Pat Payne

If you mean Bea Arthur, I will hit you with the Learnin' 2x4 ©® ... Since '3PO and Artoo are considered to be the viewpoint characters, I'd be greatly surprised if they DON'T show up in any new TV series.

Any chance to see more Vader action... I was actually beside myself with enthusiasm to see him force-choke a friggin' M&M last night.

Peter Cushing didn't play Vader. He was Tarkin. David Prowse, a British weightlifter, played Vader.

What are you talking about? ST6 ends with the crew learning that the Enterprise is being retired. Kirk already had the ship -- he's just losing it again, and he certainly wasn't demoted at the end ( What're they gonna do? "Captain Kirk, we thank you for saving the galaxy from war. But we're still pissed about that whole stealing the Enterprise thing from Movie 3, so we decided to demote you once again for it. Get out of the center seat, Commander Kirk!" ) Then again...they still hadnn't punished him for busting Decker without a court-martial (hell, without an offense being committed at all) in TMP, so maybe...

I'm stoked. Even though it's the mirror universe, getting to see all of that great, beautifully cheesy '60s TOS hardware in action one last time is a real treat.

Pardon my ignorance, but what's UMD?

Love that scene. But what's with the red the bad guy's head? Goldfinger had red hair.

Here's my own very poor paint rendition...I ain't no artist, I'm a writer ...

Don't the Rebels on Endor from Ep. VI count?

Actually, I do...They both have -- hair, and eyes, and breathe....other than that, I'm lost

After reading the novelization, I know now that GL must have read up on his history before writing this film. His conception of the fall of the Jedi reads quite a bit like the fall of the Knights Templar. The Templars (for those who don't know the tale) were a company of Latin Christian Crusaders who had stayed on in Outremer (the areas of the Middle East taken by the Crusades) and whom, around 1118, formed the religio-military order to protect pilgrims coming from the West. The Templars had extremely stringent rules of behavior (Templars were not to come into contact with women at any time -- even after death, for instance) and were expected to neither give nor ask for any quarter in combat. By and by, the order became rich and powerful (mostly thanks to many bequests made to the order by members entering the order, as well as a odd side business of currency exchange and loans at interest the order fell into) and, as the Templars were under the nominal control of the Pope alone, the monarchs of Europe began to look upon the Templars with a mixture of envy, greed, and paranoia. Chief among them was King Phillip IV of France. By 1306, he had successfully petitioned the Pope, Clement V, with wild rumors of a Templar order out of control: Worshipping pagan -- even Satanic -- gods, blaspheming, committing homosexual acts and even usurping the authority of religious leaders by absolving each other's sins. None of these rumors were completely proven, but in the end, Clement acceeded to Phillip's request. On Friday, October 13, 1307, the Templars were suppressed brutally in France and elsewhere. Among those arrested was Jacques de Molay, the final Grand Master of the order (he would be executed in 1314). Some countries, such as England and Italy, would be more lenient towards the remaining Templars, although the order became extinct by the 15th Century. Looked at it this way: Jedi=Templars; Mace Windu=(but not quite) Jacques de Molay; Palpatine=King Phillip/Pope Clement; Yoda and Obi-Wan=Surviving Templars in England and Italy. In short, much like Phillip, Palpatine wanted the Jedi Order destroyed for his own purposes, trumped up charges against the order, and used those charges to kill Mace Windu and any other Jedi he, the Clones or Vader could find. The object was different in details (Phillip wanted the Templar's cold, hard lucre -- Palpatine just wanted dead Jedi) but the spirit was the same: Malice.

What's interesting is that the fan site for Misa Hayase/Lisa Hayes has her Japanese name in the Japanese-language version, but the RT name in the English translation...

I also recall that scene too, I'm not sure if it is a mistake on the actors part or if that was what he was suppose to say. In some ways it does make sense for the Y-wing pilot to be called Gold Leader if he was the most senior pilot out of an the surviving Y-wing pilots (I recall at least one escaping or maybe I'm mistaken). Since that would make him the acting wing leader. It might be that at that time, the pilots, in the confusion of the battle, didn't know who was dead and who wasn't and thought they had heard Gold Leader's voice on the comm.

Mazeltov, pfunk! :thumbsup:

I'd assume, though, that whatever they use, at least UN Spacy ships would probably use Earth as their zero point (i.e. the center of the map)

I am your father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate!

[Tony Curtis]I'm Spartacus! [/Tony Curtis] No, I'm not...I can't back that one up...I AM a Bridge Bunny though, apparently

Check, Please!

That person needs a life.

Yep

You're mostly right on your assessment, Hurin, except for a couple of points. Even if we were there, there's not much that the US could have contributed at that point in history. Remember, after WW1, there was a swift demobilization and drawdown of the military...by the mid '20s, we were among the smallest militaries of the world. Also, the League had no real mechanism for threats to the peace outside of basically slapping the offending nation on the wrist. That's whay both Mussolini and the Imperial Japanese Government were able to thumb their noses at the League after the respective invasions of Ethopia and Manchuria. The League was equally powerless to compel military action against Hitler when he abrogated the Versailles Treaty. And, of course, the UN isn;t any great shakes on that score either, and never was. For instance, the only reason the UN went into Korea in 1950 was that the USSR walked out of the Security Council, abstaining by default. Had they used their veto, there would have been no Korean War, at least not in the way it actually happened, and Seoul could well be inside Pyonyang's sphere of influence. The problem lies with the setup of the SC. Any one of the big five (US, UK, Russia [uSSR] France or China [ROC until 1971]) can use their veto to deny any motion on the table, effectively killing it. The Chinese IIRC are also on the Security Council, and they didn't do so hot in WW2 either (my apologies to any Chinese MW'rs out there, I'm not trying to offend). The Nationalists and the Communists seemed to be as interested in keeping their internicene squabbles going as they were in fighting the Japanese. No area of China of any consequence was liberated until after August 1945. As for the French...yeah, it was definetly a "gimme." Especially with the spectre of nuclear weapons. It's always been that way, unfortunately. They day they let a young Yasser Arafat talk about peace in front of the UN while he was leader of a terrorist organization is the day the UN lost all credibility.

Bwa-hah-hah-hah-haaaaa!!!! Why oh why does this not surprise me in the least? As it so happens, I have a preview of the new ad campaign for the UN Committee on International Anime Proliferation. UN Recognizes RDF UNITED NATIONS (AP) In an emergency session wrought with emotion, the United Nations General Assembly on Monday recognized and endorsed the Robotech Defense Force as the new counterterrorism force for the United Nations. Secretary General Kofi Annan hailed the force, led by Adm. Lick Hunter, as "the last line of defense against terrorists, criminal warlords, and most importantly the immenent, albeit unrealized threat of alien invasion." This new force will replace GI Joe, which has been up until now in charge of the UN's counterterrorism tasks everywhere except France. In a speech soon after the vote was taken, Hunter outlined his plans for combatting world terrorism. "We plan to build a giant, ass-ugly spacecraft, and go in search of Osama bin Laden's home planet," Hunter said. After being told that bin Laden, the Al Qaeda mastermind, is not an extraterrestrial, Hunter said "OK, we got nothin' then." Debate in the Assemby ran hot throughout Sunday evening, as many nations doubted the wisdom of replacing the GI Joe organization, founded in 1964 and renewed in 1983. "The fact is, we are replacing a tried-and-true organization that has given invaluable service in the fight against terrorism and replacing it with a group that seems to sit around and do nothing but wear bad speedos," US Ambassador John Negroponte said in a news conference after the vote. "It's nothing better than a UN-issued pardon for Osama bin Laden." However others were upbeat. "Now we've got a true group of visionaries at the 'elm, mates, no more of this 'crack the 'eads and bash the bollocks' mentality of the Joes," Sebastian Bludd, Cobra Island's ambassador said. He later denied reports that Cobra Island had teamed up with Harmony Gold to bribe a number of nations, including Upper Volta, Outer Mongolia, Burgundy, Satsuma, Providence Plantations, Rhodesia and the Hejaz and Nejd to cast their votes in favor of accepting the RDF and dismissing GI Joe. "There is no truth to those rumors, none at all," John G. P. Ringo, ambassador of Providence Plantations, said to reporters as he went to his car in the ambassador's parking lot. The car was a new Ferrari Testarossa with the license plate "HGRULES." "I can't help but believe that there was some fraud involved there," Col. Conrad S. H(censored)r, leader of the GI Joe force said. "This new company, which nobody had heard of, puts up this bunch of spacemen in silly costumes, and expects them to be effective?" When reminded that for a time, GI Joe became a group of spacement in silly costumes, H(censored)r replied "What can I say? It was the early '90s and we were all high at the time." The vote was 170 for, including Cobra Island, Libya, Syria, PETA and Pottsylvania, and 100 against, including the US, UK, Jordan, The Byzantine Empire and Outremer. When asked if he would extend a similar recognition to the UN Spacy, given its longer service and higher sacrifice with no evidence of Speedos, Annan replied "fu*k no." He then left on a HG company chopper.

*snicker* He must have got a can of Ronnie Reagan's old hairspray somewhere in North America....you know...the stuff thats like rubber cement. Nah...all he had to do was comb his hair with the Exxon Valdez to get that Reagan sheen (personally I like and admire Reagan, but really...if he went into the ocean, he'd have caused an oil slick with that hair!)

Yeah, that was a little too disturbing for me though, Roy. He seemed to be sayng that being under the heel of an oppressive dictatorship (albeit a "benign" one -- oxymoron of the year, that) is preferable to what the Rebels were offering, which was not clearly articulated in the movies because it didn't have to be. The author of that WS article missed the point by trying to interpret Star Wars as a political statement, rather than the swashbuckling popcorn entertainment it is. JRR Tolkein had to fight for years to get people to stop thinking of LOTR as a parable on WW2 or the Cold War, rather than a fantasy work that was the product of him taking deep drinks from Anglo-Saxon and Norse mythology.

Originally, the Ewoks were supposed to be Wookies... damn merchandisable Ewoks