Star Wars "Science"

[austenandrews]

Herolover's asteroid belt thread made me realize that I should ask you guys for some input.

Currently I'm putting together a Star Wars game. We all know that science has very low priority in Star Wars films, and for me that's a great part of its charm. Here are some examples of the patent goofiness that makes the GFFA such a fun place:

- spaceships that scream in a vacuum and bank while turning
- lasers bolts that travel slower than bullets
- an asteroid field in which giant rocks fling around at high speeds and yet never stray from a defined border
- an ocean as deep as the planet's core
- a city that covers an entire planet
- a control panel with a button or lever that seemingly activates whatever functionality the user needs at that moment
- a face mask that's somehow sufficient for its wearer to survive in a vacuum

This isn't one of those threads where we try to explain this stuff scientifically. Quite the contrary: In my Star Wars campaign I want to preserve the ridiculousness of the source material.

My question to you is, what other examples of "Star Wars science" can you think of?

[Edsel]

Just how does a lightsaber know to extend for only that far anyway?

What is the real purpose of the mouse droids on the Deathstar? I've heard it claimed they carry messages. Isn't that what the intercom and radios would be used for.

[sinanju]

Giant space worms living in hollowed out asteroids. What do they eat!?

Hyperdrives in one-man fighters!

Imperials Walkers--but no Mechs? Why not?

[Nyrath]

I assume everybody know about this site?
http://enphilistor.users4.50megs.com/cliche.htm

[Lupus]

Alternately (re breathing masks in vacuum), a space slug has an atmosphere inside it, even without gravity or seals holding it in. :)

Other things: mostly to do with available tech.

-Blasters, but no missiles (other than things meant to attack ground targets/capital ships - at least until Episode 2).
-Guards everywhere, but little in the way of security cameras, even in highly-secured areas (say, the security booth watching the Falcon in the original film, or outside the bunker in RotJ)
-Obviously, they've killed the lawyers - crazy, unsafe, no-barrier lifts and walkways EVERYWHERE.

And if it sounds like I'm complaining about any of that, I surely am not. Star Wars is SO not sci-fi it's crazy, but I love it for it. :) I'm planning a SW game in the background (one of about fifteen projects on backburner), and I tell my players not to extrapolate from current tech in order to figure out what's available in Star Wars. I tell them to think of the 1930s: anything available then probably has an allegory in SW. So you have fighters, naval ships (and aircraft carriers), communications around the globe (galaxy); you have machineguns on fighters, but the only rocket-fired weapons are, well, rockets - intended for attacking ground targets, or bombs/torpedoes to be fired at capital ships. Ship sensors, too, are only about as accurate as WW2 radar, with the Falcon undetectable after it passes the Avenger's bridge in Empire (IE, it disappears from scope, and instead of saying 'well, it must have stopped', they figure it just vanished somewhere - it points to the sensors not being entirely reliable, and based on non-visual spectrum. So again, no cameras).

And the child-unsafe military architecture is just neat.

[Curufea]

Personally, I don't have a problem with a planet completely covered with a city. Although it would make more sense if they had the equivalent of wormholes/stargates for transport of essential items (and I'm highly influenced by "Pandora's Star" I'm currently reading here) - they may also have alternate methods of creating food (ie levels devoted to hydroponics - see the "Chung Kuo" series).
A planet-covering city that is dependant on ships for food? THAT is rubber science.

But, back on topic-

The Force (of course)
Guns that don't run out of ammunition
Slaves (they have robots, for pete's sake - why have slaves that are sentient and can rebel?)
Instalanguage - all members of the Starwars universe understand about 90% of other races' languages, from birth. And yet they only speak their own.
Cowboylaw - everyone carries a gun, if someone tries to kill you, you're within your rights to try and kill them back.
Psychotic doors - move one milimeter away and they close almost instantly.
Airfuel explosion - no matter what energy source any machine uses, when it takes enough damage to disable it, it explodes. Unless you target a specific subsystem.
Occupational Accents - if you belong to a certain job, you have a certain accent. ie- Imperials have Eton accents. Jedi have North London accents. Smugglers have West Coast American accents.

[Vanguard00]

How 'bout the fact that those ships are always on the same 'level' and orientation. Why don't ships meet each other at all sorts of random angles in relation to each other?

No keyboards for the computers, but if a new program needs to be written (which can done in minutes, if not seconds), a few random strikes on those buttons that they do have should accomplish the task.

Fuel is apparently as abundant for space travel as it is for driving a car, and about as expensive. Ships running helter-skelter around the known universes (and unknown) either never have to stop for a fill-up, or it's just casually mentioned as they dock/land/whatever. How the heck do they keep them bad boys flying all the time?

Especially when they never turn off the friggin' engines. Cruisin' through space on your way from Point A to Point B, you shouldn't need more than maneuvering thrusters to correct for incredibly minute directional changes. If you're already traveling at x+FTL speed, you don't really need that extra "boost", do ya?

Language. Either everyone speaks the same language, which is just plain silly, or everyone has their own language but understands everyone else's (FarScape excepted, bless their hearts).

[Herolover]

Wow....I think I am getting choked up here. A thread I started spawned another thread.

[Lupus]

How 'bout the fact that those ships are always on the same 'level' and orientation. Why don't ships meet each other at all sorts of random angles in relation to each other?

No keyboards for the computers, but if a new program needs to be written (which can done in minutes, if not seconds), a few random strikes on those buttons that they do have should accomplish the task. Definitely a problem in scifi... but is this a typical Star Wars thing? I can't think of a single case of 'programming', except where R2's hacking a system. Everyone else crosses wires and stuff. Hardware hacking, I guess. That's another to add to my list - droids are the only human interface devices. :)

Language. Either everyone speaks the same language, which is just plain silly, or everyone has their own language but understands everyone else's (FarScape excepted, bless their hearts).
Now, this actually makes some sense. From what I remember, there's some sort of universal lingo, which all species learn to facilitate communication. Not all members of all species learn it, however. There are also aliens out there who simply cannot speak it, but may still understand it (Chewbacca). Not everyone understands Chewbacca, either - Han seems to parse his howls as speech, but Luke can't understand him. Plenty of other species, too - I'd bet that most of those who never speak Basic (as the games call the language) are simply incapable of doing so.

What's a bit more odd is droids, even those intended to help humans (say, R2) not speaking English... hmm. :) Certainly, that's something to add to the list. Droids seem to speak different languages depending on their function, and you need protocol droids to translate. Owen needs a droid to talk to the moisture vaporators? Why can't he just install a voice box? He can't, because they're just not designed like that!

[Rick]

I always think of the Droids like the underclass. Society has designed technology so that it'd make there lives easier, and whats easier than not having to deal with it directly, thus we've droids. Droids are designed to be our user friendly interfaces with technology (which seem to have Droid minds too). They're cute and familiar, or for distastful things like violences they are steril or frightening. Luke actually seems to understand R2 much like I can understand my dog, I can't know for sure what he's thinking but I can get an idea from his inflections.

This is just how I see it, I'm a big supporter of Star Wars being Fantasyt not SciFi. There is little science and a whole lot of fantasy. Which is why I usually dislike the novels. Zahn then from him on, never seemed to figure that out.

[Major Tom]

This reminds me of a joke that was in the MAD Magazine parody of Star Wars
from many, many long years ago. One guy was talking to another on board an
Imperial Star Destroyer, and this was how the conversation went:

"We're on a ship that can travel faster than the speed of light, and our weapons
fire almost as fast as light! Do you know what that means?"
"Yeah! We just shot OURSELVES down!!"

There's also the one where two Stormtroopers are talking, and one of them asks
the other how do they tell the good guys apart from the bad guys, and it ran
something like this:

"It's real simple. The good guys are wearing black, and the bad guys are wearing
white."
"Okay... but if the good guys are in black, and the bad guys are in white, then
what's our fearless leader doing wearing black?"
"Well, you're not going to believe this, but it started out white, but with all of
the dirty work he's done over the years..."


Major Tom :eg:

[Spence]

I assume everybody know about this site?
http://enphilistor.users4.50megs.com/cliche.htm

Nope, not everybody.

I think I hurt something........

[Lupus]

I always think of the Droids like the underclass. Society has designed technology so that it'd make there lives easier, and whats easier than not having to deal with it directly, thus we've droids. Droids are designed to be our user friendly interfaces with technology (which seem to have Droid minds too). They're cute and familiar, or for distastful things like violences they are steril or frightening. Luke actually seems to understand R2 much like I can understand my dog, I can't know for sure what he's thinking but I can get an idea from his inflections.
Yeah, that's pretty much it. :) There are also translation programs - when Luke's in his X-Wing, he seems to get a text version of what R2's saying on his console. (He looks at the console, which has text appearing on it, then reacts as if he's reacting to the console, then replies to R2 in a way that implies he understood exactly what the droid was saying.)


This is just how I see it, I'm a big supporter of Star Wars being Fantasyt not SciFi. There is little science and a whole lot of fantasy. Which is why I usually dislike the novels. Zahn then from him on, never seemed to figure that out.
Yup. I still think it's important to understand where the science puts things, though, before you deviate from it. So I love sites like the Star Wars Technical Commentaries, but I'd never use its stuff in a game. Too sci-fi-y, not fantasy-y enough.

(Similarly, I hate the cop-out excuse of 'it's magic' in fantasy. Why is there a forest next to a desert? 'It's magic!' That's crap. Better to say 'in history, this happend and that happened, thus there is a forest next to a desert. It still invokes magic, but it's an actual explanation, not just an excuse. So I appreciate this thread - let's point out the Star Wars/Scifi disconnects, so we at least know they're disconnects, so we can then move on from there. :)

[lemming]

I assume everybody know about this site?
http://enphilistor.users4.50megs.com/cliche.htm
What! "Disembodied live brains living in tanks." are overused!? Never!

[Curufea]

That's what we are, isn't it?

[Mutant for Hire]

On the whole R2D2 issue, one can almost rationalize it, not to mention communication issues with things like Moisture Vaporators. Unfortunately the movies fall just short of that.

Think about it. Computer programming languages as they stand right now are very logical, determininistic, precise things. Human languages on the other hand, carry an inherent degree of fuzziness to them. Words can shift meaning on context and have a degree of ambiguiry to them, then there's things like metaphors and complicated modes of speaking such as sarcasm.

Protocol droids are droids that are designed to be able to handle the ambiguities of the languages of organic beings, which are very fuzzy things themselves. They can translate between fuzzy and imprecise languages of organic beings and just as importantly, they can translate between the languages of organic beings and the highly logical and precise droid languages.

Unfortunately what breaks the concept is that R2D2 doesn't seem to have any problems understanding Luke, or for that matter C3PO when he's speaking in the standard language of the Star Wars universe. More realistically, C3PO should be communicating in the same tonal language that R2D2 is speaking in when he's talking to the droid, and Luke should be depending on C3PO to interpret/translate.

However Star Wars is space fantasy and so any attempt to be really logical about such things is inherently doomed to failure. Still, there's a difference between scientific and consistant. I can perfectly deal with something like the Force, and the existance of droids, I just like some consistancy and exploration of the ramification of the existance of these things.

[Agemegos]

A galaxy that has been occupied by starfaring races for at least one thousand generations, and yet that still has wilderness planets in it, and new models of landspeeder coming out.

[austenandrews]

That's what we are, isn't it?
My disembodied brain lives in a military tank.

Btw, great stuff here! Lots of ideas I hadn't thought of for my Star Wars game. Here's some more of mine:

- No matter where you crash-land on a planet, you're within walking distance of who you're looking for.
- If you can pilot any single craft, you can pilot every craft in the galaxy.
- One fancy piloting maneuver will instantaneously trick three thousand-man Star Destroyer crews into almost colliding.
- Shoot the panel of a door that's locked and it unlocks. Shoot the panel of a door that's unlocked and it locks. (Not strictly enforced in Star Wars - in fact playfully violated - but still fun.)
- The better your armor, the more vulnerable you are ("boss" villains excepted).
- When objects explode in space, no appreciable debris is expelled. Even planet-sized objects.
- (An extension of the above...) The size of a monster is inverse to the abundance of its food supply.
- A hero can defeat any given giant monster, but not the guards holding his wrist manacles.

[Curufea]

- The cooler the uniform, the worse your aim.
- The more innocent the creature, the more deadly in combat.
- Love conquers all, including plot or characterisation (or even dialogue).
- All spaceships sound like modified fighter planes. There is no sound difference between atmospheres and space. All spaceships move like fighter planes, except the large ones - which move like naval ship.
- The first try at any major mission goal will never succeed. That is what redshirts are for.
- Heroes are captured, redshirts are killed.
- Every den of iniquity or hive of villainous scum has room for small cute animals and robots, no matter how nefarious the location.
- All villains have instant armies when needed.
- If it floats above the ground, it's science fiction.
- All ships have artificial gravity, but still feel the effects of being hit, hard acceleration or decceleration, and cannot compensate for mass when maneuvering (see moves like a naval ship above).
- All planets have standard Earth gravity
- If a Hero ever does anything vaguely unheroic, it can be retroactively changed (known as the "Han shot first" rule)
- Technology improves as civilisation declines/becomes decadent (ie forcefields are huge and clunky, but later get used by single-seat fighters, as do FTL drives)

[lemming]

A galaxy that has been occupied by starfaring races for at least one thousand generations, and yet that still has wilderness planets in it, and new models of landspeeder coming out.
Hmm. Portland city planning on a galactic scale...

(sorry, just read an article...)

[Supreme]

Not to apologize for the bad science of the Star Wars universe, but one thing that should be kept in mind is that episodes 4-6 take place after the Clone Wars in which a lot of technological knowledge was lost.

One of the things that struck me watching Ep 4 for the first time as an adult was how the blasters mounted on the Millenium Falcon had targetting systems well behind where we are now. The Walkers in Ep 6 couldn't target Ewoks hiding inside of hedges, unfortunately.

Then there's the complete lack of any biological or chemical warfare agents.

Also, was it just me, or did there seem to be no media whatsoever in the movies? No one goes to the movies, or sees plays, or listens to the news on the radio.

[Lupus]

- The more innocent the creature, the more deadly in combat.
- The first try at any major mission goal will never succeed. That is what redshirts are for.
- Heroes are captured, redshirts are killed.
- Every den of iniquity or hive of villainous scum has room for small cute animals and robots, no matter how nefarious the location. Hmm. Are these really Star Wars rules? Particularly the redshirt ones - I seem to remember the heroes largely charging in in the front lines of any assault. I certainly don't remember any 'redshirt phenomenon.' While the flunkies did certainly take horrible casualties at certain points (say, Battle of Yavin - was that 80% casualties?) they aren't tossed away. And it's almost always the commanders who go into the dangerous situations first (even among the Imperials - Vader almost always, General Veers on Hoth, various admirals leading Star Destroyer formations). I'd say that heroic action (such as leading from the front) from those in charge is Star Wars genre. (Except for those with essentially desk/co-ordination jobs, like the high commanders.)

- Technology improves as civilisation declines/becomes decadent (ie forcefields are huge and clunky, but later get used by single-seat fighters, as do FTL drives) Different kind of shield, prolly. And different species. :)

[austenandrews]

Also, was it just me, or did there seem to be no media whatsoever in the movies? No one goes to the movies, or sees plays, or listens to the news on the radio.
Attack of the Clones showed what amounted to TV commercials and sportcasts. In Revenge of the Sith, Anakin and Palpatine watch a Mon Calamari musical (affectionately called "Squid Lake"). Otherwise, you're right. And there won't be any such media in my game, either. If you want to see something, go to a gladiatorial arena (apparently a common form of entertainment in the GFFA).

[Supreme]

- All planets have standard Earth gravity

And type "M" atmospheres -- AND normal temperature ranges (excepting Hoth).

Also, those ships with artificial gravity never have seat-belts.

[Curufea]

I seem to remember the heroes largely charging in in the front lines of any assault.

I was mainly thinking of the multiple runs on the deathstar in the first movie, there.
Also in Jedi, the first attack on the station (the shield was still up), and the shield generator failed.

[Agemegos]

Not to apologize for the bad science of the Star Wars universe, but one thing that should be kept in mind is that episodes 4-6 take place after the Clone Wars in which a lot of technological knowledge was lost.

There's another one: In a society of quadrillions of people, widely scattered, and with independent collections of records, separate educational institutions, and trained technicians all over the place etc. etc. technological knowledge can be lost.


Also, was it just me, or did there seem to be no media whatsoever in the movies? No one goes to the movies, or sees plays, or listens to the news on the radio.

Well spotted! No telephone, either.

And here's another: droid torture.

[Lupus]

I was mainly thinking of the multiple runs on the deathstar in the first movie, there.
Also in Jedi, the first attack on the station (the shield was still up), and the shield generator failed.
Yeah, the run on the death star was pretty funny. But each run was led by one of the commanders. Luke didn't get in first because he wasn't senior enough. (And by the time he did, chain of command was screwed up enough that people who'd been flying longer than he had were listening to him as a commander!) It's possible to read that as red-shirt scenarios, yah. I interpret it differently, I guess. :)

Attack on the shield generator, too - big guys go in first. Han's right there along with his troops.

Really, just about any time anything dangerous is being done, there's a main character or at least high-ranking person going along with the attempt, or doing it solo. Ben turns the tractor beam off himself (telling the others to stay put where it's safe). The jedi in I and II are constantly putting themselves in harm's way. The people rescuing Han are all his friends. Luke is the first one to do an attack run on the AT-ATs (of course, his gunner dies, but that does mean he was putting himself in the line of fire).

Heroes, in Star Wars, are active. They do things. They don't sit back - that's for high command. The heroes aren't high command, they're field personnel, leading from the front. They don't tell others to do anything they aren't willing to do themselves.

[tgrandjean]

Re: Technological collapse.
I don't really see it that way (as a collapse).
Instead w/episodes 4-6 what we see instead is the results of rampant militarism. They went from virtually no military in the Old Republic (mostly just system defence), to a galaxy spanning dictatorship.
Most resources have be allocated to military use and the everyday citizens have to resort to smugglers for luxury and non-approved items.
Nobody watches the media because the only thing that you would see would be government propaganda. Think of life in the Russia after the revolution. The economy had collapsed, shows of wealth or quality made you a target, media that didn't glorify the revolution was "decadent". After a few years, pre-revolution items became extremely expensive, new items were regarded with mistrust, and government sponsored luxury items were a joke.
As far as military spending, after a few decades of war nobody really wants the expense of droid based missile systems (more the cost of the drive than the warhead) and instead concentrates on proton torpedoes (anti-ship weaponry). Shielding is also relatively expensive, boosting the cost of even an outdated fighter like the Y-Wing to several times that of a TIE Fighter.

(But as a practical matter, just envisioning technology as a extension of the 1930s-1940s works just as well. =P )

[Supreme]

There's another one: In a society of quadrillions of people, widely scattered, and with independent collections of records, separate educational institutions, and trained technicians all over the place etc. etc. technological knowledge can be lost.

Well spotted! No telephone, either.

And here's another: droid torture.
Yeah, the droid torture struck me as odd, even as an eight year-old. But then my dad was a computer programmer.

As for the technological loss from the Clone Wars, it's not just about knowledge, but infrastructure. Lose too many Questonite processing plants and there's no more Questonite and all the gizmos that require it to function. And as tgrandjean points out, if you're spending too much on the military, you won't have enough left over for rebuilding. And no, not even for military technology. Pig-headed generals who now have too much authority are going to short-sightedly feather their nests just as much as anyone else.

Has anyone brought up mono-climates yet? I can sort of buy an all-arctic planet, and maybe even an all desert planet, but an all forest planet? An all swamp planet? Ummm... no... And Star Trek was more guilty of this than SW, but cultures where everyone is of one vocation (i.e., Klingons are all warriors, Ferengi are all merchants, etc.).

[Nyrath]

Has anyone brought up mono-climates yet? I can sort of buy an all-arctic planet, and maybe even an all desert planet, but an all forest planet? An all swamp planet? Ummm... no...
SF author Larry Niven called this the 'It Was Raining On Mongo That Afternoon' syndrome. The way most authors write, you get the impression that most planets are the size of Baltimore.

[Whitewings]

Slaves (they have robots, for pete's sake - why have slaves that are sentient and can rebel?)Status symbols for underworld types.

[austenandrews]

Slaves (they have robots, for pete's sake - why have slaves that are sentient and can rebel?)
If droids could think, there'd be none of us here.

[Jhamin]

- Technology improves as civilisation declines/becomes decadent (ie forcefields are huge and clunky, but later get used by single-seat fighters, as do FTL drives)

I don't know about this one.

The Roller Droids from Episode One had personal shields. They didn't stop fighter weapons, but they were designed to fight infantry.

In Episode Three the Jedi fighter had a detachable Hyperspace engine. It might not be a big leap to a single seat FTL fighter.


More than anything, episodes I-III are "a more elegent time" rather than a higher-tech one.

[Supreme]

SF author Larry Niven called this the 'It Was Raining On Mongo That Afternoon' syndrome. The way most authors write, you get the impression that most planets are the size of Baltimore.
Now I've got an image of John Waters dressed up as Ming the Merciless stuck in my head...