Demolishing Darkstar's bullshit about the novelization

[Vympel]

It's official . . . there are no planetary shields in Star Wars. Coruscant is invaded at the start of the opening fleet battle, and then pelted with debris from it, killing uncounted numbers of people over the course of the hours of combat. The only defense against it is the planet's surface defense umbrella, consisting of surface gun emplacements, fighters, and of course the orbiting fleet.

In other words, planets are defended just like I said they are.

Except of course for the tiny fact that if the planetary shield had been raised, they wouldn't have been able to kidnap Palpatine, making the entire "inside job" a colossal waste of time.

Good one, Darkstar. Isn't there something in Labyrinth of Evil about this?

Here we get a little bit of firepower quantification, albeit a somewhat vague one. The Hiroshima airburst, for instance, vaporized very little. However, this does directly contradict the EU claims of multi-gigaton firepower. After all, if a 300 gigaton impact would be big enough to annihilate Long Island, NY and Connecticut with 5000 degree molten material within 10 seconds from impact, then simply vaporizing a small town would be less energetic by orders of magnitude.
This also serves to reinforce the idea that the bolts themselves have the power, as opposed to the unusual recent EU claim that the bolts are mere tracers for lightspeed beams.

Here we see Darkstar predictably assuming that the turbolasers referred to must be referring to the heavier weapons and in paticular that turbolasers can be equivalent to nuclear explosions.

The Confederacy landed on Coruscant and took Palpatine in the midst of the fleet combat. In other words, no trace of planetary shielding over the center of government.
On a lighter note, the EU's idea of TV . . . the HoloNet . . . gets a mention

Merely repeating what he thinks is *proof* that there are no planetary shields in Star Wars- because one wasn't in evidence above Coruscant in one big set-up. Whatever.

Republic cruiser hulls can be damaged by starfighter weaponry. Granted, most of us knew this sort of thing, but recent EU has made claims suggesting the contrary.

Of course, the quote here makes no claims about how big the "chunks" are, nor does he tell us what recent EU has made claims to the contrary.

There's no mention of actual shields on these fighters . . . just this ablative armor beneath easily-scorched paint.

It's funny how Darkstar can take "ablative shielding" and turn it into "ablative armour".

Once again, we have it clearly stated that Star Wars power systems are fusion-based like suns are, much as was seen in the other novelizations. It can hardly get any plainer.
This stands in stark contradiction to the claims made elsewhere.

Ifyou think children's superstition serves an exhaustive analysis of every possible power system for any ship whatsoever, never mind a moonlet sized planet-destroying battlestation- yeah I suppose it does The absurdity doesn't get much better than this- fusion furnaces must be exactly like ordinary medium yellow suns, because these Tatooine tykes say so! Of course, there are EU referring to fusion being used for power generation in ships. The difference is its not the only thing- and the full name of hypermatter reactors is actually, you guessed it, hypermatter-fusion.

So sorry Darkstar. No contradiction for you.

Missiles appear to lack almost any brain at all.

Clearly, Darkstar thinks its reasonable to call missiles "lacking any brain at all" simply for the crime of not being aware of another missile's whereabouts while tracking their target. Of course, Jango Fett's missile had no trouble avoiding numerous obstacles in the field chase, but don't let that stop Darkstar from painting with a broad brush.

As with TPM and other examples, we see that starfighter weapons are sub-kiloton in yield . . . multi-megaton missiles do not spray shrapnel.

An outright lie. The missile referred to in this quote is a BUZZ DROID missile, the shrapnel are actually BUZZ DROIDS. God what a liar.

Not very effective shielding, what with the emitter in plain sight and readily shootable.

Needless to say, its the hangar bay shield, not the shield of the whole ship, which is likely already failed.

This is an interesting claim on Stover's part, but ultimately futile. We see the exterior shots in the film, and they correspond to the "enjoy"-able view. Also:
1. Ships at lightspeed do not remain in planetary orbit unless they are circling madly.
2. Hundreds of kilometers as a combat range is mentioned, as opposed to the millions or billions of kilometers from Saxton.
3. Interesting "prismatic splinters against shields". Reminds one of that hit on Tantive IV in ANH.
In any case, I have a feeling that the "view wall" is actually a "window" in the film, and will probably be very similar to the bridge window from the same ship.

As expected, Darkstar sets up the inevitable "this entire passage is contradicted" claim. He also lies about the quote- it doesn't say anything about the ships travelling at near c. Just their weaponry.

Dooku of Serenno ponders the future . . . a racist Empire, an Empire of Man, in whose very genesis the destruction of alien power was arranged.
Once the Senate was swept away in ANH, all the leaders of the Empire were human. Every officer and soldier of the Empire was human. Now we officially know why.

Fascinating.

Clearly Darkstar is trying to ape Mike's criticism of the Federation in his canon analysis pages. Of course, no one ever claimed the Empire wasn't evil.

Incidentally, this also suggests that Serenno was colonized, along with planets like Tatooine (as told in ANH) and Naboo. Little wonder the Gungans didn't like the surface-dwellers.

God knows where he got this claim from. Really.

The EU's name for a ship type gets canonized in the "Carrack-class", though I doubt the EU ship type will appear in the film.
More importantly, we have the statement that these ships were attacking the faltering shields of the Invisible Hand. This is after the ship has had its docking bay depressurized by Jedi fighter weapons blasting out the bay's atmosphere containment shield . . . meaning that the fighters shot and flew right through any defensive shielding. And, of course, that had been quite few minutes back, chronologically.

This does, however, imply a possible shield resistance of several hours worth of combat. While that sounds good, the fact that defensive shielding does little to nothing against fighters is not good.

Notice the automatic assumption that there was a defensive shield arond the bay atmospheric shield of the Invisible Hand, when its clear that Star Wars ships have multiple shield quadrants.

Like the fighter weapons, the Republic warships' anti-ship weapons couldn't blast all the way through enemy capital ship "heavy armor" in one hit.

He bolds this as if this is some kind of important statement. Maybe hes trying to claim that starfighter weapons = capital ship weapons?

Further, the ship's gravity generators were shifting wildly, throwing the down-angle every which way. This was happening before the ship even lost her sheilds. To my knowledge, no such failure has ever occurred in Trek, where the one instance of gravity failure was via direct hits by torpedoes. One button-press later and all was restored.

On the good side, the SW crew was prepared for this kind of difficulty by having seat belts.

As above.

One might be tempted to think this duranium is the same substance referred to on Trek since TOS. However, one would be wrong to make that presumption.
Interesting that a ceramic material is considered sufficient to stop a starfighter weapon . . . not some ultradense armor or advanced nano-material. Then again, given the starfighter weapons we've seen (for instance, on Naboo in TPM), this isn't necessarily a surprise. It certainly stands in stark contrast to the one kiloton weapons claimed by Saxton and friends.

again. Let's just put our hands over our eyes and forget Slave I's blaster cannons in the asteroid field, shall we? This armorplast isn't looking so shabby then, is it? If you want to interpret it that way and not just exaggeration.

Here we see how Star Wars vessels evade tracking. This helps serve to explain Han's line in ANH about losing the Imperials . . . he'd probably made a number of hyperjumps.

Funny, no evidence of that anywhere in the canon.

Man, with all those exploding consoles around you'd think they were on the bridge of a Federation starship. Of course, Trek consoles seldom set people on fire or shred them, so perhaps SW exploding consoles are worse.

BTW, what is "radiation-scatter"? Isn't that "radiation"? Or am I being redundant and saying the same thing?

For some reason I doubt we'll see this in the film.

The bridge "view wall" is merely a window made of transparisteel . . . somewhat different than the computerized view wall mentioned earlier. A glancing hit from a fighter was all that was required to crack it . . . one wonders what a direct hit might've done, or even an proton grenade.
Little wonder that most SW ships have so few windows, given how weak they seem to be. When the Enterprise-D crashed into a planet, plowing through hills, most of her windows were intact.

Notice the automatic assumption that the glancing hit from the starfighter must be weak.

Here again we see that there is no such thing as planetary shielding in Star Wars.
For Coruscant, the surface-defense system . . . Coruscant's protective umbrella . . . is precisely that which I have previously stated it should be: surface guns and ships.

I trust this demonstration is as impressive as it is thorough.

Darkstar still crowing about this apparent "proof" of no planetary shields in SW.

There's also Darkstar crowing a lot about the Invisible Hand breaking apart on re-entry, of course, the ship had been hit for six by concentrated firepower from the enemy and in general being damaged as hell, as if this matters to anyone.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Good one, Darkstar. Isn't there something in Labyrinth of Evil about this?

ROTS ICS says the Invisible Hand was trapped beneath the deflector shield at the time of its incapacitation (no doubt this is an effort by Saxton to both account for the deflector shield and explain the extreme close-quarters combat in ROTS.

There's also Darkstar crowing a lot about the Invisible Hand breaking apart on re-entry, of course, the ship had been hit for six by concentrated firepower from the enemy and in general being damaged as hell, as if this matters to anyone.

Not to mention the novel goes on at length about the disrupted and failing inertial compensation/artifical gravity systems at various localities within the ship. With its engines still operable, an appropriately located failure could help the ship structurally compromise itself.

[The Dude]

Interesting that a ceramic material is considered sufficient to stop a starfighter weapon . . . not some ultradense armor or advanced nano-material.

What a fucking 'tard.

PHEAR THE NANO! Of course, nanostructured materials must make better armour against energy weapons because... umm, they're FUCKING NANO!!! That's REALLY FUCKING SMALL!

Naturally, ultradense materials are excellent choices for personal armour: who wouldn't want to wear the heaviest armour possible?

Someone oughtta tell those stupid arseholes at NASA that they should be using uranium panels on the Space Shuttle instead of those useless primitive ceramic materials.

[Imperial Overlord]

Well, you didn't expect him to reply with logic, did you? Phear the technobabble!

[Solauren]

Someone needs to reply to him:

Your using the novels now? Thank you for killing your own canon debate.

[The Dude]

Someone needs to reply to him:

Your using the novels now? Thank you for killing your own canon debate.

Ask him why he keeps lying about the ANH novel specifying fusion power for the DS1. He loves that.

Ask him why he considers the novels canon when his beloved GL "parallel universe" sentence fragment, upon which he rests his entire house of cards, clearly includes the books in the "parallel universe" category. He loves that too.

Ask again and again. And again and again and again.

[Montcalm]

Well, you didn't expect him to reply with logic, did you? Phear the technobabble!

Don't you mean *Treknobabble*

[apocolypse]

FFS, is he still on about god-damn planetary shielding? How many times does the same damn debate need to be rehashed over and over (ad nauseum) before it finally sinks in?

And good breakdown Vym.

[Master of Ossus]

FFS, is he still on about god-damn planetary shielding? How many times does the same damn debate need to be rehashed over and over (ad nauseum) before it finally sinks in?

Seriously. Any rational person would take the DVD release and recognize that Alderaan had a planetary shield. Of course, with DarkStar it was a challenge.

[Darth Servo]

Vympel's already covered much of what I have but I thought I'd post my own efforts such as they are. Opening statement:

The final chapter of the Star Wars prequel trilogy, Revenge of the Sith, had its novelization released on April 2, 2005. This is a much different sort of novelization than what we've seen before. As author Matthew Stover put it:

"Not only has Mr. Lucas succeeded in tying together the entire six-film cycle (and elegantly, too), but I've managed to weave in a significant amount of the Expanded Universe material in as well -- having started in the Star Wars realm as an EU author, after all. I was really trying to bring the whole Star Wars Universe together in this story, and while Mr. Lucas, in his line-edit, decided to excise a fair amount of the EU material, he also left a fair amount of it in... so I guess that makes whatever's left just a hair short of "G canon," for all the purists out there."

"As I said above, part of my aim here was to create a novel that would work as part of the EU as well as a companion piece to the film."
- Matthew Stover, Author (Ep3 and EU) and EU Guerrilla, Mar 2005 -

"Inside Del Rey's Episode III Library" on StarWars.com
In other words, Stover injected a large number of EU references, some of which managed to make it past Lucas. Stover theorized that he trimmed those mostly-older-materials-references because he didn't want them continuing to exist in the EU continuity. While this is an interesting hypothesis, it's more likely that Lucas simply trimmed out what EU he could immediately identify, though he did let Stover keep some of his own material in there. The only EU Lucas reads is the comics, and he exercises some oversight on the games . . . so, any older EU materials that might've filtered to the comics or games would've died at his pen's point.

So in his continuing rant against the EU, Darkstar thinks Lucas is DELIBRATELY removing references to it in the ROTS novelization, in clear contradiction to Lucas deliberate INCLUSION of EU elsewhere in the films like ADDING the Outrider to ANH or naming the capitol world ‘Coruscant’

That said, there are still a large number of EU references in the novel. However, those who do not follow the EU will not be lost. Much as Lucas threw in backstory references like the "maneuver at the Battle of Taanab" or the "nest of gundarks" or Anakin's scar to indicate a more detailed history than simply 'the last movie', Stover's various references wind up providing a similar function . . . letting the audience know that the relationship has changed and deepened due to shared events, but not going into detail about them.

Details Lucas explicitly stated were answered in the EU with regard to Anakin’s scar which DS explicitly ignores.

Also, Stover ends up naming and explaining a large number of things, frequently halting the story to ponder some doo-dad that isn't ever seen again. In this, his writing style was somewhat jarring. This can be a good thing in certain contexts . . . "big reveal" moments or writing about combat events . . . but for the most part it was poor, made poorer by Stover's goal of EU-interjection. (Or, to borrow from "The Exploited Universe", it made things crappy.)

Opinion only. And coming from the guy who actually thought ST: Nemesis was a good movie, worth precisely zilch.

Stover's insistence on referring to the EU proved to be a weakness in his storytelling in several respects. First, he tried to refer to the EU so frequently that you'd think the entire Clone War had only involved two or three events (i.e. those which Lucas Licensing managed to create since AoTC). Whenever he needed or wanted to make use of a backstory reference, he mentions someplace called Jabiim or someone called the Ventress. Thus, he mentions these only about fifty times in the novel, leading the reader to wonder if Skywalker had simply been chilling at Coruscant making babies for 90% of the war, save for these few oft-referenced events.

Well, the Clone Wars consisting of those “two or three events” is precisely what Darkstar would WANT us to believe since he actually has tried to claim there were no fleet battles of more than 27 ships in Imperial history. What a hypocrite.

Second, Stover also slipped in his ideas about Mace Windu, originally developed for Stover's EU novel Shatterpoint. Thus, in the midst of a perfectly good storyline moment, be it in the middle of some plot revelation or even combat, Stover would go off on some 'trajectory excursion' about Windu's fighting style or his way of understanding the Force. Indeed, there was no Mace Windu character per se . . . there was simply a guy with a shaved head who walked around looking for shatterpoints.

Which does NOTHING to the overall story and is just Darkstar trying to attack the EU yet AGAIN. The question is, why does he even bother if the EU truly is not part of the official story of SW?

While an exploration of how different people view the Force differently is potentially interesting and might've worked in a Windu-centric novel, it simply served to distract from this story and the events where it was interjected, especially toward the end. Worse yet, by the end of the novel one doesn't really have a better grasp of the Force at all because of all the mutually-contradictory descriptions. Obi-Wan's interactions with the Force, for instance, are calming and peaceful . . . the Force feels like a lovely luminous cloud with helpful whispers and soft caresses. Even the Dooku-Force feels this way, though from the opposite perspective. The Windu-Force, meanwhile, feels more like a horror-movie, honey-combed spiderwebs of fractures on glass . . . harsh and sharp and obnoxious.

OK so different people feel the force through different perspectives and have different experiences with it. Why is this bad? Probably because once again, Darkstar is DESPERATE for something to attack in SW and anything will do, especially if he can turn it into a totally off-topic rant against an EU author.

Third, Stover attempts to disregard the movie and claim that the fleet battles at the beginning are occurring near lightspeed, despite the fact that all the vessels are parked over Coruscant. This makes no sense whatsoever to me, but I'd imagine more than a few EU-philes think that the parking-orbit combat makes no sense.

The space shuttle appears “parked” when it is in fact orbiting at tens of thousands of km/sec.

Despite the above, Stover shines in some respects. One of my favorite elements was how he frequently stopped and put in a page or two starting with "this is [so-and-so]" or "this is what it means to be [so-and-so] right now", giving a nice character breakdown. Some might consider that to be more clumsy than introducing or explaining a character via dialogue or in the midst of other narration, but I rather liked it and thought Stover handled it nicely.
Overall, I'd say this is a decent addition to the canon novelizations, but far from the best.

Technology References, Et Cetera
Quick Links: Part One (1-75), Part Two (75 - 133)
First, overall points:
0. It's official . . . there are no planetary shields in Star Wars. Coruscant is invaded at the start of the opening fleet battle, and then pelted with debris from it, killing uncounted numbers of people over the course of the hours of combat. The only defense against it is the planet's surface defense umbrella, consisting of surface gun emplacements, fighters, and of course the orbiting fleet.
In other words, planets are defended just like I said they are.

The presence of starships as planetary defense does not in any way disprove the existence of planetary shields. Anderson is once again applying Trek standards onto SW by assuming only ONE system at work. Anyone with any brains would see that starfighters and capitol ships would be the BACKUP system in the event of shield failure. Never mind the known fact that Palpy is directing BOTH sides of this war so he clearly wanted all this to happen.

1. Stover makes frequent reference to orbital mirrors around Coruscant. On the other hand, he acknowledges a day-night cycle with sunsets and sunrises, and of course we've seen dark nights on the surface. At times, he seems to suggest that the orbital mirrors are in place simply to enhance the pre-existing daylight, as if Coruscant doesn't usually get enough sun. And, we've frequently seen that shadows on Coruscant are crisp and unidirectional . . . we've even seen the Coruscanti sunset in TPM (and thanks to Stover for giving us the planet name's adjective form). It thus isn't clear what effect, if any, this has on the issue of "Capital Time".

It DOES refute Anderson’s ridiculous AOTC speed analysis. Especially since I recently viewed AOTC again and saw TWO distinct bright spots in the Coruscant sky when Dooku returns to Coruscant after Geonosis. Not that Anderson was ever bothered with self consistency.

2. The war was going very badly for the Republic . . . and how bad was generally known. Stover refers on page 2 to "the remnants of the Republic", noting that everyone knew how bad things were and that the Grand Army of the Republic has been forced from numerous systems. Still, the public found the idea of an invasion of Coruscant virtually unthinkable.
3. Kenobi and Skywalker are a famous team to the Republic, with their names and qualities known to every child. This is rather unnecessary and doesn't really fit too well on several levels, given the story of RoTS, and how all was apparently forgotten by everyone by the time of the OT.

20 years later when the Jedi have been purged from society and were branded as “enemies of the Republic”

4. There is frequent mention of blaster ricochet, and at one point there's even mention of chrome being used for this purpose. This conforms nicely to an ANH novelization mention of polished surfaces resisting blaster fire via ricochet. But, we've also seen ricochet off of grass (in TPM) and dirty walls (ANH - Greedo).

Notice how Anderson conveniently leaves out the part from the ANH novelization about "ripped long gashes in metal surfaces". Why do you suppose he did that?

[Darth Servo]

Someone needs to reply to him:

Your using the novels now? Thank you for killing your own canon debate.

He's ALWAYS used the novelizations. Just nothing in the EU and he also insists the ICS is EU even though it deas explicitly with canon vehicles.

[Darth Servo]

FFS, is he still on about god-damn planetary shielding? How many times does the same damn debate need to be rehashed over and over (ad nauseum) before it finally sinks in?

Seriously. Any rational person would take the DVD release and recognize that Alderaan had a planetary shield. Of course, with DarkStar it was a challenge.

Because like any Trektard, he simply denys anthing that doesn't fit in with his pre-conceived notions. He NEEDS to have that shield be non-existant for his Death Star "theory", remember?

[apocolypse]

FFS, is he still on about god-damn planetary shielding? How many times does the same damn debate need to be rehashed over and over (ad nauseum) before it finally sinks in?

Seriously. Any rational person would take the DVD release and recognize that Alderaan had a planetary shield. Of course, with DarkStar it was a challenge.

Because like any Trektard, he simply denys anthing that doesn't fit in with his pre-conceived notions. He NEEDS to have that shield be non-existant for his Death Star "theory", remember?

Ugh, the MCR. What did he calc the DS superlaser at? Something a little over 20 GTs IIRC.

[Darth Servo]

Ugh, the MCR. What did he calc the DS superlaser at? Something a little over 20 GTs IIRC.

[Darkstar]Its SUPERLASER EFFECT damnit!!!!!!![/Darkstar]

23.5 GT. ~0.02% the yield of the real-life "dino-killer" asteroid.

[apocolypse]

Ugh, the MCR. What did he calc the DS superlaser at? Something a little over 20 GTs IIRC.

[Darkstar]Its SUPERLASER EFFECT damnit!!!!!!![/Darkstar]

23.5 GT. ~0.02% the yield of the real-life "dino-killer" asteroid.

LOL..the "superlaser effect", I forgot about that phrase.

And yeah, that's the yield I remember now. I knew it was in the low 20's, but couldn't remember exactly. God does he shit all over Occam's Razor. Anyway, sorry, I'm dragging it OT. Carry on with the debunking.

[Connor MacLeod]

He doesn't say anything about the 'near lightspeed' quotes about the energy weapons, or the relatavistic speed of the Jedi starfighters? Probably not because its "contradicted by canon" according to him.

[Connor MacLeod]

Except of course for the tiny fact that if the planetary shield had been raised, they wouldn't have been able to kidnap Palpatine, making the entire "inside job" a colossal waste of time.

Good one, Darkstar. Isn't there something in Labyrinth of Evil about this?

In LOE rather than one "all encompassing" planetary shield, they seem to be utilizing large numbers of local ones.

[Vympel]

He doesn't say anything about the 'near lightspeed' quotes about the energy weapons

He interprets it to mean that the ships were moving at near c, you know, so he can have his contradiction. Not that he could have it even in that case, since the description of the GC makes it clear its the entire battle being compressed into something easily seen- unless he wants to argue that what we see on screen is necessarily the entire battle

or the relatavistic speed of the Jedi starfighters? Probably not because its "contradicted by canon" according to him.

Everything he finds inconvenient is contradicted as far as he's concerned, we know that

[Darth Servo]

Novelization analysis:

"The nightside sky is an infinite lattice of shining hairlines that interlock planetoids...The shining hairlines are light-scatter from turbolaser bolts powerful enough to vaporize a small town. The planetoids are capital ships."

Here we get a little bit of firepower quantification, albeit a somewhat vague one. The Hiroshima airburst, for instance, vaporized very little. However, this does directly contradict the EU claims of multi-gigaton firepower. After all, if a 300 gigaton impact would be big enough to annihilate Long Island, NY and Connecticut with 5000 degree molten material within 10 seconds from impact, then simply vaporizing a small town would be less energetic by orders of magnitude.

This also serves to reinforce the idea that the bolts themselves have the power, as opposed to the unusual recent EU claim that the bolts are mere tracers for lightspeed beams.

Anderson ADMITS they would vaporize a small town which is MORE than the Hiroshima bomb did, thus refuting his ridiculous claim that they can’t vaporize 40 meter asteroids. And he is assuming they are talking about heavy TLs when MOST fire seen in the trailers as well as the rest of the films involves the medium and light batteries. The HEAVIES are half the length of an ISD which is clearly not what we see in the film.

The quote does NOT say the visible bolts are the source of the power. The visible portion is light scattering FROM the bolts.

"galvened particle beams"

Stover frequently refers to SW lasers as particle beams. This suggests that they are particle weapons, perhaps even plasma. "Galven", however, is not a real word (though it does sound like "galvanize"), so there is some room to maneuver.

Shove this down the throats of Trekkies still trying to claim they are lasers.

Yes, we all know Anderson LOVES “room to maneuver” but his rant about “galven” is pure nonsense. “phaser” sounds like “laser” but that proves nothing.

"Live via HoloNet, beings watch the Separatist droid army flood the government district."

The Confederacy landed on Coruscant and took Palpatine in the midst of the fleet combat. In other words, no trace of planetary shielding over the center of government.
On a lighter note, the EU's idea of TV . . . the HoloNet . . . gets a mention.

There are so many problems with Anderson’s analysis I’m not sure where to begin.

1) We KNOW Palpatine is in charge of BOTH sides of the war (AOTC). Being captured may very well be part of his plan. As such, the lack of planetary shields here does NOT disprove the other canon examples of their existence (Alderaan and Endor)

2) In light of #1 above, does Anderson honestly believe that a planetary shield must ALWAYS be up? Even if Palpatine didn't have it delibrately brought down, it is NOT impossible for someone else to sabotauge it.

3) Even IF Anderson’s logic had any validity, the absence of a planetary shield does NOT contradict the OBSERVED shield around Alderaan
(which RSA vehemently denies to this day) or the ROTJ novelization quotes about the shield around Endor. It is easily explained that implementations of Planetary shields be a necessity to “prevent” such future disasters from happening. BTW, I think we need to post that gif when ever RSA shows his face.

Re: Grievous - "The Separatist Supreme Commander is an abomination of nature, a fusion of flesh and droid [...] This half-living creature is a slaughterer of billions. Whole planets have burned at his command."

The SW galaxy would loathe the Borg.
As for carnage, the Clone War seems to have it in spades.

And your point (about the borg) is? As for carnage, yes, there is lots of it. MAny planets burned yet the Empire STILL has a MILLION systems under its control after this is all over.

"Antifighter flak flashed on all sides."

More evidence in favor of flak burst weapons, though there's also mention of shrapnel. It isn't clear if these are from the flak burst weapons or simply the remnants of combat. However, the shrapnel itself was a concern to him.

So they have some weapons that create flack. This hasty generalization does NOT mean TLs produce it.

""Arfour," he said on internal comm, "can't you do something with the inertials?""

Mention of inertial dampening on starfighters after Obi-Wan had bumped his head. In theory this could be used to argue for maneuvering capabilities above ~10g.

The quote clearly implies they are already on but just not functioning up to their normal abilities. Anderson’s leap in logic that they were completely off up to this point is totally unwarranted.

"The droid ships wrenched themselves into pursuit maneuvers that would have killed any living pilot."

I'm not quite sure how many g the fighter ought to be pulling, here, but it should be impressive.

Yes indeed. Far more impressive than Anderson gives SW fighters credit for. And much more than HIS side's ships have ever demonstrated.

"Fire from the pursuing tri-fighters blasted burning chunks from the cruiser's armor."

Republic cruiser hulls can be damaged by starfighter weaponry. Granted, most of us knew this sort of thing, but recent EU has made claims suggesting the contrary.

It would REALLY be nice if RSA was more specific what EU he’s talking about here. The EU claims (IIRC) was that the shields needed to be DOWN before fighters could damage the hull. This in no way contradicts that claim.

"the clang of lasers blasting ablative shielding off Obi-Wan's left wing."

There's no mention of actual shields on these fighters . . . just this ablative armor beneath easily-scorched paint.

Anderson outright LIES. He says there’s no mention of shielding in a sentence that explicitly mentions “ablative shielding”.

Furthermore, we SAW shields on Anakin’s tiny Naboo starfighter back in TPM. Anderson’s implication that SW fighters don’t have shields is totally false.

"There's still too much ECM. Artoo can't raise the Temple. I think the only reason we can even talk to each other is that we're practically side by side."

This suggests that there was actually less total ECM in ANH, given that none of the fighters had trouble communicating even with the Yavin base.

Are we really surprised that a fleet battle over the capitol has more ECM than a remote outpost and a single Death Star?

"Children on Tatooine tell each other of the dragons that live inside the suns; smaller cousins of the sun-dragons are supposed to live inside the fusion furnaces that power everything from starships to Podracers."

Once again, we have it clearly stated that Star Wars power systems are fusion-based like suns are, much as was seen in the other novelizations. It can hardly get any plainer.
This stands in stark contradiction to the claims made elsewhere.

Anderson assumes that “fusion” means “nuclear fusion” without ANY justification. In a passage that talks about “dragons that live inside the suns” should this REALLY be taken literally?

"Cannon misses from the vulture fighters swooping toward him blasted chunks out of the cruiser's armor."

This time it's a Separatist cruiser. Incidentally, I believe these vulture fighters are the same sort of vehicle seen at Naboo in TPM, though I could be mistaken. Fighters of that type do appear in the RoTS trailers.

And how BIG are these chunks Mr Anderson? We’ve known that fighters can take out bit of Cap ship armor since ANH (a claim Anderson ironically enough debates against).

Side note: Anderson actually admits he “might be mistaken”?!? Someone call a doctor! The man is clearly ill!

"They flashed through the battle, dodging flak and turbolaser bolts, slipping around cruisers to eclipse themselves from the sensors of droid fighters."

Hiding behind ships is effective for/against fighters.

This is a well know practice in BOTH universes except in Trek it actually works against Cap ships too.

"Missiles lack the sophisticated brains of droid fighters; to keep them from colliding on their inbound vectors, one of them would lock onto his fighter's left drive, the other onto his right. A quick snap-roll would make those vectors intersect."

Missiles appear to lack almost any brain at all.

So they aren’t as intelligent as droid fighters that CLEARLY have a larger computer core. How this leads to the conclusion of “lack almost any brain at all” is a mystery known only to the delusional mind of Scooter. In any event, SW missles clearly have more brains than RSA as proven by Slave-1’s missle tracking in AOTC.

"The trailing missile came close enough to trigger its proximity sensors, and detonated in a spray of glowing shrapnel."

As with TPM and other examples, we see that starfighter weapons are sub-kiloton in yield . . . multi-megaton missiles do not spray shrapnel.

So they have a wide variety of missles. I bet Anderson also uses sidewinders to disprove what ICBMs can do. He's probably just projecting Trek precedent onto SW once again since for most of the Fed's history they only had one kind of Torpedo weapon that they used for EVERYTHING.

"Anakin...triggered a single burst of his right-side cannon that blasted the two buzz droids into gouts of molten metal. Along with most of Obi-Wan's left wing."

Though already damaged, it seems possible that these starfighter weapons are more powerful than those of the Confederacy. In any case this causes Obi-Wan to bump his head again.

So what? All Anderson has proved is that once again, SW fighters can do what it Takes Trek Cap ship weapons to do.

Does Anderson really think he’s making a point by showing that Obi-wan has bumped his head a few times in his ship? He stated out-right he didn’t like flying in AOTC.

"Anakin's starfighter edged closer and with a dip of its wing physically slammed a buzz droid into a smear of metal. The impact jolted Obi-Wan again, pounded a deep streak of dent into his starfighter's hull, and shattered the forward control surface of Anakin's wing."

No wonder Obi-Wan was worried about shrapnel. If this appears in the film, it will be interesting to see what happens there.

Oh wow, so their fighters get dented when they collide. How does this make them worse than Trek ships that EXPLODE or at the very least, crumple like paper when they collide?

Well, for now I must quote Porky Pig...a be a be a be a thats all folks.

edit: any comments or corrections would be welcome.

[Vympel]

So they have a wide variety of missles. I bet Anderson also uses sidewinders to disprove what ICBMs can do. He's probably just projecting Trek precedent onto SW once again since for most of the Fed's history they only had one kind of Torpedo weapon that they used for EVERYTHING.

You're giving him too much credit dude. The missile in question is the buzz droid missile- he just simply snipped the rest of the paragraph where it registers Obi-Wan's surprise that the shrapnel was actually *following* him. Needless to say, I don't think anyone except RSA could conclude the missile would have a warhead

[Darth Servo]

You're giving him too much credit dude. The missile in question is the buzz droid missile- he just simply snipped the rest of the paragraph where it registers Obi-Wan's surprise that the shrapnel was actually *following* him. Needless to say, I don't think anyone except RSA could conclude the missile would have a warhead

I haven't read the novelization so I couldn't tell. But my rebuttal does show that you don't even need to in order to prove his bullshit false.

My favorite though is still where he tries to take a statement that talks about "dragons in suns" literally.

[Connor MacLeod]

He doesn't say anything about the 'near lightspeed' quotes about the energy weapons

He interprets it to mean that the ships were moving at near c, you know, so he can have his contradiction. Not that he could have it even in that case, since the description of the GC makes it clear its the entire battle being compressed into something easily seen- unless he wants to argue that what we see on screen is necessarily the entire battle

a massive projectile moving at near-c can mass quite a bit. Megaton range firepower at least.. (quite likely multimegaton "per bolt" if the projectile massed oh.. as much as a 30mm DU shell from an A-10.)

This is as amusing as his attempts to arrtificially limit the firepower require dto "vaporize a small city" - he treats what should be a conservative lower limit as if its an unbreakable upper limit.

or the relatavistic speed of the Jedi starfighters? Probably not because its "contradicted by canon" according to him.

Everything he finds inconvenient is contradicted as far as he's concerned, we know that [/quote]

Probably because of the implied power-generational capabilities of such craft as well. Assuming only 10% of lightspeed and a vessel that weighs, oh about 5 tons (several times greater than a car, in fact).. thats a total KE of 2e18 joules (which is conservative, since I'm measuring the KE of the craft at that point, not the KE of the ion stream to acceelerate it up to that speed...)

And considering a Venator carries oh.. 400 or so vessels of greater mass (those Jedi fighters are TINY!)...

[Connor MacLeod]

Anderson ADMITS they would vaporize a small town which is MORE than the Hiroshima bomb did, thus refuting his ridiculous claim that they can’t vaporize 40 meter asteroids.

I'd like to see his definition of a small town.

And he is assuming they are talking about heavy TLs when MOST fire seen in the trailers as well as the rest of the films involves the medium and light batteries. The HEAVIES are half the length of an ISD which is clearly not what we see in the film.

They may be, but the lower limit (as I've already mentioned) easily puts them into the multi-megaton range. (Consider the sort of energy likely required to vaporize a two-story house, for example. Once you factor in the distance and "area effect" you would need for this - even for a relatively small population town of say thousands spread out over a few kilometers diameter.. we're talking firepower equal to or greater than vaporizing 40 meter asteroids.)

Shove this down the throats of Trekkies still trying to claim they are lasers.

Funny, I don't recall them using "particle beam" and "laser" in the same sentence.

So they have some weapons that create flack. This hasty generalization does NOT mean TLs produce it.

IIRC the first couple pages of the novel refer to both "flak" and particle beams. Vympel even posted the Excerpt I believe. If TLs are "particle beams", then they can't be creating "flak" can they?

Ironically I have acquired a copy of hte script, and from what I see (if this is a genuine version) they also make a distinction between "flak" and "laser blasts".. not that laser bolts are flak bursting.

The quote clearly implies they are already on but just not functioning up to their normal abilities. Anderson’s leap in logic that they were completely off up to this point is totally unwarranted.

We already had proof of greater than 10 gee acceleration (ANH, ROTJ, AOTC, etc.) In fact we know the fact Jedi can withstand greater than huuman tolerances also proves it.

It would REALLY be nice if RSA was more specific what EU he’s talking about here. The EU claims (IIRC) was that the shields needed to be DOWN before fighters could damage the hull. This in no way contradicts that claim.

Fighters damaged parts of the hull of the DS too in ANH too... what's that supposed to prove again?

Also recall that the Venator is parttly carrier with big ass internal spaces. And Separtist ships don't even qualify as dedicated warships.

Anderson outright LIES. He says there’s no mention of shielding in a sentence that explicitly mentions “ablative shielding”.

Actually they don't have shielding . These fighters are primarily designed for Jedi pilots. (And given how absurdly tiny they are, they don't relaly HAVE room for shield generators. Or sensors. Or heavy flight control gear that a normal fighter would have.)

Furthermore, we SAW shields on Anakin’s tiny Naboo starfighter back in TPM. Anderson’s implication that SW fighters don’t have shields is totally false.

The Aethersprite in AOTC had shields too. WE saw this evidenceed from the hits Obi-Wan's fighter took from Slave-1.

Are we really surprised that a fleet battle over the capitol has more ECM than a remote outpost and a single Death Star?

Considering there is thousands of warships, Coruscant itself, etc. Of course, I like how he compares those airspeeder-sized microfighters to the much more massive X-wings, completely disregards the distances involved... (or some of the other targets involved, in fact.) IIRC LoE correctly they had dedicated jamming ships there (even a form of cloaking technology... same stuff as in "Jedi Trial" I believe.)

Its also worth noting that rather obviously the Rebels had some sort of satellites or some such to bounce signals off of in ANH.. sincec, you know.. the Gas Giant Yavin was blocking the way? That also might explain why they got "through" the DS's jamming.

Anderson assumes that “fusion” means “nuclear fusion” without ANY justification. In a passage that talks about “dragons that live inside the suns” should this REALLY be taken literally?

Why should "star ships" automatically mean "capital ship/War ship?" For that matter? Is not the Millenium Falcon ALSO a starship?

And how BIG are these chunks Mr Anderson? We’ve known that fighters can take out bit of Cap ship armor since ANH (a claim Anderson ironically enough debates against).

If you look at those separatist warships in the ROTS:ICS, you'll note that they mostly empty space.. so they may not be as durable as say,.. an ISD.

So they aren’t as intelligent as droid fighters that CLEARLY have a larger computer core. How this leads to the conclusion of “lack almost any brain at all” is a mystery known only to the delusional mind of Scooter. In any event, SW missles clearly have more brains than RSA as proven by Slave-1’s missle tracking in AOTC.

Don't forget the LAAT gunship missiles and the hailfire droid rockets from AOTC.

So they have a wide variety of missles. I bet Anderson also uses sidewinders to disprove what ICBMs can do. He's probably just projecting Trek precedent onto SW once again since for most of the Fed's history they only had one kind of Torpedo weapon that they used for EVERYTHING.

Actually what if its a megaton of oh Kinetic energy? Say a cannister of metal fragments expelled outwards by magnetic or gravitic fields?

Its also ironic that by this also logic, the Seismic charrge from AOTC must be sub-kiloton.

Also, do you notice how he jumps from "multi-megaton" to "sub-kiloton", while ignoring the "kiloton" range?

[Meest]

So they have a wide variety of missles. I bet Anderson also uses sidewinders to disprove what ICBMs can do. He's probably just projecting Trek precedent onto SW once again since for most of the Fed's history they only had one kind of Torpedo weapon that they used for EVERYTHING.

You're giving him too much credit dude. The missile in question is the buzz droid missile- he just simply snipped the rest of the paragraph where it registers Obi-Wan's surprise that the shrapnel was actually *following* him. Needless to say, I don't think anyone except RSA could conclude the missile would have a warhead

Here's even more support from the illustrated screenplay,


And more of the point of them boarding the Invisible Hand, implies that they let Anakin and Obi get in the ship or at least didn't hamper the effort to the degree they could have,


It's classic Sidious mirroring ROTJ, everything proceeding to his design, only a moron wouldn't see the obvious.

[nightmare]

Oh well. Darkstar's credibility debt will never be repaid. I've thought for a long time now that he's got some kind of mental disorder. Dishonesty is just not enough to describe his actions.