Look, no one is arguing that they aren’t clones in the prequels. That much is obvous from the mid-point of Ep 2. The fact is, there is little to no evidence that the troopers in Ep’s 4-6(20 years later) are clones. The original trilogy shows that there are enough differences between storm and clone troopers, which even lucas’s magic crayons can’t change.
Come on, man, this is Lucas we’re talking about here! I have no doubt that the whole concept of the stormtroopers being clones didn’t enter into his head until he hacked out the prequels, but given his whole retcon mentality, he’ll no doubt claim that he intended them all along to be clones and will no doubt point to Leia’s “Aren’t you a little short to be a stormtrooper?” comment as proof of this.
Yeah, I know all about Lucas’s Magic Crayons. I don’t buy the “way I originally intended”(evidenced the differences between the DVD’s and the Special editions-not to mention the infamous Greedo shooting).
But just because we are now at war with EastAsia doesn’t mean we have always been at war with EastAsia, Lucas to the contrary.
In the EU, it is established that it takes 10 years to successfully grow a sane clone. I suppose the movies take precedence over the books, but considering it at least used to be the line that anything in the EU was offically canon…
In AotC, the cloners state that they managed to accelerate the process by the same amount.
Up the speed caused by a ysalmiri-induced force bubble (which is what, six weeks?) Honestly, I’ve seen AotC once and have endeavored to block all of it from my mind since.
The US Navy has always been rather vague about what their nuke ships will top out at , however in this case , I used the E as an example because while Janes will agree with what you say , at least over 30 knots, a real world example occured back in the seventies , with some sort of disaster in the indian sub-continent.
That particular task force was detailed with disaster relief and the enterprise was able to make a transit , leaving her consorts in the dust , and some of the squids on usenet used the old time over distance = speed to determine what that particular speed was , which is where I pulled that figure out of.
American Figs , Destroyers and Cruisers will pull over thirty knots , however the duration will be the amount of fuel available , rather than lead foot captains, the age of the particular vessel, plus when it was last slepped will also determine a vessels actual speed.
Also for the heck of it , that sub that hit the moutain under water , was doing a sustained 30 knots under water. Bogs and Cigs are that fast , they can top out at about 80 mph on calm sea.
Going out on a limb here , but in space the concept of military design and civillian design will be transparent to some degree. While a wet navy vessel(surface) and a wet merchie(surface) will share some commonality in compartmentalization , electronics , navigation , and so forth, one is gonna be a warship and the other is gonna be a merchie , but if you designed a civillian submarine, chances are its gonna resemble a military one , without the weapons suite simply because of the hostile eviroment.
Same with the Falcon and other freighters in SW , pirates are a concern ,so your gonna have weapons and a fire control suite , solo says he has modified the falcon , so it looks like a trash hauler , but bearing its smuggling and blockade running mission in mind , its actually quite faster than the standard correllian model.
So , to me , the Falcon would have the edge on speed , but the StarDestroyer would have the edge on duration and loiter time.
Declan
If getting hit by the Emp’s lightning ages a person…
… then why didn’t Luke age in ROTJ?
On the contrary. I think the Emp *let * himself be aged, etc…he was gambling everything on Luke rescuing him. Shit, I mean Anakin, of course. And later he uses it as a bargaining chip, “Look what those bad men have done to me, disfigured me, now let’s get them!”
I think everything Palpy did was plotted & planned out. He’s easily the most intelligent, wily character…brighter even than George Lucas.
Not that that’s saying much.
Uh, so Luke didn’t allow himself to be aged? It seems as if you’re arguing that the aging effect is a matter of choice on behalf of the person being struck by lightning:
Luke in ROTJ: “OMG, this is painful!! Let’s concentrate all my powers, not to fighting back or running away, but on not getting old and ugly!”
I’m not buying it. 
See, this is one of the problems with RotS. I always had the impression that Palpy was freakin’ ancient, and that the only reason he was still living was that he was using the Force to keep himself alive.
Maybe he was.
It’s possible (in the sense that there’s nothing to back it and nothing to disprove it) that the middle-aged Palpatine-face was just a disguise. The Emperor was indeed an ancient being kept alive by the force, and the lighting seared away his false face and made him reveal his true self.
After watching the original trilogy again, I have a small little question about the scene where Anakin attacks Palpatine: why didn’t Anakin just whack him over the head? He could have thrown an unconscious Emperor in that chasm without getting electroshocked to death, and ta-da! We now have two Jedis (Luke and Anakin) for the price of one.
Ah, I think I know the answer. Dramatic necessity. Oh, well.
On the other hand, what if he bonks him on the head and doesn’t render him unconscious? Then you’ve just got a pissed off Emperor who knows where to point his lightning. Now, if Vader had a saber handy—that is, if there were one within reach of a force pull—there’s no reason he couldn’t’ve just sliced Palpatine in half.
On a related note, now that we know that Palpatine knows how to wield a lightsaber, is there any reason to believe that he wasn’t in fact armed when Luke confronted him?
Fair enough, but is that better that grabbing the guy while he is still conscious and shooting lightning and lugging him around? At least a whack over the head would at the very least distract him, possibly make him dizzy, and hopefully stunning him.
Well, I reckon that Lucas was thinking in a mythological context, so that Anakin dying would be cathartic and tragic, while him knocking Palpatine’s noggin and then surviving could be seen as a cheap solution.
I don’t think it aged him, I think it just sort of… melted him. Or his face, at least, which is where the lightning was hitting him. Luke, on the other hand, was hit in the chest. Who knows what he looks like without a shirt on now?
I’m willing to cut a lot of things in Star Wars slack because of that… a lot of decisions were made not based on “here’s an internally consistent world I’ve created with rules and structures and precedents… now how would this situation play out” but on “I want a visually and emotionally satisfying scene”. Certainly, for instance, Obi Wan chopping Darth Maul in half makes NO sense unless you view the light sabre fighting as a sort of extension of the battle of force strength, will and personality that was going on.
I think where Lucas gets into the most trouble is where he tries to have it both ways, with things like Midichlorians. Star Wars should either be hard, internally consistent, well-explained Sci Fi, or it should be mythic and archetypal space opera, not both.
[QUOTE=HubZilla]
[li]ROTS/TPM: Obi-Wan beats Anakin because he has the “higher ground”. Yet he earlier beats Darth Maul from the lower ground.[/li][/QUOTE]
this one I agree with on a certain level. from the movie is (not in the pit) obvious that Darth Maul killed Obi-Wan. after he ganked Rob Roy (cause everyone knows you cant grab a lightsabre and push it away wtf rob?!?!?) the skill difference between the actors was so vast there is simply no way Darth Maul wouldnt have simply poked his sabre out and let Obi-Wan slice himself in half when he tried that stupid ass jump. I want to know where the footage is of Darth Maul standing there giggling over the 2 halves of Obi-Wan?
the way the scene SHOULD have played out (and for a brief moment I thought it was going to) was Obi-Wan should have picked up Rob Roy’s lightsabre the second the door opened and gone after Darth Maul florentine (thats with 2 light sabres er swords? yeah whatever)…would have been the best fight scene in movie history so of course this brings the question of what exactly was I smoking when I thought that Lucas was capable of such a feat???
the reason I thought that was going to happen is just before the doors open they cut to a shot of Rob Roy’s light sabre lying on the ground.
How did Anakin grow to 7 feet tall? Is that all Vader prosthetics, even the James Earl Jones British accent?
They rebuilt him. They made him better. They had the Technology.