Random Star Wars musing of the day

[yubsie]

A thought struck me in the shower today.

Why the frak did humans settle on Tatooine in the first place? Did it used to be a much more hospitable environment? Because it's not like humans developed there. Or were chased by cylons until their ships broke down. People went to all the trouble of travelling through hyperspace to get to this lousy planet where even the dust has dust. What were they THINKING?

Or is it just that magnetic force that always drew the plot back to Tatooine at work?

Comments

[i-paint-the-sky.livejournal.com]

LOL, it's like Canada, only worse!

Perhaps there was some resource on Tatooine that we never saw that made it valuable for at least some people to live there.

Also, were the Hutt species natives? In the movies at least, we never see them off the planet. Even if they aren't, it might be the perfect environment for them.

[yubsie]

Canada's totally a better place than Tatooine. Not that it's HARD. :p

In the books they were from Nal Hutta... a swamp world. Because CLEARLY people from a swamp world would want to hang out on Tatooine. :p

The Jawas and the Tusken Raiders were native, iirc, but they didn't tend to enslave humans leading to a plausible reason they'd be around. :p

[i-paint-the-sky.livejournal.com]

It's true!

Okay well...clearly those books are just wrong. No way swamp world creatures would be happy on Tatooine.

[uscathena.livejournal.com]

I'd say it's the spice, but that'd be the wrong fandom.

[yubsie]

The spice is on Kessel. :p

[icicaille.livejournal.com]

IIRC, Tatooine used to be a pretty nice place until a civil war broke out, after which it was subjected to an orbital bombardment that effected a drastic climate change.

[yubsie]

It did? They actually explained it? THat's kinda awesome. :p

[icicaille.livejournal.com]

Well, not in the movies, but I was an enormous SW geek in my pre-teen years, haha, so my research on the subject was quite extensive.

[yubsie]

Well I didn't expect an in movie explanation. THough I wouldn't put it past Threepio to go off on a tangent as to why people are on the planet...

[glassdolphin.livejournal.com]

I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who thinks about random stuff like that at random times ;)

[yubsie]

Clearly the shower is the most sensible place to reflect on the colonization of desert worlds. :p

Now, if it were a dessert world...

[glassdolphin.livejournal.com]

So when you're out at the beach on a hot day, that's the best time to ponder the world of Dagobah? ;P

If it were a dessert world... I think the Sith would have eaten it.

[yubsie]

Dagobah was just MADE for pondering.

The Sith ate it! That's why the BSG cast never could find the hot fudge planet and were stuck with algae. :p

[glassdolphin.livejournal.com]

Ooooh, you are right on with the clever puns - I like that! After all, Yoda spent how many years pondering there? (Although now that I think of it, initially it seems like he might have been there hundreds of years... but with the advent of the new movies, it couldn't have been more than 18!)

If I were a Sith, I would totally eat a hot fudge planet.

I still have to watch BSG one of these days... :P

[yubsie]

I... totally meant to make that pun. Yep yep yep. (Surprise! Not such a long established hermitage after all. :p)

Dude, I don't need to be a Sith to eat a hot fudge planet. It's a HOT FUDGE PLANET.

You do! It's wonderful! Heartbreaking, but wonderful!

[glassdolphin.livejournal.com]

I'm sure you did ;)

But... do you think a JEDI would eat a hot fudge planet?

So I've heard! I remember hearing my friends obsess about the show, and I just made them all promise that, when the series finale rolled around, they wouldn't spoil the ending for me so I could watch it someday ;)

[yubsie]

Hot fudge is pleasant. Jedi don't do pleasant. :p Not being a Jedi, I will eat the hot fudge planet.

I'm not sure why I didn't watch it sooner. THough this way I never had to endure the horrible season finale cliffhangers.

[virusq.livejournal.com]

Who settled Tatooine? Hmmm...

Solar energy farmers. Big game hunters. Sand castle competition Olympians...

[yubsie]

... I would totally watch that event. :p But Tatooine would SUCK for sand castles, the sand is too dry. :p

Solar energy and Krayt dragon hunting on the other hand....

[virusq.livejournal.com]

They do have moisture farms. Maybe they started out moisture farming for the sand castles.

[yubsie]

IT ALL MAKES SENSE NOW!

[lestack.livejournal.com]

It's similar to Panama: A shithole, but there are still people there.

Tatooine was settled a looooong time ago (before KOTOR), then abandoned (except for people left behind who became the Fremen ... I mean Sand People :p). The Jawas may have been native, but I'm not sure anyone can get a straight answer out of them to find out. It was recolonised a few decades before KOTOR by Czerka Corp. in an attempt to mine the planet. It was a bad investment and was shortly thereafter abandoned.

It was settled a few more times, leading to about 100 years before Yavin, when yet another cluster of capitalists without any ideas colonised the dirt ball, and a few people eeked out a living farming the very limited water from the air (although if you look at the sky in the 1st and 4th movies, you could SWEAR there was a recent storm :P).

/Nerd
//Used to read TimeTales
///nerd

[yubsie]

You'd think after the first few tries they're realize it was a crappy planet. :p

[lestack.livejournal.com]

PEOPLE ARE STILL IN PANAMA! :P

[yubsie]

Panama is a bit less... an entire planet of DESERT though. :p

[jeepersjournal.livejournal.com]

I figure a lot of the humans are like the Skywalkers- descendants of slave labour brought in by other races luke the Hutts [who probably can't afford to leave if free to do so], or there for otherwise not-good reasons.

As in since it's a backwater, desolate planet, it'd be the spot to go about your illegal business, so I imagine some of the human population is there for assorted immoral purposes. Smugglers, gangsters etc.

[yubsie]

Yeah, why people STAY is easy enough to explain, good old "Can't afford the fare OFF this rock." Slave labour might do it.

The gangsters and such made sense. I mean, the Rebels hung out on Hoth precisely BECAUSE it sucked. It was just why people like the moisture farmers would end up there... when you have to farm moisture. :p

[jeepersjournal.livejournal.com]

I'm guessing they'd be people whose ancestors had ended up there for some reason or another [slavery, gang activity] who then opted to go for an honest living, and there's probably a demand for water and blue milk and such, so they'd be able to get by.

Another theory- it might of once served as a prison planet, and everyone's the offspring of convicts, like Australia :)

Though I really need to get back into reading more EU stuff. I want to buy those Jedi Detective novels.... I finished off the batch of used New Jedi Order books I had so I'm kind of Star Wars-reading-less at the moment [do have a Darth Maul novel, and a Mace Windu novel whose whereabouts I'm unsure of though]

[igrayne.livejournal.com]

In the novel Shadow the Empire it mentions that there was once water on Tatooine which is why Beggars Canyon was there... :\

But probably because Slaves were brought from other planets to serve the deserty races...

It's a good point!

[yubsie]

I'm sure this much thought did NOT go into the initial conception of Tatooine, somehow. :p

[igrayne.livejournal.com]

Indeed, Georgey boy probably said "LET'S HAVE THEM ON A DESERT SO OUR ACTORS GET HEAT STROKE!" and in the second one "LET'S HAVE THEM IN THE SNOOOOOOOW SO THEY FREEZE TO DEATH! CONTRAST! CONTRAST!"

Alec Guiness was not amused methinks.

[yubsie]

"Ooh, that would be neat! Let's do that!"

"But... but... logic!"

"SHUSH!" :p

[bel-baggins.livejournal.com]

Originally settled by alchemists who tried to turn the sand into gold.

Or maybe they're people who used to live on Kamino and got sick of all the rain.

Or Tatooine is halfway between Naboo and ... maybe Alderaan, and back before the hyperdrive was invented they needed a pit stop. And the people who ran out of fuel or couldn't fix their ships ended up settling there.

Or maybe there's a secret underground cave system that's like a tropical paradise, and only a select few know about it, they never tell new arrivals until they've been around a few years. I think there was an entrance to the cave system in Ben Kenobi's hut.

:P

[yubsie]

Ooh, ooh, I vote for that last one!