Category Archives: Star Wars (franchise)

Rebel videoscope

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Talking to Luke

Hidden behind a bookshelf console is the family’s other comm device. When they first use it in the show, Malla and Itchy have a quick discussion and approach the console and slide two panels aside.

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The device is small and rectangular, like an oscilloscope, sitting on a shelf about eye level. It has a small, palm sized color cathode ray tube on the left. On the right is an LED display strip and an array of red buttons over an array of yellow buttons. Along the bottom are two dials.

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Without any other interaction, the screen goes from static to a direct connection to a hangar where Luke Skywalker is working with R2-D2 to repair some mechanical part. He simply looks up to the camera, sees Malla and Itchy, and starts talking. He does nothing to accept the call or end it. Neither do they.

We also see the conversation from Luke’s perspective as well. It’s even more oscillioscopey, with lots of dials, switches, and sliders to either side.

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So this all might be intriguing (and right in line with agentive design) but before we start to investigate, we need to look at another instance of its use. Just like the Imperial-issie Media Console, this functions differently later in the same show.

Talking to Leia

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After Itchy’s SFW living room masturbation chair sequence, the camera cuts to Leia and C-3PO in an unspecified office somewhere. The droid works at a console for a moment and finally turns a dial. In the Wookie household, a loud dee-DEEP dee-DEEP sounds until Malla rushes to the console, and slides the panels aside. C-3PO sees Malla’s face, and turns to Leia saying, “Ah. I have made the connection. You may speak now if you wish.”

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They do, and when the conversation is over, the feed just shuts off, with neither party doing anything to make it happen.

So. Yeaaaaah.

Activation

How is it turned on? One possibility is an architectural switch activated by sliding the panels. It would be a good design decision, as it is an action that needs to be undertaken anyway to use it. But that doesn’t explain Luke’s use.

Connection

How does Malla’s device know to call Luke once it’s on? It could be that it’s a fixed connection, like an intercom, that only calls that one other device. But it’s a Rebel garage. That doesn’t make sense. Why would Malla need to only call there? And of course they receive a call from Leia, who isn’t in that same garage, so it’s not exactly fixed.

Security

The device contains incriminating evidence, i.e. the direct connection to the Rebel base, and so it needs some sort of security. Why is that not in evidence?

Secret agent?

One technological concept that would answer a lot of these questions is that of agentive technology, i.e. artificial narrow intelligence that does things on behalf of its users.

It could explain how the device turns on and (some of) the security: the camera has hairy face recognition and persistently watches for authorized users, turning on when it sees one of them. Conceptually that would be far beyond common sci-fi tropes of the time, but in keeping with the New Criticism stance of the blog, should be considered.

It could explain how it knew to call Luke: It understands Shyriiwook and listened to the conversation that Itchy and Malla had before they opened the panel, knew they wanted to call Luke, and found him in the garage.

It could explain how it turns off: It’s smart enough to understand the linguistic, social, and physical cues that the conversation has ended.

The world of Star Wars even has this technology in evidence. The droids all exhibit artificial general intelligence, and it is only a failure of imagination that this intelligence should not be incorporated into important devices, or spaceships, or architecture.

This would also explain why c-3PO is managing the interface on his end but nobody else has to bother: An AI does not need another AI, just an API.

It would even explain why the damned thing rings. Take a moment to appreciate that. This is an illegal device on the Empire-controlled Kazook. We know this because it’s deliberately hidden, and our protagonists really work to avoid the Empire’s finding it. Yet when an unexpected call comes in, it shrilly announces the fact of itself to everyone within screeching range. The only way this is not the most moronic feature possible of an illegal object is if it can scan the surroundings and verify that it’s OK to ring. Because otherwise, it would be the most stupid feature of a stupidly stupid technology made in haste for a stupid show slopped together in haste and without any respect for a logical or consistent diegesis.

Whew.

Thank The Maker for apologetics.

Imperial-issue Media Console

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When she wonders about Chewbacca’s whereabouts, Malla first turns to the Imperial-issue Media Console. The device sits in the living space, and consists of a personal console and a large wall display. The wall display mirrors the CRT on the console. The console has a QWERTY keyboard, four dials, two gauges, a sliding card reader, a few red and green lights on the side, and a row of randomly-blinking white lights along the front.

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Public Service Requests

As Malla approaches it, it is displaying an 8-bit kaleidoscope pattern and playing a standard-issue “electronics” sound. Malla presses a handful of buttons—here it’s important to note the difficulty of knowing what is being pressed when the hand we’re watching is covered in a mop—and then moves through a confusing workflow, where…

  1. She presses five buttons
  2. She waits a few seconds
  3. As she is pressing four more buttons…
  4. …the screen displays a 22-character string (a password? A channel designation?) ↑***3-   ↓3&39÷   ↑%63&-:::↓
  5. A screen flashes YOU HAVE REACHED TRAFFIC CONTROL in black letters on a yellow background
  6. She presses a few more buttons, and another 23-character string appears on screen ↑***3-   XOXOO   OXOOX   XOOXO-↑ (Note that the first six characters are identical to the first six characters of the prior code. What’s that mean? And what’s with all the Xs and Os? Kisses and hugs? A binary? I checked. It seems meaningless.)
  7. An op-art psychedelic screen of orange waves on black for a few seconds
  8. A screen flashes NO STARSHIPS IN AREA
  9. Malla punches the air in frustration.

So the first string is, what, a channel? And how do the five buttons she pressed map to that 22 character string? A macro? Why drop to a semi-binary for one command? And are the hugs-and-kisses an instruction? Is that how you write Shyriiwook? Why would it be Latin letters and Unicode characters rather than, say, Aurebesh? Who designed this command language? This orthography? This interface? Maybe it was what this guy was assigned to do after he was relieved of duty.

Video calls

When technology fails to find her sweetheart, Malla turns to her social network. She first uses her Illegal Rebel Comms device to talk to Luke and R2-D2 (next post), and afterwards, returns to the Media Console, which is back to its crappy TSR-80 BASIC-coded screen saver mode.

  1. She taps a few keys (a macro?)
  2. A new code appears: ↑***C-   ↓&&&0-   446B°-   TP%C↓
  3. The display reads: SUB TERMINAL 4468 (or 446E or maybe 446B. It’s a square font and Malla’s hairy arm is in the way.)
  4. She presses a few more keys
  5. The screen displays STAND BY for a few seconds
  6. Then the word CONNECT flashes a few times
  7. She presses a single button
  8. TRADING POST WOOKIE PLANET C flashes
  9. A live camera feed displays of the trading post

So it’s actually nice to see the first 5 characters of the string be different since this is a different mode: public function (↑***3-) versus video phone (↑***C-). It made me wonder if the codes were some sort of four part IP address, but then I saw the traffic control command is only three lines, so it’s not a consistent enough pattern. So I was hoping to find some secret awesomeness, but no.

Here’s the flow chart as completed by the demoted Stormtrooper designer (translated from the Aurebesh).

Imperial-Workflow
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Public Addresses

Not only is the interaction terrible, but it’s not really your device anyway. The Empire can take control of these screens for government business, like paging errant Stormtroopers. In these cases, an alarm sounds in the house, and then the Empire Video Feed comes online. No bizarre character strings. No flashing text. No arbitrary key presses.

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After all that, an Easy Mode

As if that wasn’t enough, the thing works differently later in the show. After he returns to the tree house, Saun uses the system to call the Imperial Officer to cover Han and Chewie’s murderous tracks with a lie. To make the call, all Saun has to do is insert an identification card, press the same key on the keyboard six times, and with no weird codes or substation identification interstitials, he is connected immediately to the Imperial officer. After the officer terminates their call, Saun presses another button a few times and removes his card. That’s it. It was almost easy.

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This tells us that the system can work fairly simply. If you’re calling the Empire. Or if you’re high enough social status and have the card to prove it. This technology just sucks. Maybe this is why the rebellion started.

The holocircus

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To distract Lumpy while she tends to dinner, Malla sits him down at a holotable to watch a circus program. She leans down to one of the four control panels inset around the table’s edge, presses a few buttons, and the program begins.

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In the program small volumetric projections of human (not Wookie) performers appear on the surface of the table and begin a dance and acrobatic performance to a soundtrack that is, frankly, ear-curdling.

A furry creature with long, greenish hair stands next to a patterned circular table, looking down with a curious expression.
A person observing a small dancer on a patterned floor, with a plant and furniture visible in the background.
A vibrant scene featuring a character in a green costume wielding a weapon, while another character in an orange costume appears from a rainbow archway.

Partway through the performance, Lumpy presses the second-from-the-left button, and the main dancer (who has just got to be a Radical Faerie, a full year before that august organization formed) disappears from the table only to become a life-sized projection just off the table, as if the figure had invisible legs but stood on the floor of the house.

Close-up view of a vintage computer keyboard integrated into a modern device, set against a blurred colorful background.
A close-up of a yellow, fluffy object being placed into a machine, with a blurred background.
Close-up view of a retro cassette player with buttons and a tape compartment, set against a blurred background.
A tall cactus in a wooden planter, surrounded by shelves with various items including a bowl and a soft object.
A green, translucent ghost-like figure extending its arms, emerging from a glass container in a wooden cabinet.

When Lumpy is done with the performance, he presses a button, and RF guy disappears from the room and reappears in small size on the table to join the other performers on the table for a bow and curtain call before they all disappear and that ghastly, inhumane music stops.

A close-up of a furry, humanoid creature with a serious expression and large eyes, resembling a character from a science fiction universe.
A green ghostly figure levitates and dances above a table, while a furry creature observes in a room filled with shelves and plants.
A furry creature sitting at a futuristic table in a room with bookshelves and potted plants. A translucent figure is seen moving in the background.
An abstract stage with colorful humanoid figures on a circular platform, featuring a rainbow arch in the background.
A colorful stage performance featuring dancers in vibrant costumes, including orange, green, and red outfits, performing on a circular platform with a rainbow arch in the background.

So…yeah. This interface.

The terrible usability of tape recorders

It’s pretty clear the control panels are cassette recorders. I know that young readers won’t know what the pfassk that is,  so for due diligence, let me explain. Those devices recorded and played back audio stored on magnetic tapes wound in cartridges. The controls for it were six stay-state toggles. These types of buttons have two states. Pushing one locks it down and sets the device to a mode: Play, Rewind, or Fast Forward. One special button, Record (often colored red) had to be chorded with the Play button as a safety precaution against accidentally destroying an existing recording. Users had to press a special Stop button to release any pressed button and stop the mode. Fast forward and Rewind could be pressed while audio was playing, but in such cases they would act as a momentary button. When any of the modes reached the end of a tape, higher-end recorders would also automatically release that button.

So let’s all admit that these are pretty terrible controls. From the fact that they almost all look the same to the fact that toggles make much more sense. (Press one button to play, press that same button again to make it stop.) But toggles weren’t the consumer model of the time. And this holocircus interface, hastily put together from things that the prop department could purchase off the shelf in the one day they were given to hack it together, inherits all that unusability and piles some more confusion onto it.

For instance

When we see Lumpy press the “Make the Dancing Man Bigger” mode, no other buttons are depressed. That means Malla had to set the circus mode, start the program, and press something like a stop button that released those. In turn that means if there was nothing on the table, it could either be because this was a blank spot in the media or that it wasn’t actually playing. You couldn’t tell, though, because the neither the controls nor the media didn’t reflect the state of the thing. This is probably not a common problem because we see that the garish programs and their terrible soundtracks are pretty effing hard to miss, but from a pure usability point of view, it sucks and should be avoided.

Now, there’s probably a thought exercise that could be done to figure out what keys mapped to which functions (and how), as well as second-guess the capabilities of the media (could he have picked any performer to enlarge, or was there just this option?) but honestly, it would be a Sisyphean multithreaded process of single-function vs. combined-letter arguments made by myself in a wall of text with little to no payoff for either of us. Knock yourself out in the comments if you want, but I’d rather focus on another aspect of the interface that I think does pay off, and that’s the visual language of the VP.

You know, for kids

This volumetric projection does not have most of the visual signals common to sci-fi hologram trope:

  • Edge-lighting
  • Blue cast
  • Scan lines
  • Projection rays

It does have translucency and an unusual scale, but that’s it. This visual language was actually established in Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope. So its absence here is conspicuous. As I noted in Make It So, these signals make it very clear to the observer that what they are observing is media—i.e. not real. Of course the real reason these VPs lack those signals is because this show had the budget of this blog post, but can we find a diegetic reason?

Surprisingly, I think yes. Kid’s media is different than regular media. Just like we pretend that Santa Claus is real for young children until they’re old enough to start to think critically about it, perhaps special effort is taken on these VPs to make it really immersive for the hairy kiddo. He doesn’t get the it’s-not-real signals because they want him to believe that it is.

Which is some fine holiday apologetics, if I do say so myself.

The Star Wars Holiday Special (1978): Overview

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A close-up of a young man with light-colored hair and blue eyes, set against a starry outer space background.
A woman with styled hair, wearing a white outfit, gazes thoughtfully while set against a starry background.
A close-up of a man with light-colored hair against a starry background, looking directly at the camera.
Two Wookiee characters with distinctive fur and facial features, smiling against a starry background.
A close-up of a Wookiee's face against a starry space background.
A dark figure in a black cape and helmet stands in a dimly lit room with a starry background, evoking a sci-fi atmosphere.
Close-up of a golden robot head with large expressive eyes, set against a dark, starry background.
A small robot, resembling R2-D2, against a starry space background, partially illuminated.
An elderly man with glasses and light-colored hair is speaking in front of a blurred background resembling a starry sky, with shelves and boxes visible behind him.
A smiling woman with long, pink, dripping hair against a dark background with sparkling effects.
A person wearing a pink dress with puffed sleeves and a white apron, featuring an exaggerated hairstyle and makeup, smiling playfully against a cosmic backdrop.
An animated character wearing a helmet and armor, holding a spear, sits on a large creature against a space background.

This week, to celebrate both the holiday and the release of a new film in the Star Wars universe, we pause the ongoing review to return briefly to the interfaces of an old, wretched entry in this ongoing saga.

Release Date: 17 November 1978 (USA)

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Han and Chewbacca are flying back to the Wookie home world Kazook [sic] for Life Day (read: Christmas) but encounter some imperial trouble which delays them. Worried, Chewie’s wife Malla makes several video calls on an illegal and hidden rebel communication device to try and find his whereabouts, and receives assurances that they are on their way. Then she attempts to cook Bantha Surprise while watching a local-cable cooking show by the eccentric, four-armed Chef Gormaanda.

Family friend Saun Dann arrives with gifts for each of them—including an erotic VR brain implantation chair for Chewbacca’s father Itchy—even as the Empire declares martial law on the planet. Princess Leia and C-3PO contact Malla and ask Saun Dann to look after the family. Stormtroopers arrive at the door to search the place for Solo and Chewbacca. One of the Imperial officers inspects a hologram-box and spends a few minutes to enjoy a music video on it. Saun is coerced to leave.

Alone, the young Wookie named Lumpy proves to be a nuisance to the stormtroopers during their search, so the family distracts him by having him watch a cartoon of Boba Fett and Darth Vader. Finally satisfied that the rebels are not there, the stormtroopers leave and Lumpy finally checks out the video introduction to the electronics kit left him as a gift by Saun. He uses the kit to build a television and watch a live-broadcast local television program. The program is interrupted by the announcement of an Imperial curfew being imposed.

An individual stormtrooper, B4-7-11, returns to the home to threaten Lumpy, but is intercepted by Han and Chewie, who have finally arrived. They defeat him and Han leaves. Saun returns and answers a call from an Imperial officer, lying about the fate of B4-7-11 . Saun leaves, and the Wookies finally undertake their Life Day rituals.

The main ritual involves donning robes, passing into a ball of light that teleports them to the Tree of Life, where they are joined by other Wookies, as well as R2-D2, C-3PO, Han Solo, and Princess Leia, who have teleported here by some unknown means. The English-speaking characters make a speech before Leia sings a traditional song. This causes Chewbacca to go into a reverie, recalling his recent adventures with the Rebellion, always from odd out-of-body ,third-person perspectives, as if from camera droids littered about the galaxy.

After Chewbacca’s reverie, they return home, sit at the table for dinner, and bow their heads in reverent prayer.

IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0193524/

 

 

 

 

Chat follow-up: Humanoid robots

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The live chat of the O’Reilly webinar that Christopher delivered on 18 April 2013 had some great questions, but not all of them made it out of the chat room and onto the air. I’m taking a short break from the release of the sci-fi survey to answer some of those questions.

Q: Adrian Warman asks: Humanoid robots (android) are not as efficient mechanically, yet we ‘prefer’ them (C3PO v. R2D2?) Will our preferences always override efficiency?

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A: I think it depends on the context of use. Humans are good at humans. So, when robots have social functions, it’s best that they appear humanoid, while avoiding the Uncanny Valley (or see page 183 in the book for more). They should stick to the Canny Rise, to coin a term. When they need to do other, non-social things for us, like build cars, or vaccuum our floors, or mine for rare earths in asteroid belts, they should be fit to task.

Giving credit where credit is due, this is exactly the case with the Star Wars robots. C-3PO’s a protocol droid, for “human-cyborg relations” and R2-D2 is ostensibly an astromech maintenance droid. Their appearances match their functions.