12

In Star Wars, like in star trek, planets tend to have only one climate zone and only one location, where you can find all people you are looking for, just by knowing they are on this planet. And all spacefaring people of the whole galaxy (at least all smugglers and other criminals) seem to know each other by name and by ship.

Some of this could be explained if indeed the spacefaring folk are low in numbers, and most planets actually have have only one location (at least only one space port, where space folk will meet) where most of all people are, and if most planets have only a low population. It would also explain why the space battles on screen have only a low number of ships involved (30 X-Wing in A New Hope).

But in other questions I read that the galaxy far far away consists of millions of inhabited planets with billions of people and the empire has millions of ships. This seems to contradict everything I saw in the movies.

So what in canon tells us how many planets, places and people are in the galaxy far far away and how are the "the galaxy is a small place" observations (I know it's a trope) explained in universe?

(And yes, I know this would not explain the "Go to Dabobah and meet Yoda". Where on Dagobah exactly? Oh, I crash landed on Dagobah in a random location. I will look for Yoda. Let us walk in this direction and see if we can find him.)

EDIT:

Ok. So let us try to approximate an answer by dividing into subquestions:

  1. What in canon tells us that there are indeed more than a few 100 planets (preferable on screen) and a few hundred races? (The only thing I can come up with is C3PO knowing 6.000.000 languages, but I think this is more to make him look elaborate than to establish millions of planets and races).

  2. If there are millions of planets, races and billions or trillions of ships, how can the "small world" impressions be rectified?

  3. What in Canon tells us on the opposite that there are only a few hundred planets and races?

To 3. I have a few Points:

The smuggler, princess and farm boy seem to know most of the planets, races, technology, ship and vehicle types, weapons, etc. When a planet is mentioned, it is done in a way that the speaker assumes that the listeners know it. When Han talks about "Lando" Leia seems to ask in a surprised and wondering tone "Where is the Lando System?" so she seems surprised that there is a System she does not know. Han "wonders" that Owi Wan and Luke have never heard about the falcon. Of course it is exagerated a lot, but it implies, that it is possible that there is a ship the whole galaxy has heard about. Hints that there are not millions of different technologies, models and types are: Leia able to do repairs an the falcon, Leia and Luke able to ride the speeders on endor, Luke able to use the weapons of the falcon and many more (I think).

Hothie
  • 4,961
  • 4
  • 28
  • 47
  • 2
    Well, the finding Yoda on Dagobah thing can get explained away easily with the Star Wars catch-all: The Will of the Force. That is a really great thing that guides people just as well as a movie script would if they were really just actors in a movie series. – BMWurm Jan 11 '16 at 13:22
  • Related, possible dupe: How many seats were there in the Senate of the Galactic Republic?. If we can figure out how many systems are represented, we're probably pretty close to figuring out how many inhabited planets/systems there are. – phantom42 Jan 11 '16 at 13:23
  • @phantom42 Not so. The Galactic Republic was never in full control of the galaxy, even when excluding the Unknown Regions. It is speculatory whether they even control a majority of the galaxy (a thousand years is not a lot of time if you are recovering from a Jedi-Sith war filled with superweapons and seeking to bring former territories back under your control. Palpatine had plenty of new land to conquer as Emperor). Many sentient species weren't granted a seat either as their sentience is subject to interpretation. In short, it won't give a good estimate even at best. – thegreatjedi Jan 11 '16 at 13:38
  • @thegreatjedi many of those things don't exist, or have been severely shrunk (thus far) in the new canon. – phantom42 Jan 11 '16 at 13:40
  • @phantom42 what I said is fully based on canon. – thegreatjedi Jan 11 '16 at 13:41
  • @ BMWurm Not the core of my question, but even if the "Will of the force" managed to crash land Luke in 2 miles reach to yoda, why could Luke even have the slightest hope to find yoda after his crash? And why did his situation seem to be just a minor inconvenience to him instead of a live threatening or "stranded for the rest of my live" situation? – Hothie Jan 11 '16 at 13:49
  • @Hothie Hence only a comment. Well he mopes around frustrated for quite a bit, and gets annoyed with the frogman from the swamp pretty quickly later on. And he got really frantic before all that when R2 got swallowed up by the swamp thing. But keep in mind, Luke actually really buys into this whole Force thing, after all, he flew to some random planet (that was apparently charted well enough that he could get the coordinates from just its name, yet no outpost or anything appeared to be there) in a fighter, not equipped for long journeys or... walking around stretching your legs out... or going – BMWurm Jan 11 '16 at 14:29
  • @Hothie ... to the toilet or anything like that... solely on the word of some hallucination he got while having severe hypothermia and probably a concussion. "What am I doing here, R2" is really an excellent question!! – BMWurm Jan 11 '16 at 14:30
  • The fact that all the smugglers know one another is because the gorious Emperor Palpatine has ruthlessly brought Law and Order to the Galaxy, thus diminishing the amount of criminal element to a negligible amount. – DVK-on-Ahch-To Jan 11 '16 at 15:49
  • 2
    In regards to each planet only having one spaceport, Tatooine, which is generally considered backwater and avoided by law-abiding travellers, has at least two in movie canon alone: Mos Eisley and Mos Espa (presumably Anchorhead is as well, but we never see it on-screen). – Michael Itzoe Jan 11 '16 at 16:20
  • @Hothie you may not notice but Luke didn't just happen to be "near" Yoda - Yoda was looking for him too. And nothing is present to suggest that his X-Wing is near Yoda's house either. – thegreatjedi Jan 11 '16 at 17:05
  • @Hothie Plus, Luke was expecting a great Jedi master like Obi-Wan in the most cliche manner possible. He was expecting civilisation, and a mighty war veteran meditating in a temple, and he would walk up to the man and the man would say "Luke Skywalker, I've been expecting you" or something to that effect. Dagobah as we now know it was NOT what he expected to encounter. – thegreatjedi Jan 11 '16 at 17:07
  • 2
    I don't know what the canonical population of the Star Wars galaxy is, but "millions of inhabited planets with billions of people" would only be a population of thousands per planet :3 – recognizer Jan 11 '16 at 17:36
  • "And nothing is present to suggest that his X-Wing is near Yoda's house either" short for having no vehicle and they seem to walk between the two locations in short time. :-) Don't think it took days or weeks from his X-Wing to yodas house. – Hothie Jan 11 '16 at 19:36
  • 1
    "millions of inhabited planets with billions of people" Don't know what comes after "billions" in english. And in german "Billion" is 1e+12, not 1e+9 as in englisch afaik (between Millionen and Billionen we have Milliarden what is 1e+9). Confusing. Who invented that? Same word for different things. – Hothie Jan 11 '16 at 19:39
  • @Hothie Actually, 9 zeroes for billion is American and 12 zeroes for billion is British. Americans rule the world of money, so the international system uses 9 zeroes for billions lol. The next word after billion is trillion. – thegreatjedi Feb 05 '16 at 08:19
  • There were a million worlds engulfed in the Clone Wars, and the Republic Senate consisted of thousands of Senators. Consider that 3% of Earth's land surface is urbanized, 10% inhabited and 83% under some form of land use. You can use that as a gauge for population sizes in Earth-like worlds in the Core, Inner, Mid and Outer Rim, based on how densely/sparsely populated those worlds are compared to us. – thegreatjedi Feb 05 '16 at 08:27
  • Dupe of How many systems were part of the Republic? – Valorum Feb 06 '16 at 22:25
  • @thegreatjedi: The British today mostly use billion the same as Americans, i.e. for the number 10^9. See Wikipedia on long and short scales. – chirlu Feb 08 '16 at 15:45

0 Answers0