Poor Design Choices In the Star Wars Universe 832
Ant writes "John Scalzi's AMC blog shows a short guide to the most epic FAILs in Star Wars design — 'I'll come right out and say it: Star Wars has a badly-designed universe; so poorly-designed, in fact, that one can say that a significant goal of all those Star Wars novels is to rationalize and mitigate the bad design choices of the movies. Need examples? Here's ten ...'"
Re:council (Score:5, Informative)
The whole point, I believe, is that the chamber is gigantic, and that representatives really needed to fly to get to the center and speak.
If you allowed people to just do a videoconference from their seats, what's the point of meeting in Wash^H^H^H^H Coruscant? Everybody could stay at their home planets and telecommute!
Re:Oh dear (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, they're never referred to as 'lasers' or similar in the films. The books describe them as ionized gas throwers, like the PPGs in Babylon 5. In fact, if they were coherent light beams you wouldn't be able to see them, the only reason you can see them from the side is that they are projectiles that are glowing.
Turbolasers, on the other hand...
Re:There is a reason they call it fiction (Score:3, Informative)
Fiction has to be believable, to draw the reader/viewer into the story. It's called suspension of disbelief. You may suspend your disbelief easily; good for you. Some people need more realistic details in order to be convinced, though.
At a minimum we can say, 'Boy, that fictional character who designed that is dumb', which then affects our understanding of the characters, when then affects how we view the story. Just realizing that Annikin designed C3PO to translate millions of languages but left him unable to handle sign language tells me that Annikin isn't as good a droid builder as he thought he was. (Or that there's no sign language in the Star Wars universe, which seems odd but is another interesting datum if true.)
Re:Seat belts (Score:3, Informative)
Re:council (Score:1, Informative)
They don't meet in the rotunda. There are separate meeting rooms for the House and Senate. The rotunda is open to the public and is adorned with art work. It doesn't really have a function beyond being a tourist attraction. And have you ever been in the room where the House meets? It's tiny and nothing at all like the massive Senate room on Coruscant.
Re:At the Risk of Sounding Like an Apologist (Score:3, Informative)
Oh, and it reproduces with "space spores [wikipedia.org]". Oh lord, I am such a nerd for knowing this.
Re:At the Risk of Sounding Like an Apologist (Score:4, Informative)
"This [indicates the staff weapon] is a weapon of terror. It is designed to strike fear into the enemy. This [the P90] is a weapon of war. It is designed to kill the enemy."
Also, Chewbacca only visited Endor. He never lived there. That guy was a bad lawyer.
Re:Of John Scalzi (Score:2, Informative)
The power requirements for the brain pal were handled internally by the device itself. In other words, it had a battery. Perhaps one that could be charged off the body's own internal energy sources? Remember, these bodies were basically designed to be the ultimate combat chassis, and so the fact that the body's own internal electrical field could be used to do something like that...not a big deal.
Finally, in The Last Colony, a huge deal is made of the fact that the enemy *can* intercept electronic transmissions, to the point that not a single colonist on the planet is allowed to have a BrainPal active, even the military personnel, unless they're in a specially shielded bunker. In fact, nobody is allowed to have any form of electronic technology that could so much as broadcast a byte of data, because it could be picked up *across the solar system* by an enemy ship.
Re:At the Risk of Sounding Like an Apologist (Score:5, Informative)
Here's something interesting:
90% of shots fired in gun fights miss, even when the shooter is a cop, and even when they aren't supposed to miss.
These are guys who are trained, have to qualify at various distances at a pistol range, etc.
But it turns out that putting your shots on target when ... is really difficult in real life.
- the lighting/visibility is poor
- the target is trying not to get shot
- you aren't under ideal cover
- you may be shooting off-handed or without proper time to posture/setup the shots
- you weren't expecting to shoot anyone today and now you're in a firefight
- THEY ARE SHOOTING BACK [!!]
So I'm not defending variable-grade shooting in the movie, but in the real world, _good_ marksmen who train constantly often do not make good shots in the heat of the moment.
Re:At the Risk of Sounding Like an Apologist (Score:2, Informative)
Re:At the Risk of Sounding Like an Apologist (Score:3, Informative)
C-3PO Can't fully extend his arms; has a bunch of exposed wiring in his abs; walks and runs as if he has the droid equivalent of arthritis. And you say, well, he was put together by an eight-year-old. Yes, but a trip to the nearest Radio Shack would fix that. Also, I'm still waiting to hear the rationale for making a protocol droid a shrieking coward, aside from George Lucas rummaging through a box of offensive stereotypes (which he'd later return to while building Jar-Jar Binks) and picking out the "mincing gay man" module.
George Lucas based C3PO & R2D2 off of the 2 main characters in The Hidden Fortress [wikipedia.org]. Their opposing and awkward personalities make for an awesome/funny dynamic between them. Star Wars is, first and foremost, a movie made to entertain.
Re:At the Risk of Sounding Like an Apologist (Score:4, Informative)
That's not a giveaway -- could easily be a stereotype, rather than a clone.
Re:Artistic License (or Homer's Poor Choices) (Score:5, Informative)
Bull. Menelaus needed to go after his "kidnapped" wife because he had the same claim to Sparta as Phillip II of Spain had to being King of England, that he had married the Queen Regnant and was supposed to shut up and get her pregnant; if she wasn't kidnapped, Paris of Troy gets to be King Matrimonial, and Menelaus is once again Agamemnon's little brother with few prospects. Agamemnon supports his brother's Quest because it is a Casus Belli to justify pillaging Troy. If it had been ended by the duel between Menelaus and Paris, the whole war would have been a failure, from the Argive perspective.
Women were no more simple commodities when they were major heiresses than was Eleanor Of The Aquitaine a simple commodity in the Middle Ages.
Re:At the Risk of Sounding Like an Apologist (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah, WWII dogfights between messerschmitts, spitfires and mustangs
Re:Nerd-boy strikes back (Score:5, Informative)
Nonsense. A tsuba is an integral part of a practical katana. Only decorative or ceremonial long blades occasionally (e.g. shirisaya) lacked them. The tsuba didn't just protect the wielder from an opponent's blade, it also prevented the wielder's hand from sliding onto the blade during thrusts. Fighting with a tsuba-less sword would be folly.
Re:At the Risk of Sounding Like an Apologist (Score:3, Informative)
Given that the US Army has a minimum height requirement for Military Police MOS I don't consider that the short stormtrooper question must indicate that they are clones.
Re:At the Risk of Sounding Like an Apologist (Score:4, Informative)
Marksmanship of imperial forces is easily explained by the steamroller principle. If you have a seemingly endless supply of soldiers (and you are not overly concerned with casualties), it is not important to outfit them with anything more than mediocre equipment. The cost savings in ammunition and equipment allows the empire to readily equip new conscripts or "clones", as it were.
This concept has historically worked adequately enough for China and Russia. It's a small irony that the AK-47, a communist-bloc weapon designed to be the ultimate bargain-basement firearm, was extremely competitive with much more expensive counterparts in the US/NATO arsenal.
Re:At the Risk of Sounding Like an Apologist (Score:4, Informative)
At the risk of being out-geeked; in the original trilogy it wasn't stated that the storm troopers were clones, they're just some generic jackbooted thugs with masks so you're not tempted to empathise with them (the contractors on the other hand...).
IIRC some of the earlier Star Wars novels explained the 'clone wars' as being a failed attempt by the empire to clone bazillions of guys to crew their star destroyers. Turned out the clones didn't have <strike>souls</strike> a presence in the force and went insane or something. So the storm troopers not clones, just some mooks in plastic armour.
Re:At the Risk of Sounding Like an Apologist (Score:3, Informative)
Have you ever been to China? Ever seen a construction project there? There are no rails, no ropes, no traffic cones, often not even any signs.
When my dad was a kid (before WWII) construction projects in Boston would store their explosives in a dynamite shack -- a wooden shed right next to the sidewalk, with no lock and no safety precautions whatever except a sign on the door that said "DYNAMITE". It was just assumed that people were smart enough to stay away.
Just because we happen to live in a time and place where we've made a fad out of giving big priority to safety precautions, that doesn't make it a universal principle. Fads are temporary. I could easily believe that thirty years from now, kids will be looking at old pictures and asking their parents "Why did you wear those funny-looking things on your heads when you were riding bikes?" This one isn't even a plot hole. It's just that the people in the Star Wars movies happen to live in a time and place where the culture does not have much interest in safety precautions.
Re:Of John Scalzi (Score:3, Informative)
In addition to the points of the commenters before me, I'll point out that communication between CDF soldiers while in combat armor is specifically described as being performed via tight-beam laser links so as not to give away their position with BrainPal EM chatter.
Really, Scalzi thought about this kind of thing. He's pretty thorough.
Light saber fencing techniques (Score:4, Informative)
I thought the article was really funny. However, it's clear that Scalzi hasn't spent much time fencing. Real fighting with an edged weapon is nothing like theatrical fencing—which is what Scalzi is apparently thinking of.
In theatrical fencing, the idea is to simulate a real fight without actually risking injury to the actors, who are usually not wearing fencing masks. Thus, there's a great deal of jumping around and clashing of blades. In a real fight (or even a saber fencing bout), there's only two reasons why the combatant's blades would ever come into contact: either they are parrying, or they are trying to beat their opponent's weapon out of line to create an opening. Usually, the contact of blade on blade is only momentary—you want your blade free to move at all times.
There is one exception to this. Sometimes, a parry or beat will result in a "bind"—a maneuver something like arm-wrestling, the purpose of which is to get the upper hand through main force by pushing your opponent's weapon out of the way. Because you are pushing against his blade, friction and the angle of the forces involved prevent your blade from "sliding" down to his hand. In any case, there are well-known maneuvers for disengaging from an unwanted bind.
In a light-saber battle, your primary targets would probably be your opponent's hand and wrist, just as it is in epee and saber fencing today. This is not because you "slide down the blade" of your opponent, but for the simple reason that the hand holding the saber is the part of your opponent that is closest to you. It could be argued that hand guards like those found on contemporary epees or sabers would be a good idea for these fictional weapons...but then you might as well go for full body armor.
If I were going to object to the light-saber battles in Star Wars on grounds of realism, it would be that they last far too long. A real battle with nearly weightless edged weapons that can cut through anything shouldn't last more than 10 seconds.
Re:At the Risk of Sounding Like an Apologist (Score:1, Informative)
Except during the Revolutionary War when they saved your sorry colonial asses.
Re:Too easy (Score:3, Informative)
Unfortunately I believe that was ad libbed by Harrison Ford.
Re:At the Risk of Sounding Like an Apologist (Score:2, Informative)
"Aren't you a little short for a stormtrooper?"
That doesn't necessarily require the stormtroopers to be clones. Most (if not all) armed forces have some sort of height and weight requirements.
Re:At the Risk of Sounding Like an Apologist (Score:2, Informative)
Almost correct. A New Hope was the only one to show blood. Obi-Wan cut off that arm in the cantina.
Re:In space, only the keen eard can hear you screa (Score:4, Informative)
Not only would it dissipate quickly, it wouldn't travel any further than the width of an atom. Take the moon mission as example, where the LEM traveled through the vacuum between the earth and the moon. Any sounds made by the men inside traveled to the surface of the vessel, and then stopped. There may have been one or two hydrogen atoms clinging to the skin that were "pushed off" by the sound's vibration, but that hardly qualifies as sound.
Re:At the Risk of Sounding Like an Apologist (Score:3, Informative)