I think that you would have loved the Star Wars prop exhibition a few years ago, if it comes round again you have to make it there. I've probably mentioned this before.
They had this massive Pod Racer, plus loads of models and scenery bits, but it was just fascinating to see how this stuff is made. For me, I have to agree about Aliens, that functional, believable sci-fi look is best. If it looks like a mess of coloured buttons on a screen, then that's what it is - it's jargon, it's rhubarb, because nobody could imagine understanding all those obtuse symbols in Star Trek, not anyone with an actual life at least.
With Star Wars on the other hand, things are tactile - levers, buttons, engineering on a personal level - can't get any more personally engineered than a Lightsabre. Anyhoo, my point about the exhibition is that they use real world components, bits of VCR, industrial parts, scrap car parts were used especially well on the Pod Racer. The Star Trek console look was designed by committee, probably had meetings about meetings about colour schemes and fonts. Whereas the scene builders and model makers for Star Wars seem to have a more organic approach, more artistic, more believable, and it looks and sounds better.
Pod Racers use bits of old scrap stuck all over them - a speaker grill, an old alternator, clumps of wires. It looks impossibly detailed until you look close and realise it's made from the stuff that we throw away.
The big triangular ship models - the bulk of them, made from jigsaw pieces layered on top, so the edges are kinda flat - gives a good look of a massive ship with maybe windows, living quarters etc.
The models for the new Ep.1 ships all have parts from Airfix kits.
In the original movies, there was a robot with a mouth piece that looked just like an old 60's microphone. And that's exactly what it was made from.
I just think that it's easy to associate with Star Wars, because those things could well be made by us - maybe not functionally, but as far as recreating a lightsabre movie prop, they could be made for absolute peanuts, yet some people pay a fortune for them.
The way I see it, if humans do ever get to those technological advances, common space flight and laser weaponary etc - well it's far more likely to involve an existing industry, like mining/drilling - so there's no way we would be using touch screens and stuff in that case. Touch screens are for games, and in the future they will be great for replicator coffee machines - but nobody can imagine flying a ship without a joystick. Even if my space ship doesn't need one, it better have a damn joystick!.
