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Poor Design Choices In the Star Wars Universe
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 ...'"
The council chamber where they debate laws seemed crazy to me. Everyone is floating in their own flying saucer. Just because you can doesn't mean you should. Regular tables with chairs make more sense. More compact and you have a chance to interact with the other representatives.
I see you didn't defend the Storm Trooper armor...
Oh, well, I'm not stupid. Tons of things in the SW universe make absolutely no sense. The storm trooper uniforms are stupid, kind of remind me of French Legionnaire uniforms that always made me laugh when I saw someone dressed like that in the desert. The red flags on your shoulders make you stick out like a sore thumb regardless of where you are.
... oh, that's right, we've been over this before on Slashdot, with our friends, in popular mechanics, everywhere. My grandfather commented on the "wings" of ships that seemed to spend all their time in space.
So there's something that actually existed much like the storm trooper armor. Somethings are meant to intimidate rather than camouflage, perhaps the storm trooper armor is there to let you know that you don't stand a chance? To be distinctive? It's a stretch but it's stupid. Looked really badass when I was a kid though.
A lot of these arguments apply to many sci-fi/fantasy works, not just SW so why waste your time on the critical analysis. Are you bettering society? Congratulations, you just tore apart something that was made over three decades ago.
He should have stuck to the physical aspects of the universe like noise in space and being able to see laser shots from the side
My work here is dung.
Storm Trooper armor is riot gear. It's for protecting against rocks and small arms while they beat down demonstrators. Most non-smugglers won't have access to a blaster capable of blowing through one. Presumably, a gunpowder rifle wouldn't penetrate the armor, which is why the characters use loud and slow firing blasters.
Funny you should mention parsec being a distance not a speed. I once was a TA for a astronomy class and one of the homework questions was something the lines about why Han's use of the word parsec was wrong. Most people said the same thing that it was a distance not a speed however I got one student who gave a page long discourse on why although a parsec is a unit of distance, Han used it correctly. The reasoning went along the lines that the path he was taking was littered with black holes preventing any direct route. The faster the ship goes, the closer you can get to the black holes and therefor the shorter the path. So in this particular instance, using a distance as a measure of speed works.
I had to give the student credit, but I have never been able to shake the feeling that it was a mistake in the movie and someone went back and created a reason for it later. Just my two cents.
Love his books to death - especially "the Andriods Dream", but like all authors his own books have more holes than swiss cheese.
Like computers built into peoples heads that seem to have unlimited bandwidth data links over huge distances - yet there is no power requirements and the enemy can't detect the transmissions
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True, true. For example *this* fanboy can't stand Science stories that have no science. Like Star Wars. It's really just a classic medieval knights-and-dragons-and-ladies fairy tale.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Dude, you've got too much time on your hands ;)
I rather liked the attitude that JMS had about this kind of stuff. One time a fan asked him "How fast do starfuries go?" and his response was "They move at the speed of plot"
If the plot makes sense and the universe remains consistent about it's own rules then who cares how functional RD2D would be in our universe or how badly designed the weapons of Star Trek are?
Part of proper world-building is making it make sense. I appreciate it when an artist goes about creating a mythical fantasy beast and puts effort into figuring out the biomechanics. I laugh when I see something like a four-armed giant depicted where he's drawn with a bog-standard human chest and the second set of arms is just shoved in a foot down from the first. No, a four-armed giant would have a chest a whole lot different from ours!
If you design a fantasy spaceship, figure out what the parts are for! Yes, it's all make-believe, but you end up with a stronger design if you can justify what you're slapping on the model. I had this argument with a designer on a project, he wanted to have all the clips on the guns curving backwards instead of forwards, just to be different. I asked him if he even knew why clips curved forward in the real world. He wasn't sure. I told him it was because bullets are slightly conic and if you stack them they would naturally curve. You don't really see that in handgun cartridges but it makes a difference for the kind you put in assault rifles. He finally conceded to reason there and the weapons looked more sensible as a result.
So, as for the guy's comments in order:
R2D2: yeah, it seems like he should have a voice chip, he could speak in text through the X-Wing's computer as we saw in Empire. But everyone seems to understand him just fine, Han understands Chewie just fine, so it's not an issue. R2D2 is like the Lassie of droids.
C3P0: The reason why he walks like he's got a rod up his ass is because it's a complicated, uncomfortable costume. I promise you he wouldn't walk like that if he were CGI.
Lightsaber: They're incredible dangerous weapons to begin with and you need to be a Jedi to use them. I don't think the Jedi even need handguards.
Blasters: it's all part of the scifi schtick. Given the tech level of star wars, a conventional gun would be just as likely to give you away. Today we've got special microphones and radar that can tell the secret service exactly where a gunshot came from. In 20 years, I would not be surprised if this tech was available in helmets and onboard displays could give an augmented reality flag to where the shooter came from. A blaster would be just as subtle.
Landspeeder: Are you serious? Rednecks drive their pickups without seatbelts all the time. I don't see belts on quadrunners. It would be more appropriate to ask about the lack of five-point restraints at the crewstations on Federation starships and why the consoles all carry safety grenades that explode in combat.
Death Star: Yeah, the unshielded reactor on the first one was dumb. Lucas wanted to steal the bombing sequence from the Dam Busters and needed a plausible reason to recreate that. This necessitated a starship as big as a moon to provide the landscape, a trench to fly down to be like the first movie and some suitable target at the end that could blow the whole thing up. There was historical precedent for something like this with the Bismarck where obsolete biplanes managed to land a single torpedo at the only point on the ship where they could do damage, the rudder. Didn't sink the Bismarck but rendered it lame and set the stage for the final surface battle which sunk her.
Stormtrooper outfits: Yeah, poor visibility in the helmets is a problem. Lucas wanted these guys to all be covered up and not visibly human because it removed the human association with violence. The troopers could just as easily have been Cylons in that getup. But you'd think the helmets would have
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
TD-0013 does it best:
http://www.adpov.net/2005/03/09/adpov-001/
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
>>>why waste your time on the critical analysis. Are you bettering society?
Yes. Whenever you point-out, "This could never happen," you improve the general education levels. The American public is already woefully-stupid when it comes to science, so any article that tries to improve knowledge is a good thing. For example - No sounds do not exist in space, even though many think it does. I like one of the comments below the article:
But a "city planet"? Coruscant is the center, capital and most populous planet, we're told. So either there exist vast factories pumping out nitrogen and oxygen, or its life thrives on a hearty stew of carbon dioxide, ozone and heavy metals.
George Lucas stole that idea from Isaac Asimov who created the center of his Galactic Empire as a citywide planet (circa 1935). As Asmiov explained the planet was originally a farming planet just like any other, but as the 20,000 years of the empire's existence continued, it was paved-over with steel and buildings and bureaucracy.
In order to survive, the "cityplanet" relied on imports to bring-in food and water, and also exports to remove waste. Much like how our modern New York City survives. After Asimov's Galactic Empire fell, the ~50 billion people who lived on the center planet literally starved to death, and those who survived removed the steel, crushed the bones for fertilizer, and reverted back to subsistence-level farming.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
I always thought it was as much an intimidation tool as actual armor. Kind of like a Samurai Mask. A sea of white "monster faced" troops running at you would be pretty intimidating. Well, intimidating until they start shooting and it becomes obvious that there is no marksmanship taught at the Imperial Academy.
If I remember correctly Asimov even went into figuring out how much it would take to keep a planet-city like that running - it was rediculous amounts of imports and exports on a daily basis just to keep things from falling apart.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
Not necessarily. Wikipedia's entry on the topic suggests that Lucas always meant Stormtroopers to be clones (as per commentary of Episode II) and has an uncited comment by Lucas that some Stormtroopers were clones and some were conscripts. I believe the main giveaway that stormtroopers are clones is Princess Leia's line in IV, as Luke enters her cell in a trooper outfit:
"Aren't you a little short for a stormtrooper?"
Reminds me of the Jaffa in SG1.
In one episode, SG1 is showing some faction the difference between the staff weapons and the assault rifles that SG1 uses. They show a Jaffa trying to hit a target perhaps 20m away - he misses several times, as you can imagine the staff weapon is rather inaccurate. One of the SG1 team then proceeds to shoot the shit out of it with their P90.
The relevancy is thus:
They explain that the staff weapon isn't made for battle - it's made for fear and intimidation. The same could probably be said for storm troopers: the blasters are loud, inaccurate, and give away your position like nobody's business. Their armor is for show, to embody intimidation and quell resistance.
It doesn't make much sense in the SG1 universe, however, as it seems like the different Goa'uld are constantly skirmishing each other. You'd think they'd use the staff weapons to intimidate their slaves, and something a little more efficient for actual battles with other Goa'uld.
In Atlantis, Ronon has a pistol that seems to shoot the same kind of energy as the staff weapons, with the caveat that it can be set to stun. Because it's a pistol, he's much more accurate than a Jaffa ever would be with his staff weapon. ... but this is only marginally related to the topic at hand, which is: Why was a wookie living on endor?
R2-D2
R2 is an astromech droid - he was designed to assist in the operation of small spacecraft. He is well suited for trundling around flight decks - he was not meant to go up and down stairs, and it's a credit to his character that he performed his duty in desert and swamp. He doesn't speak english because he speaks astromech - sentients who fly or work with spacecraft will understand astromech. Speech synthesis is unnecessary to his function... are you unhappy that your perl compiler doesn't speak in plain english?
C-3PO
C-3PO is a protocol droid. His form is purely ornamental, as his function is to facilitate communication between sentients, usually in a business setting. He is not required to lift heavy objects or cover rugged terrain at great speed, and the exposed wiring is probably just ornamentation. Droids develop their own personalities as they are learning and self-modifying systems - he made himself a screaming coward.
Lightsabers
Japanese blades often did not have a tsuba (hand guard) - relying on a tsuba to protect the hand was folly, as was slashing down a blade to get at the fingers. A quick disengage and riposte would leave you dead.
Blasters
I don't think the beams themselves are being dodged, but those dodging are anticipating their aim-point. Happens in most movies with regular guns, too. Blasters are recoiless and require no reloading, which makes them tactically superior to firearms.
Landspeeders and other flying vehicles
Unless the repulsor field was designed to keep you in place - or artificial gravity.
Stormtrooper Uniforms
Yeah, OK, storm trooper armor is useless.
Death Star
The original design flaw was overlooked by the Deathstar's builders - the Rebels analyzed the data and discovered it themselves. The second deathstar wasn't complete, and relied on planet-based shield generators rather than structure to protect it.
Sarlaac
Doodle-bugs (antlions) and sea anenomes rely on this same technique, and as the skeleton from ANH illustrates, Tatooine has megafauna prey.
That Asteroid Worm Thing in Empire Strikes Back
Not spaceships, cometary debris containing organic compounds, or spacefaring organisms that feed on same.
Midi-Chlorians
Lucas is as one dead to me for that midichlorian crap.
1. Your city is under siege and suddenly this man-made wooden horse appears out of nowhere. Any sane military command would probably blow it up or set fire to it, as opposed to taking it behind his lines and leaving it unguarded.
2. It's a bit much for foreign leader like Menelaus to go to the trouble of war over his wife leaving him for another man. Especially in an era where women were considered simple commodities.
3. Odysseus tries to escape from an island with a hot chick who does magic and wants to use him as a love slave back to an existence of responsibility and the possibility of mortal danger. Nuff said.
4. The cyclops has one eye. A monster with limited depth perception is not too intimidating and wouldn't be a very effective monster.
1) hiltless light sabors
1R) looking back at all the movies, I have NEVER seen anyone slide a light sabor across another. I speculate that there's something about the blade of a sabor that has a very high resistance on another similar blade. Every time they clash, they always have to withdraw to swing again. So in that respect, a hilt is pointless.
2) poorly designed blasters
2R) getting back to the unknowns, I think we can safely assume despite the appearance, they're not shooting lasers. Whatever it is, (plasma?) it's probably going as fast as it can as a projectile. And the sound it makes may be a factor of what it is. How silent is winging a blob of plasma? One thing they have going for them is I haven't ever seen anyone with a blaster run out of ammo or sport a bandolier.
3) unshielded exhaust port leading directly to the central reactor
3R) considering how icky the stuff coming OUT of a reactor exhaust port probably is, it's not too surprising if it's hard to put a shield around. (you certainly don't want to keep it IN, and most people aren't interested in getting TO it) And they did say it was small. (3M?) Consider the size of the deathstar. That's like a pinhole in a buick. Would a pinhole in your car worry you? And DS2 wasn't even 60% complete, it's no wonder there were some open shafts still in it, to get materials installed. DS2 was also relying on the planet based shield generator to keep it safe from attack.
4) stormtrooper uniforms
4R) I was thinking about this, and they do seem to suck for blaster-resistance. But then blasters seem to shoot through just about anything short of walls, so there may not be a point to trying to stop it. And I don't see them as bulletproof, they're more for trauma resistance, against people with bladed or blunt weapons, maybe primatives. (tho they had problems with ewoks...) Luke couldn't see well out of his helmet, but remember "aren't you a little short for a storm tropper?" He was wearing gear for someone a lot taller than him, he was probably looking out the nosehole.
5) Star Destroyer bridge towers
5R) that's hard to defend. We'll just give you that one. But then look at say the older aircraft carriers with the brdige up on top? I believe they've moved those to the bowels of the ship, but they didn't used to be there. In that time though they needed to be able to see the battlefield, but with electronics and screens now that's just a bad idea.
6) R2D2 can't talk
6R) he talks with luke via the display in his cockpit just fine. He's designed to plug into the back of the xwing and fix things, or move about inside a larger ship and fix things. Why should he need to talk to anyone any other time? His legs are only there as a convenience so they don't have to get out a dolly to move him from one ship to another or around the inside to get where he needs to fix stuff. He's a mechanic, not a conversationalist. Try chatting with a mechanic while he tries to change your alternator, he'll probably tell you to go read a magazine in the lounge and get out of his hair.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Coruscant was even called Trantor (the name of Asimov's city planet) in an early Star Wars draft.
I believe the name Coruscant actually comes from Timothy Zahn's excellent Thrawn trilogy.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
Ok, I'll be the first to admit that Lucas isn't the best designer in the world, and that the prequels sucked, but most of the points brought up are kinda garbage.
Rules of Conduct:
#1 - The DM is always right.
#2 - If the DM is wrong, see rule #1
The Jedi Knights can move objects with their minds.... yet they fight with what is essentially a flashlight on steroids that has an "on/off" switch. Why don't the smart Jedi just "use the force" to switch off their opponents saber? I guess the argument could be made that the other Jedi would just "use the force" to keep the saber switched on... but wouldn't all saber battles melt down into a concentration battle for who could switch their damn weapon on?
I think you're on the right track about the appeal, but I'd be a lot more convinced it was *intentional* if you could point to examples of top notch dialog written by Lucas.
The parallels with the cheesy old serials of yore are more than skin deep. If you look at the original Star Wars movie, its charm comes from its break neck pacing. There was so much wonderful throwaway stuff, like the cantina musicians playing Benny Goodman, but if you'd taken a good look at them they'd have looked cheesy: their faces and mouths didn't move. Instead we get a glimpse of them, and by the time we've recognized what's going on the film moves on. The cantina musician costumes were very good *for the amount of screen time they got*. They'd have been terrible for a longer scene, but as we learned from later Lucas works longer scenes have their own drawbacks.
So it's the same thing driving both the old serials and the original Star Wars movie: the director had to cram a lot of things into the movie cheaply enough, and that means not giving you too good a look at them.
That said, I don't see how better dialog could have harmed the movie. "Good" doesn't mean declaiming like in Shakespeare, it means appropriate to the story and how the story is told. Like the cantina musician masks, the dialog in the movie serves well enough. Later, when Lucas had the resources to make a movie as big as he wanted, we really see his artistic limitations. Things might have been different if Star Wars had only been a moderate success; he might have grown more as an artist.
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...and one almost legendary dam busting raid...
Ezekiel 23:20
I see lots of people wailing about midichlorians...
Perhaps they are not aware of the theorized origin of mitochondria?
In a nut-shell, they appear to have started as endosymbionts which enabled animals cell precursors to process energy more efficiently, much like legume's can process nitrogen more efficiently because of their own endosymbionts.
The medichlorians simply appear to be an endosymbiont that enhances supernatural abilities. (It is possible that this symbiosis causes structural changes in the host which produces the effects; much like legumes produce root nodules when hosting Sinorhizobium. This would render the "black market midichlorian injection" idea moot-- it would take months of incubation, perhaps years, to develop the needed adaptations resulting from being a host. This may also explain the need to train little jedi school kids when they are still in diapers in order to get full effect as well.
Compared to the stormtrooper armor, this one is at least plausible (in as much as supernatural abilities are plausible to begin with.)
No sounds do not exist in space, even though many think it does.
Wrong. Sound is pressure waves that propagate through a medium. Space is not an absolute vacuum, just a very, very, very thin medium. So, sound would exist, but it would dissipate very quickly, and it would have to be VERY loud to be heard at any distance.
Yes, sound would not exist in space as you see it in the movies, but saying that it doesn't exist at all is just as inaccurate.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
I used to play an RPG called GURPS that separated sci-fi genres into the hard science fiction and space opera. Space opera is swashbuckling, shoot-from-the-hip adventures more focused on the action than appeasing the Trekkies' need to know how object X actually functions. The design of things like C3PO and R2-D2 is purely based on their story impact. One being the "adult" and one being the "child." AT-ATs were lumbering mechanical beast trudging along and unstoppable. The lack of a hand guard added to the danger and respect you have for a jedi's skills. Trying to apply real-world rules and ergonomics to fantasy is just silly.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
"Aren't you a little short for a stormtrooper?"
Or maybe that's just an allusion to how stormtroopers were only picked from the best in physique. In Episode 4, stormtroopers were meant to be real badasses ("only imperial stormtroopers are this precise"), it wasn't until later that they became the punching-bags of the Star Wars universe.
The clone troopers angle is pure and unashamed retconning.
I think you're on the right track about the appeal, but I'd be a lot more convinced it was *intentional* if you could point to examples of top notch dialog written by Lucas.
[Han Solo is about to be lowered into the carbonite chamber]
Leia: I love you!
Han: I know.
Short, punchy, dramatic, and perfect for the characters. Oh wait that was an ad-lib cus Ford thought the script's cheesy "I love you too!" was a stupid thing for Han to say!
The enemies of Democracy are
Not necessarily. Wikipedia's entry on the topic suggests that Lucas always meant Stormtroopers to be clones (as per commentary of Episode II) and has an uncited comment by Lucas that some Stormtroopers were clones and some were conscripts. I believe the main giveaway that stormtroopers are clones is Princess Leia's line in IV, as Luke enters her cell in a trooper outfit:
"Aren't you a little short for a stormtrooper?"
I believe the main give away that they aren't clones is that they all have different voices in IV, V, and VI and that Lucas is full of shit. Contrast that with II and III where they all have the same voice, because in Lucas's world, accents aren't learned, they're genetic.
FYI, the "uncited" comment is probably from the Insider where Lucas essentially made an excuse for why StormTroopers in the original trilogy were all different shapes and sizes with different voices and the ones in the PT all looked the same. Seriously, watch the Death Star docking bay scene or even just the first interrogation scene with Vader and the captain of the Tantive IV. All the troopers are different sizes. Lucas made the excuse and then left it up to the EU authors to fix because he couldn't be bothered to.
Cool idea, I'd mod interesting!
There is a rational explanation for everything. Let me shed some light on the history of the stormtrooper armor, light saber, and blaster.
The storm trooper armour is actually based on a brilliantly designed reactive armour that stops any high velocity projectile, laser, electroshock, you name it. When it was invented it rendered its wearer invulnerable to all weapons used in those days. Moreover it is, due to the addition of a hard outer layer, also invulnerable to the stabbing and slashing weapons that briefly dominated the battlefields after its invention. Besides it primary function as a battlefield armour, it maintains body temperature and recycles waste products of metabolism. The sensor array and hud built into the helmet are also impressive. The suit has done a brilliant job of keeping its users alive for centuries, although effective countermeasures have significantly reduced the advantages of wearing it over time.
The blaster and light saber were developed as an answer to this armour. Both are low velocity weapons that don't trigger reaction by the armour. The other somewhat effective way to attack the armour is simply with a blunt object or one's hands or feet in the hope of knocking out its occupant.
Since all weapons that are effective against the armour can in principle be dodged because of the required low velocity, there is still a valid case for using them in order to discourage the development and use of other weapons. The empire has therefore remained committed to them. The rebels prefer to walk around unencumbered, which also has some advantages and is moreover cheaper. For the empire this is obviously hardly a reason to change the standard issue weapon for storm troopers, since opponents could always choose to don armour.
The helmet hud is keyed to the eyes of its owner. That's why Luke was practically blind while wearing one. Its sensors are moreover very biased to detecting people wearing similar armors, and certain kinds of technology. This is one of the reasons why the rebels don't use it, and why storm troopers have hardly any advantages over them. Since a variety of countermeasures exist to avoid detection, the empire has basically given up on tuning the helmets for specific classes of enemy. The helmets, just like the armour, do however do an effective job at limiting the options of the enemy.