Can George Lucas finally be more right about Star Wars than the fans…?
I’m not aware of any intense rivalry between Star Trek and Star Wars fans; the two extended franchises probably had adequate influence over each other to live in peace on any SF enthusiast’s DVD shelf. But anyone out there looking for the Lucasverse to score points over the Federation can take comfort in the thought that hard science apparently defends the second-most outrageous piece of Star Wars revisionism after the Greedo/Han shooting controversy – whilst dissing Klingon physics. Astronomer Phil Plait, who debunks movie myths about matters celestial at badastronomy.com, apparently surmises that the much-reviled ILM rethink of the Death Star explosion – which added a concentric explosion ring to the conclusion of A New Hope in Lucas’s revised 1997 theatrical release of the original Star Wars trilogy – is more scientifically correct than its original appearance in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991). In his 2002 book Bad Astronomy: Misconceptions And Misuses Revealed, From
