We run down some of our favorite vehicles from the Star Wars franchise including the little-known B-Wing, and, of course, the classics. We also run down the week in geek, including the release of Shatner’s The Captains documentary into the wild, Garrett Hedlund’s potential casting in the ever-less-Japanese Akira, some new video game news, and lots, lots more. We’re joined by in-studio guest (and long-time GWCer) Shooter.
Thanks for the book recommendation- I’m with okay splurging 99 cents on an ebook! Keep the recs coming!
Also, does GWC still get Amazon kickbacks if we click the link in the shopping thread? I use it every time I shop there- hope it’s doing some good!
seanscream
regarding the definition of a television “pilot” … I’ll have to go to Jules Winfield on that one :
My all time favorite television pilot would be “The Dukes of Hazzard” 
I don’t even have to listen to this one, I can tell you already.
Ground: AT-AT (aka “All Terran Armored Transport” also aka “Imperial Walkers” or my favorite “Blizzard Walkers”)
Space: X-Wing fighter, I don’t care what you guys say about the Millennium Falcon.
Everytime I hear the Slave 1’s engines I wet my pants!
Snowspeeder second
Thought I might add this, what with all the sandcrawler talk. http://www.forevergeek.com/2011/09/lucasfilms-sandcrawler-building/
It’s all about the A and B wing. Hell yeah
It looks strange seeing all that detail. My main memories of the B Wing are from the Xwing and TIE fighter games, and those models had fewer polygons than a coin in a new game.
I think this pretty much sums my feelings up Star Wars Vehicle-wise 
Gotta agree with Sean about the TIE Interceptor. That is a pretty bad ass ship, definitely my favorite TIE fighter. (Best most of you don’t even have a favorite TIE Fighter…)
Another cool one even though it doesn’t appear in the movies is the Tie Defender:
I’ve always had a soft spot for the Tye-Wing (Not in the movies and affectionately dubbed the DIE-Wing), a composite craft combining the shields and armament of a Tie Fighter, with the speed and maneuverability of a Y-Wing. What could possibly go wrong?
My favourite Star Wars vehicle is probably X-Wing, partially from the movies, and perhaps more so from the X Wing series of books (have yet to read the comics). The S foils locking into attack position is so iconic in my mind, and the dogfighting was always so wonderfully frantic and fast in the books.
What was the name of the book again?
mmmm … sweet it is.
Haven’t finished the podcast yet but here is my response so far…
Star Wars Vehicles:
If I remember correctly there is no such thing as anti-gravity in the SW Universe (sorry Sean), what they have instead are repulsor coils to create the lift on their vehicles. I really got into the tech for a while as I read the various X Wing novels (remember Corran Horn was in my FSL Team?), and even collected some of the manuals and cross section books, even subscribed to Star Wars magazine for a year. What made the X Wing novels so good was a clever move by LucasFilm, they gave the writers free copies of the X Wing-TIE Fighter games. And they played the Hell out of them, and so became quite familiar with the vehicles and how they handled and maneuvered. And it helped them to get into the frame of mind of combat, and it showed in their writing…
Katee’s Sack (cough):
The movie Sean was trying to think of was The Last Sentinel, the reason I know was because I saw it in the 5 dollar bargain bin at Walmart. It was in a DVD set with 3 other direct-to-cable movies of the same low quality, (Black Hole, Supernova, Final days of Planet Earth) familiar SyFy Channel drivel. Even though I broke down and bought it out of morbid curiosity I have yet to actually watch it, I have not been that desperate for entertainment.
Oh, I must concur with Chuck… “The Captains” was a joy to watch. I grinned like an idiot through most of it and laughed out loud at moments, and yes I even teared up a bit toward the end. It was nicely shot and edited, and asked probing and profound questions, and it even had a beautiful soundtrack. I was worried that since it was produced by Shatner it would focus on him too much but it was very balanced, and he actually seemed genuinely interested in the people he interviewed and followed up on little gems that he uncovered during the interviews. I hope to God that he does a follow up on this, he must have a mountain of material he did not use. You know damned well that those interviews were at least an hour in length each we only saw a snippet of each…
And I really respected how Shatner handled Avery Brooks, that man was stoned out of his frakking mind. If I had gone through all the trouble to book that interview, negotiate a price, and then do research and fly out with a sound and film crew to meet the man and then find him as high as a Geo-positioning-satellite I would be pissed! :mad: But the Shat just rolled with it an turned it into a positive, he joked and sang along with him and made the best of it. Nicely done Shat… Nicely done.
And the bits where he mingled with the fans was a sheer joy to watch, he really knows how to work a crowd. Gold absolute gold, those fan reactions were beautiful; funny and touching.
Shooter asked, “Where are the Netflix subscribers going?”
This bloke did his research for investing. Are Netflix subscribers going to Redbox? The short answer: No.
However this CNBC article says Redbox 3rd quarter earnings nearly doubled.
My guess is the folks that jumped the Netflix ship early are trying out other services and looking for one that fits their needs. Then again this Financial Times article shows that many are already using other outlets and have just decided to drop Netflix as a provider.
There are some folks just dropping Netflix as a luxury. This Market Watch article shows that cable providers offer a broader lineup than streaming content. Netflix was buying up a bunch of content and making it more appealing for consumers opt to use their services and drop the expensive cable providers. The tides may now be turning back.
In conclusion, I’m no expert but it appears to remain in a state of flux.
It took me long enough to remember it, but the casino/party ship in the original Battlestar Galactica (1978) was The Rising Star.
Personally I’ve always loved the Mon Calamari cruisers. The concept of them is just so cool, especially in the context of the universe. You’ve basically got a race of space amphibians living on the edge of the galaxy that are advanced enough to have their own starships, and they just do their own thing colonizing and exploring space. The Empire finds them, shows up, and tries to conquer them, and despite them essentially being pacifists, they manage to push the Empire out long enough to join the Rebels.
I mean, each of these ships is unique; each one is essentially a work of art, like a functional metal sculpture. That’s such a huge contrast to the Empire, where all their war machines are uniform and mass-produced, and more or less ties into what the Alliance is all about - they take whatever they can find, whether it be these wildly different alien races, or civilian equipment and ships and they modify it to serve a military purpose. The fact that the Mon Cals had the guts to take these beautiful handcrafted science vessels, passenger liners and colony ships, and gear them up with armor plating and shield generators, fighter bays and turbolasers just showed how committed they were. Plus that’s when the Rebels finally got some real capital ships that could go toe-to-toe with Star Destroyers and actually win.
One of my favorite bad guy vehicles was the Virago, a fightercraft used by the Black Sun in ‘Shadows of the Empire’.
And for good guy ships the A Wing and of course the Falcon, a thing of asymmetrical beauty…
And for one of the silliest and most impractical vehicles I would have to go with the twin cloud cars on Bespin…