Why Does A Trash Compactor Have A Monster Anyway?

I remember hearing the sound of sliding metal just before the dianoga disappears and Luke resurfaces. I always took that to be that it had some hatch it swam to before the compactor operated.

 

"If lasers just bounce off the walls of the trash compactor, why don't they just build the whole Death Star out of the trash compactor?!"
- Arj Barker

 

The same reason why airplanes aren't made out of the same material the indestructible black boxes are. LOL

Here is how Kenner interpreted the Trash Compactor monster in the Death Star Playset: Profile and Top

 

^^^
Yep. I had that.

But honestly, if you can't trust the Empire to run the Galaxy you certainly can't trust the Empire's sanitation department to check to see if there's any monsters hiding in their trash compactors...

 

here's a link to a drawing of what it looks like
http://images.google.com/imgres?img...rev=/images?q=dianoga+picture&hl=en&sa=X&um=1

kinda like an octopus

 

I saw Arj Barker doing stand up a couple of weeks ago and he starts off his set with "I don't wanna be one of those hacky comics that talks about airplanes or something, like 'Why don't they just build the whole plane out of the black box?!'" And then went on to mention how he'd seen Star Wars recently, and used his trash compactor line. It was pretty darn funny.

 

If, as he claims, George Lucas is inspired by Japanese cinema, then why does the beast with the tentacles ignore Leia and molest Luke?

 

It was just eliminating the competition.

 

I don't think tentacle hentai really emerged as a genre until the late '80s. At least, that's what I read on TV Tropes.

 

It can semi-flatten itself like a squid or octopus, maybe?

 

"Compacting trash ain't like dusting crops, boy. One wrong move and you could send garbage floating home!"

 

"Han, there's more trash in there than you can imagine."

"I don't know, kid. I can imagine quite a bit."

 

I bet the garbage bins on the ISS don't have rats.

Makes sense. Not much point in compacting water. Although you'd have to assume that the thing could fit through holes designed to sluice water.

Of course, there's no actual need to presume any given creature survives outside of R2-D2's divine intervention. Maybe that was it's life cycle in that particular niche--born as a microscopic larva thing, grow, reproduce (asexually, hermaphroditically, conventionally sexually?--could be more than one), give birth, attack jerks who invade environment if necessary, get crushed once a month, hope children have a better life (they won't, because they'll all be ionized gas in a few days).

 

Watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCAIedFgdY0

 

Why are alligators in the sewers?

 

Cheap rent, no long-term lease.

 

I think the sound of the latch we hear is an indicator that the walls were about to close. The creature knew what would happen so it fled

 

Entirely possible too that the compactor doesn't run all that often. Could have been switched when the troopers saw the gang go down the chute.

"What the hell? Jenkins, mag lock the maintenance hatch and turn on the compactor."

 

How's this?
It does: the Dianoga was introduced to that vat as a microbial biological waste digester. Left unchecked it grows into a colony which acts like a massive creature (don't we all?), but this isn't a problem, as it gets squashed by the action of the compactor fairly regularly. The left over cells then start to regrow, and the dominant colony eventually becomes a new Dianoga creature (for a bit).
Very cod science, I know, but within Star Wars...