Starvin' Marvin In Space

S P O I L E R

S P A C E

It may be one week late, but it was definitely worth the wait.

Trey and Matt continue to show that SP still has a lot of spunk with this very funny episode. There are two parts of the episode that had me ROTFLMAO.

1. Sally Struthers being depicted as Jabba the Hut. Just seeing the CIA agents talking to her was downright crazy, yet Trey and Matt one-up it by having Jabba's rat-like servant make a cameo as well.

2. The running gag where the 600 Club host tries to encourage viewers to help fund their spaceship. This is a definite bashing on where teleevangelist moeny really goes to. No matter how many problems the CBC spaceship runs into, The CBC bits in the third act continue to be hillarious.

Also, since being frozen in carbonite only means that the victim is alive and in perfect hibernation, Kenny doesn't technically die in the episode.

Joe Klemm

Joe Klemm wrote:

I watched tonight's episode with a heavy heart though with Mary Kay's passing. Almost lost it when the missionary spoke her 1st line (had to leave the room).

I had assume that they're gonna make Sally a bit fatter for this episode. But THAT fat?

It seems the Space scenes were inspired by Star Wars (Tractor beam), Star Trek (Wormhole, Photon Torpedos), and Babylon 5 (Hyperspace Travel/Space Combat).

Unless they drop the carbonite slate during the ruckus in space.

"Mario P. Labot Jr." wrote:

Actually- Star Wars, Star Trek, and Babylon 5 have all had these elements in their movies/ tv shows to some degree and are not exclusive to one movie/show.

Or unless he survived the freezing process in the first place.

-Toni

In article , "Mario P. Labot Jr." writes:

The space scenes seemed to be nearly all 'trek, ESPECIALLY the bits with the excessive techno-babble.

On 01 Dec 1999 03:34:42 GMT, [email] (Ben Raines) wrote:

All the sci fi movies and TV show are guilty of that... one of the best examples of techno-ignorance was a line from Star Wars: ANH. Han Solo describing the Millenium Falcon's qualities:

"She made the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs."

A parsec is a unit of measurement in distance in outer space... not time.

Although I'm not a fan, I didn't catch any Babylon 5 references... looked like all Star Wars/Trek references to me.

Maybe Flight of the Navigator, too.. that lame music playing in the spaceship's stereo reminded me of that movie... or something very similar to it. Boy finds spaceship, goes for a wonderful flight, and lame-ass music plays as he's jotting around the sky.

----- Lone Wolf There's a reason that banana is in my ear. I'm trying to get the little monkey out of my head.

"No ticket." - Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade/Dogma

"Forget pathetisad... is 'weirdork' a word?" "I dunno... is sarcastabitch a word?" - Kate and Drew, The Drew Carey Show

Lone Wolf wrote:

Actually, that scene could be interpreted in a different way. When Han says that, Obi-Wan has this look on his face that seems like he's thinking, "Han is full of shit " since as you said, a parsec is a measurment in distance in outer space, not time.

-Toni

I've heard the popular, "Han didn't always know what he was talking about, and sometimes he was just full of shit..." explanation, and it's a good one.

I've heard another one as well, although it's a little harder to swallow. Perhaps, since in the Star Wars universe, we deal with space travel in some indescribable travel through "hyperspace", we need to refocus our view on space distance. Perhaps when you take the normal path through "hyperspace", it should only be an approximate distance of 12 parsecs. But maybe Han found a way to cheat on time, and he actually cut distance off instead of time.

Personally, I'll buy the "full of shit" explanation.

says that,

full of

space, not

He was probably high on the spice melange and folded space (check his baby blues)

Bill Lynch

ROFL!! There ya go...Luke may think he's cool beans as a Jedi but Han's got him beat as the Quizaat Haderach.

K.A.

"Come get you some!" - Chyna

"We are star stuff. We are the Universe made manifest, trying to figure itself out."- Delenn, Babylon 5

On Wed, 1 Dec 1999 20:32:32 -0500, "Jack Cooper" wrote:

More likely, George Lucas didn't know what he was talking about when he wrote the screenplay.

Hey, I've been there... I've pulled plenty of bullshit scientific explanations out of my ass when I write screenplays... unfortunately, Lucas has more money than god, and I'm stuck here in Jersey. Pbbt.

Ditto.

----- Lone Wolf There's a reason that banana is in my ear. I'm trying to get the little monkey out of my head.

"No ticket." - Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade/Dogma

"Forget pathetisad... is 'weirdork' a word?" "I dunno... is sarcastabitch a word?" - Kate and Drew, The Drew Carey Show

Jack Cooper wrote in message ...

one.

"hyperspace",

The story I've heard (from a Pixar employee who works with old Star Wars creative types) is that George Lucas liked the sound of 12 parsecs enough that he kept it in even after being told that a parsec is a unit of distance. It sounds like a unit of time (sec), and it flows well, so scientific reality be damned. This was discussed to death on an email list a follow, if you're really interested email me for archive location.

Jeremiah

That's probably very likely as well. Lucas probably didn't ever know that the silly little movie he was making called "Star Wars" would be picked apart scene by scene, line by line.

list

I don't really care either way......the way I look at it is this : If I start caring that a parsec is a unit of distance and not time then I MUST start caring that Wookies can fly spaceships and droids can play chess and a desert planet has clouds that it's residents "farm" the moisture from and speeders can hover above the ground without powerful fans and Greedo is REALLY that bad of a shot and nobody laughs at Princess Leia's Cinabon hairdoo and the Empire would be stupid enough to build a battlestation the size of a small moon that can destroy entire planets but still have a built in "trench" leading right to it's Achille's Heel and - well, you get the point?

It's Science FICTION not FACT, it never claimed to be......Aaayy...relax, Guy!

Feel better, dude?

ROFL!! That's about the best summation of suspending belief for a science fiction movie I've ever heard. Good one!

K.A.

"Come get you some!" - Chyna

"We are star stuff. We are the Universe made manifest, trying to figure itself out."- Delenn, Babylon 5

Me also. I'm a Bab 5 fan and I must say I personally didn't see any refs to it, either. I'd have been thrilled if there was.

K.A.

"Come get you some!" - Chyna

"We are star stuff. We are the Universe made manifest, trying to figure itself out."- Delenn, Babylon 5

Per Webster's:

parsec - 3.09 x 10(13) km

Bill Lynch

(that's 10 to the thirteenth power)

Um... Arneil...

Good try. Really. But a kilometer (km) is 100,000 times larger than a centimeter (cm).

3.9 x 10^13 km = 3.9 x 10^18 cm.

Thank you again for the diligent research, but the original message by our friend Bill Lynch was indeed correct.

-Jack

Arneil M. Oky wrote in message news:[email]...

Woo hoo!

Bill Lynch

When I saw your post I assumed I'd made a typo, but I checked with Webster's and found:

parsec (parsek) n. a unit of astronomical distance, corresponding to that distance at which an object has an annual parallax of one second of arc, equal to 206,265 astronomical units, or 3.26 light years, or 3.09 x 1013 km: abbrev. pc Etymology [par(allax) + sec(ond)3] (C)1995 Zane Publishing, Inc. (C)1994, 1991, 1988 Simon & Schuster, Inc.

What looks like "1013" here was ten to the thirteenth there. If we can't trust Webster's, who can we trust? Good point about how it's an Earth reference and really out of place in "a galaxy far, far away".

Bill Lynch

In article , [email] (Lone Wolf) writes:

I'll have to see the ep again, but there was something unmistakenly "trekesque" about the ecessive technobabble, right around the scene where they were trying to escape the tractor beam by emitting something from their emitter shield, if memory serves me.

Deflector shields, but those are used to fend off phaser or photon attacks below a certain strength. The junker had enough power to weaken the shields and then get the Marklar ship into its tractor beam. Cartman appealed to Sally's humanitarian efforts in the past to escape the tractor.

--- Willie Westwood

In article , [email] says...

Did you also notice how one of the CIA agents attempted to use the Force on her? He waved his hand, and for obvious reasons, it didn't work. :)

Any bashing of TV evangelism is OK in my book.

But Kenny had a brief appearance with the other boys after he was frozen in the carbonite. Since nothing was mentioned of his release from Sally the Hutt, I guess that was just a screw up.

So, how's your Marklar?

In article , [email] (Joe Klemm) writes:

Oh, I dunno. I got tired of that joke the 2nd time they did it.