Star Wars Question...

[Pavonis]

Nuclear power plants, jet aircraft, the Internet, rocketry, and satellites, all off the top of my head, owe huge bursts of their development and advancement from war/military innovations. Hell, one of the biggest encouragements for technological advancements is DARPA.

Nuclear fission was discovered before the Second World War, so nuclear power plants would've been developed without a war; maybe there'd be even more of them without a war to make people more fearful of nuclear power in general. I'm reasonably certain the principles of jet propulsion would've been discovered without a war, too. The Internet was developed as a communications infrastructure by DARPA, sure, but the World Wide Web made the Internet useful to everyone, and that was developed at CERN. Satellites, too, weren't that dependent on war-related innovation. Goddard was firing off rockets in the 1920s, so rockets and satellites were being developed without a war to drive them.

And to go back to Star Wars, the power generation systems used on the Death Star alone would/should be of tremendous -- I mean, mind-bogglingly tremendous -- benefit to the entire galaxy. Not to mention all the other technologies that would have had to have been developed to build the Death Star. They basically built a small planet from scratch for Christ's sake.

None of those technologies, assuming they were fundamentally different and not just bigger, were distributed to the galaxy's populace though. What good is innovation that isn't shared?

 

[sidious618]

Naboo should've been Alderaan.

That's a great idea. The only problem I see is that Naboo is supposed to be on the outer rim near Tattoine and the original Star Wars already said they were far away from one another. I imagine a simple rewrite of TPM would fix this, though.

 

[Shazam!]

I imagine a simple rewrite of TPM would fix this, though.

A simple rewrite would've fixed most things.

 

[Ian Keldon]

The Star Trek universe remains essentially static in every major respect from Archer's time through Janeway's. It ain't history, just a fairly simple story.

That's simply not true. The Earth may or may not have been relatively the same, but the pre-Coalition era is different from the Coalition/nascent Federation era which is different from the TOS era which is different from the Next Gen era. The type of government changes, it's attitudes change (esp between TOS and TNG), the way it interprets it's laws change.

That's one reason why they took such a pounding between the Borg incursions, the Klingon War and the Dominion War. A society that had not faced real danger in almost it's living memory suddenly got smacked right across the face with a very cold, often cruel universe.,

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

The Star Trek universe remains essentially static in every major respect from Archer's time through Janeway's. It ain't history, just a fairly simple story.

That's simply not true. The Earth may or may not have been relatively the same, but the pre-Coalition era is different from the Coalition/nascent Federation era which is different from the TOS era which is different from the Next Gen era. The type of government changes, it's attitudes change (esp between TOS and TNG), the way it interprets it's laws change.

That's one reason why they took such a pounding between the Borg incursions, the Klingon War and the Dominion War. A society that had not faced real danger in almost it's living memory suddenly got smacked right across the face with a very cold, often cruel universe.

By "the Klingon War," I assume you mean the hostilities during the 4th & 5th seasons of DS9? If so, I don't think you could really compare those skirmishes with something as big as the Dominion War. The Klingons were never an existential threat to the Federation the way the Dominion or the Borg were. I'd bet you anything that Starfleet lost more ships against the Borg in 1 day at Wolf 359 than they did against the Klingons in those 2 years of conflict.

 

[Silvercrest]

Well, it's not like the Empire was going to share their planet-busting technology with anyone.

Speaking of, whatever became of the Geonosians?

Well, they had to test-fire the Death Star somewhere...

All these alien races and characters and worlds all disappearing by the time the OT rolls around always kinda bugged me.

Now we know why they disappeared!

 

[CorporalCaptain]

What evident progress in 'droid technology?

Four stand out.

First, the R-series. This is even evident in the 1977 film, as it's a fair inference that Uncle Owen rejects R2 in favor of R5-D4, because R5's are newer. The Jawa sandcrawler is full of older, obsolete droids, which tend to be more awkward and bigger than the newer and more compact models. C-3PO comments that astro-droid logic is getting to the point that even he can't understand it, which at least seems to be an excuse for R2's behavior that Luke would find plausible, and hence further evidence of advancement.

Second, the rise of the droid army. It seems pretty clear that nothing on that scale had ever existed in the galaxy, since its existence destabilized the Republic. One of the more interesting comments that Obi-Wan made in the PT was to Dex in his diner, to the effect that if droids could think then they would take over the galaxy. This suggests that one of the problems that needed to be overcome to scale up a droid army was to make sure that it didn't go rogue. Using a droid command ship, instead of allowing the droids to act independently, seems to have been one way of solving this problem. Ways of keeping large scale droid armies under control, while keeping the armies effective, constitute innovations, beyond just the scaling up process itself which is also an advancement, even if not a so-called fundamental one. [See http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Therefore_I_Am:_The_Tale_of_IG-88 for an amusing EU tale, amusing because it turns IG-88A into something so unbelievably awesome it's practically a Mary Sue, but which also concerns a planned Droid Revolution.]

Third, within the droid army there were special units capable of challenging Jedi, culminating in the IG-100, really approaching an automated Jedi in capability.

Fourth is General Grievous himself.

 

[BillJ]

This is even evident in the 1977 film, as it's a fair inference that Uncle Owen rejects R2 in favor of R5-D4, because R5's are newer. The Jawa sandcrawler is full of older, obsolete droids, which tend to be more awkward and bigger than the newer and more compact models. C-3PO comments that astro-droid logic is getting to the point that even he can't understand it, which at least seems to be an excuse for R2's behavior that Luke would find plausible, and hence further evidence of advancement.

But R(X)-D(X) modeling could equate to nothing more than how we use years to differentiate car models. Nothing there suggests ones superior to another as far as technology goes.

Then, in KoTOR, you have the homicidal HK-47 droid which seems pretty compatible to what we see in the films and a little droid that I can't remember the name of that is pretty similar to an R(X)-D(X) unit.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

This is even evident in the 1977 film, as it's a fair inference that Uncle Owen rejects R2 in favor of R5-D4, because R5's are newer. The Jawa sandcrawler is full of older, obsolete droids, which tend to be more awkward and bigger than the newer and more compact models. C-3PO comments that astro-droid logic is getting to the point that even he can't understand it, which at least seems to be an excuse for R2's behavior that Luke would find plausible, and hence further evidence of advancement.

But R(X)-D(X) modeling could equate to nothing more than how we use years to differentiate car models. Nothing there suggests ones superior to another as far as technology goes.

The fact that Owen picked one and rejected the other shows which one Owen believed to be superior.

 

[BillJ]

The fact that Owen picked one and rejected the other shows which one Owen believed to be superior.

If it's a model/serial number then it shows which one Owen thought was newer. Which he would think he'd get more mileage out of.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

The fact that Owen picked one and rejected the other shows which one Owen believed to be superior.

If it's a serial number then it shows which one Owen thought was newer. Which he would think he'd get more mileage out of.

Ah, OK, that's a fair interpretation too. However, I was taking this also in combination with what 3PO said about their logic "getting [quite] out of hand", suggesting the possibility that newer models really did have differences in their brains at least.

 

[Silvercrest]

Threepio isn't exactly the brightest bulb in the fixture. Really I think the quote says more about him than it does Artoo. And Threepio is newer.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Threepio isn't exactly the brightest bulb in the fixture. Really I think the quote says more about him than it does Artoo. And Threepio is newer.

I agree that 3PO isn't the brightest and it says a lot about him, but still I always thought that that line indicated that progress in droid AI was occurring. YMMV, as always.

In any case, the transition from R1 to R2 discussed in the Wookieepedia article I linked seems like an important innovation. One can also note that it made astromechs on starfighters practical.

 

[Pavonis]

Is refinement of a technology the same as innovation? Incremental improvements in the 'droid AI software won't change the fact that 'droids are already ubiquitous and relied on extensively to support the economics of the GFFA. If there were to be a fundamental change in 'droid technology that altered the relationship between 'droids and the society that uses them, then that'd be an innovation worth noting.

For instance, my cell phone is smaller and faster than the giant brick cell phones from the 1980s, but not fundamentally different in operation. The real difference is in the distribution of cell phones. Everyone has one now, and that has changed social interactions immensely.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

That's a good question.

The droids played a pivotal role in the story of the 1977 film. They were self-motivated and autonomous to a degree that earlier model droids were not, especially R2. Were it not for that, he would have been unable to escape from the Tantive IV, survive his trek across the desert, seek out Ben, and save the galaxy. The earlier R1 would have failed on numerous scores.

So, yeah, I think the incremental improvements added up to a revolution in the case of the R2 unit. If the R1 was a car phone, R2 was an iPhone.

 

[Set Harth]

How much of that is self-motivation and how much is Leia, though?

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Leia didn't have time to enter any elaborate programming. What she told him to do, he was able to deduce how to accomplish on his own. And his body was physically able to take him there.

 

[Dantheman]

Speaking of, whatever became of the Geonosians?

In one of the DVD commentaries, George Lucas says they were involved in the construction of the Death Stars.

Also, a Rogue Squadron video game had a mission involving the Rebels going to Geonosis.

 

[Anwar]

I thought the Separatists themselves designed the Death Star, we see one of the Trade Federation guys looking at a holo-image of it in AOTC.

 

[Chaos Descending]

Yes, that is correct. And Dooku steals the plans for Darth Sidious.