TCW Season 4

[2046]

Just a generic thread title for the remaining episodes and any other notes, since not a lot of discussion has occurred.

So, how about that plastic surgery technology the Republic employed in "Deception"? They poked a thingy in Obi-Wan's neck and blammo, a few seconds later he looks like another dude. Seems like some sort of nano-tech or accelerated genetic weirdness on his face.

The funny thing was he then had to swallow a big bug thingy to change his voice, which seems like it would've been trivial after the face-change.

[Trinoya]

Plastic surgery must be easy levels of awesome in starwars. Though yeah, the voice thing is a bit odd.

Maybe there is a way to do it for the entire body and not just the face...

[2046]

"Friends and Enemies"[TCW4] . . .

. . . last night's episode featured three ship crashes. One was a stolen cargo vessel which was intentionally crashed into the swamp of Nal Hutta, which featured root-looking things sticking up over the swamp surface. It was, as usual, not a high-velocity crash. The ship, featuring a fuselage and two blocky nacelle shapes sticking off the side connected by tubes, came apart. One nacelle sheared off on impact with a root (the root seemed undamaged), then the other broke off, then the fuselage broke in half, with other giblets lost along the way.

Later, a purchased ship and a Jedi vessel collide at low velocity and both go down. The Jedi vessel smacks face-first into a rockface, the purchased ship skidding sideways against a hill, taking no obvious damage. The purchased ship is able to be restored to flight capability within minutes. The ship more resembles a yacht than an aircraft, with a somewhat boxy but solid structure with a fairly thick ribbed hull. I would say it fared better than a similarly-sized modern aircraft (e.g. a Learjet or very small commuter plane, for instance), but the modern aircraft wouldn't have come apart either . . . it just would've needed more extensive repairs.

[2046]

"The Box" will be a legendary episode undoubtedly copied in game form, despite being rather silly.

The basic premise is to take the best bounty hunters (about a dozen) and put them through an artificial series of challenges in an elaborate and undoubtedly quite expensive transforming-interior facility to winnow their numbers down by attrition to the "best" remaining, with the best one of that group then leading a mission for the Confederacy along with the remaining four.

Of course, this is a total waste of talent and resources, as well as being offensive to the bounty hunters.

For a modern-day analogy, it would be like race-car drivers being put through a life-or-death F-Zero competition to see who qualifies for the next race, except in addition to making them play the racing game you have to freaking design, develop, and build the Super Nintendo game console at great cost.

In any case, we get a few pertinent details on technology and technique. One useful competitive event between two of the players involved a sniper rifle against a moving target on a wall. The "best" bounty hunter failed, but Obi-Wan in disguise was able to hit it every time out of the 3-4 he tried thanks to the Force. A modern human would've had significant difficulty replicating that, I think.

Another event featured a ray-shielded area on floors and wall (the shield being of the red planar sizzling kind). Contestants who fell onto the shield were seemingly just electrocuted, for all intents and purposes. One alien, when provided with a drug or other injection of some kind that basically inoculated him against ray shields (but which was only useful for certain blood types of his species), was able to pass through the shield without any obvious permanent deleterious effects. This drug was said to be toxic for all the other contestants.

Clearly, then, the Force cannot be used by the Jedi to allow them to replicate this protective mechanism or otherwise shield themselves against the ray shield effects.

[2046]

Last week's ep ("Crisis on Naboo", I think) featured some interesting technology.

1. A personal appearance and speech by the Chancellor at a special event on Naboo features a small dome-shaped shield (about 60 feet across) projected by six ground-level shield projectors. The projected shield, activated only after Palps took the stage, could've been of an Episode I Gungan style, but with edge-based projectors. Or it might've been something else.

The shield is brought down by an alien bounty hunter reaching through it and zapping it with his bioelectric charge. A similar charge a few seconds later temporarily knocks out Anakin. For reference, I'm pretty sure this is the same alien dude who, when given a drug, was able to reach through the red ray shields in the last episode.

He zaps one shield generator and it explodes, along with the next one beside it.

2. Some awesome holographic disguise technology was employed. All we saw was a device put on a table that generated four "shadow holograms" for disguises. The people to be disguised were told to step into the holograms and thenceforth they appeared as the relevant disguises.

Just to be sure here, let me reiterate . . . there was no obvious technology that continued to be worn on the disguised individual. We did later see another device used to disguise someone else, and we also saw one of the disguised individuals switch disguises somehow, but the mechanism for this is unclear.

The disguises were very glitchy as shown, frequently fritzing and showing who was behind the proverbial mask (for benefit of younger viewers, I presume), though in some cases this was clearly not just for viewer benefit but part of the plot. For instance, Obi-Wan notices one of them fritzing right before the shield is brought down, and calls the other Jedi to let them know that the fritzee is a badguy.

The fritzee, being the bioelectric alien dude, is not shrouded when he reaches through the shield. It's unclear if he intentionally deactivated the shroud or not, or if so how.

[Trinoya]

The holo technology presented is frankly exceptional to a heavy degree. I can only presume the 'shadows' of the hologram are not hard light and instead some sort of system of emitters... otherwise why is it every communication, over nearly any distance, is whispy blue holograms..


Whatever it is, it's clearly not visible, and not easily detected. It also likely doesn't have application for cloaking technology since.. if you could be invisible.. why not just be invisible.


Still.. damn impressive.

[Mike DiCenso]

The holotech shown in TCW and to a lesser extent in the PT is fairly impressive compared to what we saw in the OT. But this tech sounds very much like "tech of the week", unless someone can point out where somethng like this has been used before.
-Mike

[Trinoya]

We did have the person who infiltrated the Jedi Temple with similar (but different) holo tech. It was just as undetectable.

It's damn peculiar that's for sure.

[Mike DiCenso]

Then an explanation is in order for why this tech is not in common use for everyone.
-Mike

[Trinoya]

Just a quick update: It appears that sending in conventional troops during an exterminate order was considered superior than orbital bombardment in a recent clone wars episode.

Another Update: Magic in star wars appears to be superior or at least on par with the rest of the stuff.

[Mike DiCenso]

Details, please?
-Mike

[Trinoya]

Recently we have seen Magic genetically modify an individual to be super strong and evil, commit acts of voodoo across the galaxy (literally burning someones face from across the galaxy with just a hair and a voodoo doll), resurrect the dead, and meld man and machine, while altering the machine parts into new and useful components (changing completely useless parts into fully functional legs that look entirely different from their original stuff).

All of this was from the night sisters... I especially like the army of undead ripping apart droids.

[Khas]

Are you sure this really was magic, and not just the Dark Side of the Force? After all, Palpatine did say that the Dark Side is a path to powers many consider unnatural.

[Trinoya]

While it is entirely plausible that it is the 'force' there is also no evidence in TCW that it is, and it is referenced as magic by several characters. It creates this green mist whenever it is used, and the strongest night sister force user has, so far, been incapable of using 'magic.'

Some other things that I forgot:

The ability to create lightning (green lightning), the ability to become incorporeal, fly, and the ability to transmit messages/clues over vast distances.

[Praeothmin]

The ability to create lightning (green lightning), the ability to become incorporeal, fly, and the ability to transmit messages/clues over vast distances.

All these were abilities displayed by the powerful Force embodiment in season 3, the ones encountered by Obi-Wan and Anakin, and they were not using magic...