I was going by what was on screen, and that the Falcon had no FTL capacity.
My understanding is that Disney has essentially purged the majority of the SW expanded universe and the conjectured details that the expanded universe invented.
Does the Federation "rule" the Galaxy? (ultimately)
- Thread starter Prax
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My understanding is that Disney has essentially purged the majority of the SW expanded universe and the conjectured details that the expanded universe invented.
There are two ways to look at the Falcon possibly having a working hyperdrive part of the time off screen:
1) if it is not contradicted on screen it could have happened off screen, and since reaching Bespin without hyperdrive was impossible something like this must have happened off screen.
2) If it is not shown or mentioned on screen it could not possibly have happened off screen. therefore, even in the era of The Force Awakens Han, Leia, Chewie and C3Pio are still headed for the Bespin system in the Millennium Falcon and impersonators were seen in Cloud City and in the later parts of the series.
People who want to believe everything makes sense choose option # 1; people who want to find plot holes choose option # 2.
But unless Hoth and Bespin orbit different stars in a multiple star system there's no way for a ship without hyperdrive to reach one from the other during mere days, weeks, or months.
There is no way for the average distance between stars to be so small in a galaxy.
Maybe. But it could also be that Vulcan sees the extraplanetary Vulcans that are elsewhere for specific purposes *aside* from colonization - such as the listening outpost at P'Jem to monitor the Andorians, or their survey flights like the one sent to Sol System - as sufficient for purposes of taking the Vulcan genome eggs out of one basket, so to speak, and otherwise, it is logical to expend their resources in a way that minimizes unnecessary redundancy while keeping their citizens close by for their 7 year cycles.
In other words, maybe the Vulcans are just homebodies.
Everything smart seems to get attributed to the Vulcans, but I'm inclined to give the origination on this one to the Andorians.
Consider 47 Tucanae,
47 Tucanae is globular cluster located just outside our own galaxy. It is 120 light years across (@ 900,000 cubic LY's).
It possesses millions of stars and has an extremely dense core.
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I tend to see the percieved human dominance as being largely down to the filters through which we view SF. We know that they run ships with all Vulcan crews, it's hardly a stretch to imagine other species might also have exclusively or predominantly crewed ships. Enviromental factors alone would dissuade (or even prevent) many species from cohabiting on a vessel without extensive and cumbersome provisions being put in place. Even slight differences in artificial gravity, temperature, atmospheric composition could readily make a ship opyimsed for one race an uncomfortable proposition for another, leading to species with similar tolerances tending to be posted together.
As a reflection of seeing mostly human crews we see the "alien of the week" serving as a foil to highlight aspects of the human condition. We could easily imagine in universe however that elsewhere in the rather vast federation other species are equally as active and involved.
There might also be the consideration that even with exact gravity and atmosphere not every Federation species can interact for long periods of time with each other.
Socially and psychologically.
Some Federation cultures might be simply incapable of "meshing" with certain other Federation cultures. Someone from a culture that doesn't mesh with a Human cultural norm, stationed to a ship with a predominately Human crew, could quickly find themselves socially isolated off duty.
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I've often thought that this is something conveniently overlooked in trek. The UT allows for the language barrier to be bypassed in order to accommodate the "aliens as human proxies" concept but very few races are shown onscreen struggling to cope long term with human physical conditions. They breathe oxygen at room temperature under what might reasonably be assumed to be 1g or close enough.
As I suggested above we might explain this away by having certain species serve together on suitably environed vessels, but only in terms of SF personnel. It can't cover, however, why our heroes so rarely seem to even cross paths with such alien species. (Except various space borne entities)
As I suggested above we might explain this away by having certain species serve together on suitably environed vessels, but only in terms of SF personnel. It can't cover, however, why our heroes so rarely seem to even cross paths with such alien species. (Except various space borne entities)
Which I love, but perhaps for reasons separate from what they intended. While it's a shame that we miss out on threats and concepts like the Yuuzhan Vong (I love body horror and near-Lovecraftian alien religions), a lot of what annoyed me about the expanded universe were all the retcons and revisions and Monday morning quarterbacking about things that very clearly happened in the movies, in an effort to juice up or make SW even more impressive than it originally was.
One case in particular: the Battle of Endor against Death Star II. When Lando deduces that its shields are still up, he orders the entire armada to break away from their approach. In the movie, all ships and fighters pulled banked away and engaged the TIE squadrons. Despite the considerable distance between the fighters and the Death Star, the novelization and other sources said that a few Rebel fighters didn't turn in time, and crashed into the shield, which seemed pretty pointless.
Absolutely love the Vong. Pain worship, biotechnology, absolutely awesome addition to Star Wars. Disney should be broken up and sold for that very decision.
The thing is, it could still come back. We don't know for sure where the Episode films are going or what the Empire had sent Snoke out to the Unknown Regions for in the first place to allow for the First Order to form...or what was so special about Jakku in the first place that the Imperial Fleet made a massive stand there of all places.
The Vong were poorly known and such complex and dark villains would never be understood or appreciated by the general public.
They were reviled especially by those that hated the EU and were completely unknown to those ignorant of it.
They were reviled especially by those that hated the EU and were completely unknown to those ignorant of it.
I always liked the idea that by Daniels time that the Federation covered a huge amount of the galaxy including all the major known nations like Romulans and Klingons.
I always figured that the Falcon could just travel between star systems without a hyperdrive, but having one meant they could cross the galaxy in minutes. In Empire they go from Hoth to the Anoat system to Bespin without a hyperdrive and I also never thought Hoth and Bespin were neighbours.
I always figured that the Falcon could just travel between star systems without a hyperdrive, but having one meant they could cross the galaxy in minutes. In Empire they go from Hoth to the Anoat system to Bespin without a hyperdrive and I also never thought Hoth and Bespin were neighbours.
My theory about the Falcon was that Han was able to jury-rig some kind of a lightspeed engine that did not account for time-dilation so that they spent months (hours as they experienced it) going to Bespin. This also allows for Luke to get in some quality Yoda time.
And after the Andorian incident this can happen in the novelverse.
I blame humans, always wanting to stick their flag on someone's else territory...
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So true ; Voyager should have taken 70 years to travel 70,000 light years and yet Deep Space 9 seems to take one day.
If the Federation is 8,000 light years in scale does it take 8 years to cross the Federation?
DS9 is very close to Earth, to be fair; the DS9 TM said something like only 50 or 60 ly away? Granted strictly by a 1000 ly/yr measurement that'd be like 2.5 weeks of travel, and in-show it's probably not more than a few days, but maybe the 1000 ly/yr value is an average value over extremely long-term flight accounting for maintenance cycles and/or in areas not well-charted. Further, Cardassia seems to be the nearest system to Bajor based on all evidence, akin to Earth and Alpha Centauri, so the ~one day travel time there is pretty reasonable; they're probably no more than 5 ly apart.
And yeah, it would, though keep in mind that that's likely the longest distance between two points in the Federation. Honestly the Federation isn't even necessarily contiguous; most interstellar powers wouldn't necessarily need to be, in the sense of actively controlling territory.
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