{"id":13340,"date":"2009-01-16T23:06:59","date_gmt":"2009-01-17T06:06:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/2009\/01\/16\/rhetorical-sf-geek-questions.html"},"modified":"2013-06-04T14:44:35","modified_gmt":"2013-06-04T20:44:35","slug":"rhetorical_sf_geek_questi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2009\/01\/16\/rhetorical_sf_geek_questi.html","title":{"rendered":"Rhetorical SF geek questions"},"content":{"rendered":"

SciFi Wire, in pointing to their sister site, DVICE, asks questions about “who’d beat whom” in SF battles<\/a>, a long and honored tradition.<\/p>\n

Their examples, though, aren’t very even or creative.<\/p>\n

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Ever wonder who would come out on top if sci-fi’s most famous franchises duked it out?<\/p>\n

Could a fleet of Shadow vessels from Babylon 5<\/em> overpower the Death Star?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Yeah. Yeah, I’m pretty sure they could. The Death Star is a one-trick pony. Yeah, it has swarms of TIE fighters, and various gun turrets, but (so far as the movies go), it’s big gun isn’t exactly what you’d call suited to a quick, dynamic space battle. <\/p>\n

The Shadow Ships, on the other hand, not only have their own swarms of fighters, but are regularly shown carving apart opposing vessels and large space installations — not unlike the Death Star. <\/p>\n

No contest, as far as I can see. Especially if we’re talking a fleet<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\n

What if the Cybermen battled the Borg?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I’m pretty sure the Borg would wipe them out without much fanfare. The Cybermen are pretty impressive against hapless humans with slugthrowers and no body armor, but the ever-adaptive Borg — even if we’re just talking about foot soldiers here, not a Cube — would handle Cybermen pretty easily. Esp. once they figured out how to hack into their system and assimilate them that way.<\/p>\n

(Now, a Borg Cube vs a Shadow Ship … that might be interesting …)<\/p>\n

\n

Check out our sister site DVICE<\/a> as it leaps into the fray to referee a Star Trek\/BSG<\/em> face-off, which we hope will be the first of many such bouts. Find out which starship will be triumphant and which will end up as nothing more than space debris!<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Without looking at the site, I give the nod to the Enterprise<\/em>. Not only is her in-battle warp drive technology more than capable of evading any nukes Galactica <\/em>might toss her way, her shields would render her immune to any fighters from Galactica <\/em>and her energy weaponry would quickly end the battle.<\/p>\n

(Of course, then we we would have to see a lust-off between Riker and Starbuck …)<\/p>\n

For the record, DVICE disagrees<\/a>, though they call it close. But only, it seems, because Vipers can outgun Shuttlecraft (because that’s what the Enterprise <\/em>always uses in battle, right?) and because BSG’s DRADIS is somehow superior in battle to ST’s sensors (what?!).<\/p>\n

FWIW, I see the battle between the two as pretty close to the TOS episode “Balance of Terror,” with Galactica <\/em>in the Romulan Bird of Prey role (slower, more primitive technology, but with a few tricks up its sleeves). That one ended up as a pretty decisive victory for Enterprise, barring Adama coming up with an extraordinarily clever idea (not beyond the realm of possibility). I stand by my assessment (and most of the commenters at the site seem to agree with me).<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SciFi Wire, in pointing to their sister site, DVICE, asks questions about “who’d beat whom” in SF battles, a long and honored tradition. Their examples, though, aren’t very even or…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[362,360,40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media-tv-babylon-5","category-media-tv-star-trek","category-media-tv"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":12865,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2008\/09\/16\/weakest_deaths_in_scifi.html","url_meta":{"origin":13340,"position":0},"title":"Weakest Deaths in SciFi","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 16-Sep-08 10:43am","format":false,"excerpt":"Via BD, this charming list of the 12 Weakest Deaths in Science Fiction History. My comments: 12. Shepherd Book (Serenity): Aside from being one of my favorite Firefly characters, his...","rel":"","context":"In "Babylon 5"","block_context":{"text":"Babylon 5","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/media\/franchises\/media-tv-babylon-5"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3241,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/01\/08\/too_many_notes-2.html","url_meta":{"origin":13340,"position":1},"title":"Too Many Notes","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 8-Jan-03 8:14am","format":false,"excerpt":"So Joe Straczynski, the certifiable genius of a writer\/producer, has been working on a new project proposal for the SciFi Channel called \"Polaris.\" Sounds like a slam-dunk, right? I mean,...","rel":"","context":"In "Babylon 5"","block_context":{"text":"Babylon 5","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/media\/franchises\/media-tv-babylon-5"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":558,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2001\/09\/19\/the_reason.html","url_meta":{"origin":13340,"position":2},"title":"The Reason","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 19-Sep-01 4:20pm","format":false,"excerpt":"\"Next on SciFi: At 6, Star Trek. At 7, Babylon 5. At 8, Farscape. This is SciFi.\" There's a reason I have digital cable, folks. 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As a ground-breaker,...","rel":"","context":"In "Babylon 5"","block_context":{"text":"Babylon 5","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/media\/franchises\/media-tv-babylon-5"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":49720,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2015\/03\/01\/emotional-moments-from-sf-tv.html","url_meta":{"origin":13340,"position":4},"title":"Emotional moments from SF TV","author":"***Dave","date":"Sun 1-Mar-15 10:32pm","format":false,"excerpt":"A cool article\/video if only because it includes some (very justifiable) bits of #Babylon5 in the mix (along with BSG, TNG, and X-Files).YMMV, of course. Video: Ars picks ten emotional moments from our favorite sci-fi TV shows Some truly great character bits from some truly great television episodes. View on\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":128344,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2015\/10\/18\/the-50-greatest-sci-fi-tv-shows-kinda-sorta-more-or-less-redux.html","url_meta":{"origin":13340,"position":5},"title":"The 50 Greatest Sci-Fi TV Shows (kinda-sorta more-or-less) (Redux)","author":"***Dave","date":"Sun 18-Oct-15 11:20am","format":false,"excerpt":"So this is based on an article from a Popular Mechanics (!) article on \"The 50 Greatest Sci-Fi Shows Ever\" [http:\/\/www.popularmechanics.com\/culture\/movies\/g156\/the-50-greatest-sci-fi-tv-shows]. See here [https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2015\/10\/17\/the-50-greatest-sci-fi-tv-shows-kinda-sorta-more-or-less.html] for caveats and comments on that list. I've decided to do my own force ranking (thanks +Stan Pedzick), working within the same list (to do otherwise\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/TV%2BGuide%2BSF.jpgimgmax%3D660.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13340"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13340\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37105,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13340\/revisions\/37105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}