Fromm Here to Eternity

A Race to the Finish

Writers: Peter Sauder and Steven Wright

Medium: Television

Air Date: September 28, 1985 

Timeline Placement: 15 BBY

 

The finale of the Thall Joben/Fromm Gang/Trigon One story arc. The droids and their masters finally arrive on Boonta for the big speeder race, but Sise Fromm is still pissed about the loss of his base and apparently all of his wealth and underworld power and he shows up with son Tig and henchman Vlix Oncard looking for some revenge. 

 

The Fromms hire notorious bounty hunter Boba Fett, in his first EU appearance since the Clone Wars, to make our heroes pay for ruining his life. Fett advises Fromm that Jabba the Hutt has put a bounty on his head, but he'll refrain from collecting it and take Fromm's job instead because Fett "owes him a favor."

 

Boba Fett's appearance in this episode is noteworthy for a few reasons, one of which being how it informs the chronology of his life in the Expanded Universe. Prior to Attack of the Clones and the revelation that Boba had begun life as a clone of his "father," Jango Fett, the earliest events in his backstory were told in the short story "The Last One Standing: The Tale of Boba Fett" by Daniel Keys Moran. In that story, we first see Fett wearing his signature Mandalorian armor and operating as a bounty hunter in the year 12 BBY. However, a short prologue set an unspecified number of "years" earlier revealed Fett's past, supposedly before becoming a bounty hunter or even going by the name "Boba Fett," as a Journeyman Protector known as Jaster Mereel.

 

To this day, fans remain quick to throw this story under the bus whenever discussing pre-prequel Expanded Universe stories that were rendered non-canon by George Lucas's second Star Wars trilogy. They are, of course, completely wrong, as Fett's past as Jaster Mereel was salvaged by the Star Wars Insider article "The History of the Mandalorians." This article also incorporated the Star Wars Tales comic Outbid but Never Outgunned, which revealed that Fett had a young daughter, into his post-PT, pre-OT life. The result was a new backstory, largely left up to implication, wherein at some point Fett gave up bounty hunting to start a family and lived under the name of Jaster Mereel, revealed in the comic Jango Fett: Open Seasons to be the name of his father's mentor.

 

Fett's appearance here in "Race to the Finish" sets the outside cap on how early this phase of his life could have occurred. Taking all these sources into account, we can arrive at this rough timeline of Boba Fett's mostly untold backstory:

 

32 BBY: Boba Fett is "born" on Kamino as an unaltered clone of his father, Jango Fett, the so-called last of the Mandalorians until a bunch of retcons made that not true anymore. 
 
22–15 BBY: Following the death of his father at the outset of the Clone Wars, Boba Fett becomes a bounty hunter himself. He starts off working primarily for Jabba the Hutt, but Jabba apparently forgets who he is at some point because when the Hutt hires him in 5 BBY during the Han Solo Trilogy he acts as if it's the first time they've ever met.
 
c. 15–13? BBY: At some point he meets fellow bounty hunter Sintas Vel, and the two eventually have a daughter named Ailyn. Fett gives up the bounty hunting life to try to be a family man, taking the name of Jango's adopted father, Jaster Mereel, and becoming a Journeyman Protector on the world of Concord Dawn. His attempt at giving his daughter the idyllic family life he never had comes to an abrupt end when his wife is raped by a fellow Protector named Lenovar and Fett murders him, breaking his oaths and ending up exiled from the planet. He abandons his assumed name and returns to bounty hunting.
 
12 BBY: Boba Fett takes a job on the planet Jubilar, where he sees Han Solo for the first time when the 17-year-old is forced to fight for his life in a gladiatorial arena after being arrested for cheating at cards. 

 

What does all this have to do with the Droids animated series? Absolutely nothing, but it's way more interesting for me to talk about.

 

It's also worth mentioning (not really) that The Droids Re-Animated ties Sise Fromm's rise to power in the criminal underworld to Boba Fett eliminating his rival Klin Kartoosh, despite the novel Darth Plagueis establishing Sise as major player in that scene during Palpatine's rise to power in the Old Republic, before Boba was even decanted born. Oops! 

 

Anyway, Fett sends his droid BL-17, a Mandalorian Battle Legionnaire manufactured by the Separatists during the Clone Wars, to become friends with C-3PO in order to get close enough to assassinate Thall and the others. Threepio tells Kea that he and BL-17 "graduated from the same production facility," which I would have thought the EU's continuity-weavers would have spun into a reference to Affa, the planet where C-3PO was originally constructed 80 years before Anakin Skywalker reassembled him from junked parts. Like maybe the Separatists had a manufacturing plant there during the war or something. But I don't think it ever gets mentioned. Maybe BL-17 was just lying about it.

 

But eventually some junk falls on BL-17 and crushes him to death. Fett tries to capture the White Witch but he gets owned by R2-D2, allowing Thall Joben to win the race (and a kiss from Kea). Despite failing at the job he was hired to do, Fett decides that he's had enough and turns on the Fromms, capturing Sise, Tig, and Vlix and taking them to meet their fate at the hands of Jabba the Hutt. The implication, as much as this tepid cartoon for babies can make one, is that they're all going to be murdered, explaining their absence from the criminal underworld in the OT.

 

Sadly, this grim fate was retconned away in order to the accommodate the continuity of the MyComyc comics The Stolen Ship and The Secret Disk, which depict Tig Fromm and Vlix Oncard still alive after the conclusion of this story arc. Keep in mind that Lucasfilm didn't consider these obscure Spanish comics officially licensed products and that half of them don't even fit the cartoon's continuity in the first place, but whatever. It's revealed in The Droids Re-Animated that the Fromms were able to convince Jabba to spare them "by paying the Hutt a sizable percentage of their business dealings and promising to commit their Annoo-dat clones to eradicating the Mandalorian Death Watch diaspora." 

 

The Death Watch was a Mandalorian splinter faction created for, and killed off in, the comic Jango Fett: Open Seasons. But that stupid Clone Wars cartoon brought them back for some reason, so I guess this retcon is an attempt to clean up the mess it left behind by taking the Death Watch back off the table again. Being wiped out by the villains from a Saturday morning cartoon show is about the fate they deserve. Oh I guess it didn't take though because they're still around in the Star Wars Galaxies MMO.

 

Speeder mogul Zebulon Dak offers Thall, Jord, and Kea a job designing and building racers, but according to his company policy, R2-D2 and C-3PO would have to be memory-wiped in order to remain with their masters. Aboard the The Sand Sloth after the racer, presumably heading back to Ingo yet again, the droids overhear their masters deciding to reject the job offer in order to keep their little found family together. Artoo and Threepio decide to sneak off the ship in an escape pod as their masters jump to lightspeed, giving them the freedom to take the opportunity they've been given. "Yes, it was a sacrifice, Artoo," says Threepio, "but that's what friends are for."

 

And the adventure continues... 

The Battle Against Sise Fromm

MyComyc #2: Kea Kidnapped

Writer: Uncredited (translated by Abel G. Peña)

Penciler: Beaumont Studios

Medium: Comic

Publication date: 1986

Timeline placement: 15 BBY

 

Following the theft of the Trigon One weapons satellite by Thall Joben, Kea Moll, and the droids, Kea is kidnapped by the Fromm Gang once again. As ransom, they demand the return of their stolen Trigon superweapon, as well as their stolen Trigun manga collection. 

While their useless masters remain behind, Artoo and Threepio go to Tig Fromm's base, where Artoo handily incapacitates the guards with his "blinding ray." A large security droid rolls out to oppose them but falls victim to Artoo's "circuit board disruptor beam." 

 

The droids find Kea shackled to a wall. They free her and escape without incident, while Tig Fromm shouts ineffectually for his guards to stop them. The gang is reunited and everyone sits around on giant beanbag chairs. "They sure are fantastic droids!" Kea says. Strangely, Jord Dusat is also here on Ingo despite being left behind on Annoo in the previous episode and still being there in the next one.

 

I have to say it, the human characters' hairstyles in this arc are starting to haunt me. Kea's skunk-do has got to go.

 

The Trigon Unleashed

Writers: Richard Beban and Peter Sauder

Medium: Television

Air Date: September 21, 1985 

Timeline Placement: 15 BBY

 

Thall eventually decides that they should probably do something with the Trigon One besides leaving it sitting around so he and Artoo head out into the Ingo wastes to hide it. At the speeder shop, Threepio starts fiddling with the TV's rabbit ears and picks up first what he describes as Artoo's favorite program, a Western featuring astromech droids, and then (somehow) a video call between Sise and Tig Fromm where they discuss their plan to get their superweapon back. Just then, Fromm henchman Vlix Oncard and his army of Annoo-dat clones attack!

 

Let's take a moment to discuss the weird and confusing lore of the Annoo-dat, the species of the Fromm family and their criminal underlings. The true Annoo-dat come from the planet Annoo in the Outer Rim Territories. They are scary-looking four-eyed lizard people who were created in the year 2002 and look like this:

 

 

How can this be, you ask, if the Fromms are Annoo-dat yet look completely different and have existed since 1985? Patience, all will be revealed. 

 

Two hundred ninety years before the events of The Phantom Menace, Annoo had fallen into ruin due to internecine warfare, so the Annoo-dat waged a conquest of the planet Gelefil, a planet in the same star system populated by the Ret, who look like this:

 

 

The Annoo-dat renamed the conquered planet Annoo, in replacement of their lost homeworld. After a century of cohabitation on the planet, which seems implausibly fast given that the Ret can live for hundreds of years, the Ret assimilated into Annoo-dat society, adopting their conquerors' native language and considering their race part of the Annoo-dat species. Outsiders distinguished between the two by calling the former Ret the "Annoo-dat Blue" and the original Annoo-dat the "Annoo-dat Prime."

 

All of this information comes exclusively from a 2004 article in issue 170 of the gaming magazine Polyhedron, and was completely pointless as a retcon because there was almost no existing lore about these two species at the time, let alone contradictory lore requiring this convoluted cultural-historical intertwining.

 

Also for some reason in this episode Vlix Oncard says, addressing his goons, "All right, you clones!" I assumed the Fromm foot soldiers all looked identical because of the show's limited animation budget but apparently they were really supposed to be clones in-universe. This was never expanded on or mentioned again in the cartoon, but came up again in the StarWars.com continuity fix-fic The Droids Re-Animated. But that's a story for another time!

 

Anyway Thall and Artoo come racing back in their landspeeder to rescue Kea and Threepio from the Annoo-dat Blue clones. They don't get far, however, before the Fromms chase them into a dead end and they're all captured. Tig Fromm attempts to coerce them into revealing the location of the Trigon One by threatening them with a disintegration ray (which he drops and breaks) and revealing that the gang has captured Jord Dusat and Kea's mother, but Thall insists that they'll only talk to Sise himself. So everyone goes back to the Fromm headquarters on Annoo (formerly Gelefil, which is important to someone).

 

Brought before Sise Fromm, Thall immediately reveals where the Trigon One is hidden. Tig and Vlix head back to Ingo to retrieve it, but the wily Sise suspects that his prisoners are up to something and has them all locked up. Threepio tells the Fromm guard that there are valuable jewels hidden inside Artoo, but when the guard tries to get them out, Artoo sprays him all over with some kind of cake batter, which allows everyone to escape. Everyone, that is, except Kea's mother, Demma, who had already been taken away for interrogation.

 

Thall reveals that he and Artoo programmed the Trigon One to home in on Sise Fromm's communications signal. When Tig brings it to Annoo, it will crash itself into the Fromm stronghold. They only have 49 minutes to escape before they're all killed! Thall and Kea go to save Demma while Jord and the droids procure an escape ship. 

 

Some wacky high jinks ensue but everything works out in the end. Our heroes escape and the Fromm base and the Trigon One are both destroyed, leaving Sise, Tig, and Vlix alive but with their power base shattered.

 

So if you're keeping up, we first met our heroes on Ingo. They then traveled to Annoo, where Jord Dusat stayed behind while Thall and Kea returned to Ingo. It's possible that Jord also went from Annoo to Ingo and then back again in between episodes if we want to make Kea Kidnapped fit. Thall and Kea were then captured by Tig Fromm and Vlix Oncard and brought back to Annoo. Tig and Vlix immediately returned to Ingo to retrieve the Trigon One, then immediately went back to Annoo again. 

 

 

Next episode, Thall, Kea, Jord, and the droids finally arrive on Boonta for the big speeder race, leaving all this galactic jet-setting behind them.

Episodic Nostalgia: Beast Wars II

 

Airdate: April 1, 1998 – January 27, 1999

 

Beast Wars II and its sequel, Beast Wars Neo, were anime series produced to fill time between the Japanese broadcasts of the first and second seasons of Beast Wars. They have no connection to the plot of Beast Wars; in fact, in Japanese continuity, they take place tens of thousands of years in the future, long after the ending of Beast Machines. However, at least one American continuity (namely the Beast Wars comics by IDW Publishing that ran from 2006 to 2016) posits the existence of a second Great War following the conclusion of the Great War between the Autobots and Decepticons. In this continuity, the Maximals and Predacons fought a war of their own sometime between the events of G1 and Beast Wars. The two Beast Wars anime take place during this war, making them distant prequels to Beast Wars in American continuity. When Optimus Primal's and Megatron's character bios in Dawn of Future's Past mention them being veterans of the Great War, they're referring to the more recent conflict.

Yes, Dawn of the Predacus does completely ignore this retcon, despite being published by IDW! It's the worst of both worlds: Primal and Megatron are still war veterans, which contradicts Beast Wars, but they're veterans of the Autobot-Decepticon Great War, which really contradicts Beast Wars. Why am I still talking about this schlock? Let's talk about Beast Wars II instead! Not all of it, though, because it's a filler show composed of mostly filler episodes.

Episode 1: The New Forces Arrive!

 

While on a routine space patrol, Maximal Commander Convoy vanishes after an explosion in an asteroid field. Without their leader, his squad becomes bereft and shiftless, and are quick to jump into action when they receive a distress call saying that Predacons under the command of Galvatron (not the G1 Galvatron, who’s dead as per Dawn of the Predacus; like Beast Wars Megatron, this guy renamed himself after one of his historical heroes; unlike Megatron, he absolutely cannot pull off that purple color scheme) are invading the planet Gaea to steal its Angolmois Energy. They arrive at the planet and their ship is immediately shot down. Radiation levels on Gaea force them to adopt beast modes. There is Tasmanian Kid, a Tasmanian devil; Scuba, a squid; Diver, a frog; Bighorn, a bison; and Apache, an offensive Native American stereotype. The Maximals are are quickly captured by Galvatron’s forces but saved by a mysterious white lion. Who could this lion be?

 

Episode 2: White Lion, Run!

 

It’s Convoy! By an astonishing coincidence, when his ship went down while investigating the asteroid field, he ended up here, on the same planet his crew would soon come to investigate for unrelated reasons. Kimba the white lion saved his life after the crash, so he adopted its form as his beast mode and is now known as Lio Convoy. Meanwhile, Galvatron discovers an ancient underground supercomputer and uses it to upgrade his alt mode to the most powerful weapon in this planet’s recorded history. He becomes so powerful that he goes into a coma for three episodes.

 

Episode 5: Galvatron Revived

Megastorm, the younger brother of Galvatron, fears his brother will come out of his coma and reclaim his title of Emperor of Destruction, so he decides to throw him down a pit and bury him alive. He’s unable to complete his plan, however, when the Anglomois Energy in the pit predictably rejuvenates Galvatron. He sets off to get revenge against the Maximals, who he thinks tried to kill him in his sleep. He proves more than a match for all of them put together with his powerful drill-tank vehicle mode and penis-dragon beast mode, but when the battle moves into a volcano, Megastorm snipes the rock his brother is standing on out from beneath his feet and Galvatron plunges into the lava below. I’m sure we’ve seen the last of him.

Episode 6: Mystery of the Ancient Ruins

Episode 7: The Insect Corps Arrive

Episode 8: Friend or Foe? The Insect Robos

Episode 9: The Strongest Tag Team?

Unnecessarily drawn-out introduction of the Insectrons, a six-member Transformers faction with insect alt modes who fled to the planet Gaea to escape the war between the Maximals and Predacons. The show inexplicably becomes all about them for the next half dozen episodes. Galvatron returns but immediately gets drunk and falls into a lake.

 

Episode 14: The Combined Giant, Tripledacus

 

A group of Maximal Combiners called the Jointrons, consisting of DJ, Motorarm, and Gimlet, crashes their ship on Gaea while en route to the planet Trius. Their ability to join together to form the giant robot Tripledacus (not to be confused with the evil Predacon ruler Tripredacus, although the two of them look identical) makes them some of the most powerful combatants in the conflict, but their habit of behaving like over-the-top Latino caricatures makes them unreliable and more of a nuisance to Lio Convoy's group than a benefit.

Episode 19: The Space Pirate Seacons!

 

Yet another Transformer subgroup, a roving gang of pirates called the Seacons, arrives on Gaea. This infamous band roams the spaceways looking for treasure to pillage, now they've come for the Anglomois Energy! If all the Anglomois Energy is removed from Gaea, the planet will die, so the Maximals must go all out to stop the Seacons, even though there's no danger of them stealing a planet's worth of energy in their tiny pirate ship. The Predacons have been harvesting that shit for months without so much as a greenhouse effect. The Seacons combine to form the giant robot God Neptune, but he gets distracted when the Maximals release all of their harvested Anglomois Energy simultaneously, causing their ship to explode. Great, now they're stranded here with you, you morons.

Episode 21: The Tentacular Scuba

 

After finding a four-leaf clover that he believes will bring him good fortune, Bighorn falls head-over-hooves for female Seacon Scylla, but she only has tentacles for fellow squid-bot Scuba, much to the chagrin of Artemis, a guardian robot living on the Moon who's crushing on both Scuba and Predacon jet Starscream (no relation to Decepticon jet Starscream). Starscream, however, is clearly gay.

Episode 22: Megastorm's Reckoning

 

The Seacons join forces with the Predacons or something. More importantly, though, this is probably the funniest episode of the show that doesn't involve the Jointrons.

 

Episode 25: The Final Battle

 

The Seacons have repaired their ship and are ready to leave Gaea because they're tired of losing to the Maximals all the time, but they don't have enough energy to reach orbit. Lio Convoy offers them the energy they need, but their leader, Halfshell, refuses charity, instead counter-proposing a one-on-one battle with Lio Convoy for the energy. Lio Convoy agrees, only to find himself fighting one-on-one against God Neptune. Despite being outmatched, Lio Convoy still manages to hold his own because he's the main character. The Predacons are secretly observing the match, however, and Megastorm becomes overanxious and opens fire on Lio Convoy, accidentally detonating a huge deposit of Anglomois Energy. The Seacons flee in the ensuing anarchy but steal the energy on their way out. They don't get far into space, however, before a black hole or wormhole or some bullshit appears in front of them and they disappear.

 

Episode 26: Enter Lio Junior

 

Galvatron has summoned the artificial planet Nemesis to harvest all the Anglomois Energy of Gaea. It's making its way through the outskirts of the solar system... very, very slowly. Moving much more quickly is a spaceship carrying Maximals Skywarp (no relation to Decepticon Skywarp) and Santo. They're on assignment from Maximal HQ and have detected a powerful new lifeform on Gaea birthed from Anglomois Energy. That would be Lio Junior, the son of Lio Convoy! But Lio Convoy declares that he has no son, leaving Lio Junior to wonder why his father doesn't want him.

 

Episode 27: Megastorm Reborn 

 

Galvatron is back in a coma again after getting a sword stabbed through his chest in the previous episode so Megastorm once again assumes leadership of the Predacons. Starscream is sick of his bullshit though so he tricks Megastorm into attempting to become more powerful by submerging himself in Anglomois Energy. Megastorm changes his mind but Starscream dumps him in anyway and leaves him for dead. Megastorm's last thought is that he only wanted to be stronger, which causes the Anglomois Energy to turn him into a dinosaur.

Episode 28: The New Weapon, Tako Tank

 

Scuba's cousin, Ikard, arrives on Gaea to deliver the Tako Tank, a mobile armored artillery unit that his family has sent him as a birthday present. Meanwhile, Megastorm, now calling himself Gigastorm after being reborn as a giant dinosaur, has become so heavy that he keeps falling into holes in the ground and getting stuck.

Episode 30: Gigastorm's Treachery

 

With Galvatron still in his coma, Gigastorm decides to chop him up with a chainsaw. Galvatron awakens and congratulates Gigastorm on his powerful new form, but when Gigastorm then tries again to kill him, Galvatron is none too pleased.

Episode 31: The End of Starscream

 

Gigastorm learns that Starscream and BB had betrayed him, their attempt on his life transforming him into a robotic dinosaur. He repays them in kind by knocking them into the Angolmois Energy with a bomb, transforming them into the much more stupid-looking Hellscream and Max-B, a robotic shark and wolf, respectively.

 

Episode 32: The Lio Convoy Assassination Plot

 

Now it's Durge and Thrust's turn to sell more toys get upgraded new forms and dumberer names: Dirgegun and Thrustor.

 

Episode 33: The Great Angolmois Freezing Tactic

 

The Maximals put their ship's AI into a mobile robot body. I don't know why. Also the planet Jupiter gets destroyed.

 

Episode 36: Emissary of the Fourth Planet

Episode 37: The Crisis of Planet Gaia

 

A robot probe awakens in the ruins of Mars and travels to Gaia on a mission to interface with the planet's master computer and stop the Angolmois Energy from being used for evil. The Maximals defend it from Predacon interference and help it accomplish its goal, little realizing that the way it plans to protect the Angolmois is by causing the Moon to crash into Gaia, destroying the planet and all of its energy, not to mention all the Transformers and other lifeforms still on it. Moon, the rabbit Transformer living on the Moon with Artemis, travels to Gaia to warn the Maximals, even though none of them can see him. But Lio Junior does so the plot can happen and he's able to get the warning to Lio Convoy in time. Working together with Galvatron, the Maximals are able to break through the master computer's defenses so their mobile robot AI can reprogram the probe and stop the disaster. Crisis averted, the truce is over and Galvatron turns on the Maximals once again, setting the stage for the final confrontation between dumb and dumber.

 

Episode 38: Fly Out! Planet Gaia  

Episode 39: Assemble, Thirty-Nine Warriors 

Episode 40: Revenge of the Space Pirates

Episode 41: Breaking Into Nemesis

Episode 42: Legend! The Green Warrior

Episode 43: Farewell! Lio Convoy

 

The final arc! Including a stupid anime clipshow episode that forces in plot-critical developments so you have to watch it. Who lives? Who dies? Who cares?

Planet of the Hoojibs

Star Wars (1977) #55: Plif! 

Writer: David Michelinie

Penciler: Walt Simonson

Medium: Comic

Publication date: October 1981

Timeline placement: 3 ABY 

 

Wow, that Columbia ten-speed Formula 10 racer could be mine already!

 

The Further Adventures: Planet of the Hoojibs

Author: Jymn Magon

Illustrator: Greg Winters

Medium: Picture book

Publication Date: April 1983

Timeline Placement: 3 ABY

 

Princess Leia, C-3PO, and Chewbacca are on a post-Empire Strikes Back mission without Han Solo, who is frozen in carbonite, or Luke Skywalker, R2-D2, or Lando Calrissian, none of whom is in the book. The Rebel Alliance sent the B-team.

Leia and company arrive on the planet Arbra in search of a new base for the Rebellion instead of searching for Han. The dominant species on the planet is the Hoojibs, a race of small, fluffy rabbit-like creatures. Threepio is quick to assure the princess that they are unintelligent. 

The Rebels welcome the wild Hoojibs into their camp and spend their time petting them and posting Instagram pictures of them because they are so floofy. They are like cuter, less commercial porgs. That night, however, C-3PO awakens from shutdown mode to find the Hoojibs are attempting to eat him alive. They have already drained all the energy from the Rebels' weapons. The Hoojibs, it turns out, feed on the electrical energy of technology. 

 

Chewbacca grabs one of the Hoojibs, presumably to lift it over his head like a baby, and is surprised when it begins to speak! The Hoojib, one Plif by name, explains that his people used to live in a cavern filled with crystals that supplied them with all the energy they ever needed, but recently they were driven out by a monstrous space creature called a slivilith. He does not explain that the slivilith is actually a bio-engineered long-range intelligence-gathering device created by the extragalactic Yuuzhan Vong and sent into deep-space prior to the Yuuzhan Vong's development of faster-than-light technology. That factoid wouldn't be added to the lore until Wizards of the Coast's release of Alien Anthology in 2001.

The slivilith attacks! It is a giant flying green bat/manta ray-like creature with prehensile tentacles. The only functional blaster the Rebels have left belongs to the guard who was on duty at the time, but rather than shoot at the slivilith himself he hands the gun over to Leia like a true cuck.

The princess fends off the monster, and the Hoojibs show the Rebels the way to its lair in their former cave, where they keep it at bay with wooden spears until Chewbacca gets bored and just swings the thing, many times larger than himself, by its tentacles into the pointy crystals, killing it. It then falls into a bottomless pit.

With the Hoojibs' food supply restored, Leia contacts the rest of the Alliance and reports that she's found them a new base.

A simplified version of the story told in Marvel Comics' Star Wars #55: Plif!, but as with the previous (and only other) Further Adventure, the illustrations are gorgeous and worth reading the book for, or at least looking up scans online. Another hit!

Droid World

Star Wars (1977) #47: Droid World! 

Writer: Archie Goodwin

Penciler: Carmine Infantino

Medium: Comic

Publication date: February 1981

Timeline placement: 3 ABY 

 

The plot of this issue is described below, in the section for the much better children's book adaptation. I'll mention a few things worth pointing out here, though. Kligson, the cyborg ruler of Droid World, reveals that he is a veteran of the Clone Wars who lost most of his organic body fighting in that conflict. "I suffered enough in the Clone Wars to make me hostile to my fellow organics forever!" Weird that this was his takeaway when his injuries presumably came from the Confederacy's droid armies. Maybe Kligson was a Separatist who fought against the clones. Except he didn't, because the Author's Cut of The Essential Guide to Warfare revealed that Kligson went on to serve the Empire after the Clone Wars and got his injuries by being shot up by stormtroopers for not being evil enough. Ah well nevertheless.

 

He also describes himself as "more machine than man," an interesting turn of phrase that Obi-Wan Kenobi's ghost would use to describe Darth Vader in Return of the Jedi. But that movie wouldn't be released for more than two years after this comic. Did George Lucas pilfer that line from Archie Goodwin? Probably not, but in my headcanon he did.

 

The Further Adventures: Droid World

 

Author: Jymn Magon

Illustrator: Dick Foes

Medium: Picture book

Publication Date: January 1983

Timeline Placement: 3 ABY

 

The Rebels have captured a damaged Imperial Warbot, a giant combat droid equipped with multiple blaster cannons and, even more frightening, huge grasping robot claws. Luke Skywalker and an Alliance technician attempt to obtain the Warbot's technical readouts by having R2-D2 jack into it and download the data, but this only causes the droid's innards to start shooting out sparks and melting. The technician tells Luke that the only person who can retrieve the data from the droid now is a man called Kligson who lives on Droid World, a giant space station of his own design.

Luke and the droids travel to Droid World, where Kligson fires warning shots at their vessel and demands that they leave. Kligson reveals that he is a cyborg and wants no contact with non-mechanical humans. Luke appeals to the man's ego by telling him he's the only one who can repair their Warbot, so Kligson agrees to allow Artoo, Threepio, and the Warbot onto Droid World on the condition that he be allowed to keep whatever he repairs.

Aboard the space station, Kligson dismisses the Warbot as cheap Imperial junk not worth fixing and orders his second-in-command, Z-X3, to dispose of it. He also tells Artoo and Threepio that they are now free and don't have to return to their life of servitude. But Threepio protests that they love Master Luke.

 

Meanwhile, Artoo is suspicious of Z-X3, so he follows the Imperial experimental droid trooper and learns that he is still loyal to the Empire and planning his own droid mutiny. Artoo and Threepio reveal this treachery to Kligson, who leaps into action and is immediately blown away by Z-X3. The mutinous droids chase Artoo and Threepio around Droid World for a while, with a droid tank cornering them at the edge of a melting pit before plunging to its own doom while the good droids are hoisted out of danger by electromagnets.

Kligson reveals that he's still alive, having sent a robotic double to die in his place. He has long suspected Z-X3's treachery and has been building a droid army of his own to fight against Z-X3's army of droid mutineers. In fact the battle is raging now! When it's all over, Kligson ponders the loss, sending Artoo and Threepio on their way with the schematics they wanted. 

Luke congratulates the droids on accomplishing their mission, but he can't help feeling bad for Kligson, who loved droids but had to kill them. And soon the Empire will come to finish what Z-X3 started. But just then, the engines of Droid World blaze to life, carrying the giant space station into deep space. Safe at last, maybe Kligson will finally be able to find peace after all.

This is a picture-book adaptation of Marvel Comics' Star Wars #47: Droid World. The story here isn't quite as in-depth as the comic's, but the illustrations are much better, and the picture book comes with an audio version of the story on record or cassette, so really it's a toss-up on which version to get. Well at this point it's probably a lot easier to come by the comic. But this is way cooler!

LOST Retrospective – Season 1: Plane Crash

"This show is about people who are metaphorically lost in their lives, who get on an airplane, and crash on an island, and become physically lost on the planet Earth. And once they are able to metaphorically find themselves in their lives again, they will be able to physically find themselves in the world again." 

– Damon Lindelof, co-creator of Lost

 

When I think about the first season of Lost, I often think of it as a season of superlatives. It has the best pilot episode in TV history. It's the best debut season of any show in TV history. It is, at least in my estimation, the single best season of television ever produced. Although I hated much of what the series eventually became, it's on the foundational strength of its first season that I still consider Lost my favorite TV show of all time.

I had watched the first season of Lost in full three times: once by myself, twice with friends. On September 22, 2024, twenty years to the day since the original series premiere, I started watching it for the fourth time.

 

It is still the best season of television ever produced.

 

 

Episode Tier List

S-tier

• Pilot
• Walkabout
• White Rabbit
• Deus Ex Machina
• Exodus

 

A-tier

• Tabula Rasa
• House of the Rising Sun
• The Moth
• Confidence Man
• Solitary
• Raised by Another
• All the Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues
• Special
• Outlaws
• ...In Translation
• Numbers
• Do No Harm
• The Greater Good

 

B-tier

• Whatever the Case May Be
• Hearts and Minds
• Homecoming
• Born to Run 

 

Notes

* In addition to the above superlatives, I'll also point to "Walkabout," the first John Locke episode, as the single greatest episode of TV ever made, with its last five minutes the greatest scene in TV history, but those are competitive categories.

 

* In terms of story continuity, Season 1 is fairly tight and I could almost believe that it was planned out from the start, despite being aware of how in real life most of the long-term mysteries and mythology weren't introduced until after ABC picked up the show for a full season and the writers had to come up with something to fill another 20 hours. But one thing in this season that's always stuck out to me as a pretty weak retcon is the revelation that Locke was the one who knocked out Sayid and destroyed his transceiver in "The Moth." 

 

LOCKE: The first week after the crash there was a cave in. Jack was trapped. Do you remember that?  

 

SAYID: Of course.  

 

LOCKE: You, Kate and Sawyer went out into the jungle to try and triangulate a signal.  

 

SAYID: Yes.  

 

LOCKE: You were hit from behind—knocked unconscious? When you woke up your transceiver, your equipment was destroyed. That was me.  

 

SAYID: This is one time you'd better not be telling the truth.

 

LOCKE: I did what was in everyone's best interest.

 

SAYID: You ruined my chance to find the source.

 

LOCKE: The source of a distress call that kept saying they're dead, it killed them all, over and over? Is that a place you really want to lead people to?

 

SAYID: Why wait all this time? Why not tell me then?

 

LOCKE: Because back then you wouldn't have engaged in reasonable debate, and nobody else would have. You were all so focused on getting off the Island that you weren't seeing things clearly. 

 

This exchange where Locke makes his confession in "The Greater Good," an otherwise strong episode, feels distractingly weak, like the writer got handed the assignment to work an explanation into his episode for this lingering mystery left over from the beginning of the season and just wanted to get past it as quickly as possible. "It's me, Austin! It was me all along, Austin! I kept it a secret for fourteen episodes but I'm telling you now for no reason!" Earlier in "The Greater Good," Sayid tells Locke that he knows when he's being lied to. Yet Sayid questioned Locke about the incident back in "Confidence Man" and had no clue that Locke was giving him the runaround. Not that Sayid should be a superhuman lie detector (he's not Emma Swan after all), but the discrepancy is noticeable enough to make this scene feel half-assed and unplanned. It smacks of the terrible and lazy writing habits the writers would develop in later seasons, either making up completely nonsensical bullshit excuses to avoid answering questions or answering them in the most perfunctory and resentful way possible.

 

* The only other story element in Season 1 that feels similarly desultory is the saga of Kate's stupid toy airplane. "Whatever the Case May Be" has a decently fun on-island story, with Kate, Jack, and Sawyer competing with one another to obtain the U.S. Marshal's Halliburton case and find a way to open it, but it's made one of the weaker episodes of the season by its pointless flashback story, which is completely wasted on building up the mystery of this pointless toy plane. The payoff, such as it is, comes in "Born to Run," where we learn that Kate cares so much about the plane because it's a keepsake of her childhood friend who was later killed due to Kate's thoughtlessness. You can see how that might have seemed like an okay idea at the time, but aside from an awkward scene in the season finale where the Marshal essentially just monologues to the camera for five minutes to explain the convoluted back story of the plane and why it mattered enough to have wasted so much time on it, neither the plane nor Kate's friend is ever seen or mentioned again for the rest of the show. So in retrospect it sticks out like a sore thumb. They had two decent ideas for Kate-centric stories in Season 1, but because Evangeline Lilly was so hot they stretched that second story across two episodes. As a result, "Whatever the Case May Be" and "Born to Run" both ended up feeling weaker than they might otherwise have been. Lose the lame bank robbery flashback.

 

* "White Rabbit" is my second favorite episode of the season after "Walkabout"; sometimes I think they're equally good. But it's kind of a bummer hearing Charlie desperately yell "I don't swim! I don't swim!" as he's searching for someone to save the woman drowning right in front of him. In the Season 3 episode "Greatest Hits," Charlie reveals, "I was junior swim champion in Northern England. I can hold my breath for four minutes." The plot of that episode actually hinges on Charlie's swimming ability. Did they just forget about what he said in Season 1? "Greatest Hits" is a great episode but it could have played out nearly the same without explicitly contradicting another great episode. People will try to justify this plot hole by saying that Charlie couldn't save Joanna because he was strung out on heroin at the time so he lied about not knowing how to swim. Um...

 

 

* "Homecoming," the season's second Charlie episode, features a mostly unnecessary flashback. The rematch against Ethan is tense and exciting, but it's somewhat anticlimactic how easily Jack beats him despite getting his ass thrashed last time. This episode would have been better off keeping the deleted scene of Locke stabbing Ethan prior to his fight with Jack, explaining his defeat. Unfortunately, aside from this one promotional still, no footage from this scene has ever been released. 

 

 

* I feel comfortable putting "Hearts and Minds," the season's Boone-centric episode, as a B-tier episode because its on-island story feels undercut by essentially being all a dream/bad trip. Despite the important character development, it ends up feeling like filler because the most exciting things that happened didn't actually happen. I wish they had found a way to write it that felt like less of a cheat. But I still feel a little bad because I think the flashback is great and it has one of the most memorable scene transitions in the entire series. The soundtrack grows more urgent as Shannon and Boone fall into bed together and then all the sound cuts out and it hard-cuts to Boone sitting hunched over, naked and pale, at the bottom of an otherwise black frame, out of focus so you can't even tell what you're looking at at first. Shannon says his name in the dark, then clicks on the lamp and is revealed sitting on the other side of the room fully clothed.

 

SHANNON: When we get back to LA, you should just tell your mom that you rescued me—again, just like you always do. And then we'll just go back.  

 

BOONE: To what?  

 

SHANNON: To what it was.  

 

BOONE: Like it's all up to you.  

 

SHANNON: [contemptuously] Get dressed. 

 

I can't say enough good things about the editing, framing, blocking, and acting in this scene, and how it reveals so much about the characters. You almost don't even need the dialogue, but I've often found myself hearing Boone's hollow "Like it's all up to you," in particular situations, for the last twenty years.

 

Yeah I've had this drug-induced fantasy before.

The Planet That Ate Everyone

Galaxy of Fear #1: Eaten Alive

Author: John Whitman

Medium: Junior novel

Publication date: January 1997

Timeline placement: 0 ABY

 

Back Tagline: A new evil lurks: Star Wars Galaxy of Fear. Terror is everywhere . . .

Interior Tagline: Welcome to the dark side of the galaxy . . .

 

Official Book Description:

Vanished?

D'vouran seems like a normal enough planet. The friendly locals welcome Tash, Zak, and their uncle Hoole with open arms.

But Tash has a bad feeling about this place.

There's a madman running around the streets shouting that people are disappearing. He's saying they've just vanished into thin air.

Tash knows that's impossible. But something is really wrong on D'vouran. Will she find the courage to trust her gut instincts . . . before it's too late?

Brief Synopsis:

Six months after the Battle of Yavin, thirteen-year-old Tash Arranda and her brother, twelve-year-old Zak, are living in the care of their Uncle Hoole, a shapeshifting Shi'ido anthropologist. Natives of Alderaan, Tash and Zak were off-world on a school field trip when the Death Star destroyed their planet, killing their entire family. Their only surviving relative is their aunt's alien husband, who takes them in due to his species' custom of treating all family like immediate family. Aunt Beryl herself never appears in the series. Did she also die on Alderaan? Hoole gives no sign of being broken up over the death of his wife if so. Did she die previously from other causes? Is she still alive somewhere and just wants nothing to do with her remaining family? Is she away on a business trip? Pick your headcanon explanation now, because she won't be mentioned again after this book.

 

Hoole and the Arrandas, along with their droid DV-9, who is just Marvin the Paranoid Android from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, are currently bound for the planet D'vouran aboard Hoole's ship, the Lightrunner. Hoole's work as an anthropologist takes him all around the galaxy; his current mission is to investigate this recently discovered planet that, according to the existing star charts of this region, shouldn't exist.

 

Despite his willingness to take in the children, Uncle Hoole remains a cold and distant figure who never talks about himself or his work. He keeps to himself while thrusting his charges off on DV-9, or "Deevee," an advanced scientific research droid who is in a deep depression about having to give up his career to babysit and tutor a couple of middle-schoolers. Zak, who has become a thrill-seeking daredevil as a trauma response to their parents' death, decides to sneak into Hoole's quarters and find out what he's working on. He is immediately caught, of course, because Hoole is still in his room at the time, but before his uncle can finish reprimanding him, everything is thrown into chaos when the Lightrunner drops out of hyperspace prematurely.

 

On the bridge, Tash had been pretending to pilot the ship at the time of the disaster. Hoole immediately blames her for disrupting the autopilot, even though she hadn't touched any of the controls. More introverted than her brother, Tash has only withdrawn further into herself since the destruction of Alderaan, and doesn't really miss anyone who perished there besides her parents. She was always an outcast among her peers due to her uncanny prescience. Using her leet haxorz skills, she uncovered restricted information about the Jedi Knights on the dark web and now dreams of being trained by one of them in the ways of the Force. Unfortunately, as we all know, there are no Jedi left.

 

Damaged by its premature deceleration, the Lightrunner sets down on D'vouran, where Hoole and the Arrandas are greeted by the ever-smiling Chood, one of the native Enzeen (pictured on the book cover). Chood explains that D'vouran was recently discovered by the Empire when a cargo ship, the Misanthrope, crashed on the planet after similarly being yanked out of hyperspace by an unexpected mass shadow. The sole survivor was the Misanthrope's captain, Kevreb Bebo. Here he comes now, being bodily thrown out of the local cantina.

 

I was genuinely surprised by how kind and compassionate Tash is in this scene. She immediately runs over to this crazy drunk and tries to help him, but he just raves about people disappearing. What a loon! Anyway, Hoole and the Arrandas enter the cantina, where they are immediately accosted by Gank mercenaries in the employ of Smada the Hutt, an old acquaintance of Hoole's. Smada wants wants Hoole to come work for him so he can use Hoole's shapeshifting abilities to assassinate his enemies or something. Hoole says no, but Smada vows that he will employ Hoole one day whether he likes it or not.

 

Fortunately for our heroes, however, also in the cantina are Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Princess Leia, Chewbacca, R2-D2, and C-3PO, and they step in and force the Hutt to back down. Tash recognizes Princess Leia because I guess the Force tells her who she is. Everyone treats this like some big scandal even though the Arrandas lived on Alderaan so why wouldn't they recognize their planet's royalty? It turns out that the Millennium Falcon also experienced an unusual departure from hyperspace in the proximity of D'vouran and is currently undergoing repairs. Luke talks to Tash about the Force while C-3PO annoys Deevee.

 

Hoole arranges for Zak and Tash to stay with Chood, this complete stranger they've just met, while he goes about his mysterious work in the middle of the night. Tash is awakened by a mysterious slurping sound, which turns out to be for the best as she finds Whatsamatta the Hutt's goons trying to kidnap her. She kicks the nearest Gank in the balls and runs out of the house with Zak, who is still half asleep. They run into town screaming with the Ganks in hot pursuit, but when the townsfolk turn out to investigate, the kids' attackers are nowhere to be found. 

Tash once again encounters local wildman Bebo, who is wandering around crying about his friend Lonni Anderson vanishing. Chood explains that Bebo is just a crazy old lunatic but Tash takes pity on him and asks him about his friend. She intelligently follows him into the nearby forest, where he shows her a hole in the ground hidden beneath the roots of a tree. Suddenly aware that she's made a huge mistake, Tash tries to leave, only to be pushed into the hole by Bebo. 

They find themselves in the abandoned ruins of an Imperial science laboratory. Bebo explains the true history of the Misanthrope crash, how the crew actually survived only to start vanishing one by one, until only he and Lonni were left here in the lab, the one protected place on the planet. Bebo gives Tash a special pendant he always wears for protection, a miniaturized force field generator developed by the long-gone Imperial scientists. Tash takes it and goes to warn her family, then Smeagol the Hutt's minions appear and shoot Bebo.

 

Back on the surface, Smada makes another attempt at kidnapping the children to force the conspicuously absent Hoole to do his bidding, but all three are captured by Chood and the Enzeen, who are revealed to be essentially giant intelligent fleas that feed off of the planet by sticking their tongues into the ground. D'vouran itself is a living organism, either brought to life or wholly created by the Empire's mad scientists. It presents itself as a paradise world to lure in settlers, then—shhhluuuuuuuurrrrpp—sucks them into the ground and digests them. It now does exactly that to every non-Enzeen on the planet, except for the Arrandas, who are protected by Tash's pendant, and Smada, who is suspended on a hoversled.

 

The Enzeen drag their prisoners back to the Imperial laboratory, where they plan to throw them into a pit called the Heart of D'vouran. But just when all hope seems lost, one of the Enzeen turns on the others, revealing himself to be Uncle Hoole in shapeshifted disguise! Smada falls into the pit due to his own selfishness, and during the battle the pendant falls into the pit as well, clutched in the hand of a screaming Chood. Unable to digest the protective force field, D'vouran gets bad acid reflux and the whole planet starts coming apart.

 

Tash, Zak, Hoole, and Deevee make it back to the Lightrunner, but are unable to take off as the ship is seized by tendrils of molten earth. But suddenly the Millennium Falcon appears in the sky. As the Heroes of Yavin were on their way to their next adventure, Luke had a Force vision of the Arrandas' peril and made Han go back for them. Everyone makes it onto the Falcon, but D'vouran gives chase, following the starship across the system under the propulsion of I guess magic, or something. But eventually D'vouran's heartburn gets so bad that it digests itself and collapses into nothingness.

 

Later, after things have calmed down, the Galaxy of Fear heroes share everything they learned with the Rebels. "Someone is using science to create mutants," Hoole declares, vowing to put a stop to these shenanigans. Tash remembers Smada the Hutt's warning about how little the kids know about their uncle and wonders what he's really up to. But for now, at least this experiment is over, and no one else will ever be Eaten Alive.

 

But the twist is...

Elsewhere in space, a ship is prematurely pulled out of lightspeed by a mysterious planet that doesn't appear on any star charts. Somehow, D'vouran returned.

 

 

the Platonic Boy-Girl Relationship:

Zak Arranda and his sister Tash, who disappears down a hole in the ground halfway through the book.

 

Questionable Uncling:

After Tash narrowly escapes being kidnapped by Smegma the Hutt's goons in the middle of the night and is chased through town while screaming for help only for her attackers to vanish into thin air, Hoole tries to gaslight her into thinking that she was just sleepwalking and it was all a dream.

 

Early 90s Cultural References:

The Internet, IRC chat, Stranger Danger, Goosebumps

 

Memorable Cliffhanger Chapter Ending:

Ch. 3/4:

Something cold and slimy grabs Tash by the neck. It's... a flower necklace.

 

Genuine Scare Alert:

"If you thought your friends and allies on the surface suffered, you were wrong. Their deaths were quick and merciful—most of them suffocated when they were pulled under D'vouran's surface."

 

I remember reading this as a child and finding the idea of being buried alive and suffocated by dirt much more viscerally horrifying than whatever made-up nonsense it was being favorably compared to. Quick and merciful suffocation, sounds great!

 

Title Drop Alert:

"I am going to take you to the Heart of D'vouran. There you will meet a death that makes these other deaths seem like a gift. In the Heart of D'vouran, every last nutrient from your body can be carefully digested. You will be eaten very slowly. Eaten alive."

 

"Aaiiiiii!" the Gank screamed. "It's hurting me! It's hurting me!" His eyes were alive with terror. "I'm being eaten alive!"

 

Yes, it happened twice! 

Cameo Alert:

Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Princess Leia, Chewbacca, C-3PO, R2-D2, and Darth Vader

 

Conclusions:  

Galaxy of Fear was one of the earliest EU series I ever read, along with Jedi Prince, Junior Jedi Knights, and Young Jedi Knights. I didn't find it particularly scary even as a child, but I loved the characters and the interesting new worlds they would visit and the strange creatures they would encounter. I read several Goosebumps books but was never a huge fan—Star Wars and Animorphs were more my jam at the Scholastic Book Fair—but any slim volume with colorful cover art is like a shot of nostalgia. Starting to read Galaxy of Fear again felt like coming home.

I've hyped these books up for years as one of the most underrated series in the EU, but really Eaten Alive is just all right. It's a lot of fun, never boring, and a quick read, but a grown adult reading it for the first time in 2025 probably won't get much out of it. Rereading it for the first time in 25 years is a real trip, but despite one or two (admittedly well-handled) emotional scenes, Eaten Alive isn't really aiming for any meaningful measure of depth or complexity. And that's fine! It's a better written, more interesting Goosebumps, and I'm looking forward to reading more.

To Take the Trigon

Escape Into Terror

Writer: Peter Sauder

Medium: Television

Air Date: September 14, 1985 

Timeline Placement: 15 BBY

 

En route to the big speeder race on the planet Boonta, Kea Moll's starship experiences a hyperdrive malfunction. Fortunately, there's an astromech droid aboard, and R2-D2 sets about repairing the hyperdrive just like he did on the Royal Naboo Starship seventeen years earlier. Unfortunately, this time he's assisted by C-3PO, who somehow lets the entire hyperdrive float away into space. Somehow this isn't the most catastrophic thing ever, and the gang decides to go stay with Kea's mother on the planet Annoo until they can get a new hyperdrive. How long will it take them to get there at sublight speed? Don't worry about it.

 

Meanwhile, the comical I mean notorious Fromm Gang is still hard at work building the Trigon One superweapon so they can become the number one criminal organization in the galaxy. I wonder what Black Sun has to say about this. We meet the big man himself, patriarch Sise Fromm, who we're told is 900 years old. Just like Yoda! Maybe they went to high school together.

Sise is upset about the events of the previous episode, where his son's incompetence caused their scheme to be discovered. He's got it out for our heroes, whose roster he describes in a very specific way three times in twenty-one minutes: "The two who infiltrated our secret base are here on Annoo with a girl and two droids. I'll find those two young meddlers myself, the girl, and the two droids. My men will find them: two males, a girl, and two droids." Geesh, Mr. Dramatis Personae over here.

The gang lands on Annoo, where two Fromm goons are waiting for them at the spaceport. R2-D2 creates a distraction by spraying C-3PO with oil and spazzing out like a "mad droid." Nonsensically this allows the humans and droids to escape undetected in the White Witch.

 

At Kea's mom's house, the droids bungle onto a secret room and discover that both women are secretly members of the Rebel Alliance! Which shouldn't exist for another thirteen years! Let's just assume they meant lowercase "rebel alliance" instead of the formal Alliance to Restore the Republic. 

"Freedom is everybody's fight," Kea's mother declares. This becomes C-3PO's new mantra that he repeats while practicing the fabled martial art of gravik-nez at inopportune moments throughout the episode. Threepio’s martial antics were played for laughs in this episode and then never mentioned again, but the Expanded Universe took his combat programming very seriously, revealing that Threepio could be seen attempting (and failing) to use it against one of Jabba’s Gamorrean guards in Return of the Jedi, and that gravik-nez was in fact an Affan martial art. (Affa, of course, was the planet where C-3PO was originally built almost a century before Anakin Skywalker salvaged his disassembled parts on Tatooine.)

Also, Threepio observes, "Why, I'd rather be feeding tauntauns on Hoth." It's weird that Hoth and its native fauna are apparently common knowledge at this time.

 

They hatch a plan to destroy the Trigon One. Thall Joben and Kea hide in a shipping container about to be loaded onto the Fromms' ship. After they're locked in, Jord Dusat announces to no one that he's going to stay behind to bang Kea's mom while the droids load the container. High jinks ensue, but in the end our heroes easily hijack the Trigon One right in front of Sise Fromm's fat face and blast their way to orbit. Strangely, the superweapon is explicitly called a satellite, but it seems to be just a spaceship.

 

The Fromms dispatch a group of droid starfighters to retrieve their weapon, fourteen years before George Lucas featured droid starfighters in The Phantom Menace. These ones are just about as useful and our heroes get away. Kea argues that they should use the Trigon to end all organized crime in the galaxy or something, which seems like it would outside the scope of the [r]ebel [a]lliance's goals, but Thall insists that the Trigon One is too dangerous to be left alive and Kea immediately agrees with him because she has strong convictions. Threepio tries to do a karate move and falls down.

I'm ashamed to say I laughed more times at this episode than was appropriate.

 

"Stop, Artoo! ARTOO, STOP!"

MyComyc #1: Neutralizing Trigon I

Writer: Uncredited (translated by Abel G. Peña)

Penciler: Beaumont Studios

Medium: Comic

Publication date: 1986

Timeline placement: 15 BBY

MyComyc was a Spanish-language anthology comic telling short, two-page stories featuring characters from various licensed properties. In Star Wars' case, that was the Droids and Ewoks animated series. These comics' place in Expanded Universe canon is a fuzzy one, however; while the events of the some of the Droids strips are directly referenced in the two-part StarWars.com article The Droids Re-Animated, the behind-the-scenes word is that Dark Horse wanted to include them in one of their Omnibus collections, but "despite the comics bearing appropriate copyright information, Lucasfilm was unable to locate paperwork proving Editorial Gepsa had actually licensed the titles." So while at least some version of at least some of these comics happened in continuity, the strips themselves as published cannot be considered fully canon.

 

This first strip in particular proves that point, as Neutralizing Trigon I tells a story seemingly incompatible with the events of the Droids cartoon. Thall Joben and Jord Dusat eavesdrop on a video call between Tig and Sise Fromm and discover that the Trigon One (here called the Trigon I) is hidden in the desert mountains. While Thall and Threepio distract the Fromm guards, Jord and Artoo sneak about the Trigon I, where Artoo "disconnect[s] the computer's main memory," because "without its central memory, this machine is worthless!" Then they escape, and Threepio tells Artoo that he's proud of him.

 

For this story to coexist with "Escape Into Terror," it would need to take place during the events of that episode, as Thall and Jord first learn of the weapon during the episode and have stolen it by the end. However, there's no real time in "Escape Into Terror" where Neutralizing Trigon I could logically take place. The sequence of events would have to be: 1) Kea's mother tells them about the weapon, 2) they travel back to Ingo to sabotage its central memory, then travel back to Annoo the same day, 3) the next morning they sneak onto the Fromms' ship to go back to Ingo again, where they steal the Trigon despite having just rendered it inoperable.

 

Alternatively, this could be taken as a retelling of the events of "Escape Into Terror," like a drastically more extreme version of the Adventure in Beggar's Canyon vs. Luke Skywalker's Walkabout case. In that event, this comic is completely pointless and there was no reason to even bring it up.

 

Since the MyComyc stories aren't confirmed canon anyway, I don't see any point in getting bent out of shape trying to make Neutralizing Trigon I fit. The strips that already conform to established continuity make for easy headcanon, and the ones that don't can just be ignored. Wait, what was I talking about?