ST Bad Plot Twists that Shouldn't Appear in the Sequel Trilogy

I think he's factoring in the distance when he's speaking about time. For instance, if Star Wars occurred 2.57 million ago in the Andromeda galaxy, then we could only be learning about it right now since the Andromeda galaxy we see in the sky is actually 2.57 million years old. (For instance, "radio" communications from Andromeda 2.57 million years ago would just be arriving at Earth today, and what we're seeing in the sky is where Andromeda was not where it is right now) So, if Star Wars occurred 1 million years ago in the Andromeda galaxy, then we wouldn't be able to learn of it for another 1.57 million years, and that would be our future.

I agree with both of you that GL clearly wasn't factoring in when humans would be learning of the events of Star Wars. I'm sure he also didn't look at a chart of our known universe to figure out which galaxy Star Wars occurred in. He was changing up the old fairy tale opening: "A long time ago in a kingdom far, far away."

We were just taking things more literally. One poster who knows astronomy commented on my Top 10 list on pg 1, where one of bad twists was that ST occurs "A long time ago, in a galaxy slightly less far away." That poster mentioned how what I said could actually be true in reality because of galactic drift, and he used the Andromeda galaxy, which is the closest galaxy to the Milky Way, as an example because it is drifting towards the Milky Way. So we were just riffing on the idea -- well, what if the events of Star Wars did really occur in the Andromeda galaxy? One poster mentioned that though the Andromeda galaxy is the closest galaxy to the Milky Way, it would still qualify as far, far away since it is 2.57 million light-years away. I then added that if the events of Star Wars did really occur in the Andromeda galaxy, then we couldn't learn of those events until 2.57 million later. Consequently, if the events of Star Wars did occur in another galaxy and if we did learn of them, then GL would be completely right because even the Andromeda galaxy qualifies as being far far way and our learning of those events would guarantee that those events at least occurred 2.57 million years ago. Like you guys said, GL wasn't factoring in the transmission time of the information when he said "A long time ago," but I was just going to a silly extreme of pretending that Star Wars actually occurred, and since in my scenario Star Wars actually did occur (and it wasn't made up by GL's imagination), then at the very latest it must have occurred 2.57 million years ago, because if it happened any more recently than that, then we wouldn't have any way to learn of it because information from the GFFA wouldn't have gotten here yet.

And to end my post, I will put a big one of these: !!!!!

(I also wanted an excuse to show that incredible image of the Andromeda galaxy in the night sky on another page of this thread!)

 

You are saying my exact point in other words. Are you sure you're addressing the right person? darth ladnar is the one saying "it has to have occurred a long time ago". I'm concurring that it could have occurred any time Lucas likes and that such a statement unnecessarily assumes the story was transmitted from there to here. My "it" referred to the end of that imaginary transmission, if that's what he's going to assume. In other words, the story isn't bound to have happened a long time ago by the laws of the speed of light, only by the decision of the writer.

[edit]I posted this simultaneously with darth ladnar's explanatory post above, thus now putting me at an agreeable position with him

 

Fair enough, I just mentioned your comment that 1 million years ago would be "in the future" just bcs the galaxy might be a long distance away. That's not how time works. The time it takes for light to reach us is a separate issue. Something that happens on the sun takes 8 minutes for us to detect. That doesn't mean it just happened at that instant, it still happened 8 minutes ago.

I know, I'm just saying that there's no need to factor in the distance. As a work of fiction GL is saying this happened a long time ago in a far away galaxy. That can be a perfectly accurate statement if it's 1 million years ago in a galaxy 10 million light years away. There's no need to consider some imaginary transmission that GL received that needed to reach him at the speed of light! That's crazy talk.

 

The ending scene of ESB shows a grand spiral galaxy subtending I'd guess 90 degrees, meaning, whatever the radius of that galaxy is, they are at a distance of radius * square root 2. Andromeda 220,000 ly diameter, so 110,000 ly radius , so, 156,000 ly distance at end of ESB. Andromeda distance 2.54 m ly = 2,540,000 ly ; 2540000 ly diameter / 220000 ly distance = 11.5. So if Han said he's flown from one side of this galaxy to the other, and that galaxy was Andromeda, then Han would have to fly 11.5 that distance from the core of Andromeda to reach Earth, and ESB already shows that there's no problem getting well outside of their galaxy.

 

I think we should send this conversation to the producers of Big Bang Theory

 

Its really a Disney Musical and all of John Boyega's lines being ripped straight from the Star Wars Gansta Rap while Daisy Riley is forced to sing every Disney Princess song.

 

Thanks for bringing us back down to Earth with a thud

 

evil can never be destroyed

 

The parsec is a unit of time.

 

This is great extrapolation, but unfortunately, I think there's one problem with it. Ships can only travel at faster-than-light speeds in the GFFA by taking hyperspace routes, and those hyperspace routes don't extend far outside the SW galaxy. Plus, there's no way for our heroes or anyone else in the Saga Era of the GFFA to extend them further because they don't understand the technology. From what I remember, the hyperspace routes were created by an advanced ancient race that used Force technology to construct them, but as that civilization declined, they lost the ability to construct new routes. According to the EU, those who live in the Saga Era of the GFFA don't really understand the physics of the hyper-routes or even how hyperdrive engines work. They simply found hyperdrive technology and reversed-engineered it. Since they wouldn't be able to construct hyperspace routes to the Milky Way, any Star Wars spaceship could only travel to Earth at sub-light speeds, limiting their travel time to slightly longer than that of any transmission involving the electromagnetic spectrum.

Of course, the ETs that appear TPM seem to have made the transit from the GFFA to here, so maybe the answer to all of this is hidden somewhere in Spielberg's ET !!!

 

So how did the Falcon get from the Hoth system to the Bespin system with its hyperdrive offline? (The backup hyperdrive engine theory? It actually took a few weeks theory? The systems where really close theory? Or the Falcon can go faster than lightspeed without relativistic effects but not nearly as fast as hyperdrive speeds theory (that one is a bit of a mouth full)?)

Plus the EU is dead atm, so all they really need is precise calculations so they don't bounce too close to a supernova... since that end their trip real quick.

 

Oh my lord, I've seen fierce debates about this one -- seriously!!! It got so bad that both sides got banned. It was crazy. I don't know that much about the Hoth to Bespin debate, but I do know that it's been going on since the 1980's. I guess there is an official star chart of the GFFA, and it shows that Bespin and Hoth aren't close. Consequently, that would mean that going sub-light speeds the Falcon took thousands of years or something to make it to Cloud City. So, in the end, it always ends up that one side says that the official star charts are wrong and other says that the Falcon can still go faster than light even without its hyperdrive.

I'll pull something out my butt to try to resolve the issue once and for all: My guess is that whoever it was who erased the Kamino system before ATOC also moved Bespin on the star charts just for laughs, and because of this, the star charts are really wrong, and Bespin and Hoth are actually very close together -- close enough so that Han can make it there in maybe 3 months or so at sub-light. (I can't imagine it could be any closer or Luke really got short-changed on his training!)

 

I believe Han & Chewie patched it up enough while in the space slug to make the jump to Bespin. It still needed further repairing though. The Empire then deactivated it while on Cloud City.

EDIT: no it wasn't working was it? That's why Han turned around & charged the Star Destroyer. Well either Bespin was close by or they patched up the drive en route & made a small jump.

I don't see that as much of a plot hole, unlike Padme knowing where the hangar is at the end of Clones

 

That's why it belongs in this thread

 

Leia got out and pushed, really, really hard.

 

Wicket digs up Darth Vader's helmet from the burnt up remains of Vader. Wicket puts the helmet on and promptly turns to the Dark Side.

C3PO is our only hope against the all powerful Darth Wicket. 3PO convinces Wicket he will become angry and use his magic if Wicket doesn't relinquish his brutal reign of terror across the universe. Wicket senses a presence he hasn't felt in a long time (Luke), wises up to 3PO's bluff, and slays 3PO and Luke in an epic duel.

Leia ends up killing Wicket by feeding him a poisoned snack.

 

Dooku had a vision that an opponent of the Sith would attempt to flee from Hoth to Bespin, so he moved Bespin away from Hoth on the star charts in order throw the Sith's opponent off.

 

It's funny but Ahsoka not being in ep VII was the first thing that popped into my head. Seeing someone thought of that too was pretty amusing. Also agrees about Sidious.

The only other thing that comes to mind off hand would be Luke being responsible for the creation of a third death star. Like he voted for it because it seemed like a good idea for future protection.

 

JJA takes the term "space opera" literally and all of the dialog is sung ... dramatically.

-OR-

More Sith whose second names were created by removing "IN" from the beginning of the word (as in INsidious and INvader), giving us the Dark Lord of the Sith, Darth Coherent, and his apprentice, Darth Advisable (who continually laments that his master isn't Darth Surmountable) as sequel trilogy villains.

 

The Stargate franchise has done quite well with this resort or conceit or condition. GFFA's Kardashev 2.5 & 3/4 society can go on and on and on and on and on, as one might surmise from Kenobi's 'thousand generations', without KNOWING how crap works to the planck scale? I mean, these EU 'Stargate Ancients' are long dead, but Geonossian or Separatist/Sith funded scientists and engineers can come up with the Death Star, a technological terror? I dare say the SW films, all of them, are replete with character familiarity with mechanical engineering, astrogation, and keeping a 'used universe' up and running. Reflect on the qualifications of some EU writer to make this call.

The 'Trade Routes' in TPM, as I understand it, were thoroughfares protected from piracy. They were an infrastructure of policy, not of unknown technology. Please cite your sources if you know better, or if Lucas says anything on this.

 

I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks that precursor races/civilizations don't belong in Star Wars. I've always preferred the idea that unlike in most sci-fi stories, the Star Wars galaxy was developed by "modern" civilization.

 

If hyperdrives can only move you along certain lines, there had better be a visual somehow indicating that. Basic movie science. No visual showing a cobweb of routes, or ships moving along a track in space, they can go wherever they want. Doesn't mean they should go off into the great unknown, but they have that option.