Me thinks you are taking this too seriously.
Plot holes.
- Thread starter Swedish Borg
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That's not a plot hole, that's a blooper. Just as I said you have no idea what you're talking about.
No that's a plot hole. Wrong again.
It's obvious that when Data makes a contraction it's not a plot hole. He wasn't written to make a contraction, the actor makes a mistake and no one notices it until it's too late. That's typically a blooper. That's a textbook blooper, in fact.
Smart...
I am talking with kids today.
If you think that's a blooper, then...
Are you sure you wanted to start a thread about this?
An inconsistency in the narrative or character development of a book, film, television programme, etc.
part of the plot (= story) of a movie or book that does not fit with other parts of the plot
an obvious mistake or missing element in the plot of a film, book or play
etc.
In colloquial use it's a vague catch-all for anything a viewer thinks is an oversight or doesn't make sense. Is the fact that the rebel fighters skim the trench to make this impossible shot a plot hole because it would seem to be much easier to dive straight down at it? Or is that just a logic bomb?
It's much vaguer term than the oft-misapplied MacGuffin...but it doesn't really matter.
part of the plot (= story) of a movie or book that does not fit with other parts of the plot
an obvious mistake or missing element in the plot of a film, book or play
etc.
In colloquial use it's a vague catch-all for anything a viewer thinks is an oversight or doesn't make sense. Is the fact that the rebel fighters skim the trench to make this impossible shot a plot hole because it would seem to be much easier to dive straight down at it? Or is that just a logic bomb?
It's much vaguer term than the oft-misapplied MacGuffin...but it doesn't really matter.
But is it a plot hole if that contraction gave birth to a later plot line? Or has Mr. Chekov been leaving his phaser on random walls again.
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Data making a contraction is obviously not a plot hole because that's not part of the plot and it's not part of the script either. Brent Spiner knows that the standing order about Data is that he doesn't do contractions. So it can only be a mental error by the actor, alone, an error that isn't caught in time to be corrected and therefore ends up in the final cut. That's a blooper. QED!
are you quite sure?
are you quite sure?
Director: So now Brent you're gonna do a contraction...
BS: Why?
Director: It's in the script!
BS: But Why?
Director: I don't know. We want people to realize that Data is a phony, that he's just an actor pretending to be a robot
BS: But Why?
Director: I have no idea.
Yeah, I am not sure that'll hold up in court.
They outright stated that direct assaults were adequately defended against, so either it's something like that the exhaust port's shielding is better at those angles, so that a direct shot is impossible, or it's because every turbo laser with line of sight could on focus on craft, even fighters, diving in at a straight line to attack the port and just blow them away with concentrated fire, like what happened to Porkins, only worse. Or both.
In any case, the vulnerability was plotted for us with computer graphics, and it was shown that the torpedoes had to travel in a quarter-circle arc to get into the port. The live-action footage of Luke's torpedoes going in reflected that. Since the torpedoes were obviously therefore being acted on by forces to go in those curved paths, that means that the torpedoes were being fired into a force field set up around the exhaust port. So, if the torpedoes were fired straight in, you'd expect them to spiral back out into space under the influence of that force field (that had to be, at least at times, permeable to particle waste from the reactor).
Also, down in the trench, there were obviously many times fewer lasers guarding the approach than the number with line of sight on a craft diving in, and the fighter shields were established as adequate for defense in that situation (while established as being ineffective against concentrated crossfire).
It's never stated in the film (or in any follow up film, either), but I always imagined that the purpose of the trench was to vent waste from when the superlaser fired. Perhaps, when the planet killer fired, gas and plasma was directed by force fields to get vented out along through the trench(es) and then eventually out into space.
You've already implicitly posited that it's not "just" The Dam Busters, by opening up the question of why they didn't attack the exhaust port in a way that doesn't correspond to the way that the bombers attacked the dams. You can't have it both ways.
Anyway, even though it obviously isn't "just" The Dam Busters, they don't have to explicitly justify anything. This is a universe in which space fighters have the handling characteristics of 20th century fighter aircraft. That's not explained. We also know that the Force guided Luke when he fired the torpedoes. That's certainly not explained. It simply is, like so much else in the film.
Just because something isn't explained, that doesn't make it a plot hole. The Dam Busters spent hours explaining why they attacked the dams the way they did. Why the fighters in Star Wars had to approach the target in a certain way was not what Star Wars was about. The Rebels analyzed the stolen plans and came up with the attack strategy, one that the Empire didn't account for, despite having accounted for others. That's what we were told; whatever explanation there might be as to why the fighters had to fly the way they did has to derive from that. As demonstrated, it is not difficult to fill in details that might explain it more technically by applying exactly what was shown on screen.
But otherwise why they did this but not that is irrelevant. Since what they actually did on screen is not nonsensical in the universe we were shown in which space fighters have the handling characteristics of 20th century fighter aircraft, and since it doesn't contradict what we were told before, it's not a plot hole.
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