The Obsidian Order Project
The Obsidian Order ProjectFor the most part, Vs. sites are no different than any other website . . . they tend to come and go. Few site builders have ever gone to the trouble of getting top-level domain names (i.e. ST-v-SW.Net), and those who do then had to continue to be interested enough to shell out the continuing cash to maintain it. While this may change as hosting prices drop and similar-but-free alternatives increase, this meant that in the past most Vs. sites were just little quickie-sites. These might be hosted on the webspace one would get from their ISP, as was the case with Wong's StarDestroyer.Net in its original sympatico.ca location, or elsewhere. ST-v-SW.Net started its life on university webspace much as the Vs.-related "Star Wars Technical Commentaries" did. A rare few other sites existed on free webspace (such as Poe's original h4h.com URL or some on old Tripod sites) or had subdomain-based URL redirection via services like the long-defunct Monolith.
Many such sites were never taken any further by their creators, and over time most if not all have disappeared. This Obsidian Order Project, named after the first entry below, is an attempt to resurrect the sites for their historical value.
A Vs. Debater who went by the moniker of 'Elim Garak' once had a series of lovely pages on his Qwest.net provider's webspace under the directory "ObsidianOrder". His pages were geared toward publicizing the most embarrassing technical quotes from the Star Wars non-canon. Granted, for the purposes of my site, such quotes are irrelevant . . . however, they made an interesting counterpoint to those who have tried to wank out Star Wars tech in recent years.
When I noticed that the pages seemed to be going up and down repeatedly, I decided to save them to my hard drive. The site then fell permanently, and eventually I reposted these under the presumption that the author wouldn't mind. I marked this page with a request that he contact me. In December 2003, the original author did indeed get in touch and thanked me for keeping the pages alive. It was, of course, my pleasure.
This is not a perfect reposting . . . only the main pages are present due to the database format of the originals, so the source-specific pages are left out. However, all the information should be present. I have not amended the pages' internal links to work properly, since many of the links would be dead anyway. The pages have, however, been modified with header and footer to assist in navigation back here or to my main index.
Michael January's Star Trek versus Star Wars page
Despite the uninspiring title, January's pages were some of the better material available in the late 1990's. Though clearly based on some of the pro-Wars arguments of the era and thus subject to all manner of potential corrections and counterpoints, January's pages were vastly superior to those of his comrades. His analyses were reasoned and comparatively reasonable, appearing thorough and honest, and there are often references to contradictions instead of attempts to sweep them under the rug and dismiss the less-than-helpful examples.
His pages aren't perfect by any means, but his calm, honest, and open approach on the pages is light-years beyond the rabid, angry, venom-filled rhetoric currently the norm among the main pro-Wars contingent. Thus, while January's work is largely obsolete since much of it is based on the non-canon of both universes, in general his pages remain a model to which they should aspire.
The pages available here are originally from the Wayback Machine. I have edited them only to remove the Wayback coding, space-wasting links to the long-defunct "Star Trek vs. Star Wars webring", and to ensure that internal links work fine. I also fixed a small number of coding glitches. Their presence is entirely understandable . . . remember, this was back when it was perfectly likely that a webpage would be built entirely in a text editor like Notepad!
Created by a team inspired in part by ST-v-SW.Net, this site burst upon the scene in November 2004 with over 40 webpages of opinionated arguments and commentary already in-hand. Soon a forum was created, and during 2005 this was the premiere location for Star Trek vs. Star Wars debates, bar none.
As their decidedly pro-Trek website constituted a readily-visible fortified position it was frequently under fire in the early days, whether via sniping from afar or frontal attack at the forums by SD.Net swarmers. However, due to the time required by the forums there was little time left to update, idiot-proof, and/or correct the pages, much less to create new ones. And of course, as time went on this problem only increased.
As a result, within a couple of months the authors announced that the main pages were no longer to be updated and were, in effect, left up as an archive version. With the main pages thus unsupported, the creators had a free hand to enjoy the forums. However, by the end of 2005 the creators were getting a bit burned out, and yet were still paying the costs for the domain and bandwidth.
All good things come to an end . . . and so in January 2006 it was announced that the site and its forum would be shutting down. Another individual volunteered to take the forums and host them elsewhere, and the authors agreed to allow the old pages to be hosted here.
The Science in Science Fiction:
A Guide to the Physics Governing the Star Trek Series by Martin Whiteside, BSc. (Hons.)This is not a Star Trek vs. Star Wars site, but I'm archiving it anyway.
Sometimes when you're discussing the Star Trek vs. Star Wars topic, you'll end up searching for some esoteric bit of data that you really don't expect to find. Back during my ASVS days, such searches in regards to Trek would often end up with "www.cakes.mcmail.com/StarTrek/" showing up in the results. I'm not sure I ever got to actually use any of the data this fellow made available, but I was always impressed by the site . . . even if it was just donated webspace from a cake shop.
The site featured examinations of certain aspects of Star Trek technology with a view toward real physics. On both scores the pages were written excellently. The Star Trek tech info does make extensive use of the Star Trek technical manuals. Most of the time I would simply note that this is merely forgivable, but Whiteside managed to extract some fascinating data from the manuals and explore them in ways I've not seen before. Further, he managed to include a great deal of canon information (even from Voyager) at a time before the DVDs and episode transcripts were readily available, so there's no question as to the work he put in.
The site wasn't updated after January of 2000, which is a shame. Nonetheless, the site hung around for quite awhile online. In late December 2006 I was going through my hard drive and found where I'd saved a copy of the site in late June 2003. When I checked online to see if the site was still around, I found that it was gone and, judging by the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, it's been gone since May 2006. Even the domain mcmail.com is no longer active.
The contact methods given on the old pages are dead, so as with the original Obsidian uploading and the January pages these are archived pending permission. But frankly, I'm rather proud to resurrect this site. I hope you find it as fascinating as I used to, and still do.
