ATMachine

As in "Intergalactic Gargle Blaster"?

TILT (with an extra t for verbosity) the 1990 indie film Hardware was the evident inspiration for Jan Ors' mechanical hand in LucasArts' 1997 Jedi Knight.

I quite like Ewan McGregor, so I wouldn't mind him showing up in some capacity in the anthology (non-PT) films. But I think it'd be a bit bathetic in dramatic terms for Luke to still be having daily chats with Ben and Yoda.

More like the SOTME story conferences from 1976. ;D

Barbarella (1968)

The sort of movie that these days (in the wake of the Reagan Revolution which Star Wars heralded) you'd never see in an American cineplex.

Although it evidently was the source for the design of the Bespin twin-pod cloud cars.

9.1/10 blouses with vacuformed breast windows.

I have a sudden urge to study the paintings of Cranach the Elder.

Meh, John Boyega's American accent is for the birds. I much prefer his normal speaking voice. I wonder who we ought to curse out for telling him not to use it.

DuracellEnergizer said:

I guess Luke was fitted with one of those explosive implants, too.

 Seriously, dude, you've been reading too many pulp SF novels. No idea that practical would ever occur to GL.

I bet Struzan could've made the basic idea work, though.

Clicking through to the original source article at TheWrap.com led me to this quote:

Oscar winner Benicio del Toro is nearing a deal to play the villain in “Star Wars: Episode VIII,” for which plot details remain unknown. However, the Internet has taken it upon itself to speculate that Han Solo’s daughter could be introduced in the film.

Han Solo's daughter? But I thought that was supposed to be Daisy Ridley's character.... where's she going to be in Ep8 anyways?

Also: dude, when's the next trailer?

DuracellEnergizer said:

ATMachine said:

How come the Empire doesn't implant explosive tracking devices into its prisoners' bodies to prevent them escaping?

Or its military personnel, for that matter. There'd be no fear of defection then.

 Nah, David Lynch already used that idea.

Personally, I pity indigo more.

How come the Empire doesn't implant explosive tracking devices into its prisoners' bodies to prevent them escaping? After all, it seems to be simple enough that even a penny-pinching Toydarian in the backwater of the Outer Rim can do it.

Darth Id said:

John Doom said:

I suspect it's either as Tobar said, or that he changed his name into "Ben" before serving the Organas in the Clone Wars.

 Nope--sorry, but Ben is just his name.  That's all.

 Sorry. That hasn't been true since the fourth-draft script of Star Wars from early 1976.

That it seems there can be only one.

I don't hate that Matt Stover gave Blackhole an old-school Time Lord hat, though.

Sorry! Shows how young I am, I guess.

I was thinking of the lightsaber tests on the SW Blu-ray bonus features, where they try out in-camera effects for blue, white, and red lightsabers -- all of uniform colors.

SilverWook said:

ATMachine said:

Judging by the hilt on the toy version, it seems possible that the two emitters on the crossguard are meant to do the job of protecting the hand, while also providing two additional smaller blades protruding a tright angles.

Of course, that could be totally wrong! I am judging this from a tiny piece of plastic, after all.

I do recall that Ralph McQuarrie's early saber hilt designs were based on flashlights with flared rims -- for the exact reason that that would make a good handguard. (Probably it was dropped because that design wouldn't fit very well on a utility belt.)

 Or maybe they were worried they would look like flashlights. ;)

 Neat image -- where's it from?

Of course, if a lightsaber can cut through anything except another saber, what would be the point of making the crossguard out of anything but more lightsabers?

You'd just have to be careful to make the cross-emitters stick out far enough horizontally so you don't burn your hand off. :D

Judging by the hilt on the toy version, it seems possible that the two emitters on the crossguard are meant to do the job of protecting the hand, while also providing two additional smaller blades protruding a tright angles.

Of course, that could be totally wrong! I am judging this from a tiny piece of plastic, after all.

I do recall that Ralph McQuarrie's early saber hilt designs were based on flashlights with flared rims -- for the exact reason that that would make a good handguard. (Probably it was dropped because that design wouldn't fit very well on a utility belt.)

Yeah, I'd say that's a real chock of monkey snot.

SilverWook said:

ATMachine said:

True. But at least it could be edited. Didn't the BBC have ludicrously antiquated cameras that only allowed you to halt filming four times or so per setup?

 Stopping tape doesn't require turning the cameras off. I imagine they could overheat if you ran them all day, but in the range of a normal studio session they shouldn't be a problem.

I had the misfortune of using 1970's tube cameras in college, (because the studio was built in 1975, and not used until the mid 80's) and they did require "warming up" and a lot of tweaking. They were replaced with modern chip sensor cameras the moment I graduated of course. ;)

I may have misremembered the bit about the cameras having to be halted, I confess.

They still could barely edit the program, however., since unlike with Star Trek, the Beeb filmed Doctor Who on videotape. The tape editing equipment then was so primitive that they had to film virtually every scene in sequence.

So the editing team had very little ability to go back and re-shoot sequences that "didn't work" or in which somebody flubbed a line. That stuff tended to get left in.

This also bespeaks a larger "show must go on" mentality -- the legacy of the BBC's origins in radio and stage drama (vs. the American TV networks which mainly grew out of Hollywood.)

"Ben" is actually the Old High Galactic equivalent of "Toshiro Mifune." Obi-Wan watched a lot of samurai movies as a young man.

"I find that if I just sit down and think..."

"Whooooooaaaa!"

"...a solution presents itself!"

-- Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

True. But at least it could be edited. Didn't the BBC have ludicrously antiquated cameras that only allowed you to halt filming four times or so per setup?