Re: Delphi, ranks, and SF, oh my!

Walter Amos (amos@sedl.org)
Thu, 10 Jul 1997 13:41:26 -0700 

<note: I am concatenating replies to several notes on this subject to
make things less mbox-intensive>

Chi Ming Hung wrote:
> Even that I don't think is reasonable.  I mean what land-battle?  With
> such advanced technology, massive orbital bombardment is enough to win
> any war ^_^  So theoretically you can do anything from the ship,
> and if not, just send in a couple of HAL-90000000-controlled land
> combat units, why risk human lives and create redundant army ranks at
> the same time? ^_^

Well, as Sue intimated in her reply, I don't think any government will
want to go and mass exterminate whole populations of their own.  That
tends to destroy your infrastructure, supply, population, morale, and
generally wreck the nation from within.  Remember Westerland?  I think
that is argument enough against this sort of strategy.

> You see, Star Trek seems more sensible in this respect.  There's a
> prominent Star FLEET, but no army (at least I can't recall one).

You can't compare the two because there are no bad people in Star Trek.

>Hey Walter, you're probably the only one who complains about villains not
>being accurately portraited ^_^  You know, bad guys are bad guys, they enter
>the scene, act badly for a while, and die!  That's it (don't you just love
>my gross over-generalization of things? ^_-)    So get over the floating
>fatman Walter, I bet they don't even have a poster with him on it! (but
>if they do, I'm sure you have the only existing copy ^_^)

I am NOT the only one!  I have had a number of discussions with people
into Yamato about the possible characterization of Desslok in the
supposedly forthcoming live action Star Blazers movie.  A lot of people
are worried about how he will come out.  And while bad guys may act
badly and die, without them we wouldn't have much plot would we?  And I
would never buy a poster of the BAron in the Dune movie, principally
because as I've said he wasn't a great villain, and less so because he
doesn't have a cape (a requirement for a classy villain!)

Sue Shambaugh wrote:
> 2. The director's cut was NOT unauthorized.  "Allen Smithee" was a
> pseudonym.  Do some research.

Ah, you're sort of half right.  Allen Smithee is a pseudonym, but it is
one directors use when they "don't want their name on this piece of
crap."  So if Lynch wanted it to say Smithee on the TV version it
probably means he couldn't stop them from making the changes they wanted
but he no longer wanted his name on a work he didn't think was worthy.

> OK!  Who's up for the Dune versus GHL thesis competition?  :D

Eep!  I dunno if this merits a thesis, maybe a term paper max! :)

==============================================================================
"Zu jeder Zeit, an jeder (sic) Ort, bleibt das Tun    |       Walter
Amos
  der Menschen das gleiche..." - Galactic Heroes II   |     
amos@sedl..org