Most of the people who know me, and probably everyone who has read my blog beginning to end already knows...I have been a big fan of King of the Nerds since it started. However, a couple weeks ago, it came to debate week. While I appreciate the nerd culture, this episode really struck me in the face over the selection of people that they featured. Overall, this season featured a stunning lack of scholastic nerds, and as a former speech team geek, I was less than impressed by the debates surrounding the Star Wars and Star Trek franchises. Only the women on each team really offered up intelligent arguments, while the remaining four people seemed to be reduced to petty convention squabbles. While I was more impressed with their arguments, I was more surprised to see what they left out.
Now, I do understand that the shame may not fall on either young lady. Television producers most likely had to cut out big parts of the arguments to keep the show running in it's designated 60 minute time slot. The debate topic was that Star Trek's Enterprise would win in a dogfight against Star Wars's Millenium Falcon. This is clearly an apples to oranges argument on one speaking point that I missed hearing in the debates: size.
The Millenium Falcon is a modified YT-13 freight ship. It's speed capabilities were enhanced to make it a more effective smuggling vessel, but that doesn't change the fact that it is essentially a space semi with a small crew of four and most of it's space utilized for freight. The Enterprise-D (the incarnation that Kayla used for her debate) is more like a spaceborne aircraft carrier. With it's crew of 1012, it's size is comparable to the Empire's Star Destroyer Class ships, which were so large that the Falcon was able to hide from sensors by "landing" (magnetic interlock) on the back of the bridge of the Star Destroyer. On that major note, the Enterprise wins the battle on sheer surface area alone. There is simply a large amount more sheet metal that the Falcon has to destroy just to DISABLE the Enterprise, not to mention total ship destruction. Kayla did bring up the crew size for fatigue, but not for surface area to house this many people, and I feel that it is the biggest advantage.
The smaller advantage that the Enterprise holds is smaller ships. Now, I've never been a big Next Generation fan, but I do know Vogager. The USS Voyager carried three shuttlecraft, plus another ship they built to be a small fighter in the unfamiliar section of space that it was stranded in; and the Voyager Crew was 16% of the crew of the Enterprise-D. That leads me to believe that the Voyager was smaller, and I assume that the larger Enterprise carried many many more shuttles. Now, even though the ships bear the name "shuttle", do not be fooled. Starfleet shuttlecraft carry warp capability, forward and rear phaser arrays, and a small compliment of Photon Torpedoes, and would probably be a similar size to the Falcon (large enough to carry a handy landing party). Between the size difference, and the shuttlecraft to surround the Falcon, Han and his hairy sidekick would be easily overwhelmed and brought in to negotiate an unconditional surrender very quickly.
I'm sure Han and Chewie had some other tricks up their sleeves, and would be able to duck and weave better, but these are the big advantages that are out there.
