Or they could sell the damaged but otherwise luxurious royal yacht and buy a smaller but still-functional ship to get them to Coruscant. Or even just tickets to Coruscant. Even if it’s just tickets for “Padme” and her one handmaid who looks like Natalie Portman, plus Qui Gon and Obi-Wan, and everyone else in the royal party has to hole up for a while, it’s not like it’s going to take very long for them to send someone back to pick them up.
With the added bonus that they wouldn’t be found by the merchant guild assassins if they were in a shit-ship
May also be a state property issue - Queen is only a title, and we learn in the second movie that Amidala has been electorally replaced as Queen.
Sorta like if a president tried to sell Air Force One.
While the President probably couldn’t sell Air Force One in a desperate situation, the Secret Service and/or Air Force people on board could. If there were any legal issues with this, the President could pardon them afterwards. While the power of the pardon is often abused, but this would actually be a good case for it to be used.
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So the problems with the other plans is that it could tip off the Trade Federation, but the convoluted plan they went with was better even though it also tipped off the Trade Federation?
The sensible plan would be to get off the planet as quickly as possible, the longer they stayed there the more likely they’d be discovered. Which is what happened.
Selling the flashy ship and either buying a less conspicuous ship or simply booking passage on a ship would mean they wouldn’t have to wait until after Boonta Eve to leave. Maybe even hire a smuggler that has experience in evading detection? Given the enemy is a Trade Federation that has a penchant for blockades there’s probably a good number of smugglers with experience in getting around those blockades and those smugglers are no friends of the Trade Federation.
But since they already did the thing that makes the most sense in Star Wars already they gotta change it up. But that means doing something that doesn’t make a lot of sense.
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They only need to get the value of transport to Coruscant, they don’t need to get the full value of what the ship is worth.
I mean if someone said they would give you a Lamborghini with broken engine in exchange for a ride to the next state, you wouldn’t take that deal? Sure it might be a headache for you to either tow it to a garage to get it repaired or find a buyer who will buy it as-is, but you’re talking about something like $100K in value just for giving some people a lift somewhere.
They could be out of there almost immediately if the safety of the Queen was top priority and were willing to take a huge loss on the sale of the ship.
“Ok, ya got me. I wanna win a slave boy in a pod race. Obi Wan is getting a bit old.”
This boy… there’s something special about him. I believe he may be the chosen one!
Sorry Obi Wan, you’re no longer the “chosen one.”
Consider that all the money handlers probably work for the Hutts, who they’re trying to avoid.
Now imagine one of those handlers reporting to the Hutts tip them off that someone is exchanging a shit ton of republic credits, someone who hasn’t checked into a ship dock and is trying to stay low.
Now, I don’t actually think George Lucas thought of that, but it’s easy enough to explain away.
Nice. That was decent apologetics
Honestly the pod race was one of the few parts of Episode 1 that were actually pretty good.
Pod race. Fight at the end. Gungaboss shaking his head for no real reason.
It’s their culture!
I JUDGE THEIR CULTURE
My mitichlorians! Noooooooooo
“Oh, you need a hyperdrive? NP we’ll send someone to pick you up instead.”
I still don’t understand why the currency wasn’t good. Travel pretty often abroad for work and fun, exchanging euros or dollars for local is less painful than shaving. You go to a booth, usually at the airport, and they do it right there. Yes you can usually get a slightly better rate if you go to a bank but it usually isn’t massively better. Also they have like FTL communication plus plenty of computers. Why not use a credit card?
'Cause Republic currency is digital (or at least I assume it is because it’s called “dataries” and Watoo says it isn’t “real” enough) and Tatooine is the ass-end of space. Either they don’t have the communication infrastructure to deal with Republic credits or they just refuse to due to fears of having their transactions tracked.
Ok I guess. Been to places in the world where the bidet/tolietpaper/sink was a garden hose that was tied to a gravity feed rain water tank that you had to sort out yourself over the toilet mounted over a hole and was still able to use my credit card.
Surely, even Tatooine will have money changers, no magic required?
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I bet that is like the last profession. Long after even hookers are replaced with robots there will still be someone willing to make currency a into currency b while skimming a bit off the top for themselves.
People give the sequels a bad rep, but the Phantom menace has a lot more plot holes than all 3 sequels combined.
Like queen Amidala, who hired Jedi to break her through a blockade in order to participate in a senate meeting, only to want to return immediately afterwards because “her people need her”.
And that in a world where holographic meetings are the norm.
The blockade was jamming communication. The reason she wanted to return was that the republic refused to help, which was the whole reason she traveled Coruscant in the first place. She had to get back to Naboo in person to make an alliance with the Gungans.
Qui-Gon would never take any action likely to mess with
the plotthe Will of the Force.
