StarDestroyer.Net BBS

This is not about "Oh that's wrong because..." no this is about the common, or even not so common fallacies that we all believed when we first saw the OT and were not exposed to EU or websites like this one. For example:

When I saw ROTJ I believed that the Imperial fleet over Endor WAS the Imperial Fleet. I thought those were all the star destroyers they had and since we've only ever seen a handful of stradestroyers at most at any time in the previous films I was amazed at seeing so many destroyers on screen at any one time.


I also believed that the sensor globes were shield generators.

Can't think of anything else right now but its stuff like that which would be of interest to this thread.

1) "Shield Generator" fallacy.

2) "Thousand ships" fallacy.

3) "Good Guys Always Win" fallacy (specifically, in an ST vs SW matchup, I once thought that the Alliance would team up with the Federation and beat the Empire).

Can't think of any others.

I always believed that the rebels fleet was small.

The shield generator fallacy. I really didn't know whether to make of the Endor fleet as the entire or just what the Emperor could use as a trap.

That the officer in the detention block in ANH was killed by shrapnel from the wall beside him, while Luke actually fired two shots, the first hit the officer in the abdomen while the second hit the wall.

In ANH I thought the entirety of the rebellion was the single base and 30 fighters.

The "officer hit by wall shrapnel", "exactly one Ewok died in the Battle of Endor" (this was before I got wide-screen versions) and "two thousand ships was all the Imperial fleet had", that was my understanding at the time.

I saw ROTJ when I was about 6, and for some reason I had the impression that when Jabba the Hutt dropped you down that hole, he had the choice of feeding you to the Rancor or somehow turning you into one of his little frog things in his bowl, then he would eat you.

I think I thought this because there is a scene where he drops someone in, then after all the commotion dies down he eats a frog from that cylinder coming up out of the ground.

The Jabba the Hutt scenes scared the piss out of me at that age. That's one reason the SE "letting Han Solo step on his tail" really ruins Jabba for me.

"Cross-eyed Stormtroopers" Stormies kick ass except for when the heroes are involved, but everyone made fun of them for not hitting anything.

I got hooked to SW after being exposed to Timothy Zahn and the SW CCG, the only thing I remember about SW before that was "Damn, is that movie fuzzy. So........... what happened?"

ROTJ was showing on free-to-air TV, but the film they got was some crappy version, with very, very bad lightning and everything. It was like being Han Solo after carbonite, so, I always thought Luke Skywalker crushed the Rancor using his magic powers.

1) The "shield dome" fallacy

2) That rebel fighters alone could take on Star Destroyers and such. The ROTJ battle focuses so much on fighters scooting around and blasting stuff that we rarely if ever see any TL exchanges between the capital ships at all. This also sorta led me to believe that only the fighters in SW did the real heavy fighting and that capital ships were just their to support and supply the fighters and hold ground troops and stuff.

3) That TIE fighters had a habit of crashing due to their "inferior and flimsy" design.

4) That Endor survived the Deathstar explosion completely intact because "all the debris would just burn up in the atmosphere anyways"

6) That the only capital ships the rebels lost were the two mon cals blown up by the Deathstar.

7) That the AT-AT in ESB only blew up because the speeder managed to hit it in the neck.

Sean Howard wrote:I saw ROTJ when I was about 6, and for some reason I had the impression that when Jabba the Hutt dropped you down that hole, he had the choice of feeding you to the Rancor or somehow turning you into one of his little frog things in his bowl, then he would eat you.

I think I thought this because there is a scene where he drops someone in, then after all the commotion dies down he eats a frog from that cylinder coming up out of the ground.

Yeah, I also thought that when I was very young, some twenty years ago!!! I had almost forgot about that.

When I was about 3, I thought the Death Star blew up Earth. In the future. It scared me.

Years later, I basically had the idea that the X-Wing games were accurate, as playing X-Wing is what really got me into Star Wars in the first place.

I think most of the fallacies I had were from external things, like the X-wing games, but I was all in favour of the shield generator one prior to SDN, as well as the starfighters engaging capital ships thing too. I'm also still quite partial to the super star destroyer name, but there we are.

I thought Ben's lightsaber blade length actually shrunken indicating his saber energy chopped off by Vader.

Later on it turned into "Ben losing his advantage, or Force". Even after I watched TESB. (I kinda thought everyone had the Force, too)

Globe fallacy, 'nuff said.

Some other kiddie rumor:
A 4th movie called "Revenge of the Jedi" existed as a sequel, with Han dead.

Nothging off the top of my head. I took it for what it was when I was a kid.


On the other hand, when my oldest son was little, he thought Darth Vader was the coolest thing ever. It damn near broke his heart when he got old enough to figure out that Darth was a bad guy.

Another kid thing. I remember arguing that Yoda was not actually an alien, that the Force had turned him from a human into whatever. Kind of like the Navigators from Dune.

Shield Dome fallacy? The new book ends the debate. The domes are integral related to shields. They might not be shield generators, but they are projectors.

Alyeska wrote:Shield Dome fallacy? The new book ends the debate. The domes are integral related to shields. They might not be shield generators, but they are projectors.

They have small local area projector spikes *attatched* to them (which makes sense considering the domes are vital to the scanning and targeting abilities of the ship), but they have nothing inside them that is critical to shields being generated or powered.

Icehawk wrote:

Alyeska wrote:Shield Dome fallacy? The new book ends the debate. The domes are integral related to shields. They might not be shield generators, but they are projectors.

They have small local area projectors spikes *attatched* to them, but they have nothing inside them that is critical to shields being generated or powered.

They have projectors attached to them yet are critical to maintaining shields?

The EU makes it very clear that the domes are critical to protecting at least the bridge of the ISD. The new book clears things up showing how the domes work as duel use. Therefore the whole "shield dome fallacy" is nothing of the sort. Doesn't matter if they power the shields or project them, once they are destroyed shield function will drop.

NOW we do know that you have to get through the shields in the first place to destroy these. Typicaly this means the shields are outright destroyed, though we have evidence of shield holes being opened up and you can take advantage of that to. Its a minor weakness, but one it shares with all capitalships because once the shields go down good gunners can target the projectors/generators on any ship in an attempt to prevent the shields from reforming.

I used to think (a long time ago) that since there weren't many uber-looking explosions in the films, nukes would be strong against SW stuff.

Alyeska wrote: They have projectors attached to them yet are critical to maintaining shields?

No, they have projectors attacted to them for defensive purposes because they are key structures for SCANNING. The diagram in the book shows the domes are filled with hyperwave transciever coiles and scanning equipment, IT MAKES NO MENTION or specific indication of them being "dual use" for actually protecting the bridge.

The closest it comes is by mentioning the vains are "local area projectors" But why assume that includes protecting the entire bridge and not just the domes themselves? To me it makes more logical sense for the domes to have their own shields.

Icehawk wrote:

Alyeska wrote: They have projectors attached to them yet are critical to maintaining shields?

No, they have projectors attacted to them for defensive purposes because they are key structures for SCANNING. The diagram in the book shows the domes are filled with hyperwave transciever coiles and scanning equipment, IT MAKES NO MENTION or specific indication of them being "dual use" for actually protecting the bridge.

The closest it comes is by mentioning the vains are "local area projectors" But why assume that includes protecting the entire bridge and not just the domes themselves? To me it makes more logical sense for the domes to have their own shields.

Because the EU makes specific mentions to area projection with shields AND it fits with the Endor scene. You can't outright right it off as not being related to shields. This outright ignores scores of EU references and is a no-no.

Alyeska wrote: Because the EU makes specific mentions to area projection with shields AND it fits with the Endor scene. You can't outright right it off as not being related to shields. This outright ignores scores of EU references and is a no-no.

Ok fine, I see what you mean. But the fallacy was originally that the domes were purely used for shield generation and projection for the ship which WAS wrong and I think thats what people were referring too.

I've always liked the Coffee tank theory...