It's weird to think about but the first television series of Star Trek is fast approaching 60 years old. The ecidedly optimistic space sci-fi series was made before the first Apollo missions landed on the moon and in that weird window of time before everyone realised that we've damaged our own spaceship quite a lot. The first Star Wars movie on the other hand, which at the time was simply known as Star Wars, came after the Apollo program had ended and after Skylab had failed to capture the public imagination. In fact, Star Wars sits in a particular space in time after the 1970s oil crisis and just before peak wages. Star Wars is decidedly not optimistic and presents quite different view from the shiny world presented by Star Trek a decade earlier.
Wrapped up within the mythos of these two space sci-fi series is the the very nerdy question of who would win in a fight: Stormtroopers or Redshirts. I think that this is practically a foregone conclusion but I'll lay out the case anyway, in keeping with the parameters of the question that I was given.
Stormtroopers:
These Imperial Soldiers are equipped with laser blasters and some kind of armour. The running joke is that Stormtroopers always miss their targets.
Redshirts:
These Starfleet crew members are equipped with phasers which can be set to 'kill' but their only form of protection are the polyblend red shirts that they are wearing. The running joke is that Redshirts always die.
...
In principle this looks like the opposite of what happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object; which should result in the mutual annihilation of both since the work expended has to do something. The difference here is that it looks like we have an ineffective force versus an impossibly easy to move object; and since the ineffective force is in theory unable to act, then the results are ambiguous. Mathematically speaking, the thought experiment on the face of it is supposed to be 0/0 as opposed to ∞/∞.
Except that it's simply not true.
Quite evidently, Stormtroopers are more capable than zero. If the galaxy was obtained by and maintained by the active use of force, then the base assumption that Stormtroopers always miss must be faulty. They are often seen killing people and talking people hostage; which means that our assumption simply isn't true. In a numerically equal fight, trained soldiers with proper weapons would easily destroy a crew of essentially untrained civilians who are forced to make do with vastly inferior equipment. A Stormtrooper's blaster blast versus a polyblend red shirt can only end in the death of the Redshirt. A Redshirt's phaser shot against the armor of an Imperial Stormtrooper, would do three quarters of five fifths of diddly squat.
Even if you allow for the assumption that Stormtroopers genuinely are terrible at aiming, then I submit my ability to score goals on the football field. I notoriously do not own shooting boots and have boots made for passing and stealing (I am a defender) but even I have scored occasionally. The reason for this is the phenomenon known as the law of large numbers which says that if you repeat something often enough, then eventually you will get the result that you are looking for through sheer brute force. Even playing football as a pick up game in indoor, while other players consistently score six or seven, I have occasionally picked up a brace or a hat-trick. If it was a hundred Stormtroopers firing off all at once, then even in a chaotic firefight, they are still more likely to take out a hideously underdefended and underweaponed opponent in comparison. While one might not be able to hit a barn door with a bucket of water, if you throw sufficiently large enough numbers of barn doors then you should be able to do damage to an unfortunate bucket of water.
I already think that Star Wars is rebel propaganda which is told by unreliable narrators. If the framing device of Star Trek is the diaries of Captain James T Kirk, who by the way can't really be bothered to remember half of the names of his crew, then Star Trek is probably also an equally unreliable narrative. As it is, not remembering the names of expendable crew, leads me to believe that he has little to no faith in them winning in a fight. In contrast, you don't kit out literally thousands and thousands of soldiers with the instruments to kill people if you do not intend for them to use them. From a propaganda standpoint, the fact that Star Wars does have the added tagline of "A New Hope" implies that previously there wasn't very much hope to be had. Even from an unreliable narrator standpoint this still implicit that Stormtroopers are to be feared.
I just do not see how Redshirts win this fight with any given set of conditions. I think that no matter which way you look at it, Stormtroopers always win. Certainly if the USS Enterprise accidentally wandered into any space fleet battle, it would be destroyed. It is only equipped with minimal torpedo cover whereas any Imperial Fighter has more armaments.
Sorry, sorry, Captain Kirk,
All you have are fireworks.
And as you crash out of the sky,
99 Luftballoons go by.
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