Star Wars: Nothing But Star Wars

[DMC]

2 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

in fact the whole tone of the movie suggests Obi Wan has been hiding out in the desert since after Order 66, and thinking that actually he hasn’t been doing that doesn’t fit at all on rewatch.

I mean, it still makes sense that Owen and Beru would give Luke that impression.  Obviously not the Order 66 part, but describing him as a crazy old wizard, hermit, etc.

[Heartofice]

1 hour ago, DMC said:

I mean, it still makes sense that Owen and Beru would give Luke that impression.  Obviously not the Order 66 part, but describing him as a crazy old wizard, hermit, etc.

Well I tried to watch it coming at it from that direction, but it still doesn’t really work, giving their reactions and the things being said.

[RumHam]

3 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Watched the first half of ANH to see how much the Obi Wan series fits into it. As I thought, it doesn’t make sense at all and a lot of the dialogue now seems completely disconnected from the series.

"Most of what Obi-Wan says in Star Wars turned out to be bullshit" has been true since the prequels.

[Kalbear]

3 hours ago, DMC said:

I mean, it still makes sense that Owen and Beru would give Luke that impression.  Obviously not the Order 66 part, but describing him as a crazy old wizard, hermit, etc.

Yeah, one of the things I do all the time when I am the guardian of kids is that I let people I describe as a 'crazy old wizard' and a 'hermit' just meet my 9 year old kid and give him toys

[DMC]

1 minute ago, KalVsWade said:

Yeah, one of the things I do all the time when I am the guardian of kids is that I let people I describe as a 'crazy old wizard' and a 'hermit' just meet my 9 year old kid and give him toys

?  Obviously Owen thought Obi-Wan deserved to meet him, but that doesn't mean he wouldn't still refer to him as a crazy old wizard and hermit to try to make sure a teenage Luke stays away from him.  Hell, it's not even clear Owen tells Luke that that is "Ben Kenobi."

[Kalbear]

3 minutes ago, DMC said:

?  Obviously Owen thought Obi-Wan deserved to meet him, but that doesn't mean he wouldn't still refer to him as a crazy old wizard and hermit to try to make sure a teenage Luke stays away from him.  Hell, it's not even clear Owen tells Luke that that is "Ben Kenobi."

I had just assumed that Luke looks up at him and calls him General Kenobi as soon as Obi Wan says 'Hello There'

After all, that's what is in the canon

[DMC]

1 minute ago, KalVsWade said:

After all, that's what is in the canon

Huh?  Am I remembering the episode wrong or are you referring to something else.  Cuz I thought it just cut away after Obi-Wan says "Hello there."

[Kalbear]

1 minute ago, DMC said:

Huh?  Am I remembering the episode wrong or are you referring to something else.  Cuz I thought it just cut away after Obi-Wan says "Hello there."

I'm joking, and making fun of everyone who exclaims that some random shitty book or 3 seconds of being told to use the force means that you can extrapolate across everything or that most people will even take that as the main viewpoint. 

[DMC]

12 minutes ago, KalVsWade said:

I'm joking

Ah, sorry.  I guess you shouldn't joke like that while I'm getting high, cuz clearly I didn't catch on.

[Werthead]

Regarding the speed Reva took to get to Tatooine, it's worth remembering that comical line in Empire Strikes Back: "they could be on the other side of the galaxy by now," given by an Imperial military officer like five minutes after the Falcon flew past them (certainly not too long, as Threepio is still freaking out about Han's maneuver five seconds later).

That implies that with hyperdrive you can travel, at the very least, thousands to tens of thousands of light-years in a matter of minutes. Several other data points in all of the movies suggest this, with the trip from Tatooine to Alderaan being the only one implied to take anything more than a few minutes (enough time for Luke to get some training in and Artoo and Chewie's chess game).

So yup, it appears to be absolutely possible to travel that fast in the Star Wars universe and it's very dumb, but it has been so since 1980.

[RumHam]

7 minutes ago, Werthead said:

the Star Wars universe and it's very dumb, but it has been so since 1980 1977.

Pretty much sums it up! I mean Han famously uses a unit of distance to describe how fast his ship is in the first one.

[Lord Varys]

There is no indication Luke got his general opinion about Ben Kenobi (only) from Owen. He had friends knew other people in the region who would have also told stories about Ben. The way Owen is portrayed in ANH makes it pretty unlikely that Luke ever had an open discussion with his uncle about Ben Kenobi - after all, Luke likely had little to no interest in the guy, so we should not expect that he asked (m)any questions about him.

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

That implies that with hyperdrive you can travel, at the very least, thousands to tens of thousands of light-years in a matter of minutes. Several other data points in all of the movies suggest this, with the trip from Tatooine to Alderaan being the only one implied to take anything more than a few minutes (enough time for Luke to get some training in and Artoo and Chewie's chess game).

It seems to be a fast flight, but jumping to the conclusions of 'minutes' is too far-fetched since we have no clue how much time passed between them entering hyperspace and the later game/training session.

I think we could reasonably expect the flight taking a few hours, possibly even a day. The gang could have slept for a couple of hours with the movie not touching upon it.

But chances are very low that the flight took longer than a day.

[Werthead]

28 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

It seems to be a fast flight, but jumping to the conclusions of 'minutes' is too far-fetched since we have no clue how much time passed between them entering hyperspace and the later game/training session.

I think we could reasonably expect the flight taking a few hours, possibly even a day. The gang could have slept for a couple of hours with the movie not touching upon it.

But chances are very low that the flight took longer than a day.

Like I said, in ESB an Imperial officer in an official capacity calmly states it's possible for a ship to be on the other side of the galaxy to where it was earlier on, in a short enough period of time that Threepio is still going apeshit over Han's insane maneuver, which is, even given Threepio's tendency for histrionics, probably going to be minutes rather than hours. The Falcon is supposedly one of the fastest ships in the galaxy with an overpowered hyperdrive, so it might be unusually fast, but it still implies that FTL travel in Star Wars is ludicrously fast. This is something that the EU pushed back on a bit (with it sometimes taking days to get anywhere, maybe weeks to go from one end of the galaxy to the other) but since the Disney canon took over, if anything, travel has even gotten faster.

[felice]

2 hours ago, Werthead said:

Regarding the speed Reva took to get to Tatooine, it's worth remembering that comical line in Empire Strikes Back: "they could be on the other side of the galaxy by now," given by an Imperial military officer like five minutes after the Falcon flew past them

I interpret that as hyperbole; he's just saying they're too far away to have any hope of catching them.

[mormont]

You can make it all work if you just headcanon that hyperspace travel times are not linearly related to distance, perhaps because hyperspace itself is non-linear. Some destinations halfway across the galaxy can be reached in minutes, others much closer would take days. Better hyperdrives cut all of these journey times, but the basic point is that hyperspace travel (and we assume navigation) is complicated and can be bent to fit the story.

[Lord Varys]

3 hours ago, Werthead said:

Like I said, in ESB an Imperial officer in an official capacity calmly states it's possible for a ship to be on the other side of the galaxy to where it was earlier on, in a short enough period of time that Threepio is still going apeshit over Han's insane maneuver, which is, even given Threepio's tendency for histrionics, probably going to be minutes rather than hours. The Falcon is supposedly one of the fastest ships in the galaxy with an overpowered hyperdrive, so it might be unusually fast, but it still implies that FTL travel in Star Wars is ludicrously fast. This is something that the EU pushed back on a bit (with it sometimes taking days to get anywhere, maybe weeks to go from one end of the galaxy to the other) but since the Disney canon took over, if anything, travel has even gotten faster.

Well, they are at the very edge of the galaxy at that point and the guy is talking about the Rishi Maze, the small satellite galaxy that's mentioned in AOTC as being in the immediate neighborhood of Kamino. Which I think was also 'the home galaxy' of the extra-galactic Nagai and Tof species from the Marvel comics.

Or at least that's the explanation they gave to explain this thing away.

Anyway, all I wanted to say is that we don't *have to* imagine Tatooine-Alderaan as a journey that only took minutes.

I think there is also weirdo supplementary material stuff claiming the journey from Hoth to Bespin took quite a long time considering they didn't have a working hyperdrive at that time, which helps to make Luke's training last longer ... but there is no in-movie indication for this, either. Although it is clear that without a working hyperdrive it should take the Falcon pretty long to get to Bespin.

3 hours ago, mormont said:

You can make it all work if you just headcanon that hyperspace travel times are not linearly related to distance, perhaps because hyperspace itself is non-linear. Some destinations halfway across the galaxy can be reached in minutes, others much closer would take days. Better hyperdrives cut all of these journey times, but the basic point is that hyperspace travel (and we assume navigation) is complicated and can be bent to fit the story.

That doesn't really work since the crucial factor is not 'non-linear hyperspace' but correctly computing the proper hyperspace lane. No indication that better hyperdrives move you around *faster* but rather they can calculate better (i.e. shorter) routes to your destination.

Then, of course, Star Wars never properly established how fast their ships go, nor were distances ever a factor when telling a story. The worldbuilding doesn't make sense on that level - just as it doesn't make sense in Star Trek.

In the NJO novel series the GFFA first comes alive as a place, at least insofar as stellar cartography becomes a rather crucial aspect in the planning of a galaxy-wide military campaign - both for the invading Yuuzhan Vong and the good guys trying to fight back. But that's a rather unique situation in Star Wars media.

[felice]

2 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

I think there is also weirdo supplementary material stuff claiming the journey from Hoth to Bespin took quite a long time considering they didn't have a working hyperdrive at that time, which helps to make Luke's training last longer ... but there is no in-movie indication for this, either.

Time dilation - the journey to Bespin takes months, but the crew only experience days or hours. I think incorporating an explanation of that into the script would have been very tricky to pull off, but it fits what we see.

2 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

That doesn't really work since the crucial factor is not 'non-linear hyperspace' but correctly computing the proper hyperspace lane. No indication that better hyperdrives move you around *faster* but rather they can calculate better (i.e. shorter) routes to your destination.

Surely those are entirely compatible? Non-linear hyperspace explains why it's really difficult but not impossible to calculate shorter routes, and lanes would be stable pre-charted routes.

[Lord Varys]

1 minute ago, felice said:

Time dilation - the journey to Bespin takes months, but the crew only experience days or hours. I think incorporating an explanation of that into the script would have been very tricky to pull off, but it fits what we see.

I guess that could work, but we don't really know how they made the way to Bespin, so ... who knows? Supplementary material came up with a back-up hyperdrive which goes *really slowly*.

1 minute ago, felice said:

Surely those are entirely compatible? Non-linear hyperspace explains why it's really difficult but not impossible to calculate shorter routes, and lanes would be stable pre-charted routes.

Well, we don't know that/if the calculations are done in hyperspace or with real space as foundation. The impression in the movie is that the nav computer needs to have sufficient data about normal space, hence Han talking about flying into a star, getting too close to a nova, etc.

In that sense I daresay that you move always at the same speed in hyperspace (at least nothing indicates that there are faster/slower ships in hyperspace depending on the quality of their hyperdrive engines - although I guess it would be theoretically possible) and the deciding factor is your nav computer and the route it calculated.

[JGP]

If you want to get really dicky about it [and don't mind if I do] I never caught an explanation about how interstellar communication works. It'd have to be something like Card's ansible for instantaneous interaction with hologram projections from Revan knows where or how far, yet it's not a big deal to me. 

And before anyone writes a book at me [narrows eyes at Varys] I've only read Splinter of the Mind's Eye [so long ago I remember not a thing except the cool cover] and the Heirs trilogy. 

[Lord Varys]

37 minutes ago, JGP said:

If you want to get really dicky about it [and don't mind if I do] I never caught an explanation about how interstellar communication works. It'd have to be something like Card's ansible for instantaneous interaction with hologram projections from Revan knows where or how far, yet it's not a big deal to me. 

They talk about hyperwave communication there. Don't know what it is, don't care. It is clear that it is instantaneous magical communication.

37 minutes ago, JGP said:

And before anyone writes a book at me [narrows eyes at Varys] I've only read Splinter of the Mind's Eye [so long ago I remember not a thing except the cool cover] and the Heirs trilogy. 

LOL, I do not want to write books at anyone, really. I might use some postings as hooks and stuff, but don't feel, well, talked at because of that. I just like to write about this stuff occasionally.

6 hours ago, Werthead said:

Regarding the speed Reva took to get to Tatooine, it's worth remembering that comical line in Empire Strikes Back: "they could be on the other side of the galaxy by now," given by an Imperial military officer like five minutes after the Falcon flew past them (certainly not too long, as Threepio is still freaking out about Han's maneuver five seconds later).

The Reva issue is not so much how she got there so fast, but how she got there while everybody else got nowhere. She received a pretty bad stab wound, she was abandoned on a planet in the middle of nowhere, and she had no ship ... and presumably lacked the means to acquire one.

None of those questions are answered. And that's pretty bad writing there. But you could ignore that to a point if she hadn't been teleported to Tatooine pretty much in the first scene of the final episode. If we had first gotten the Vader duel it may have been more convincing because we would have at least gotten the feeling that some time had passed.