Worst science goofs

[Christopher]

Actually I remember the Lucas story the same way you told it, except I've never seen anything that says it's in the script. I first read it in the letters page of the Marvel Comics adaptation of the original movie. Some readers were complaining about the parsec thing. The editors quoted Lucas (who had already come up with this response for someone else) as saying that Han is the sort of bull artist who doesn't always know what he's talking about.

That's my original source for it too. But I think I've seen something more recently that showed the script reference.

From the Wookieepedia page on the Kessel Run:

In the revised fourth draft of A New Hope in 1976, the description for "Kessel Run" is put as follows:

It's the ship that made the Kessel run in less than twelve parsecs! Ben reacts to Solo's stupid attempt to impress them with obvious misinformation.

So it implies that the puzzling speech of Han Solo is "misinformation" and not truth, and it has nothing to do with the nature of the Kessel Run in any respect. Han means nothing other than impressing Obi-Wan and Luke with pure boasting. Indeed, even in the final version of the script, the parentheses attached to Han's line state that he is "obviously lying."

Which is ambiguous, admittedly; it could either mean that he isn't using "parsecs" correctly or that they know it's impossible for the ship to perform as well as he claims. So it's inconclusive.

It goes on to say:

In the commentary for Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope DVD, George Lucas mentions that the parsecs are due to the Millennium Falcon's advanced navigational computer rather than its engines, so the navicomputer would calculate much faster routes than other ships could.

So in this case, it would seem that it's Lucas's claim that it really does make sense that's the revisionist explanation, and the original intention was that it didn't make sense (in one way or another).

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

How's this for worst science goofs: Pretty much the entirety of The Black Hole.

For their part, nobody really knew what a black hole was when that movie was made. They were just making shit up. They could re-film that same script today, but just call it "Wormhole," because that's what that thing was - obviously not a true black hole as we understand it today.

 

[Silvercrest]

Christopher wrote:
So in this case, it would seem that it's Lucas's claim that it really does make sense that's the revisionist explanation, and the original intention was that it didn't make sense (in one way or another).

That doesn't make sense!



(But you knew that.)

 

[cdgodin]

The explanation I recall is that the Kessel Run is near a mass of black holes, and the closer you get to the black holes, the more space is warped and the shorter the actual distance is.

 

[Silvercrest]

It's still a science goof. A technobabble explanation by another writer YEARS AND YEARS after the fact doesn't change that the first writer didn't know what a parsec was.

 

[Christopher]

^Or that the character wasn't using it right. I know people have reason for skepticism about Lucas, but just as a general rule, one shouldn't assume that a character's ignorance reflects the writer's ignorance, especially when the script explicitly has the other characters reacting to him with disbelief.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

It's still a science goof. A technobabble explanation by another writer YEARS AND YEARS after the fact doesn't change that the first writer didn't know what a parsec was.

Yeah, but it's pretty clear that Lucas did know what a parsec was way back in 1977. The only reason that it's an issue is that fans have trouble wrapping their heads around the fact that Lucas had his character utter some bullshit. To make sure it was bullshit, Lucas had to misuse the term, and the only way to misuse the term on purpose is to know how to use it correctly. If the scene failed, it failed to anticipate that people wouldn't get that Han was bullshitting when he said it, leading to years and years of overblown controversy, over-analysis, and wanky explanations, like going around a black hole at the shortest distance.

ETA: Or, what Christopher said.

 

[Silvercrest]

It's still a science goof. A technobabble explanation by another writer YEARS AND YEARS after the fact doesn't change that the first writer didn't know what a parsec was.

Yeah, but it's pretty clear that Lucas did know what a parsec was way back in 1977.

I guess that's not clear to me. It reads as though he misused a term and when someone called him on it, he shifted the blame by claiming the character was written to be foolish. Maybe that's not what happened, but that's how it reads from here. And it doesn't really ring true.

If he had claimed the character was written as trying to put one over on his customers, that would ring true to the character and I'd have believed him. As it is, I can't see it as anything other than writer error.

 

[Christopher]

^But it's right there in the script drafts that Han was providing "misinformation" and "lying." We know for a fact that Lucas intended Han's line to be an exaggeration that his listeners didn't find credible, because it says so right there in documents that were written in 1976, before the movie was even shot. So it doesn't make any sense to assume that it's something Lucas made up after the fact to cover himself.

 

[Silvercrest]

Actually it makes a great deal of sense considering all the other time he's done it. But I'll reconsider.

 

[Christopher]

Actually it makes a great deal of sense considering all the other time he's done it.

That would only be true if that were all you had to consider. The point is that in this case we have hard evidence from before the fact that supports what he said very shortly after the fact, in the comic book adaptation. And, as I said, we do know that he later changed his story to something else, the navicomputer explanation I quoted above -- so it's that something else that we should be skeptical of, surely.

And last I looked, wasn't this a Star Trek forum?

 

[ATimson]

And last I looked, wasn't this a Star Trek forum?

Star Trek literature, to boot. Oh well.

 

[Silvercrest]

Hey, Mr. Laser Beam gets the credit for bringing it up; I'm just an accessory to the crime. And I did bring up Final Frontier.

 

[FFunctionalData]

What other fun science goofs have you noted in TrekLit?

In the DC Comics "Grond vs Ajir" two-parter by Diane Duane, Kirk needed to get the Enterprise to safety, so he ordered Sulu to perform a 360 degree turn to escape an alien vessel!

 

[F. King Daniel]

I have yet to read it myself, but I'm sure I've read someone complain about the Genesis Wave's inconsistant FTL/STL speed.

It's been ages since I read it, but wasn't the premise of Spock Must Die! that the transporter duplicate of Spock was an exact mirror image of the original, and that was what made him evil?

 

[bullethead]

It's been ages since I read it, but wasn't the premise of Spock Must Die! that the transporter duplicate of Spock was an exact mirror image of the original, and that was what made him evil?

No, it turned out the weird barrier over Organia was the reason why the other Spock was evil.

 

[Christopher]

^But he was a mirror image because he reflected off that barrier around Organia.

 

[Timo]

...In defense of Diane Carey, the Final Frontier chase scene where George Kirk doesn't have to yell "Freeze!" to stop his prey cold is not quite as counterphysical as some have suggested.

The fugitive doesn't enter a room in vacuum - he enters a room full of air, at "minus two-hundred-something" by the inexpert opinion of sidekick Drake (but probably a bit hotter than that, or the air would have turned liquid). So there's a lot of heat conduction available for cooling down our victim. Moreover, the freezing does not take place in seconds - there are several minutes available for it. Finally, the victim doesn't totally shatter from hitting a wall at running pace - "shards" and "chunks" of him spray the heroes when they unthinkingly turn gravity on and drop him from near the ceiling of a "garage-sized" cargo bay all the way to the floor of that bay, but the corpse still supposedly remains more or less intact and a chore for our heroes to drag away.

What's being described there is actually semi-plausible... In scifi terms at least.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Silvercrest]

Ah. Well, that's why I asked if I was remembering it correctly. Thanks!

 

[theblitz]

The whole of the new Star Trek is based on super-bad science.

1. A supernova would not destroy a distant star system
2. It would take ages for even the minimum effects to arrive.
3. The fact that the star is VERY old (as stated in the pre-flim comic) actually means that it is LESS likely to go nova.