FTL Navigation- ST v SW

[Mike DiCenso]

Technically speaking, there are few stories that have been done in recent times that in some fashion before have not been done before. Even TOS borrowed concepts from other movies and stories. Roddenberry took a great deal of inspiration for the look and feel of Trek from MGM's "The Forbidden Planet" of just a decade prior. And Trek took the episode "Arena" from a short story of the same name by Fredric Brown.

In Star Wars, the most blatent "rip off" is the now iconic opening scrawl which clearly takes from the old Universal Flash Gordon serials that George Lucas originally wanted to adapt as a movie, but could not get the rights to make since Dino De Laurentiis had already secured them.
-Mike

[Mith]

One thing particularly disappointing in ST navigation was how lame it turned out to be in STII, when it's decided that that they simply travel to the desired star-system at warp, and then locate the desired planet by counting in from the furthermost planet-- not even noticing if anything's changed on their planetary-charts. While this may have been retconned for the plot of TWOK, it's pretty lame, and is a heavy strike against ST nav, equivalent to a sailor not noticing that a charted island has moved.

Most probably someone just fucked up at the helm rather than a technological issue. That may seem stupid, but people have done that before. Someone might have thought "oh, I know this place, nine planets right? I'll just set course for the fourth planet down the line".

It would have been unforgivable in TNG though, where things are so highly automated.

In contrast, SW navigation is so precise, that Solo came out of hyperspace exactly where Alderaan was supposed to be, and he knew that the planet wasn't there. In other words, hyperspace travel gives very precise point-to-point travel capability anywhere in the galaxy.

Hardly.

Khan's system was in what was probably the ass crack of the Alpha Quadrant. Or else I don't think Kirk would have left them there if he thought they could get off and start shit again.

Comparing it to Han realizing that Alderaan was gone is hardly a big deal. It's part of well established space. I mean fuck, it would be like someone realizing that Vulcan or Andoria had been vaporized. Or someplace like New York City or London.

It's not something that you can really miss given its importance.

[KirkSkyWalker]

"Probably" means you don't know where it was.
It simply wasn't suitable for human colonization, but Khan could handle it. If Kirk wanted to find a far-off planet, it would have been better than that, but simply too far away.

It's more likely that this was simply a retcon for plot-reasons-- like the cockamamie idea of a planet a) exploding, and then b) moving another planet into its former orbit-- particularly without melting it in the process, and c) having Khan's habitat "erased from the archive memory" like Dooku did with planet Kamino, when the planet would simply be ruled off-limits like any other pre-warp civilization.

Again, the scientific and philosophical depth of Star Trek simply went to crap with STII, by trying to compete with Star Wars.

[KirkSkyWalker]

Technically speaking, there are few stories that have been done in recent times that in some fashion before have not been done before. Even TOS borrowed concepts from other movies and stories.

Sometimes poorly; "Mirror, Mirror" was Superman's Bizarro-world, and "In the Blink of an Eye" was taken from an episode of "The Wild, Wild West" where a cowboy-chemist invented a "speed-serum."