Whoa - MAJOR mistake nobody is noticing.

[Tsu'roen]

A couple quick counter points to Tsu'roen's post above:

#4: Quaritch didn't know what link Jake was using. He didn't get an opportunity to find out because Jake jumped onto the suit before he could smash more units.

The Implausible comment:

There are some things that don't quite add up. One is how Norm got his Avatar (and ultimately the other Avatars). We know that Jake's Avatar was lying in a heap of ash by the remains of Kelutrel. Norm's avatar are most likely back at Hell's Gate. Grace's Avatar ws taken with the Omaticaya to the Tree of Souls supposedly. (This makes sense, as we see both grace and her avatar being carried to the ToS). The fly in the ointment is Norm's Avatar. Where was his?

Norm's Avatar was at the shack - it was not at Hometree with Grace and Jake but also not returned to Hell's Gate when Quaritch hauled them out.

And of course, a response team of some sort should have available. The only reasoning one wasn't sent (in my opinion) is that Quaritch simply planned to kill them in the end anyway. So why bother sending out a response team? The time line for the events in reference is plausible to an extent, though. In a way, the movie seems to convey a rushed feeling when this scene is playing through. Once the lab is squared away, things tend to slow down a bit.

Well he was very eager to shoot them when they escaped and he doesn't strike me as a guy to put things off for later. Especially since he didn't know at that point that he would have to make a strike against the Tree of Souls (he decided that only after Jake assembled his troops there)

And as for them flying over the Tree of Souls (what's the Na'vi word for that again?), I think that if they had heard it, they wouldn't have cared, or rather they purposely avoided looking for it, because they realized the danger of the tawtute, and also because they just destroyed Kelutrel.  They would not want to face that again.

Trudy didn't fly over the Tree of Souls, but past it. You can see the ikran riders, but they are flying toward the Tree. I'm sure the Omaticaya weren't in any condition to confront the Samson. They may have mistaken the Samson for a Scorpion as well. In any case, the landing site of the lab isn't exactly far from the Tree, either.

I don't find it plausible that they just ignore what happens right next to them. Yes they have been beaten. But now it's about the survival of the clan. So I doubt they don't have guards on the watch. Even if they were not in the condition to attack the Samson they would at least have sent someone to see what's going on there. That's just basic precautions.  

[pbhead]

Assuming the RDA has been on Pandora for at least 5 years.

at a very, very, very minimum, 35 years. The current line of isv's require unobtanium to construct... so... it would have taken a very very minimum of 7 years (and theres a good chance that that first ship was slower) for that first shipment of unobtanium to reach earth... and then 8 years for each of the ISV's built before the venture star, and then 20 years for the ammount of time the Venture star has been operational. (from earth, to pandora, back to earth, and currently in orbit around pandora)

They haven't been on Pandora that long.

It's a maximum of 25 years, because thats ~ when they first discovered the life on there.

I think a more accurate figure is like 10-15 years. Remember, it takes 5 years to get there to start with.

Yeah, I said maximum.

But I think it would actually be around 18 years at most, because it only takes two years to send info back to Earth, from Pandora, or vice versa. The five year rule only applies to the ships.

now wait a second... does it give a date on when "life was discovered?"

because that would be the time when the first, not-using-unobtanium ship reached pandora (they cant build ships with stuff that they dont got)

Now, check me on this, but last time i checked, the Venture star, when it reached pandora in the movie, it arrived to pandora for the second time. so... it has done 1 and 1/2 trips.... 3 burns.  one leg takes approximatly 7 years from the view point of the people on earth... so the Venture star must have been commisioned 20ish years ago.  I also am preety sure the venture star was the 9th (of 12) ships built... and that the ships are preety evenly spaced... and once again... they cant build ships that require unobtanium without getting unobtanium in the first place... so some how, before the first ISV was built... they got to pandora, got some, and got it back.... and built 8 ships before the ISV venture star was. how long did that take?
prolly a long while.

[El Jacko]

New idea: Would't it be possible to send a message to an outbound ISV and use that as a relay station? Or... hmm, no. They travel slower than light so it would just ensure that the message is more often received, corrected and amplified...

It would still take 4.7 years to get back to earth, even using a relay system. If you transmit something from an object travelling at the speed of light, the transmission travels at the speed of light, so object and message will reach the destination at the same time. Can't go faster than C.

[Kìte'eyä Aungia]

After escaping from Hell's Gate:
- How long would it have taken Quaritch to mobilize another Samson or Scorpion to go after them - and he knew where they were going. It is common practice to always keep an alarm team ready. And Quaritch seemed to be the guy to follow this practice. And then Trudy had to land, get the cables out, connect them to the Samson and to the container and disconnect the two containers from each other - all that has to take at least an hour in total - more than enough time for Quaritch to have a Scorpion there to blast them out of the sky.

Might be grasping at straws here, but in the scene where they are first flying out to the shack, Norm comments that you can't see anything from the cockpit, so any pilot attempting that trip would have to be able to fly completely blind (no instruments and no visibility). Maybe Trudy is the only pilot who knows the region well enough to make the trip safely.

[kintìomum]

According to a small note at the bottom of one ASG-page the giant pit they created (the mine) was carved out in less than a year.
Sure, this needed the giant machinery they're using now but it's pretty impressive none the less.
I guess that the docks can spit out an ISV every 4 years or so (the Venture Star is stated to have been a colossal financial risk meaning a long term project for me) so that'd leave (8x4) 32 years since the first ship left Earth.
With the standard travel time of about 6 years per trip and the need to refuel (meaning they had to start producing antimatter) and build the first parts of Hell's Gate and the mine I'd say it was a two-three year stay for the first ship.

The one with their escape not being followed struck me as odd on the last view. There seem to be several Scorpions in the air patrolling around Hell's Gate (watch the controllers surround-screen and the display behind Selfridge when he first talks to Grace), so why not sent one of them to intercept? I don't think that the Flux is that close to Hell's Gate that a transport (the Samson) could outrun a gunship (the Scorpion).

[Tsu'roen]

What about this:

[kintìomum]

Interesting. I think I can explain it:
Pandora was discovered with a large telescope and as soon as they found out about some strange magnetic fields they built a probe (I guess that the RDA was already controlling everything above traveling airplanes). The probe delivered proof of Unobtanium and the first ISV was built. Large, bulky, not very efficient but up to the task nonetheless.
Now, setting this 32 years in the past works quite fine. The ISV is built (28 years left), travels to Pandora (~23 years left) and the first humans get to see the moon with their own eyes and a lot more eye set for the details. They set foot on pandoran soil -with shovels, pick axes and giant robodozers at hand. With these distances you don't let them go to "see what's needed and return to get it".
The first team will have discovered very soon that there was urgent need for an armed security force and the message was relayed back to Earth (perhaps immediatly after they received the distress call from a team attacked by nantang).
The RDA creates a new sub-division in their security forces and calls them Alpha Centauri SecOps. The next ISV on route to Pandora carries not only some folks who know how to point a gun in the right direction but some of the best interstellar mercs Earth has come up with so far (being the only ones helps that statement a lot).
Should work, no?
Humans didn't know much about Pandora before they arrived in person. They knew it had an atmosphere containing enough oxygen to be breathable with exopacks and that there was a world rich in plant life and a superconductor in easily manageable depths in the ground.

edit: my bad, named the security division wrong

[Technowraith]

I didn't know RDA had a formal name for their security division. Unless that was something that was mentioned in an open source. Not sure. (Not that it bothers me. It's something that if it happened, i missed it during all 35 screenings of the film).

[Tsu'roen]

ASG p. 5 states that the first mission was an unmanned research craft that send/returned data and images that actually triggered the first manned mission. Though I'm not sure if the first manned mission was already set up for a full fledged mining operation. More likely (based on today's practice) it was a scouting mission to determine the feasibility of mining Pandora.

It turns out the suits are interested in Josh because of
his genes. Tom Sully had signed up to something called
the Avatar Program. In the Avatar Program you sign a ten
year contract to work on Pandora, a planet of the Alpha
Centauri starsystem.

Like everyone, Josh has heard of Pandora, or more properly
Alpha Centauri B-4. Discovered by the first interstellar
expedition twenty five years ago, Pandora has been the
single most interesting thing to happen to the human race
in ages. The news services love to run clips of the wild
scenery on Pandora, and its bizarre flora and fauna. To a
culture which has lost all contact with the natural world,
Pandora is mysterious, primal, and terrifying.

Now this first draft contains many details that have been changed in the 2007 Script, Movie and ASG

One of them is that Pandora's sun now is Alpha Centauri A (ASG p. 4: "Alpha Centauri A (...), serves as the sun for Pandora, ..."
Another one is that in that version Pandora was an independent planet and not a moon of a gas giant - which would have actually be more plausible since a gas giant like Polyphemus is highly improbable in a binary star system like Alpha Centauri A-B:

Possibility of planets
... All the observational studies have so far failed to find any evidence for brown dwarfs or gas giant planets.[68][69]...

Theoretical planets
Some computer generated models of planetary formation predict the existence of terrestrial planets around both Alpha Centauri A and B.[72][73][74] Other models also suggested that formation of gas giant planets similar to Jupiter and Saturn remain unlikely because of the significant gravitational and angular momentum effects of this binary system.[75] ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_Centauri#Possibility_of_planets

This early draft also seems to be the source of the 25 years since the discovery. Since not everything has changed it is still possible that this specific information is still valid. At least I could not find anything contradicting it.

I didn't know RDA had a formal name for their security division. Unless that was something that was mentioned in an open source. Not sure. (Not that it bothers me. It's something that if it happened, i missed it during all 35 screenings of the film).

Yes, it's Sec-Ops or SECOPS - next time look for the side of Trudy's helicopter, right below the big number "16"
If you look hard you can also see it on this picture:

[pbhead]

That poster makes sence... My estimate puts the earliest a permenent colony could have been founded at... 20+8-7 years ago... 21 years (although the ship would have left (at the earliest) 28 years ago)... (which is assuming 1 year for space ship production time...which is definatly on the short side...)  25 years of permenant settlement actually seems just about riight as far as timing. (a production time of 1.5 years puts it at just about 25-26 years or so, which makes sence considering the ship's spacing, and seems to work well.)

they prolly didnt have secops when that first ship (with no unobtanium used in construction) got there, and they prolly didnt found a permenant colony, sincethey knew (that with one ship) it would be 14 years before it could possibly be resupplied... so they went their, picked up some easy unobtanium, (a floating mountain, anyone?) and got going back.

the old 880 scriptment has to be wrong/out of date... the math does not work out at all... When Cameron was first writing it, i dont think he had hired his team of scientists and futurists to get everything nice and perfect on the first go.

[Technowraith]

Nice find, Tsu'reon. Even after 35 screenings, i never noticed that. 

[Txontaw]

next time look for the side of Trudy's helicopter, right below the big number "16"

Wait. I don't think that's Trudy's helicopter, because that's when Quaritch comes to the mobile link site, and he didn't come in Trudy's heli.

[Technowraith]

next time look for the side of Trudy's helicopter, right below the big number "16"

Wait. I don't think that's Trudy's helicopter, because that's when Quaritch comes to the mobile link site, and he didn't come in Trudy's heli.

That's Samson 19 in the pic referenced. Trudy would be Samson 16.

[Txonyä'ite]

Just a quick observation on why Trudy wasn't chased when they escaped from Hell's Gate.

I wonder if after all the carnage at kelutral the pilots on duty weren't quite so eager to go and shoot down one of their own. It seems to me that even the dragon pilot did not sound to thrilled about what had happened after Kelutral fell. Qauritch says "lets boogey" and instead of smiling or offering a quip in return, he says with a completely straight face "Dragon, coming left"

Just because the pilots followed orders and did what they thought was necessary doesn't necessarily mean that they would do there best to fire on Trudy.

I guess I am proposing an "oh no, they must have gotten by me sir" type scenario.

[Will Txankamuse]

That's Samson 19 in the pic referenced. Trudy would be Samson 16.

In defense of Tsu'roen, he uses the word 'also' to stress that in his first line he is talking about Trudy's Samson, and in the line below he is talking about a different one.  I only noticed this because I was going to pick up on his 'mistake' and then realized that if you read it that way, it's not a mistake.

Will

[Technowraith]

That's Samson 19 in the pic referenced. Trudy would be Samson 16.

In defense of Tsu'roen, he uses the word 'also' to stress that in his first line he is talking about Trudy's Samson, and in the line below he is talking about a different one.  I only noticed this because I was going to pick up on his 'mistake' and then realized that if you read it that way, it's not a mistake.

Will

I wasn't shooting anyone down, but more or less stating a fact. I figured that even though Samson 19 is shown, Samson 16 would bear the same marks. So yes, Tsu'reon is correct. And he's got a sharp eye (or i just never paid attention close enough) to catch that.

[Tsu'roen]

Just a quick observation on why Trudy wasn't chased when they escaped from Hell's Gate.

I wonder if after all the carnage at kelutral the pilots on duty weren't quite so eager to go and shoot down one of their own. It seems to me that even the dragon pilot did not sound to thrilled about what had happened after Kelutral fell. Qauritch says "lets boogey" and instead of smiling or offering a quip in return, he says with a completely straight face "Dragon, coming left"

Just because the pilots followed orders and did what they thought was necessary doesn't necessarily mean that they would do there best to fire on Trudy.

I guess I am proposing an "oh no, they must have gotten by me sir" type scenario.

I also wondered why Quaritch did not send someone after Trudy, Grace, Jake and Norm when they escaped. He was very eager to shoot them but then didn't do anything else even though he knew exactly where they were going -> site 26.
But I doubt he would have had a hard time to find a pilot willing to shoot them down. Not in that bloodthirsty crowd.

I also wondered why Trudy had no trouble after "deserting" from the Homtree raid.

[Mithcoriel]

2. Missiles able to hit Trudy's Samson:
A normal missile shouldn't work at all in the flux as it would screw up the electronics badly. But that would also apply to all the aircraft if they were not specifically shielded for that environment.
But there are actually wire guided missiles (Milan, BGM-71 TOW, ...). At that stage the wire is probably fiberglass and therefore safe from electromagnetic interferences and the electronics are heavily shielded. I could see the RDA using those in an electromagnetically active environment like Pandora.

This was mentioned in "Moviemistakes", in the Correction section, incase you care:

It was said in the dialogue that the area surrounding the Soul Tree disrupts electronic missile guidance systems. That's why the humans planned to manually drop explosives over the Soul Tree instead of blasting it with a guided missile. Yet during the aerial dogfights between the Na'vi and the "Sky People" Trudy was off the sky by a missile from the mothership that had a curved trajectory [a guided missile!]
[Many electronic things worked - just not radar. Heat seeking missiles should work fine.]

Especially since he [Quaritch] didn't know at that point that he would have to make a strike against the Tree of Souls (he decided that only after Jake assembled his troops there)

I'm quite sure Quaritch planned right from the start that he would attack the Tree of Souls. It was only after the many Na'vi arrived that he had a good excuse for it, to convince the other people.

[Tsu'roen]

Especially since he [Quaritch] didn't know at that point that he would have to make a strike against the Tree of Souls (he decided that only after Jake assembled his troops there)

I'm quite sure Quaritch planned right from the start that he would attack the Tree of Souls. It was only after the many Na'vi arrived that he had a good excuse for it, to convince the other people.

Sure, he had that on his screen from the point he learned about that place (why he didn't know of it before is gonna be another topic).
What I wanted to say was that he had not planned it in detail and no timeline for that attack when Jake and the others escaped. That's why I find it so hard to believe that he didn't go after them.

[Kätsyín te Zotxekay Tsyal’itan]

Just a quick observation on why Trudy wasn't chased when they escaped from Hell's Gate.

I wonder if after all the carnage at kelutral the pilots on duty weren't quite so eager to go and shoot down one of their own. It seems to me that even the dragon pilot did not sound to thrilled about what had happened after Kelutral fell. Qauritch says "lets boogey" and instead of smiling or offering a quip in return, he says with a completely straight face "Dragon, coming left"

Just because the pilots followed orders and did what they thought was necessary doesn't necessarily mean that they would do there best to fire on Trudy.

I guess I am proposing an "oh no, they must have gotten by me sir" type scenario.

I also wondered why Quaritch did not send someone after Trudy, Grace, Jake and Norm when they escaped. He was very eager to shoot them but then didn't do anything else even though he knew exactly where they were going -> site 26.
But I doubt he would have had a hard time to find a pilot willing to shoot them down. Not in that bloodthirsty crowd.

I also wondered why Trudy had no trouble after "deserting" from the Homtree raid.

The reason I think Trudy had no trouble deserting the Kelutrel raid is because she, unlike any of the other pilots, had grown, thru knowing the AVTR drivers, to respect the Na'vi. She saw it as butchery, and decided not to take part in it.