Our Versus this week features two prominent back-up characters from two of the starriest of science fiction franchises:
On one hand, this is about the race of Klingons vs. the race of Wookies. Both cultures revere strong warriors, but Klingons have (I think) been more overtly warlike. Wookies are stronger and bigger, but Klingons aren't exactly slouches.
On the other hand, this is about this specific Klingon and this specific Wookie. And let's be honest, Worf hasn't exactly covered himself in glory when push comes to shove. We haven't seen Chewbacca do much in combat (at least in the movies) besides fire his crossbow and yell a lot, so it's hard to say what his real track record is. Still, I tend to side with whoever is fighting Worf, since his main role appears to be "He Who Gets Crushed By The Villain Du Jour". At least Chewie's resume is relatively clear of getting his hat handed to him.
You also have to factor in the relative tech levels of their universes. I'd say on the level of the individual, the two seem roughly equivalent. So that's sort of a wash.
I'm going to go with Chewie on this one, but I'm curious as to who you'd pick and why. Sound off in the comments!
My heart says Chewie…but my heads going with Worf. Both are awesome charecters. Damn damn damn. BOTH will utilize distance weapons (although I think Worf may have the advantage here…) BOTH will utilize bladed weapons ( I never saw Chewie use Kashyyyk blades but I assume he would…) BOTH are strong as hell bad ass fighters. I guess I’m going with Worf but I’m very undecided.
this is no contest. worf is terrible. every character in tng has got over on worf. they name of the trope is “the worf effect” or some such shit. chewie owns all day.
Wookies are known to rip peoples arms out of their sockets.
Wookies have claws.
Chewie can not only wield weapons, ranged and melee, but can also fix and fly a starship, man its guns and befriend minature versions of himself to defeat a more advanced mechanized enemy.
Worf plays with blades and phasers, and pushes buttons.
Worf shows no technical skills.
Worf gets owned by balding old white guys and human women at regular intervals.
Chewie, no contest.
Chewie comes aboard Enterprise. Worf attacks him. Chewie grabs him and throws him across the transporter room, knocking him out.
Sounds about right for Worf.
Uh…. Is there even a choice???? That overgrown tribble will get nothing from me if not the sharp end of my Bat’leth right between his eyes.
And Jeff, I was never crushed, I just let the “Villain du Jour” get a false sense of superiority. If I was really crushed I wouldn’t be around later on to deliver the Coup de Grace. 😉
Not before pulling his arms off his torso, of course.
I think they would both end up in Ten Forward, drinking prune juice and talking about hunting.
But, just going off of what we’ve seen on screen, Worf may have gotten beat up a few times, but he’s been in a lot more battles – and he’s always come back. Chewie on the other hand was captured twice; once by Storm troopers, and the other time by……Ewoks. Yeah, Ewoks.
We’ve never really seen Chewie in action – which is really a bummer, I’d have like to have seen him wade into a bunch of storm troopers and start tearing stuff off.
…Mmmmmmmm. It also comes down to the ultimate disclaimer…’Where are they and why are they fighting’. Thats cheese ridden but it does matter. For the sake of vanilla however I’ll still go with worf.
Sure worf has gotten his a$$ kicked on a regular basis, BUT let that be a credit to his endurance. He’ll get knocked down, but he’ll get up again. (He will not however be piss’in the night away.)
Let the Wookie win. ‘Nuff said.
Mr. Q
they both have ferocity, but Worf has more technique.
Well, I can’t imagine that kind of scene in Star Trek, so I decided to cut some detail.
Haha! More star wars then star trek fans here!
I am fan from both but i think chewie is to slow and worf is fast and clever enough to avoid him.
Both dont like to lose, so the fight were gona take along.
Chewy all the way. Love Worf to but like I said in the last contest. You gotta know when you’re beat and know what fights to pick. Worf should listen to these words because Chewy would kick the crap out of him and probably the rest of the crew of Enterprise.
Reasons.
Chewy has it over Worf in Strength (opinion not fact)
Chewy also has more animistic raw power, Worf may have more fighting skill and technique but sometimes a punch from someone just as quick and more powerful will put you down. Chewy was never known to be a slow dimwitted animal.
Both species use bladed and range weapons.
I dunno. I want to say Chewbacca, but a Wookie hunter/scout/starship tech/former slave with no formal (but plenty of practical) combat training, vs. a Klingon soldier trained in both Klingon and Starfleet fighting disciplines? I know Worf seemed to exist to get beaten up in every other episode of TNG, but I just can’t seem to justify giving this win to Chewie.
That is, unless Worf has a glass jaw, which would account for his constant getting pwned, at which point I could always see Chewbacca landing that lucky knockout blow. But I think I’ll have to go with Worf on this one.
And, I’m a Star Wars guy.
Admittedly I know next to nothing about Star Trek, and therefore Worf, but I had to go with Chewie. I mainly chose him because he is quoted as being able to rip one’s arms right out of their sockets if they beat him in a game of space chess. Also, Wookie’s strike me as hulk type characters who just punch you back harder when you punch them so, ya, I say Chewie.
Yeah, I’m going to go with Chewie. And for those interested, there is a site that compares the Star Wars and Star Trek technologies using various sources and a little bit of actual science.
http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Essays/FiveMinutes.html
It’s pretty interesting, and I happen to like it, even if it’s a bit one-sided.
Even setting aside the number of times Worf has gotten his ass kicked, Chewie is way out of his height and weight class. In a straight up hand-to-hand confrontation Chewie would likely overpower Worf in a matter of moments.
I usually pick SW over ST, but Worf, I think, has a intellect advantage. I also see him head butting Chewie and that cranium of his could do some damage
I’d have to say Worf, simply because when you take into account his Klingon discipline and his Starfleet training, and add in the fact that it’s his job to protect the Enterprise crew (whereas Chewie was a navigator and a friend to Han Solo), Worf seems to come out on top. I love both of these characters–Star Wars and Star Trek are my two favorite series ever— but logically I’d go with the always-ready Klingon in this match up.
Glad to see that some people here have some good sense about them. 😉 The interesting thing is that the Chewie crowd are ashamed of themselves and don’t chime in. Out of 17 commentators we have:
Worf: Big Mac, Me, Gene, FRM, Myro, punkjay, Hudson – 41%
Undecided: Kytana – 6%
Chewie: Knight26, Kalontas, Xavierking5, Mr. Q, Sebastian978, joelstadler, Coran Horn, Doornik1142 – 53%
Still a win, I grant you, but not close to the poll results so far…. It always makes me wonder who these silent voters are….
Strictly limiting it to what has been seen on screen, I have to give it to Worf. We’ve seen him utilize some degree of skill in martial arts and ranged weaponry, plus based on comments made by various characters he seems to train constantly at levels that would be dangerous for anyone else. We’ve never seen Chewie do much of anything, not really. Sure, he has the reputation for pulling arms off, but Han was talking to C3PO and I’m not sure I couldn’t pull him arms off either. Also, a phaser is just so much more versatile than a blaster, being able to do things like wide beam or automatic fire timer.
Also, Stardestroyer.net is a horrible, horrible site dedicated to making SW as uber as they possibly can with little to no justification in many cases. I would avoid using it as a source.
I am surprised nobody has pointed this out – we have never seen Chewie demonstrate enough strength to rip someone’s arm out of its socket – we only have the word of a rogue who smuggles, shoots first, abd spins tall tales more than once in the first movie.
Never having seen Chewie in combat, it could be the case that their size and appearance makes them intimidating enough to not have to fight, kind of like the theory that Tyrannosaurus Rex didn’t hunt, but actually used its size to scare off smaller predators from their kills. (Personally I don’t buy it, but the possibility has to be considered.)
So after much arguing back and forth, I went with Worf. Dude came back from a permanent spinal injury that 24th century medical science was not advanced enough to fix.
you didnt include me in your little equation.
I like both but Worf wins my vote. Chewie is smart but didn’t he put C3PO’s head on backwards? Just saying! My view is Worf would take a bullet or in this case “Laser” for his team which he was hired for, Chewie is just helpful because Hon Solo needed a extra hand so it’s more of a friendship deal. So in my opinion Worf has more background in battle.
Sorry about that, I counted you but forgot to put your name in the final tally. So to update, now with 20 commentators:
Worf: Big Mac, Me, Gene, FRM, Myro, punkjay, Hudson, Abraxas, Sean Murphy, Mr Matt – 50%
Undecided: Kytana – 5%
Chewie: Knight26, Kalontas, Xavierking5, Mr. Q, Sebastian978, joelstadler, Coran Horn, Doornik1142, Barbario – 45%
That would give “ME” the win. Which begs even more, the question of who are these anonymous, scared to show their faces, voters???? 😉 😛 😀
I can’t vote because it’s too ‘parsable.’ In the bizarre possibilities that they would fight and not just turn on whoever sicced them on each other, there are a few variants to consider.
A. Ship to ship fighting we have C with ‘brawn’ and W with better tactics.
B. Energy or proj. weapons, C with ‘brawn’ and W with better tactics.
C. Bladed melee C has better reach, too, but we haven’t seen him fight.
D. barehanded we’re back to C with ‘brawn’ and W with better tactics.
The biggest difference is that C would run if he might lose and W WOULDN’T.
Honor can kill . . . C might lose for running, but is used to living through that. If W loses, he most likely dies with honor.
Gonna go with Worf, and for reasons that pretty much parallel what Hudson and Abraxas said. Security officer from an aggressive warrior race with multidisciplinary training vs lowlife (let’s face it; it’s part of his charm) assistant smuggler with lots of fur to grab. It’s like a Green Beret vs. a tall gangbanger, regardless of how Worf’s been treated by ST scriptwriters.
On behalf of Chewie, though, I think he put C3PO’s head on backwards so he’d have somebody watching his back. And I agree with those who point out that we never really see Chewbacca operating at what one would assume is his full potential, and while I have a dim recollection of seeing Wookiees fighting in some one of the later-issued trilogy, I don’t recall being shocked or awed, so I admit it’s tough to judge his capacity for damage based on what I know.
Nevertheless, Worf ftw.
I had to go with Chewbacca on this one. As was said before, he is seriously out of Worf’s weight class. Unless Worf has some super martial combat training (like Bruce Lee abilities) I don’t see his tactics taking out the wookie. From what I remember, Worf would often try to make use of his superior strength to beat an opponent. What is Worf going to do against an opponent who is stronger than he is?
Actually in some Expanded Universe works he has demonstrated the ability. Once in a comic where he ripped both arms off a Trandoshan slaver, and once in The Courtship of Princess Leia where he ripped an arm off a Nightsister so fast a nearby character remarked that he hadn’t even seen it happen. There may be other examples as well.
Stardestroyer.net cites its sources and follows real science a hell of a lot better than Trekkies do.
I’m really not interested in getting into another one of these debates so this will be my last comment on it, but, first, half of Star Trek technology runs on magic and most of the rest runs on the rule of cool. Star Trek isn’t consistent enough to use real science on. Star Wars shares much the same problem, even if on the whole Star Wars fans are reluctant to admit it. Case and point, look at the prequel trilogy. In one scene you have seismic charges that are being Deployed by Slave I which are putting out what appears to be high gigaton to low teraton level firepower, in another you have these goofy cannons actually manually aimed by human operators (aimed at stellar combat ranges!) which have enough firepower to merely toss someone across a room. So, on the one hand you have antiship weaponry thousands of time stronger than any weapon ever produced by man and it is paired with antiship weaponry roughly equivalent to a modern military mortar. This would be the equivalent of a modern navy arming some ships with 18 inch guns and some of their ships with lawn dart hurling howler monkeys. But, that is because these things are designed by people who do visual effects, not physics for a living and are tangent to my overall point.
In addition to real physics not even making sense for SW, SD.net as a matter of routine misapplies them. For example, their asteroid destruction calculations assume for no good reason the entire mass of the asteroid was vaporized rather than merely fragmented. SD.net uses real formulas and real math, but the variables it selects for those formulas are invariably selected from many possible interpretations of a scene and always done to produce the highest numbers possible, even in the face of more moderate and reasonable estimates.
Ok, this is where I’ll ask politely, before Jeff shuts the thread down, that no one else (without naming names I DO MEAN no one) reply to, or continue this ST vs. SW discussion, before it derails into a flame war. The idea is for us all to have fun in an adult fashion and, at most, discuss the merits of a match-up between these two characters.
I apologize, in retrospect, if any of this is derived from my previous comments.
Regards to all,
I’ll go with Chewbacca, on the basis of track record. Now, Chewie didn’t get much chances to show his warrior talents in the movies – well he captured that walker in Return of the Jedi – but compared to the punching-bag-of-the-villain-of-the-week aka Worf, Chewie is a paragon of warriorhood. Seriously, I can’t remember a single time right now, when Worf had actually lived upto the hype.
Flame war baaaad….Geekery goood. I love both SW and ST. The chagrin that we must all wear is that NONE of these space operas are real. Sucks, but its true. I know I know, I want to the fly the falcon and carry a lightsaber too. I also want to be on the bridge of the Enterprise. Until then I guess we geeks are just stuck with each other. God Bless all of you…(May the force be with you and ‘Make it so’…..)
Wait, you … what? What are you saying? Oh my …
Correction: Space operas are FICTIONAL, not “unreal”. Just like it was said in South Park – fictional characters are known to, cared for, cherished and loved by hundreds of millions people world wide. How many “actual” human beings are that widely known? A regular Joe can be happy if a couple hundred people care for him, so in a sense “fictional” people are more real than any of the “actual” people commenting on this blog. Besides, “reality” is highly overrated.
I’d go more for: I reject your reality and substitute my own. 😉
It amazes me how many Mythbuster fans are part of this community.
::raises hand:: Guilty as charged! I love that show.
Wow, I don’t check in for a week, and look what I miss. Well, for the record, I’m going with Chewie, though Worf was my favorite from TNG, when I was into Trek.