Why is it that in fiction, especially Sci Fi, and the future, there doesn’t appear to be any OSHA? No standards of safety whatsoever?
In that big, weird facility that Quigon fought Maul in Episode 1, there were no guard rails at all over a big gaping hole in the ground. No guard rails on on all of those bridge thingies, not a thing. And it’s not limited to Naboo! There were no guard rails in the Empire either, both Death Stars were built without guard rails if I remember correctly. And the EU is even worse.
Apparently George Lucas also designed Nero’s ship in the new Star Trek, because there are no guard rails to be found there, either.
And that’s just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Guard rails and OSHA seem to be uniquely 20th century inventions. Perhaps we should leave them behind.
Also, if a 1cm droplet of Redmatter could make a black hole large enough to stop a supernova, and the same size droplets can be used to envelop planets… Why’d they create what is apparently a 2 meter ball of the stuff?!
What could anyone possibly want/need with enough redmatter to turn every celestial body in a spiral arm of the galaxy into a black hole?!
I think that it’s the sign of a culture that has had levitation for a long time, long enough for the fear of falling to have been bred out of the basic mindset. Falling just isn’t dangerous, in their minds. Of course, in these decadent later times, the system is breaking down, and falling has reappeared as a hazard. But to the average Empire citizen, it’s still a kind of theoretical hazard, eclipsed by the very real menace of politics and economic survival.
I pointed this out to the wife last week when we were watching it for the second time. Not only are there no railings, but the floors are covered in cables! I can only assume that if someone falls off there is a stasis field that kicks in and catches them before they fall out into space (given the open (and completely non-functional) design of Nero’s ship).
They got it made at a discount. Even so, why would Spock take more than he needed to do the job?
Even futuristic space ships are not designed with enough outlets where needed and use lots of extension cords. Then when the communications systems go in the installers work for the local communications provider. That should explain much if you have ever seen cable installations in a few houses. Sure they might do a good job on the command deck, but the rest of the ship will have holes drilled through bulkheads and runs of cable shoved against the wall laying on the floor. Engineering were all the cables route through will be a maze of wires a monkey couldn’t swing through.
Because it’s dramatic, of course. And because, to Bad Guys, minions are cheap. If I were in Star Wars OSHGA I’d look into the cases of those poor guys in the tube for the Death Star Death Ray. Their only function seems to be to cower awayy from it. I’m certain they must be getting overdoses of some kinda radiation.
For what it’s worth, when I lived in Utah there were no guardrails along the side of the roads going up into Big Cottonwood Canyon and Little Cottonwood Canyon. This was true of other canyons, as well, but these were heavily-traveled roads with two ski resorts at the top of each. The drops were precipitous and long. And sometimes you’d get fogs that obliterated all vision. I don’t know if they changed all that in the course of tooling up for the Olympics, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they hadn’t.
For the same reason that those ships do not include another feature required by safety regulations: bathrooms. The people using them may take showers but they never take dumps, and they only fall if it’s already the last 15 minutes of the movie.
You can never be too pretty, too rich, or have enough Redmatter. I mean, if you’re evil, you’ll want MORE!
MORE!
Bring me MORE REDMATTER!
Bwahahahahahahaa!
It’s not the lack of guardrails that tips off the lack of OSHA in Star Trek. It’s the holodeck. We’re talking about a recreational device that malfunctions and kills someone on an average of about once every fifteen minutes. In the 20th century, the manufacturer would have been sued into oblivion within the first year of operation. One can only assume that there are no lawyers in the Star Trek universe.
Family guy starwars edition, rails were conciderd but rejected by management due to concerns about troopers leaning against them, instead of standing at their posts.
