Star Wars Minute 58: Two Hundred Hours

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Date

August 21st, 2013.

Summary

Chewbacca and the two robots sit around the lighted table covered with small holographic monsters.

Guests

Ryan Haupt

Notes

Film

• Obi-Wan finishes the description of his feelings regarding the million different voices (from Alderaan) crying out in terror and then being silenced.
• Chewbacca smugly sits back as he is recognized for having pulled people's arms out of their sockets when he loses.

Podcast

• Obi-Wan says "suddenly" twice in his line (spread across two different minutes for this podcast). "...suddenly cried out in terror and then were suddenly silenced". This annoys Pete as it is not very poetic. They talk about how this happened.
• George Lucas as a director and writer. Mixed views.
• The lightsaber practice scene. How practical / safe is it for a 'new Jedi' to practice swinging a lightsaber in the confined area of a spaceship? The potential for accidents seems quite high.
• Droids surviving in the vacuum of space.
• The chess game and how it started.
• R2-D2, C-3PO and Chewbacca communicating.
• What is the chess game called? Space chess? (see below).
• Referenced: "Space chess" from Star Trek, Gambit from X-Men.
• C-3PO takes the threat of having his arms pulled off in his stride, which is unusual. Also, R2-D2 doesn't have any arms so it's an empty threat.
• Han's reaction when no-one praises him for escaping from the Imperials.
• Ryan hypothesizes that maybe the Death Star just stops planets in their tracks and then talks about what would happen if a planet simply stopped moving instantly. The energy from the planet's movement would have to go somewhere (i.e. into the objects on the planet) and this may be enough to destroy it.
• How they keep track of time in the Star Wars universe (based on Han's estimated arrival time of "O-200"). Alex say that he thought this meant something like "well, we should be arriving at Alderaan IN oh, 200 hours" (i.e. the trip was going to take a little over 8 more days).
  • Plus, how can you have standard measures of time of the planets have different length days?
  • When you get Relativity into the mix, the whole thing goes screwy, what with travel at ".5 past lightspeed"
• The concept that there is lot of the trip to Alderaan on the Millennium Falcon that we don't see.
• A imagined deleted scene in which Luke accidentally realizes that he has telekinesis powers.
• The smugness of Chewbacca in this scene.
• Is Han bluffing about Chewbacca actually being strong? Alex thinks it's disappointing that they don't show Chewbacca's strength somewhere in the trilogy
• Ryan talks about Han's famous 12-parsecs comment and whether he was testing Ben and Luke to see if they noticed the error (i.e. using distance instead of time). If they didn't, he can charge them whatever he likes for the trip (see minute 48 for further discussion).
• Han lets Chewbacca win at chess every time (he doesn't want his arms ripped off) and they don't play that much anymore given this. That's why Chewbacca was so keen to play when new people turned up.
• Maybe Lando had the chess board installed.
• Han has food and drink at his desk on the Falcon. Alex thinks this must all go flying when the ship gets jostled around.
• How is there gravity on the Falcon? No real answers on this one.
• Mentioned: Laser swords

Meta Minute

• 16:15 podcast episode length.
• Cold-open: Alex theorizes that everything that Han says is a lie, and Obi-Wan is making everyone say everything else via the Jedi mind trick.
• The holographic chess game is called Dejarik.
• Pete refers to early drafts of the script for this scene. Ben actually passes out when he senses Alderaan's destruction. Alex makes the point that this may not be the best way for a Jedi to react to bad things happening, although it may explain his technique in the later duel with Darth Vader.
• Pete then refers to the comic book in which Ben says that he feels "a great ebbing in The Force" and then it was like "the cries of a billion beings stopping all at once". This seems more poetic.

Quotes

• Ryan: "George Lucas does not seem to understand how human beings talk." <long and extremely painful awkward silence> Alex: "Yes."
• Ryan: "I'm not that kind of scientist."
• Ryan: "Ehhh sprinkle."
• Pete: "And that's how they all died."
• Alex: (As C-3PO, in the voice) "Oh, I see you have a chess board Master Solo". (As Han, in just a gruff voice) "Shut up".
• Ryan: <Does an excellent Chewbacca impersonation>
• Pete: (As C-3PO mistranslating for R2-D2 to Chewbacca, in the voice) "Oh, he said that he can totally kick your ass in chess."
• Ryan: "It's the Jedi 'possum response where you just play dead when something bad is happening and hope that it works out ok."
• Pete: "The days have no meaning."
• Alex:" But anyway we're getting off the track. Now we're talking about Empire Strikes Back minute 12 as opposed to Star Wars minute 58."

Link

http://www.starwarsminute.com/2013/08/21/minute-58-two-hundred-hours/

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