What was Pablo Hidalgo's Deal with Tech Heads?

[Darth Yan]

I remember seeing a video from Wayne Poe which described how Hidalgo seemed to have an unusual amount of contempt for Tech Heads and fans who analyzed Star Wars scientifically. Was wondering if anyone could clarify how much of that was true.

[Soontir C'boath]

I don't have know or have anything riding this. I'm just going to assume it's because it's a headache to have to keep things consistent and have nerdy fanboys nitpicking everything.

[Darth Yan]

That was part of it but there were also instances where he was nicer to hyperinclusionists (the guys who REALLY went all out in trying to keep everything in regardless of what is logical).

[NecronLord]

Confessions of a dateless nitpicker:

Well, it's not an entirely accurate description, but it has a nice zing to it. Ages ago, I had a website called the Star Wars Index. Parts of it are still online. It was a crazy attempt to out-encyclopedia the Star Wars Encyclopedia. Just a collection of all the fictional elements in the rapidly growing Star Wars universe. And in doing so, I saw all manner of continuity errors from day one -- Luke can swim, Leia can't; Leia can swim, Luke can't. I felt no need to create patches, sidebar stories or wild magic bullet theories to make it all fit. I just noted the contradictions in my footnotes, and kept writing.

At first, it was fun, rediscovering the stories with an eye towards the minutae that filled the frame. But that only really counted towards the stuff that I was reading the second, third, or umpteenth time. In a rabid effort to keep my Index up to date, I would read a Star Wars novel with a notepad next to me, keeping track of page numbers and discrepancies, suddenly unable to see the forest for the trees. It was when I was reading a certain cruddy novel about Hutts building a superlaser that I just had to ask -- why was I doing this?

Keep in mind, I wasn't actually fretting about continuity at this point. I was just wondering, why am I putting so much effort to make real a universe I know isn't. A universe I know can't be real. A universe I know is being constructed as a fiction? If the creators of the universe aren't keeping an hour-by-hour chronology or an accurate-to-the-micrometer account of ship lengths, why should I?

It was the classic case of a hobby no longer being fun anymore. That, and the novel really sucked, and I was making an unpleasant activity even more unpleasant. I started thinking about other properties I was passionate about, and whether I felt the need to micro-analyze them. G.I. Joe? Yeah, I love those guys -- but I know the cartoon and comic are two separate worlds, and even inside themselves they're pretty spotty. Transformers? That's even worse, with every story redefining the rules within their own medium, Those universes had hardly a shred of stability to them, so why was I still into them?

Because it wasn't about the continuity that made them fun. It was army guys versus Cobra, or an eighteen-wheeler that turned into a robot. I mean, that was the intent of the creators, after all.

Then, I started thinking about the Muppets. Is there a Muppet chronology out there that agonizes over the veracity of Piggy and Kermit's wedding in The Muppets Take Manhattan, or that Scooter is seen as a manager of the Electric Mayhem in The Muppet Movie, yet was clearly established to be the nephew of the theater owner in the TV show? Did I get angry about that? Did anyone? Probably not.

So, why are Star Wars or scifi fans different? When clearly learned men take incredible amounts of effort to tell me that a Super Star Destroyer is x-meters long based on careful astrolabe-confirmed data gleaned from their Sony triniton, I ask them to explain the scientific principal that holds the yellow letters together at the start of the movie. Or why, if the Empire was so adamant that the Death Star was a secret project, would they allow it to be written in a title crawl for any farmboy to read with a pair of macrobinoculars?

Of course, they yell at me for being facetious and introducing all sorts of logical fallacies to their oh-so-proper college-rules debate.

It just started to get more and more absurd. I realized it was going further and further away from what Star Wars was about. George set out to give a story to a generation growing up without fairy tales, and instead created a generation that can't grow up. Fairy tales don't need technical commentaries (my calculations show, by the way, that there is no physical way the beanstalk could have supported its own mass, let alone that of an ascending or descending giant. Furthermore, please see my essay, "The Fallen Giant Holocaust" for my incredibly footnoted description of how Jack's home land would have been utterly destroyed had a giant fallen from that distance).

I've mellowed out when it comes for my need for the universe to be kept a tidy place. But that said, I do think continuity is important to a degree. To what degree is the question. To the Star Wars scribes, like Randy, and even myself, I say: you KNOW you have an audience that is simply incapable of mellowing out. No amount of saying, "hey it's only a movie" will placate them. You know this. What you have to figure out is a) are they really the largest percentage of your money-spending audience and b) can you put up with their whining?

I honestly don't know the numbers. My gut tells me its actually the minority that worry about Star Destroyer sizes and day-to-day events. But that really depends on your medium. Most of the happy moviegoers that left the theater in 1983 weren't angry that the Endor holocaust wasn't depicted. Oh sure, they wanted Ewoks to die, but they didn't care that the fuzzballs lived due to sloppy science.

But I don't know the psychology of a comics buyer. I think I know the psychology of the average reader of HoloNet News, so I take care not to mess that up too egregiously. And if you're writing a cross sections book or anything that pretends to be a technical manual, for God's sake STOP! Or, at least get ready for the hate mail.

ph

I wouldn't want to speculate too much beyond what he actually says here, but it's clear that there's a fair degree of antipathy to Dr Saxton's work. I would like to suggest that with his original entry into being a professional Star Wars creator being through the WEG games books, he particularly might resent the sheer depth of venomous loathing that many 'tech heads' have directed to the WEG books.

He also makes a point of talking about his own fansite and some references to Dr Saxton's site that make me think he holds some resentment there. It probably doesn't help if even half of the rumours of Dr Saxon's unprofessional behaviour in respect of the "Inside the Worlds of Star Wars Trilogy" (to which the rumour I have heard is that Dr Saxton refused to engage further with the book unless the Endor Holocaust was included and canonized in the book, and left the project) I can understand some resentment. Dr Saxton's involvement with ITW was about a year before this post that keeps coming back to the Endor Holocaust.

[Galvatron]

I hadn't heard any of those rumors before, but nothing would surprise me at this point. Why Curtis was so fixated on it when the very ending of ROTJ pretty clearly demonstrated that no such "holocaust" occurred was always baffling to me.

[Darth Yan]

When it comes to PHYSICS Saxton's a case of "you're not wrong you're just an asshole." The issue is that OTHER sections of fandom have been even worse (hyperinclusionists, minimalists etc).

When it comes to non phsyics Saxton talks out of his ass.

[chimericoncogene]

Oh, Pablo is the most minimalist of the minimalists. He's one of the guys who pushed the Essential Guide to Warfare and its 3-million-man, 18-army Clone Army (one Clone for every hundred thousand stars, ladies and gentlemen!). He's quite adamantly against technically and historically "sweet" interpretations.

In High Republic, he's pushing lore for handmade one-of-a-kind spacecraft, built like handicrafts. TPM had the same vibe, but he's expanding the aesthetic and logic to mass production items like civilian cargo spacecraft.

Granted, he's a product of the fights of the old days, or so I've heard, but he's quite something...

[NecronLord]

Yeah it can't be denied that Pablo is strongly against science in his star wars or even basic logic. The famous "It's a Star Wars Black Hole, not a real life one" springs to mind.

[GuppyShark]

In High Republic, he's pushing lore for handmade one-of-a-kind spacecraft, built like handicrafts. TPM had the same vibe, but he's expanding the aesthetic and logic to mass production items like civilian cargo spacecraft.

FML that's because Naboo was rich. Those were Rolls Royces, not Fords.

[Gandalf]

Also, with droid labour and automation, there should be excess labour for things like custom made ships.

[Darth Yan]

You need to have some logic and common sense or it falls apart. Most of the people advocating more logic and common sense are actually pretty reasonable about it; that "oh who cares about logic" is just lazy (even today in the world most cars are made by machines. The few exceptions are the rich people cars. Star wars is MORE industrialized so having every ship be built by hand is.....well stupid.)

Yeah it can't be denied that Pablo is strongly against science in his star wars or even basic logic. The famous "It's a Star Wars Black Hole, not a real life one" springs to mind.

I'm curious about this. While yes there is some scientific leeway too much of that got us that "Leia floating in space" scene which even many fans of the movie will admit was utterly stupid.

Intellectual laziness is bad and it feels like Pablo is encouraging that attitude.

[Ralin]

While yes there is some scientific leeway too much of that got us that "Leia floating in space" scene which even many fans of the movie will admit was utterly stupid.

I cannot remember seeing even a single person complaining about the science in that scene.

[Darth Yan]

If not about the science than the fact that it looked utterly ridiculous.

[Lord Insanity]

This is also the same idiot that insists on an incorrect continuity order for The Clone Wars series. In season 2 the original episode 11 clearly leads into the start of episode 9. So you should watch season 2 episode 11, then 9, then 10. Instead of admitting they screwed up the original air order he insists that episode 11 comes after 10. Anyone with a functional brain can see that causes all sorts of continuity contradictions.

It's basically the old "The Executor is only 8km long" nonsense all over again. Anyone that watches the movie can see that is wrong by at least double. (Hence the modern accepted length of 19km.)

As long as that idiot is in charge of continuity, Star Wars doesn't have any as far as I am concerned. (Though I guess that sort of explains the sequel movies doesn't it.)

[Darth Yan]

Pretty much. While having complete consistency isn't possible you need to have SOME form of logic and consistency. Hidalgo has a "who gives a shit" mentality, which is how we end up with comic book inconsistencies (well that and the inability to just let the stories end).

The 8km was based on a flawed reading of the novelization that no one bothered to correct....which allowed shit to fester.

[chimericoncogene]

Yeah it can't be denied that Pablo is strongly against science in his star wars or even basic logic. The famous "It's a Star Wars Black Hole, not a real life one" springs to mind.

The obvious retort is that a Star Wars black hole should look cooler, like one of those CGI black holes in Interstellar.

I mean, sure, Nebulae aren't much to look at in real life close up either and the colors are all false color, but dear god, just grab some Hubble pretties and build on that.

The astronomical objects all look like crap these days. I swear, they could make a neutron star look boring.

[NecronLord]

I'm curious about this. While yes there is some scientific leeway too much of that got us that "Leia floating in space" scene which even many fans of the movie will admit was utterly stupid.

Intellectual laziness is bad and it feels like Pablo is encouraging that attitude.

Your wish is my command.

Q: We saw the crew near a black hole, so are we going to see the time dilation suffered by them?
Pablo: You’re getting science into our Star Wars, which is always kind of a weird thing. We don’t know for sure whether or not the Star Wars galaxy experiences physics or time the same way our galaxy does. In Star Wars there’s like, simultaneity, it’s called. They have objective time. That is, someone on Tatooine can experience a Tuesday, and someone on Coruscant is experiencing that exact same Tuesday, can pick up the phone and call them. That doesn’t happen in our galaxy because of relativity. The rules are different so… who knows what happens when you fly close to a star cluster like that.

[Darth Yan]

I KINDA understand that but at the same time there needs to be SOME form of scientific consistency or else it falls apart. At the very least it should be INTERNALLY consistent and have SOME logic

[MarxII]

I'm just speculating here, but the impression I get is that there's a reflexive distate for anything resembling "getting science into our Star Wars" that comes as much from a corresponding dislike of certain well-known proponents of rigorous scientific analysis of the films as from any objections to tonal clash or authorial intent or anything like that. Much like the whole Last Jedi brouhaha, it comes off as in-universe preference reflecting real-world politics.

[Lord Insanity]

The obvious retort is that a Star Wars black hole should look cooler, like one of those CGI black holes in Interstellar.

What is really funny is that the CGI black holes from Interstellar were based on the most recent (at the time) physics calculations about how it should look in real life.

[Darth Yan]

I'm just speculating here, but the impression I get is that there's a reflexive distate for anything resembling "getting science into our Star Wars" that comes as much from a corresponding dislike of certain well-known proponents of rigorous scientific analysis of the films as from any objections to tonal clash or authorial intent or anything like that. Much like the whole Last Jedi brouhaha, it comes off as in-universe preference reflecting real-world politics.

Curtis Saxton is a reactionary racist jackass, and a lot of others don't want to think about politics period because it's uncomfortable

[Darth Yan]

Looking through this I realize Pablo's problem; He got his start with WEG and the tech head approach would mean admitting WEG got a lot wrong/was badly researched. It's like McEwok and the other WEG fanboys. They value precedence over what's actually right (sort of like how judges will use precedence even if new evidence clearly shows precedence is full of shit.)

[Ralin]

Looking through this I realize Pablo's problem; He got his start with WEG and the tech head approach would mean admitting WEG got a lot wrong/was badly researched. It's like McEwok and the other WEG fanboys. They value precedence over what's actually right (sort of like how judges will use precedence even if new evidence clearly shows precedence is full of shit.)

So the problem was that he...liked one version more than another?

[Darth Yan]

That seems to be it. HIs "oh it's just a movie" is a cowardly dodge. If it was just a movie he'd accept it.

He seems to have a genuine contempt for rigor and actual thought. Some inconsistencies are inevitable but if they can be avoided by two minutes research than no, you're an idiot who deserves to be pilloried.

[Vendetta]

It's basically the old "The Executor is only 8km long" nonsense all over again. Anyone that watches the movie can see that is wrong by at least double. (Hence the modern accepted length of 19km.)

See here's the thing. "anyone who watches the movie" can see that the Executor is Big. Bigness is a property communicated well by the model work and how it is showed compared to other established Big things.

How Big?

Doesn't matter.

Big is what's important because it makes it visually imposing and that adds something to the way the visuals communicate story.

He seems to have a genuine contempt for rigor and actual thought.

When applied to Star Wars, certainly. It's not that sort of story. It's a space fable where the problem is solved by trusting in feelings and an ineffable "Force" which guides the heroes to an enlightened true path. Intellectual rigour and actual thought are literally the thing that the Jedi have to learn not to do to be Jedi.