Category: Opinion

Find a Way or Make One: Thrawn, Star Wars, and History

Posted on December 5, 2013by
“Elementary, my dear Pellaeon!”
Incidentally, Cumberbatch is on my short-list of actors who would make a great Thrawn. Hugo Weaving takes the cake, however.

Grand Admiral Thrawn, of Timothy Zahn’s Heir to the Empire trilogy, was one of the most brilliant opponents ever faced by the New Republic. He outmaneuvered the heroes deftly, often defying impossible odds to accomplish stunning victories over the heroes. At the time of his death, Grand Admiral Thrawn had the New Republic on its knees. In a letter to a fan, Zahn described the blue menace as a composite of several figures: the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, as well as several historical military figures: Hannibal Barca, Robert E. Lee, and Erwin Rommel, among others. Thrawn’s deductive abilities are almost certainly drawn from Conan Doyle’s famous detective, Sherlock Holmes. Holmes is able to assemble an accurate picture of how a crime occurred through deductive abilities, impeccable observation skills, and the aid of his trusty compatriot Dr. James Watson, who serves as the narrator in the Holmes stories. One of Thrawn’s signature traits is his ability to deduce his opponents’ actions before they even begin said actions, through a thorough understanding of psychology, an encyclopedic knowledge of military tactics, and the understanding of alien mindsets through the study of alien art. He even has his own Watson, in the form of Captain Gilad Pellaeon, captain of the Star Destroyer Chimaera and later Grand Admiral of the Imperial Remnant.
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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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Abandoned Universe: What Could Have Been

Posted on December 2, 2013by Feature Articles, Pen and Paper

ST_Lightsaber

The Star Wars Expanded Universe has grown quite large over the years, containing everything from comics to novels to video games. Most of these entries exist within the same continuity, a notable few do not, and some linger somewhere between the two in a sort of state of canon limbo, waiting for day that executive judgment comes and their fate is decided one way or the other. All of these stories share at least one thing in common, however: they were published.

They were released and distributed to, paid for, and read by legions of eager (and occasionally less-than-eager) fans. But what of those tales that never quite made it into circulation for public consumption? Those that made the leap off the drawing board, but still fell short of the printing press in the end? It’s true that there are likely countless proposed and discarded concepts of which we will never hear, but a rare few proved sufficiently promising to be formally announced and yet still failed to see fruition.

In today’s feature, we will examine several of these uncommon cases in which stories were revealed and dangled in front of our eyes before being suddenly snatched away and left as mere obscure historical curiosities.

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The Case of the Disappearing Generals

Posted on November 27, 2013by Cry Havac
"We're going to be generals? No way that lasts."
“We’re going to be generals? No way that lasts.”

The modern-day Expanded Universe is built on one great, big, foundational mistake.

In his “A Case for Starting Over” series, Alexander has been looking at ways a new Disney-era Expanded Universe could improve the post-Return of the Jedi stories. I tend to disagree with that outlook: I don’t think that a few small mistakes or missed opportunities, many of which can simply be remedied with additional stories, call for starting over and throwing out the entire vast enterprise of the EU. But if I were to look forward to any possibilities to be found in a fresh start, correcting this glaring error would be the one.

What’s the mistake? The decision to have Han and Lando resign their commissions.

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Geek Culture Doesn’t Have a Woman Problem, It Has a Geek Problem

Posted on November 26, 2013by Scotch Tape and Popsicle Sticks

brianwood-sdcc

As pieces like this so often must, let me start with some caveats.

I watch a great deal of cable news. MSNBC is, functionally, my white noise machine—it’s what I put on my television when I’m not watching something. I get information from it, sure, but that’s incidental; that’s not why I have it on, and really, that’s not what cable news is there for anyway.

What cable news has instilled in me, above all, is an overriding, omnipresent awareness of just how little of what people tell you can really be believed. How easy it is to mischaracterize, or prevaricate, or outright lie, with a straight face and a clear conscience, and sleep soundly that night.

Once upon a time, I respected John Edwards. Once upon a time, I respected Anthony Weiner. Even with the cargo plane full of skepticism I bring to bear when imbibing a political story, I was still susceptible to people saying things I wanted to hear, in the manner I wanted to hear them.

So when a story appears that basically boils down to that least reliable of all premises—he said, she said—my gut reaction is to temper myself, even when the allegations are deadly serious.  Especially when the allegations are deadly serious.
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