What is a laser dart?

[Lucky]

Obi Won: As if made by a laser?

Anakin: How did you know?

Obi Wn: The neurological damage you sensed back at the morgue. What if Twuon was hit in the optic nerve by a precision laser dart? It explains the sudden death with no visible wounds.

Anakin: The electromagnetic pulse would have created a massive seizure.

Obi Wan: Causing her to crawl...

Anakin: Over there before she died.

1) Is this even possible?

2) What sort of weapon could do what is described? I don't think a L.A.S.E.R. can do this, and we see a lot of EMP weapons that are harmless.

[Darth Spock]

1) Is it possible? Well, some people are susceptible to photosensitive epilepsy, and then there's this little gem: http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/201 ... eizure-gun, however well that would really work.

2) How this thing punched a hole through the office window, but then caused no obvious physical damage to Twuon beats me. Especially too, weren't the Amani and Sugi using the same type of guns, and they seemed to behave fairly similarly to normal blasters?

One thought that came to my mind, was if Twuon was using binoculars just and Anakin was when he spotted the hole, they might have absorbed the brunt of the energy, and what leaked through triggered a seizure... It wouldn't be a stretch to imagine she dropped them over the edge at that point, and it simply wasn't addressed since they already found the clue they needed to move on (especially in the dialog of a 22 minute cartoon!)

[2046]

Ah, that's it! I'd been mulling over the window hole because something didn't seem right, and that's the answer . . . or, more correctly, the question. The window hole plus the magic brain EMP and unmarked corpse don't jive. I'm not even really that fond of the seizure-crawl . . . I would expect more of a simple collapse . . . but whatever.

As for binoculars, most of the binoculars we've seen in Star Wars are not standard lens-based optical ones like we have today, but electronic, with a view that looks not unlike the holograms inasmuch as having lots of scan lines and such. I'm not sure that would transmit the hypothesized effect.

As for the general question of the thread . . . is there a difference between a blaster bolt and a laser dart? It is possible that "laser dart" could simply be the proper in-universe term.

[Darth Spock]

Yeah, it doesn't make much sense, though for my own peace of mind I'm sticking to the binoculars theory, which gets some redemption through the distinction made at http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Macrobinoculars, indicating some more traditional binoculars do exist. Even in the episode, Obi Wan uses the funky visor looking electrobinoculars, immediately after, Anakin looks through his own more traditional looking viewer, albeit with only a single telescopic lens.

Ultimately, the unfinished reels probably would have gone through a few more refinements, the whole detective routine felt similar to what they did in the closing arc of season 5. Still, it's nice to be able to see the WIP, as opposed to it being lost in a dusty Disney archive somewhere. In the end I guess the whole "laser dart" question gets chalked up to Star Wars' disdain for the etymological distinctions between slug throwers and ray guns!