Questions I've Always Had About Star Wars

[Christopher]

The Force is more than just a telekinetic ability, it's a state of being that allows them to tap into the energy of the universe, to know a great tragedy has occurred, like Alderaan, or that someone you know is near, to see outside your own perceptions of time & existence

Well, rather, the Force is the energy of the universe, or rather, the energy field that binds all living things in the universe. Force-sensitivity is the ability to tap into the Force and interact with it, whether to perceive things through it or to manipulate objects and minds through it.

As to the "long time ago" preamble. It's perfectly ambiguous. It sufficiently removes the events from the viewers' base of reference, such that no preconceptions can burden it, but also leaves open the potential of still being relevant & connected. Why use the word galaxy otherwise? To give the suggestion that we all may still inhabit the same universe.

That's kind of overthinking it. Like I said, SW is basically a fairy tale dressed up with sci-fi trappings. They took "Once upon a time in a land far, far away," and substituted "galaxy" for "land" because most people are aware of the word "galaxy" meaning some kind of large region in space.

Incidentally, I'm of the rather fantastic opinion that E.T, himself is a user of the force, & potentially a Jedi in his own right. Displays telekinesis, has empathic powers shared with Elliot, & recognizes Yoda, from a child's costume (at least one could interpret it that way) kind of makes you wonder if Jedi can heal like E.T. too. lol

I just read on Cracked.com about a fan theory that E.T. is a Sith Lord, because he has the power of resurrection, which is something only the Sith ever mastered.

 

[SeerSGB]

In terms of "Long time ago,..." it's relative in time to the story construct of the Saga. It's not necessarily "our" past, but it's the past of the Star Wars galaxy, where that is on "our" timeline doesn't matter. What matters is think of it as a old storyteller telling the story at some distant point in the future of the Star Wars galaxy.

I seem to recall the original film's novelization (ghostwritten by Alan Dean Foster under Lucas's name) presenting the tale as an excerpt from The Journal of the Whills. I may have read that said journal was one of the early ideas of Lucas's that fell by the wayside.

Yeup. The Journal Of The Whills, IRC, was the original framing device for the movies. It was jettisoned pretty early on, save for sparse mentions here and there.

 

[Christopher]

^So they didn't have the Whill to go on?

 

[USS Triumphant]

^So they didn't have the Whill to go on?

Booooo....

When I was 10 or so, my cousin and I wrote a program for my Atari computer that faked up making it look like we had hacked into Lucasfilm's computers and were looking at their notes for upcoming film ideas - and we included all sorts of references to the Journal of the Whills. (He had seen some stuff about it in some fanzine or something.) Really had my mom - who had seen Wargames but knew very very little about how computers worked - freaked right the hell out and trying to get my dad to have a talk with us before we got in trouble.

 

[USS Triumphant]

But I digress.

I actually LIKE most of the tech and science-y stuff from Star Wars. I think the big problem midichlorians cause is, "why isn't anyone getting midichlorian transfusions to use the Force with?" Because it really seems like if character ability to use the force is based on something like that, it would be able to be transferred, enhanced, etc, by medical means.

 

[Christopher]

I actually LIKE most of the tech and science-y stuff from Star Wars. I think the big problem midichlorians cause is, "why isn't anyone getting midichlorian transfusions to use the Force with?" Because it really seems like if character ability to use the force is based on something like that, it would be able to be transferred, enhanced, etc, by medical means.

According to Wookieepedia, injecting midi-chlorian-rich blood into an organism can sustain their life when they would otherwise die (as with General Grievous, apparently), but would not imbue Force sensitivity. I'd speculate it's because midi-chlorians aren't separate organisms but are symbiotes residing within every living cell. The m-cs inside someone else's cells wouldn't be inside your own cells, such as the cells of your brain and nervous system, so you probably wouldn't be able to access them. More to the point, apparently Darth Plagueis attempted midi-chlorian transfusions but couldn't get the m-cs to cooperate, because they're linked to a universal consciousness of sorts.

So you'd need to find some way to enable the m-cs inside an individual's own cells to multiply. I'm not sure what would do that, but it'd be a lot more complicated than just giving someone a transfusion. Anyway, the article mentions experiments to increase midi-chlorian counts that ended up driving a planetary population insane. So maybe that's why people stopped trying. Given that m-cs are a manifestation of the universal spiritual force, I guess that tampering with how the m-cs work would be throwing off the spiritual balance of nature, so there would be harmful consequences.

 

[EnsignRicky]

The Force is kinda like 5G and the Jedi are Smartphones.

As far as when a long time ago was, all I know is that it was a Tuesday.

 

[martok2112]

The Force is kinda like 5G and the Jedi are Smartphones.

As far as when a long time ago was, all I know is that it was a Tuesday.

2pm. 65 degrees and rainy.

 

[RoJoHen]

There were a few episodes of "The Clone Wars" that delve into the origins of the Force and the Light and Dark Sides. I think it might actually be an interesting topic for a standalone Star Wars film.

 

[USS Triumphant]

There were a few episodes of "The Clone Wars" that delve into the origins of the Force and the Light and Dark Sides. I think it might actually be an interesting topic for an elective Philosophy class at some university out in California.

FIFY. I really can't see it being a movie, but I can totally see what I've changed it to happening - if it isn't happening right now.

 

[Venardhi]

I was always under the impression (perhaps the delusion) that Midichlorians are more of a canary in a coal mine than the source of a person's force connection. They're drawn to force sensitives and accrue in their cells, possibly even feeding on their connection to the force.

 

[SPCTRE]

Here's a question for you capitalized True Fans of Star Wars:

Would you say Shamus Young's definition of "Drama First" (as opposed to "Details First") is an apt descriptor for the kind or subset of sci-fi Star Wars is?

I prefer to think of these two genres as “Details First” versus “Drama First”. While “fiction” and “fantasy” are synonyms, Details and Drama are often opposed over the short term, because nothing sucks the drama out of a scene like having someone stop and explain to the audience why that gizmo that worked so well last time can’t help us this time. Conversely, nothing will torment a “Details First” nerd like hand-waving the established rules of the world because some character happens to be believing in themselves a little harder than usual.

 

[Venardhi]

Doctor Who is a good example of Drama First and at times seems to even delight in ignoring the implications and implausibilities of various episodes' plots and solutions. Most of the time it is easy to overlook but on occasion a singing child or an alien hatching from the moon just stretch the audience's willingness to go along with it too far.

Star Wars sits firmly in the Drama first category but generally has done better for itself by not establishing difficult-to-abide-by rules to begin with and not straining the audience's suspension of disbelief nearly so much with central plot points. Hyperspace travel is fairly well established, but ships effectively move at the speed of plot (which is easy to get away with by saying hyperspace navigation requires routing around gravity wells and such, adding time so that distances don't have 1:1 equivalents). Lightsabers cut through everything except when they don't. The Force works on weak minds minus a few alien species(vague enough to be dismissed when inconvenient). The only details of their technology necessary to explain to the audience are things like the Death Star's ventilation shaft, which is entirely situational.

 

[Kor]

I was always under the impression (perhaps the delusion) that Midichlorians are more of a canary in a coal mine than the source of a person's force connection. They're drawn to force sensitives and accrue in their cells, possibly even feeding on their connection to the force.

The way I've always seen it (and I don't know if it's borne out this way in the now-defunct EU), a person is not Force-sensitive due to a higher midi-chlorian count. Rather, a person has more midi-chlorians in the body because he/she is Force-sensitive, with the Force-sensitivity itself not being explainable in measurable scientific terms.

As to the OP's questions, concretely tying down the Star Wars galaxy in relation to our real world would just be bizarre.

You can certainly tell how much time has passed from one movie to the next, though.

There has been plenty of (now-defunct) Expanded Universe stuff that took place thousands, or tens of thousands, of years before the movies, using "BBY" (Before the Battle of Yavin) as the epoch.

Again, no reference to time in our real world, because it's not necessary, and frankly would ruin the mythic feel of the whole thing. It would be like trying to create a direct continuity between "The Lord of the Rings" or "Conan the Barbarian" and the contemporary real world of 2015.

Kor

 

[Set Harth]

I was always under the impression (perhaps the delusion) that Midichlorians are more of a canary in a coal mine than the source of a person's force connection. They're drawn to force sensitives and accrue in their cells, possibly even feeding on their connection to the force.

The way I've always seen it (and I don't know if it's borne out this way in the now-defunct EU), a person is not Force-sensitive due to a higher midi-chlorian count. Rather, a person has more midi-chlorians in the body because he/she is Force-sensitive

That's a fan workaround invented by people who hate the concept of midichlorians. I think it's contradicted by things Lucas has said on the subject. We know from TPM that the midichlorians are at least the source of people being able to "hear" the will of the Force.

There were a few episodes of "The Clone Wars" that delve into the origins of the Force and the Light and Dark Sides.

Well, they were certainly advertised that way - but the episodes in question didn't really do that.

 

[publiusr]

There was a storyline in The Clone Wars (which is still considered canonical) that revealed the planet that was the "origin" of the Force or something like that.

Not universally. I actually rather liked the midi-chlorian idea. It was the one genuinely clever and fresh idea in the prequels. Midi-chlorians are...independent organisms that create living beings' connection with the Force...So midi-chlorians as a spiritual analogy for something that's more scientific in our reality is actually quite an imaginative idea, a distinctive take on spirituality that could've been quite interesting to explore if it had been used as more than just an incidental plot beat.

I always assumed the Force was just Psionics to start with. Midi-chlorians being biological versions of the Higgs except tapping into something like Dark Energy

 

[RoJoHen]

There were a few episodes of "The Clone Wars" that delve into the origins of the Force and the Light and Dark Sides.

Well, they were certainly advertised that way - but the episodes in question didn't really do that.

Maybe they didn't give us all the answers, but they certainly gave us more than we had before.

 

[DWF]

Lucas explained where he got the idea for the Force, from his wored.com interview.

Lucas never met the young Canadian who influenced him so deeply; Lipsett committed suicide in 1986 after battling poverty and mental illness for years. But like a programmer sneaking Tolkien lines into his code, Lucas has planted stealth references to 21-87 throughout his films. The events in the student-film version of THX took place in the year 2187, and the numerical title itself was an homage. In the feature-length version, Duvall's character makes his run from a subterranean city when he learns that the love of his life was murdered by the authorities on the date "21/87." And in the first Star Wars, when Luke and Han Solo blast into the detention center to rescue Princess Leia, they discover that the stormtroopers are holding her as a prisoner in cell 2187.
The rabbit hole goes even deeper: One of the audio sources Lipsett sampled for 21-87 was a conversation between artificial intelligence pioneer Warren S. McCulloch and Roman Kroitor, a cinematographer who went on to develop Imax. In the face of McCulloch's arguments that living beings are nothing but highly complex machines, Kroitor insists that there is something more: "Many people feel that in the contemplation of nature and in communication with other living things, they become aware of some kind of force, or something, behind this apparent mask which we see in front of us, and they call it God."
When asked if this was the source of "the Force," Lucas confirms that his use of the term in Star Wars was "an echo of that phrase in 21-87." The idea behind it, however, was universal: "Similar phrases have been used extensively by many different people for the last 13,000 years to describe the 'life force,'" he says.

The Force then IMO is far greater than mere psionics, it is what Yoda called it, an energy force that binds the universe together.

 

[Set Harth]

Maybe they didn't give us all the answers, but they certainly gave us more than we had before.

They certainly gave us new plot content, in the form of Mortis and the "Force Wielders", but that in itself didn't tell us anything about the "origins of the Force" or the "origins of the sides of the Force", unless it was something to be gleaned through implication from the episodes' symbolism ( such as "Cosmic Force begat Living Force", perhaps ). Essentially all we need to know about the origin of the Force was in the first two movies anyway.

 

[tomalak301]

Lucas explained where he got the idea for the Force, from his wored.com interview.

Lucas never met the young Canadian who influenced him so deeply; Lipsett committed suicide in 1986 after battling poverty and mental illness for years. But like a programmer sneaking Tolkien lines into his code, Lucas has planted stealth references to 21-87 throughout his films. The events in the student-film version of THX took place in the year 2187, and the numerical title itself was an homage. In the feature-length version, Duvall's character makes his run from a subterranean city when he learns that the love of his life was murdered by the authorities on the date "21/87." And in the first Star Wars, when Luke and Han Solo blast into the detention center to rescue Princess Leia, they discover that the stormtroopers are holding her as a prisoner in cell 2187.
The rabbit hole goes even deeper: One of the audio sources Lipsett sampled for 21-87 was a conversation between artificial intelligence pioneer Warren S. McCulloch and Roman Kroitor, a cinematographer who went on to develop Imax. In the face of McCulloch's arguments that living beings are nothing but highly complex machines, Kroitor insists that there is something more: "Many people feel that in the contemplation of nature and in communication with other living things, they become aware of some kind of force, or something, behind this apparent mask which we see in front of us, and they call it God."
When asked if this was the source of "the Force," Lucas confirms that his use of the term in Star Wars was "an echo of that phrase in 21-87." The idea behind it, however, was universal: "Similar phrases have been used extensively by many different people for the last 13,000 years to describe the 'life force,'" he says.

The Force then IMO is far greater than mere psionics, it is what Yoda called it, an energy force that binds the universe together.

I didn't know that. Interesting interview.