This post has nothing to do with Bob Ross.
So.
One of the more entertaining aspects for me in the age-old (or at least decades old) debate over which is better, Star Trek or Star Wars, is that Star Trek managed, I believe entirely unintentionally, to create a more believable world because of budget constraints.
Allow me to explain.
In the real world, naval vessels tend to linger in service until they are manifestly obsolete. Military service can be demanding, but building new ships makes less sense if there’s not some new capability to be gained, and older ships can be refitted to extend their operating life. The US, for example, resurrected the Iowa-class battleships in the 1980s, dragging what were then 40 year old ships back into frontline service, where they would serve for another decade as major surface combatants. Even on the smaller scale, the same principle holds true; the B-52 bomber has been continually upgraded through its service, despite the fact that in a modern peer conflict it would be little more than a range extender for cruise missiles, solely because we already have it, and improving on its abilities as a flying dump truck for bombs is actually more difficult than you might think. The fact that the airframes are now significantly older than most of their pilots is irrelevant; the thing works.
In Star Trek, monetary and budget concerns have always loomed over the various productions, and television is a very different animal than film. Failure to deliver ratings often results in a rapid death spiral for embattled shows, so cutting corners where you can is important, the better to focus your resources on things people are themselves more focused on. And while you don’t want to skimp on your effects budget if you don’t have to, reusing existing models, both physical and now digital, means you can stretch your dollar that much further.
Which is the happy little accident in question.
Because Star Wars does none of that. You see a reused model in Star Wars, they’re doing it to squeeze money out of the nostalgia factor and that’s it. Because Star Wars isn’t facing the same budget constraints, and the producers had different priorities. Specifically, merchandising, where I understand the real money of the movie is made. Which is why less than 20 years in-universe sees the reconstruction of the entire Empire military, to the point where not a single piece of Republic-era hardware remains in service (at least not with the Empire), and then promptly does it all over again, TWICE, for the sequel trilogy. Because toys.
The irony is that reuse of that kind of asset actually makes even more sense in Star Wars than in Star Trek, given the rest of the world building involved. Star Trek is a world where innovation is ongoing, but progress has slowed significantly. You could take Captain Kirk out of the original series and dump him into The Next Generation and he would have little trouble adapting; the ships are a bit faster, weapons a bit more powerful, but most of the major advancements have been secondary, things like replicators and holodecks and evolutions of technology he’d be familiar with. So the fact that we regularly see ships whose design cues are all a century or more old is fine; like the venerable B-52, they’re good enough for the tasks Starfleet has them performing. They may not be on the technological bleeding edge, or out doing the sexy exploration work that gets people to put on those dashing jumpsuits, but sometimes all you need is a flying dump truck.
Star Wars, on the other hand, is apparently a world where technological progress has almost completely plateaued. Almost nothing changes over the course of thousands of years, including social structures and organizations. “For over a thousand generations, the Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic”, after all, and while statements like that are illustrative of other issues in the world building of Star Wars, and ways in which the sequel (and prequel, to a lesser extent) trilogy dropped the ball, that’s a different post that’s been chilling in my drafts folder for years.
But anyway.
Star Wars would have you believe that, despite nothing actually changing in the last thirty years, military manufacturers would have completely revamped their entire lineup, and even less believably that a struggling insurgent group (or, rather, two such groups) would have been using their resources to acquire said hardware.
Because they want your kids to get all acquisitive when they watch.
Meanwhile in the real world we have McDonnell Douglas/Boeing trotting out a new version of the F-15 Eagle, a fighter that entered service about nine months before I was born, because sometimes all you need is a flying dump truck with all-new avionics. Moreover, they’re doing so at the behest of the US government, illustrating for the umpteenth time the inherently conservative nature of military organizations, particularly when it comes to hardware.
Just a random thought I felt like writing down. Not gonna promise to write more regularly, but we’ll see what happens.
Shambling Towards Bethlehem 