Do you know where we may find the calculation?Alyeska wrote:When you take into account the fact that distances in the asteroid field are actually going to be fairly difficult to account for, with possible errors taken into account 9 GT is well within that range.
This strikes me as an awful double standard, the one that always baffled me when reading stuf at SB.com. I heard the same thing from people saying that Chee's words proved that the EU was canon, yet, those same words explicitely stated that any of those EU sources has equal canonicity. Guides, novels, narratives in video games, etc... all at the exact same level, with no distinction.From my readings, ICS and other Technical Manuals directly tied to the movies have a higher rank within the EU then most other EU content. This would put ICS above any pattern displayed in the majority of the EU regardless of what that pattern may denote.
Then, there was that amalgam, and people were quick to jump to false conclusions; Somehow, having lots of bits borrowed from the the films, and then mixed to stuff solely invented by the EU's authors (guides and novels) made the whole source (as a book for most of the cases) more canon, and as a consequence, in a case of contradiction between two EU sources, that so called higher one would enfore its non-film (excuse the rough term) material and facts upon the other's.
It's another double standard, because I've also been largely battered by the same horde of people stipulating that one cannot ditch the whole ICS because there's one contradiction, yet they're quick to say that all of the ICS material is of a greater canon level, albeit within the C zone, because a portion of it directly came from the film.
A hasty association, quickly forgetting that the extra material, anything freshly introduced in the EU source by an EU author, is nothing more than EU, with no special higher status.
An example would be a typical disagreement on firepower about a ship. Say a frigate. Because the ICS provides a miles long list of details and technicalities about said frigate, and because some of the stuff referenced in the ICS directly comes from the film (or the novelisation), then the firepower, which in that case would be a pure addition from the EU's author, would hold more weight than the figure found in the novel, from another EU's author.
Nevermind if, above all, Star Wars is above all a matter of stories, and that the guides should support the stories, not contradict them.
However, it would seem that the contradictions apparently flourishing in the films themselves differ by orders of magnitude which are almost negligible compared to the far fetched numbers found in the ICS, and even more when compared to the low ends found in other segments of the EU.On a personal note I do believe that ICS violates what Star Wars was shown to be using excess in many areas. However, as Lucas is the ultimate arbiter on what makes Star Wars and he has laid the grounds for doing just that, my perceptions of what Star Wars is is ultimately irrelevant as Lucas has the final say.
If, again, the goal is to reach a balance, settling on the crazy high ends is not honest, nor wise, especially when in one hand, we're dealing with kilotons, and in the other, with, what was it again? teratons? *
Unfortunately, it seems to be what a wide range of pro-SW vs debaters seem to do, and not only against Trek, but for anything that's pitted against SW.
* Funnily, the balance would bring us back close to what was considered the high end of Wars' firepower calcs, IIRC.