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

Posted on September 24, 2014by

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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?

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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

The Pitch – Rebels Bottle Episodes

Posted on September 19, 2014by , , , , and

A handful of you will find this hilarious.

While we’re only a couple of weeks away from the official premiere of Star Wars Rebels, it may be a while yet before we really know on a macro level what the show is about. The Inquisitor, after all, doesn’t even join the party until later on—and it remains to be seen just how big of a presence he’ll be in the first season as a whole, to say nothing of future seasons. The same goes for Lothal—it’s the heroes’ base of operations for now, but forever? I doubt it.

So with that in mind, I asked the others to pitch their ideas for what you might call Rebels “bottle” episodes. Colloquially, a bottle episode of a TV show is a standalone story designed to be produced entirely using existing sets and contracted actors, meaning it can be produced for a bare minimum of expense—often these will show up to allow for something particularly extravagant elsewhere in the season.

While I didn’t hold them to the “cheap” part, I did mandate that the story be entirely self-contained, so it could theoretically go anywhere in the first season without getting in the way of whatever the larger arc turns out to be. Here are their ideas. 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.

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The Empire and Rebels: Causes for Optimism

Posted on September 15, 2014by Obiwomble's Outlook

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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