One of the things that always irked me about the original game and its expansion (as well as other science-fiction series that feature habitable 'lava planets', like Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith) is the very existence of Char. I know the series is by no means realistic, but it still bothers me for some reason. Under certain celestial conditions - a planet existing too near its sun and being pulled apart by gravity, or a planet constantly bombarded with asteroid impacts - such a planet could exist in real life. However, it should certainly not be habitable by human beings without some sort of armor, let alone the biological Zerg (another sci-fi 'brain bug' that irks me is the biological enemy capable of posing a massive thread to high technology, but that's for another thread). The tremendous amount of volcanic activity should cause the planet to have a poisonous atmosphere as well as create a massive green house effect, which ought to keep the temperatures in the mid-hundreds of degrees.
I was thinking of a similar scenario as well with that planet from Episode 3! My irk was that Obi-wan and Anakin couldn't of had their dramatic fight scene on the planet's molten surface because they couldn't have been breathing! A volcanic planet, covered with an almost constant lava flow, would create an atmosphere that would be absolutely poisonous! Almost 0% oxygen, if any! Green plants and some types of bacteria produce oxygen, which is nice, but they would all be dead from the intense heat, and as far as I know, no extremophile bacteria make oxygen, because they synthesize iron for energy. Basically, their lungs would be torn apart from pnumonicultramicroscopicsiliconvolcaniconiosis, or that disease that is caused by breathing very fine particles, such as volcanic ash. In simpler-er terms, they couldn't breath, and thus, they're dead.
With Revenge of the Sith, it's even worse than Brood War: the volcanic activity on that planet was not even close to being natural - far too explosive. But then again, some have speculated that the area they were in was a shielded/partially terraformed mining area. Plus they were Jedi, and could control the Force, and maybe Obi-Wan extended some sort of Force protection over Padme (remember that the miners were wearing suits). The unarmored Terrans and Zerg have no such excuse.
hahah! my friend made me remember that from school... tom? anways, the zerg are just awesome like that. They dont need a great happy planet to live. I think it's fine.
Remember that the Zerg have adapted and evolved. They have become a space-faring race (where space has absolutely no atmosphere) and yet they still continue to survive. The Zerg are a hardy species and if anything, the planet Char suits their lethality and explosiveness.
