ddern@BBN-UNIX@sri-unix.UUCP (08/05/83)
From: Daniel Dern <ddern@BBN-UNIX> Re discussions of background/universe/things hanging together in the logic, facts etc of STAR WARS...I get the feeling people are trying to deduce the existance of a coherent sub-structure which DOES NOT EXIST. My sense is that the SW gang did not attempt to think about and subsequently resolve the contradictions either implied or shown. Unless folks are trying to come up with the sub-structure-as-it-should-be, hand-waving away whatever in the actual movies contradicts these exercises, I'm at a loss to know what's going on. Come on, people -- these movies are NOT documentaries. They're entertainment. I'm grateful they made as much effort as they did. Ditto the efforts in STAR TREK. Resolving ambiguities at the print level -- was there rain, and why; what happened to line of dialogue x; and so on -- strikes me as an acceptable pastime, if one cares about these things. But they're not going to rewrite and reshoot just to make it hang together. This is why many authors give up on series, or decide to ignore these problems. Marion Zimmer Bradley has unabashedly not tried to retrofit old Darkover stories to mesh perfectly with the newer, nor limit the new stuff with the older strictures. Conan Doyle tried to kill off Holmes, for god's sake. (And the Baker Street Irregulars have scads of discussions locating and resolving the logical problems in the Sacred Writings. The comics world is also collapsing under the accumulated history of things, and the desire to be consistent. Some are doing better at resolving it all than others (Marvel's four Captain America's, splitting off main and segregated "universes", not counting Marvel-DC joint efforts in overall continuity; the Earth-A/B/Prime/1/2/etc issue, imaginary tales, and so on...) Unfortunately, it is harder to purge the cast of characters than we would like. (The issues of character aging, current era, and retrofitting character's previous eras [e.g., moving Superboy up to the Sputnik era] is getting increasingly messy.) Back to the movies: If we're going to pick at this level of logic, what's to stop us from asking even more central questions, like "What made them have so-and-so do such a dumb thing," or "what--you call that acting". Yours till VAL GALS OF GOR, Daniel Dern P.S. If this is "sf-lovers" what happened to talking about sf?
urban@trwspp.UUCP (08/10/83)
Why are people trying to make the StarWars universe coherent? Because it's fun! You point out the Baker Street people's attempts to resolve the Holmes bugs. This is a game that lots of people play with imaginative literature. OF COURSE we know that the reason that X is inconsistent with Y is "the writer wasn't thinking about Y when he wrote X." But the universe in question (whether Holmes' London, or Oz (FULL of wonderful holes to play with), or a galaxy far, far away) is sufficiently appealing that we find it more fun to "play in that universe" by trying to force it to make some kind of sense [btw, read Fredric Brown's "What Mad Universe" for a humorous story of someone who really ends up in a pulp-magazine SF world]. Tolkien's entire universe sprang from this kind of play, of course. "Unfinished Tales" shows Tolkien in his last years trying to come up with a coherent explanation of Galadriel and her place in the history of Middle-Earth, though he hadn't completely worked this out when "Lord of the Rings" was written. Imperial Armor dates from the days of the Republic and was excellent at repelling the blasts of a now-obsolete variety of blaster. Galactic paperwork being what it is, the Imperials haven't managed to retool their armories with anything that effectively blocks the new Mark VII blasters that the well-financed Rebellion uses. Or something. Mike