StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Apparently, the live-action series Lucas has been promising for a while is due to go into pre-production sometime this year. What would you hope to see from it in terms of tech, characters, story, or otherwise? Be reasonable--it's doubtful that characters will go into monologues explaining the precise teraton firepower of ISDs before showing gratitious shots of BDZs.

Personally, I'd like to see some good examples of day-to-day oppression by the Empire, such as peaceful riots being brutally put down, Tiannamen style, with maybe Imperial secret police agents serving as antagonists at some point. Focus on lesser-key character types like smugglers would be good, although from what I hear it's going along this route as it is.

Yes, I think it would be a good idea to high light the corruption of the Empire. A 'Firefly' type show, as it were, following smugglers or refugee's dodging the Empire's Agents while eking out a living. No Jedi, though, that would be too cliche for me I think.


Edit: Though, as I think I said last thread like this, I think it would be fun to do a SW version of Foundation series and jump ahead 4 thousand years...

Knife wrote:Yes, I think it would be a good idea to high light the corruption of the Empire. A 'Firefly' type show, as it were, following smugglers or refugee's dodging the Empire's Agents while eking out a living. No Jedi, though, that would be too cliche for me I think.

Yeah, that's exactly my ideal image of the show, although unfortunately I'd imagine a Jedi or Force-user would make a cameo at some point. An evil Imperial official or some sort of crime lord would make a good central villain. That, or I could imagine them doing an anthology show, focusing on some different scenario each time, with maybe some underlying arc. I'd hope that the show would echo older films, like the original trilogy itself, in this case perhaps westerns--brave outlaws on the run--like Firefly, as you say, as well as Noir (something Lucas mentioned regarding this), to reflect the grimmer side of living under the Empire.

I would hope that it would be a swashbuckling serial like what inspired Star Wars in the first place. I also like Knife's idea of 4 Gs in the future. I think the current era is just done. Too much has been said and written about it. Although if there is one thing we can on out of GL these days, it is him ignoring the EU, so hopefully he will shoot tons of holes in it and force a reboot or something.

Do we have any firm idea of what they are shooting for with this series, or is everything still in secret squirrel mode?

Lucas has made some vague suggestions; apparently it'll be about 'lesser characters', and will be set between ROTS/ANH. Beyond that, not much.

Sam Witwer, the voice and likeness of Galen Marek in the Force Unleashed has expressed interest of reprising that role in the live action series. Don't know if that's a good idea or not.

As a cameo, maybe....

Havok wrote:I would hope that it would be a swashbuckling serial like what inspired Star Wars in the first place. I also like Knife's idea of 4 Gs in the future. I think the current era is just done. Too much has been said and written about it. Although if there is one thing we can on out of GL these days, it is him ignoring the EU, so hopefully he will shoot tons of holes in it and force a reboot or something.

Lucas on it:-

"It's kind of like Episode IV — it's funny and there's action, but it's [a] lot more talky. It's more of what I would call a soap opera with a bunch of personal dramas in it. It's not really based on action-adventure films from the '30s — it's actually more based on film noir movies from the '40s!"

So yeah, not inspired by the 1930s stuff, but 1940s stuff.

Enh, I can live with that.

Even though Vader isn't going to be in it, it'd be nice if he could make a cameo. I get an image of a scene where some surviving Jedi character goes off to meet his fate against Vader, you see him walk into a room with the shadow in there, the doors close, he screams and its the end of that character.

If Wookieepedia is to believed, one rumor hints that there might be a storyline about the capture of the Death Star plans--the 5674464th time it happened, then.

Srelex wrote:If Wookieepedia is to believed, one rumor hints that there might be a storyline about the capture of the Death Star plans--the 5674464th time it happened, then.

Let's not indulge in the fiction that the T-canon will do anything more than be inspired from and randomly draw small things from the EU.

I'm hoping to see a Base Delta Zero at some point in all it's terrible destructive glory.

I'd like to see an art budget big enough for more than one Imperial ship.

I'd like to see what Star Wars 'can really do'. And do it in a way where is background material.

i.e "Hello, this is your captain speaking. It's currently 6:30pm, Coruscant central time. We've been cleared for lift-off by traffic control, and baring traffic problems, should clear Coruscants Gravity well at 6:35pm. We'll jump into Hyperspace at approximately 6:37pm, and arrive on Naboo, 65,000 Light years distance. Expected hyperspace travel time with this vessels Class 1 hyperdrive is 45 standard minutes".

Something nice and common in our world (Pilot explaining flight conditions and expected travel times, etc), but with star wars technical information. From that one line, we now have some nice background detail, and some solid tech information to work with. (Class 1 hyperdrive is approximate 1445 Light years per minute).

Some supporting visuals on what Star Wars can do would be nice too.

i.e
Officer: "We're in attack position now sir."
Captain (on com with planet leadership). "Ladies and Gentlemen, you attempting to shot down our Warship with a antique 200 megaton nuclear device. In response, I will now fire a single cannon into your major food production region"

(Star Destroyer opens fire. 1 blast hits the planet, and levels a large area. We even see the effects planet side during the explosion).

"That was a single blast from one of our Light Turbolaser cannons. In terms you can understand, that was the equal of a 200 Gigaton nuclear device, approximately 1000 times the power of the weapon you attempted to us on us. Our shields are designed to withstand several hours of continuous bombardment by dozens of weapons of that firepower level. I'm sure you'll not appriciate why your attempts are resistance are, pointless. You have 2 hours to surrender control of your planet to the Empire, or I will begin further bombardment with our HEAVY Turbolaser cannons, witch are a further 400 times more powerful."

This gives us numbers to work wirth (results:
Star Destroyer light Turbolaser cannon: 200 Gigatons per shot
Star Destroyer Heavy Turbolaser cannon: 80 Terratons per shot.)
and it's in line with a condesencing, 'intelligent elite' style Imperial officer talking down to a alien planetary government.


And visiting some varied worlds beyond the movies would be nice. Hell, visit the '20 seconds of viewing' planets from the movies! I'd love to see the kind of cities the Wookies, Twi'liek, Muan, or another non-human culture has created.

I'm hoping for a look at the life of the average joe in the universe, with maybe the odd episode concerning the military or the scum of the galaxy. I'm totally burned out on Jedi, Sith, Clones and Stormies, they've been done to death.

People hoping for base delta zeros and accurate figures for things are going to be disappointed, because nobody making shows like this gives a shit about anything like that. I'd be surprised if you could quiz Lucas on the spot and have him actually know what his own universe was capable of. I highly doubt he went "oh, these star destroyers can evaporate asteroids, which means they have blah blah firepower", or pulled up a map of the galaxy and determined how long characters would take to get around to different places so he could include it in his story. Instead, he just said "AND THEN DARTH MAUL FLEW TO TATTOOINE AND IT TOOK A DAY". OR whatever.

I mean, yeah, a BDZ would be cool, but its not a very realistic thing to hope for.

Stormies would be nice. They don't get enough screentime or protagonist treatment as it is.

You know what... I just want a good fucking story, with action, humor and adventure. Something that I can watch and feel good about. I don't give a flying fuck if it makes Star Trek more powerful and Star Wars the laughing stock of the Vs debate universe... I DON'T FUCKING CARE!
Just make me love Star Wars again George.

Havok wrote:You know what... I just want a good fucking story, with action, humor and adventure. Something that I can watch and feel good about. I don't give a flying fuck if it makes Star Trek more powerful and Star Wars the laughing stock of the Vs debate universe... I DON'T FUCKING CARE!
Just make me love Star Wars again George.

We have a winner.

I feel pretty jaded about the Vs debates as a whole, and people requesting future entries of a series specifically make the universe more powerful for vs debates is almost offensive. I know people didn't explicitly do that in this thread, but the general attitude of "rarr we need to see tie fighters blowing up cities to show those trekkies who's boss" just rubs me the wrong way.

It turns out fatty nerds make the worst fanfic writers. WHO KNEW

Shit. I just channeled Stark there. I feel dirty.

I would like to see a close and detailed look at a regular Joe Blow Imperial, like a stormtrooper or an Imperial pilot. Not some evil monster just a regular guy or girl serving their Empire.

Solauren wrote:I'd like to see what Star Wars 'can really do'. And do it in a way where is background material.

i.e "Hello, this is your captain speaking. It's currently 6:30pm, Coruscant central time. We've been cleared for lift-off by traffic control, and baring traffic problems, should clear Coruscants Gravity well at 6:35pm. We'll jump into Hyperspace at approximately 6:37pm, and arrive on Naboo, 65,000 Light years distance. Expected hyperspace travel time with this vessels Class 1 hyperdrive is 45 standard minutes".

That could work as background stuff while two characters are on the transport talking about important stuff, otherwise it just comes off as pointless trivia taking up time in the episode at best and "warsie conspiracy" at worst.

Some supporting visuals on what Star Wars can do would be nice too.

*snip*

This gives us numbers to work wirth (results:
Star Destroyer light Turbolaser cannon: 200 Gigatons per shot
Star Destroyer Heavy Turbolaser cannon: 80 Terratons per shot.)
and it's in line with a condesencing, 'intelligent elite' style Imperial officer talking down to a alien planetary government.

That's pushing it and seems a bit too obviously that these things are for the vs debate rather than exclusively for the story. You also don't want to bog the story down too much by exposition. If we get those numbers both through dialogue and visuals over the course of a couple episodes would be far better if that's really want you want.

About the most I can see making sense is if the reactor on a Venator gets heavily damaged and the engineer says "we'll be lucky to generate a yottawatt" a single sentence that gives us information that makes people who know what those words mean go "woa" and doesn't get in the way of the story.

Main reason why I want to see a Base Delta Zero is well, to see it, the visual spectacle of it all, and that is far more likely to happen as Star Wars is all about big setpieces. What you described sounds more like something they would do on Star Trek for random stat porn.

I wouldn't want to see a TIE fighter blowing up a city or anything, but I would like to see them kicking ass and taking names, and show that Stormtroopers are every bit as competent as their Clone Predecessors. Basically Make the Empire scary again, cause villains aren't effective if they aren't scary.

And visiting some varied worlds beyond the movies would be nice. Hell, visit the '20 seconds of viewing' planets from the movies! I'd love to see the kind of cities the Wookies, Twi'liek, Muan, or another non-human culture has created.

Most certainly, I would love to see extremely varied technological appearances, everything from Anime like the clean and sterile, hexagon filled stuff that Evangelion, Gundam and Metal Gear Solid are fond of, Dirty Cyberpunk like Coruscant somewhat conveys mixed with some Ghost in the Shell type stuff, To extremely bizarre technology that appears to be culturally intended to look like Steam/Dieselpunk (Computer interfaces that are like typewriters and stuff that has dials and valves in spite of the inner workings being highly advanced, it's just their choice to make it look that way.)

It's a big galaxy, there's so much room for different design aesthetics.

Yeah--in fact, it'd be better for the writers to avoid numbers altogether, in case we get crap like an ISD being horrified over a kiloton-level weapon, or whatever. When exactly have precise firepower numbers ever been given in a visual piece of SW fiction anyway?