Author: Ben Crofts

In Defense of Implausible Victories

Posted on December 3, 2013by Obiwomble's Outlook

More than any other work in Star Wars, the New Jedi Order (NJO) arc gave rise to a sense that for the Republic and Jedi to win the war something quite heinous would have to happen. Deploy Alpha Red? No, that isn’t smart against an enemy with superior biotech, but once having gained a decisive advantage over the enemy, would they all have to be fought to the death? The finale to the story, The Unifying Force (TUF), had to tackle this thorny question head-on and gave a decisive, unequivocal answer. No.

I recently re-read TUF, it’s been a decade since I last read it, so neither I nor the story can possibly appear the same. In the climatic battle which sees a Yuuzhan Vong armada assault Mon Calamari, the allied fleet gives a strong accounting of itself but is, nonetheless, outnumbered and outgunned. They cannot win this by force of arms. And, in a lot of ways, that’s the point! Star Wars may, by title, be a story about wars in space but there’s nothing that actually requires the victories be particularly military. In some respects the series is quite anti-militaristic.

One area is in its victories and this goes all the way back to the Original Trilogy. A small solo-piloted starfighter destroys a moon-sized battlestation able to destroy planets? And then, heaping further insult upon the Empire, an entire fleet of Star Destroyers, with a Super Star Destroyer as its flagship no less, loses to a “pitiful band” they outnumber and out-gun! Should the Rebel Alliance have won at Endor in military terms? No. Should Thrawn have won at Bilbringi? Probably. The Yuuzhan Vong? As shown in The Unifying Force, certainly, they had the superior fleet numbers and strategy.
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Fleeing the End: Looking for Lost Magic

Posted on November 19, 2013by

I recently read the first trade collection of the Brian Wood Star Wars series and… well, it didn’t go well and this was some time before the very recent controversy over Wood’s interactions with female comics professionals. But it also got me thinking as to why I’m still looking at items in the Expanded Universe at all. It’s fair to say that I’ve become more disillusioned with Star Wars over the last decade due to a combination of corporate decisions and dismissal of it from one G. Lucas who’s nevertheless happy to profit from it.

Reading the new comic, however, brought a new aspect to the fore that I’d been unaware of, or perhaps trying really hard not to notice – and that’s the sense that the magic has gone. People go to the films, they see works like Star Wars that take them away to another world, another time but it’s only for a couple of hours. What if you could stay longer? What if there were more stories? What if you didn’t have to let that magical experience fade away? Enter the Expanded Universe.

So what did Wood’s Star Wars do that was so offensive? It went and stomped all over the Classic Star Wars run by Goodwin and Williamson, oh it wasn’t intentional, it was a side-effect! It wasn’t personal, it was just business, you understand? Oh, I understand all right and I’m flogging the book in response at a very competitive rate! Just business you understand?
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Jeffrey Brown’s Star Wars & Star Wars Publishing

Posted on November 18, 2013by Obiwomble's Outlook

A couple of days back I grabbed Jeffrey Brown’s trio of Star Wars books for a bargain price and, after getting them delivered, went through them pretty quick. His latest is Jedi Academy, but it’s the preceding books, Darth Vader and Son and Vader’s Little Princess that really got him attention and deservedly so.

For me, it was the Jedi Academy book that showed the limits of Brown’s skills – namely, he’s great at observational cartoons that capture a single moment but this book doesn’t really work in that way, instead telling the story of a new student at the Jedi Academy, which from what I can tell, pretty much mostly resembles a US school in its structure and social interactions. This is unfortunate as it immediately limits the story in a parochial way and greatly reduces my interest in one swift stroke. Nor do I ever end up caring about the character I’m supposed to.

In contrast the Darth Vader and Son and Vader’s Little Princess books are far superior showcases for his skills. They mix observations about parenting and children with comedy riffs on all those famous one-liners from the films that we all know so well. It’s a very clever and inspired combination that’s nowhere near as easy as it looks to come up with. A lot of the best ideas are very simple but only once someone else has come up with them! All of these pieces are, on their own, excellent but it’s the overall sense of enthusiastic affection that runs through the books that raise them to another level of brilliance.
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Aggressive Negotiations: Fans and the Expanded Universe

Posted on November 8, 2013by Aggressive Negotiations

October 26, 2013 – a day that will live in virtual infamy? No, not right, insanity? Getting closer I suppose. Four Star Wars fans got together for what was to be a short chat on the future of the Expanded Universe. Three in Britain, one in Germany – so the EU was to discuss…. the EU! (And there’s more where that came from!) Ground rules were set – a couple inevitably broken – a rough timetable set, though it really was more like a guideline and said short chat became an epic spot of online comedy mixed with some serious points!

The participants with me were: (brackets indicate TFN forum usernames)

Becca Hughes (@Beccatoria)
Stefan Pfister (@CeiranHarmony)
Gorefiend (@Gorefiend)

The doomed ground rules:

Stefan: Ok then we better set something straight now: NO 3 million clones, no death star diameters, no superstardestroyer lengths ;)

Becca: deal, I can’t remember why half that stuff is contentious anyway. (Well okay, even I remember most of the 3 million clones fiasco BUT STILL)

Gorefiend: As far as I am concerned only evil Clones fought against the Republic in the Clone Wars, the Death Star is the size of a moon and Vader’s Star Destroyer is big.

Stefan: Evil is a matter of point of view ;) but I agree there. I want my old… well ancient… Clone Wars… Republic invaded by Mandalorians who use clones against it.

Gorefiend: Wasn’t it insane Clone Masters?

Stefan: Yub

(EDIT: Yes, Ewoks, every controversy going and I hadn’t even turned up, still, if others do the work for you why worry?)

Prelude….

Becca: Ben! Two things: 1) I’m assuming you’ll be acting as an informal mod for the chat, and 2) we discussed it and we’re hoping you’re gonna run this thing through a spellchecker and correct for typos before it goes live!

(EDIT: They hoped – correctly as it turns out.)
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The Pitch – Novels Humbly Requested by Eleven-ThirtyEight

Posted on November 1, 2013by , , , , , and Not A Committee

Whatever one thinks of the Star Wars novels that have come out since Fate of the Jedi ended, one has to admit that their primary distinguishing feature is experimentation—in a little over a year we’ve gotten a western, an Ocean’s Eleven riff, a female-led Dawn of the Jedi story, and the first X-Wing book in thirteen years, among others. Now that no one—not even, it seems, LucasBooks’ Jennifer Heddle—is quite sure what’s going to become of the Expanded Universe in a couple years. It seems there’s never been a better time for the EU to just go for broke and see what works. To that end, the staff of Eleven-ThirtyEight humbly submits the following for your consideration.

Mike: X-Wing: Red Squadron

Seriously, now—how has this not happened already? In addition to being the perfect mix of fan-bait and movie tie-in, a book telling the origins of Red Squadron would be the perfect opportunity to sort out the myriad gaps and inconsistencies of this era and deliver a coherent history of the pilots who destroyed the Death Star.

If they were really into the idea, the concept could even spawn two different books—one pre-Yavin, detailing the initial formation of Red Squadron from pieces of several other units of the early Rebellion (and incorporating the proto-Red Squadron from the X-Wing game that gave us Keyan Farlander, one of the few Yavin survivors), and one post-Yavin that tells of the “Rogue Flight” era, when Luke and Wedge, alongside Commander Narra (an important character who dates all the way back to the Empire radio drama yet has had few moments in the spotlight) rebuilt Red Squadron almost from the ground up and eventually evolved it into the Rogue Squadron seen on Hoth.
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