h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

You think this won't sell on DVD?

They've *already* made their 44 billion dollars back on marketing alone - allegedly.

"Box office figures don't mean that much; lots of people will go to see a movie once and then not like it"

That logic works for normal blockbusters. Some people see it and like it, some people see it and don't. Fair enough. But you don't get Titanic/Avatar/Star Wars numbers from people going to see a movie once. The ONLY way you get the kind of stupidly huge numbers this movie is getting is from people going to see it once and loving it *so* much they go back and see it in the cinema again. And not just a few people - you need lots and lots of people to watch the movie two or three or more times to make these kinds of figures.

If anything, in an era of relatively cheap 60" 4K televisions, 3D blu-ray players and 7.1 THX surround home theatre sound systems, it's even more amazing that people are NOT waiting for the home release, but are going back over and over to see it on a REALLY big screen.


"I'm not buying that you can build hyperdrive engines INTO a planet"

You're buying hyperdrive. You're buying hyperdrive on a moon-sized battle station built (in-universe) over FORTY YEARS AGO. But you're not buying hyperdrive built into a planet - despite that planet clearly being *heavily* modified. Bear in mind that it effectively drains dark matter (?) from its fuel-star with a collector, passes it through the planet core and emits it as a super-luminal blast on the opposite side of the planet. All of that machinery is visibly mounted in a canyon that reaches deep into what would be not merely the crust but the outer mantle of the planet. As with much in Star Wars, what I think is a large part of the problem here is that the engineering - the implied tech level - is SO far beyond what we're used to EVEN IN OTHER SF that you struggle to understand it.

I think part of the resistance comes from familiarity with other "high-tech" shows like Star Trek, but the tech levels are nowhere near comparable. You can suspend disbelief in Trek because their warp engines have pretty clearly defined limits - vehicles get just so big and no bigger. If you showed a photo of the *original* Death Star and an awesomely huge Borg cube to scale, the Borg ship would be barely visible. Decades ago someone wrote an amusing essay about the old "who would win out of?" question of Trek vs. Wars. The naive question is "Enterprise vs. Star Destroyer". The writer in question, working only from information that had been incontrovertibly established on screen in both properties, showed that the more sensible question would be "Enterprise vs. Slave 1" - i.e. the flagship of the Federation fleet vs. a small, one-man patrol ship from the SW universe. And the result was a humiliating defeat for the Enterprise. Or, for that matter, any couple of hundred ships the Federation could muster - simply because the tech-level of the SW universe is tens of millenia more advanced. They can *demonstrably* control and wield energy *dozens of orders of magnitude* more than even our high-tech future fictions like Trek and similar.

As I said though - you have three options when presented with this.
1. take the eight-year-old's route, and just accept it.
2. take my route, and do (1) at first, but then think about it and have fun critiquing it
3. take the grumpy route, and reject it.

To each their own.

"You think this won't sell on DVD?"

No, you're right, it will. But it shouldn't. Makes me worry about the future of film.



"You're buying hyperdrive. You're buying hyperdrive on a moon-sized battle station built (in-universe) over FORTY YEARS AGO. But you're not buying hyperdrive built into a planet - despite that planet clearly being *heavily* modified."

No, I'm not. And I'm not arguing about it either. No sir.



"I think part of the resistance comes from familiarity with other "high-tech" shows like Star Trek, but the tech levels are nowhere near comparable."

Fair enough, you're right about that. There's still plenty of other things for me to complain about.



"[...] the tech-level of the SW universe is tens of millenia more advanced."

This is not entirely true. Star Wars doesn't have anything remotely comparable to a transporter. Nor, logically, any countermeasure against one. Star Trek also appears to have better sensor technology than Star Wars.

Put those two things together and you can beam the enemy crew straight into space. Fight's over.

Or if the crew's too big (which it probably would be), detect the enemy's power source (something Enterprise sensors do all the time) and beam THAT straight into space. Enemy ship becomes hunk of metal in space. Fight's over.



Data is also a far more advanced android than anything on Star Wars. Though Data is pretty much one-of-a-kind and can't be duplicated.

Can someone explain why C-3P0 was built by Annakin and then ends up as part of Princess Leia's entourage?

Why was Annakin building a protocol droid when he was 10?




I just this second heard that Alan Rickman died.

Alan Rickman...

nooooooooo!.

Blimey they're dropping like flies at the moment.

"Star Wars doesn't have anything remotely comparable to a transporter"

The transporter is the single most implausible piece of technology in either fictional universe. See "The Physics of Star Trek" for details. It doesn't LOOK it - intuitively something like hyperdrive/warp drive is at least as unlikely. But when you examine the physics, even time travel is more plausible than a Trek-style transporter. (Surprised you didn't mention time-travel a weapon - the Federation seems to have a pretty good grasp of how to do it. To my mind, the best and only chance the Feds would have against the Empire would be to travel back ten or twenty thousand years to the point where they're about equivalent in tech, then beat 'em up there. Any time since that, they've no chance).

That said - just because you haven't seen it, doesn't mean they don't have it. It could simply be outdated or otherwise obsolescent. You might just as well say that modern armies don't have anything remotely comparable to a trebuchet - how do they ever expect to launch leprous corpses over a wall using only mortars? That's no use. In our world, the transporter is a storytelling device and budget-saver, designed to get the Trekkers onto or off a planet surface without the need for an expensive special effect shot of a ship landing or taking off. The 'Wars has the money in spades, and in-universe their ships go from ground to orbit and beyond in a trivially short amount of time, rendering transporters superfluous. There's just no need to walk to the transporter room and say "energise" to beam down when, in less than a minute, you can simply take your whole ship.

"Nor, logically, any countermeasure against one"

Often enough in Trek the transporter breaks down or can't be used due to things like strong magnetic fields or shields or, y'know, clouds. It's not a system on which I'd like to bet the farm. Meanwhile, the (admittedly uprated) deflector shields on a ship the size of the Falcon can demonstrably successfully protect it against the onslaught of several fighters AND the batteries of a Star Destroyer - weapons ludicrously more powerful than anything any Federation FLEET could put together. And you think you're going to be able to beam something through that? Good luck. Note also that whatever exotic material the Falcon's hull (or at least its smuggling compartments) are made of prevented life-sign scanners (which the Empire definitely have - they knew there were no lifesigns on the pod R2 and 3PO ejected in) from spotting the crew of the Falcon even when the ship was sitting in the hangar bay on the Death Star! You can't beam off something you can't see.

"you can beam the enemy crew straight into space"

The Galaxy-class Enterprise D - in its time the largest, most powerful ship in the fleet - has just six personnel transporters. The *maximum* rate of transport achievable with these all put together is seven hundred people per hour, or slightly less than a dozen people per minute (Source: TNG Technical Manual). If you accept that you're configuring the things as essentially a weapon, and the targetted personnel don't need to survive transport, you can bring in the cargo transporters, all eight of them, and perhaps managed as many as thirty people per minute beamed off, say, a Star Destroyer. A ship with a crew complement of over forty six THOUSAND.

Which means the transporter would be a devastatingly effective weapon used in that way, as long as the Star Destroyer
(a) didn't raise its shields
(b) didn't launch any fighters, any couple of which would make short work of the Enterprise even with its shields up
(c) didn't fire ANY of its weapons, any one of which would make short work of the Enterprise even with its shields up
(d) didn't just leave - Star Destroyers can cover in a matter of *hours* distances it would take even the Federation's fastest ship decades to get across.
(e) basically sat still and did nothing at all for the over 26 HOURS it would take to beam the crew off. So yeah... fight's over - eventually.

"if the crew's too big (which it probably would be), "

Good guess.

"detect the enemy's power source (something Enterprise sensors do all the time) "

No, hang on. They do that all the time, yes - but ONLY to ships at a similar tech level: Klingons, Cardassians, Ferengi, Romulans etc. Presented with something even a bit beyond their tech level (e.g. the Borg, Tin Man) they fail, time and again. Plus, have you any idea just how big the power generator on a Star Destroyer is? It takes up most of the back third of the ship, and protrudes outside the wedge-shaped hull. It's a sphere big enough to engulf the original Constitution-class Enterprise. What's the biggest object you've ever seen a Trek-style transporter deal with? Have they ever beamed even a shuttle?

OK - they don't need to beam the whole thing, just identify some vital component and beam that out. A typical transported human represents about 0.1m3, so we can perhaps shift, instantaneously, about a metre cubed - assuming we can successfully target the transporter beam through whatever the hull and internal walls of a Star Destroyer are made of. What are the chances of hitting something vital? Bearing in mind that our volume if interest is a sphere approximately 400m in diameter, buried in the hull of a ship that could swat us like a gnat. That sphere contains a little over a quarter of a BILLION metres cubed. Even if there's some component, somewhere in there that doesn't have multiple redundant backups (unlikely), your chances of getting it at your first attempt are way, WAY worse than your chances of winning the lottery. And, rather obviously, the instant you signal your hostile intent in that way, there'll be a response.

"Data is also a far more advanced android than anything on Star Wars."

Again, just because you don't see it doesn't mean it's not there. The 'Wars universe clearly has the ability to produce prosthetics externally indistinguishable from real human extremities (Luke's new hand looks *very* realistic, even right up close). It also demonstrably has the ability to produce droids which are extremely well coordinated physically - C-3P0's jerky gait is highly untypical. IG-88 and 4-LOM make their living as bounty hunters, and they're obviously good at it - only the very best would have made it into the select bunch tasked by Vader with finding Luke. Droids have also replaced humans in the medical profession, a place where empathy and emotional intelligence are very important.

There's therefore clearly no *technological* reason why they couldn't produce a *more* perfect facsimile of a human than Data. The only reasonable conclusions one can draw from this are EITHER
(a) you don't see Data-style androids in the SW 'verse because the ones that are there are so good they pass for human.
(b) you don't see Data-style androids in the SW 'verse because for some reason the people in that 'verse choose not to make them. Maybe way back when there was something like the Butlerian Jihad, and making human-passing droids became taboo or at least frowned upon. You can see why that would be.

You certainly can't conclude that the tech is beyond them, because we've SEEN (even in the very limited time of just seven movies) that it isn't.

"Why was Annakin building a protocol droid when he was 10?"

Put simply, to me it looks like in the Wars 'verse, Meccano can think. When I was his age, I built remote control cars. Kids these days build GPS-guided drones (at least, the geeky, mechanically and electronically adept kids do). It's not (to me) implausible that in a sufficiently advanced-tech 'verse, the thing you build out of scraps when you're ten is a self-aware humanoid robot.

I'm not asking why he built "a" droid.

Why is it that he built a protocol droid. He was in a galactic backwater, the son of a slave. Why would he need or want a droid to assist in diplomacy? And why that protocol droid in particular and why wouldn't he recognize C-3P0 later?


My point is they shoe horned C-3P0 into the prequels when there is absolutely no plausible plot reason to do so.


C-3P0 was just one of many protocol droids on the Princess' ship who by happenstance ended up with R2D2 in the escape pod. After that, hey, he's along for the ride and I'm happy to see his cameo in Ep 7. But it just makes no sense, and there is no pay off later, for C-3P0 being directly connected to Darth Vader.

"The Starkiller Base is a base. Built into a planet. It has things like rocks and trees and dirt and small vulnerable animals. Not that I think the Empire would care about the fate of small vulnerable animals, but I'm not buying that you can build hyperdrive engines INTO a planet." [Mr. X]

These technical discussions are going over my head. I saw the original Star Wars movie almost 40 years ago, and the subsequent ones a long time ago as well. It's hard to remember minute details for that long a period. Watching the same small number of movies many times seems to me like going around with my head in the sand [I was going to say something earthier ]. There are other movies to see, and other things to do than see movies.

I always thought of the Star Wars movies as being about characters, most of whom I liked a fair bit. Well, maybe not Darth vader, but villains are not supposed to be likable.

I'm listening to an old podcast and they mention a film that should be unmade.

Did you know there was a sequel to _Cocoon_?
There shouldn't be.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094890/?ref_=nv_sr_2

I think I saw that sequel, but merciful times had erased my memory of it until now

"Why is it that he built a protocol droid."

Why did I build a Tyrell P34 when I was nine? Because it was cool, and I could get the bits.

"He was in a galactic backwater, the son of a slave. Why would he need or want a droid to assist in diplomacy?"

He said it was "to help mom". He didn't say "...with diplomacy." It's a humanoid robot - it can dust the house and cook dinner. He just needs to download the patch...

"And why that protocol droid in particular"

The impression I get is that Cybot Galactica 3P0's were pretty common - the Toyota Corolla of protocol droids. There'd be bodies lying about in scrapyards.

"and why wouldn't he recognize C-3P0 later?"

Two answers to that:

1. who says he didn't?
2. if I went and dug out the first car you owned, resprayed it a different colour, put new wheels on it and changed the number plate, would you recognise it? Especially if you saw a car much like that most days, and never gave it much thought? 3P0s are *everywhere*, on planets, ships and mining stations, unchanged in external design, for DECADES. Why would Vader be able to recognise one out of the doubtless trillions that exist?

Good points.

A friend has asked me to accompany her to see "The Force wakens" next week. It will be the first Star Wars movie I've ever seen more than once, and I will be concentrating on the characters.

You're still missing my point.

There is no reason in the plot for him to have built C-3P0. It's just too big of a coincidence to not have narrative justification. Like I said, there is no pay-off later. There's no A-HA! moment. It's a set up with no punch line.

The answer is simply lazy writing.

Lazy writing, or having too many other fish to fry? It's hard to suspend disbelief when too many suspect items are present, but I've been able to mostly do so when watching these movies.

But then, I never thought of technology as anything but a tool that either helps you live a better life, or fails to do so.

I take it back. It's not lazy writing. It's blatant fan service and whorish merchandising.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gd5yB9Vmd6I

Someone at Wired did something supremely silly. Rhett Allain applied math and physics to issues regarding Starkiller Base.

http://www.wired.com/2016/01/force-awakens-starkiller-would-actually-fling-everyone-into-space/

Blimey this is getting geeky beyond my reckoning :D

I read bits of the physics of Star Trek once - it was very good

I was quite interested to read about the capabilities of the galaxy class Enterprise D (that was Picard's one right?)

I'm sure I've seen episodes of Star Trek (bear in mind here I can be geeky - but I'm in awe of the above posts so I may be wrong) - where they rescue entire ships crews using the transporters in moments - hundreds of people. At least I think so.
It is moments like that that I wonder why they bother to have a transporter room at all when they can simply beam people from any place they choose to any other place they choose whenever they wish....