Star Wars and LotR

For this fictional comparison, i would definitely have to say that the better stories are those of Star Wars and Lord of the Rings, over Star Trek and Harry Potter.

On the Space side:

Star Trek, despite covering much more space in it's galaxy due to it's adventurous nature, is a smaller story. It focuses on the exploits and travels of one ship (please note, I am discussing the original series here) and it's crew members. There is little to no cohesive narrative, and very few looks at the workings of the entire galaxy, just the adventures of the Enterprise and it's crew. There is nothing wrong with episodism, but when performed without any over-arching narrative it falls flat. This can be attributed to it's age, yet many shows from the late 60's and early 70's were able to achieve continuous storylines with an episodic structure, so Star Trek cannot use it's age as a crutch.

(seeing as I only commented on the original Star Trek, it is only fair to comment solely on the Original Trilogy for Star Wars)

Star Wars, on the other hand, is a single story that, although not covering as much ground as Star Trek, is able to delve more into the workings of it's universe. The political intrigue, the military superpowers that battle each other, etc etc. We see characters grow and develop more as our heroes complete their journeys, due to the defined story structure and continuous narrative Star Wars has over Star Trek. In addition to the  successes of it's story-telling, Star Wars also has superior visual effects due to ingenious usage of PFX in regards to the small scale models it employs to carry out it's space battles. The scenery is also enhanced by the use of canvas painting to show an entire planet that looks completely different from our own, whereas Star Trek used mainly a rocky area in california with little alteration to their set.


Now I could go on about Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings, but after all I wrote about Star Wars and Star Trek, i'm just going to say one thing. Dumbledore was a mortal, and died. Gandalf is literally an immortal demi-god. He wins. That compounded with the far more advanced literary quality (Lord of the Rings really is good literature, it is written very well, whereas Harry Potter relies on strong characters, the quality of writing is not superb), and the vast superiority of it's film adaptations, Lord of the Rings is extremely better.