trek character, causing them to spill a bit of their drink, the Star Trek character gets mad, attacks the Star Wars character and depending on a lot of creative writing external factors such as if one character had their weapon ready or if there was a distraction and a weapon earlier knocked away can be picked up off the floor while the winning character doesn't notice, ultimately decides the question. Nothing wrong with a bit of fiction involving fictional characters, Family Guy and others have done it pretty well a lot of the time, but they come up with different scenarios for each joke. Seriously I mean it's not really in character for say princess Leia to just walk into a bar, surely Forbeck could come up with something else, say she walked out of a hairdresser and the Star trek character made fun of her hair or something. But alas we're pretty much restricted to someone walked into a bar for most of these fights.

To make matters worse it's not even really the character you're thinking of, I mean Luke fights Riker, but it's not Jedi master Luke, it's farm boy teenage Luke. I think most people are thinking of each character at their peak when the question who would win a fight comes up in general conversation.

Besides a couple of characters (a lot of Star Wars are from the terrible prequel movies) Forbeck pits ships verse each other, religions, even each franchise's theme songs. To be fair there are little snippets of trivia on the actors, awards each film has won, box office takings and things that show Forbeck has done a bit of research and are of some interest. However hardcore fans would probably know most of it. As a trivia book it has some appeal, but if buying for a who would win analysis, it's not worth your time, let alone your money.