posted
I thought of a couple of plot holes in some of the more popular SF work today. They just occured to me and I have no idea why these things are the way they are. Perhaps I'm missing something, so I'll let the rest of you explain it to me.
First. On the series "Stargate Atlantis", the Wraith feed by attaching their hand to the chest of their victims. They also communicate telepathically. Both of these things are really cool. But it leaves me wondering: Why do they need mouths full of pointy teeth?
Second. "Star Wars". Darth Vader is really cool and really bad. AND, he is Luke Skywalker's father. C3PO is Luke's big mouth droid. Also cool. How come C3PO didn't tell Luke that Darth Vader was his father? Apparently he knew this for many years, yet never bothered to give Luke a a warning. (Of course, neither did any of the other principals.) Perhaps this latest movie will explain it?
quote:On the series "Stargate Atlantis", the Wraith feed by attaching their hand to the chest of their victims. They also communicate telepathically. Both of these things are really cool. But it leaves me wondering: Why do they need mouths full of pointy teeth?
We know that one way they feed is through draining the life out of a victim. I don't think we know for certain that they cannot feed by eating flesh.
But even if their only method of feeding is through life-draining, it does not necessarily follow that they should be mouthless.
The human body has an appendix, even if it is useless (and even dangerous, if it gets infected.) While evolution eventually tends to eliminate features that have negative survival value, it can take a long time.
So if the Wraith originally began as non-telepathic carnivores, the fact that they developed telepathy and life-draining would not automatically remove their mouths.
posted
Protocal droids, because they talk and thus remind their owners that they are walking security risks, tend to have their memories erased pretty frequently, basically every time they change owners. In the first movie, Uncle Owen expresses some displeasure with the fact that his recently aquired R2 unit is apparently acting on orders given to it by a previous owner, and he tells Luke to take both droids in and get their memories erased.
Whether it is usual for service/maintenance droids to remind their new owners to erase their memories is not well established. In any case, C-3PO strikes me as the kind of droid that has often reminded his owner to erase his memories.
This doesn't change the fact that the prequels are crappy and full of stupid plot holes. It just means that I can see why what's her name would take Threep in for a memory wipe fairly soon after her breakup with good old "Master Annie".
posted
I've also heard it on good authority that there is a protocol for droids that their master can make them keep a secret. It is so deeply hard-coded into them that they would blow themselves up before telling. This is usefull if let's say you murder someone and bury them under the floorboards, then your droid doesn't tell anyone but you don't have a suspicious recent memory wipe. (Of course nothing can be done about that pounding beneath the floor boards.) But now here is a diffrent Star Wars question, why have all the jedi except Qui-Gon vanished when they died?
Posts: 1895 | Registered: Mar 2004
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posted
Lucas claims that will be explained in E3. My theory is that it takes a certain degree of preparation (think about it: the only other Jedi we've seen die--and known that they faded away, cause I didn't see any of the Jedi on Geonosis fade away--have had time to prepare themselves for death) and Qui-Gon just didn't have the time to prepare himself. he was too worried about keeping himself alive long enough to tell Obi-Wan to train Anakin.
I think I've spent way too much time reasoning that out...
posted
From what I've read from the Star Wars comics and novels (that's right, I continue to willingly admit that I'm a total geek), Survivor's answer is actually the most accurate. Read "Shadow Hunter," the protocol droid in that got his memory purged, which ended up making it so he couldn't warn anyone about the Sith. But as Survivor said... that doesn't really help with all the many other plot holes...
"But now here is a different Star Wars question, why have all the Jedi except Qui-Gon vanished when they died?"
Yea... I really hope that one gets answered in E3 because that's been buggin' me too...
Unfortunately, I'm still trying to catch up on SGA, so, I can't really give you an explanation for the Wraith...
for the sake of show design, the wraith have those teeth of theirs for the sole purpose of looking ugly.
as for evolution... they are evolved by a merging of a human population with a species of telepathic vampiric spiders. the spiders slowly integrated the human dna into their being creating the super-being: the wraith. the life-sucking developed later.
in other words, i don't think it's AS big a hole as you think, they're just being slow at revealing the details. also, if you don't keep up on it fully and retain the information about the wraith they slowly leak out you will quickly come to the conclusion that they wraith are completely baseless as well as impossibly outlandish.
it is an interesting story though and i'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt in case you can't tell
as for SW... i refuse to make ANY comments since i only have negative ones to make
WARNING! PLOT SPOILERS FOLLOW! WARNING!
If you intend on watching Atlantis, and have not yet seen the end of the season, DO NOT READ THE REST OF MY POST! Hopefully this warning was clear enough... if not it's not my head
back on SGA:
the thing that really got me was the end of the season... i could have SWORN they sent Atlantis to a different galaxy just so that they wouldn't be able to hook up with SG1 whenever they were in dire circumstances, which they reiterated with the episode where Atlantis tried sending some folks back home to relay info via that planet with the mist-creatures that gave off an energy signature strong enough to power the gate.
so what is with manuevering SG1 in such a ridiculous way with all that time travel hooligans (as interesting as they might be) just to send aid to SGA? and then to have the people they send to aid SGA screw it all up so badly?
quote:Marines always screw everything up... so true...
The above coming from an Army boy...
But I can't really defend the stupidity of some of the Marines stationed with me. Then again, I can't really defend the stupidity of some of the Army soliders I knew either... or sailors or Air Force dudes. Really, stupidity abounds everywhere... it's hard to miss.
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I do think SGA is pretty good, I didn't like the people they sent. Now I know that they have some pretty nice weapons at that point, and well...the Asgard can move between galexies pretty easily. So if the Asgard are helping the humans, why wouldn't they help them to power the gate between galaxies?
It seems like all the military people (army, marines, whomever) that are sent to "help" are always morons. Tends to get annoying.
posted
time constraints. the asgard can move about fairly easily, true, but even they cannot go from Milky Way to Pegasus in a single bound. except if they managed to get the gate power to do it. and even there the asgard would fall short, seeing that only ZPMs are powerful enough, or that interesting amplification device that O'Neal made during one of the times he took on all the Ancient library, that coupled with a naqueduh(sp?) generator would be able to make it to pegasus.
the asgard might also be less willing to help than you might think. they are still fighting the replicators. sg1 may have wiped out the replicators in the milky way, but not in whatever galaxy the asgard live in.
basically they had all bases covered. sg1 and sga were successfully cut off from each other. until they did the stupid time-travelling episodes of sg1. they aquired a zpm and sent some nim-witted military dweebs over to help who totally screwed up. after all, we all know that if the colonel or whatever they sent in the first place had survived things would be a disaster now, and they sent the guys best fricken friend as the leader of the new wave! can't get any more stupid than that.
posted
When I was a little boy and asked questions like this, my Father always said: "Because you wouldn't have a story otherwise." I think both of these items fall into this category. SGA is much more interesting because the Aliens can talk to the humans. Without mouths the dialogue would be pretty one sided, and the teeth make them look creepy. (It just seems to me that any society that can build space ships would have better dentistry. And hair dressers.)
Without Luke discovering his parentage on his own the movie would have been lessened. That little tidbit of information made quite a public stir when the movie first aired and no doubt added to the box office take.
So, it makes me wonder how many other movies and series have things that are purposely left in, in order to make them attractive to the public.
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99 % of all commercial sci-fi and fantasy intentially plan for the dumb a-- factor. Thinks so glaringly lame and wrong that a sixth grade writer would catch them.
This gives the nerds and geeks months of enjoyable debate about the dumb a-- factor so called screw ups. Such as
"If jedi can kill with their minds why do they need light sabres?"
or
"if the federation has transporters why don't they instantaneously teleport objects across space instead of using glorified mega sized saucer shaped mail trucks?"
etc etc its done so the geeks will have new fodder.
And being one of these nerdy geeks nothing is better than the old "well you know you really can build a lightsabre with a c-battery"
posted
"if the federation has transporters why don't they instantaneously teleport objects across space instead of using glorified mega sized saucer shaped mail trucks?"
Because transporter range is limited (I actually had a more detailed answer, but I chose not to reveal how much of a geek I really am).
That was kinda answered in E2 when Yoda fought Count Doku, they actually started with just a force fight, but they were too equally matched, so they went to sabers... that's why you actually only see the Sith take out their sabers when fighting other Jedi, everyone else just gets choked to death...
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