Escape Pod: Mistress Mnemos and the Storytelling Framing Device

One of the cleverest, most self-referential character arcs in the original Star Wars trilogy is C-3PO’s ability as a storyteller. In the first movie he claims to be “not very good at telling stories,” but in the final film he recounts the heroes’ adventures to the Ewok village with a delightful blend of humanlike charisma and droidlike sound effects. Either modesty or a lack of confidence was holding our anxious droid back, and as masks fall, it turns out that Threepio can make stories interesting (to everyone except Han, anyway). Vader is actually Anakin; lightsabers are actually useless; and Threepio is actually very good at telling stories.

But what if he isn’t?

Mistress Mnemos is a room-size supercomputer whose mission is to store all the Rebel Alliance’s data, whether entertaining or not. She debuted in Russ Manning’s newspaper comic strips in 1979, and has never even been referenced since. This in spite of her incredible potential as comic relief, femme and non-humanoid droid representation, and commentary on the nature of storytelling itself. As she is built into the walls of a secret Rebel stronghold and literally plugged into the story’s narrator, Mnemos is the platonic ideal of a captive audience.

As brilliant as she was back then, I think Mnemos could serve an even more important role now. She protests Threepio’s excessive, self-centered tangents — “My banks are overflowing with trivia as it is!” — and that was in 1979, decades before “Star Wars trivia” was the subject of board games, parties, and masters’ theses.

Even her name has aged in a fantastically relevant way: the prefix “mnemo-” means “memory,” one of the most vital themes for a franchise so rooted in nostalgia, so backwards- and inwards-looking, with even its freshest new stories haunted (and frequently visited) by the ghosts of the Expanded Universe. Every spinoff of the original trilogy must contend with its audience’s presumed memories, and that presumption often bleeds into the stories’ themes and the struggles of their characters: Revan’s amnesia, Anakin’s dreams, Yoda’s burnt library. As the audience, we remember the story, while the characters can forget, or try to stop it, or need to move on. But Mnemos must remember, too, no matter how unhappy it makes her.

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Escape Pod: Essence Transfer

palpatine-essencetransfer

After a lengthy dry spell, welcome back to Escape Pod, our recurring series in which we choose one thing from Legends and argue for its inclusion in the new canon.

When Obi-Wan Kenobi first stated “if you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine”, there was next to nothing explaining what that actually meant—even after we’d heard his voice in Luke’s head later in the movie. The rest of the original trilogy implied certain things when Obi-Wan was followed by Yoda and even Anakin Skywalker, recipient of that original warning, in apparent life after death. The prequels provided the first evidence that it wasn’t just a standard Jedi thing, but rather something that had to be proactively learned, and The Clone Wars finally spelled out the whole deal by showing us Yoda’s own Force ghost training just four short years ago.

Our own Mark Eldridge recently did a deep dive into the lore—and more importantly, the principles—of existence beyond death and what it means. In his conclusion, he stressed how important said principles are to the core messages of the franchise:

…the Force ghost mystery takes us to the heart of Star Wars: the selfless choice or the selfish, letting go and finding enlightenment or clinging on and causing suffering. Future filmmakers may be tempted to introduce a form of “dark side” immortality, but should resist the thought, because it would fatally undermine the value system at the heart of a series which was designed to teach these lessons to children.

That’s no hypothetical concern, either. With more than three decades passing between the first time we saw Obi-Wan vanish and when we finally received a full, official explanation, countless fans grew to adulthood without those answers, many of them ultimately creating Star Wars stories of their own, and without a full understanding of this subject [1]exactly what Lucas himself knew at any given point is probably debatable, but he certainly wasn’t sharing, the Expanded Universe was rife with immortality. Most famously, in one of the earliest “modern” EU stories, Palpatine himself returned in a cloned body six years after his death at Endor. Read More

References
1 exactly what Lucas himself knew at any given point is probably debatable, but he certainly wasn’t sharing

Escape Pod: The Miraluka

Normal_Visas-Marr-22For most of season two of Star Wars Rebels, it was hard to miss the signs that things were building towards an explosive conclusion. Not only was it explosive, but the season two finale shook things up in a major way. What looks (no pun intended) to be the biggest game changer is Kanan being permanently blinded after his duel with Maul. Granted, it’s entirely possible this injury will be fixed by next season (after all, medical technology in the Star Wars universe is capable of some pretty amazing things) but I’m hoping that it stays permanent. For one, it would be especially great on the representation front to show that physical limitations don’t mean you can’t still be a hero.

But secondly, it presents the perfect opportunity for a fun nod back to the Legends timeline. If Kanan is going to learn to cope with his newfound blindness, he’s going to need help. He can manage for the time being through intense concentration in the Force, but he probably won’t be able to maintain that level of concentration 24/7. And that’s where the Miraluka come in.

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Escape Pod: Imperial Defectors and the Rand Ecliptic

randMoral relativity is hard to do in Star Wars, because it’s a tale of good versus evil. However, sophisticated storytelling expects that things are rarely black and white. Add in the influence of fans, and it’s not surprising that villains end up being quite popular in Star Wars. The Galactic Empire is probably one of the most popular villains in fiction, and so it’s easy to see why there’s an interest in presenting the Empire as a little more nuanced than purely evil. This always runs the risk of whitewashing Imperial atrocities, or presenting the “good Imperial” – the person who is certainly not a Rebel, but also not a bad person. We’re personally always suspect of the idea of the “good Imperial,” because while we very much enjoy reading about Imperials we also don’t want to sacrifice the theming of the Star Wars saga.

The new Star Wars canon has done a good job addressing this issue so far, from realistically portraying how people end up buying into the Imperial system in Lost Stars, to exploring the loss of innocence and seduction of evil in the Servants of the Empire series, to examining the mindset of an Imperial Security Bureau agent in Rebels. At the end of the day though, the people who stick with the Empire are usually either delusional, corrupted, or participants in the Imperial system – at least those who are involved in furthering its goals. But not always. There are certainly the rare Imperials who serve with honor and distinction, and try to refuse the worst orders – even if they’re not “good” compared to the heroes of the saga, they might be good by Imperial standards. But there are also those who realize their decency isn’t compatible with Imperial service, it’s these people we want to talk about today: Imperial defectors.

In the Legends EU, many prominent Rebel characters – including film characters such as Jan Dodonna, Crix Madine, Biggs Darklighter, and Derek “Hobbie” Klivian – began their careers as dutiful Imperial officers. EU mainstays such as Kyle Katarn, Soontir Fel, and Tycho Celchu also started out as Imperial officers. These officers defected to the Rebellion when they realized that the Empire wasn’t living up to its own honorable ideals, often in response to atrocities they were ordered to commit. Biggs and Hobbie defected almost right out of the Academy, taking their ship – the Rand Ecliptic – with them. Imagine what other defectors flew with them – heroic, goodie-two-shoes aren’t the only kind of people who might’ve left the Empire’s service and we’re missing out on good characters if we think that. Lost Stars and Aftermath both gave us examples of flawed, human Imperial officers who defected to the Rebellion – but there’s such storytelling potential in exploring the different types of people who might come to a realization that Imperial service just isn’t for them.

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Escape Pod: The Katana Fleet

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