The Borg would wipe out the Star Wars universe entirely. I’m not even going to talk about the Federation. All they have to do is assimilate one Star Destroyer, and next thing you know they’ve got hyperspeed technology and they’re tracing it back, taking out the Outer Rim and everything else. It’d be very fast.

That’s what I said last time, and I told you guys Mrs. Know-It-All was going to want to rebut it. Sure enough, she saw it and she was like, oh yeah? Oh yeah. So this one’s been waiting since last year, and really, last year was a month ago. We’re through the holidays, we’ve got a better setup, and I’m rolling out my brand new homemade Strange New Worlds uniform. I had a shirt made. It’s the prototype, and I’m going to keep playing with it until my lines match up a little closer.

The rules are the same as the original. Who would win between the Star Trek universe and the canon Star Wars universe? That distinction is very important, because there’s extended universe material on both sides, so we’re sticking strictly to canon. And the other rule I want to reiterate: I’ve taken Q and the super space beings off the table. Star Trek has a plethora of those for some crazy reason, and it’s not fair. At the snap of a finger they could destroy anybody. At least in Star Wars you’ve got to work for it. We’re just playing with the toys in the box.

What I Said Last Time

She wanted to start with what I said, so I played the summation. Order 66 nullified the Force, in my opinion. When a whole bunch of soldiers can just turn around on the people they’re serving with, and it’s “what was that? Order 66,” and you’re dead, I’m no longer impressed by the idea that Darth Vader can reach up and grab a starship, or that Rey in The Rise of Skywalker pulls a ship out of the space it was in. A glorified transport ship, let’s be real.

My call was that in a ground war the Star Wars universe wins. Head to head, overall, I feel like Star Trek can dominate in a lot of ways.

Her first move was the map. Hyperspace is already faster, and Star Wars has covered its whole galaxy where Star Trek has only seen a piece of its own. So pretend that galaxy is united, she said, and it invades the Enterprise’s galaxy. “We would win.”

You don’t get to just make statements like that. If they come into our galaxy, they’re going to run into the parts of our quadrants we haven’t even experienced yet. They’re going to encounter the Borg. They’re going to encounter other threats at that level.

Deflector Shields and Warp Core Bombs

She gave me my point from last time, that the Federation ships are agile. She agrees with it 100 percent. Her answer is that Star Destroyers are bigger, and Star Wars deflector shields don’t go down by percentage. They just stop what they’re trying to stop.

She’s absolutely right, by the way. They don’t go down by percentage. You have to actually hit the power station of the thing to bring the shield down, and until you do it’s an impenetrable force. So her contention is that they have stronger shields. The best offense is a good defense, I get it.

Then she brought the fleet: the Star Destroyers, the Super Star Destroyers, and the TIE fighters they carry. But those can’t travel through the shields either. For that tactic to work, and by the way it would work, you have to stay 100 percent inside your ship.

And we can play the same game you guys play. I’m willing to count the sequel trilogy, because it’s canon. One of the awesome moves in it is that whole hyperspeed run that blows up a bunch of ships. Very powerful move. We can do something similar, and it’s called dropping our warp core. You drop a couple of warp core bombs, and a warp core bomb would take out your shields and probably half of the ship with it. If nothing else there’s an EM pulse, that wave you see come off a warp core when it explodes, and the pulse is what would ultimately take out your shield generators.

That’s check. Checkmate’s a ways off, but it counters her first move and puts us back at level.

I’ll concede the other side of it. The repeating blasters on those ships would take out our shields fast. Our shield percentages would plummet. She said she’s never understood that about Star Trek anyway, which is a whole other conversation. It’s technology trying to be realistic. We’re not a fantasy.

Two Shields Built for Two Different Jobs

Her next point: “We put shields around planets.” So true, and they’re hard to get through. Rogue One showed you that. She wanted to know whether the warp core move would take those down too.

Absolutely, and it comes down to what each shield was designed to stop. The shields in Star Wars are designed to stop anything from physically penetrating. They’d also stop a phaser, because that’s a concentrated form of energy. A wave of raw energy off a warp core is a different animal.

Our shields are designed to stop energy, because that’s what everybody in our space is shooting. The Ferengi, the Romulans, the Klingons, whoever. Even the thing a Klingon ship fires out the front is a type of disruptor, a ball of energy. Hit a Federation shield from the outside with something solid and it drops faster, because it was built to deflect energy.

So your TIE fighter is actually probably the best weapon against a Federation ship, in truth. It would be difficult for us to aim at and catch something that moves the way they do. Step out of the universe for a second: Starfleet was built and designed around naval, submarine and battleship style battles. Very different creations, with a very different thought process, which is why we always question why some Star Wars ships look so silly sometimes. Same goes the other way.

You Can’t Get Rid of the Force

Then she went after the big one. You can’t get rid of the Force, she said, because even though Order 66 happened, the Emperor is still alive. He’d be the one leading the charge. And for the sake of this argument, he’d be able to take, let’s say, the Enterprise, and crush it.

Yeah. Absolutely. Hands down. I concede that 100 percent.

In that rant about Order 66 I was being a little tongue in cheek. But the truth is, a lot of the Force is about more than your ability to fight and concentrate. It’s about being prescient, about how the universe is moving. Yoda sees the future. The reflexes Anakin shows in the podracer are him sensing that he’s about to turn left, so he’s ready and he turns left preemptively.

So when you bring the Force in, I have to ask why that foreknowledge wasn’t enough to help them against the soldiers. I know people argue that it’s because they trusted them. Bro. That level of treachery, right in your face? I hear my daughter on the phone in the next room and I’m already asking where are you going, what’s going on. You’re trying to tell me these guys with the Force wouldn’t have an idea that something was coming?

I feel like that hamstrings her argument from within. Not totally, because I do agree with her about the Emperor. Truthfully, I think he’d probably use Force lightning to take out the shields first, and then crush the ship. He’d be kind of mean like that. That’s also the writer in me.

She brought comments with her, too. One of the comments under the first video said, well, whoever writes it wins, and she said they’re right on. And she said it’s funny, because the gentleman who brought up Order 66 goes by Darth Vader, and he was right. You can’t take the Force out.

Betazoids, Androids and Transporters

If we’re going to do that, I’m down, but I get to rebut. If the Force stays on the table, then out of the gate I conscript as many Betazoids as possible. That’s Deanna Troi’s people. She was half Betazoid, so she’s only empathic. Real Betazoids are full telepaths. I need to be ready to know the mind of whoever’s in front of us.

That’s my first play. There are some higher order beings who aren’t godlike, but I don’t know that you have to go that route. I think androids become a huge factor, especially if you go the Picard route, with the worker drone type androids. If we can start replicating those bad boys and bringing them out, that helps us in the ground war, because clearly stormtroopers are coming next.

She remembered that in a previous post I said the Mandalorians would win in combat against the Klingons. I think that’d be an awesome little battle to see. Let’s write that.

Then she brought the Death Star, which does move through hyperspace, and which has one of those awesome shields on it. You don’t have to turn that shield off for the TIE fighters to come out.

Okay, but let’s transport something. Transporter technology is really going to suck for you, because your shields won’t protect you against it. They’re designed to stop intrusive hard energy, like blaster fire. We could transport bombs, if you want to get nasty.

Her point was that by the time we showed up, they could’ve taken out all nine of our planets. We have a lot more than nine planets in the Federation. I know what she’s saying, though, and if anything they’d show up closer to Earth to take out Federation headquarters. And I still want to know what you think stands up against the Borg. The Borg would mess you up. She agrees. She also pointed out that the Borg are in our space too.

The Rebels Join Starfleet, and Palpatine Meets the Borg

Then she pulled a commenter on me. John Cyber Seniors, you betrayed me.

No he did not, she said. He’s smart, and she agrees with him 100 percent. As far as she’s concerned, the two of them live side by side right now, galaxies apart. So if the Empire traveled into the Star Trek galaxy, his point was that the Rebel Alliance would be right behind them, and they’d team up with Starfleet.

Good call. I can see that. They like freedom and stuff. They’d say we want to join you guys, and when we’re done we go back to our galaxy and we make some stuff together. Yeah, dude. I could see that.

Then she gave me the one I hadn’t thought about at all. She thinks the Borg would get to the Empire eventually. She’s just not so sure that’d be a bad thing for the Empire, especially if the Emperor ends up in a form of control over it.

You think he becomes like a Locutus? Instead of a queen, she said.

Part of me wants to say oh, I don’t know. The other part of me goes, okay, I could see that. I think the Sith can control some things on the molecular level, and if he’s powerful enough to control how the nanites enter his body, there’s something to be said for that. We were filming this one pretty late, and that’s where it went.

Counting Picard, we already know it’s possible. What’s her name, I can’t think of it, is now the Borg Queen of that little offshoot. So it’s absolutely possible to control them. But he’d have to be the Borg King. It’s kind of crazy, and I love that whole thought process.

So now we’re on an even playing field, almost. The Rebel Alliance is hanging out with Starfleet, and everybody’s got a real common enemy.

Where Round Two Leaves It

It sounds to me like we’re probably never going to get into the full blown war. But she’s given me much more to think about in terms of how the Empire would actually respond. The rebels potentially joining Starfleet was smart, and I hadn’t even thought about it.

I do believe her argument has merit. That was amazing, and what a great argument. That’s round two, and we’ll see if there’s a round three after we hear from you guys.

Never forget, everyone loves a know-it-all.

Does Mrs. Know-It-All’s argument hold water? Whether you’re pro Starfleet or pro Empire, I’d love to hear where you land, and what you think of her theory that the Borg could be controlled by the likes of Palpatine. The conversation lives in the comments on the video above.