Author Topic: Star Wars: Rogue One  (Read 10110 times)

Arcana

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Re: Star Wars: Rogue One
« Reply #20 on: April 10, 2016, 08:09:47 PM »
And I also agree, there should be a Bothan. As a primary character. Bothans were almost definitely used to recover the original DS plans (unless they hadn't joined the Alliance yet). Bothans are used for spy work because they're insanely good at it.

If they really are genetically predisposed to intelligence work, why would any sane Imperial officer not just shoot any Bothan on sight given how xenophobic the leadership of the Empire was anyway?

I just remembered that in Return of the Jedi Mon Mothma says that the Bothan spies gave them the *location* of the Death Star and information such as the fact that the Emperor was going to be there.  They also had some technical information about the Death Star but unlike when they got the plans for the first Death Star they didn't necessarily need precise classified blueprints: because the second Death Star was still under construction they could just fly through the incomplete structure and blow up the main power plant.  Given the enormous scale of the construction of a Death Star, its entirely possible this more general technical information was a lot easier to get than the plans necessary in ANH to locate the vulnerable exhaust port.  The hard part was locating its construction site and getting information on the Emperor becoming involved in the project directly.  Given that the nature of the information they got in ANH and in RoTJ was different, it is entirely possible that the Bothans would have been good at the kind of strategic information gathering that could discover things like where the empire was hiding its new Death Star and where the Emperor might be traveling, but not be as good at directly infiltrating the location hosing the classified (original) Death Star plans.

Incidentally, I think the complaints about the exhaust port on the first Death Star are overwrought.  It doesn't seem to be a particularly stupid design error to me: if the Death Star needs exhaust ports at all in the first place, it might be extremely difficult to make them both impossible to attack and still properly functional.  They took the precaution of shielding them from above so you couldn't just shoot them straight on.  The trenches might exist specifically *because* the shielding meant the plasma exhaust couldn't go straight up and thus had to be directed outward through those trenches.  They had to be long and straight to prevent problems with high volume venting.  And in the pre-nuclear age warships had the same design "error" of having stacks that pointed straight up and could use used to detonate explosives bypassing the armor of the ship.  It almost never happened because the odds of such a hit by a dive bomber are extremely unlikely, but it has happened.  There was just nothing practical you could do to prevent it from happening.

There were probably lots of exhaust ports all over the Death Star, and in most of them the combination of defenses and their design placement made an attack on them impossible.  This one port managed to be in just the right place with just the right configuration to make the attack possible but the design engineers simply failed to account for it.  It was obvious enough after the attack began that an imperial officer figured it out during the attack.  But that sounds exactly like the sort of error that happens in real life, both in civilian engineering and in military weapon systems.

eabrace

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Re: Star Wars: Rogue One
« Reply #21 on: April 10, 2016, 10:06:51 PM »
That never made any sense to me. An entire race of spies?

If they really are genetically predisposed to intelligence work, why would any sane Imperial officer not just shoot any Bothan on sight given how xenophobic the leadership of the Empire was anyway?
My understanding was that it was a cultural thing.  Power and influence above all else.  Like an intergalactic Machiavellian society.
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Arcana

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Re: Star Wars: Rogue One
« Reply #22 on: April 10, 2016, 10:23:37 PM »
My understanding was that it was a cultural thing.  Power and influence above all else.  Like an intergalactic Machiavellian society.

Alien monocultures in general are usually a silly trope.  It normally doesn't make a lot of sense for an entire race of people to all be one thing.  How does an entire race of spies get past the part where everyone drops dead of starvation because no one is a farmer?  Who's in charge of the spy planet when no one is a politician?  How do they get to be any good at it if there are no teachers?  Ethiopians appear to have some genetic and cultural advantages to running long distance marathons but it would be ridiculous to think they are a race of competition runners.

TimtheEnchanter

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Re: Star Wars: Rogue One
« Reply #23 on: April 11, 2016, 12:09:40 AM »
Maybe they did, and after about, oh, the thirtieth one was disintegrated the rebels were like "hey maybe we should send someone that the Empire won't just kill instantly to try to get information on the new Death Star" and when they succeeded Mon Mothma head desked and was like "do you know how many Bothans died before you guys figured that out?"

Well, the 'Bothan Spy Net' didn't just employ Bothans. They created the thing though so it had that name. Maybe "Bothan" was just a name for any spy who worked for the network.

Vee

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Re: Star Wars: Rogue One
« Reply #24 on: April 11, 2016, 12:20:25 AM »

TimtheEnchanter

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Re: Star Wars: Rogue One
« Reply #25 on: April 11, 2016, 02:50:38 AM »
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Manuel_Both-Hanz

I don't know if you meant this to be serious or not, but Mon Mothma definitely said "Bothan Spies" "and many Bothans died."

eabrace

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Re: Star Wars: Rogue One
« Reply #26 on: April 11, 2016, 03:06:53 AM »
Alien monocultures in general are usually a silly trope.
No disagreement here.  Wouldn't be the only time a silly trope was employed in Star Wars, though.
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Vee

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Re: Star Wars: Rogue One
« Reply #27 on: April 11, 2016, 03:34:49 AM »
I don't know if you meant this to be serious or not, but Mon Mothma definitely said "Bothan Spies" "and many Bothans died."

Well considering it was from a parody, no, not serious.

Arcana

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Re: Star Wars: Rogue One
« Reply #28 on: April 11, 2016, 05:36:40 AM »
No disagreement here.  Wouldn't be the only time a silly trope was employed in Star Wars, though.

To be fair, the movies didn't invoke the trope, that was the EU.  The one thing the EU novel-space did a spectacular job of in my opinion was inventing unnecessarily ridiculous ideas.

Tenzhi

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Re: Star Wars: Rogue One
« Reply #29 on: April 11, 2016, 01:08:51 PM »
That may be true, but Young Jedi Knights is still one of my favourite Star Wars things ever.  Of course, then they went and fouled up the whole EU with that awful event series about aliens invading from another galaxy...
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Re: Star Wars: Rogue One
« Reply #30 on: April 18, 2016, 02:34:33 AM »
Mark Hamill hate-staring the camera down at the end was kind of unnerving...

Huh. Somehow I saw another clip or trailer where the part right after is played, and he says 'oh sorry, do I have lines? I'm used to just staring at the camera.'

So maybe there were Bothans in the trailer, they were just being all incognito.

Ha! Although I did find the lack of aliens generally to be a bit odd. I didn't see many (any?) non-humans. Maybe I didn't look carefully enough.

My understanding was that it was a cultural thing.  Power and influence above all else.  Like an intergalactic Machiavellian society.

Now I'm wondering if a race of spies still works with the Republican interpretation of Machiavelli...

Alien monocultures in general are usually a silly trope.

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