Okay, people, here’s a thought experiment. Somewhere, somehow, there’s been a massive multidimensional cross-rip and a Star Wars stormtrooper ends up in a shootout with a Star Trek redshirt. Who survives?
Stormtrooper: Canonically weak-minded. May be vulnerable to distracting shouts of, “Hey! Are those the droids you’re looking for?”
Redshirt: Canonically unlucky against lethal aliens. Do stormtroopers count as alien?
Stormtrooper: Trained in marksmanship by the Imperial Academy, which seems to mean “good aim unless you’re shooting a main character or something fuzzy.” Alas for our poor redshirt, he or she is likely not fuzzy.
Redshirt: Trained by Starfleet, which tends to result in good aim except against man-eating monsters. The stormtrooper should be fair game.
Stormtrooper: Armed with a blaster that can be set to stun.
Redshirt: Armed with a phaser, but ditto.
Stormtrooper: Has armor, which may or may not help against phasers.
Redshirt: Does not. Better dodge.
Stormtrooper: Usually comes in patrols of at least two. Either backup’s nearby or he’s twitchy because it’s not.
Redshirt: Number varies; may be a lone guard or separated from a larger away mission. In which case they’ll also be distracted.
Stormtrooper: Usually in stark white armor with black accents, will have a hard time taking advantage of camouflage.
Redshirt: Well. The name says it all.
On the surface, it would seem these two opponents are fairly evenly matched. I’m sure true Trekkers or denizens of the Expanded Universe can come up with a multitude of reasons as to why this is not actually so. Make your case! State your evidence! Who survives?
Or as we might say… who shot first?
Crossover Queen's Creative Chaos 
Stormtrooper, not Clone Trooper? I’d put good odds on him. Because Star Trek is a more pacifistic in the underpinnings, and good stars are some of their moves, suspect. Stormtrooper gotta explain to Vader why he didn’t shoot, and even being dead won’t save him from that conversation.
Clone Trooper wouldn’t shoot first, but he’d shoot with much better aim.
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I don’t like Star Trek. Is it bad that I believe the Storm Troopers would win hands down?
And, uh… the new Trek is putting their Main Characters (TM) in Red Shirts now. So…
Uh… But, Yes. The Red Shirts might be Main Characters, but they aren’t Luke, Leia, and Han, so I don’t think one of the criteria you laid out for Stormtroopers will actually pan out.
The Red Shirts are doomed.
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Scotty was always a redshirt. And the best character in the show.
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Stormtrooper, because Rogue One proved that they are extremely effective so long as their opponents don’t have plot armor. They would eat the Redshirts’ lunch.
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Haven’t seen Rogue One, but this sounds good.
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I argue on the fact the phasers are not EBR (evil black rifles), so they automatically lose.
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Phaser rifles are EBRs, though. And they will pierce armor, no problema.
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The question is what happens afterwards.
Stormtroopers die by the dozens so the main characters can escape.
Redshirts die so the main characters can get serious.
So the obvious outcome is that the Stormtrooper kills the Redshirt, then Kirk beams down and whacks the Stormtrooper over the head with a rock.
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The Stormtrooper had better hope he’s not in the DS9 series as so many characters in DS9 are combat pragmatists when they get serious.
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Is the Red Shirt in a situation where he expects attack? Will he be on alert?
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Star Wars probably has a more robust setting, if you carefully pick and choose from the material, but Star Wars probably also has ownership mismanagement that is more effective at ruining it.
In Gundam, I understand that a traditional joke answer to questions of match ups between machines is ‘Turn A destroys them both’.
In Star Wars versus Star Trek, the winner is Star Gate: SG1.
SG1 shows up to the fight with a couple of mook teams, who die heroically, and SG-1 escapes, surviving by narrow odds. (Presuming they don’t wind up reanimated somehow.) Then, seasons later, SG-1 overthrows the tyranny of the Galactic Empire, and the United Federation of Planets.
so, I guess my answer is ‘make an original knock off of all three, but imagine it most strongly as a sequel to SG1 and maybe to Atlantis. But, address Banshee’s point by having Chaplains.’
Then my bunnies start going ‘gundam has princesses and mecha’, ‘battletech has mecha’, ‘xianxia’, ‘how about an isekai with realistically engineered space travel, and magic’, and so forth.
I may have been down this road a time or two.
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Star Fleet phasers have a wide-setting– so assuming they fired at all, they’d be more likely to hit.
Troopers seem to do a lot of warning/try to get them to duck so you don’t get shot by them type shots… so I’d say that most likely the Redshirt wins.
Goes down this way– they both drop out of a Sliders style handwavium portal, in different areas. They’re trying to figure out where they heck they are– see eachother at the same time.
Trooper lets off a shot to drive the Unknown But Not A Trooper backwards, and they both backpedal.
Redshirt puts his phaser to wide, gets off a shot.
I’d say it stuns the trooper, rathe than putting him out completely, Red gets knocked head over teakettle when he gets close enough to try to identify the Trooper– does think to kick away the blaster.
Lots of rolling around and thumping eachother as they try to get to a weapon, probably some talking– the Redshirt would almost certainly yell accusations about why the Trooper brought him there, I swear they talk too much.
Each manages to get the other’s weapon, he’s not really sure how to use it, and the “ok we’re both armed….sort of.. but that guy acts like he thinks *I* brought him here, so- maybe there’s a common enemy.”
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I think it’s more depending on the environment and how well both sides use it to their advantage.
Outside that, anything is game.
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When you said both phasers and blasters can be set to stun…
I had a sudden vision of both the redshirt and the trooper firing simultaneously, hitting the other, and falling over unconscious in unison.
I’d wonder whether the phaser would go through the Space Plastic armour, but then it goes through clothes, so.
I wonder which weapon would keep someone under for longer?
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They wake up at the same time, fire another shot simultaneously, and are both down for the count for another several hours. By then, both sides of the conflict have had plenty of time for shenanigans to occur behind the scene.
The rebels have now met Enterprise while looking to sabotage the Empire’s missions, and while neither side is really in agreement on methods used, both sides agree that they have Opinions in regards to the Empire.
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Simple. The Stormtrooper misses, but the Redshirt dies anyway. Thus the rules of both universes are adhered to.
Every notice how Stormtrooper armor never seems to provide any protection? You can *punch out* an ST without even knocking their helmet off first! I’d make a joke about “lowest bidder”, but given how the Empire had to go through a *massive* buildup in little time, “cheap gear” is almost a given.
(explains TIE fighters, at least)
Meanwhile Redshirts run around with hand weapons and regular uniforms (maybe some minimal body armor in Discovery) b/c Starfleet can’t seem to accept that, yes, it *is* an actual military force, not just a bunch of peaceful explorers who just happen to be armed to the teeth.
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PAAP strikes again!
Peace At Any Price is a fanon political party that argues that we have already achieved an endless peace and enough space for an eternity in the quadrant, so why bother exploring except for leisure? Also: War Bad, Weapons bad( They could kill a harmless criminal!), so disarm. NOW! I’ll cry if you don’t!
I think it would either go to the stormtrooper, just due to actual military experience, or a mutual kill.
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While everyone jokes about the Redshirts dying to everything… if you actually run the numbers then Redshirts are the least common deaths even just on the show in TOS (if, admittedly, including background numbers of “X number died, before the Enterprise got involved, most of which you don’t see on screen only hear mentioned”), despite the Redshirts having the duty of seeking out problems (of the potentially deadly variety) and dealing with them. Sure, like Stormtroopers, Redshirts have a vulnerability to Plot Armor (tho the mirror of the one the Stormtroopers have, as it affects them less by their opponents having it, and more by their own side’s Main Characters having it needing a “visible example of the danger” by them being injured/killed).
So, I’d argue this goes at least partly to numbers, whether an MC is present, and which side the MC is on. Redshirts don’t seem to be prone to the inverse-ninja law, unlike Stormtroopers, but are more vulnerable to MCs on their own side than the enemy side. Stormtroopers are more vulnerable to enemy MCs, and to the inverse-ninja law, but can actually do ok in smaller numbers and when MCs are not involved.
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Oooh, and if they have more than a few words– they promote to Secondary Character really well.
As does whoever they were speaking with.
… so *that* is why both Trooper and Reshirt survived in my scenario…..
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Clearly, whoever manages to get named in the narrative first will survive, a la Order of the Stick. 😉
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Stormtrooper survives, but redshirt doesn’t.
Why? Because of the difference in their respective governmental policies and rules of engagement. Stormtroopers walk around with their weapons set to kill unless specifically changed to stun. Star Trek officers walk around with their weapons set to stun unless specifically set to kill.
So if they both shoot each other simultaneously, with good aim, the stormtrooper is stunned, but wakes up a few hours later. The redshirt, on the other hand, is killed outright.
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Oh, and the answer to “who shot first?”
Is ALWAYS: “Han.”
I mean, I don’t understand what Lucas thought he was “fixing” with that edit. Greedo was holding a gun on Han, *and* had just stated outright that Jabba planned to kill him once Greedo turned him in. Morally, that’s grounds for self-defense by shooting first in any sane world.
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:grumpy:
Lucas, thinking?
Assumption against evidence….
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Too true!
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Yep. Han’s character of smuggler with shadowed morals came across much better that way!
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