ST Hyperspace Use In The ST

What you've described is that the Holdo Manuever was a miracle, something so theoretically difficult that it wasn't considered a military tactic. That is in keeping with Poe's retort in TROS.

That is NOT how TLJ portrays the maneuver. Hux's reaction is consistent with it being an unconventional, but very achievable and devastating tactic. Holdo's decision to even use it in the first place reinforces this. These issues were already sorted out at length in the designated thread, and the explanation TROS landed with, the "It's so incredibly difficult that it could never be weaponized over thousands of years of interstellar warfare," explanation, has already been shown to not work in TLJ. It's too bad, because there was actually one single explanation that did work - Holdo was using her nav computer to target the Supremacy's hyperspace tracker - but Abrams doesn't keep up with the fan theories, apparently. Instead he just elected to retcon it, because it was obviously such a problematic decision.

 

that's exactly how it is descrbied and show in TLJ. Yes it's unconventional no one is saying it isn't.

Nothing you said disagreed with what I said. TROS doesn't disagree with this either they have that line to put an end to internet critics.

in no way is it retconed. I don't get how you are coming to that conclusion

The reason it's not weaponzied is because it is show in countless star wars media a ships hyper drive and engines can be disabled before making the jump to hyperspace.

 

TROS says the maneuver is only possible in a theoretical sense. That is not how TLJ portrays it, nor intends to portray it. That makes the TROS explanation a retcon.

That doesn't explain why it wouldn't be weaponized. Ships are shown to be capable of avoiding enemy weapons all the time.

 

@Glitterstimm very much agree with your analysis.

If you want to see a canonical, film reaction to “1 in a million” then take a look at ANH. Tarkin very much believed that the DS was not vulnerable to the kind of attack the Rebels were making, and was playing it very cool as a result. Even though his aide did say there was a danger. He wasn’t bothered about it.

Compare that to Hux who instantly sniffed the danger in what Holdo was attempting. He very much thought it was anything but 1 in a million.

 

wrong

TROS says there is a 1 in a million chance. That means the ship has to

a. be the right distance too close and you don't destroy your target. too far and you pass through them with out hurting them
b. not under attack. If the enemy is firing they can disable your engines or destroy you


What Holdo did was an act of desperation a 1 in a million chance and it worked

he realized that he was in danger he is a coward first and formost. But I think that was more of him just trying to stop a ship from crashing into him and killing him. I don't think his first reaction was

"oh no my entire fleet my be destroyed" more likely "Oh no i'm about to die"

it's also shown many times that a ship can be disabled easily. Espeically the bigger ships. It's also a mater of resources. At best you would be trading 1 ship for another. The odds there would be a fleet in the same formation like that is slim to none. You are better off fighting and have ships remaining then fire wave after wave of ship in the small hope that you managed to get a succesful hyperspace ram.

Do you know why we don't ram our own Navy ships into other Navy ships? Because we have more effective weaposn.

Remember also in TLJ 1 single payload of a bomber took out an entire capital ship. In ROTJ a single A -wing took out the Super Star Destroyer.

In Empire a single Ion canon was disabling Star Destroyers left and right. Why not use those all the time? Hell in Rogue One 2 Y-wings with ion bombs took out a star destroyer.

 

Who said anything about ships? Why not mass produce hyperspace missiles, or small, heavy craft piloted by expendable droids? If you've got a lot of them, then why would they be any more vulnerable to getting their engines disable than any other fighter or ship? Again, everything you're bringing up has been sorted out at length in the designated thread.

Ok, so now we are getting to the heart of the issue. Star Wars has traditionally modeled their space battles after WW2 movies. All the various fantastical technologies you mentioned and their employment are roughly analogous to war movies like The Dam Busters (Battle of Yavin), Tora! Tora! Tora! (Battle of Endor, Scarrif), etc. This means that even though the GFFA is basically using magic in place of technology, there is still an internal logic to how it all works. Hyperspace however, doesn't have any real world parallel, and that's why Lucas did not weaponize it, because it would disrupt the dynamic. Even the most prominent exception to this rule (TCW ep 4) portrays its "weaponization" more like a transportation accident than anything else.

Rian Johnson just didn't understand or respect this dynamic, that's why the Holdo Maneuver doesn't make any sense in-universe. It's not because nobody every thought of it before, it's because everyone before him did think of it but had enough respect for the mythos to avoid it.

 

size and mass. The reason it did so much damage is because it's a giant freaking capital ship

A smaller ship won't do as much damage.

wtf?? what do you think the entire bomber scene at the start of the movie was based off of?? WW2 bombing runs.

Understand or respect?? seriously get over yourself

By your comment George Lucas didn't understand or respect this when he wrote the prequels as in ROTS the opening space battle is based off of 17th centruey naval combat with broadside canons.

again it is perfectly explained why it worked and why it is a rare occurrence in TLJ The line in TROS reenforces this by explaining something to people who didn't "get it"

It didn't retcon anything

 

So, why aren't we strapping hyperdrives onto asteroids? Also, have you seen the size disproportion between the Raddus and the Supremacy? It suggests that a fighter colliding with a Star Destroyer at hyperspeed would destroy it.

Look up the Battle of Guadalcanal. Relatively close quarters naval combat did happen in WW2, although the Battle of Coruscant is an admittedly exaggerated re-imagining of that dynamic. However, it's nothing like the Holdo Manuever, which suggests that navies somehow had the capability to accelerate their battleships, cruisers and gunboats to supersonic speeds instantly but never weaponized that technology.

I've explained for you at length why it is a retcon. I think you just don't have the same expectations for internal consistency in Star Wars that I do, and that's perfectly fine!

 

for what? Planet killers? We already have death star tech for that. We also have seen that 1 turbo laser can completey destroy an asteroid.


Have you seen the size difference between a fighter and the Raddius? The Raddius is huge. Also we see the damage done to the Supremcey is the size of the Raddus. A smaller ship would do similar size damage if anything at all and not just crash into the hull.

Also the Supremecy wasn't destroyed it was cut in half and they were still able to destroy all the AT ATs and troops.

Where we saw cheap WW2 bombers take out a huge dreadnaught. Which is cheaper a fleet of bombers or 1 capital ship?

Quick name 1 single WW 2 German, US or Japanese ship that had fixed broadside canons.

Too slow there isn't any. Hence 17th centruey naval combat. this is his call back to swashbucklling naval combat movies.

this is such a weird freaking hill to die on. If this is where you want to stand then show me what WW2 ship had hyperspace at all? Or what WW2 ship had buzz bots? How about which WW2 ship had shields? How about a WW2 plane that had bombs that shut off all electrical power on a ship?

no can't find one?

If anything Ramming is the most WW2 thing in any star wars movie as there where several naval battles where battleships and even subs rammed the enemy ship in a final act of desperation.

 

Hmmm, not really a hill to die on, because I'm 100% correct with my analysis. What the Holdo Maneuver accomplishes is not analogous to conventional ship ramming. If it were, then there would be no reason for Poe to explicitly say it's not, as he does in TROS.

 

...... so you are saying every weapon in Star Wars has a 1 to 1 ratio with ours?


they don't do it in TROS because any ship that attempted it would be destroyed

 

No, I was pointing that out because you seemed to be saying it was analogous to WW2 ramming. It's not.

 

it's as analogus as any other WW2 theme they use in Star Wars. The Trench run is based off of the Dam Busters but did the perfect shot that was aimed using space magic cause an explosion the size of a small moon?

did they have a targeting computer?

oh wait i know were they on a ticking clock because the dam was about to fire it's super laser and destroy the Allies?


it is just as analogous as anything else in star wars

 

Remind when in WW2, or at any other time, someone figured out how to accelerate a battleship to supersonic speeds instantly?
Too slow! They didn't!

Look man, it's ok to have a different set of expectations than I do. There's nothing wrong with that! We've had this discussion at length for over a year, and TROS has only confirmed what I and many others believe, that TLJ's portrayal of hyperspace didn't make sense, and would need to be retconned.

 

Show me when in WW2 a pilot used a targeting computer and space magic to blow up a dam that was about to destroy the allies?
They didn't

it did make sense and you missed the point of TROS statement. it wasn't to retcon but to silence people who were going to ask "why didn't they use hyperspace ramming"


You still have yet to explain why you think it retcons it. You went off on some tangent about how Rain didn't respect Star Wars because he didn't make it a 1 to 1 WW2 analogy (even though he did and not all star wars space combat is ww2 based)

I've given you reasons why it's a 1 in a million and why it is useless to weaponize it. Yet you avoided those answers because they disrupt your view of something you didn't understand.

In no way does 1 in a million contradict what Holdo did

 

Nice!

 

Getting away from the Holdo maneuver for a bit...

The thing that bothers me in TROS is that hyperspace travel is now apparently instantaneous. It really feels like the first time in the saga that we have seen (and I could be wrong) ships making hyperspace jumps without time passing. The OT/PT made use of hyperspace travel for character moments, showing that it took some time, even at these speeds, to travel these distances. Even JJ used that dynamic in TFA. But TROS seems to throw all of that out the window - First with the (ludicrous in my opinion, but ymmv) idea of only having 16 hours to get to Palpatine, but then with the lightspeed skipping and the fact that Lando can jump all around the core planets apparently while the fleet has a battle. It takes a lot of headcanon fudging to make the travel in this film make sense in any way for me.

I know that it is supremely nerdy and in the end it would be a nitpick for most, but this is the one thing that bothers me the most about the film. It feels universe breaking to me as if we are suddenly in a completely different fictional setting. Am I the only one?

 

16 hours is such a stupid mention there limiting all events of the movie to very limited time. I guess hyperspace travel just developed a lot, there seems to be apparent technological development in Star Wars now. People used to complain that technology in Star Wars doesn't evolve. When it does people complain about that too But I really wonder why hyperspace skipping was even added, it made no sense with previous depictions of hyperspace travel and it served no purpose in the story. Poe could've just done anything reckless to get Falcon broken if they so much wanted to have conflict between Rey and Poe. (In the end that idea went nowhere)

 

Yeah, it was a neat visual (which began, if I'm not mistaken, with the Falcon jumping to lightspeed through an ice wall??) The whole time though, I was thinking, "Huh, Poe can dust crops...."

For me, the only saving grace of that scenario came afterwards in seeing and hearing how damaged the Falcon was after performing such feats. So while such a tactic may (now) be possible, it doesn't seem all that practical. (Although they did repair the Falcon rather fast.....)

 

So far, the only explanation for light-skipping that makes any sense to me is that it's going to be part of a ride at the theme parks.

 

There's a lot of issues with how hyperspace travel is presented in the ST, and I think you hit on some very good points. A lot of this boils down to JJ just simply not caring, like, at all, about pre-established rules in this fictional universe. He's done the same in the new Star Trek films, and it's very representative of his general filmmaking style. He just wants things moving, moving, moving, and doesn't much care about anything else.

The power of good world building in fictional universes is ensuring that whatever basic rules you create, you follow. It doesn't necessarily matter if some things are outlandish (ie, space wizards using laser swords, a station that blows up a planet, etc.), we all know this is science fiction and we're all willing to suspend our disbelieve on certain things, and those are things that are generally established by certain rules. Once you start breaking rules here and there, though, is where it gets problematic. Both Star Trek and Star Wars are fictional universes with established history, science, rules, etc. It frustrates me to no end that JJ has never really cared much for the small details in both universes, details in mind that don't really constrain any sort of storytelling, as long as one is willing to be creative and play within the rules of the universe. In my mind, JJ cares more about his story, and just takes the short cut to make things happen his way, rather than trying to make it work within universe.

 

No you're not the only one - the Galaxy just keeps getting smaller and smaller. It does seem that it used to take time in Star Wars to travel from place to place.

For me the immersion was destroyed in TFA when Finn looks up into the sky and sees 5 planets being simultaneously annihilated, immediately realising they've 'destroyed the Republic' (?), whilst Starkiller Base wanders hither and thither with no apparent method of propulsion. I can only presume Abrams and Kasdan lack any appreciation of cosmology at all, down to not realising that Star Wars had previously taken place in many different Solar Systems, between which light would take many years to travel. Are they even aware of what a Solar System is? Now there are 5 inhabited planets in one Solar System, plus the one we're on, plus the one the First Order are floating about on, all parked so our heroes can see them in the sky, just because it's convenient for a visual in that poorly told moment in the film. It's not so much the level of ignorance on display - someone on the production had probably read a book at some point - it's more how low their estimation of the audience is. It's infuriating, because it doesn't have to be this way. Film doesn't have to be full of such obvious and lazy stupidities. If you pulled this rubbish in an SF novel, it would never get published, but Hollywood chucks 100s of millions of dollars at this hack-work, and it's lapped up. Star Wars is hardly the only offender, to be fair.

 

I mean in the OT it took minutes. Think about it in ROTJ the Rebel fleet leaves for Endor when Han and the ground forces enter the bunker and arrive just as they are being taken out. So maybe 10 minutes?

In Rogue One the Rebel fleet leaves for Scarif when they ground battle has started and Vaders's Fleet with the Death Star arrive after the rebel fleet gets there.


Then from Scarif to Tatooine is supposed to be minutes maybe.

In ANH it takes maybe 10 to 15 minutes to get from Tatooine to Alderan as it's blown up while they are in flight and they arrive as it is freshly exploded.

In Empire from Hoth to Dagobah takes maybe 10 to 15 mins as Luke gets to Dagobah just as Han find the cave to hide in.

Hyperspace isn't supposed to be real it's just a narative device so they can go to different planets.


While I will agree the whole Hyperspace skipping thing did seem a bit to fast and just a fun thing they did.

 

But at least they where different and had some otherworldly vibe to it.

 

The lightspeed-skipping scene raises a question that left me scratching my head while watching TROS: why was almost everything shot in close up? The Falcon is on this extraordinary planet with spires, etc, and for some reason, instead of a wide establishing shot, we’re getting a blurry closeup. So many odd visual decisions in the film.