Category: Opinion

Bacta Basics: Medical Science and Technology in A Galaxy Far, Far Away

Posted on September 24, 2014by

a-bacta-tank-healing-luke-skywalker

From a few brief scenes with a diapered Luke Skywalker floating in a tank of clear (later established to be blue) liquid came one of the franchise’s most enduring futuristic inventions: that mysterious, miraculous live-saving fluid we call bacta. In go the wounded, out come the hale and hearty. A universal cure for anything and everything that ails you. Incredibly convenient, without question, but also a rare instance in which we’re permitted a glimpse of a technology that is most decidedly not a straightforward science fiction counterpart to something from our own world.

At least not yet, anyways. There are obvious questions that come to mind: where does it come from? How does it work? Who controls the supply? All valid questions at the moment, as their established answers have been washed away in the all-consuming deluge that is the big red button labeled “reboot.” So let’s ask a different question, instead. We’ve seen what bacta is capable of, so what else might they be able to do that we can’t?

Read More

Story Group and the Perks of Planning Ahead

Posted on September 22, 2014by Scotch Tape and Popsicle Sticks

Lately, I’ve been using my series The Expanded Universe Explains to explore some of the more, well, overexplained corners of the Star Wars universe—namely, events referenced or implied by the original trilogy that have since been depicted multiple times (usually in a contradictory fashion) by further sources. While that process remains ongoing, my search for the best candidates has led me to the conclusion that perhaps the worst offender is not a single event, but basically the entire span of time between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back. Further, it occurs to me that in a quandary of this type we find likely the strongest argument in favor of the Story Group, and therefore its greatest opportunity to strengthen this new canon we find ourselves in.

Ask any old-guard EU fan which era of SW is the most crammed full of stories and they won’t even blink before responding with the aforementioned time period—0-3 ABY, as it’s (ostensibly) known in-universe. We tend to think of that era as a nonstop relay race in which our heroes dash from one adventure to the next with scarcely a bathroom break in between; and while there are indeed hundreds, literally hundreds, of stories set there, the truth of this problem is much more complicated. Read More

Escape Pod: Wedge Antilles

Posted on September 17, 2014by

The coming sequel trilogy has put a lot of value on the presence of the older generation of heroes and on the impact they had. While it remains to be seen how the Rebellion/Alliance will fare in the new continuity, it’s a safe bet that a New Republic still exists even if it’s not necessarily by that name. In that new Republic the vested veterans of the Rebellion, the heroes of the original trilogy, will likely have influential positions, just as they did in the Legends stories. Leia will likely be a politician still, Han may be a military officer, and Luke a veteran Jedi Master, perhaps the head of a new Jedi Order. But they are not the only veterans of the war against the Empire.

Consider one Wedge Antilles.

Read More

The Empire and Rebels: Causes for Optimism

Posted on September 15, 2014by Obiwomble's Outlook

kallus-imp

I have a copy of A New Dawn on the to-read pile and it’s giving me the evil eye: I did buy it to read it, didn’t I, so what’s taking so long? Some things should be properly appreciated, so no, I’m not going to casually barrel through it at speed. One thing I’m quite confident of is I’m going to like how the Empire is portrayed due to a couple of things: First, John Jackson Miller has an excellent track record and second, the Emperor has an efficiency adviser? That’s genius. Efficiency gurus are a modern-day Bogeyman who are more terrifying due to existing – you can’t bargain or reason them, they feel nothing, they only think in maths equations – in short, a perfect villain.

Despite this there is much trepidation around the show Rebels, particularly where the portrayal of the Empire is concerned. I was never going to be inclined to like the Clone Wars cartoon. The offense was simple but enduring: It steamrollered the 2002-2005 work done in the same era with casual contempt. Rebels, however, is not doing that. No, it has its own time period, it is not setting fire to somebody’s else’s lawn, so what’s the problem? The fear is that the Empire will be rendered as too easily defeated, too incompetent, that it will be a joke. I don’t think that needs to be feared as much as may be thought. Read More

The Minority Report: A New Dawn

Posted on September 10, 2014by Scotch Tape and Popsicle Sticks

rebels-insider

As you may well know, dear readers, I have always taken a special interest in the state of diversity in the Star Wars franchise, and Expanded Universe in particular. One of the first recurring series I commissioned for Eleven-ThirtyEight was Michael Lind’s Go Figure, in which he broke down and analyzed a wide range of demographic data from the Galaxy Far, Far Away, with a special focus on race and species prevalence.

After the reboot was announced, of course, Michael’s impressive pool of data was effectively useless—and so Go Figure came to an end, and I picked up the baton. Beginning with my article No Gays in Space last May, I’ve seized upon the reboot (much like the Story Group) as an opportunity to start afresh, and build a new database from the ground up. My own methodology differs quite a bit from Michael’s, though; while interesting, the exact number of Twi’leks is of less concern to me than one basic fact: how many straight white guys there are.

More thorough explanations of my personal Diversity Scoring system can be found at the above links, but as this constitutes the beginning of a new series, I’ll reiterate very briefly—a Diversity Score is the percentage of characters in a story who are anything other than straight, white, human men. Historically I’ve gone off a given story’s Dramatis Personae (the cast of characters often presented at the beginning of a SW novel), but as I’m attempting to be as thorough as possible, my new policy is to count, as best I can, all named characters. In the case of the six films, given their status as the most visible and inviolate elements of the canon, I have gone by the full casts as listed in their end credits. While I presented rough scores for the saga (as well as The Clone Wars) back in May, I’ve since had the opportunity to work straight from the films (as opposed to Wookieepedia) and I present the following as my final scores for the Star Wars Canon. Read More