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 Polonius wrote:

I think I know why. Star Wars isn't interesting because of the setting, at least not in the way that, say, Middle Earth or Star Trek is. Star Wars was originally a three act space opera recreating the hero's journey, and as such, dealt less in vividly new settings and more in archtypes. You literally have a desert planet, an Ice World, and a forest moon (that's called "the forest moon!") You spend almost no time with the cultures at play, instead sticking mostly to wilderness as befits a rebel force on the move. To it's credit, the world does appear lived in and real in a way that most sci fi doesn't, but that also is because the scenes were meant to look familiar. the Yavin/Death star sequence in a New Hope is basically a Battle of Britain/Dam Busters mashup with different fighters. The characters are somewhat interestingly both archtypes but also three dimensional. The old mystic has a sense of humor, the bossy princess isn't afraid to get her hands dirty, and the smart alek rogue has moments of sincerity.

I think you are on the right track: Star Wars is a setting developed around a story. Story came first and setting was built along as needed for the story. This means that once the story is complete, setting is also 'complete' and it is hard to come up with new, interesting stories. Star Trek, by contrast, is much more about the setting which can be used as a playground for different stories. It's even more obvious with Warhammer 40k setting.

Talking about Middle Earth, it is in many ways a 'setting first', but Hobbit & LotR were very much stories where setting was written around them. This is why Third Age Middle Earth is nothing like Tolkien's original, Silmarillion era Middle Earth. And once LotR was finished, Tolkien found out that his setting was also finished. He actually tried to come up with a sequel for LotR but very early came to conclusion that it was going to be crap and gave up.

Backfire wrote:

 Polonius wrote:

I think I know why. Star Wars isn't interesting because of the setting, at least not in the way that, say, Middle Earth or Star Trek is. Star Wars was originally a three act space opera recreating the hero's journey, and as such, dealt less in vividly new settings and more in archtypes. You literally have a desert planet, an Ice World, and a forest moon (that's called "the forest moon!") You spend almost no time with the cultures at play, instead sticking mostly to wilderness as befits a rebel force on the move. To it's credit, the world does appear lived in and real in a way that most sci fi doesn't, but that also is because the scenes were meant to look familiar. the Yavin/Death star sequence in a New Hope is basically a Battle of Britain/Dam Busters mashup with different fighters. The characters are somewhat interestingly both archtypes but also three dimensional. The old mystic has a sense of humor, the bossy princess isn't afraid to get her hands dirty, and the smart alek rogue has moments of sincerity.

I think you are on the right track: Star Wars is a setting developed around a story. Story came first and setting was built along as needed for the story. This means that once the story is complete, setting is also 'complete' and it is hard to come up with new, interesting stories. Star Trek, by contrast, is much more about the setting which can be used as a playground for different stories. It's even more obvious with Warhammer 40k setting.

Talking about Middle Earth, it is in many ways a 'setting first', but Hobbit & LotR were very much stories where setting was written around them. This is why Third Age Middle Earth is nothing like Tolkien's original, Silmarillion era Middle Earth. And once LotR was finished, Tolkien found out that his setting was also finished. He actually tried to come up with a sequel for LotR but very early came to conclusion that it was going to be crap and gave up.

with all due respect the idea that star trek was a story designed around a setting is complete and utter bull. the starship enterprise was given warp engines specificly so they could visit a new planet each week. and each week a new planet was invented, some of them rediculas, specificly to tell a story. TNG wasn't much differant. nor for that matter was voyager. the only trek that could be argued to be a "story based around a setting" is DS9. and frankly, spin offs by their nature have to play within the setting, but even DS9 did lots of stuff specificly to tell a story. like invent whole empires with a magic warp gate, specificly to cause trouble for the heros.

 kodos wrote:
Star Wars was Fantasy in Space, with alle the cool fantasy themes but in a more realistic way so it fits the present science focused world

as "the force" is easier to accept than just pure magic

it is not about details, things are just there and don't need to be explained

and it focus on the individual hero saving the day against the enemy armies


as soon as things went a different way of classic fantasy story telling, started to explain the universe and moved away from the singe hero thing, the universe lost a lot of its magic

Nope. It's actually martial arts in space. Both dojos train it's members in sword fighting and hate each other with a passion.

Don't let space ships and blasters fool you. The centre of each SW movie is the lightsaber fight which goes along with the mystical mumbo-jumbo to channel your ki aka force.

But none of the main plotlines is resolved with a swordfight...

Cronch wrote:
But none of the main plotlines is resolved with a swordfight...

I don't know if I'd call Vader's massacre of Rebel crewmembers in Rogue One a swordfight...

Star Wars is a very interesting setting, but the writers' insistence on making every story about the same group of protagonists (old EU)/trying to copy-paste the original trilogy over and over again (sequel trilogy) really limits how much space there is to explore, and the desire to make the economic and political underpinnings of the setting a pile of half-baked gibberish intended to be skimmed past by twelve-year-olds in search of the next explosion instead of making any effort to make sense (prequel trilogy) does limit the quality of any spin-offs.

I don't think the setting is the problem. The aforementioned handful of exceptions (Rogue One, KotOR, etc.) indicate that there's room to do interesting things if you don't demand the writers keep doing the same thing over and over again and then castigate them any time they try and innovate, but that isn't how the Internet of today works.

I would add to that the writers using the Force as a crutch for laziness and making it the centrepiece of every single storyline.

There are elements of Star Wars (now that I think of it) that are rather archaic, especially in terms of technology. It's rarely bothered me, but it is something that's come to mind frequently.

No internet for example. The Holonet exists but it's more like cable TV than the internet. No one has anything like a cell phone or lap top connecting them to any broader networks and computer systems in the Star Wars universe are abnormally analog.

The lack of modern security systems is another. Like, how is it possible that the Empire didn't cover things in security cameras with droids watching for suspicious behavior? This bugged me in the one episode of Mandalorian with the prison ship. It seemed really bizarre that the security droids and systems on that ship were not well connected or coordinated, until Mando was using them to advance the plot, anyway.

Star Wars is more fantasy than sci-fi but it's still a show with sci-fi trappings and it's sci-fi right out of 50 years ago. It's never ruined anything for me aside from random thoughts, but I wonder to what extent the anachronisms of the setting might hinder bringing new people into the franchise.

 LordofHats wrote:
There are elements of Star Wars (now that I think of it) that are rather archaic, especially in terms of technology. It's rarely bothered me, but it is something that's come to mind frequently.

No internet for example. The Holonet exists but it's more like cable TV than the internet. No one has anything like a cell phone or lap top connecting them to any broader networks and computer systems in the Star Wars universe are abnormally analog.

The lack of modern security systems is another. Like, how is it possible that the Empire didn't cover things in security cameras with droids watching for suspicious behavior? This bugged me in the one episode of Mandalorian with the prison ship. It seemed really bizarre that the security droids and systems on that ship were not well connected or coordinated, until Mando was using them to advance the plot, anyway.

Star Wars is more fantasy than sci-fi but it's still a show with sci-fi trappings and it's sci-fi right out of 50 years ago. It's never ruined anything for me aside from random thoughts, but I wonder to what extent the anachronisms of the setting might hinder bringing new people into the franchise.

Yeah. Things like... obviously they can mass produce cameras because droids are everywhere and they can see. If droids have sophisticated AI that can be tasked with and execute on jobs then why do they have to have humanoid like bodies (or bodies at all). Why don't ships have droid AIs? Why don't houses? Why didn't the deathstar have several running and organizing different functions on the station?

SW is crazy analog. Thats why it's just fantasy with Sci Fi trappings and not actually sci fi at all.

I think you can make analogue make sense in a setting where there are malicious AIs, or a past AI revolution against the organics. Then having taboos against it might bake sense, or at least, manual overides all over the place.

But Star Wars as you say has Droids, which are obviously AIs, and yet...

 AnomanderRake wrote:
Star Wars is a very interesting setting, but the writers' insistence on making every story about the same group of protagonists (old EU)/trying to copy-paste the original trilogy over and over again (sequel trilogy) really limits how much space there is to explore, and the desire to make the economic and political underpinnings of the setting a pile of half-baked gibberish intended to be skimmed past by twelve-year-olds in search of the next explosion instead of making any effort to make sense (prequel trilogy) does limit the quality of any spin-offs.

I don't think the setting is the problem. The aforementioned handful of exceptions (Rogue One, KotOR, etc.) indicate that there's room to do interesting things if you don't demand the writers keep doing the same thing over and over again and then castigate them any time they try and innovate, but that isn't how the Internet of today works.

Except of course, they do innovate and a lot of the innovations are largely acclaimed by the Internet of today. They just aren't the stuff on the big screen, because that's been gak more often than not. 3 good, 2 average, 6 bad, by my count.

 Da Boss wrote:
I think you can make analogue make sense in a setting where there are malicious AIs, or a past AI revolution against the organics. Then having taboos against it might bake sense, or at least, manual overides all over the place.

But Star Wars as you say has Droids, which are obviously AIs, and yet...

Yeah, also a "Droid Smith" found data on a Droids harddrive and could tell what that data was and that it was encrypted, not by plugging in a wire and interacting with it's code, but by going at the back of it's head with an ark welder. fething what?

 Argive wrote:
I would say that currently star wars isint that interesting of a setting. Thats because its been sanatised completely to be customer (child) friendly. This means that you cannot get neuance and everything boils down to black and white / good vs evil. But the evil is white washed and there is no room for grey areas and creativity.

I don't think any major Star Wars production was anything else than a child friendly franchise of movies with a manchean morality. They took some very mild steps toward a less manichean style in Episode VIII, but quickly retreated back to known territory for Episode IX. KOTOR II also attempted to delve further on the theme of the Force and good and evil, but the game storyline needed some work and was rushed out. I don't know anything about the EU which was apparently an awfull mess.

 Da Boss wrote:
I think you can make analogue make sense in a setting where there are malicious AIs, or a past AI revolution against the organics. Then having taboos against it might bake sense, or at least, manual overides all over the place.

But Star Wars as you say has Droids, which are obviously AIs, and yet...

Well, in the old EU, Droids received regular mind wipes to keep a lid on things.

A thinking Droid is of great use, especially on things such as Astromechs, who for the inexperienced pilot are an absolute boon.

There’s also the question of what sentience is. C-3PO can do some things against his programming (impersonating a deity), but not others (revealing the Sith translation). One is clearly simply some sort of taboo. The other is an absolute inability to comply.

During The Clone Wars, there’s a plot device where R2-D2 is captured by the Separatists. And Anakin being Anakin, hasn’t had his memory wipes for quite some time, meaning the Separatists might find all sorts - plans, base locations, troop dispositions etc. So he has to be rescued.

Yet strip away any kind of decision making, rendering all Droids essentially mono-tasked automata? You remove a great deal of their uses. Sure, a Gonk, Mouse or Treadwell Droid would still get it’s job done. But Protocol, Navigation and Astromech? Nah. Not gonna work.

Why they are ais and how useful them being ais is is not the question. The question is if that tech exists they why is it not implemented in other better ways.

Droids, even if they are not actual ais but are just really advanced conversational interfaces for complex computers, should mean that all kinds of other things should be voice activated. If you can have a conversation with your astromech about plotting coordinates for hyperspace jumps then why are you not just talking to your ship?

Why is there a droid language at all? Shouldnt r2 and water condensers or whatever the feth lars needed c3p0 for just have a language setting and speak whatever language their owners do?

Why does every door on every ship and every planetary base have a locking mechanism for a astromech to use its spinny plug key on which means people cannot interact with it but litterally anyone with a droid can?

In the EU it was also explained that most SW peoples greatly feared AI uprisings, which was a main reason why ships don't have wide droid control. The Katana fleet from Heir to the Empire was literally a big fleet of Dreadnoughts that had the Droid AI all linked to enable skeleton crews to f!y them, and then it went crazy and they jumped blind into lightspeed and disappeared for decades.

The most important question is why don't Astromechs just speak common? It would make it easier than evidently every main character taking a college course in Astromech so they can understand them.

Yeah but you dont need to give the droid ai full unimpeded control. You can still require a manual pull of a handle to activate warp speed jumps. The ais in the ships deciding to do a blind jump is the exact same level of threat as r2 deciding to do the same thing when imputting coordinates and plotting a course.

Small "snubfghters" were referred to as being too small to mount the full sized navicomputers in them as well as a hyperdrive (a bit a%%-backwards, if you ask me. I'd want the nav hardware with or without the go-faster drive).

The later Jedi fighters had an astromech socket, but still needed a hyperspace drive ring for example.

The droids were their plug-in navicomputer, as well as other ship repair device things.

Presumably if a droid does all the things a droid does + be a nav computer then plugging in the bit of hardware that is the droids brain would take less space than the droid and do its job.

 Lance845 wrote:
Why they are ais and how useful them being ais is is not the question. The question is if that tech exists they why is it not implemented in other better ways.

Droids, even if they are not actual ais but are just really advanced conversational interfaces for complex computers, should mean that all kinds of other things should be voice activated. If you can have a conversation with your astromech about plotting coordinates for hyperspace jumps then why are you not just talking to your ship?

The weird thing about that is the Falcon is established as having a voice interface. C3PO complains about its dialect of all things.

Why is there a droid language at all? Shouldnt r2 and water condensers or whatever the feth lars needed c3p0 for just have a language setting and speak whatever language their owners do?

Its worse when you consider that the droids can clearly understand languages, and make sounds. R2 even communicates in writing (on the X-wing HUD) with Luke when they're going to Dagobah, presumably because his beeping can't be heard in space.
Now this may be a setting prejudice against droids rearing its head (I know I hate having devices talk to me and give instructions), but droids are so ubiquitous its seems crazily passive aggressive and inconvenient just for spite's sake.

Why does every door on every ship and every planetary base have a locking mechanism for a astromech to use its spinny plug key on which means people cannot interact with it but litterally anyone with a droid can?

I've been binging Rebels this week, and that really got to me after a while [it doesn't help that their droid just grabs the port with a pair of pliers and spins it, rather than inserting an actual interface unit]. Often the ports are just inside the exterior doors, even in facilities/ships that don't seem to use astromechs at all.
And they seem to be designed for astromechs (as they're set way too low for humanoid models), which by definition shouldn't be working ground facilities anyway.

Well Solo established that the Falcons computer was Landos sassy rebelious droid that got its body destroyed. If anything it just proves how easy it is to put a droids brain in a ship that a professional gambler can just do it without some kind of advanced engineer/programer. Which returns to the first question. Why the hell are they not in more things?

 Lance845 wrote:
Well Solo established that the Falcons computer was Landos sassy rebelious droid that got its body destroyed. If anything it just proves how easy it is to put a droids brain in a ship that a professional gambler can just do it without some kind of advanced engineer/programer. Which returns to the first question. Why the hell are they not in more things?

Until Solo we didn't know the falcon's brain was a droid brain. So the answer could be "maybe they are in a lot of things?"

as for how analogue SW seems keep in mind ANH was released in 1977, and they could eaither keep to the look and feel of that or randomly for no reason modernize and risk losing elements of aestetics people loved.

BrianDavion wrote:
as for how analogue SW seems keep in mind ANH was released in 1977, and they could eaither keep to the look and feel of that or randomly for no reason modernize and risk losing elements of aestetics people loved.

I think the grunge retro-tech look of Star Wars is great. I'm only questioning if trapping the sci-fi trappings of the franchise in 1977 hurts it more than helps it. You can be grunge retro tech in aesthetic, and still supply characters something like a cell phone. Just give those little communicators people use a holoprojector or something, and expand on the Holonet to make it more of an internet analog and less something that just pops up randomly. Maybe keep it analog and give a reason for it. Maybe slicing and hacking abilities are so good in the Star Wars universe that networking computers just makes them more insecure?

 AegisGrimm wrote:

The most important question is why don't Astromechs just speak common? It would make it easier than evidently every main character taking a college course in Astromech so they can understand them.

In a way, Binary is the Common Tongue. Every droid, regardless of who owns it, runs on Binary. So you have to learn one language and you're basically good to go with every droid you ever meet. You could probably get rudimentary translator widgets that translate your speech into binary, and any binary into your speech. As long as an alien has a similar device (for his language), you can communicate without a protocol droid knowing six million forms of communication. There are presumably millions of aliens that can't speak Common, but that's not a barrier to understanding Binary. Presumably few non-droids can actually vocalize Binary (too fast?) but ones that could manage it would be effectively set for life communicating with the galaxy at large.

So your Astromech speaks Binary because it guarantees that the droid owner will be able to understand it. I mean, if they can't be bothered to learn Binary in the first place, they're idiots, given how staggering useful learning it is.

And yes, the Star Wars setting worries about droid uprisings. That's why the Battle Droids were controlled from a central computer, despite that being an enormous weak point to exploit. But you could stop a droid uprising with the flip of a switch. Another good reason to know Binary, so that you know if your droids are plotting behind your back. Such is the cost of having a slave race.

 John Prins wrote:

 AegisGrimm wrote:

The most important question is why don't Astromechs just speak common? It would make it easier than evidently every main character taking a college course in Astromech so they can understand them.

In a way, Binary is the Common Tongue. Every droid, regardless of who owns it, runs on Binary. So you have to learn one language and you're basically good to go with every droid you ever meet. You could probably get rudimentary translator widgets that translate your speech into binary, and any binary into your speech. As long as an alien has a similar device (for his language), you can communicate without a protocol droid knowing six million forms of communication. There are presumably millions of aliens that can't speak Common, but that's not a barrier to understanding Binary. Presumably few non-droids can actually vocalize Binary (too fast?) but ones that could manage it would be effectively set for life communicating with the galaxy at large.

You're assuming that every species (or even planetary culture) would program droids in a universal way and give them (somehow) a universal language. That doesn't make any real sense at all. Reducing numbers to 0s & 1s doesn't create a functional language, regardless of Lucas calling the 'droid language' Binary. [And assuming it isn't a parsec situation, where he was just using a word he didn't understand in a stupid way]

It still just begs the question of why people wouldn't learn or get a 'translator widget' for Basic, rather than bothering to give the Droids a universal private language that they can use with fewer people understanding them, something people wouldn't even do if they fear a droid uprising. If Binary is a real language (rather than machine code that lacks complex concepts and grammar, which doesn't seem to be the case from what we're shown), there isn't any reason to thing Binary is any less complex than Basic, or any random alien language like Huttese (which gets used a lot)

Voss wrote:


You're assuming that every species (or even planetary culture) would program droids in a universal way and give them (somehow) a universal language.

in fairness the vast majority of the galaxy was united under the republic for a looong time. long eneugh for things like droid languages to be standardized.

BrianDavion wrote:

Voss wrote:


You're assuming that every species (or even planetary culture) would program droids in a universal way and give them (somehow) a universal language.

in fairness the vast majority of the galaxy was united under the republic for a looong time. long eneugh for things like droid languages to be standardized.

The same is true for the language for people. It goes back to the very point that Lance raised in the first place. The droid language is a barrier, and there isn't any functional reason for all the droids and machines to not speak Basic, since droids understanding it is nigh-universal already. Its only a barrier to the operators.

Consider if the Amazon Echo and Siri (and etc) could only communicate back in machine code. How in the world would that be useful?

If your astromech can be told to check the ship's shields, finds they're not great but could be better if only it could get to such and such a panel it can't reach, why is it useful for it not to be able to tell you that? The bloody thing can understand your orders, make sounds, and even replay visual/audio recordings, but it _can't_ tell you that a lever needs to be pulled to reactivate the hyperdrive. That's a thing that literally happens on screen, and its utterly stupid.

It's also worth noting that whatever 'droid language' R2 is speaking, it's not binary. Binary would be... well, if you had a computer with a modem in the '90s, you probably remember that buzz when you connected to the internet. THAT'S binary.

R2 uses a wide variety of sounds - whistles, chirps, beeps, and etc. He's communicating far more than 0's and 1's.

BrianDavion wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
Well Solo established that the Falcons computer was Landos sassy rebelious droid that got its body destroyed. If anything it just proves how easy it is to put a droids brain in a ship that a professional gambler can just do it without some kind of advanced engineer/programer. Which returns to the first question. Why the hell are they not in more things?

Until Solo we didn't know the falcon's brain was a droid brain. So the answer could be "maybe they are in a lot of things?"

We do know it's smart enough to talk to (and presumably offend) 3P0 in Empire, which also has a later scene where he chastises R2 for 'trusting a strange conputer' because Cloud City's central computer apparently volunteered information to him as well...

The Holonet is a different beast entirely... Before the prequels it was generally depicted in the EU as a stand-in for cable TV. But by the time the prequels rolled around it was essentially late 90s internet in all but name.

In our RPG I've rationalized it as being severely limited in bandwidth the further rimward you go, with the Empire not believing in net neutrality. So the core world's can have their 90s internet while the outer rum can check their e-mails and hang around analog BBS boards if they've got top-end circa 1970s nerd tech.

Does anyone remember that "Star Wars doesn't have paper" meme from before the sequel trilogy? We never see any sStar Wars characters take in any sort of culture outside of musical performances. Unless you count the Holiday Special.