Mando season 3

[Maxperson]

It was a bit silly how many jetpack-wearing fighters on both sides were vulnerable to being knocked off a ledge.

Nah. At first I thought so and then I started watching closely. For the most part they get stunned somehow. Shot, punched in the face, etc. before being tossed off the edge.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

An engineering genius, a demolitions expert, an acclaimed artist, and sufficiently skilled in the Mandalorian combat arts to routinely defeat people who just do that full time, all by her mid to late teens, having also spent meaningful time in the imperial academy.

One of the weaker points of Rebels is that, having made the teenage boy a Jedi (the coolest thing you can be in Star Wars), they decided to balance it out by making the teenage girl every other cool thing in the Star Wars universe they could think of. If she was older, or if they established right off the bat that she was a prodigy, I wouldn't be bothered (still wildly improbable, but not as ridiculous), but they sort of stumbled into making her an all-out engineering genius whose weapon design could not be reverse engineered by anyone else, when originally she seemed to just be highly competent, and on top of all of her other competencies it all became a bit Mary Sue-esque on a character who is supposed to still be 20 in the final season.

Clever people are not as uncommon as you think. When I was a postgrad research assistant most of the scientists I was working with were good at other stuff too - art, music, martial arts etc. Its rare to find someone so narrow that they are only good at science.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I wondered about that, but I wondered even more why Bo didn't use the Darksaber to cut through and have the Mandalorians save Din when he was caught alone out with the Imperials.

Coming through a small hole one at a time into a kill zone is a good way to get everyone killed.

A strategic withdrawal was the correct tactical decision in those circumstances.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

Clever people are not as uncommon as you think. When I was a postgrad research assistant most of the scientists I was working with where good at other stuff too - art, music martial arts.

Right, which is why I said it wouldn't bother me if she was older. But no, being skilled enough in something technical, as a teenager, to surpass the best trained professional adults a galactic empire can muster requires a high degree of focus for even a highly intelligent person with prodigious talents, and you would not also be a master at several other wildly different skills.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Right, which is why I said it wouldn't bother me if she was older. But no, being skilled enough in something technical, as a teenager, to surpass the best trained professional adults a galactic empire can muster requires a high degree of focus for even a highly intelligent person with prodigious talents, and you would not also be a master at several other wildly different skills.

Contrary to the stereotype, most scientists are not old men with beards! As a general observation most do their best work in their 20s.

And working as a teacher, I would sometimes come across a student of about Sabine's age who I would observe was much cleverer than I am.

Very clever people are uncommon, but not that uncommon, and that cleverness is usually at it's height when they are young.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

Contrary to the stereotype, most scientists are not old men with beards! As a general observation most do their best work in their 20s.

And working as a teacher, I would sometimes come across a student of about Sabine's age who I would observe was much cleverer than I am.

Very clever people are uncommon, but not that uncommon, and that cleverness is usually at it's height when they are young.

Right, but she is, in some weird part of weapons research, doing work beyond the comprehension of normal people in the field. I very much doubt that your students are up to that, and in the very unlikely situation that they are I would anticipate that they spend a lot of time on it rather than it being a side project to their very full schedule of fighting for galactic freedom.

In a premodern society, it is easy to be a polymath, when most fields of study are underdeveloped. As our own society came into the 20th century the era of polymaths being the ones doing cutting edge intellectual work basically ended, as being at the absolute top of one field meant neglecting other studies, at least in highly technical fields. One has to imagine in a whole galaxy of people with hyper-advanced technology a technological breakthrough so complicated professionals in the relevant field could not even comprehend it would not come from a teenager, much less one with a pretty full schedule of other things. Perhaps if we follow the fan theory that the galaxy far, far away is overwhelmingly illiterate it makes more sense.

I like the character by the way, I just thought they were already stretching the bounds of credible writing with her being multi-hyper-talented before we got the plotline where she had also invented the un-reverse-engineerable Bescar targeting weapon several years earlier when she was 15 or whatever.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Right, but she is, in some weird part of weapons research, doing work beyond the comprehension of normal people in the field. I very much doubt that your students are up to that

Sure they are. As I said, very clever people exist. I have had students who can do things I can't comprehend, and I have done things most folk don't comprehend, such as investigate the effect of magnetic fields on the initial mass function of stars by modelling the relative abundance of simple chemical elements in stellar nurseries. But that was when I was young, I couldn't do it now.

And Sabine has unusual advantages: she has a better science education than most Mandalorians, and better knowledge of beskar than most imperials. She will certainly be able to do stuff that most people cannot. Simply having access to beskar, and extremely rare and expensive material, to experiment on would give her a major advantage.

 

[MarkB]

If it took weeks or months they could have given it weeks or months. There was no time pressure on the mission, they where just impatient.

They don't even know if it's possible, let alone how long it would take. And they weren't moving in on this mission, just scouting out their eventual goal to see whether it's even viable to try to move in and hold it. That seems like a sensible enough first step.

And if it turned out that the source was artificial, they could have taken it out from orbit. They have a capital ship and the escorts to defend it from counterattack.

Yeah, but they couldn't identify and locate it from orbit. They'd have to investigate in order to even know it was artificial, and that means going down there.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

They don't even know if it's possible, let alone how long it would take.

It's always possible. You could, for example use direct beam lasers, or dozens of other alternative methods of communication. Although it would be very unlikely that any natural electomagnetic interference would affect all wavebands.

And they weren't moving in on this mission, just scouting out their eventual goal to see whether it's even viable to try to move in and hold it. That seems like a sensible enough first step.

Scouting with no idea what you are going to run into, and no way to call for support or extraction is not sensible. If you have no alternative then use expendable probes. I expect Plazir-15 has some ex-imperial probe droids to sell.

Yeah, but they couldn't identify and locate it from orbit.

Sure you can, it's called triangulation. And you don't need a very precise location, you just need to draw out your enemy out by making them believe they are discovered.

 

[MarkB]

It's always possible. You could, for example use direct beam lasers, or dozens of other alternative methods of communication. Although it would be very unlikely that any natural electomagnetic interference would affect all wavebands.

And yet it happens all the time in sci-fi settings, and in most such instances can't be overcome by any readily-available means. Deriding one particular group for not being able to get around it seems overly judgemental.

Scouting with no idea what you are going to run into, and no way to call for support or extraction is not sensible. If you have no alternative then use expendable probes. I expect Plazir-15 has some ex-imperial probe droids to sell.

Droids don't know what to look for, the Mandalorians themselves have the expertise needed to both locate and assess the Forge.

Sure you can, it's called triangulation. And you don't need a very precise location, you just need to draw out your enemy out by making them believe they are discovered.

The phenomenon is planet-wide, otherwise someone would have noticed otherwise. And again, they had no reason to believe it to be artificial - only further investigation, such as finding a hidden Imperial base, would have even suggested such a conclusion.