Author Topic: Technological Evolution
miilousuede 
Registered: Apr '09
Date Posted: 4/20 9:42pm Subject: Technological Evolution
I'm rather new to the earlier parts of the canon (the 4,000ish BBY Old Republic era) so please forgive me if I make short-sighted assumptions. I'm trying to read the current comic series and play the first KotOR game and I feel like they are just simply too modern. I watch the films and see a series of sprawling space faring metropolises. And Taris looks and feels very much like the film era Coruscant level of technology. I know Bacta hasn't been harnessed yet in this time period but it seems like (purely from a layman's perspective) that there is no real sense of scientific development over a period of four thousand years! Modern Civilization today is radically different from earlier communities in 2000 BC on Earth, why can't we have the same sort of realistic progression in the Star Wars universe?

 

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Darth-Ghost  5690 posts
Registered: Oct '03
48129_Anakin Skywalker (42109)
Date Posted: 4/20 9:52pm Subject: Technological Evolution
miilousuede posted:
I'm rather new to the earlier parts of the canon (the 4,000ish BBY Old Republic era) so please forgive me if I make short-sighted assumptions. I'm trying to read the current comic series and play the first KotOR game and I feel like they are just simply too modern. I watch the films and see a series of sprawling space faring metropolises. And Taris looks and feels very much like the film era Coruscant level of technology. I know Bacta hasn't been harnessed yet in this time period but it seems like (purely from a layman's perspective) that there is no real sense of scientific development over a period of four thousand years! Modern Civilization today is radically different from earlier communities in 2000 BC on Earth, why can't we have the same sort of realistic progression in the Star Wars universe?


They seem to have reached a stagnant end-point in technology. (Although there do seem to be a few upgrades in technology for LEGACY comics).

I think there are a few possible explanations:
-the wars always end up destroying progress and "resetting the clock" by how many times they have to rebuild
-they have limited the intelligence of droids and try to keep them subservient, the same is probably true for other machines and computers
-the galaxy has enough resources and doesn't really need technological advances at this point, there's no drive, what could be better than what they have now, technologically-speaking?

 

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Charlemagne19  26812 posts
Registered: Jul '00
6408_Jedi Outcast
Date Posted: 4/20 9:55pm Subject: Technological Evolution
miilousuede posted:
I'm rather new to the earlier parts of the canon (the 4,000ish BBY Old Republic era) so please forgive me if I make short-sighted assumptions. I'm trying to read the current comic series and play the first KotOR game and I feel like they are just simply too modern. I watch the films and see a series of sprawling space faring metropolises. And Taris looks and feels very much like the film era Coruscant level of technology. I know Bacta hasn't been harnessed yet in this time period but it seems like (purely from a layman's perspective) that there is no real sense of scientific development over a period of four thousand years! Modern Civilization today is radically different from earlier communities in 2000 BC on Earth, why can't we have the same sort of realistic progression in the Star Wars universe?


I suggest you keep it in perspective.

They've been a Space Faring Civilization for *20,000 YEARS*.

In other words, one might argue that the Prequel Era and Movies are not nearly modern ENOUGH.

 

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Carnage04  4905 posts
Registered: Mar '05
43718_Darth Nihl
Date Posted: 4/20 10:50pm Subject: Technological Evolution

Well, when was the last assault on Coruscant? Nothing past "The Old Republic", right?

I'd assume as technology advanced, building material will grow strong and structures will stand for hundreds, maybe thousands of years.

Most of Coruscant could actually be "Ancient"

 

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Havac  14250 posts
Title: Lit Mod of War
Registered: Sep '05
23735_Obi-Wan Kenobi
Date Posted: 4/20 11:20pm Subject: Technological Evolution
There have been spacefaring civilizations for far more than 20,000 years. They've had faster-than-light travel for 20,000 years by 4000 BBY. The Star Wars galaxy has been advanced beyond our wildest fantasies for thousands upon thousands upon thousands of years. Any expectations we might have about technological advance just couldn't apply. They're mind-bogglingly advanced; by and large, they've run out of stuff to invent. It's just a matter of refining technology more and more, rather than making great new advances.

 

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DarthMRN  194 posts
Registered: Dec '07
7843_Anakin / Vader
Date Posted: 4/21 5:49am Subject: Technological Evolution - Date Edited: 4/21 11:20am (1 edits total) Edited By: Havac
The original TotJ comics were admirable in their lack of development on one hand, and clearly technological advancedness on the other. That this era no longer is, can be blamed on the pants at Bioware, who in making KotOR 1 seems to have gone out of their way to cater to the movie audience by ripping mercilessly from PT era stuff rather than TotJ in this and several other respects.

The retcon, as I've understood it, consists of the galaxy rebuilding and restructuring after the Sith War. Which of course just makes the whole thing even sillier, with a technological boom in just 40 years, followed by 4000 years of stagnance.

I'm so happy this very same company is now tasked with creating new continuity for one of the largest single products in the (RL) hitory of SW...

 

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Excellence  24488 posts
Registered: Jul '02
6338_New Republic Seal
Date Posted: 4/21 5:54am Subject: Technological Evolution

sw tech is not "stagnant." People simply don't bother writing new tech.

But if we get anything too "weird" or "non-sw" you'll attack the writer, so don't complain.

Denning gave us maser beams. Something different. I appreciated that.

 

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Jedimarine  4888 posts
Registered: Feb '01
48815_11 - Crimson Empire
Date Posted: 4/21 6:27am Subject: Technological Evolution
If you are looking for one of those characteristics that distinguishes "scifi" from "space opera"...here it is.

science fiction is constantly on the lookout to "improve" the science, better the technology, and by that, the story can present more difficult problems to be solved and on and on.

Space Opera is not that way...Space opera presents us with the essential world, and from that the story progresses...sometimes history repeats itself...but it's not about finding that better technology to solve the problems...it's about the people...the technology is a given.

And as was said...when hyperdrives are about as common place as internal combustion engines in our universe, we'll see how quick our "technology" advances after that achievement.

 

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Zorrixor  4300 posts
Registered: Sep '04
42757_Prince Xizor
Date Posted: 4/21 7:06am Subject: Technological Evolution - Date Edited: 4/21 7:12am (2 edits total) Edited By: Zorrixor
Jedimarine posted:
If you are looking for one of those characteristics that distinguishes "scifi" from "space opera"...here it is.

science fiction is constantly on the lookout to "improve" the science, better the technology, and by that, the story can present more difficult problems to be solved and on and on.

Space Opera is not that way...Space opera presents us with the essential world, and from that the story progresses...sometimes history repeats itself...but it's not about finding that better technology to solve the problems...it's about the people...the technology is a given.

And as was said...when hyperdrives are about as common place as internal combustion engines in our universe, we'll see how quick our "technology" advances after that achievement.

I largely agree with all of that.

I don't really see Star Wars as plain "science-fiction" in the Star Trek sense. While I'm not a fan of the term "space opera", I fully agree that to me Star Wars has never been about the technology as such. The technology is just the background, the setting. The story itself has always been about the characters and their relationships, so I've never expected major changes in technology.

I do love it though when we get the occasional thing like the masers or those starship super ray gun things that Daala had in LOTF. I like though that on the whole fancy technology is rare, for whatever arbitrary reason. Hard to produce, knowledge lost, outlawed, whatever.

The way I see Star Wars is that it's important to keep in mind that the hyperdrive was reverse engineered from Rakatan technology. Presumably prior to that technology had reached a dead end. For all we know, certain planets may have been in the space age for hundreds of thousands of years, they just didn't have access to faster than light travel until the Infinite Empire came along. But on a planetary level they may have mastered everything else. Guns, forging, starship building, so on and so forth. Only thing they didn't have was the magic engine that fired them into hyperspace.

Similarly, I've then always just assumed that without stumbling upon another super advanced piece of technology to reverse engineer, the Republic/GA has reached the limit of its technological know-how. Maybe they'll miraculously stumble upon the physics behind how to instantly teleport across the Galaxy like the Aung-Tii. But I won't care if they never do. I see the level of science involved in Star Wars as so wildly beyond our understanding that a group of physicists could sit around for centuries and come up with nothing. Obviously some random Rakata dude got lucky. Presumably though there's just never been that super scientist in the Republic/GA who has unearthed the next great mystery.

Arguably, I'd say the Rakata had a bit of an advantage as they were a Force-based race, so they were able to work out how hyperspace worked more easily. Likewise, the Aung-Tii are a bunch of Force mystics too, which may explain how they worked out how to teleport. In the GFFA though, Force-users are in short supply and demonised a lot, plus the Jedi don't like screwing with the foundations of the Galaxy the way the Rakata did, so the GFFA is lacking the "Force Physicists" that other races have had.

I really do love what Dark Horse did with Karness Muur and XoXaan though. It was nice seeing how to a large extent the "primitive" appearance of TotJ could probably be put down to the art style as much as anything. If they were ever remade with all the modern graphic design tools, they'd probably look a lot cleaner and more modern, even if they stayed 100% loyal to the original designs. I feel the same way about Dark Empire. The technology in it appears very backward now compared to the Prequels, but it's only really a lick of paint away from appearing more advanced. The art just makes it feel "gritty" in an OT-style, that conveys the illusion of more limited technology, but under the surface that's not really the case.

 

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DarthMRN  194 posts
Registered: Dec '07
7843_Anakin / Vader
Date Posted: 4/21 10:09am Subject: Technological Evolution - Date Edited: 4/21 10:16am (1 edits total) Edited By: DarthMRN
Excellence posted:

sw tech is not "stagnant." People simply don't bother writing new tech.

First, I disagree. Seems to me like new tech is introduced in a story whenever this serves the storytelling, and isn't too out there. Second, if new tech wasn't being written, how is that different from actual stagnance?

Stagnance, as in stuff that is created in the modern era and suddenly turns up millennia earlier, sometimes after having been explicitly created much later.

Excellence posted:

But if we get anything too "weird" or "non-sw" you'll attack the writer, so don't complain.

Hah. I would not. I accept the space operatic parts of SW enough to accept that gadgets are brought into the story for narrative purposes only, to the point where if a character had access to all that has been created, he would be able to counter any dramatic challenge, thus becoming boring to read about.

What I do is take issue with inconsistencies in continuity. If something is established a certain way, that is okay. As someone said, given the level of tech in SW, things seem to have been quite slow for 20.000 years. That wouldn't make much sense from our Earth perspective, but I can accept that because of what SW is. Suddenly changing it, however, is another matter. As is showing dramatic progress during a few decades, followed by millennia of stagnation (as far as is written, at least).

 

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Zorrixor  4300 posts
Registered: Sep '04
42757_Prince Xizor
Date Posted: 4/21 11:01am Subject: Technological Evolution - Date Edited: 4/21 11:09am (1 edits total) Edited By: Zorrixor
DarthMRN posted:
Excellence posted:

But if we get anything too "weird" or "non-sw" you'll attack the writer, so don't complain.

Hah. I would not. I accept the space operatic parts of SW enough to accept that gadgets are brought into the story for narrative purposes only, to the point where if a character had access to all that has been created, he would be able to counter any dramatic challenge, thus becoming boring to read about.

I agree with Excellence in the sense that I never want to see Star Wars suddenly warp into something else. That said, I also agree that I don't mind "advancements" for narrative purposes. When a certain piece of tech suits a particular story, I'm fine with that. Likewise though, I'm fine with the general level of things remaining more or less the same.

Like, I'd find it odd if in Legacy somebody all of a sudden made a break through and teleporters came into widespread usage. Sure, teleport devices have been established in limited uses in the GFFA; but suddenly having teams teleport to planet surfaces would just feel too out of place and just a gratuitous Star Trek gimmick.

However, I'd have no problem if a story involved a team of explorers coming across a lost Gree hypergate and there being an adventure that revolved around a number of lost planets that had been part of the Gree Enclave. That wouldn't mean I'd suddenly want the GA mastering hypergate technology and them popping up everywhere else, but I'd be perfectly happy with them for the purpose of the story in that individual novel.

This is why I've long wanted some "Unknown Region" books, exploring lost and forgotten or otherwise completely unknown races, which would be an opportunity for some slightly more oddball storytelling. The adventures of Jedi Master Jim, galactic explorer and Ambassador of the Galactic Alliance or something along those lines as he went around the UR. I'd kind of hoped we might see that with Luke's exile, though I'm iffy about that now.

 

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_Catherine_  1038 posts
Registered: Jun '07
23521_Handmaiden
Date Posted: 4/21 11:15am Subject: Technological Evolution - Date Edited: 4/21 11:25am (3 edits total) Edited By: Havac
DarthMRN posted:
The original TotJ comics were admirable in their lack of development on one hand, and clearly technological advancedness on the other. That this era no longer is, can be blamed on the redacted at Bioware, who in making KotOR 1 seems to have gone out of their way to cater to the movie audience by ripping mercilessly from PT era stuff rather than TotJ in this and several other respects.
You don't think it's kind of silly for a 20,000-year-old civilization to dress like they're from ancient Egypt and have ships that look like they're made out of sticks?

I mean, I never did, but I didn't really think about it that much. The TOTJ aesthetics never bothered me, but then neither did the KOTOR aesthetics. Except for that damn Basilisk.

posted:
The retcon, as I've understood it, consists of the galaxy rebuilding and restructuring after the Sith War. Which of course just makes the whole thing even sillier, with a technological boom in just 40 years, followed by 4000 years of stagnance.
I think you're thinking of the wrong Sith war. As I understand it, there was a retro-fashion fad going on in the Republic during TOTJ.

 

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Zorrixor  4300 posts
Registered: Sep '04
42757_Prince Xizor
Date Posted: 4/21 11:44am Subject: Technological Evolution
_Catherine_ posted:
You don't think it's kind of silly for a 20,000-year-old civilization to dress like they're from ancient Egypt and have ships that look like they're made out of sticks?

I mean, I never did, but I didn't really think about it that much. The TOTJ aesthetics never bothered me, but then neither did the KOTOR aesthetics. Except for that damn Basilisk.

That echoes my feelings quite well. I never worried about it at the time when TotJ came out, but looking back at it these days, it does strike me as rather forcefully primitive for a space age civilisation. Even without KOTOR, I think the explanation for them all running around like Egyptians as a fashion trend makes more sense than it actually being because they weren't advanced enough to make stormtrooper style body armour.

[image=http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/e/e2/Battle_of_Coruscant_(Great_Hyperspace_War).jpg]

New images like that though I feel convey a far more space age technology level than the comics themselves did, yet still remain faithful to the original designs. Those Sith warships, while the same as the ones in Fall of the Sith Empire, actually look pretty normal. When I saw the JvS artwork, it made a lot of that stuff not seem half as primitive as TotJ itself seems due to the dated comic artwork.

KOTOR just seems to be when somebody got it in their heads to start making ships that looked like triangles rather than squares.

 

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EmeraldBlade  330 posts
Registered: Apr '08
21416_Atris
Date Posted: 4/21 1:36pm Subject: Technological Evolution
I've got to smile at this topic, because it is one of the many things that I can't believe people don't talk about more often on Star Wars forums. I am late to the EU compared to many here, and my journey started with the KOTOR games. Not being a gamer, I played them years after they had been released, and I was equally confused regarding the technology.

I don't even try to work it out. It is like the medical technology - they have mastered hyper-drive in the GFFA, but Darth Vader has to live inside a crude life-support "suit".

It is the difference between science Fiction and Science Fantasy, in my mind.

Still, I like reading the rationalizations (most of the fun most of the time), so keep it up coffee

 

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Tyber_Zahn  910 posts
Registered: Sep '08
41993_Tyber Zann
Date Posted: 4/21 1:38pm Subject: Technological Evolution
It would be difficult for us to really notice any difference because even though they're 4000 years behind the film era in terms of technology they're still at the very least 21 thousand years ahead of us. It's still going to look futuristic either way.

 

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DarthMRN  194 posts
Registered: Dec '07
7843_Anakin / Vader
Date Posted: 4/22 3:27pm Subject: Technological Evolution
_Catherine_ posted:
You don't think it's kind of silly for a 20,000-year-old civilization to dress like they're from ancient Egypt and have ships that look like they're made out of sticks?

No. As has been said, the tech is certainly there in most places to make it full-worthy SW. The appearance and fashion are awesome, IMO. Only by taking a RL perspective would egypian aesthetics seem out of place. What I think is silly is changing it all of a sudden.

And that doesn't just mean aesthetics. Even if most movies-era stuff was invented in TotJ, their technological primitiveness showed in other ways. Huge lighsabers growing movie-small in just a few decades? Starships growing sleek and streamlined rather than full of solar sails and protrusions? These things can be chalked up to fashion and design to a degree, but when the new look seems like it could with ease blend in with the PT, it gives off the wrong impression.

_Catherine posted:
I think you're thinking of the wrong Sith war. As I understand it, there was a retro-fashion fad going on in the Republic during TOTJ.

No, I meant the Great Sith War (Exar Kun etc.). Really? They retconned TotJ away in favour of KotOR?! You don't remember where you have this from, do you?

 

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