The Star Wars Challenge

'Snub-fighter' is slang for 'Star-Fighter'. During the mission briefing for the attack on the first Death Star one of the pilots uses the term 'Snub-Fighters' - even though the fighters were using against the Death Star were X and Y wings.

Star Wars cannon tends to hold up very well to close inspection, principally because Lucasarts employed someone to keep track of established 'facts' in the SW universe and had the ability to insist that all works conformed to cannon. Where you see problems it is a result of the prequels, which established that the clone wars took place 18 years prior to SWIV. Before the prequels it had been assumed (and more or less cannon) that the Clone Wars had taken place 30-40 years before SWIV.

For example the Jedi Corran Horn (Introduced in the X-Wing Series) is the Grandson of a Jedi knight. The problem is that he was meant to have died AFTER the Clone Wars - fighting dark Jedi - and that his son was 10 years old at the time. This causes a problem because Corran is meant to be the same age as Luke (give or take a year or two), which would mean his father would have had to have conceived him before he was in his teens.

Here's a lego version of the scene... At least they show some sort of shelter at the end of it...

however, if Luke's father had fought in the clone wars - and Luke was 18 in ep IV, then for the clone wars to be 30 years before ep IV, luke's dad would have had to be at least 48 when Luke was conceived.

math correction - 30, not quite so farfetched.

just pointing out - to me the worst culprit in ignoring canon is George Lucas.

:-[No I don't think so, a Tauntaun would have some kind of analogue to blubber under the skin increasing the insulation factor, more than just a pile of warm guts sitting in the open air. Though how thick or what form of insulator it would have to be cannot be known .

iI am reading this from an "Outsider" point of view, as in, I am not all that versed in the exact workings of either animal or plant this scene was played on...

However, just a couple of points...

You have a person in possible stages of Hypothermia.
From what I know of extreme hypothermia and the rescue of such, putting them immediately into a warm place is not considered good practise?...
I have heard credible research that putting them in a bath of water close to the temp they are at and gradually warming that water to a more desirable heat prevents thermal shock to the body?....

To what was available at the time....
The "patient" is out in the cold and getting colder.
You have an animal carcase....
Now if treated properly, the skin of that animal could possibly be used to make a coat, or a Tent even....
but you dont exactly have the time for that.....
But it WILL create a shelter, that will at best, prevent the patient from getting much colder from Wind-Chill factor, and as it was in deep snow scene anyway, it prevents chill from the ground as well....

Of course, in those conditions, eventually the carcase will freeze....
But right now?... its semi-warm inside, definitely warmer than outside, and prevents any further degradation of the patient..........

I would suggest that if you look at it from a "Any Port in a Storm" situation, not having any Tent or other shelter immediately to hand, the inside of a carcase is much preferred to leaving the patient on cold surfaces in a howling wind?....
Its not to fully revive the patent, its more to prevent or delay further degradation of his condition in the hope of some form of rescue.......

Is any of this making sense?...

If we get a possibly hypothermic patient, we IMMEDIATELY stuff then into a vehicle that has the heat at maximum. when the ambulance gets there, we yard them out and stuff them into the ambulance, where they are given warmed breathing air, as well as the heater being at maximum.

what has the greatest cardiac arrest risk is allowing the patient to move around - which increases blood flow and the risk of a sudden rush of cold blood into the heart.

but your peripheral blood is much colder than your core temperature, so you can warm the extremities and skin pretty rapidly without causing thermal shock.

The use of real animal guts is problematical on several levels.

Unless the animal is killed within a few minutes of the tests being run they would need to find some way to heat the guts. I strongly suspect that this would be totally impractical, as well as being considered unacceptable for the show - as not only would it give the impression that they were killing something for the show but would probably require that they run the tests in a slaughterhouse. I would suspect that some of the crew, and probably Kari, would outright refuse to take part in such testing.

Heating guts brings in its own nest of problems. The amount of material needed would make using a microwave or oven impractical - especially since the chances of finding such a thing anywhere near a suitable freezer is next to zero - and in any case that would be cooking rather than heating the guts. The only way I can think of to heat guts to a suitable temperature would be to immerse them in warm water. However this would take quite some time, and if the guts froze even partly during testing they could spend hours waiting for the guts to heat to the correct temperature, and they would have difficulty getting consistent temperatures between tests. It would also require that the guts were removed between tests, which would be a LOT of work moving the guts and probably the 'animal' around so they don't have a chance to cool down too much while they are putting the guts back in.

Last of all there is the health aspects. They would be handling animal guts rather a lot, and the chances are that they would rupture at some point - either while being pushed into the 'carcass' or when 'Luke' is pushed in. Even if MB come to the conclusion that this doesn't pose a hazard to the cast, the owners of any suitable freezers are likely to refuse to allow them to run such tests as they would have to clean the entire freezer out afterwards or risk being shut down by the Health Department - and cleaning the freezer would most likely require that they have to turn the freezer off for a day or two...which given the size of freezer they would need would cost the owners a LOT of money.

Therefore it is better for all involved if the 'guts' are not guts at all but a stand in. Warm water* flowing through pipes inside the 'animal' eliminates all of the above problems, allowing a safe and controllable test rig that they could set up and reset in less than an hour. (Educated guess, but I suspect that they would be able to set the rig up faster than the cameras). This rig would also allow them to change the body temperature of the 'Tauntaun' if they wanted to, not just because that would be possible but also because they would most likely have the time to run such tests.

(*More correctly, warm water with anti-freeze. This is not just a matter of trying to create the blood chemistry of a Tauntaun but also because you'd want to take steps to prevent the 'blood' from freezing during testing.)

The comments about causing shock if you heat someone too quickly are fair ones. However don't forget that Luke is wearing cold weather clothing which would insulate him everywhere but his face (which wasn't covered, but also wasn't shoved into the animals guts). The insulation would reduce the amount of heating, making it a slow warning effect rather than the equivalent of dropping him into a bath of warm water. However the nature of the testing process given would allow MB to make an educated guess as to if Luke was being warmed too quickly*.

(*Or there could be a missing scene from SWV where Han ends up giving Luke CPR...I can't help smiling at the idea that Leia only kissed Luke later on because she was jealous he'd been kissed by Han first.... ;D )