How Star Wars Trumped Star Trek For Scientific Accuracy 495
An anonymous reader writes "When George Lucas added the 'ring around the Death Star' effect to his 1997 re-release of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, the revision was almost as hated as Greedo shooting first, and to boot was seen as a knock-off of the seminal 'Praxis effect' in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991). But a debunking astronomer claims that the Federation got it wrong and the fan-boys should thank Lucas for adding some scientific accuracy to his fictional universe."
And So Offered Another Inaccuracy (Score:5, Interesting)
Sadly, upon closer inspection, we see that ILM blew this rare opportunity for scientific realism in the Star Wars universe ...
Indeed, if you're familiar with Docking Bay 327 [ggpht.com], it is inside a large maitenance trench [wikia.com] where the structural weaknesses should have created a horizontal ring exploding outward. Instead the movie gave us a vertical ring exploding outward.
I hate most of Star Trek and basically considered Star Wars a religion as a human larva & pupa (see above docking bay reference). Being as how I was hatched after the last (real) Star Wars movie came out, my nipples exploded with joy at the prospect of seeing the originals on the big screen -- special edition or not. I was confused by the Han/Greedo exchange, found not a whole lot of added value in the other aspects but must have been the only person pleased with a more satisfactory Death Star explosion.
But a debunking astronomer
Yes, it's Phil "Bad Astronomer" Plait. Look, it's great you get people into astronomy via sci-fi religious flamebait stoking but ... I think you put it best in the last slide of one of your presentations [wikipedia.org].
Re:And So Offered Another Inaccuracy (Score:5, Insightful)
How Star Wars Trumped Star Trek For Scientific Accuracy
Isn't that the greatest headline ever to create a nerd flame war!?
Re:And So Offered Another Inaccuracy (Score:5, Funny)
How Vi trumped Emacs!
Have I been here too long?
Re:And So Offered Another Inaccuracy (Score:5, Funny)
I think you must've been! C'mon out of your vault, the war is long over and we all use nano now.
Re:And So Offered Another Inaccuracy (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a pretty insignificant point. I don't know anyone that would seriously side with Star Wars being science fiction. It has more in common with the Lord of the Rings than it does any sci-fi I've seen. Have some good films come out of the Star Wars universe? Sure, but that doesn't mean it's anymore than a fairy tale set in space. Couple that with the kiddy image of marketing and merchandise and it's hard to take Star Wars seriously as science fiction.
Re:And So Offered Another Inaccuracy (Score:4, Interesting)
You can take it further than that. Star Wars is heavily inspired (with some elements lifted directly) from Akira Kurosawa samurai films.
If you watch the Akira Kurosawa films, you realize that they're heavily influenced by American Westerns. Several of his films were re-made as westerns for western audiences, like The Magnificent Seven (Seven Samurai) and A Fistful of Dollars (Yojimbo). I think at least one of his films is a remake of a John Ford western, even, though I can't think of which one it is.
So yeah, it's similar to a western. But it's not really a John Wayne kind of western, it's a western by way of Japan.
Re:And So Offered Another Inaccuracy (Score:5, Funny)
Re:And So Offered Another Inaccuracy (Score:4, Interesting)
This is like asking (Score:5, Insightful)
What is more scientifically accurate? Superman or Spider-man? They are both so wide of the mark it is not even worth noting the difference.
Re:Need to Mod Articles (Score:5, Informative)
Star Wars is adolescent nonsense, ... Star Trek can turn your brains to puree of bat guano, and the greatest science fiction series of all time is Doctor Who! And I'll take you all on, one-by-one or all in a bunch to back it up!
- Harlan Ellison
But of course I agree.
Re:And So Offered Another Inaccuracy (Score:5, Insightful)
Science fiction ? Star Wars is more like future fantasy, and Star Trek is more future fiction.
Re:And So Offered Another Inaccuracy (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe 'Science Fiction' is a major misnomer for all works currently filed under it.
Re:And So Offered Another Inaccuracy (Score:5, Insightful)
Star Wars is more like future fantasy
That certainly explains the opening scroll for every movie, which all start "A Long Time Ago, In a Galaxy Far, Far Away" :)
Re:And So Offered Another Inaccuracy (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And So Offered Another Inaccuracy (Score:5, Informative)
Magic carpets and wizard spells don't fall into the realm of science fiction. That would be fantasy.
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Orson Scott Card said once there really is no difference:
"Half joking, I was writing to Ben [Bova] about this very subject, and I said, look, fantasy has trees, and science fiction has rivets," Card said in a 1989 interview. "That's it, that's all the difference there is, the difference of feel, perception."
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I'd say that fantasy is any story that's wholly impossible in the current or any probable past (probable being based on the past being very much like the current present, any dragons, monsters, or alie
Re:And So Offered Another Inaccuracy (Score:4, Funny)
What did you use the fishing poles for? To reach the books on the high shelves, to lift the librarians skirt, or something else entirely?
SF: only one impossibility per story (Score:5, Insightful)
Absolutely wrong, at least for connoisseurs. "Hard" science fiction, or SF for short, is very different from fantasy.
SF is a genre written with a "what if" question. Suppose *one* and only one thing that's impossible today were possible, what then? Examples of authors in this genre are Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein and Arthur Clarke. There's very little true SF in movies and TV, it's too cerebral for visual consumption. A magazine that specializes in SF is Analog [analogsf.com], published since 1930, when it was named "Astounding".
Fantasy is a genre where anything goes. You could say that SF and, as a matter of fact, all fiction is a sub-genre of fantasy. Star Trek and Star Wars are fantasy but not true SF, they have too many impossible things to qualify as true Science Fiction.
Re:SF: only one impossibility per story (Score:4, Insightful)
The way I've always liked to see it put is that hard SF is an attempt to write plausible fiction that uses scientific knowledge that is as accurate as it can be at the time of writing to extrapolate into the future of what could be.
Fantasy doesn't let plausibility get in the way of telling a good story, and doesn't worry about explaining how stuff works, or worry about whether it even could.
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HAL isn't a good example of hard sci fi. Nor is the monolith for that matter. HAL was conceivable, not proven, but seemed plausible given what we knew at the time. You're right, though, Clarke and Kubrick didn't bother explaining in detail how HAl's AI was possible. The monolith was truly beyond comprehension, and is pure fantasy.
The depiction of weightlessness and motion in space, the silence in vacuum, and other aspects of 2001 are good examples of hard sci fi. Those were done to be as scientifically
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In the books the Monolith is just a very, very powerful computer + manipulator/nanotech created by a very, very advanced civilization. I think in the book 3001 they get into that quite a bit, as humanity had advanced to a point where they could begin to understand it. As the author himself said, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic - the monolith is a perfect example.
I don't know that HAL *needs* an explanation - it's a computer, an artificial intelligence, and that was somet
Re:SF: only one impossibility per story (Score:5, Interesting)
I always liked this definition: "SF is a story about things that might happen, but we wouldn't want them to happen. Fantasy is about things that we would like to happen, but can't possibly happen." It's not an exact definition, but I thinks it's pretty good.
I don't remember who said it (Maybe Arthur C. Clarke?). If anyone remembers, please enlighten me. Thanks.
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I can think of good, hard SF where the story ends up being about something that might happen, and by the end, we might want it to happen:
Here's a short list for potential converts:
The Novel length version of Greg Bear's Blood Music, (but not the short story, that's definitely a 'would NOT want it to happen')
Arthur C. Clarke - Childhood's End, The City and the Stars, 2001 (if you ignore the sequels, as Clarke himself recommended)
John Brunner - The Stone that Never Came Down
Brainstorm (the Christopher Walken/
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Yup, it was him. I remember him saying that or something very similar on TV once.
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Star Wars is a Fantasy work because it has:
An interesting theory of magic.
An interesting theory of good and evil.
An interesting theory of super-human proficcency with weapons.
A young farm boy with a destiny.
Star Trek is Science Fiction because it posits some new basic science and extrapolates their technological, social, political and military consequences.
Re:SF: only one impossibility per story (Score:4, Interesting)
No, it's for people who want an exception to there precious Fictional stories to seem 'more important' then others. Nothing more.
Name 1 book that is very different from fantasy? 1 story that would couldn't replace the fiction science with a fictional magic device.
Isaac Asimov
AI in rogot can easily be replaced by golems from fantasy.
Robert Heinlein
A immortal man? an AI, a talking car? Really? can't be replaced with magic?
Clones can be doplgangers.
and Arthur Clarke.
HAL could also be a Genie in a bottle,.
Just listing the Big Three does not an argument make. An dyes I have read most, if not all, of their works
"Fantasy is a genre where anything goes"
No, it's not. Like all stories it provides bounds and context. any story where 'anything goes' is crap.
The ONLY difference is how far removed it is from current understanding and technology.
IT's ALL still fiction.
" too cerebral for visual consumption.
and ther is it. NMY stuff is too smart for the unwashed masses. Hurumph. I should start to cal it the Hurumph fallacy. or maybe the "Petomane fallacy"
I am familiar with Analog. I was a long time subscriber, plus I had boxes of me grandfathers copies. I read a lot of them.
Fantasy is a sub genre of fiction.
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The 'visual' is why skiffy (TV/Movie SciFi) fails as SF: if it's a cool special effect, it's probably bad science. The skiffy genre is all about special effects, and has only a distant relation to SF - skiffy is an excuse to put eye candy on the screen, not an exploration of how a particular technlogical advancement would affect society.
Even when the source material is a Phillip K Dick book, the resulting movie always seems to push aside whatever cleverness made the source interesting in favor of eye candy
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It shoots midichlorians.
Re:And So Offered Another Inaccuracy (Score:4, Insightful)
Lukas had every right to change his creation but to assume fans of the original would be pleased was a little foolish.
Of course he does. It's just amusing that a person who once went in front of Congress to protest against the colorization of The Three Stooges is one of the biggest film revisionists of all time at this point. Hell, he's supposedly supposed to be making even more revisions for the BD release.
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It's just amusing that a person who once went in front of Congress to protest against the colorization of The Three Stooges is one of the biggest film revisionists of all time at this point.
His position was absolutely consistent. His protest against colorizing the Stooges was correct - you don't mess with the classics (To those that object to the usage of The Stooges and "classic" in the same breath, I ask which you would rather see, "Three Little Pigskins" - also starring a very young Lucille Ball - or "
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FanFight! (Score:5, Funny)
Cue the guys with pointy latex ear extensions flipping off the guys with the neon glowing plastic swords.
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Indeed:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x115u4_triumph-the-insult-comic-dog-star-w_fun [dailymotion.com]
(Wait for it. The good news is that the wait is entertaining in and of itself.)
Re:FanFight! (Score:4, Funny)
Finally! (Score:3, Insightful)
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Maybe, but Jedi are not omnipowerful and CAN be defeated in a fight. Also, imagine an army of Jedi Borg... That would be amusing.
Re:Finally! (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is that both sides takes their movies/shows way to serious. A lot of people put into a deep meaning in Star Wars that isn't really there. Star Trek had a meaning sometimes but they are both for just kinda watching and say wow it would be so cool to be in Space.
Ep. 4,5 and 6 had a lot of Gaps that we filled in our own imagination that when ep. 1,2,3 came out we would all be disappointed as our imagination was replaced with someone else's.
Star Trek was based on the Campy 1960's TV show. And always trying to make itself seem more modern, as it will often use new technology as an excuse to complete the plot. However it was designed for a weekly viewing where at the end of the day everything was back to where it was before. Being that Star Trek and its following Spinnoffs were TV shows we really got to know and learn about the characters and got to know them. So when the movies came out there wasn't any time explaining that Spock was a Half Human, Half Vulcan, or that he was rather smart and strong etc...
So Unlike StarWars when a Star Trek Movie sucks it is usally because it was just bad, not that told us what happened where our version was much better. Hey I wanted the Clones to be the Bad Guys.
Re:Finally! (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the problem was that Episodes 1-3 didn't fill in the interesting gaps.
4: Here's this Luke kid. Light Side wins.
5: The Empire blows up the base, hacks off Luke's hand, and Han's fully-clothed and petrified. Dark Side wins.
6: Luke beats Palpatine. Dad's OK. Light Side wins.
Following the parallel, we should have had:
1: Here's the Anakin kid. Light Side wins.
2: Anakin hacks up a bunch of Sandpeople, kids, and finally flips out Natalie Portman, formerly naked, ends up petrified. Dark Side wins.
3: Here's this Darth Vader dude. He gets more and more evil with every passing month, slaughtering millions, razing planets, building Star Destroyers and Death Stars, and he's so freaking oppressive that the Rebellion starts. Some Bothans rip off the plans for the Death Star and haul ass outa there! Light Side wins.
Instead we got this incoherent jumble:
1: Here's the Anakin kid. Light Side wins.
2: Here's the Anakin dude. Whiny little bugger, ain't he?
3: Here's the Anakin dude. Still a whiny little bugger, ain't he? DO NOT WANT.
All the interesting gaps in the Star Wars storyline took place between Episode III and Episode IV. We all know Anakin's going to fall to the Dark Side, and there was no need to spend two movies doing it. The unexplored part of the movie timeline is what life is like immediately after he becomes Vader, but before the events of Episode IV.
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All the interesting gaps in the Star Wars storyline took place between Episode III and Episode IV. We all know Anakin's going to fall to the Dark Side, and there was no need to spend two movies doing it. The unexplored part of the movie timeline is what life is like immediately after he becomes Vader, but before the events of Episode IV.
Agreed. However, I have my doubts that Lucas could have pulled off anything better than he did, regardless of his chosen timeline. He's just not very good, as he's proven time and time again. :\
Re:Finally! (Score:4, Interesting)
To me it was one of the few ones who's plot was reasonably believable. Reasonably good build up, some tension thrown in, no overwhelmingly painful, tediously dragged out love story, good depiction of a coup and to top it off, only a few unanswered questions about what had taken place.
Star Trek story lines usually had an air of believability to them. Granted some series had too many encounters with time travel (I'm looking at you Voyager), holodeck accidents (I'm looking at you TNG) and the Mirror Universe (I'm looking at you DS9), but you could usually find decent explanations for most things. To be honest I like the TV series approach better than the films, as was stated by others here, you have more time to develop characters, more time to develop lore and culture but you also invariably have more time to create garbage and bullshit. But overall I feel that the genius to bullshit ratio of Star Trek far exceeds that of Star Wars
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The turning to the darkside was set in motion from the second one. Sure it was accelerated somewhat during the latter portions of the third one, but thats what you get from showing it in a film. Lets not forget what Yoda said "Fear lea
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A few stormtroopers? We're not talking about a handful here, we're talking about being outnumbered by huge amounts.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09n0qd_n4c0 [youtube.com]
First one to go down was taken by a squad at most. Apparently he can lead the charge on the droid army for days on end without taking a scratch... but a couple dozen storm troopers ... get him within a few seconds. (and he was ready) Why didn't the droids army ever bother to send
Second one gets taken down by the first shot fired. Less than a dozen troop
Historical Accuracy (Score:4, Insightful)
Which portion of this 8 year old book about a 20 year old movie is news?
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Slow news day ::shrug::
Hadn't Noticed (Score:5, Funny)
Ring around the Death Star? Greedo shooting first? You mean, people actually watch the butchered editions of Star Wars?
I had no idea.
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Not all of us have the beautiful anamorphic laserdiscs.
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Not all of us have the beautiful anamorphic laserdiscs.
Laserdiscs? What's wrong with the OT DVD release?
Han shoots first on my DVD copy. Same on my VHS copy.
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Greedo shooting first is far more hated ... (Score:5, Interesting)
When George Lucas added the 'ring around the Death Star' effect to his 1997 re-release of Star Wars episode IV: A New Hope, the revision was almost as hated as Greedo shooting first ...
No. Greedo shooting first is far more hated. Enhanced explosion effects and cgi starfighters are the sort of thing expected not a major character personality rewrite.
Adding ridiculous numbers of storm troopers to corridors is probably far more hated. The death star explosion is most likely pretty far down the list.
Re:Greedo shooting first is far more hated ... (Score:5, Insightful)
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I think the word you were actually looking for is scoundrel, not rogue.
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I'm actually familiar with those, and if you dig a tiny bit deeper, you'd see that they're STILL the same thing.
Re:Greedo shooting first is far more hated ... (Score:5, Insightful)
While I agree that it's stupid that they made Greedo fire first, it was pretty obvious that if Han hadn't shot him, Greedo would have pulled his trigger, so even without Greedo shooting first, Han was still acting in self-defense.
My point being that the idea of making Greedo shoot first to make Han look somehow less "evil" was even at its very best, a completely unnecesssary change, because it was obvious to me that Han shot Greedo in self defense when I first saw the movie in 1977. The real problem with that change was that it made Han look like he was somebody who simply reacted to situations around him rather than proactively dealt with them in an efficient and appropriate manner.
Re:Greedo shooting first is far more hated ... (Score:5, Insightful)
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He likely went to the same shooting range as every stormtrooper in the galaxy.
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Greedo missing from 3 feet away, stormtroopers unable to hit anything, and Obi-wan's comment "Only Imperial Stormtroopers are so precise," can all be explained away by another of Kenobi's comments: "...clumsy or random as a blaster."
From all this, I can only conclude that "blasters" have an intentionally random directional shift applied each time the weapon is fired. Such randomness would mean that they constitute a galaxy-spanning game of Russian roulette, and would also make them ideal terror weapons.
Thi
Re:Greedo shooting first is far more hated ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly. Dicking with SFX is mostly just irritating. But a major personality rewrite is a betrayal -- not of us fans, but of the character himself.
But the real question is: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:But the real question is: (Score:5, Funny)
http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=1759
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the TARDIS
Yeah, that bullshit (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Yeah, that bullshit (Score:5, Funny)
VrrrrrWhooosh!
(That's the "sound" of a TIE fighter flying over your head, in space.)
How many even understand what he's talking about? (Score:2)
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Star Wars v. Star Trek (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Star Wars v. Star Trek (Score:5, Insightful)
Both are entertainment. If you know anything about the relevant science they spout off, I hope you're not taking notes for future reference. I assume both put just enough real science in there to make it sound not _entirely_ bullshit but didn't bother going to ridiculous realistic detail to turn it into a class.
Again, these shows/movies were for entertainment. Picking apart the "science" that was written by.. writers.. might be funny in some blatant cases, but generally it's just a futile effort since not even they cared and they were the ones writing it into canon.
Frankly, my opinion is that those who "take offense" to the lack of credible science in these two series/movies are the ones who sincerely hope/hoped it will/would/(was?) become reality in the not so distant future (or long ago past for the Star Wars fans). OMG! The science isn't real! Does that mean I won't get to tool around the galaxy on the Enterprise-A/B/C/D/E?
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ST and SW are of such a high calibre of entertainment that I can forgive the bad physics, or at least tolerate them. But BSG (new) and B5 prove that you can have a good story AND still get the physics right without it "turning into a class" as you put it.
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Star Trek tried making the bad science part of the plotline which was idiotic.
It's hard to avoid this when you're filling scripts for nearly a dozen movies, plus hundreds of hours of television programming. Star Wars only had to contend with six movies, a Christmas special and a handful of cartoons. The Star Wars books certainly go down the "science rathole" (wormhole), explaining, for example, how Han made the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs...)
Re:Star Wars v. Star Trek (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, it's not like conjuring up some mystical phenomena that allows the characters to defy the laws of physics.
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Re:Star Wars v. Star Trek (Score:5, Insightful)
That could be because Star Wars is about the story, whereas Star Trek is about the characters.
Inventing Particle A which is fixed by Particle B may not be a good story in itself, but how Kirk, Spock, Bones et al deal with the situation is why I like ST over SW.
Darth Vader was a great baddie, but so was Khan.
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Good comment, no mod points. ST:TNG was a let down in terms of stories and characters. Picard was the only truly memorable character who wasn't a one-hit interest (like Worf's Klingonishness). Everyone else was boring. The stories were, well, days in the life mostly rather than the morality-questioning, slightly more epic tales of the original Star Trek. And Bones, Kirk, and Spock were the reason people watched the show.
TNG episode that stands out the most didn't even have the main characters: The Game
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One of the things that Star Wars had over Star Trek is the fact that the science, or lack of it, was never a critical point of the story. Nothing wrong with bad science with your fantasy, but Star Trek tried making the bad science part of the plotline which was idiotic. Making up a particle that causes some problem, then making up another particle that fixes the problem caused by the first fake particle is beyond stupid. You don't gain anything from it.
Yeah. 'Cuz Star Wars never had a plot that depended on a fictional technology (force fields and, erm, force fields) with blatant plot holes (the most important control panel on the huge-freaking ship is in the most obscure, out-of-the-way, unguarded spot on the ship or the force field generator is on a populated moon that doesn't seem to orbit anything {and has the solar-cycle of a planet} which is guarded by a small force of second-rate troops with no heavy weapons*).
*No AT-STs are not heavy weapons. Loo
Title failure (Score:2)
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As opposed to slowing down time if you feel like it?
I don't care about science in this case (Score:5, Insightful)
I care about the integrity of a work of art, cheesy pyro effects and all.
Digital remasterings that go beyond color correction and noise reduction suck. JMHO.
Acceptable? Getting rid of the matte outlines that were visible in VHS Star Wars IV. Not acceptable? Adding a CGI tauntaun.
Re:I don't care about science in this case (Score:5, Funny)
Of course not. Everybody knows that the Tauntauns all live on Hoth, and they didn't even go there until episode V.
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Right absolutely on. Fix what the tech of the day *could not* make right in the first place, sure. And that does NOT mean you can substitute CGI for claymation or whatever other old-style SFX. Doing so makes a visual "hole" in the film that makes our "willing suspension of disbelief" hit the ground with a resounding THUD.
But no matter how "broken" it may seem a few years later, DON'T fuck around with the visual, structural, or character integrity of the film.
I like what John D. MacDonald wrote about his ear
Praxis effect entrenched in our memories. (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless, of course, Praxis had a trench round its circumference too (visible or not). Strip-mining is a viable extraction method.
Praxis? The Klingon moon? (Score:3, Informative)
Praxis is their key energy production facility...
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WTF? Did you forget Alien? (Score:2)
Yip yip! (Score:2)
But a debunking astronomer
Astronomy grants getting a bit thin? Don't they need to be gathering gravity wave data to work out whether or not the universe is a hologram and dark energy radiates from evil mirror branes or something?
claims that the Federation got it wrong and the fan-boys should thank Lucas for adding some scientific accuracy to his fictional universe
Yeah, I'll get right on that. Oh, wait, I'm not a fan boy! I'm exempt! Yay! :-D
MORE OLD NEWS!!!! (Score:2, Interesting)
Star Wars is WAY better than Star Trek (Score:2, Funny)
If you look at the dynamics of the Enterprise during the Far Point episode, you can see at least 16 maneuvers that violate physics. I think it's pretty clear that the people who do Star Trek don't have any respect -- whatsoever -- for any kind of physical realism. On the other hand, if you look at the way the Millennium Falcon moves, especially the way it goes into hyperdrive, it is WAY more realistic.
It really bothers me that Trekkies/Trekkers/whatever you want to call them think that Star Trek is so grea
Re:Star Wars is WAY better than Star Trek (Score:4, Insightful)
On the other hand, if you look at the way the Millennium Falcon moves, especially the way it goes into hyperdrive, it is WAY more realistic.
You lost me when you used FTL drive as an example of something that's "more" realistic.....
The whole idea in Star Wars of a struggle between good and evil is far more realistic
Except it's not a struggle between good and evil. It's a struggle between two sets of elitists that basically espouse the same philosophy. You think the Jedi represent good? Yoda was perfectly content to allow Anakin's Mother to die and even encouraged the boy to let it happen. Windu tried to appoint himself Judge, Jury and Executioner. Qui-Gon wasn't permitted by the Jedi code to rescue two people from slavery and broke the rules in saving one of them.
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Who decided that Klingons should be Black people, huh?
Your charges of racism have no validity. The Klingons were played by white actors during the original series. They switched to mostly black players for the later series, but the Klingons were good guys (for the most part) by then.
You don't see ANY kind of racist shit like that in Star Wars.
Mesa called Jar-Jar Binks. Mesa your humble servant.
If you asked any reasonable people who have actually looked at physics, or just observed thr world around them, Star Trek SUCKS compared to Star Wars.
Spare me. Neither one is realistic. That's why it's called Science Fiction.
Interesting Definition of Trumped (Score:4, Insightful)
So, if I'm reading the summary correctly, Star Wars was edited to include an effect that had already been included in Star Trek. So for copying Star Trek, Star Wars wins?
WTF? Star Wars is totally nonsensical (Score:4, Insightful)
- Star Wars uses laser weapons. Any advanced space-race would never use laser weapons as they are readily re-mediated by the use of reflective materials. Star Trek uses Phasers (phased energy weapons), which at least sort of makes sense.
- An entire planet existing as a city? This makes no sense from a material logistics point of view, at all. There is nothing like this in Star Trek.
- Need I mention the force? Microscopic life forms (midichlorians) giving magical powers to people? It is an interesting plot device, but rooted in any kind of science? No.
Re:WTF? Star Wars is totally nonsensical (Score:5, Informative)
Star Wars uses laser weapons. Any advanced space-race would never use laser weapons as they are readily re-mediated by the use of reflective materials.
Try reflecting a megawatt or even kilowatt laser from a vehicle coating sometime and let us know how it works out. The material needs to be able to survive re-entry and be easily repaired between flights.
- An entire planet existing as a city? This makes no sense from a material logistics point of view, at all. There is nothing like this in Star Trek.
It's been explored repeatedly in Science Fiction, most notably by Isaac Asimov in the Foundation series.
Need I mention the force? Microscopic life forms (midichlorians) giving magical powers to people? It is an interesting plot device, but rooted in any kind of science? No.
Midichlorians were the attempt to root it into some kind of science. I could invent all kinds of bullshit QM explanations for them but I'm not that much of a fanboy. I don't think we need to go into the whole mind-melding thing as a counterexample. Can't we just accept that both are fantasy, and move on?
Blasters aren't lasers. (Score:4, Informative)
Star wars blasters are actually (I can't believe I said that) bolts of superheated plasma, not lasers. The plasma is what does the damage, not the laser. That's why they call them "blasters" and not "lasers", as well as why they have visible flight time instead of being nigh-instantaneous. (It doesn't explain why one side's ships have orange bolts and the other side has green, though. That never made sense to me.) More details at [ http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Blaster [wikia.com] ].
Similarly, a lightsaber is described as a blade of plasma, held in place by a projected energy field. It's not a laser either. ( per [ http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Lightsaber [wikia.com] ] )
6 movies + one cartoon vs 5 weekly shows (Score:3, Insightful)
Personally, I see it as an apples and oranges thing. You'd be more accurate comparing Star Trek with Dr. Who and Star Wars with Star Ship Troopers (but I wouldn't even want those flame wars!)
How would an explosion actually behave in space? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd love to see space battles done realistically some day. But here are some points.
Gas, debri, behaves differently and quite counterintuitive in a vacuum. Everything in space follows a parabolic/freefall trajectory, and unless it has anything to hit, it'll continue follow that vector. Gases and liquid much the same. Any explosion or rapid venting would see gas streaming out into space fast.
The closest example I can find is the rocket exhaust from a russian missle test that spiralled out of control over norway. http://paradoxoff.com/files/2009/12/norway-sky-spiral-phenomena-1.jpg [paradoxoff.com]
This gives you some idea of the odd way things behave in a vacuum. Rocket exhaust has a velocity of many km/s.
As for explosions, only ionized glowing gas would be visible, or ice particles reflecting light, as well as any debri.
In earths atmosphere explosives generate a shockwave traveling at many kilometres per second. In a vacuum this is relatively unimpeded, so would be faster.
Yet in a vacuum shockwaves from gas alone would be relatively benign after a short distance. There is no overpressure/underpressure effect the same as in an atmosphere. If anything the shockwave from explosives nearby would give a vessel a sideways shove with rather even pressure exerted by high velocity gas impacting the hull.
However in space, any debri or shrapnel is extra deadly.
Consider that Project Orion was intending to use nuclear warheads detonated behind a vessel to propell it along. They were talking about distances of 100 metres, which with a mutli-kiloton bomb would only ablate a thin layer of steel off the pusher plate with each pulse.
So a nuke could go off pretty close to the hull of a vessel and do little more than give it a nudge and a does of EM and gamma radiation - if enough nudge it might splatter the canned primates against the inside of the ship and cause some structural damage.
Considering lasers are defeated by a reflective surface it seems to me the only plausible space weapon is projectiles. A high velocity delta would mean putting your packed lunch out a airlock at a 8km/s differnce would give it it's own weight in TNT and put a hole through a foot of steel.
Thankfully Battlestar Galactica reboot got this right - they ditched lasers for more realistic old fashioned projectile rounds.
A smaller projectile accelerated to relativistic speeds would be almost impossible to dodge for anything large and slow moving. If you could detect it at tens of thousands of kilometres away you'd have only a split second to move your vessel.
Scientific accuracy? (Score:3, Funny)
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How do you know that isn't the default sound of a starship sensor system alerting the pilot that something nearby just blew up?
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They even got the Ipad right more than 20 years before it became real.
They also got cell phones right, 30+ years before they became popular. Ever notice how the original flip phone was inspired by the communicator?
They had shuttlecraft years before the early designs for Space Shuttles were created.
The list goes on and on.
LK
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The movie Blade Runner, for instance, as much as I wished it had been, was not Science Fiction. Even though it was set in the future (2014), there was a long list of astounding scientific advances the viewer had to accept in addition to the main premise that an android could become self-aware and, in some cases, not even know that it is an android (I mean c'mom, imagine the science needed to produce utterly accurate bodily functions. Or did androids just think they had amazingly efficient digestive tracts?
I