u/datapicardgeordi

It’s been almost 40yrs since the original manga and we are still being told the story of the Puppet Master.

Do you think this speaks to a lack of creativity?

Or, was the plot so prescient about our technological society that it’s still relevant today?

It’s still asking the same questions about how we define life and a soul, how we live with technology, and how we remain human in a technological age.

No society has really come up with answers to these questions. We play around them and float theories about living in a simulation but we don’t drill down and define ourselves on the most basic levels.

Instead of drawing clear boundaries we are still busy blurring the lines.

To me, the philosophical aspects of the series are more important than ever, and maybe too complex for society to take seriously.

Sure, we know that all the high level players in the Heretics era have knowledge of the no-gene and its abilities to shield from prescience but does the commoner know about this?

By Heretics there are millions of trillions of humans and as far as we know only the ruling Tleilaxu and the Sisterhood are interested in exploiting the no-gene.

The popularity of the no-ship implies that a lot of people understand the existence of prescience and protect against it, at least in terms of interstellar travel.

So is the no-gene just a secret of the elite? Or do commoners dream of mating with someone with Siona blood to give their offspring new powers?

Thufir plays a pretty central role in the Atreides household. As a mentat assassin he’s supposed to be one of the deadliest soldiers in the Imperium. He’s also central in training young Paul to be a mentat.

But Thufir fucks up. A lot.

He suspects Jessica of being a traitor when she is anything but.

He misses the Hunter-seeker assassin hidden in the walls of the royal palace.

He even allows himself to be captured and interrogated.

On top of that he’s not mentioned as being key to the fighting prowess of the Atreides forces. That credit is given to Duncan Idaho and Gurney Halleck.

So with all this in mind has Thufir become a liability instead of an asset?

Whether it be the stats given by the Baron about Rabban's previous year in command or in the details about Sardaukar losses calculated by Hawat, none of them are accurate.

This is because the Fremen routinely collect their dead.

This practice clears the battlefields of Arrakis of most of the Fremen bodies.

When the Harkonnen and Sardaukar come along afterwards and try to tally body count they are left piecing together battle reports from the surviving, often demoralized, soldiers and come away astonished.

This helps to build the myth and mystique that the Fremen use to their advantage as a kind of psyop against their enemies.

The film adaptations of Dune depict the planet as a desolate place with a limited color scheme of orange and white sands illuminated by harsh blown out lighting. However, what's not depicted are the many plant species listed in the novel. These species bring verdant greens and colorful blooms to the landscape.

While the equatorial band of the Tanzerouft IS largely dunes due to the Coriolis storms, both the north and south poles harbor many species of plants introduced before spice was discovered. These even date back to before the Butlerian Jihad, back when the botanical testing stations were still active.

The following are species known to be on Arrakis:

https://preview.redd.it/uu4o09jxd2dh1.jpg?width=1600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f2b1a6da6bb325790a9a400ec40215df28d8d5cd

Date Palms: Most notably planted as part of the palace grounds, date palms are also planted in oases and sustained by qanats to anchor soil and provide valuable shade and resources like fruit, wood, and oil.

https://preview.redd.it/zcd2h4xpf2dh1.jpg?width=780&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=44ec10615edb14d3fc7720c0ddabf7dfaaf2d798

Saguaro: Known as a keystone species in its native habitat, the saguaro provides food and shelter to many other animal and plant species. They hoard water, bear fruit, and act as nests for birds and insects.

https://preview.redd.it/0pma64thj2dh1.jpg?width=1536&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a4beebfbceced8a9b9d2573e4a8460a409e2e2b4

Barrel Cactus: Highly adapted to extreme heat, their dense spines provide vital shade. Their flowering fruit is an important source of moisture as is the morning dew that collects on their spines.

https://preview.redd.it/u7057rxgx2dh1.jpg?width=1000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=09e31a11bf967c367a7ce74a576238256f074e66

Creosote Bush: A staple desert survivor known for its hardy root system, they can survive extreme drought periods. Their leaves, seeds, and flowers provide food for many animals including desert hare, kangaroo rats, and many types of insect.

https://preview.redd.it/dh4yo21oz2dh1.jpg?width=576&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=440baf55757d828c700b3ec486b4a795e00b2189

Burro Bush: A drought-tolerant shrub belonging to the sunflower family. Known to grow in proximity to creosote bush, it produces chemicals which repel root growth of surrounding plants resulting in diminished competition for limited resources.

https://preview.redd.it/lbyedeu003dh1.jpg?width=1024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=76657abc156827ecad9fe5568e37840ac87ace6d

Desert Smoke Tree: Common, scrubby shrub that thrives in Arrakis' harsh basin environments. Known to bloom bright blue or purple flowers.

https://preview.redd.it/4c5purwl53dh1.jpg?width=1130&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b5eff8ed9ec8053c972d177cdeaa08c77d300273

Sand Verbena: Thriving in hot, sandy environments these colorful flowering plants are known for their, stout, sweet roots.

https://preview.redd.it/ndc8wa4m93dh1.jpg?width=1024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=edd22790f81131806ae22eda0042ed8e1375abae

Evening Primrose: A weedy species that favors disturbed environments, they take well to areas of Arrakis where wind storms have done their work.

https://preview.redd.it/t0demoffa3dh1.jpg?width=1094&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2089f9c1c207d27019aa80fe92e993f78815b8c9

Incense Bush: Highly fragrant, drought-tolerant shrubs that produce prolific flowers and attract pollinators. Thrives in rocky, dry, decomposed granite soils and is ideal for xeriscaping.

They don’t use lasers or phasers or any directed energy weapons, they use good old fashioned guns.

Big guns. Lots of big guns.

A battlestar is basically just a mobile artillery platform with missiles and nukes for extra punching power.

It gave the whole series a foundation in the tangible and didn’t make it too sci-fi despite FTL jumps and killer AI.

The Fremen are the true power of Dune, desert power, but throughout the story are sold as underdogs. After all, they struggle against the forces of an intergalactic empire. However, they overcome that empire, how?

The biggest and most plain explanation is spice bribes. The Fremen collect and process more spice than any other faction. This also makes them the richest faction on Arrakis. Even when the Emperor shows up with his battlepalace the Spacing Guild still upholds the blackout of the South. This means in practical terms that the Fremen are richer and hold more influence than the Imperial Throne. Some of the spice they collect buys the Fremen whatever they want from ornithopters to materials to build stillsuits and maula pistols. The rest goes to hide the entire southern half of Arrakis.

This has the benefit of hiding the physical location of Fremen strongholds and plantations. I know it seems obvious but it allows the Fremen real privacy and comfort, the lebensraum of half a planet. It also allows for freedom of movement. Large forces can traverse long distances without being observed. They have an unhindered logistics system that nurtures a productive economy that is based on spice. In short it provides a safe place to develop their own thriving culture unharassed by the Empire.

It also makes it easier to hide their numbers. No one is ever sure exactly how large the Fremen population is until Paul sees the millions for himself. This is in itself is a huge advantage that factors into the equation at every level. The Fremen are habitually underestimated in every encounter. Sardaukar and Harkonnen patrols are always expecting low numbers of unorganized wretches that can barely cling to life in the harsh desert. Instead they encounter large numbers of highly organized and ritually trained fighters that are better funded and equipped than they are. That translates into a real advantage that the Fremen consistently exploit. They even go so far as to collect their dead, skewing official reports and feeding a myth about their fighting prowess.

Before Paul comes in and radicalizes them Fremen tactics favor ecology not politics. The Fremen are focused on their plantations and grasses, not fighting the Imperial presence on the planet. It's only the few Fremen tribes in the north that are really threatened and even then only by the Sardaukar. Most of the Fremen population is in the south, planting melons and maize, cycling through duty in the spice fields and very rarely going north. They've been doing this for three generations by the time Paul shows up and it's why their population is so large, they are avoiding conflict and focusing on the terraforming of the planet.

In short, the Fremen win because they are always underestimated and always have an advantage in numbers. These are advantages bought and paid for with the riches of spice.

One of the biggest changes from the book to other media has been the character of Rabban.

In the movies he is depicted as a brutish fool who kills his own advisors in showy fits of rage. He is a brute who communicates through incompetence and anger.

But book Rabban is just another military aristocrat. He’s well trained enough to listen when the Sardaukar report that the Fremen are more than rabble. He’s also well aware of the threats to his life from his family. He operates under bad information due to the successful Fremen propaganda campaign upheld by the spice bribes. If not neutered by his Uncle he may have been able to wield the Sardaukar much better or at the very least much sooner.

Even movie Rabban is smarter than it looks. Before he kills his military chief he asks a deviously simple question, why aren’t you holding the entire planet? This is of course due to spice bribes but everyone believes the cover story that the southern hemisphere was uninhabitable. But the question itself was at the heart of the conflict. It was the Fremen’s true advantage, and Rabban sees it and calls it out.

It’s easy to reduce him to the leader of a pogrom and just another Harkonnen psychopath, but Frank painted him differently. Frank showed us a competent military leader gaslit and his hands tied by his overbearing family. Taken in this light maybe the movie Rabban killed his chief for being the Barons man as much as for failing militarily.

It seems to me that most of the nukes we see are tactical, smaller warheads on the order of 1-100 kilotons.

In the opening miniseries we see with the nuking of Caprica that there are multiple small explosions feeding larger mushroom clouds. Over targeting like this is a common military tactic especially on larger geographic targets like entire cities.

We see Galactica take a direct nuclear hit early on and at least once again during the course of the series. That suggest smaller warheads, designed to take out targets with their radiation as much as with their explosive force. After all, nukes in space don't have a medium like air to carry a shockwave. Galactica's armor and double hull likely took the brunt of those attacks, and the amazing part is that they held.

The attack that seems to do the most damage to Galactica is Boomer's jump when stealing Hera. The raptor's jump engines in close proximity to the hull tear a twenty foot hole in Galactica's side. Galactica clear wasn't built to hand spatial distortions as well as she was nuclear blasts.

We see a nuke can be really effective, taking out the resurrection ship with one warhead, and the nuke that went off in the tightly packed fleet above New Caprica was devestating.

However big targets like Galactica and the Hub are routinely targeted with multiple nukes.

As an aside, do you think Pegasus or Valkyrie's hulls would have handled nukes or spatial distortion differently?

Future Hints here: