The Outfits
Call me shallow, but if I had to compare military chic, Starfleet’s “brightly colored sweater/black pants and cuban heeled boots” combo beats the 12 colonies’ dark blue jumpsuits look any day. Of course, Enterprise‘s crew worse jumpsuits too, suggesting that if humanity hadn’t been nearly eradicated by the cylons, then maybe future Battlestars would’ve been populated by women with beehive hairdos and short skirts.
Somewhere, I have just given someone the idea for some truly terrible Starbuck Photoshopped fan art.
Advantage: Star Trek.
The Threats
It’s harder to get bigger than the complete destruction of the human race, but Star Trek does come back in terms of variety, considering the Klingons, Romulans, Cardassians, Xindi or Borg, amongst many others. But can even the Tribbles measure up to an enemy that looks just like us, has a horrifyingly understandable objective for completely unknown reasons and has already, to all intents and purposes, already won? Exactly. Maybe it was the zeitgeist, but the cylons were far more threatening and, ultimately, winning as villains than any Trek villain ever managed to be, and I say that as one who never really fell for the obvious charms of Tricia Helfer in the same way as, oh, everyone else on the planet.
Advantage: Battlestar Galactica.
That Said…
BSG didn’t have any sexy green slave women who hypnotized me with one freeze frame in the end credits and I never actually saw that episode until years later, post-puberty when it really didn’t live up to my fevered imaginations.
Advantage: Potentially oversharing.
In the end, it’s impossible to choose between BSG and Trek for me. They’re such different shows, trying to do such different things. I can see the connections between Deep Space Nine (and, to an extent, Voyager) and Battlestar Galactica, but any real comparison or attempt to choose which is “better” shifts results depending on what day it is, or what mood I’m in, or any number of ingredients. Now, BSG and Lost… That’s another story.