The Battle Of Hoth Unlimited, Part Two

The first part can be found HERE. Please refer to Part One for the various rules and assumptions we're using for these scenarios. And remember, this is my opinion only, and this is purely for fun!

In Part One, we took a look at the more low tech forces, namely the Xenomorphs, the Zerg, the modern US Military, and Stargate Command. With one exception, the Empire emerged triumphant. However, as we move on to more high-tech combatants, the resistance starts getting much stiffer as the Empire begins dealing with foes with are much closer to being their technological peers.

PANDORAN MILITIA

Source: Avatar

Tech Level: 14-15

In the movie, the Na’vi were able to best the human forces through a series of specialized circumstances, such as a sensor-scrambling electromagnetic field and an apparently sentient biosphere. Those circumstances will not be in play here. Also, in order to fill out the same numbers with the rebels, the militia will be increased from a few hundred as shown in the movie to 2000 total troops.

The mercenary forces on Pandora are mostly supplied with what their society views as cheap, second-rate cast-off equipment or what the colonist were able to manufacture on-site with their limited facilities. Since we don’t get a chance to see what the top-of-the-line gear back on Earth is like, we have to go only with what's shown in the movie.

Composed almost entirely of ex-soldiers from a future Earth that is as ravaged by war as the modern-day version, the militia here has a very strong core of experienced veterans, and they seemed to be highly motivated (their corporate employers were obviously paying them well.) In addition, they faced off regularly against an extremely hostile array of hard-to-kill fauna, and its almost certain that they have armor-piercing rounds and advanced personal armor at least equal to what the SGC employed in the last match-up. Thus, soldier-to-soldier, they have a definitive advantage over the snowtroopers with their superior rates of fire.

In place of the snowspeeders the Pandoran militia will have nine Scorpion rotary-blade gunships, which are armed with 50-caliber rotary guns and missile pods. We don't really see any stationary point defense weapons in the movie, so they'll have instead the AMP mecha walkers, which are armed with 30mm autocannons and three-foot “knives.”

Like with the normal US Military scenario in Part One, sorties of the Scorpion gunships are sent to take care of the AT-ATs. Unlike them, however, the Scorpions with their much higher-tech targeting systems should be able to hit the walkers’ individual moving legs more easily. Concentrated missile fire would eventually start bringing the walkers down. In the end, Scorpions can probably bring down one third to one half of the AT-ATs, though they themselves will probably suffer heavy casualties from concentrated ground fire.

The AMPs vs the AT-STs would be an interesting match-up. Both are very maneuverable robotic walker units, though the AT-ST probably has the edge in size, armor and firepower, while the AMP would have a superior rate of fire and versatility.

So, on balance, the Pandoran Militia can almost evenly match the Imperials unit-to-unit, lacking only heavy armor vehicles that can directly match the AT-ATs. But then, the Rebels in the original movie didn’t have the latter either.

RESULT: Marginal Victory for the Rebels. Despite their higher tech advantages over the modern day US army and the SGC, the Imperials’ numbers still do Pandoran Militia in. Like with the Rebels, they’re able to hold off the enemy so that all the transport ships make it off planet, but only just barely before the Imperials smash their defensive line and destroy the power generators. Casualties suffered will also probably be similar to that of the Rebels as well.

TERMINATORS

Source: The Terminator Movies

Tech Level: 14-15

These are mostly T-800 models (the kind played by Arnold Schwartzenegger in the movies), with a small smattering of T-1000s mixed in, say one T-1000 for every 200 T-800s, or about 10 total. As we’re leaving off the more obscure Star Wars walker units so as not to confuse casual readers, we’ll do the same with many of the more obscure Terminator models from various sources, and just stick with the two everyone probably knows. The T-800s here are flesh coated, as we’re familiar with seeing them in the movies.

Terminators are a bit inconsistent, tactically. At times they’re extremely clever and subtle. At others, they’re single mindedly dim (as with the T-1000’s “you’re twenty feet away but I must stab you with my pointy arm-knives instead of just grabbing a gun and shooting you” strategy in T2.) Since we’re dispensing with Plot-Induced Stupidity (PIS) for these match-ups, we’ll stick with the Terminators able to use smart tactics and subtlety.

In their future, Terminators use advanced, high-caliber firearms with very high rates of fire and ammo capacity. They probably fall somewhere between the capabilities of modern firearms and the high-tech armor-piercing ammunition used by the SGC and the Pandoran Militia. The human resistance was very wily, but was usually not heavily armored. It will probably take more than one shot for a Terminator to bring down a snowtrooper.

It should also be mentioned that Terminators are extremely efficient crack shots (except when aiming at the hero/heroine, of course, but that can be considered PIS.) They will have a much higher rate of hitting their targets, even at long ranges, than any mere human troops. So though their weapons do not have the penetration to take out the snowtroopers with one shot, their inhuman accuracy will more than make up for this deficiency.

The Terminators also luck out in that their coatings of human flesh in a way serve as additional armor for themselves. Since blasters deliver most of their damage as heat, when they hit the outer layer of flesh, it will explode in a messy shower of sparks, steam, and viscera, but leave the robotic chassis underneath largely untouched.

Their endoskeletons, made from an advanced uber-alloy and designed to be extremely tough and bullet proof, could probably also survive a half dozen or so direct blaster hits before the unit goes down. This combined with their flesh ‘armor’ makes the T-800s extremely tough to kill compared to the snowtroopers, though concentrated fire or one or two solid shots to the head will probably do the trick. If the Empire had to rely on just its infantry in this battle, they would likely be completely routed despite their numerical superiority.

Ironically, the usually much more fearsome T-1000s are much more vulnerable to heat damage, so a single blaster hit would disrupt the workings of a T-1000 for at least several seconds, and repeated hits would wear away at its structure until there was too little left to be effective (they supposedly become less intelligent the more mass they lose.) So they’d likely hang back for now.

At first, the enemy’s seeming high resistance to blaster fire would seriously unnerve the snowtroopers. But as soon as they see the metal endoskeletons underneath, cries of ‘they’re just freaking droids!’ would go up through the ranks. Even though these are very tough and deadly units, robots are so ubiquitous in the Empire that the fear-inducing psychological advantage Terminators usually have over human foes would not be present here. Given that droids are a lowly slave class in the Empire, many of the troopers might actually be incensed that these ‘uppity’ mechanicals would dare pretend to be human, and fight back all the fiercer at this affront.

Smart Empire commanders would form up the troops around the AT-STs, to take advantage of the walkers’ heavier firepower to drive wedges through the Terminator’s defensive lines, and let the AT-ATs fully take the lead to give them some cover.

As equivalents to the Rebels snowspeeders, the Terminators have HK-Aerials, the advanced twin-engine air vehicles glimpsed at in most of the movies. These gunships have advanced weapons that include lasers, missiles, and plasma guns, but unfortunately their lasers and plasma guns would be next to useless against the blaster-proof armor. And with the uber-armor the AT-ATs are sporting, it would take quite a bit of concentrated fire from their missiles (which, since they usually fight unarmored humans, probably aren’t that effective against heavy armored units) to affect even the walkers’ leg joints. They have deadly accuracy with these weapons, and can hit the most vulnerable points dead-on almost every time. Even so, at best they may be able to take out a third of the AT-ATs before they become too threatened by concentrated ground fire.

But the AT-ATs may not be safe yet. Seeing that their air units are not faring well, the Terminators may try a different tactic: an organized ground assault on the remaining big walkers. However, this is not just a kamikaze Zerg-like rush. Instead, each group of the T-800s serve as cover for a T-1000, to get them as close to the AT-ATs as possible without damage. Once at the walkers, the T-1000s can make their way up the legs easily, to try and find an egress inside. Any size opening will be enough for them, even if its an inch or less across, and they’re strong enough that they could pull off vent covers and the like (like the one that Luke cut open with his lightsaber.) Once inside the vehicles, the T-1000s make quick work of any crew or troopers there.

Though this tactic will not work on ever AT-AT (the imperials would wise up to it fast), it may take out a significant number of the remaining walkers, slowing the advance.

RESULT: Marginal Rebel Victory. This is the one match-up in these scenarios that seems almost dead even and could go either way easily. The Terminators’ inherent toughness and deadly accuracy make up for their disadvantages in numbers and weapon sophistication. It would come down to how effective the T-1000 gambit with AT-AT walkers would prove. Between the HK-Aerials and the T-1000s, all but one or two of the walkers would probably eventually be taken out. However, that’s all that’s needed to break through the defensive lines and take out the generators. The Imperials are delayed long enough for the transports to get away, and the base will eventually be captured after a long, drawn out fight with the surviving Terminators.

JAFFA

Source: Stargate SG-1 (Gua’uld)

Tech Level: 18

These are the Jaffa as the Gua’uld first employed them in the early seasons of Stargate: SG-1, not the Free Jaffa they evolved into later in the series.

The Gua’uld system lord are the technological peers of Star Wars’ Empire, having many of the same major innovations in place (antigravity, force fields, plasma weapons, etc.) Yet they have failed to take full advantage of what that technology is capable of. And in no place is this more apparent than in their personal guard/ground troops, the Jaffa.

This is not the fault of the Jaffa themselves, who were often shown to have extremely high quality training, morale, and motivation (often deriving from their religious fervor, falsely believing that the aliens they served were real gods.) Rather, their Gua’uld masters succumbed to a number of cultural deficiencies that left them deficient as a fighting force.

The Gua’uld were first and foremost arrogant, having no real rivals in the Milky way Galaxy for thousands of years, save for members of their own kind. They had no reason to develop better tactics. They were technological scavengers, having stolen most of their high technology from other races, and were extremely slow to innovate on their own. And the Jaffa was used also as a police force, and much of their equipment were meant more to terrify a superstitious populace into submission than to serve as practical weapons of war. Those choices will serve the Jaffa poorly here.

The Jaffa’s primary armament is the staff weapon. Two meters long, it can shoot plasma bursts of similar performance and power to a stormtrooper’s blaster, and can double as a quarterstaff-like hand weapon. The Jaffa employ very heavy, highly-stylized armor. However, it also hampers movement and has no internal displays or sensors beyond a simple 'periscope' system that allows them to see normally out of their raised headpieces.

Since the two sides’ weapons are very similar in performance, and a single shot from a staff weapon can take down another armored Jaffa, I think its safe to say that the SW troopers’ weapons will have a similar effect, despite the Jaffa’s thicker-seeming armor. Point-defense weapons will be tripod-mounted plasma weapons seen very occasionally in the series, and in place of the Rebels’ speeders, they have 9 death gliders (unlike the SGC’s modified versions, the original death gliders seemed designed with ground strafing in mind as one of their primary functions.)

Though as individual warriors the Jaffa can be truly exceptional, their grasp of group tactics seem universally abysmal throughout the run of Stargate: SG-1. They will fight fiercely, but not effectively as a unit. So despite their better overall troop quality, their leaders’ inability to grasp effective tactics puts them at a disadvantage as compared to the snowtroopers.

The death gliders run into a problem as well. The armor of the AT-ATs are blaster proof, even in the legs. The weapons on the death gliders, which seem to have similar capabilities, therefore will not be able to much to harm the plodding behemoths.

RESULT: Decisive Victory for the Empire. The Jaffa inflict heavy casualties, but in the end their incoherence as an integrated fighting force and their inability to do much to the Empire’s armored units result in the Empire reaching and destroying the power generators with only moderate delays. A number of transports are caught on the ground, and the base is captured.

THIRD IMPERIUM GROUND FORCES

Source: Traveller RPG

Tech Level: 18

In some ways, the Third Imperium of the Traveller RPG universe is the opposite of the Jaffa. They too are technological peers of Star Wars’ Empire, at Tech Level 18. However, they take far greater advantage of what their technology is capable of than the Empire does, at least as far as their ground military is concerned. The Empire’s technology would probably dominate in space, but on planet surfaces the story would be completely different.

The Third Imperium (TI)is composed of 11,000+ worlds, which actually have a huge variety of Tech Levels spread among them. We’ve already seen what their lower-tech level troops could probably do with other groups using similar technology, such as the Pandoran Militia. Here, we’ll use its highest tech troops at the same Tech Level of the Empire’s.

The most significant advantage for the average TI trooper is being equipped with powered battle armor, similar in many ways to the armors used in the novel Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein. With Star Wars’s very advanced robotics, its surprising that this technology seems to have been given the short shrift in the Empire. The Third Imperium took full advantage of it, however. These powered battle armors are superior to stormtrooper armor in every way. They allow full range of movement, enhance the user’s strength, and is equipped with an advanced sensor suite (IR, radar, light enhancement, telescopic, etc) and holographic helmet displays.

Also standard equipment are grav belts, which allow the Third Imperium trooper to actually fly and maneuver in the air for short periods of time if necessary. Most often, though, they’re used for simple ‘jumps’ to gain a lot of ground in a hurry. Advanced anti gravity is something often seen in the Empire, but apparently is never used outside of vehicles and spaceships and other specialized applications.

Their standard weapon is the PGMPs, or Plasma Gun Man Portable. They use the same operating principle as the snowtroopers’ blasters, but are ginned up into much more devastating weapons. The bolts travel far faster (equivalent of high speed bullets vs. the fast ball pitches of the SW blasters) and are much hotter (at least ten thousands degrees.) They have ranges of several kilometers, are equipped with advanced targeting scopes, and often have attached underslung grenade launchers. The armor the Traveller forces wear are actually designed to withstand at least one shot by PGMPs, meaning the weaker blaster rifles used by the snowtroopers will only do minimal damage. The heavier blasters of the AT-STs or the AT-Ats would be needed to take out a TI trooper in a single shot.

What this means is that the average Third Imperium high-tech trooper is more than a match for quite a number of Empire snowtroopers. Concentrated blaster fire could take down an armored Third Imperium trooper, but given the greater range and power of the PGMPs it seems unlikely that any will come close enough for that to happen, even with the Empire’s greater numbers.

Point defense weapons would be heavy fusion guns mounted on tripods, which have ranges of several kilometers and advanced targeting systems. Fusion guns are similar to plasma guns, except they contain their plasma in their compressed magnetic bottle long enough for a fusion process to begin, greatly increasing the amount of heat/energy the bolt has (at least 200,000 plus degrees) when finally released. Though the AT-ATs are ‘blaster proof’, these weapons would seriously put that to the test. An AT-AT could maybe survive one hit, but two or three or more in rapid succession would likely take it down.

If all this wasn’t bad enough, the snow speeder equivalents used here are the mainstay of Third Imperium high-tech armor units, the Trepida (short for Trepidation) grav tank. These are about the same size as a modern M-1 Abrams tank, but are truly monstrous weapon systems. For the first time in these scenarios, the AT-ATs meet their match in a heavy armor unit.

As a grav tank, the Trepidas use advanced anti gravity technology and are more maneuverable than modern day attack helicopters, as well as being capable of achieving transonic speeds if needed. They are equipped with the best sensors and targeting systems of their tech level, and are powered by long-enduring fusion generators.

The tank, in Third Imperium currency, costs a little over 81 million credits to build. 79 million of that is spent just on its gun, a rapid-fire heavy fusion gun with a range of many kilometers. Plus the tank is designed to take shots from other Trepidas, at least along its very heavily armored forward arc, and could withstand fire for a time from even the AT-ATs’ heavy blasters.

Ton for ton, they are just as tough as the AT-ATs, but are far more maneuverable and mount a far more versatile and devastating main weapon. In most circumstances a Trepida would make very short work of any AT-AT and barely get a scratch. And once the Trepida’s are done with the heavy walkers, they turn their fusion firepower on the AT-STs and snowtrooper lines.

RESULTS: Decisive Rebel Victory. A complete route of the Empire forces. As soon as the assault is spotted, all nine Trepida grav tanks pop up and smash the Empire’s armor units and advancing lines with a long-range rapid-fire barrage of star-hot fusion fire. The rapid-fire main tank guns overwhelm the blaster-proof armor of the AT-ATs and the walkers are slagged in short order. The powered armor troopers are used mainly for clean up. The battle lasts less than a minute, and the Empire forces never come within a kilometer of the base.

STARFLEET PERSONNEL

Source: Star Trek (DS9 era)

Tech Level: 21/22

Once we get past the Empire’s Tech Level of 18, the battles with other science fiction forces become more and more one-sided. The results of the imperial forces facing off against, say, 2000 Ringworld-Era Kzinti or 2000 Daleks should be pretty obvious (though admittedly they might still be cool spectacles to watch.) However, given the traditional (and on many levels silly) rivalry between the two fandoms, there’s one we really have to address: Star Trek’s Federation and its Starfleet Personnel.

At the beginning of these scenarios, we dispensed with Plot-Induced Stupidity (PIS), and Star Trek is by far one of the worst purveyors of it. In fact, its creators have even stated that they purposely dumb down some parts of the show to keep it accessible from week to week to the casual, non-scifi viewer. The crews conveniently forget about the supertechnology they tripped across or invented just the week before, the transporters fail if someone sneezes too hard, and they ignore the fact their weapons have ranges of hundreds of thousands of miles and trade shots with other ships at eyeball range.

However, when we remove PIS, it quickly becomes obvious just how powerful Star Trek technology can be, and how potentially terrifying it could prove to be on the wrong end of it. The DS9 era is chosen here because that’s the series of the show that portrayed the most ground combat.

Starfleet crews are very high quality troops. They’re highly motivated, trained, and disciplined, chosen only from the best and brightest of the Federation. Though humanitarian and often compassionate, Starfleet personnel will kill if necessary, and that will be the case here. Dispensing with the Redshirt-Ricky-Gets-Eaten-By-The-Monster-Of-The-Week PIS, its very easy to see how formidable opponents they can be, even if the Tech Level was even.

But its not. The plasma guns and fusion guns fielded by the Third Imperium troops in the last scenario were very impressive and devastating. But phasers, even the humble Type II hand phasers from the original series, are even more so.

With enough power in its cells to apparently nuke a starship if set on overload, these weapons are amazingly versatile, both in use and power. Their fire modes range from single shot, continuous beam, wide beam, and autofire. Their power can be set to simply disrupt someone’s nervous system (stun), to deliver energy blasts that can superheat a substance or make it explode, to full-on nuclear disintegration. Each is capable of firing thousands of killing shots (less if used on its very high settings) before its cells run dry, and the weapons have ranges of thousands of meters.

Its been pointed out that phasers are ergonomically poorly designed, and that’s true. But then, I’ve seen people in arcades blasting around those weird looking plastic weapons that shooter games have and become amazing crack shots with them. The phaser, very lightweight with no recoil, would handle very similarly to them. So a cylindrical handle, ‘dustbuster’ configuration, or lack of iron sights will not prevent a person properly trained with them from being able to hit their targets.

Their power as hand weapons are pretty hard to deny. I remember reading once that on its highest setting, a hand phaser could disintegrate over 400 cubic feet of matter. The composition of the target wouldn’t matter (and hence most armor, even the ‘blaster proof’ type, would be useless) because it’s a chain reaction taking place in the target’s atomic nuclei.

Being able to disintegrate the snowtroopers or some of the armor units in a single shot would be no laughing matter to the other side. It would be terrifying, and almost as bad for snowtrooper morale as facing the Zerg.

Of course chances are the Starfleet personnel would just use killing settings on the snowtroopers, and save the disintegration for the AT-STs, or the AT-ATs’ leg joints. In the original series episode ‘The Omega Glory’, the Mad Captain Of The Week described how he and a handful of other men, armed with just hand phasers, killed many thousands of natives in a single battle. Having much longer ranges, power, and endurance than the snowtroopers’ blasters, they would be able to accomplish the same thing here. One can imagine setting the phasers on continuous beam set to kill, and just sweeping them back and forth over the approaching troopers. Now repeat for 2000 or so defenders. In most ground battles in the various series, the first thing any combatant does when the phasers start firing is head for cover. Out in the open in the snowy wasteland, the snowtroopers won't have that option.

With tricorders, the Starfleet crews could also pinpoint the power sources of each of the armor units, and may elect to just use concentrated fire to take them out instead of destroying the whole vehicle.

The Star Trek universe mostly lacks tactical point defense weapons and armored land vehicles; it could be that ubiquitous disintegration weapons and teleportation rendered these obsolete. The only traditional-looking tactical weapon I ever recall seeing on the show was the photon grenade mortar from the original series episode ‘Arena’, and they seemed to have mini-nuke-level explosive yield (a distance of 1200 yards to the target was cited as being kind of too close to safely use one of those things, and they dived for cover as soon as it was launched.) Even if the Starfleet side does have these, they likely won’t use them in this battle, as the blasts could collapse the underground base.

Instead of snowspeeder equivalents, we’ll instead allow the Starfleet side to have their preferred mode of on-planet travel—a six-person transporter room and the sensors and power source needed to make them work for at least the breadth of the battlefield. This allows the Starfleet side to use a very unusual tactic in taking out the Imperials’ armored vehicle—they simply beam the crews off of them. The blaster-proof armor would likely be no hinderance, anymore than starship hulls are in the Star Trek series. In fact, this would probably be their preferred tactic, as it would be the most humanitarian way to deal with the enemy, at least with the AT-ATs and the AT-STs. They could also teleport away vital parts of the walkers, such as the pins holing the knee joints together or some vital power conduit or something similar.

To the troopers and Imperial commanders, the walker units would just slowly grind to a halt, and just stand there silently. Some of the AT-STs may fall over. The commanders on the ground halt the advance to investigate, and discover the crews and troops on board have literally vanished. Their men now thoroughly unnerved, they will have a hard time getting the advance to move forward again, even if they have replacement crews for the vehicles readily available. (But of course those would just end up vanishing as well a few minutes later)

If the Federation personnel really wanted to play mind games, they could also beam away the commanders as well at that point. The trooopers, who have never seen teleportation before but may have seen some of their fellows disintegrated a few minutes ago, may conclude that their commanders were simply wiped out of existence by some unknown weapon of terror. Now with no heavy vehicles and no leaders, the spooked snowtroopers do the only sensible thing: break their advance and retreat to get new orders. Using this tactic, its entirely possible the Starfleet personnel could stymie the ground assault with minimal casualties on either side. They would, however, now have several hundred prisoners they would have to deal with, at least until the last transport was away.

Of course, this assumes Starfleet is in their usual nice guy mode. If they wanted to be completely ruthless, they’d just beam the vehicle crews and commanders a mile into the ground, and use the phasers on full disintegration to wipe out every single snowtrooper to the man.

RESULT: Decisive Rebel Victory. Freed from PIS, Starfleet’s technical advantages (especially phasers and transporters) simply prove too overwhelming. Like with the Traveller scenario above, the Imperial troops probably never make it to within a kilometer of the base. A number of Imperial troops are taken prisoner via the transporter. All Rebel transport ships make it off-planet, and the base is never taken.

CONCLUSION

There are many more possible match-ups, and we could go on with probably dozens of different match ups just for the heck of it, but I only wanted to give a representative sample to contrast how ground combat is handled in different science fiction sources. Hope you enjoyed these fun little what-if scenarios.

The Battle Of Hoth Unlimited, Part One

This article started out as a comparison of how different scifi properties portray tactical combat. To spice things up, I decided to pattern this article after a lively forum board debate I read through years ago, by placing said troops into an actual battle scenario from science fiction and see how they would do. For this, I’ve chosen the Battle of Hoth, one of the most famous ground engagements in on-screen science fiction, from The Empire Strikes Back.

The militaries from various sources will be replacing the rebels defending the base, and we’ll see how each will handle the Imperial ground assault. Remember this is my opinion only, and is purely for fun.

THE SCENARIO

The Empire has discovered a major Rebel base on Hoth, a world gripped in a severe ice age and completely covered over in glaciers and snow. The Imperial Fleet arrives in orbit, and the Rebels activate a large shield over the base that prevents orbital bombardment or direct landing of troops. So the Imperials send in a mechanized division outside the field radius to take out the field generator through an old-fashioned ground assault. Their primary objective is to capture and/or destroy the base’s main generators powering the shield, at the center of Rebel-defended territory.

The Rebels attempt to evacuate base, piling everyone they can into ships to run the Imperial blockade in high orbit. While the base is being evacuated, a number of stalwart rebels fight a holding action against the oncoming Imperial troops to give their fellows time to escape.

Because of the overhead shield, neither side can employ any type of high-altitude attack craft or weapon. Like in the movie, the defenders have to hold out as long as they can.

This battle was actually much larger than what was portrayed on screen. The film narrowly followed only the parts of it Luke and the other principles were involved in, but the battle actually involved thousands of troops and the siege taking place on various fronts simultaneously.

VICTORY CONDITIONS:

Rebel Decisive Win: All the transports get away safely, and the Imperials never take the base.

Rebel Marginal Win: All of the transports get away safely, but the Imperials take the base (this was the result in the movie.)

Imperial Marginal Win: The Imperials take the base quickly enough that a good percentage of the transports never make it away.

Imperial Decisive Win: Imperials take the base with hardly any resistance and intercept most of the transports before they leave planet.

THE RULES

Basically, as we switch out the Rebels for various other sci-fi troops, these soldiers will be given any equipment and weapons from their source material that approximate the role of equipment the rebels had. For example, the rebels defending the base had 9 speeders, so the new troops will also have 9 low-altitude attack craft their forces would typically employ, or the closest equivalent they have in their source material. They will also be employed in roughly the same numbers the rebels were.

Also, like the rebels, the new troops will also be well versed in winter warfare tactics and can take advantage of the environment just as well.

A NOTE ON PLOT-INDUCED STUPIDITY

For this scenario, we are jettisoning what’s called Plot-Induced Stupidity (PIS.) A term that’s become popular with fans of various stripes online, PIS is when characters act outrightly idiotic against common logic, or when events in the story take a badly contrived turn, in order to move the plot along. Some rather famous examples include elite Imperial Stormtroopers in Return of the Jedi being routed by stone-age teddy bears, or some convenient glitch in Star Trek that prevents the crew from using their transporter at a critical moment.

So for this article, PIS is dispensed with across the board for attackers and defenders both. All equipment will work the way it is supposed to, and all troopers involved on both sides will act competently and use smart tactics wherever appropriate.

THE IMPERIAL FORCES

First, let’s take a look at the attacking force.

The Imperials are at about Tech Level 18, meaning they’re a fairly typical space-opera civilization technologically. They do not always employ equipment that takes full advantage of their society’s technical sophistication (why employ clumsy walker units when they have extremely versatile anti-grav technology?), but what they lack in sophistication they usually make up for in ruthlessness and sheer numbers. The Imperials’ favored military tactic usually involves head-on confrontation with overwhelming force. Subtleties and scheming is usually left to the Sith overlords and their pet generals.

In this scenario, they are employing (at least according to the Wikipedia article on the Battle for Hoth) 9 AT-AT walkers, various smaller walker units (AT-ST units,) and a division of Stormtroopers specifically trained and outfitted for winter conditions. Total Imperial ground troop strength is around 12,000 personnel. Other types of combat walkers are mentioned in EU sources, but they’ll be left off here. We don’t want to confuse casual readers too much, so we’re just going to stick mostly to the types of units seen onscreen in the movie. The walker units advance ahead of the main bodies of foot soldiers, in order to use their superior armor and weapons to smash through the gathered Rebel defenses. Of course, the AT-ATs are carrying a fair number of troops as well.

The Stormtroopers have full-body armor designed to be impact resistant and thermally insulated. The helmets have a full radio suite and a heads-up display with several limited sensor capabilities, such as infrared. The armor, however, does limit movement somewhat, and the helmets severely limit real world vision. This means that if the HUD goes down, the trooper will only have a narrow field of vision unless he removes his helmet.

Their primary weapons are “blasters,” which seem to be low-velocity plasma weapons; basically the weapons superheat a compressed volume of gas into a plasma state then release it as a magnetically-focused bolt. Despite doing potentially impressive heat damage, the Imperial versions seem to travel at low speeds (equivalent to a baseball fastball pitch) and have limited penetration capabilities. On the plus side, though, they are very long-enduring (we never see a Stormtrooper who has to stop to reload), have good effective ranges, and are very rugged.

The Imperial armies do seem to have a troop quality issue that goes beyond the keystone-kop-like PIS we see sometimes. Many don’t seem well motivated or well trained, at least compared to many modern real-world militaries. The Imperials, at least in the movies, depend less on elite, skilled soldiers and much more on raw numbers. The troopers that were involved on Hoth seemed better than most seen throughout the series, but general troop quality is still something that must be taken into consideration.

The quality of the commanding officers (excluding Vader and a few others) seems to be exceptionally dismal. They’re usually portrayed as barely competent and haughty, basically over-promoted bureaucrats more interested in sucking up to their superiors than in actually getting their jobs done right.

And there’s no getting around the most glaring problem with the Imperial forces in this scenario: the AT-AT walkers. They are one of the most impractically designed ground military vehicles ever put on screen. They’re basically slow moving, top-heavy, walking targets. Though they do look very neat (which is probably all the film makers were primarily concerned about) in most ‘realistic’ engagements they’d be more a liability than an asset.

The good is that they’re very heavily armored; Luke even states they’re blaster-proof. The bad--the very bad--is that this chassis is balanced high atop of four very tall, very vulnerable legs. If the vehicle falls, it can’t right itself, and it also seems like heavily uneven terrain could seriously stymie it. Still, the AT-ATs also carry some impressive firepower in the form of forward-mounted heavy blasters. In fact, if the AT-ATs can somehow make it to the defensive perimeter, their heavy firepower is usually assured to bring down any defenses there.

The AT-STs are much better suited for this kind of fight. Though they are also a bit top-heavy for their size, they make up for it by being speedy and maneuverable. Though they seemed underused in the movie, in truth they would be highly effective in hit and run tactics and in infantry-support roles. In a more realistic scenario, they, not the AT-ATs, would prove to be the key weapon system that would allow the Imperials to capture the base.

In summary, the Imperials represent a formidable invasion force, though they do have some weaknesses foes may be able to take advantage of.

THE DEFENDERS

In the movie, the base is defended by about 2000 rebel infantry (making them outnumbered by about six to one). Besides the aforementioned nine attack speeders, they also had various hard point defense turrets at strategic locations and minor vehicles and mounts (tauntauns) to move troops and supplies around. The various new defenders will be given their source-material tactical equivalents of these.

In the movie, the rebels suffered devastating losses; well over a thousand defenders were killed and just as many captured or MIA. We’ll see who can do better, and who can do worse. As per OV tradition, we’ll take the defending forces from lowest tech and work our way up you the highest tech troops.

XENOMORPHS

Source: The Aliens movies

Tech Level: 0

The xenomorphs have no technology per se, so its basically just them naked against the invaders, about two thousand strong, positioned in clusters throughout the base, with a Queen and two dozen eggs/facehuggers for every 200 drones or so.

At first, out in the open, the Imperials do very well. With their far superior numbers and firepower, they have no trouble picking off any groups of drones sent out to attack them. The Imperials will have little trouble reaching the base proper or getting to the power generators.

But, as anyone who’s ever seen the Aliens movies can guess, once they actually begin moving into the base itself is when the horror show really begins.

The aliens are very good at stealth, hiding in relatively small spaces, and executing hit-and run ambush tactics. Plus they do not show up on infrared scans. The stormtroopers will be seriously stymied at first, but will likely adjust their tactics once they discover what they’re up against. They do have the advantage of numbers, plus their armor provides them with at least some protection from the xenomorphs’ violent physical attacks and acid blood. Sweeping through the base slowly but cautiously in large groups, they’re likely to take horrific losses, but will eventually make their way through to the field generator.

RESULTS: Imperial Decisive Victory. The Imperials will eventually capture the base, but in the process will lose at least several hundred troops, much more than against the original Rebels. The increased amount of time the Imperials spend capturing the base itself is made up for in a far more speedier traversing of ground from their drop points, allowing them to blow the generators much earlier than in the movie and intercept many rebel transports.


THE ZERG

Source: Starcraft

Tech Level: 0

Purely biological, the Zerg have no technology per se.

As we made a point of jettisoning PIS, we’ll also do the same in this case with GIS—Game Induced Stupidity. Some odd, and even non-sensical, abstractions were necessary in the Starcraft game in order to make the product playable and fun. Soldiers with rifles shooting down battleship-sized starships, producing entire armies with blue crystals and green gas, hatching tank-sized critters in under five minutes, and so on. The games’ narrative, visuals, and cut scenes will be used for a more ‘realistic’ version of the Zerg we’ll use here.

Because of the overhead shield, the Zerg will likely not bother with many air units, excepting Overlords. Instead, the Cerebrate in charge of defense will produce huge amounts of Zerlings and Hydralisks, along with nine Ultralisks to equal the Rebels’ snowspeeders. Point defenses around and within the base will be Sunken Colonies or burrowed Defilers.

Like the Imperials, the Zerg’s favorite tactic is a frontal assault with overwhelming numbers. And that’s exactly what they’ll do; organize three direct assaults on the three AT-AT groups to take down what they see as the most obvious threat right away. Each assault group would likely consist of one hundred to several hundred zerglings and hydralisks to assist three ultralisks.

The problem for the Imperials here is that individual Zerg are much tougher physically than any rebel or even xenomorph. As seen in cut scenes in the game, even the zerglings, the least of the Zerg, can withstand full autofire from Terran gauss guns for a short time. The blasters the troopers are armed with do not have the rate of fire nor the penetration capability of guass guns, and the hydralisks and ultralisks in the attack force are considerably tougher than the zerglings. Though concentrated fire will eventually bring the critters down, it will take a substantial amount.

Seeing several hundred of these monstrous creatures stampeding directly at them, shrugging off most weapons fire, is sure to rattle even the most seasoned soldier. But even with their superior size and toughness, the ultralisks will likely fall fairly quickly, as they would draw the most fire immediately.

But even with the behemoths out of the picture, the AT-AT walkers will likely be doomed, as they learn first hand the meaning of the term “zerg rush.” Zerglings and hydralisks swarm the vehicles dozens strongs, ripping apart their metal legs and tearing them down. Then the survivors turn their fury on the troops and smaller combat walkers, with very messy results for the Imperials. The troopers would eventually prevail from their superior numbers, but would be badly battered and demoralized from these initial assaults.

But once they reach the base perimeter, new horrors await them, in the form of sunken colonies and Defilers heaping Plague attacks on them, plus whatever ground forces the Zerg may have held in reserve. Here, unfortunately, is where the Imperial assault breaks like a wave against a dam. Already badly battered by the initial assaults, the troopers’ thin morale disintegrates as fifty-foot tendril-tongues erupt from under the snow to impale and crush them without warning, they’re continually gassed and horribly weakened by the Defilers, and the troopers who get too close to the battlements are ripped to shreds from Zerglings or hit with bolts of acid from Hydralisks.

RESULT: Rebel Decisive Victory. The Imperials retreat with horrible losses, perhaps as much as 40-50% of their ground forces. The Zerg suffer a similar percentage loss, but have no morale problems and are already spawning replacements. The Imperial commanders in orbit, no matter their threats, will not be able to get the troops to brave that meat-grinding horror of the Zerg defenses again. The base is never taken, and all rebel ships make it off planet intact.

MODERN US MILITARY

Tech Level: 10

The US military is not only highly-trained and disciplined, it is also the most technologically advanced military in the world. This makes US soldiers the best suited of any real-world combatants, past or present, for having a chance of taking on the higher-tech forces of the Empire.

The US military maintains very high troop quality, in sharp contrast to the Imperials. In the wake of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US has a solid core of highly experienced combat veterans, and as a purely volunteer force, the soldiers are in general well motivated to begin with. Even though the Imperial division assigned to the ground assault is very competent by stormtrooper standards, the US soldiers will still be several notches above them in overall quality.

(I’m not an expert in modern military weapons, so forgive me if some assignations of equipment below might be off)

Point defenses will primarily be M-2 50 caliber machine guns or similar, with MK 19 40 mm machine guns (a type of armor-piercing autogrenade launcher) placed in areas where they can expect to be hit with heavy armor units. Both types of guns are mobile, and can be moved around as needed to different hard points. Low-altitude attack craft in place of speeders will be MH-60L Blackhawk attack helicopters.

Realistically, the US troops would also do what they could to heavily mine the most likely approaches the Imperials would take. However, since the Rebels in the movie did not use the tactic (most likely due to lack of prep time), it will be disallowed for the US troops as well.

The primary infantry weapon of the US armed forces is the M-16A2, with some units being equipped with M-4 carbines. Most squads would also be issued at least one M-249 SAW. These weapons do have some advantages over the Imperials’ blasters. First and foremost, they can deliver much greater rates of fire, and can deliver a much more potent kinetic energy punch to their targets.

However, Stormtrooper armor seems very good at absorbing kinetic impact, and given their tech level, will probably hold up to at least a few hits by modern day bullets. In fact, the situation will probably be similar to what US troops encountering J’afa in the original Stargate movie and in the earlier seasons of Stargate: SG-1; it will probably take concentrated autofire on any one target to bring them down.

The same will probably not be true on the other side. Even though the US armor is very effective against kinetic impact and penetration, they are not graded to withstand intense heat. The imperials’ blasters deliver most of their damage as heat, probably at least over a thousand degrees Fahrenheit, concentrated in a focused super-heated stream. Most likely most dead-on shots will penetrate the US soldiers’ armor; those that don’t may have the plasma “splash” against the target like a wave, causing severe secondary burns.

When the imperial assault is first spotted, Blackhawk helicopter sorties are organized to try and take out the AT-AT groups. The helicopters are as fast and nearly as maneuverable as the speeders shown in the movie, and have much longer-ranged weapons. However, the AT-AT’s heavy armor prevents their missiles or their rotary guns from penetrating the main chasis. So they will quickly adopt an alternate strategy: attacking the legs.

As noted earlier, an AT-AT’s big vulnerability is that most of its mass is balanced on four very tall legs. Take out even one of those legs, and the entire vehicle is neutralized. Also, the guns most likely to take out the Blackhawks, the turbo cannons on the AT-AT’s ‘heads’, have a fairly restrictive firing arc, meaning smart helicopter pilots will quickly learn to swing around and come at the walkers from the rear.

The legs are also heavily armored and heavy-duty, and withstood up to repeated blaster fire in the movie. However, missiles are not blasters, and deliver their damage mostly through kinetic impact and explosive concussion. While the walkers may be nigh-invulnerable to the blasters (perhaps by using a thermal superconducting mesh in the armor, which re-radiated away the heat?), kinetic impacts, if strong enough, could just hammer away at the joints until they buckle.

Even so, anything other than a direct hit by an anti-armor missile from the Blackhawks will likely be inadequate, and even then, it will likely take more than one shot.

Modern missiles are very good at homing in on specific individual targets. However, pinpoint-targeting different areas of a target vehicle is something much harder to engineer with modern technology. So hitting the moving, relatively thin legs of the AT-AT’s are going to be difficult. I estimate at best the Blackhawks could take down 1-2 AT-ATs before they themselves become imperiled by organized ground fire.

At the perimeter, the fighting is very fierce, but the US troops are simply too low-tech compared to the Imperials and too out-numbered to prevail. Especially devastating to the US troops are the AT-STs; their speed, maneuverability, and relatively heavy firepower wreak havoc with the US defenses. The surviving Blackhawks pick off what they can, but it likely won’t be enough. When the AT-AT’s with their heavy blasters come within range of the defensive lines, the fight is pretty much over.

RESULT: Marginal Victory for the Imperials. The US forces manage to inflict much heavier troop casualties among the Imperial infantry than the Rebels, thanks to superior rates of fire, but would be much less effective at taking out the enemy armor units, which most of their weapons can’t seriously affect. The only time the Imperial advance is significantly slowed is when the main body of troops reach the defensive perimeter, and all too soon that is breached when the Imperial armor is brought up. The Imperials take down the field generator with numerous rebel ships still on the ground, and capture the base.

STARGATE COMMAND

Source: Stargate SG-1, Stargate: Atlantis

Tech Level: 13-15

Stargate Command itself employs only a few hundred actual combat troops. For this scenario we’ll assume they use normal US troops, as above, to fill out their ranks to the 2000 or so soldiers needed to take the Rebels’ place.

Stargate Command, technically under the auspices of the USAF but more practically its own branch of the US military, has a number of advantages over the ‘normal’ US troops used in the last scenario. Not only do they have captured and adapted alien technology, but they have become highly experienced specialists in fighting battles against foes with superior technology.

Weapons used by the main troops will be as outlined above for the normal US troops. However, it was established that the SGC developed and employed on a regular basis specialized equipment designed to neutralize advantages of the much higher-tech J’afa warriors. They have advanced ammunition that can readily penetrate high-tech armor, and have inserts in their own body armor designed to withstand the plasma blasts of the J’afa staff weapons. Since the Imperials and the Gua’uld J’afa have approximately the same Tech level (18), we can assume that these innovations will be as equally effective against the Imperial snowtroopers. They distribute what they’ll have along these lines to as many of the normal troops as they can, so let’s assume for simplicity’s sake that about half the soldiers have these enhancements.

What this means is that unlike the normal US troops, their weapons can take down individual Imperial troopers with a single shot. So, soldier-to-soldier, they would actually have an advantage, in that the SG teams’ weapons have much greater rates of fire, and would be bolstered here and there by Zat guns and some other captured alien tech. There is also an even greater discrepancy in overall troop quality; the SG teams are the very cream of the crop of the US military, so they would have even better overall training, morale, and motivation than normal US troops.

However, these advantages may not be able to overcome their big disadvantage: lack of advanced armor units. In defending against alien threats in the various series, the SGC had a two pronged approach: space-going battlewagons that could engage in strategic battles in space, and ground troops that could engage in insurgent and guerilla tactics via the Stargates. While both approaches in the end proved very effective, it left a gap in development of their high-tech arsenal: armored fighting vehicles and aircraft.

Basically, the SGC has no high-tech equivalent of the snowspeeders (fighters like the X-303s are designed as high-speed, high-altitude/space attack aircraft, and would be poorly employed here) and will have to rely on what the normal US military used in the last scenario. Thus, they likely won’t have any better success in stopping the AT-AT advance, and will likely only take out a handful of them.

RESULT: Marginal Imperial Victory. Greater troop-to-troop casualties will only slow the Imperials down slightly, given their usual ruthlessness toward their own men. The Imperials will take a greater number of casualties, maybe twice that the normal US military by itself was able to inflict, but in the end the defenses fold as soon as the Imperial walkers smash through the defensive line. The imperials capture a number of rebel ships still on the ground.


Go HERE for part two: Avatar, Traveller, Star Trek, and more.

Confessions Of A Xenophile

(Warning: This article will touch upon some mature subject matter, more so than my usual posts. Rated PG-13. Also, I talk here from the male's POV, but a lot of what's discussed can be applied to female scifi fans as well.)

A few weeks ago, Conan O'Brian was interviewing James Cameron on The Tonight Show and mentioned something I found interesting: He said that he thought the lead female Na'vi character in Cameron's movie Avatar was pretty hot. Andy Richter, sidekick extraordinaire, chimed in almost immediately to agree.

What's significant about this is that the Na'vi are definitively not human. Oh, the Na'vi are humanish, as in most of the 'important' parts that humans require for a female to look sexy are there. Yet they're packaged in a way that leaves little doubt that the Na'vi are not members of the species homo sapiens.

If, like Conan O'Brian, you found the Na'vi girl Neytiri to be hot, all I have to say is: welcome to the club. Some of us have actually found alien and other non-human girls hot for a long time now, and maybe its time we started speaking out.

The term is 'xenophile,' someone who is open to, and holds affection for, the alien and foreign. It also has a sexual/romantic connotation, as in someone who is attracted to foreigners, or, in this case, non-human people. Its not as unusual an affectation as most people think.

Science fiction fandom, to no surprise, boasts a very large percentage of potential xenophiles, and of course that genre has had no shortage of sexy non-humans to appeal to fans. With SF so popular nowadays, xenophilia seems to be more popular than ever, and I would even dare say it was close to being mainstream, especially with hugely successful properties like Star Trek and Avatar showing sexy aliens and humans having liaisons with them.

My first inkling that I may be a bit of a xenophile myself came in pubescence, with a fascination for Orion slave girls and Vulcan women in Star Trek and for Frank Frazetta's cover paintings showing the crimson-skinned, egg-laying Dejah Thoris in Edgar Rice Burroughs classic John Carter of Mars series. I grew up and of course discovered real girls, but even through dating and all the other romantic hijinks, a curvy alien woman was sure to rivet my attention pretty strongly, even to this day.

Of course this caused some friction with some girlfriends, but most were pretty understanding it. In fact, the ones that were into SF or fantasy themselves usually saw no problem with it, though sadly I have never been able to get one to dress up in green body paint and an Orion slave bikini. Someday....

Friends have also confessed similar attractions over the years, so I know I was far from alone: Athaclena from The Uplift war by David Brin; Aslan and Vargr characters from the Traveller RPG; Klingon women from later Star Trek incarnations; Delenn from Babylon 5; Twi'lek girls from Star Wars; Orcs and Night Elves from World of Warcraft; Dadward's alien pin-up girl Xixa, illustrated to the left. Even the Beast from Disney's Beauty and the Beast, who my girlfriend (27 at the time) would have much preferred not turn back to human at the end of the movie. Attraction toward the inhuman seems to be a very common theme in our modern culture.

So is it all the result of some deviant mutant behavior? Naw.

First of all, people who seem to have at least some xenophilia in them actually seem to be pretty high in number. From my own very unscientific polling, I'd say at least about 25% of my friends, family, and coworkers could be considered to have xenophilia tendencies. What it is in the general population I couldn't say without a real study, but about a quarter or so of the population sounds about right, and of course the percentage is probably significantly higher among scifi fans.

I also think xenophilia derives from a very basic facet of human behavior: outbreeding instinct. It doesn't get as much press as its scandalous cousin inbreeding, but outbreeding is very important to any species' long-term survival, and is responsible for so-called hybrid vigor. Its the instinct to introduce as much variation into your offspring's genes as possible to ensure better overall survival. To do this, one seeks mates who are as much unlike oneself as possible but still recognizable as viable breeding prospects. In other words, the more exotic and foreign a date appears to you, the more attractive he or she will likely be.

Most of us have experienced at least a touch of this at one time or another. If you ever found a foreign accent sexy, it was likely your outbreeding instinct at play. It explains also why asian women are so popular as sex fantasies among guys in the North America, and why blond women are the same to males in the Far East. Its all a matter of what is familiar to you, and what you will find exotic.

Some people have a much more highly developed outbreeding instinct than others. So much so that apparently it can extend to imaginary characters who aren't technically human. As long the character is relatively human in shape and the specific "parts" (do I really have to spell out which ones?) which we tend to focus on for attraction are there, other details don't seem to matter as much. In fact, these tertiary characteristics, if made slightly non-human, only add to the characetrs' exotic nature and in some ways will make her (or him) more attractive in that outbreeding kind of way.

There also seems to be different sub-classes of xenophiles that have sprung from different scifi subcultures and genres. These include fantasy-philes (likes elves, hobbits, elves, orcs, etc), otaku (anime girls in all their big-eyed weird haired variations), furries (human-like mousegirls, catgirls, etc), monster-philes (vampires, werewolves, ghosts, etc), technophiles (cyborgs, androids, fembots,) and more.

But of course this is all just fun fantasy. Non-human people don't exist, and if we ever did meet any, the chances are very huge against them ever being romantically or sexually compatible with us. (Unless we eventually genetically engineer some that way, but that is another whole can of ethical worms...)

But that doesn't stop scifi fans from fantasizing, and in fact, capitalizing on their xenophilia has become big business. The Twilight series, about a human girl with very non-human would-be suitors, shows just how much money can be made from tapping into it from the female side. Avatar's runaway popularity also seems to stem at least partly from the sexiness of its non-human characters, especially in a way that appeals to males. Both properties take different approaches as to target the different genders, but they both tap into the same desire we have for the sexually exotic. And because they've made so much money, it only means that Hollywood and others are sure to tap more of this xenophile desire in the coming years. So I suspect this is only the beginning of a wave of xenophile works we'll see in the next decade or more.

So if you've ever had a tingle in your trousers from watching ten foot blue-skinned cat-eyed people jumping about in skimpy loincloths, relax. There's nothing wrong with you. You're not alone, and in fact belong to a fairly large group of like-minded indivduals. Welcome to the club.

(Neytiri copyright James Cameron. Other illustrations by Dadward, used with permission. Check out his WEBSITE and all his cool swag at his CAFEPRESS SHOP!)

The 7 FORGIVABLE Sins Of Sci Fi

A lot has been made about the scientific inaccuracies and logical fallacies we often see in on screen science fiction. While no doubt some of it does stem from just plain ignorance or carelessness, a lot of it actually serves an important story telling purpose.

The first commandment of any form of entertainment is straightforward: You Must NOT Be Boring. This coupled with time constraints, limited budgets, and the need to tell a complete story driven by characters, has led to a number of shortcuts that creators of film and TV science fiction have to take. Its not that they, the writers, the FX crew, etc., are unaware of how scientifically accurate phenomena would actually work, its just that they have to put entertaining the audience and creating a compelling but easy-to-follow narrative first. And that often requires compromises.

This isn't to say that fans aren't right to complain about obviously stupid plot developments, or groan-inducing nonsense technobabble. Only that people should understand that science fiction is primarily about stories and characters first, and if some scientific accuracy has to be sacrificed to enhance either of those, so be it.

1. Cow Goes Moo, Duck Goes Quack, Space Goes Kaboom

In a dramatic presentation, music and sound effects are often used as dramatic punctuation, a tradition that goes back centuries to the earliest plays and operas. Its used so often because its proven itself very effective at evoking visceral responses from the audience. Should a filmmaker give up such a useful and versatile tool in a science fiction film simply because in real life, sound does not travel in space?

The answer is, it depends. Some very successful science fiction has used space silence as an effective dramatic device (2001, Firefly, Planetes). However, these works are almost always aimed at a more mature, thoughtful audience. For a more general audience work, especially an action-oriented one, such abrupt silences can serve to kill the dynamic flow of the story. So using sound in spaceshots, such as engine noises, weapon fire, explosions, etc, as well as background music, is forgivable if it all keeps the story or action flowing smoothly.

NOT FORGIVABLE: Humans breathing and talking in space without explanation (Superman IV, Power Rangers, for example). Even the most non-science-savvy of audiences nowadays know that people can't survive in space without spacesuits, much less go around talking in naked vacuum.

2. Enhance!

A sin scifi shares with many a modern crime show, this is where a computer enhances a visual image in some way that should either be impossible (how exactly do you enhance four fuzzy pixels into a complete mugshot?) or take many hours of tweaking and programming.

This is a necessity mostly born of time constraints. A typical scifi TV show only has an hour, not counting commercials, in which to tell its story. How much of that time do audiences really want to watch a computer operator clicking a mouse and typing at a keyboard to tweak an image into clarity? Even a montage of that would be fairly mind-numbing. So this is a quick little shortcut most scripts use to bypass what would be a scientifically accurate but very boring process to watch.

3. The Universal Up

In scifi TV shows and movies, most ships meet each other in the depths of space always oriented in the same "up" direction. Most combat, too, is usually depicted as two dimensional. Spaceships come at each other from ahead or behind, but rarely from below or from above.

This is mostly a visual shortcut, to avoid confusing the audience. Because make-believe spaceships come in a lot of unusual visual designs, they can be difficult to recognize from odd angles, especially during combat when they may be zipping quickly across the screen. This way the audience can more easily keep track of who's the good guy and who's the bad guy.

There have been exceptions to this, of course (particularly Return of the Jedi), but even then, with the fighters zooming about in three dimensions, the main fleets themselves were arrayed on a more or less flat plain in space as they exchanged shots.

4. And One Gravity For All

In science fiction, most locales are either one Earth-normal gravity, or zero gravity. There is no in between, even on the Moon or Mars or alien planets. Even the most low-tech future societies seem to easily develop magical artificial gravity.

The reason for this stems from the current limits of special effects and most movie/TV budgets. Simply put, all the actors and sets are on Earth, and there's no escaping that a full G is in effect there. Studios have gotten fairly adept over the years at visually fudging freefall with harnesses and other tricks, but these can get expensive, and are usually not used except for certain necessary scenes. In other words, faking anything other than Earth normal gravity can be a budget buster for most productions, so they usually use artificial gravity as a quick and easy end run around that.

5. Cosmic Wharrgarbl

Wouldn't it be convenient if every race, nation and civilization spoke the same language? In many science fiction universes, they do.

Yes, we know that the act of actually translating and learning to speak a completely new, alien language would be a long, complex, and arduously boring process to watch. Like with Enhance! this process is usually shortened dramatically, or even hand-waved away, to save on the audience's sanity and to get on with the story that will actually entertain them.

UNFORGIVABLE: Not providing even an arbitrary explanation for WHY everyone speaks the same language. If even my 8 year old nephew knows enough to question why everyone is speaking the same, then its not something audience members will just shrug away. Universal translators, babel fish, telepathy, a common trading language, etc., just pick one and move on. I'm looking at you, Stargate Atlantis. Earthers show up in a brand new galaxy that has been removed from human contact for 10,000 years and everyone can easily understand each other the first time they meet?

6. Ridged Forehead Syndrome

Aliens are one of the centerpiece concepts of science fiction. From everything we know about evolution, its easily a trillion to one odds that any alien lifeform will end up looking even remotely like us. So why do so many aliens in sci fi look like actors from Hollywood central casting with crinkly foreheads?

The simple answer is, of course, they are. Until fairly recently, expecting a special effect to act would be like asking the moon to dance a jig. If you wanted the aliens in your story to be actual characters instead of some barely-seen rubbery suit or glowy cloud, that meant you had to use human actors. And even Hollywood make-up masters could only make them so alien, especially with the budgets many productions had.

This has changed somewhat with modern computer animation (especially with incredibly convincing CGI characters like Gollum in the Lord of the Rings movies), but even so the process still remains very expensive. So ridged forehead aliens are still forgivable, as long as other measures are taken (language, mannerisms, culture, etc) to show that they're from a world other than earth. It is also forgivable if the presence of near-human aliens is plausibly explained away (such as in the Stargate universe, where many human populations were transplanted off Earth in ancient times to be used as slaves of the alien Gua'uld.)

UNFORGIVABLE: Having near-human/ridged forehead aliens in a sci fi production where the FX budget easily allows for better, less human alien characters. This is a sin especially perpetuated by japanese anime--being animation they aren't limited by FX budgets, and yet too often their aliens come in only two varieties--very human-looking or loathsome tentacle-beasts.

7. Outdated Special Effects

Now, we've all had a good laugh at one time or another at the Styrofoam rocks on the original Star Trek or the hokey muppet Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back. But seeing people put down the entire movie or TV show because of such special effects is definitely a sci fi sin.

We all know the story we're watching isn't real. But we're willing to suspend our disbelief for the sake of being entertained. Its why we can enjoy animated movies even though everything in the film is at least several steps removed from reality; its why we can get into plays even though its obvious we're just watching people shuffle about and talk on a stage with obviously artificial sets. If the story is good enough, whether the FX scenes look realistic shouldn't matter so much as how well they serve the ongoing story and move it along.

The original King Kong is a brilliant example. Does the Kong of the movie even closely resemble or move like a realistic gorilla? No. But is the movie still very entertaining? Definitely yes. The FX are crude by today's standards, but still serve the story of the film and move events along very well.

So this sin is very forgivable IF the special effects crew did the best they could with the technology and budget they had at the time. How well the effects serve the story should always matter more than how realistic they look.

UNFORGIVABLE: using outdated special effects on more modern films; in fact, the bigger budget and more modern a movie is, the less forgivable this sin is. Also, using special effects so much that they dilute the story instead of enhancing it, as was the case of all three Star Wars prequel films.

Let me know if I've forgotten any!

Ten Year Ago, Star Wars Fell Off A Cliff

I hadn't realized that it had been over 10 years now since The Phantom Menace was released. Of course, I imagine that is not an anniversary most people tend to observe, but it is significant as it marks the downfall of one of the great science fiction franchises.

I use 'downfall' purely from a quality standpoint, of course. Star Wars still makes scads of money and has many ardent fans, my 8-year-old nephew among them. But few people who aren't wonder-filled prepubescents can deny that as far as story quality and cultural impact goes, the franchise is only a shadow of its former self and shows no sign of resurging. Phantom Menace was simply a bad film, and Attack of the Clones somehow managed to be even worse. Revenge of the Sith was better than the first two but was still only mediocre at best.

Its interesting that the franchise has fallen so quickly and so completely in the public's eye. Once, it was held as the pinnacle of fantasy-related story telling. Today, its just another scifi franchise among many, and far from the best.

Its also interesting that it is not weathering its current downturn anywhere near as well as many of its peers among long-running scifi franchises have handled theirs. Star Trek and Dr. Who have all had up periods and down periods, yet none of them fell quite so spectacularly as Star Wars. I have to wonder why.

Star Trek has had many mediocre, and some outrightly atrocious, episodes among its many series and movies. And yet, the public seemed a lot more forgiving of Trek's sins than those of Skywalker and co. Even after outright bombs like Star Trek V and Nemesis, the Trek brand remained essentially untarnished.

I think in part it might be just the sheer volume of Trek stories out there. Everyone seems to have a sense that if the current incarnation of Star Trek sucks, another one will eventually come along that will be better (and that's pretty much exactly what's happened recently.)

But also I think Star Trek strives for something Star Wars never has: story transcendence. It tries hard to be more than just pulp adventure; it explores new ideas and is unafraid to ask the BIG questions about things like destiny, mankind, existence, god, love, and other things. And very occasionally, it succeeds ('The City On The Edge Of Forever,' 'The Inner Light,' 'The Visitor.') Even when it fails (which is more often than not) we recognize the nobility of the attempt, we are more willing to overlook it because hey, at least they're trying.

Doctor Who is very similar in this regard, especially in its modern incarnation; it too tries for story transcendence and occasionally succeeds, though its best stories tend to be quite a bit darker than Trek's. ('The Empty Child'/'The Doctor Dances' and 'Human Nature'/'Family Of Blood' are the two storylines that stand out most for me.)

I guess Dr. Who and Trek are like good friends that we see struggling and striving for a hard-to-obtain goal, so that when they succeed, we can't help but cheer. And when they fail, they pick themselves up and try again. Who can't admire that, at least at some level? Its almost like what Rocky Balboa said--its not how hard you can punch, but how many times you can pick yourself up after being knocked down that determines if you're a winner or not.

Star Wars hasn't picked itself up yet, if it ever will. The keepers of the franchise insist that its mistakes were in fact successes, that there is nothing really to correct, that there is no higher goal for them to try and reach. It fell to the mat and apparently likes it there. And so the franchise keeps floundering, and the public has no interest in seeing it revive, as its not even trying to do better. What's there to cheer for?

The potential for future greatness is there, mind you. The Star Wars universe is very rich and can be mined for a lot of great stories and ideas, as some authors in the 'Expanded Universe' novels and comics have shown. But will we ever see that creative vitality for Star Wars make its way back onto the screen? It doesn't seem too likely, anytime soon.