Category: Opinion

Centerpoint Station: An Indictment of the GFFA

Posted on January 27, 2014by

A couple of weeks ago, my In Defense of Superweapons article omitted Centerpoint Station, save perhaps as a vague mention as falling into the ancient star-killing tech category. Some commentators wondered about that, which in turn led to this!

Centerpoint Station is, to me, quite different from all the other superweapons – for they were designed as weapons. All of them have a quite clear and defined intent – to kill and destroy on a mammoth scale! Centerpoint Station is not this. Oh sure, the Empire advanced the line that the Death Star was for asteroid clearance but the duplicity and lack of belief in the statement is obvious. The Death Star projects exist for one purpose: To terrify a galaxy back in line. (Although it could be said the designers or the Empire didn’t really consider the full implications of their success.)

In contrast Centerpoint Station was created by its ancient builders to do just that – build! With Centerpoint Station we are no longer in the area of technology being created to kill but rather technology being perverted from its original aims!

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Star Wars and Genre: The Prison Story

Posted on January 23, 2014by Cry Havac
The Great Escape, maybe the greatest prison escape movie, so it's pretty well named
The Great Escape — maybe the greatest escape movie, so it’s pretty well named

With Maul: Lockdown soon to appear on bookshelves, the time seems right to take a look at the prison story genre. Stories about prison and prisoners go back a long time (though probably not as far back as you might think, given the relatively recent introduction of imprisonment as punishment). Though Lockdown is the first pure prison story of note for Star Wars, the genre has its place in the Star Wars franchise as well.

Prison stories, though united by their depiction of the experience of incarceration, tend to break down into two main groups. There are escape stories, which concentrate on portraying jailbreak attempts — they are often spiritual cousins of the heist story, focused on elaborate schemes to get out rather than in. Then there are prison life stories, which are concerned with depicting the travails of life behind bars rather than telling a jailbreak yarn. It’s not always a binary distinction; The Shawshank Redemption manages the twist of seeming to be solely a prison life story until the end reveals that it’s been an escape story all along, too. Cool Hand Luke‘s titular hero’s escapes are an important part of his character, but the film’s focus is not on their execution, but on the toll prison life is taking on Luke. But overall, the distinction is useful.

Since the Star Wars franchise is better suited to adventurous capers than melancholy meditations on the hardships of the incarcerated, and since both the regular casts of characters and the needs of a franchise geared toward ongoing story tend against protagonists rotting away in jail, the Expanded Universe is always going to lend itself more naturally to escape stories than to ones about prison life. I will focus, therefore, on that area of storytelling, a type of adventure that is a natural fit for the setting.

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JJ Abrams, Jesse Plemons, and the Best-Case Scenario

Posted on January 21, 2014by Scotch Tape and Popsicle Sticks

By and large, I’m perfectly content to let Episode VII rumors come and go without comment. They can be interesting, and I don’t begrudge anyone choosing to cover them, I just think that there’s rarely much to be gained from spending one’s column inches picking apart developments about which we’re drastically underinformed, and that may or may not even be true to begin with.

But a certain image of the sequel’s development has been coming together over the last couple months that I think could make for an instructive thought experiment—meaning, even if every assumption I’m about to make is incorrect, my point can still stand. So keep in mind that this article isn’t an endorsement of any particular rumors, it’s just that—a thought experiment.
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A Case for Starting Over, Part IV: Guardians of Peace and Justice

Posted on January 20, 2014by Pen and Paper

ExarKunspirit_egtf

In the first three installments of this series, we looked at how a reborn Expanded Universe might take advantage of the opportunity for a fresh start offered by the announcement of the Sequel Trilogy to build on its various strengths, improving the treatment of certain elements and elevating others from being merely good to potential greatness. That is not to make the claim, however, that the existing post-Return of the Jedi continuity is entirely without its flaws. Quite the opposite, in fact, as more than a few readers are likely willing to attest.

For the latter half of the series, we’ll be taking a somewhat more critical approach, turning an examining eye upon the structural weaknesses of the universe in the decades following the Battle of Endor, and looking at how a new beginning might enable us to improve what we find to be less than ideal and set what has gone astray back on the right path in addition to reinforcing that which is already fundamentally sound.

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The Smaller Star Warriors – Why Average Soldiers Fight for the Cause

Posted on January 17, 2014by Feature Articles, Guest Editorials

starwarsidentities

We all know Luke, Leia and Han. They were destined to save the galaxy and lead the Rebellion. Palpatine was determined to take over the galaxy and ensure permanent domination. This is the fundamental basis of Star Wars as we know it. But one large factor is often overlooked, or rather an innumerable number of smaller details that add up to make the difference. The average soldiers who serve both sides of the conflict. Risking their own lives and taking the lives of their enemies.

By why? What does TK-421 gain by guarding the Millennium Falcon in the Death Star’s hanger bay? Why did so many Bothans die to ensure that the Rebellion could learn of the Second Death Star? The motivation behind these numerous, yet faceless, characters is often ignored in both the movies, and the Expanded Universe. In fact, the only armies that can be accepted without considering their personal feelings are those of the Separatist Alliance or Xim the Despot – droids who are programed for war.

As soon as an army utilizes living, thinking beings, emotion and reason enter the equation. And so the question must inevitably follow, what possible reason could they have to put their lives on the line for something that they may not even benefit from, even should they survive.

It’s the same question that real-life political leaders must grapple with, and historians forever analyze to understand the rise and fall of empires. And in the fictional world of Star Wars, there is no less a role for this. In fact, many of the militaries we see are nothing more than a reflection of our own history.
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