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How Star Wars Trumped Star Trek For Scientific Accuracy
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."
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, it is inside a large maitenance trench 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.
My work here is dung.
Cue the guys with pointy latex ear extensions flipping off the guys with the neon glowing plastic swords.
A good bitchfight is about to emerge here. I for one have my popcorn ready. BTW, Star Wars is waaayyy better than that sissy star trek.
Apparently this is regarding a book published in 2002 which talks about the 1997 edition of Star Wars vs a 1991 Star Trek - comparing the way an explosion appeared on screen.
Which portion of this 8 year old book about a 20 year old movie is news?
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
Ring around the Death Star? Greedo shooting first? You mean, people actually watch the butchered editions of Star Wars?
I had no idea.
"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." -- Albert Einstein
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.
Which would win in a fight, the Millennium Falcon or the Enterprise?
Just made Star Wars totally unrealistic.
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.
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.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Unless, of course, Praxis had a trench round its circumference too (visible or not). Strip-mining is a viable extraction method.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Praxis is their key energy production facility...
You know I realize CmrTaco founded slashdot, so maybe i'm looking a gift horse in the mouth here, but come on dude!!!! The book cited was published in 2002. This following an article on Falconry that has been in use for at bare minimum 70 years??? Is it the slowest news day in history or what??
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 great. What really gets me is how Earth-centric it is. Like, as if Earth would become some marvelous utopian society and yet the Klingons (note: Black people?) are so freakin violent.
The whole idea in Star Wars of a struggle between good and evil is far more realistic, and I think that's why so many kids aged 7-9 relate to Star Wars so well, because it reflects the reality of the world, as any child can see. I vowed never to watch any more Star Trek about 3 years ago, and honestly it was the best decision I ever made. Even my work performance improved.
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?
Is 1563649 a prime number?
Send to Klingon High Command: "This is Excelsior, a Federation Starship traveling in beta quadrant. We have monitored a large explosion in your sector. Do you require any assistance?"
- 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.
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, 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.
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!)
The force that blew the Big Bang continues to accelerate.
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 ].
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 ] )
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.
vi +
Star Trek will forever and always be better then Star Wars!!!
Babylon 5. Far more accurate with science than Trek or Wars. Also, they had JPL engineers on staff to give thumbs up/down to spacecraft design and maneuverability. Also had a 5 year story arc planned out, not make things up as you go along.
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.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
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
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Sci-fi obviously gets this wrong, with billowing clouds of burning petroleum shot on earth composited over CG or scale models, it's almost completely wrong on every level.
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
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.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
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 always thought the implication was that the replicants were engineered biological organisms. Otherwise why would they bother with the Voight-Kampf test? Once you've accepted that they're biological, pooping comes for free. Really the only big leap is that such a level of bioengineering
that they could make something that is indistinguishable from a human, but so much stronger, resistant to heat, etc.
That doesn't sound like significantly more of a stretch than presuming you could somehow accelerate human growth to super-speeds. Mr. Clone inexplicably knowing things he couldn't possibly have known is the bigger leap imo.
And what makes Blade Runner (and to a lesser extent The Island) true Sci-Fi is not that they restrict the degree to which they extrapolate from existing technology. It's that they posit a type of technology and a type of future in which that technology exists, and explore how that affects the human condition as we see it today. True sci-fi is always about the present, not the future.
The enemies of Democracy are
I enjoy both Star Trek and Star Wars as adventure drama, but there is not one iota of real science in either one. Might as well post an article about how the pot trumped the kettle for whiteness.
The original Howling Frog is a fictional character and has no UID.