'Star' Wars

Which TV show is cooler, Star Trek or Star Trek: The Next Generation? The answer is one of the galaxy's great imponderables, but six new Next Generation videos (episodes 9 to 14 from the 1987 season, arriving in stores this week) show why Nexters pick Picard and pals as the hipper spacemen:

Cooler Creatures
Classic Trek aliens look like stagehands in Woolworth's Halloween costumes; the Next creatures (check out the Ferengi on episode 10) are made with feature-film-grade alien effects.

Cooler Stories
The old episodes are mostly one-dimensional fables. The new stories (such as the one about the hostages and terrorists on planet Mordan IV in episode 12) are far more complex and mature.

Cooler Starship
You can practically see the strings holding up the old Enterprise; the newer starship not only looks neater, it's got those nifty holodecks, which can make any fantasy into virtual reality (Picard uses one to play detective in episode 13).

Cooler Androids
Part Mr. Spock, part Pinocchio, Brent Spiner's yellow-eyed Data is the most appealing TV robot since that bubble-headed boobie on Lost in Space. (Data's evil twin, Lore, makes his debut on episode 14.)