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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 ...'"
R2-D2
Sure, he's cute, but the flaws in his design are obvious the first time he approaches anything but the shallowest of stairs. Also: He has jets, a periscope, a taser and oil canisters to make enforcer droids fall about in slapsticky fashion -- and no voice synthesizer. Imagine that design conversation: "Yes, we can afford slapstick oil and tasers, but we'll never get a 30-cent voice chip past accounting. That's just madness."
I believe his primary function is a flight droid so they were built to interface with ships. Not a lot else. John Scalzi seems to suffer from the "must have everything" school of thought and doesn't think the future will focus on minimalism and getting one thing right. Thank god he's not writing software and just another hot air blogger. I reject Episodes I, II & III so I don't know what he's talking about with the oil slick and jets.
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.
Again, you're overlooking his primary function. C-3PO is a protocol droid designed to serve humans, and boasts that he is fluent "in over six million forms of communication." So he's got arthritis, well, you didn't build him to be flexible or fight. You built him to look pretty and translate. Everything else is bells and whistles. I think he was meant to stand in a corner for some rich merchant or politician and translate any language imaginable. Are you going to tell me that my car is flawed because I couldn't afford a $20 toaster to put in the dash?
Death Star
An unshielded exhaust port leading directly to the central reactor? Really? And when you rebuild it, your solution to this problem is four paths into the central core so large that you can literally fly a spaceship through them? Brilliant. Note to the Emperor: Someone on your Death Star design staff is in the pay of Rebel forces. Oh, right, you can't get the memo because someone threw you down a huge exposed shaft in your Death Star throne room.
Uh, the second Death Star was never completed, you idiot. The rebels learned about it and attacked it before it had everything completed so anything like "four paths to the central core" or "exposed shafts" could well have been necessary during its construction. Haven't you seen Clerks or watched Robot Chicken's parody of Palpatine trying to talk to the foreman?
But Luke's X-34 speeder on Tatooine? The Yugo of speeders, man. One hard stop, and out you go.
He's a farmer. You should have seen the "vehicles" and ATVs I drove while working on farms. One was a modified bus with huge water tanks on the back and an upside down bucket for a seat. They make a Yugo look like a dream car. Are you going to complain about the blast marks and carbon scoring adorning the rag tag rebel ships next?
So easy to rip apart. And you know, he doesn't offer anything constructive. Like the asteroid worm. He would have enjoyed it more if space in the Star Wars galaxy was like our space? Dead, uninhabited and void? George Lucas isn't a god but he sure thought up some neat ideas for a universe that John Scalzi will never come close to.
My work here is dung.
Let's not even go near the idea of light beams being slow enough to dodge; that's just something you have let go of, or risk insanity.
I think by the time you're writing an article about design failures in Star Wars ... you're already beyond just the risk of insanity.
I think giving George Lucas access to the raw footage was a poor design choice.
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 agree with the critique on the Death Stars. Centralized power was the fatal flaw in both, so it would have made a lot more sense to use distributed power systems throughout the Death Star II. (lots of little reactors instead of one big one) That way, the rebels would have had to destroy the DSII apart piece by piece. Given how much time that would take, the Imperials probably would have won.
I won't even go into the Endor holocaust in detail. (guess what happens when you detonate a small artificial moon near a planetary atmosphere? You get lots of fallout, resulting in nuclear winter and lots of dead ewoks)
"It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity."
Inconsistencies and illogical details in the Star Wars Universe?
Fish. Barrel. Large bore shotgun.
Star Wars, like much of the Space Opera and Science Fantasy genre, follows only one well tested design strategy: The Rule of Cool. If something looks cool, and it doesn't get in the way of the story, it's in. Once you can accept that you're good.
I can't wait for the Star Trek one after reading the seat belt gripe. Idea #1: Why aren't there seat belts on the bridge? It seems like almost every episode someone gets thrown from their chair. It happens so often in ST:VOY it should be the first modification they make to the ship.
This article is wrong on so many levels, but, of course, is easy to defeat: Everyone knows that the Star Wars universe is perfect. George Lucas had fully anticipated exactly what was going to happen in all 6 movies (and all of the books, comics, cartoons, etc.) while designing the first movie. To question this is heresy, and therefore you, John Scalzi, are a heretic.
But then I realized the cable was blue, so I only gave it one star. I hate blue.
>R2D2's speech
The original voice of R2D2 died of heat exhaustion while wearing the suit. In his honor they used digital beeps.
>C3P0 and mincing gay man
This is because C3P0 is a gay robot. Its a shame Scalzi is such a bigot that he cannot accept homosexual robots. Someday, 3P0, someday you'll be accepted and you can marry that nice medical robot who has been checking you out.
>Lighsaber guards
With the guard up all lightsaber fights ended in a stalemate. The jedi council of 4922 banned them for the sake of "sport and honor."
>Blasters
In the star wars world, lead bullets are useless against storm trooper armor. So everyone needs to use blasters which are slower and noisier. Blasters also release a mint scent which is an added bonus.
>Luke's lack of seatbelts
Luke was originally told his father died asphyxiating from a seatbelt after an accident that flipped his speeder. Luke vowed to never take that chance and removed his.
>Stormtrooper armor
In a sophisticated universe, style is very important. "The path to defeat, an unstylish military is. - Yoda"
>Death star
The empire has always been a good sport and has left vulnerabilities in all its designs.
>a huge exposed shaft in your Death Star throne room.
To be fair, this was put in so the emperor could toss people down it as he pleased. He knew it was a risk someone could toss him down it too, but he was crazy that way.
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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Yeah and a long long time ago in a galaxy far away they obviously didn't have such stuff like OSHA.
Or they'd have railings to stop people from falling into pits and other nasties...
Clearly it's a galaxy where they didn't have warning stickers on lightsabers to tell people "This way to enemy", or "Do not point lightsaber at remaining head".
But still...
There is no sound in space.
There's no incidental music in the real world. I like to consider space sound effects to be the same sort of thing.
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Was I the only one bothered by the sad attempt to bridge the gap between EP 3 and EP 4 by simply throwing away all the nice full color displays and elegant controls that we saw in the ships of the first 3 episodes, and in one fell swoop go back to the flashing lights and big on/off switches of the last 3? You know, at the end of EP 3 when Darth takes command of the Empire fleet, only to strut out onto the bridge of a ship that looked like it was designed to control a hydroelectric dam and not fly among the stars...
Maybe I was the only one.
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.
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
Perhaps Anakin told the librarian bot at the Tatooine Public Library 'I want every language translation (book/tape/disk/whatever) you have' and imported them all into C3P0's memory. By the time the copyright cops caught up with him he had become Darth Vader so they let him go as a matter of professional courtesy (sort of how sharks don't bite lawyers)
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
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?
Death Star
An unshielded exhaust port leading directly to the central reactor? Really?
I searched all the comments for this and not one person correctly pointed out that "The shaft is ray shielded, so you'll have to use proton torpedoes."
Slashdot, you disappoint me.
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.
Great men are almost always bad men--Lord Acton's Corollary
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!
Doug: Uh question for Ms. Bellamy. In episode 2F09, when Itchy plays Scratchy's skeleton like a xylophone, he strikes the same rib twice in succession, yet he produces two clearly different tones. I mean, what are we to believe, that this is some sort of a... [the nerds chuckle] a magic xylophone or something? Boy, I really hope somebody got fired for that blunder.
Wizard.
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.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall