Top 5 Burning Questions coming out of Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Last night most of the civilized world saw the premiere of Star Wars, Episode VII: The Force Awakens.  Rather than do a review, I would like to pose my list of my Top 5 Burning Questions that were left after the end of the movie.





Obviously, massive *** SPOILERS ***






1) Who is Rey, and where does she come from?  To me, it seemed during the movie she would be revealed to be either Han and Leia's daughter, or Luke's daughter.  I think the chances of her being Han and Leia's are pretty slim now, but there's still the possibility of Luke.  From the intense Force-flashbacks she had after touching the lightsaber, to her quick-learned fighting ability, this would seem to be a logical possibility.  But daughter by whom?  Or is she a completely independent person who happens to be Force-sensitive, and will likely be part of Luke's new Jedi order.

But the other half to this question is why was she on Jakku?  She apparently was either stolen or left there at a young age, with a promise that someone would be back for her.  Who was it?  And why was that promise or mission so strong she felt so compelled to return there time and time again?  What is her purpose in the greater story?


2) What happened to Kylo Ren to turn him to the Dark Side?  All we really know is he was Han and Leia's son, Luke tried to train him, he turned to the Dark Side and Luke ran away.  There's a huge untold story there, and I'm not sure how much we'll be told in detail (at least within the framework of the actual trilogy).  He seemed very young to have risen to such a position in the First Order, and immature as well.  Obviously he has a volatile temper and is easily provoked.  What components of his character led him to reject his parents and mentor so utterly and go down a path that would lead to Han's murder?

The other half of this question is what exactly happened to Han and Leia that they split up, and were estranged from each other?  Was it Kylo's betrayal that caused their rift, or was it the reverse - their disagreements led to Kylo's feelings of abandonment and anger?  Now that Han is gone we may never get the full story, and I'm not sure of Leia's involvement in the ongoing story.  The answer to this question is likely a key aspect to Kylo's character so I believe it must eventually be addressed.


3) Who is Supreme Leader Snoke?  What is he?   Is he a Force-sensitive as it was hinted?  Where did he come from, how did he get to be Supreme Leader of the First Order?  Is he a Sith Lord, and Kylo is his apprentice?  Or is he something completely different that will be introduced into the mythology?  Does he really look like the creature that was in the hologram, or is there someone else "behind the curtain"?

Another part of this, is what exactly does "First Order" mean?  It's such an arbitrary phrase I think it has to refer to something specific.  How did it come to power on the ashes of the Empire?  I would guess there will eventually be books and other supplemental material to address this, but I hope they don't leave it so ambiguous in the next movies that it becomes a mystery that won't be solved.  How did it become so powerful that it could build a "Death Planet" without the New Republic even knowing about it until it was operational?  How much of the galaxy does it control?  How much does the New Republic control?  And if the New Republic is the legitimate government, why are their defenders called The Resistance?  Typically Resistance is synonymous with Rebellion, and the Rebel Alliance was "resisting" the established Empire. Why is The Resistance resisting an outside force?


4) How did Han and Chewie really lose the Falcon?  I know there was a story how it was stolen by this guy, and that guy, and that guy, and eventually ended up on Jakku.  But depending on what connection Rey is to the larger mythology, that can't be a coincidence.  I think it was left deliberately there on Jakku for her to eventually use to escape.  But it seems hard to believe Han and Chewie would abandon their beloved ship without good reason.

For that matter, how did they happen to be near the Jakku system just at the moment Rey and Finn needed rescuing?  I think Han mentioned something about this in the movie, but it seemed a very convenient explanation.

Again, what happened between Han and Leia to cause his self-imposed exile for so many years, going back to smuggling apparently but without the Falcon?  Hopefully this story isn't what it seems at face value.


5) Why is Luke really in exile?   What happened during the process of beginning to train a new Order of Jedi Knights?  Where are these other trainees?  Did Kylo kill them, similar to how Anakin and the Emperor purged the Jedi Knights, or have the scattered to the winds?  It seems out of Luke's character to run away and hide.  I get the feeling there is a lot more to this story than simple shame and guilt that would drive our heroic Jedi to flee.  If so, why leave behind parts of a map with R2 and Lor San Tekka/Poe Damaron/BB-8 that would help the Resistance find him?  I think his disappearance is part of a much larger plan that he has put together to either bring down the First Order, recover Kylo Ren to the Light Side, or train Rey in the ways of the Force.  Or there may be, and I hope this is the case, a stronger cause to create a new Order of Jedi that is nothing like what was there before.

Oh, and who was Max Von Sydow's character Lor San Tekka, and what was his connection to Luke?  He was there for so short a time to deliver the map portion to Poe we don't know anything about him.  He obviously had some kind of history, but he's dead so who knows if his character will be referred to again.  Why is Poe Damaron such a good pilot?  Is he Force-Sensitive as well?  His convenient disappearance/reappearance seemed very pat - there seems to be more to his story.   And while we're at it, how was Finn such a good lightsaber fighter out of the gate, without even knowing anything about the weapon?  And how was he so lucky, and able to break his conditioning?  Are they all Force-sensitives?



Those are my five burning questions (ok, with lots of corollaries).  What do you think?

Billions and Billions

This story is, to coin a phrase, fascinating:

An Alien Earth May Be in Our Cosmic Back Yard

"Looking at thousands of red dwarf stars in the Kepler field, the lead investigator (Courtney Dressing from the Center for Astrophysics) found several dozen stars with candidate planets (probable companions that have not yet been confirmed). Out of those, she found three that were about the size of Earth, as well as being in their stars’ habitable zones, the right distance from their stars to have liquid water. Accounting for planets with orbits that don’t let them transit from our view, what she found is that 6 percent of red dwarf stars have Earth-sized planets at the right distance from the star to be potentially habitable.

That’s 1 out of 16. Out of 75 billion stars. That’s a lot of Earths. In fact, using that number and applying some statistics, Dressing and her team calculate that on average, in this part of the galaxy, Earth-like planets are only 13 light-years apart. That’s a long way to walk, but in galactic terms, that’s incredibly close. Only about three-dozen stars are known that are within 13 light-years of Earth. Could one of them bear a planet like home?"

It boggles the mind that, finally, soon, astronomers in the next 1-2 generations may actually be able to confidently say whether life might exist on other planets throughout the cosmos.

If we can determine the likelihood of life-bearing worlds, we can determine the likelihood of life.

Planets have to fall under certain criteria to have the potential to bear life as we know it. They have to be in a certain habitable "zone" around the sun - within a certain range of radii, to get that "not too hot, not too cold" effect, so liquid water can exist. Likelihood of greenhouse effect, density, etc - all these traits of worlds should eventually come into focus as better and better detection techniques are developed. Eventually, hopefully, astronomers will be able to point to some planet orbiting some star under some particular conditions and say, "Yes, it as a statistical probability that life exits on that world."

Of course, until we are able to visit such a planet (or, miraculously, contact it's inhabitants) we can't know anything for absolute sure. Heck, we live right next door to Mars and as of early 2013 we're still not sure if life ever existed there at all. But we know exponentially more about the possibility of Martian life now than we did even 15 years ago. I would predict if life on Mars exists, or ever did exist, we'll likely know for sure within the next 20 years. We're that close. So based on this article we're also very close, statistically speaking, to making a good, firm prediction about the probability of life on planets outside our solar system.

After years and years of fictional speculation about people loving on other planets around the galaxy - after imagining the lives of people living on Vulcan, Tatooine, Gallifrey, Arakis, Centauri Prime, Caprica, Tangaroa, Krypton, Hala, Aiur and many others - to imagine that the basic building blocks of such a larger universe, habitable planets, may actually exist and that we may confirm it in our lifetime is staggering.

My New Desk

I just had this great new desk installed in my office:



Yeah, people are looking at me funny, but hey...I've got a model of DS9, 3 Star Wars lego keychain men, Micromachine Trek ships, a Borg cube, the Enterprise NX-01, a stuffed lionfish, The Abominable Snowman from Rudolph, a framed aerial photo of EPCOT and the World's Fair, a print of Prince Eric fighting Malificent, Bill and the Conjunction Junction guy and a working tribble in my office. Who can tell a difference?

Ok, I don't have the cool Han-Solo-in-carbonite-desk, but you know I'd use it if I had it. Buy it for me here and I'll let you sit behind it and pretend you're Princess Leia...

Stay on Target! Stay on Target!

Artoo, that stabilizer's broken loose again...

This coulda been the coolest thing ever:


X Wing Rocket - Watch more free videos

I take it back, it was the coolest thing ever. Too bad the structural integrity failed and the S-Foils couldn't stay on. The original plan was for the wings to stay together, then unlock and open into attack formation.

How cool was that? Hopefully they'll try again soon....

An elegant weapon for a more civilized age...

Star Wars Lightsaber To Travel 6 Million Miles In Space

The original Jedi lightsaber will travel 6 million miles in space to mark the 30th anniversary of the original Star Wars episode.

Doug Mattice, a spokesman for Space Center Houston, said that the prop -- used when Mark Hamill played Luke Skywalker and fought Darth Vader -- would ride aboard the shuttle Discovery, which is scheduled for launch at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on October 23. It will be docked at the International Space Station and travel around Earth's orbit before returning to Earth.

The Ultimate Item on my Geeky Wish List

And I'm totally serious.

How to create a do-it-yourself Stormtrooper costume

And if I also had a fully-authentic black outfit with the helmet and all the winky-blinkys, I'd make a great Darth Vader...














What? Why are you looking at me like that?

And Then You See It, Ominously Floating Over the Hilltop, and All You Hear is the Breathing...

This is probably the greatest thing ever.



Can you imagine seeing that thing flying over your head?