It's interesting that the journey from the Hoth system to Bespin was brought up, because I noticed that as being a glaring error for the first time when I watched the film this weekend.
The only in-story justification I can imagine is that the Imperial fleet was spread out among the local star systems looking for the Falcon, and that the Avenger made a hyperspace jump to the Anoat system to rendezvous with the Executor and the rest of the fleet for Captain Needa's apology, inadvertently taking the Falcon with her. Now that I think about it, this is supported by the dialogue as Leia asks Han where they are.
It's reasonable to assume that this part of the film elapses quite a bit of time, both because of Luke's training and because of how entrenched Vader is at Cloud City when the Falcon arrives, but to imagine that they somehow travelled from one star system to another at sublight speeds is a bit difficult to swallow, even in the fast-and-loose physics of Star Wars.
Regarding the speeds discussed in the films:
Hyperspace is never really canonically discussed beyond a few oblique references (the infamous “parsec” line, Han's dressing down of Luke during their escape from Mos Eisley), but it's clear that we can't take “.5 past light speed” to literally mean 1.5c, unless there is some unknown quirk to relativity that once you surpass the speed of light, your velocity increases by some exponential fashion.
There is something important about hyperspace that should be somewhat illuminating in this context as well: while all of the ships depicted have hyperdrive, nobody ever chases anybody through hyperspace. The one instance of this happening in the original trilogy is when the Death Star tracks the Falcon to Yavin, which was done by following a homing beacon.
We don't really know how hyperspace works, so while I agree that maybe a little more care might have been made in selecting the terms in the writing stage, as it stands, I feel it falls less in the “inconsistencies” and more into the “technology so advanced it looks like magic to us” arena.
“That’s impossible, even for a computer!”
StarThoughts said:
It's interesting that the journey from the Hoth system to Bespin was brought up, because I noticed that as being a glaring error for the first time when I watched the film this weekend.
The only in-story justification I can imagine is that the Imperial fleet was spread out among the local star systems looking for the Falcon, and that the Avenger made a hyperspace jump to the Anoat system to rendezvous with the Executor and the rest of the fleet for Captain Needa's apology, inadvertently taking the Falcon with her. Now that I think about it, this is supported by the dialogue as Leia asks Han where they are.
It's reasonable to assume that this part of the film elapses quite a bit of time, both because of Luke's training and because of how entrenched Vader is at Cloud City when the Falcon arrives, but to imagine that they somehow travelled from one star system to another at sublight speeds is a bit difficult to swallow, even in the fast-and-loose physics of Star Wars.
The idea that the Executor would travel to a different star system seems silly, after it is discussed that hyperdrive would allow the Falcon to escape to anywhere in the galaxy. The only reason to continue the pursuit with their ships is if they believe that the Falcon didn't have hyperdrive, and thus couldn't travel to other star systems. Vader even says that he wants every ship available to sweep the asteroid field, and hires bounty hunters to help.
Another problem with the fleet traveling to hyperspace with the Falcon in tow is that Han says that they could float away IF the fleet follows protocol and dumps their garbage. If their goal was to evade the fleet, they could have detached from the Avenger at the first garbage dump and saved themselves the trouble of evading multiple ships. Then again, they would need to be in an inhabited system to make repairs, so perhaps they jumped with the Destroyer and then detached nearer to their destination. However, this is never implied, and indeed he orders the Avenger to continue to scan the area while he is away apologizing to Vader, which heavily implies that the Avenger doesn't travel with him.
Eh, probably just a problem with the script that was glossed over.
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Episode 9 Rewrite, The Starlight Project (Released!) and ANH Technicolor Project (Released!)
Maybe they hitchhiked.
“That’s impossible, even for a computer!”
It always seemed a tad convenient that Vader turned out to be Luke's father in Empire.
I mean long before Leia was decided to be the sister of Luke at the last minute on the set of Jedi.
“Always loved Vader’s wordless self sacrifice. Another shitty, clueless, revision like Greedo and young Anakin’s ghost. What a fucking shame.” -Simon Pegg.
It seemed a bit odd that Vader after being declared the last ember of the Jedi religion by Tarkin in the first film was found bending his knee to another Force user who was Tarkin's supreme commander.
It's possible he kept it secret from all but a select few but by the time the third film came out he was loudly yapping and laughing about his Force usage before a hanger full of troops.
One thing that seems inconsistent in the original triology is the way things sometimes happen on huge scale, like giant star destroyers and a battle station that can destroy a whole planet and intimidate everyone in this huge galactic empire - but then the imperial forces are so intent on finding the location of rebel base and destroying it when the rebel base is smaller than a US air force base and the rebel fleet is smaller than the US air force. If there really was a rebellion that threatened this galatic empire, there would need to be hundreds of rebel bases hidden throughout the galaxy and they wouldn't be able to crush the rebellion just by destroying one.
Also, the idea that they could blow up the Death Star with just one shot from a single small fighter really strains credibility.
Also, when the main characters leave the death star Lei seems to have no problem leading the Imperial forces to the rebel base when she knows that the Millenium Falcon is being tracked. You'd think she would tell Han Solo to take the ship somewhere else to trick the Grand Moff Tarkin and Darth Vader.
Stu said:
Also, the idea that they could blow up the Death Star with just one shot from a single small fighter really strains credibility.
This is the theme of a lot of great movies - the small and meek defeating the big and strong. The classic David and Goliath. And in this case, it wasn't just one shot... that one shot required a whole team effort to research, prepare, and execute.
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History has proven a small determined group of people can be a constant thorn in the side of a larger, more powerful foe. We never saw the entire rebel fleet until Return of the Jedi, so it's clear there was more than one base of operations.
A powerful WWII vessel could be sunk by a well timed torpedo or bomb drop, so the DS getting blown up isn't that much of a stretch.
Allowing the Death Star to track the Falcon was an attempt to lure the battlestation into a vulnerable situation, away from the rest of the Imperial fleet. (And bank on Tarkin's overconfidence.) The window of opportunity to exploit any weakness found in the plans wasn't going to be very long either way.
Where were you in '77?
Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:
Stu said:
Also, the idea that they could blow up the Death Star with just one shot from a single small fighter really strains credibility.This is the theme of a lot of great movies - the small and meek defeating the big and strong. The classic David and Goliath. And in this case, it wasn't just one shot... that one shot required a whole team effort to research, prepare, and execute.
But if the empire was advanced enough to build something like the Death Star, you'd think they wouldn't use a reactor design that would allow the thing to blow up like a bomb because that would be to vulnerable to sabotage. And if they did, they would take every precaution to prevent that. It seems pretty amazing that the rebels could find this weakness when the very people who designed the thing didn't notice it, especially when the empire has a lot more resources than the rebels.
SilverWook said:
History has proven a small determined group of people can be a constant thorn in the side of a larger, more powerful foe. We never saw the entire rebel fleet until Return of the Jedi, so it's clear there was more than one base of operations.
A powerful WWII vessel could be sunk by a well timed torpedo or bomb drop, so the DS getting blown up isn't that much of a stretch.
Allowing the Death Star to track the Falcon was an attempt to lure the battlestation into a vulnerable situation, away from the rest of the Imperial fleet. (And bank on Tarkin's overconfidence.) The window of opportunity to exploit any weakness found in the plans wasn't going to be very long either way.
But even the fleet in the Return of the Jedi seems to small to me. The picture that's painted of the galaxy in the movies is one of civilization on an incredibly huge scale. It's hundreds of planets and the capital is a planet that's one big city with skyscapers that are two miles tall in some cases. Using the rebel fleet to fight against the government of that would be like five guys trying to take over Manhattan with just handguns.
Also Lei didn't know that there was a weakness, she was just hoping there could be a weakness. But the weakness in the movie is so incredible that she would have had no way of knowing that there was even the slighest chance that they could destroy the Death Star with the small forces that they had.
Also, when the Death Star is being attacked, nobody on it is saying "hey, what's going on here? What are they trying to do? They can't hurt us with such a small number of small fighters? Have they found some hidden weakness that we don't know about? What are these guys up to?"
And Grand Moff Tarken says "I think you overestimate their chances." But he doesn't say what "chances" he's talking about? Their chances of doing what? Does he know about the weakness or does he know that there might be some weakness and the rebels can blow the whole thing up?
You see Sam I don't think Tarken knew or cared what the weakness was.
Imperial might and fear of what it would do would always win in his book.
It's hubris.
It's not as hubristic as say... getting your deadly rival and his son to fight while you hang around a room with a great big inexplicable big hole in the floor but it comes from the same place.
I don't know, to me he seems more cold and calculating than that. Rational, but in a purely evil way.
For me there's some stuff in Star Wars films that I can just sort of ignore even though it's implausible, like Luke understanding R2D2's computer language and the domesticated tauntauns in the second film, but for certain things it just makes it harder for me to get into them because it makes it hard for me to forget that I'm watching a movie. It just sometimes seems like it's not a logical possibility at all.
You assume that Tauntauns are native to Hoth and not routinely domesticated harsh terrain beasts of burden.
Camels aren't native to Australia.
They aren't entirely adapted to night conditions so it would make sense if the weren't from there but brought, pre-trained for convenience.
Who are Lei & Tarken that you talk about?
J
There was a Tauntaun head in Jabba's palace, so Bingowings is onto something. If they aren't native to Hoth, they could be a remnant of an earlier colony.
There was a translator thingy on the screen in the X-Wing when Luke chats with Artoo.
Where were you in '77?
Jaitea said:
Who are Lei & Tarken that you talk about?
J
OK, I guess I was spelling those wrong. I think it should be Tarkin and Leia.
I read something saying that they were native to Hoth, but I don't think that has anything to do with the movie, I think it's something that some other author wrote.
Stu said:
Also, when the Death Star is being attacked, nobody on it is saying "hey, what's going on here? What are they trying to do? They can't hurt us with such a small number of small fighters? Have they found some hidden weakness that we don't know about? What are these guys up to?"
Sure they are. An officer even tries to tell Tarkin that they've "studied their attack patter and there IS a danger..." but Tarkin ain't havin' it.
NeverarGreat said:
I'd say that the largest problem with the OT from a technical plot point of view is the idea that the Millennium Falcon, without hyperdrive, manages to locate and fly to Lando's mining operation...
Alright, here's the best I can come up with:
The Anoat system is a neighboring star system to the Hoth system. They are rather close together in galactic terms, probably much closer than the average two systems. (Such as the Sun and Proxima Centauri).
The Falcon limped its way there without a hyperdrive over a significant period of time. Weeks or even months. Even at sublight, over time the Falcon is able to accelerate up to speeds that can make this journey.
Meanwhile, Luke travels to Dagobah in a far shorter period of time (hours to days) and spends the interval training with Yoda. He arrives at Cloud City later on through the benefits of traveling again through hyperspace.
Also, it's pretty strongly inferred through in films that the Falcon would have no trouble outrunning a Star Destroyer in a straight drag race, but things become complicated when you factor the Destroyer's turbolasers into the mix. The Falcon has to dedicate vast amounts of available power to rear deflector shields in order to withstand the blasts from the bigger ship. Because of this, only a fraction of the Falcon's potential speed is available to flee with.
As far as meeting Lando...
It's not called "Solo's luck" for nothing.
^WRONG PHOTO!
Stu said:
Also Lei didn't know that there was a weakness, she was just hoping there could be a weakness.
I thought that was a brilliant idea - the basic assumption that regardless of how huge and invulnerable someone looks, there is always a weakness. That's why defeating the Death Star amounted to getting the detailed plans so that they could find it.
Stu said:
Also, when the Death Star is being attacked, nobody on it is saying "hey, what's going on here? What are they trying to do? They can't hurt us with such a small number of small fighters? Have they found some hidden weakness that we don't know about? What are these guys up to?"
But they DID... remember when the commander says to Tarkin: "we've analyzed their attack, sir, and there is a danger".
The work of R2 to find the weakness is a bit like the work of Alan Turing, who figured out how to break the enigma codes in WW2. The Nazis never suspected it.
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R2 didn't find a weakness.
The team on the Yavin Base Bletchley parked that.
Tagge was very much aware of the potential for disaster, as was the Emperor (why else send Vader after the plans and after the base?).
Ah, true -- R2's work was more along the lines of the folks who grabbed the enigma off the sub and then transported it back to Bletchley. The analogy still holds, though.
"Close the blast doors!"
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Ah yes... Bon Jovi ;-D
Han and co must stink.
After travelling for days, weeks, months... From Hoth to Bespin, they're still wearing the same clothes.
Even after arriving on Bespin, Han still didn't changed. Smelly bastard!
As for Chewie, he really is one DirtyWookie!!!
