CT Bespin a great place to work yay or nay

You work on Cloud City get to live in the sky meet lots of new people. The Empire does not bother the place as the planet in Neutral. On the other hand when Baron Lando was in charge the place was still in desperate need of trade. The Ugnaughts have terrible working conditions so it sucks to be like them. The place is a Gambling den attracting an unpleasant crowd of smugglers like Han & Chewie no doubt some of the other galactic gangsters come to Bespin often so the nightlife scene is probably on the iffy side with high murder rates & crime.

So what do you reckon people i'd have to say yay because living on a Spaceport far away from the battlefield is still tranquility. Workers rights might be crap but it far better than the other hellholes in the Galaxy plus the more prosperous the planet the more likely the Empire will demand tribute or the Rebels might ruin your tranquility.

 

Cloud City seems to be loosely based on the archetype of an old mining town - not the ones that have been around long enough to become normal towns, but back in the old boomtown/gold rush days. Those places could be pretty rough, and you usually didn't move there voluntarily unless you were already wealthy and in charge of it or you were desperate to avoid starvation and hoping to get rich quick. (Odds were that you would not get rich quick, or ever.)

If you are desperate and stuck living in the Empire you could do worse, but I wouldn't consider it a great way of life.

 

before the Empire showed up it was essentially a paradise. It's big though. 10 miles or so across and circular, so it's quite huge. So some seedy elements might exist there but overall it was a safe place to work and play. Then the Empire came.

There is a symbology to Cloud City, Luke descending into the underworld, a place with a glamorous appeal but sitting on a perilous foundation. Betrayal, turning things to stone, all based in old myths.

 

Bob the X-Winger wrote

The Ugnaughts have terrible working conditions so it sucks to be like them.

Where did you get that impression from? In ESB we can clearly see that Ugnaughts are free to walk the same corridors as Bespin's wealthier citizens do, so there is no separation of classes, apparently (but also a hard to overlook presence of security personnel throughout the city)



(and the Ugnaught to the left doesn't look like a worker to me...)

On the contrary, their presence rather suggests to me that they might have had terrible working conditions elsewhere, perhaps even religious persecution, and found a new home or better job income in Cloud City.

Essentially, Cloud City is a very beautiful and sophisticated offshore platform in an ocean of clouds. The environment may be nice but it's rather sterile. You can't really go and visit the countryside on your free time...

I'd presume that many people go there just to make money over a certain amount of time and then return wealthier to their home planets. Probably a nice place to visit and to work, but not one where you'd want to live forever.



Some bits and pieces of information from Lando:

We're a small outpost and not
very self-sufficient. And I've
had supply problems of every kind.
I've had labor difficulties...

Our operation
is small enough not to be noticed...
which is advantageous for everybody
since our customers are anxious
to avoid attracting attention to
themselves.

Can't help to wonder what kind of customers he's talking about. Apparently that's neither the Alliance nor the Empire (yet), so there is a certain probability that he's supplying members of organized crime with the rare, anti-gravitational Tibanna gas...

 

Cloud City is not what I expected when Han and Leia discussed going to a "mining colony". Sure I expected something high-tech, but one could be forgiven for having expected mining equipment and people who look like they might work in a gas mine.

 

Martoto77

No pun intended, but how could one have expected anything about the look of a "gas mine"?

According to the original production hints and the annotations in the ESB Portfolio the basic concept was that Cloud City would float to cloud areas containing Tibanna gas (or the raw elements or whatever) and then fine comb and filter the air in these areas by means of the long vertical shaft to extract the rare Tibanna gas.

 

If they had said gas cloud harvesting, rather than mining, I might have been disuaded from projecting my impressions of onshore and offshore gas drilling on their "mining colony". I probably still would not have expected the palatial, art-nouveau environs of the city.

I love cloud city though. The "mining" nomenclature was clearly meant as misdirection since Leia's and Han's dialogue suggests that we are going to a similarly bleak or hostile location as the whole movie had presented so far. But then shazam! It's Emerald City. Cool!

 

My interpretation of bad work conditions actually refers to that piece of dialogue in which Lando said he had labour difficulties implying the Ugnaughts might have been going on strike spreading industrial unrest and seeing the scene in which they are playing with C-3PO's bodyparts with no Chief reprimanding them for this behaviour for me is a sign of toiling around in the mines and not having much fun. I don't see them having good pay and perks of the Job down there. Lando's idea of a happy workforce is a compliant workforce.

 

Appears to be one of the better employment opportunities in the galaxy. Although you can't beat the job security of Death Star builder.

 

It's not neutral, it's illegal and hidden. The Empire hasn't shut it down because the Empire doesn't know it exists.

I know the Empire gets a lot of blame for Bespin, but its one of the few times they are at least legally justified in raiding the place and taking control. People take Bespin as showing the Empire as way too restrictive, crushing small businessmen like Lando and making operations like Bespin impossible, and whatever, that's a fair criticism, but Lando is running a wholly illegal business.

 

It sure would be a beautiful place to take a holiday.

 

CT-867-5309 wrote

Lando is running a wholly illegal business.

Apparently so, but mostly from an imperial point of view. Remember what Biggs had to say about Imperial economy (in the deleted Anchorhead scenes):

What good is all your uncle's work
if it's taken over by the Empire?...
You know they're starting to
nationalize commerce in the central
systems... it won't be long before
your uncle is merely a tenant, slaving
for the greater glory of the Empire.

It would appear that Cloud City was small enough (and too remote?) not to be noticed. But eventually it would have been nationalized, too. Assuming that the Empire wanted to have the absolute monopoly on Tibanna gas probably rather sooner than later (and Lando was probably aware of that).

 

For god's sake every act in the galaxy would be deemed illegal that is not under Imperial control. Bespin is as good as neutral they don't offer any assistance to the Rebels. They also seem to be A O Kay with Bounty Hunters dropping by to have lunch. I'd have reason to believe the place in swarming with Imperial informers or military officers who are enjoying a nice holiday a rest from the toil of waging war unofficially of course.

 

I love Cloud City. If it was real I'd go there in my gap year and work as a waitress or dancer or something! And then marry Lando or knowing my luck get into a relationship with Lobot.

 

Certainly beats the other garbage worlds of the Galaxy.

 

Work I dunno, but maybe a vacation!