How do long distance communication work in the star wars universe?

Rogue One had a few scenes with radio operators talking in real-time with ships in other systems, which seemed a bit non Star Wars to me.

I can’t think of any examples from the OT of communications between systems other than the Emperor’s hologram call to Vader in ESB (and there are similar long distance hologram communications in the PT). Maybe there are some implied off-screen?

If ships were equipped with long distance communicators there are many times it would have been useful, Han could have called ahead to Bespin, Luke could have called The Falcon from Degobah to see if his vision was true, The Rebel fleet could have waited safely until the Endor strike team called to say the shield is down, Qui-Gon could have called the council/senate as soon as they had cleared the communications blackout on Naboo. Having Long distance communications really negates the need for a lot of travelling.

I have always assumed the Empire had full control of the communications network so the Rebels couldn’t use it, I guess you could say that the rebels were just unwilling to use it openly for fear of interception/detection, but this is not the case in Rogue One.

Not sure what I’m trying to get at but Star Wars is effectively a Fantasy/Adventure setting and travelling from place to place is integral to that, having the ability to make phone calls rather than go on adventurous quests just breaks that feel a bit.

I don’t care!

Seriously, this is the kind of shit that takes the fun out of these movies for me. Let’s not get all Star Trek and have to explain every damn thing. It’s space fantasy. Let it go…

The great thing about not caring, if you really don’t care, is that it’s super easy to just ignore the threads and posts where people do care. “Let it go” is great advice.

stealthboy said:

I don’t care!

Seriously, this is the kind of shit that takes the fun out of these movies for me. Let’s not get all Star Trek and have to explain every damn thing. It’s space fantasy. Let it go…

It’s fine that you don’t care, I don’t care all that much just thought it was interesting enough to talk about and maybe I picked the wrong title, I’m not looking for an explanation, I know it’s fantasy not science fiction.

It’s just something in Rouge One that seemed inconsistent with the OT, like the hyper-drive in Force Awakens being effectively instantaneous, just seems like the people making these films don’t quite understand the foundations they’re building upon.

Maybe long-distance calls are an extra space dollar a minute, so they try not to call if they can avoid it.

Handman said:

Maybe long-distance calls are an extra space dollar a minute, so they try not to call if they can avoid it.

LOL. also a great point. If real life is what you are comparing star wars against, then there are several factors that go into why you do something a certain way, and even if the ‘best’ way is possible, you might no do it because you just didn’t think of it at the time, you aren’t used to doing it that way, or you didn’t have the cash / latest version of the app.

How can communication not be instantaneous, but you can see other planets on other sides of the galaxy get blown up in real time with your own eyes when you look up at the sky?

A crazy old wizard did it.

Alderaan said:

How can communication not be instantaneous, but you can see other planets on other sides of the galaxy get blown up in real time with your own eyes when you look up at the sky?

I will agree with you (for once) that this part of TFA was stupid.

But why do that when they could dial 10-10-321 first and only pay 10 cents a minute?

You could buy Calling Cards to save on Galactic money. However, using the card would send out a signal that would be tapped by Empire.

TV’s Frink said:

Alderaan said:

How can communication not be instantaneous, but you can see other planets on other sides of the galaxy get blown up in real time with your own eyes when you look up at the sky?

I will agree with you (for once) that this part of TFA was stupid.

Like the topic of this thread, for me that falls under “really don’t give a shit.”

I agree with you as far as the thread topic goes, but that TFA one is a bit too blatant for me to accept.

I never really thought about the logic of it until it was pointed out so I can’t say I found it too blatant. In my mind, the Hosnian system is just really close to Takadonna and that’s good enough for me.

Yeah but what I mean is that SW is fantasy so I truly do not care if that’s the case in the real world.