The Making of 'Star Wars,' 1977: Amazing photos of ILM filming Death Star explosions

I think womp rats live in 'em.

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Yup. I actually thought it was kind of clumsy. I was trying to think of the phrase Robert J. Sawyer used on the second page of Calculating God in an offhand reference to how Star Wars had influenced SF spaceships, but I couldn’t remember. You made me wonder, so I looked it up. Sawyer called it robot puke. I gotta admit, I like my term better. Pretty decent book, BTW.

Here, I found it on Google Books (fiddlesticks, the scan ends on page 35)…

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Also, if the surface of the Death Star was a smooth as a J-type 327 Nubian royal starship, you wouldn’t get a sense of how fast they’re flying.

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More room for window offices. Something with the internal volume of that thing has a LOT of managers.

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Well there is one company who makes 12x12 replicas that are cast.

And then this guy made 3D printed ones, which used the real thing for reference, thus might be more accurate.

https://www.myminifactory.com/users/IzzyMel

I couldn’t quite recall where I heard the supposedly official name, but I found it: “greebles”.

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You mean Hans Olo, of Space Scandanavia?

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I always figured that there had been a revolution by one of their “client races,” who then took over the empire. Kind of like the Mongols becoming Chinese emperors…

Design-wise always assumed it was a nod to the work of the likes of Chris Foss, Jim Burns & Angus Mckie.

I find trying to attribute in-universe reasons for things in The Star-Wars has gone past the parody event horizon with the Corellian Bloodstripe

There’s an interesting parallel between star wars models, and architectural renderings. In high school drafting (pre-CAD) we were taught to give a building only enough texture to establish the idea of that surface, and leave most of the areas empty, so as not to overwhelm the eye.

The Star Destroyer model likewise is quite sparing with the greeblies: the vast majority of its surface is smooth plates. But the detailing serves to set the scale. Without those details, the ship could easily seem ten times smaller. Most other large designs have the same thing going on. (Exception being the death star itself, where the relentless greeblies fade into texture, that is set off by narrow strips of smooth plating)

I’ve read that model makers have their favorite mass produced models they like to use for kit bashing at different scales. Too much of any one thing can make a pattern that breaks the illusion.

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I hated that story arc, with the heat of a thousand suns I hated it.

OMG, that makes me so happy! Thanks!

Is Enterprise considered canon? I couldn’t get past the opening theme song more than two or three times.

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I’ve been noticing this on GoT, specifically in Meereen. Example (not spoilers but may ruin immersion):

The balcony panels are all the same, but rotated. And in the throne room, the same panels, and the presumably in-world handcrafted windows are all perfectly identical:

Star Trek canon has gotten a bit slippery lately, but certainly Enterprise was considered canon at the time.

Given that the final episode is A Star Trek: The Next Generation holodeck history lesson that slaps down Enterprise fans for expecting a big Archer speech it kinda sorta has to be, and The Xindi getting name checked in Star Trek Beyond cements it.

BTW the final episode is truely, truely atrocious.

Greeble union. All structures must have a certain amount of greeble coverage; it’s in the contracts.

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Original Death Star, before the Emperor found out about it, thought it was a super idea, and gave them the budget.

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Isn’t that…why, yes, it is, It’s that fucking Rod Stewart song from Patch Adams.

Isn’t that the movie where Robin Williams played a nonconformist who kept having run-ins with an authority figure?