From: flowerpt@coos.dartmouth.edu (Bill McGonigle)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.starwars
Subject: Re: Luke's lightsaber
Date: 16 Nov 92 01:41:27 GMT
Organization: Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH

In article <1e48dqINNdrc@gap.caltech.edu> keith@cco.caltech.edu (Keith Allan Schneider) writes:

>Also, there is no way to deflect large physical objects.

Maybe not with a lightsaber, but any Jedi should be able to Force 
something large away from himself.

>What?  I don't think so... you really have to concentrate to move stuff around
>like that.  One little distraction and you'd lose control.  You are trying
>to make the Force more powerful than it is.  It is not some magical
>superpower that the Jedi can invoke with no thought whatsoever.  To do a trick
>like that would be very difficult.  Also, I don't think that the Force
>could direct a lightsaber to do such intricate movements.

Pseudo Jedi Luke easily became distracted, but this was a few days into his
training.  I think that you could have a WWF match, a mariachi band, and 
a fireworks display, and Yoda wouldn't get distracted.  Remember that Luke
in Jedi has only had less than a year of real training and he is able to 
pick 3PO up and move him about in all three dimentions.  

Obi-Wan could do mind tricks effortlessly, and his fight with Vader didn't 
seem to require much exertion.  This is how a real Jedi works.  

In ROTJ, Vader maneuvers his saber to slice the catwalk.  The lightsaber
isn't a boomerang, so he had to guide it through its entire path. 
What's to say he couldn't have made it go x number of more places before
coming back to him?  And Vader isn't as good a Jedi as Ben is.  "If you
strike me down, I'll become more powerful than you can possibly imagine."
Vader didn't know everything about the Force.  A lot less than Ben.

>Well, "magnetic sealing" deflects many types of energy weapons (remember in the
>trash compactor in Star Wars?).  I suppose it could deflect a lightsaber as
>well.  I don't think that theh RPG is always accurate, but I seem to agree
>with most of the things in it.

In TESB, the snow speeder's blasters are ineffective against the AT-AT's 
because the armor's too tough.  Now, if they were talking about the 
physical armor, the metal coating, we'd expect to see some dents or 
pox marks where the blasters hit, even though they couldn't penetrate
all the way through.  This isn't the case, however, so the 'armor' must
be a deflector shield, or magnetic field.  Now, we see Luke hop up and
slice apart a hatch control with his lightsaber.  Therefore, we must
assume that the lightsaber can cut through a magnetic field. 

Something that is magnetically sealed can deflect a blaster, and so can
a lightsaber.  Therefore, they must have something in common.  A light
saber isn't a column of blaster fire.  If it was, it couldn't deflect it.

My guess is that a lightsaber is a variant on the magnetic field with
something else, that enables it to cut and gives it the glow.

-Bill

-- 
     -= Bill.McGonigle@Dartmouth.edu =-      |  Fighters!   |   |  /   \  |   |
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