Category: Opinion

Escape Pod: The Katana Fleet

Posted on March 14, 2016by Scotch Tape and Popsicle Sticks

katana-beliblis

In addition to the many existing Legends stories that are ripe for adaptation in the new canon, there are some that, while full of potential, Legends never really got around to telling. One of these is the legend (ha) of the Katana fleet. Dating back to Dark Force Rising, the second book of the Thrawn trilogy, the Katana fleet was a huge force of two hundred Dreadnaught heavy cruisers that went missing thirty-two forty-five twenty-seven many years before the Battle of Yavin only to be discovered by the smuggler Talon Karrde, and eventually to become a piece in Grand Admiral Thrawn’s game against the New Republic.

The fleet was constructed at a time when the Old Republic’s power had grown stagnant—we knew that much even in 1992—and was meant to symbolize a return to greatness. All two hundred ships had their controls slaved to the flagship, meaning that they could be crewed by a scant two thousand people each (as opposed to the ships’ usual complements of sixteen thousand, or later Star Destroyer crews of more than double that). This way, the Katana fleet represented military might without militarization; the cutting-edge slave-circuit technology meant increased security for the Republic with a bare minimum of its sons and daughters put in harm’s way.

That was the plan, anyway. Upon the fleet’s launch, the crew of the Katana itself was ravaged by a deadly virus that had the fun side effect of driving them insane before it killed them. In their delirium, the crew jumped the Katana to random hyperspace coordinates and brought the entire fleet with them, never to be seen—by the Republic—again. Read More

Not Her Father’s Star Wars: Raising a Daughter in the Disney Era

Posted on March 11, 2016by Guest Editorials
“I think…this is a good movie.” - Anne, a few days prior from turning 3, uponwatching A New Hope for the first time, her first Star Wars film.
“I think…this is a good movie.” – Anne, a few days prior from turning 3,
upon watching A New Hope for the first time, her first Star Wars film.

When my daughter Anne was born, I was a bit of a lapsed Star Wars fan. As a kid in Junior High and High School I dove into the new (and not just to me) Expanded Universe. I devoured the Zahn trilogy novels as they were released, bought the monthly issues of the early Dark Horse Comics as I found out about them (I started monthlies with Tales of the Jedi: Dark Lords of the Sith and Dark Empire II), and fully embraced the Shadows of the Empire multimedia project. I saw all the Special Editions in the theatre, slowly downloaded the Episode I teaser trailer, stood in line for Phantom Menace tickets, did midnight madness for action figures, went to the very first showing in my hometown, actually did enjoy the movie, and then I went off to college, where my interest in Star Wars media in general somewhat, well, went away.

Now, to be clear, Star Wars hadn’t done anything to offend me. I didn’t rage-quit the fandom. I didn’t hate George Lucas or accuse him of doing dark things to my childhood. My notice and interest just went firmly into the periphery. I didn’t hate Attack of the Clones or Revenge of the Sith at all, I didn’t feel like they did any sort of violence to childhood memories like some appeared to have believed, but, well, they were to me, just Movies That Happened, and movies that I saw, and enjoyed as I enjoyed many of the other movies I’d seen.

When The Clone Wars animated film came out, I noted its existence, but circumstances didn’t permit me to get to a theater to see it. I didn’t have cable at the time, and didn’t have the strong need to begin watching the series as it aired on Cartoon Network when it came on.

It was, again, a thing that existed, and that was cool in theory, but not a Priority. Read More

Escape Pod: The Feel of the Bantam Era

Posted on March 9, 2016by The Holocron

waruI love the Bantam era, and have in fact written in defense of a whole period of Star Wars publishing that, though ridiculous, is near and dear to my heart. There’s a sizable chunk of us fans who were brought in by books like the Thrawn trilogy and who kept reading even through The Crystal Star and The New Rebellion. Now, we’ve all had discussions about the plot quality, the villain and superweapon of the week, and all the other things we laugh at this whole era for. However, there are many good things. And one of them is the way this whole era handles politics and world-building. A galaxy that’s undergone two major government changes in the last twenty years of history won’t be the most reasonable place, and perhaps it took a publishing era of mixed-up timelines, impressively blundering villains, bizarre technology, and Waru to make it all really feel like Star Wars.

When I first heard that The Force Awakens might have a galaxy in which the New Republic or whatever wouldn’t be fully in power, I was suddenly excited. Even when I was twelve and devouring every last Star Wars book I could grab, I wondered just how the Rebel Alliance had made themselves into a functional government in just five years. How could they have gone from a rag-tag band of freedom fighters to a normal government, complete with bureaucracy enough to make us believe they’d been in power for years? It seemed a bit hard to understand, and seeing the New Republic withstand threat after threat to their rule and always come out unscathed made me wonder. Hearing that the reimagining of the galaxy might not be so secure actually made me feel better about TFA- it’s hard to reconstruct the government of a galaxy no matter what. We see that whatever’s going on between the New Republic and the Resistance and the First Order and whoever else is there, it isn’t very organized. Something happened that created the First Order, something happened that destroyed whatever Jedi were rebuilding, and the New Republic and the Resistance aren’t the same people. There are so many factions, so many layers of politics, and that makes for many stories to be told. Think back on all the different sides of the story in the old EU; we saw many small parts of Empire and Republic and others jockeying for power. It was a complicated mess, and that made for lots of storytelling space and a big galaxy for new problems to arise in.

Read More

Fantasy Foresight – Could the New Republic Have Prevented the Starkiller?

Posted on March 7, 2016by Obiwomble's Outlook

firstorderassembly

It has to be said, of all the effects I could perhaps consider The Force Awakens having on the Star Wars fanbase, this wasn’t on the list. Yet it’s become something of a thing fairly quickly.

The basis of it is simple: The Empire clearly did not honour its post-Battle of Jakku treaty obligations. Instead it went and constructed new weaponry of mass destruction in the form of the Starkiller and killed billions of New Republic citizens. Therefore, the New Republic should never have signed the treaty and spared the Empire (the New Republic will be referred to as just the Republic from this point on). Thus: No Empire = No First Order = No Starkiller = No billions dead.

The problem is what the ‘no Empire’ part would have committed the Republic to. It would amount to killing millions, maybe billions on the basis of a fantastical superweapon way off in the future. Now, that could be done, but if it were? The Republic would no longer be the Republic, indeed, in quite literally killing the Empire they would have become it! Read More

The Problem With Legends as an Alternate Universe

Posted on February 29, 2016by

A fun game I’ve played once or twice since the release of The Force Awakens is to try and pinpoint a moment in time where you could tip the post-Endor timeline, Back to the Future-style, from the Expanded Universe’s version to the sequel trilogy’s version. As I recall, the best mstarwars94idea I could come up with was Leia getting pregnant with Ben immediately—like, “the night of the Endor celebration” immediately. The impending child not only accelerates her coming to terms with her heritage (and motivates her and Han to marry sooner) but gives her a huge extra reason to end the war with the Empire as soon as possible. Sure enough, Leia taking an even more aggressive role in the military campaign brings about a swifter military victory, and perhaps even further motivates complacent core worlders to rally behind her as a post-Empire figurehead. This has all sorts of random ripple effects, too—different people come to lead the Imperial Remnant, Luke perhaps founds his new Jedi Temple sooner, and so on.

Of course, while a fun thought experiment, this is complete nonsense. The truth of the matter is that the sum total of the “Legends-verse”, as many are inclined to think of it, is under no circumstances a single coherent timeline that could be switched on or off like a light bulb. Lucasfilm’s efforts to keep it consistent over the years were herculean and admirable, but I’ve come to believe that a more accurate way of looking at Legends is as a plethora of “pocket universes”, which fit together more nominally than absolutely. Read More