Hitchhiker's Guide-verse vs. Star Wars

[ChosenOne54]

An interesting vs match I recently thought of, which pits the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy universe, at its height, against the Star Wars universe, also at its peak, in an all out war. The battle takes place in a neutral galaxy, where the laws if physics work the same for both sides. Who would win?

[septesix]

which time period would you consider to be their height?

Although, I just want to point out, and to paraphrase the guide, that because of the proliferation of time-travel, every period is now pretty much like all the others......

[The Romulan Republic]

Hmm, probably Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy takes it.

Their FTL is slower. I recall there's a line about standard FTL (ie not an Infinite Improbability Drive) taking years to cross the galaxy or something like that. Firepower is roughly a draw, I'm guessing, with perhaps a slight edge to HGTTG: their are multiple different factions that can blow up a planet.

Its the Infinite Improbability Drive and the new evil guide from Mostly Harmless that swing it, I think. The first fucks with reality in various ways, and the latter seems to be a piece of software which is basically omniscient. Oh, and time travel.

Teleportation tech. is around as well.

[The Romulan Republic]

I should add that its their normal FTL that's slower. The improbability drive, though, is pretty much instantaneous when it actually goes where one means it too.

[Batman]

I'd really be surprised if anybody managed to come up with a solid figure for any HHGTTG faction given we're never given a concrete damage mechanism for their weapons.

[ChosenOne54]

I recall, at least in the old TV series, the Vogons completely destroythe earth with a single laser, which I believe came from one of their ships.

There's also the Krikkit. I think this article speaks for itself:
http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/Krikkit

[The Romulan Republic]

I recall, at least in the old TV series, the Vogons completely destroythe earth with a single laser, which I believe came from one of their ships.

In the movie, they used a fleet of what looked like dozens of ships to surround the planet. It looked like they disintegrated it somehow or something like that. No idea how that worked.

In the books, I don't recall a clear description.

Edit: Speaking of which, what version of HGTTG are we talking about? Film, books, radio, TV? Might make a difference.

[Batman]

I recall, at least in the old TV series, the Vogons completely destroy the earth with a single laser, which I believe came from one of their ships.

I don't remember that series all that clearly but I'd bet a goodly amount of money that not only were the visuals completely incompatible with an actual laser, they were incompatible with a planet-destroying one too.

[ChosenOne54]

The point still stands that the Vogons have the ability to casually destroy planets, a feat that gave even the Empire quite some trouble.

[Batman]

Correction: the Empire had trouble destroying planets with an Alderaan-level planetary shield while the Vogons could casually destroy modern day (plus minus a decade or two) Earth. Not quite the same situation I think.

[ChosenOne54]

Is there evidence that the Empire could brute force-destroy planets before buildin the Death Star? In fact, Solo specifically says that their fleet wasn't enough to do so. Why would they build the Death Star in the first place if they could pretty much destroy planets before?

[PhilosopherOfSorts]

Three words: Planetary grade shields. Laying waste to an unshielded planet is no problem, getting through powerful planetary shields can take weeks, the Death Star defeats those shields in an instant.

[Darth Tedious]

Shielding issues aside, the Vogons didn't BDZ Earth, they completely annihilated it. Even the Death Star wasn't as thorough (there was an asteroid field left where Alderaan used to be).

I would assume we would take the novels as highest level canon for Hitchhiker's.

As has been mentioned, time travel provides a huge edge. The Infinite Improbability Drive and Guide Mk. II (even being one-of-a-kind techs) could also provide insane advantages.

[The Romulan Republic]

On what possible basis do you assume the novels are the highest canon? The radio versions actually predate the novels.

As for the fancy tech. it certainly would help. Of course, one doesn't know exactly what result you'll get with the Improbability Drive, but one can easily envision a scenario where it happens to fly near Coruscant and randomly turns Palpatine into a duck. This would be entirely consistent with canon.

I'm now stuck wondering weather duck Palpatine would still have Force powers.

As for the Guide Mk. II- its one of the scariest fucking things in the whole history of sci-fi. Didn't it manipulate events to ensure the destruction of Earth/humanity in every single alternate universe?

[FaxModem1]

What about the fact that the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy takes place in the Doctor Who verse? After all, the Doctor met Arthur Dent once.

[The Romulan Republic]

Really? So this therefor makes it a Star Wars/Doctor Who crossover?

It doesn't change the outcome. Instead of Star Wars facing one franchise with rediculously wanked tech. including routine time travel, it'll be facing two franchises with rediculously wanked tech. including routine time travel. Except Doctor Who has better FTL, doesn't it?

[Parallax]

The Who-verse, is should be noted, joins up with various (if not all, really) alternate realities.
We've seen this both in stories such as Inferno and the introduction of the new cybermen - it may be the Doctor was in one of these when he met Dent.

Hell, according to the comics ... the Doctor exists in the same Universe as the friggin' Transformers!

[PhilosopherOfSorts]

Shielding issues aside, the Vogons didn't BDZ Earth, they completely annihilated it. Even the Death Star wasn't as thorough (there was an asteroid field left where Alderaan used to be).

I would assume we would take the novels as highest level canon for Hitchhiker's.

As has been mentioned, time travel provides a huge edge. The Infinite Improbability Drive and Guide Mk. II (even being one-of-a-kind techs) could also provide insane advantages.

I'm not disputing any that, I was responding specificly to ChosenOne54

[ChosenOne54]

Let's keep Doctor Who out of this for once.

[Darth Tedious]

On what possible basis do you assume the novels are the highest canon? The radio versions actually predate the novels.

Only two of them. The third, fourth and fifth radio series' weren't done until 2004. However, that's somewhat beside the point.
For one specific example: In the radio show, the characters are blasted to the Restaurant at the End of the Universe when the computer at Magrathea explodes. This doesn't occur in the novels, and the change is retained in both the TV series and the 2005 film.
More generally speaking, there were a number of contradictions between the first two radio series and the books, while the other three were very true to the novels. This is what suggests (to me, at least) that the books should be considered the definitive version, and possibly were by Adams.
I guess without an official canon policy, it's hard to call- does the 2005 film override previous material? Are the towels canonical? Who knows...

As for the Guide Mk. II- its one of the scariest fucking things in the whole history of sci-fi. Didn't it manipulate events to ensure the destruction of Earth/humanity in every single alternate universe?

Indeed it did. Having multi-verse spanning pan-temporal omniscience is such a strength, the Guide Mk. II could concievably defeat the Empire on its own.

I'm not disputing any that, I was responding specificly to ChosenOne54

All good, my point was tangential. I don't believe the issue of shields has really been addressed directly, though the advantages enjoyed by the Adamsverse factions could allow them to be bypassed anyway...

[ChosenOne54]

Do we have any actual calcs for Alderaan's shields? They dispersed the blast for, what, 0.7th of a second or something, so do we have any accurate figures?

[The Romulan Republic]

I recall, at least in the old TV series, the Vogons completely destroythe earth with a single laser, which I believe came from one of their ships.

There's also the Krikkit. I think this article speaks for itself:
http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/Krikkit

Depending when this is set, Krikkit may not be an issue. However, it is worth noting that this one world apparently came close to winning a galactic war. Yes, they had the advantage of surprise, and were guided by a supercomputer, but still, that's pretty damn impressive.

The universe-wide supernova bomb is obviously insanely powerful, but I kind of feel we should discount it. It was a one-off design and the designer no longer exists as of the end of the third book. Also, if you use it, you don't really win: a scenario where there universe is destroyed is a draw.

On the other hand, comparing industrial capability, I think that at least at some times in their history we have to give this to HGTTG as well, considering that custom planet building is an industry.

[Glimmervoid]

Hitchhiker's Guide canon is a complex issue and made even more so by the Whole Sort of General Mishmash introduced in the last novel. The radio plays and the novels seem to take place in alternate universe which occasionally intersect, via the aforementioned mishmash. Though its not said, its possible the movie also exists in this mishmash.

As such, I would argue that each Hitchicker series (Radio plays, books, old tv series and new movie) exist in alternate universe from each other, but in the same great Whole Sort of General Mishmash. To couch it in terms of the of the last novel, they exist at the same point in space but different points on the probability axis. As such, all would have been effected by the Guide Mark II's end game in the novels.

Insistently, I would argue that the audio books out rank the novels in canon since they were published after the novels and narrated by the author. Of course, since they are the exact same there is no difference outside possible pronunciation issues.

[Batman]

Alternatively, in the absence of an official canon policy one might disregard 'And Another Thing' due to not being written by Douglas Adams and simply assume the series ends with 'Mostly Harmless' (an approach I personally do not like as 'And Another Thing', while still leaving Arthur Fenchurchless, was a much superior ending to the series than Mostly Harmless, which Adams himself admitted was a pretty bleak book), so no Guide Mk II. How much that would help the Wars side is, of course, another matter-the Infinite Improbability Drive alone may be their undoing.
According to the description of the drive in the books, knowing how improbable something is is enough for the drive to make it happen, so as long as an outcome is possible (however improbable), the Drive can see to that it does.

[Glimmervoid]

Nuts. I completely forgot about 'And Another Thing', which I've not gotten around to reading yet. By last novel I mean 'Mostly Harmless'.