I believe we have time to take a closer look, Number One
November 15, 2011 8:42 PM   Subscribe

 
Not a derail: X-Wings capable of sublight travel only? According to both the pencil-and-paper RPG and the X-Wing computer game series, X-Wings had hyperdrive motivators! BAH!

Much less importantly: that was not very good at all.
posted by barnacles at 8:49 PM on November 15, 2011 [11 favorites]


Well, the very next line is something about achieving Warp 5....

I don't think the clip is all that concerned with reality on any level.
posted by hippybear at 8:54 PM on November 15, 2011 [2 favorites]


I love this but, worse than that!

Data: Basic early design, capable of sublight travel only. They are accelerating to Warp 5

MORBO: WARP 5 DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY!!!
posted by Blasdelb at 8:55 PM on November 15, 2011 [9 favorites]


hippybear: "I don't think the clip is all that concerned with reality on any level"

hippybear, this is much more important than reality! This is obsessive geekdom!

But, yes, you're right. :)
posted by barnacles at 8:55 PM on November 15, 2011 [3 favorites]


I don't need Deanna Troi to explain Han Solo to me! I need her to explain the characters in Episodes I-III and not just by what they're wearing!
posted by mazola at 8:56 PM on November 15, 2011 [6 favorites]


Harrison Ford? I like his Solo work but he was better when he was still Indy.
posted by shakespeherian at 9:08 PM on November 15, 2011 [59 favorites]


When they got up to the bit where Han shoots Greedo, they should have a bit where Picard or Riker says something like "Fire all weapons!" really urgently, and then facepalming when they realise they're watching an edition where Greedo shoots first. A missed opportunity.
posted by Effigy2000 at 9:26 PM on November 15, 2011 [3 favorites]


Nerd levels at critical.
posted by a shrill fucking shitstripe at 9:31 PM on November 15, 2011 [2 favorites]


Effigy2000: Really, I think we're looking at more than one missed opportunity here.
posted by webmutant at 9:46 PM on November 15, 2011 [1 favorite]


Of course X-Wings are capable of FTL flight. Luke goes from Hoth to Dagobah in his X-Wing, and he's not a skeleton when he gets there.
posted by Errant at 9:53 PM on November 15, 2011 [7 favorites]


She cannae take any more CGI, captain!
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 9:53 PM on November 15, 2011


I don't normally consider myself a nit-picky nerd, but this line really got me going, "WTF, mate?": Data: Basic early design, capable of sublight travel only. They are accelerating to Warp 5.

No! Does not compute!
posted by asnider at 9:53 PM on November 15, 2011


I was hoping that this would be more amusing. Maybe next time...
posted by Hicksu at 10:06 PM on November 15, 2011


All rebel wing fighters have FTL capability in order to maximize their guerrilla warfare tactics. Basic TIE fighters do not (though the newer TIE Interceptors do).

Yeah, I'll nerd out on this stuff easy.
posted by linux at 10:26 PM on November 15, 2011 [2 favorites]


I'm impressed that the maker of the video managed to stick with clips from early seasons only. It is far too often that I find myself cringing while watching a TNG montage that has the crew uniforms flipping from collared to collar-less like a lightswitch.

Far too often.
posted by good in a vacuum at 10:48 PM on November 15, 2011 [4 favorites]


WARNING: Thread at nerd overload, abandon thread, abandon thread.
posted by marienbad at 11:04 PM on November 15, 2011 [1 favorite]


Brillllllllllllliant
posted by Avenger50 at 11:51 PM on November 15, 2011


I don't need Deanna Troi to explain Han Solo to me! I need her to explain the characters in Episodes I-III and not just by what they're wearing!

The prequels will never be shown on the bridge of the Enterprise. The auto-destruct system was designed with such eventualities in mind.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 1:21 AM on November 16, 2011 [7 favorites]


Alert me when the crew of ST:TNG reads Time Speeder.
posted by Wolfdog at 1:59 AM on November 16, 2011 [1 favorite]


All this for Picard's "Why?" at 1:35. Brillnt.
posted by cavalier at 2:58 AM on November 16, 2011


I really love the idea, but the execution didn't really work for me, sadly. While the TNG crew would surely be your go to guys for taking any movie far too seriously, I still didn't manage any suspension of disbelief.

I think confining themselves to visual responses was a mistake by the makers. It would be massively easier to make something funny and convincing by overdubbing dialogue onto the Star Wars (that's what it's called!) footage, with an occasional cut back to the bridge. If you did that, it would be fairly simple to outline the dialogue, then perform a search of the TNG transcripts to find appropriate clips.

At the moment this feels like the shell of a meme without the content. Hopefully someone will perform a little memetic engineering and get it working.
posted by howfar at 3:44 AM on November 16, 2011 [1 favorite]


A New Hope?

*clicks*

Oh, you mean Star Wars.
posted by Eideteker at 4:13 AM on November 16, 2011 [11 favorites]


And now, your Highness, we will discuss the location of your hidden Rebel base.

There are four lights!
posted by steef at 4:18 AM on November 16, 2011 [3 favorites]


Hopefully someone will perform a little memetic engineering and get it working.

*reroutes the subflux neutrino phasings into the jeffries tubes*
posted by DU at 5:04 AM on November 16, 2011 [2 favorites]


A New Hope?

*clicks*

Oh, you mean Star Wars.


No, look at the explosions of Alderaan and the Death Star.

This was obviously A New Hope.
posted by hippybear at 5:18 AM on November 16, 2011


Next up: G'Kar and Londo watch episodes of UFO together.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 5:29 AM on November 16, 2011 [4 favorites]


hippybear: "No, look at the explosions of Alderaan and the Death Star."

Where did those single-ring-of-destruction explosions come from, anyway? It seemed for a couple of years that everything blew up that way.
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 5:56 AM on November 16, 2011 [1 favorite]


I couldn't tell whether the bridge crew was supposed to be watching a movie, or whether the Star Wars scenes were supposed to be actually happening. The responses seemed to go back and forth.
posted by valkyryn at 5:58 AM on November 16, 2011


By the way, did anyone else during the massive power outage in New England while scanning radio channels like me come across a rendition of the original War of the Worlds radio play voiced entirely by Star Trek actors of varying vintage?
posted by XMLicious at 6:12 AM on November 16, 2011


Is this what you're referring to? I think it's available for listening here.
posted by hippybear at 6:19 AM on November 16, 2011 [2 favorites]


WARNING: Thread at nerd overload, abandon thread, abandon thread.

We can't, the hypershunt escape system is jammed and the dilumium is about to explode!


CAPTAIN, WHAT DO WE DO?!?!1?/1!
posted by eriko at 6:41 AM on November 16, 2011


Where did those single-ring-of-destruction explosions come from, anyway? It seemed for a couple of years that everything blew up that way.

Interstingly enough, the first occurrence began in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, when Praxis explodes at the beginning of the movie.
posted by Fleebnork at 6:52 AM on November 16, 2011 [1 favorite]


By the way, did anyone else during the massive power outage in New England while scanning radio channels like me come across a rendition of the original War of the Worlds radio play voiced entirely by Star Trek actors of varying vintage?

That's a dramatization put on in Los Angeles in 1997, which led to a series of similar adaptations under the banner "Alien Voices"
posted by Horace Rumpole at 6:57 AM on November 16, 2011 [2 favorites]


Data: Basic early design, capable of sublight travel only. They are accelerating to Warp 5

MORBO: WARP 5 DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY!!!


Of course they can warp. Didn't Ham Salad do the Parcheesi run in less than 57 trillion miles or something? That is some serious space warpery.
 
posted by Herodios at 7:33 AM on November 16, 2011


You underestimate the Numanium Balkans. It was 0.23 quadrillion miles, actually.
posted by howfar at 8:58 AM on November 16, 2011


What the hell is an 'Aluminum Falcon'?
posted by grubi at 9:00 AM on November 16, 2011


All rebel wing fighters have FTL capability in order to maximize their guerrilla warfare tactics.

And yet this is the same group of engineers that invented something called a Snowspeeder that "trouble adapting to cold weather." Pfft.
posted by ShutterBun at 9:01 AM on November 16, 2011


If we're going to argue magnificent absurdities of a science fiction series, then let's not leave out the too frequent time travel in all the Treks.
posted by grubi at 9:03 AM on November 16, 2011


I couldn't tell whether the bridge crew was supposed to be watching a movie, or whether the Star Wars scenes were supposed to be actually happening.

I took it as sort of a "Galaxy Quest" kind of scenario: they are simply seeing/ watching the movie (the cutaway to Leia during the destruction of Alderaan, etc.) but are misinterpreting it as being an actual series of events (or at least "historical documents."
posted by ShutterBun at 9:10 AM on November 16, 2011


Next up: G'Kar and Londo watch episodes of UFO together.

Maybe that's not such a good idea...
posted by wittgenstein at 9:22 AM on November 16, 2011


I would also accept Space:1999.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 9:33 AM on November 16, 2011


Jandrewedits has a bunch of hilarious star trek edits.
posted by Galaxor Nebulon at 9:57 AM on November 16, 2011 [2 favorites]


(note: My link is to the jandrewedits playlist. That particular video isn't necessarily the best)
posted by Galaxor Nebulon at 9:58 AM on November 16, 2011


This is perhaps the best jandrewedit.
posted by en forme de poire at 10:06 AM on November 16, 2011


Also:

Neo and Trinity watch Lifeforce
The ship's complement of Serenity watch the Galactica reboot miniseries
Dee and Fat Apollo watch Skyline. Then Dee shoots herself.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 10:51 AM on November 16, 2011


And yet this is the same group of engineers that invented something called a Snowspeeder that "trouble adapting to cold weather."

Hired by the same brilliant tacticians that had at their disposal a fleet of small FTL craft, but couldn't figure out how to have an astromech droid ram one into the Death Star.
posted by Hylas at 11:59 AM on November 16, 2011


Ok what I actually wanted to see was the CAST of TNG watching A New Hope and commenting. On the whole thing. (Or maybe watching their pick of 1-3 and snarking at it.)
*makes grabby hands at the Internet*
posted by gusandrews at 12:07 PM on November 16, 2011 [1 favorite]


Interstingly enough, the first occurrence began in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, when Praxis explodes at the beginning of the movie.

Alien had the same kind of explosion, only presented edge-on with 1979 effects.
posted by fleacircus at 12:10 PM on November 16, 2011


Hired by the same brilliant tacticians that had at their disposal a fleet of small FTL craft, but couldn't figure out how to have an astromech droid ram one into the Death Star.

Droids are sentient, if non-living, beings. How is a suicide run for an astromech droid different from a suicide run for a flesh-and-blood pilot?

Ignoring the pop-philosophy, I always sort of figured that the droids were a combination co-pilot/removable computer system for X-wings and the like. They could manage the auto-pilot and navigation but weren't really designed to engage in combat maneuvers. Human(oid) pilots were necessary and crashing a fighter wouldn't have worked because the exhaust port was too small! GOD!

[/nerdrant]
posted by asnider at 12:24 PM on November 16, 2011 [1 favorite]


They couldn't adapt the snowspeeders to the cold quickly because they weren't actually snowspeeders. I'm guessing they were called such only in reference to the models and toys. In the movie itself, I think they were only called "speeders."

As for the video, I like how it doesn't really bash either franchise. I can't think of any Star Wars scenes that would lend themselves to the reverse of this, except during the mission briefing on the first Death Star attack. Even then there wouldn't be many lines to work with.

(Or maybe watching their pick of 1-3 and snarking at it.)

Well, it's not like the Star Trek movies were all four-stars either, TNG or otherwise...
posted by TheSecretDecoderRing at 11:50 PM on November 16, 2011


Ramming an object at FTL speed would be really hard. Let's leave aside for the moment the idea that droids as sentient beings have autonomy, because they very clearly don't and are a slave race. Nothing in Star Wars should convince you that navigational pinpoint accuracy is possible. Notice the Rebel fleet approaching Death Star II at sublight speeds. Why? The clear guerilla strategy would be to hyperdrive into firing range and give the station as little time as possible to muster resistance. Even the twin idiots of Ackbar and Mon Mothma could figure that out.

The only conclusion is that hyperdrive is not navigationally pinpoint accurate. Even ships at war drop out of hyperdrive and must approach before engaging, and jumping to hyperspace is universally considered an infallible escape option. Jedi in a rush to reach their friends still halt hyperdrive at the edge of the system and maneuver in on normal engines. So how would an X-Wing manage to hit a target that is only the size of a small moon?

That doesn't even get into the clear indication that hyperdrive causes a ship to enter an associated non-Newtonian spatial arena, evident by the lack of inertia present in ships coming out of hyperspace. A ramming ship driving at hyperspace speed would have to drop out of hyperspace in order to make contact, and every indication is that the shift into normal space dissipates inertia to the point that the ram would not be any more significant than a "conventional" ramming at sublight, and possibly even less than a similar craft building up steam from insystem.

(As an aside, Star Trek's warp facility was also not considered to be sufficiently accurate until Picard demonstrated, from necessity, the insystem microwarp. Even then it couldn't have been terribly pinpoint, or the battle at Wolf 359 would after a time just be starships microwarping into the Borg cube until structural integrity was sufficiently compromised.)

tl;dr: you need far better navigational systems to ram at hyperdrive than are in evidence, and you probably couldn't ram objects in normal space from hyperspace anyway. So stop being unrealistic.
posted by Errant at 12:52 AM on November 17, 2011 [2 favorites]


Also, hyperspace routes in the Star Wars Universe are generally pre-calculated courses, like say, train routes, as opposed to being able to fly wherever you want. Since the Death Star could be just about anywhere, the Alliance would have to get lucky and catch it while it was "parked on the railroad tracks," so to speak.
posted by ShutterBun at 6:42 PM on November 17, 2011


They couldn't adapt the snowspeeders to the cold quickly because they weren't actually snowspeeders. I'm guessing they were called such only in reference to the models and toys. In the movie itself, I think they were only called "speeders."

Han refers to them as "speeders" in dialogue, but in the script itself, they are called snowspeeders (example: INTERIOR: SNOWSPEEDER -- Cockpit)

Granted, in the extended universe, they were retconned into the T-47 "Airspeeder" whose design characteristics necessitated the cold-weather modifications.
posted by ShutterBun at 6:51 PM on November 17, 2011


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