Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker

[Peelee]

An artificial engineering problem imposed by an executive's arbitrary aesthetic preferences is hardly novel.

I agree in spirit, but a CPU constantly popping out of its socket was certainly a novel problem regardless.

[Lethologica]

Sci Fi has long been said to include things, Buck Rogers, 2001, Asimov, Martian Chronicles, Lensmen, Dune and John Carter. Agreed, we can use the Sci-Fi term broadly to encompass anything with a futuristic setting.

However, then we include things like post-apocalyptic fantasy settings (Shannara Chronicles) and politically focused speculative fiction works that happen to be set in the future (1984, Anthem, A Handmaid’s Tale). I noticed bookstores (do they still exist?) and online vendors will just stick fantasy together with future settings and label it all “sci-fi.”

The problem is the term is so overused it starts to have no meaning at all. Star Trek isn’t “hard” sci-fi by most critics estimations, and embraces a lot of genres in different episodes, but Star Wars looks and feels like a different type of story that happens to be set in space.

A lot of technology in Star Wars literally work in ways that embrace the magical. Lightsabers are hand built by Jedi after going on vision quests to attain sentient kyber crystals (or Sith learn to torture the crystals). The Death Star works by using absolutely gigantic amounts of these same special crystals.

Both old and new canon ancient Jedi has use of special technology that could do things like time travel, teleportation and resurrect the dead. Palpating and Vader seek to take advantage of this lost tech by seeking it in the same way Indiana Jones or King Arthur goes after ancient magical and divine artifacts.

The old EU explanation for why technology in Star Wars doesn’t advance fast is an ancient extinct master race called the Builders created most of it and left it seeded throughout the galaxy after they were overthrown in slave revolts. Modern engineers and scientists didn’t fully understand the theory of how things work, just how to reverse engineer what was already created.

In other words...the lack of the science part of science fiction is literally written into Star Wars’ midichlorian infused DNA.

Star Wars is big enough to be multiple things at once. Science fiction is big enough to have different types of stories in it. Stories are all one big continuum anyway - you can very roughly characterize different regions of the continuum as genres if you like, but the boundaries are basically meaningless, and stories have no obligation to respect them. You'll see speculative themes in fantasy settings and fantasy themes in futuristic settings and literary, romance, epic, procedural, detective, military, horror, mythical, thriller, political, satire etc. in both. Pick a genre, it's massively present somewhere in SF. And pretty much any genre (especially fantasy) has speculative stories that cut right to the "what if..." heart of how you define SF. Is the difference only that SF's speculation is tied to scientific/futuristic/spacebound trappings? That's no different than the difference between Star Wars and fantasy. There's no reason to recoil from fantasy-SF mixtures specifically or try to root them out of the genre.

[Reddish Mage]

It's not that Startrek is unrealistic, it's that Startrek at it's core is about taking things that we don't have, or aren't real at the moment. Advanced technology, interaction with aliens. The Earth not being on the verge of tearing itself apart with countries going to war. And asking the question,

"How would this affect humanity?" To me That question is the core of Science Fiction. It's why I consider The Twilight Zone to be the greatest Scifi series of all time.

While what you say is perhaps the profound message of Star Trek, in this context it provokes me to roll my eyes until I have a problem with it staying in the socket

By the way, while I realize that the solution to an eye falling out of its socket may just be to pop it back in. I’d still prefer I had adoctor who knows the problem by its Latin name and has the resources to do the “procedure” in a sterile environment and potentially examine if there’s any underlying reasons why my eye wasn’t behaving properly.

There are all sorts of professionals in many fields that speak in a lot of specific jargon and use uniquely named instruments and software. That this is what it would sound like to hear 24th century engineers discuss what they are doing among their intellectual peers in their city-sized spacecraft as it goes at warp 8 through deep space seems pretty intuitive.

Its not the fact that simple solutions don’t sometimes fix mechanical issues. Its the fact that if that’s all you have in your vocabulary to discuss problems of nuclear engineering, biological nanotechnology, quantum computing and their futuristic cousins and descendants, you are probably in the wrong job.

At this point please tell me you all weren’t serious in suggesting Star Trek is being unrealistic and aspirational in treating technical problems as...being problems of a technical nature requiring specialized understanding, equipment and vocabulary to solve.

I think I had a point about Star Wars not being concerned with any of this stuff. Something about Star Wars being fundamentally different and not-very specifically Sci-Fi.

Its not that George Lucas is using his superior technical knowledge to make the Millennium Falcon sound simpler. Actually, Han does have a bunch of funny sounding tools and fixes weird systems with tech speak in those repair scenes. Its just that the movie is focused on things other than how the ship works, and so no one remembers the few parts where Han Solo talks technobabble.

The little bit of technobabble they have in Star War is transparent nonsense more so than usual. That Han Solo’s “12 parsecs” comment is infamous but he also says he can get “.5 past lightspeed” which is also nonsense (if it was the hyperspace engine it would be way too slow, if its the regular engine its way too fast). I recall somewhere they measure the energy output of a Star Destroyer Turbolaser in kilowatts.

[Peelee]

While what you say is perhaps the profound message of Star Trek, in this context it provokes me to roll my eyes until I have a problem with it staying in the socket

By the way, while I realize that the solution to an eye falling out of its socket may just be to pop it back in. I’d still prefer I had adoctor who knows the problem by its Latin name and has the resources to do the “procedure” in a sterile environment and potentially examine if there’s any underlying reasons why my eye wasn’t behaving properly.

I take it you would be unimpressed to hear that Scrubs is one of the most accurate medical shows ever made?

[Devonix]

Perhaps the " Realism " part is making you misunderstand me. What I mean is that Starwars and how it treats technology is more analogous to things here. Space ships aren't space ships, they're basically just cars.

Flying from one planet to another isn't a space voyage, it's just traveling to different countries. It's why when looking at the space combat I don't think of it like space combat. Capital ship fights fights are just Ships on the high seas batteling it out.

When I watch Starwars I don't think of the science and how it works, Startrek makes me think about if this was real, how would it affect things.

Starwars isn't more realistic, I just can suspend my disbelief about how stuff works in it more easily.

[Reddish Mage]

Perhaps the " Realism " part is making you misunderstand me. What I mean is that Starwars and how it treats technology is more analogous to things here. Space ships aren't space ships, they're basically just cars.
...

When I watch Starwars I don't think of the science and how it works, Startrek makes me think about if this was real, how would it affect things.

Starwars isn't more realistic, I just can suspend my disbelief about how stuff works in it more easily.

Yes, Star Wars generally treats the technology and science behind it simplistically (to some extent, see my comment above about Han’s own technobabble). I’m pretty sure that wasn’t the aim, by the way, just that Star Wars movies have other things going on and so the technical problems have to be dealt with swiftly.

However, I’m pointing out Star Trek is realistic, just a different, more sophisticated set of realism. Han’s ship is supposed to be the length of a 737 and three times as wide. Imagine a pilot and a co-pilot that were also aircraft mechanics running through various crises and making repairs in flight on a commercial airliner. Don’t they use a lot of jargon when they talk to each other and air traffic control? Wouldn’t they more likely work together with the ground if they had to get through crises? Would you understand half of what went on if you got to watch them work? Is it not realistic to think a spaceship will be at least as complicated as a commercial airliner?

Also, note that most of what we are talking about when talking about Star Trek’s technobabble is TNG and after, when they decided to bring in decorum and professionalism. TOS had a lot of Scotty saying he’s using scotch tape or something to keep engineering together, I’m pretty sure he banged things with a wrench at some point.

Star Wars is easy to watch and easy to lose yourself to the action because that’s what it is about. Star Trek (more so since TNG) makes you think about what’s going on, but what your thinking about is meant to be relating what is going on to the real world and real world problems. Star Wars battle between Good and Evil, Jedi and Sith, Rebels and Empire, don’t relate cleanly to anything in the real world.

[hamishspence]

I recall somewhere they measure the energy output of a Star Destroyer Turbolaser in kilowatts.

I don't remember that ever cropping up in Legends or Newcanon tie-in material.

Starfighters firing energy by the kilojoule (possibly intended to refer to a few hundred kilojoules) yes.
Assault frigates (comparable to small star destroyers) were described as unleashing gigajoules of turbolaser energy.

The Incredible Cross Sections books took the "questionable amounts of energy" trend to the opposite end of the spectrum - with starfighter-size ships unleashing Hiroshima-scale energy (kilotons) with each shot, and troop transport ships described as unleashing what could best be summoned up as "World War III nuclear exchange" scale energies (gigatons).