Somewhere in Time

Droids (1986) #4: Lost in Time!

Writer: David Manak

Penciler: John Romita Sr. and Warren Kremer

Medium: Comic

Publication date: July 1986

Timeline placement: 15 BBY; 1 ABY

 

The droids' next assignment finds them working as diplomatic couriers for the Republic Diplomatic Corps. They arrive on the planet Sooma at the palace of King Zornog, where... I'm not sure what they were actually going there to do, because it turns out that Prince Plooz, the toddler-aged son of King Gokus of the planet Alzar, has mysteriously stowed away on a Sooman freighter and ended up in King Zornog's court, where he is attempting to throttle the king with a piece of cloth. The droids save him, and in gratitude the king gives them the mission of escorting Prince Plooz back to his homeworld to avoid an interstellar war between Sooma and Alzar.

 

But the prince's disappearance has been a ploy engineered by Alzarian General Sludd, who wants Alzar and Sooma to destroy each other so he can conquer both planets. And rule over the ashes, I guess? This plan doesn't seem very thought out. 

Artoo and Threepio are en route to Alzar with Prince Plooz aboard their courier ship, where we learn that ships in Star Wars apparently have food synthesizers and power their faster-than-light engines with antimatter, just like in Star Trek. General Sludd's armada appears and opens fire on the droids, trying to assassinate Prince Plooz and hoping that King Gokus blames it on the Soomans, I guess. Sludd stupidly reveals his identity and evil plan on the viewscreen. I'm sure that won't come back to bite him.

 

Prince Plooz tries to help by pulling a lever that disrupts the courier ship's antimatter pods. The only way to escape certain doom is to jump to lightspeed without full antimatter, which naturally creates a rip in the spacetime continuum. The droids and Prince Plooz find themselves flying through a starless black void, finally emerging in a strange region of space. R2-D2 reports that they have gone through a time warp and traveled 100 years into the future!

 

Sadly this chronology did not stand the test of continuity; ultimately they only travel about 16 to 18 years into the future, and the EU's only explanation for Artoo's misstatement is to amend it to "anywhere from ten to one hundred years." But it's cool to think about how this date must have been chosen at the time. The 1986 Droids comics were produced as tie-ins to the Droids animated series, which had aired on TV the previous year. The cartoon has several references and appearances that set it during the reign of the Galactic Empire, requiring it to take place relatively close to the Original Trilogy. The comics, on the other hand, have no references to the Empire, or any other established Star Wars institutions or locations. One issue does feature an appearance by the Fromm Gang, but their race, the Annoo-dat, was established in the animated series to be able to live for centuries. The final piece of the puzzle is C-3PO's backstory prior to The Phantom Menace, which came directly from George Lucas and had Threepio being built on the planet Affa 112 years before the OT. So if it hadn't been for the Star Wars prequels featuring the first meeting between R2-D2 and C-3PO, these comics could officially be placed around 100 BBY, which would have been awesome.

 

But instead George Lucas changed his mind and made something way dumber. Anyway, the droids land on Endor and meet the E-e-e-e-ewoks. CONTINUED NEXT ISSUE! 

Ewoks #10: The Demons of Endor

Writer: David Manak

Penciler: Warren Kremer and John Romita Sr.

Medium: Comic

Publication date: July 1986

Timeline placement: 1 ABY; 15 BBY

Prince Plooz lauches himself out of the ship in an escape pod and lands on the Forest Moon below, where the Ewoks find him and mistake him for a magical Star Child bringing good fortune for their forthcoming peace treaty with the Duloks. The adult Ewoks take the Star Child back to their village, but Wicket and Princess Kneesaa dawdle and are left behind, whereupon they come across R2-D2 and C-3PO searching the swamp for the lost prince. "Omigosh, Wicket, look!" cries Kneesaa. "Demons!"

 

The droids give chase, asking the young Ewoks if they've seen Prince Plooz, and they all blunder into a deadly booby trap set by the Duloks. A giant boulder falls off a mountain to crush them, but Artoo balances himself on his retractable middle foot and rotates his other two legs 180 degrees over his head, catching the boulder and tossing it harmlessly over the back of his head.

 

What. 

C-3PO starts speaking the Ewok language, calling it an obscure dialect of the Inner Zuma region. Weirdly he's completely fluent in it in this comic despite barely understanding what they were saying when he had to translate for them in Return of the Jedi. He explains the whole situation about the interstellar frog prince and the two warring planets and the Ewok children completely understand what he's talking about.

 

They take the droids back to their village to warn Chief Chirpa and the others of the Duloks' treachery, but everyone has already gone out to meet the Duloks and sign the treaty. Logray, the old medicine man, comes running out and levitates the droids with his wizard staff, also mistaking them for demons, but Wicket and Kneesa set him straight and they all run off to the peace treaty making place.

 

Meanwhile, King Gorneesh and his Duloks are waiting to murder the Ewoks when they show up. Chief Chirpa comes in waving the Star Child over his head like a moron but King Gorneesh snatches Prince Plooz away and dangles him over a pit. But the droids show up and the sun reflects off C-3PO, making the Duloks think he's a demon. Man there are some weird demons on this moon.

  

"Unhand that child, you ruffians!" Threepio demands. The Duloks drop him and run for their lives.

"Droids! Droids! Me come!" Prince Plooz shouts, then falls into the chasm. Wicket swings down on a rope to catch him and all is well. 

 

Threepio recaps the whole story yet again, and even the Ewok elders understand the stakes involved with flying a spaceship through a time void. 

The droids and Prince Plooz return to their own time through the portal, which is identified in StarWars.com's 2013 blog article The Droids Re-Animated as the Endor Gate, the infamous wormhole that transported Darth Vader's indestructible gauntlet across the galaxy from Endor to Mon Calamari (don't ask). The indication given in the story itself is that the droids traveled back in time by creating a wormhole that collapsed at the end of the issue. But the Endor Gate is a black hole, and judging by the Bermuda Triangle-level of legends that are supposed to surround it, it seems like it should have been around longer than 20 years. Also they were nowhere near Endor when they flew into it.

Anyway, General Sludd is still up to no good but Artoo plays a recording of his self-confessed crimes to the king, the conspirators are taken into custody, and all is well.

The Droids and Ewoks crossover is infamous in the EU fandom as one of the very few canonical instances of time travel in Star Wars. For years I labored under the assumption that this comic explained why the Ewoks revere C-3PO as a golden god when they see him in Return of the Jedi. The Droids Re-Animated even says as much: "The fascinated Ewoks helped the droids find the missing child, so awed by C-3PO's shiny exterior that they assumed him to be a god. Thus, when he returned to Endor years later, they recognized him immediately and dropped to their knees in reverence."

But really that isn't the case at all. Initially the Ewoks mistake Threepio for a demon, not a god, and even run from him in fear or attack him. By the end of the story, though, he's explained his real identity to them and they completely understand what's going on. Then when he returns to Endor only three years have passed. The Ewoks the Rebels met then are the same Ewoks in this comic! They already know who C-3PO is, they just met him a couple of years ago, and they never thought he was a god in the first place. But when they meet again in the movie, neither appears to remember the other.

I had high hopes for this story after Part 1, but Part 2 completely blew it. The droids should have gone back in time to Endor's past, to the earliest days of Ewok civilization, and accidentally created a religious myth that was passed down for generations. Then when he finally returns, the Ewoks think it's scripture coming true. But instead of doing a cute little time loop story where Threepio unwittingly invents his own divinity, they made an unnecessary jumble of continuity where the Ewoks worshiping him makes no sense now. I'm sorry to say that David Manak and the crew at Star Comics completely dropped the ball on this one.

 

 

On the other hand, Prince Plooz is completely hilarious and adorable. I want him to come live with me. Lucasfilm could have been cashing in on the Baby Yoda merch craze decades earlier if they'd made some Prince Plooz plushies. Unfortunately the only time we'll ever see him again is when he returns to Endor in some ambiguously canon German comic.

Wolf in the Fold

Droids (1986) #3: The Scarlet Pirate!

Writer: David Manak

Penciler: John Romita Sr.

Medium: Comic

Publication date: May 1986

Timeline placement: 15 BBY

R2-D2 and C-3PO have been purchased by Ambassador Zell of the planet Majoor, who puts them to work babysitting his son Llez while he's away performing his diplomatic duties. Llez is a spoiled brat whose father doesn't love him enough and buys him expensive toys to compensate. 

 

Llez is a huge fan of the adventure show Space Pirates of the Galaxy, and imagines himself to be a swashbuckling buccaneer called the Scarlet Pirate. He also idolizes the real-life space pirate Redjac, a noncorporeal lifeform who travels from planet to planet, possessing people's bodies and committing serial murders to feed on the resulting garmonbozia (pain and sorrow). Just then, a news broadcast cuts into the program: Redjac has been captured and is, coincidentally, being brought to prison right here on Majoor! Llez takes one of the family landspeeders and rushes off to rescue his hero, with the droids in hot pursuit.

 

Llez uses a magno-neutralizer to deactivate the droid guards escorting Redjac to the prison and they steal the guards' police ship to escape the planet, with Artoo and Threepio arriving close behind and just managing to sneak onboard. Llez tells Redjac about how he feels neglected by his father and reveals that the ambassador is currently leading a convoy of ships on a peace mission to the planet Armath. "I AM WITHOUT ENDING. I HAVE EXISTED FROM THE DAWN OF TIME AND I SHALL LIVE BEYOND ITS END. IN THE MEANTIME I SHALL FEED, AND THIS TIME I DO NOT NEED A KNIFE," says Redjac commiseratingly.

 

They arrive on Redjac's ship, the Blood Brother, where his pirate gang, the Red Fury Brotherhood, prepares to attack Ambassador Zell's convoy. Llez protests that this is wrong, but the brigands reveal the true nature of pirates, shattering the boy's childhood delusions. Redjac mistakes Artoo and Threepio for pirate droids on his crew and orders them to take Llez to the brig. 

 

Llez dries his tears and vows to save his father. He and the droids find the ship's control room, where Llez dropkicks the two-headed Dyclops gunner firing plasma torpedoes at the ambassador's ships. Artoo jacks into the computer console and orders the torpedoes to self-destruct, saving the convoy. Zell leads a security team aboard the Blood Brother, where Llez and the droids have already taken out most of the pirates via cartoonish antics. "I was a fool to make a hero of you, Redjac!" Llez declares.

 

Redjac puts Llez in a headlock and orders the droids to stand back. "YOU WILL ALL DIE HORRIBLY IN SEARING PAIN!" he promises, adding, "REDJAC! REDJAC! REDJAC! REDJAC! REDJAC!" Ambassador Zell arrives and beats the shit out of Redjac, revealing himself to be a former Republic Space Ranger, just like Buzz Lightyear. As Redjac is taken away by the ambassador's guards, Zell and Llez restore their father-son bond, with Zell promising that Llez will accompany him on all his diplomatic missions from now on. "That sounds super boring, Dad!" says Llez.

 

Threepio sighs dejectedly with the understanding that they are no longer needed here and have lost yet another master, but "this time.. it was worth it!" I don't think that's how property ownership works, but okay.

 

Next time, the droids babysit another green alien child! Also, time travel! Stay tuned!

Existentialism on Fromm Night

Droids (1986) #2: The Ultimate Weapon!

Writer: David Manak

Penciler: John Romita Sr.

Medium: Comic

Publication date: March 1986

Timeline placement: 15 BBY

Apparently it was an Intergalactic Droid Agency shuttle that picked up Artoo and Threepio from Dodz, because that's where they are at the start of issue #2. Artoo's condition continues to deteriorate and he's on the verge of blowing up when Nikki Idd, co-captain of the vessel along with her brother Vik, inserts an energy feedback shield into R2-D2 to contain his excess energy. Their father, Lonn, will be able to repair Artoo, but Threepio explains the existential despair that droids feel when they don't have a master, so the two teens agree to act as their temporary masters until they arrive at Lonn's droid repair shop.

 

When they arrive, however, their father is nowhere to be found. The droids stay with Vik while Nikki goes off to find him, only to be captured by Tig Fromm and Vlix Oncard, members of the notorious criminal organization, the Fromm Gang. The Fromms have been attempting to coerce Lonn Idd into installing his new laser device onto their ship. When they threaten Nikki's life, he finally agrees. 

 

Thinking quickly, Nikki is able to push a button on the nearby computer console, transmitting a video feed back to her brother and the droids. Alerted to the intruders, our heroes set out to stop them, while Lonn sets to work installing his laser and Nikki is locked in a broom closet. '

 

Vik and the droids discover a non-functional Guardian Droid owned by Lonn, later retconned as an HK Guardian Droid, presumably making it of the same lineage as HK-47 from Knights of the Old Republic and HK-01, who led the Great Droid Revolution on Coruscant in 4015 BBY. HK Guardian Droids were known for being impervious to blasterfire, but Lonn Idd didn't allow any weapons on his space station, so R2-D2 volunteers himself to be their weapon.

 

Vik and and the droids confront the Fromms. Vik removes Artoo's energy shield, and Artoo starts bleeding electricity everywhere. Vik is able to free his sister from the closet, but Artoo is blasted by a Fromm hover guard droid and taken out of commission. The Idds are all taken prisoner, leaving C-3PO to save the day. 

After Lonn finishes installing his laser on Tig Fromm's ship, the Fromms decide to test it by killing the entire Idd family. But just then, the HK Guardian Droid comes in, its armor deflecting the blaster bolts of the hover guards. "Now it's my turn, you mechanical insects!" shouts Threepio from inside the Guardian Droid armor, destroying all the hover guards with his fists. Nikki blinds Tig Fromm with a spray of her perfume because she's a girl, then Vik drops a net on the Fromm Gang. Lonn promises them that they'll face justice, which of course they won't because they're the villains of the first story arc of the Droids animated series.

 

Later, Lonn finishes repairing Artoo and tells the droids that Nikki and Vik will take them back to the Intergalactic Droid Agency to be assigned to a new master. However, Artoo refuses to leave until someone fills him in on what he missed. Everybody laughs for some reason.

One thing I really appreciated about this issue is the art design and coloring. I like the colors used on R2-D2 by Al Williamson and/or Jon D'Agostino, the credited inkers on this issue. He's primarily white, yellow, and red, completely the wrong colors. He looks like a cheap Star Wars knockoff you'd find at the dollar store, a toy labeled something like STAR ROBOT and having nothing but blank cardboard on the back of its package. He looks so awesome.

 

I also love the Idds' cheesy-looking space jumpsuits, like costumes out of Lost in Space. The decades' worth of styles, designs, and influences spanned by the EU were among its greatest attributes, and really helped create the sense that this was a whole universe with different fashions and cultures, and the (frequently underutilized) potential to tell any kind of story you could imagine. Modern Star Wars continuity begins in the mid-2010s and everything sucks.

From the Adventures of R2-D2 and C-3PO

 

Droids (1986) #1: The Destroyer 

Writer: David Manak

Penciler: John Romita Sr.

Medium: Comic

Publication date: February 1986

Timeline placement: 15 BBY

 

 

Four years after the rise of the Galactic Empire and the deletion of C-3PO's memory of the Star Wars prequels (were we all so lucky), the lovable droids are now in the employ of the Intergalactic Droid Agency, having found themselves lost in space due to the incompetence of Tantive IV nepo hire Corla Metonae. The agency has set them up with a new master on the planet Dodz in the Outer Rim Territories.

 

The droids arrive at the home of their master, Lott Kemp, only to find it burned to the ground and Kemp himself nowhere in sight. They encounter a young boy named Jost Ellon, who tells them that Kemp was driven off-world by the corrupt Governor Kugg for refusing to pay his taxes. The citizens of Dodz live in fear of the governor's giant combat droid, the Destroyer, which he uses to extort the populace. 

 

The droids adopt Jost as their new master and accompany the orphan home to his dilapidated hovel. There they discover that Jost has unknowingly scavenged an antique Ranger X-1 defense droid. They explain its history and what it is to the boy, who hopes that they can use it to free the planet of Kugg's tyranny. Unfortunately, the droid has corroded power cells and will not be able to remain active for long.

 

Jost Ellon and his three droids travel to the monthly town council meeting, where the citizens are voting on a resolution to stand up to Kugg and refuse his demands for higher taxes. Governor Kugg himself walks in and declares that their taxes are now tripled, with the Destroyer bursting through the wall to emphasize his point. As the adults all kowtow before Kugg, only Jost has the courage to stand up to him, pitting his X-1 against the Destroyer.

 

At first the X-1 clobbers its opponent, but as its power cells run dry it starts to lose the fight. But Artoo intervenes, hooking himself up to both droids and transferring power from the Destroyer to the X-1. The battle resumes, and when it's over the Destroyer has been destroyed, with the X-1 left standing tall. Governor Kugg is taken into custody to await intergalactic trial.

 

The day has been won and the citizens of Dodz are now free, but Artoo sustained "some pretty serious microsynapse damage" during the fight, so he and Threepio have to leave their new master to find someone with the skills to repair him. It's unclear if they call a shuttle to come pick them up or if the people of Dodz just give them their own spaceship, but as the droids blast off back into space and their next adventure, Artoo asks, "Dok-do-eet-denn?" To which Threepio replies that of course he's proud of him.

 

Definitely child-oriented but still plenty enjoyable. I like the idea of the droids as Kwai-Chang Caine-type characters wandering backwater worlds beyond the Empire's notice and helping people in need when they can. What adventure awaits them next!

Second Death

FIRST LIFE

 

 

Although C-3PO achieved consciousness in a Mos Espa slave hovel, his frame is actually quite old, and some of his components date back a century, forged on the mechanized world of Affa. 

– StarWars.com Databank

SECOND LIFE

 

 

Young Anakin Skywalker cobbled together enough pieces to give Threepio new life. He was more than a run-of-mill Cybot Galactica 3PO-unit. His salvaged nature imbued in him special qualities that set him a brand apart from his droid cousins.

– StarWars.com Databank

 

Memory Loss...

Writer: Christopher Cooper

Penciler: Andres Ponce
Medium: Comic

Publication date: December 2014 in Star Wars Comic #13

Timeline placement: 19 BBY

 

At the end of Revenge of the Sith, C-3PO is being led away to be mind-wiped aboard the Tantive IV Sundered Heart Bail Organa's Starship by Raymus Antilles Colton Antilles Jeremoch Colton the captain. The captain is called away to the bridge and assigns R2-D2 the task of murdering his friend. As Threepio is marched to his execution, he laments that they were unable to save Padmé, and recalls how happy he was assisting her on diplomatic missions, mentioning how valuable the secret information in his memory banks is. 

I fully expected that Artoo would try to help Threepio avoid his fate but instead he cheerfully puts him into the brain drain machine and is about to throw the switch when he gets blasted. A bounty hunter droid has infiltrated the ship looking for information to sell to the new Empire, and after overhearing their conversation he's set his sights on C-3PO's memory banks. 

 

Threepio realizes that his knowledge could lead the Empire to baby Luke and Leia. He knows he must protect the children, but he's too clumsy, awkward, and useless to do anything. Plus his arms don't even bend. He wishes Artoo would wake up and save the day like he always does. "He'd do something silly and brave and selfless, like... Oh, of course."

 

Threepio wrestles the bounty hunter's vibroblade away from him, then pushes the two of them into the memory-wiping machine. Knowing the twins will be in danger as long as he remembers them, C-3PO activates the machine, erasing his own memory and finally getting the heroic moment Anthony Daniels always wanted, five years before J. J. Abrams had him do the same exact thing in The Rise of Skywalker. 

As his memory banks are deleted, Threepio's life flashes before his photoreceptors, culminating with his earliest memory:

 

 

Then nothing.

THIRD LIFE

 

KOTOR 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12-plus

The Old Republic

Developer: BioWare

Medium: Video game

Release date: December 2011

Timeline placement: 3,643–3,623 BBY

 

 

KOTOR 2 and The Last Jedi: Unlearning What You Have Learned

Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords

Developer: Obsidian Entertainment

Medium: Video game

Release date: December 2004

Timeline placement: 3,951 BBY

"Perhaps you were expecting some surprise, for me to reveal a secret that had eluded you, something that would change your perspective of events, shatter you to your core. There is no great revelation, no great secret. There is only you."

 

It is 2003. Filmmaker Rian Johnson, having recently shot his first movie, Brick, gives an interview where he reveals his ambition to make a movie so divisive that half the audience loves it and the other half thinks it is the worst movie they've ever seen.

 

It is 2017. Filmmaker Rian Johnson, having recently shot his fourth movie, Star Wars: Episode VIII – The Last Jedi, goes to a Halloween party dressed as Dougie Jones, the bastardized subversion of beloved Twin Peaks hero Dale Cooper who appeared in Twin Peaks: The Return, David Lynch's "fuck you" to nostalgia.

 

It is December 17, 2017. I walk out of the theater after watching The Last Jedi and text my friend Bryant, who asks me how the movie was. "Oh fuck," I text back, realization dawning, "I don't think I liked it."

 

It is in our house now.

It's always been difficult for me to choose a preference between Knights of the Old Republic and its sequel. As a story, I greatly prefer The Sith Lords, along with most of its characters. The original KotOR is more or less a perfect Star Wars experience, but the price of being prototypically Star Wars is not being able to be anything else. By contrast, KotOR II just isn't as much fun to play. The tone and atmosphere are much darker, and you're always ill at ease. There's precious little lighthearted adventuring between the desperate battles; you're on the run from beginning to end, without the comfortable reliability of the Jedi or the Republic to fall back on.

 

It's also less fun for less deliberate reasons. The length of the opening sequence on Peragus II is a common complaint, comparable to a more survival horror-ish version of the first game's Taris. But where KotOR let you begin the game's main quest in its second major area, Dantooine, in KotOR II you first have to explore the Republic ghost ship Harbinger and complete Citadel Station, a huge area full of backtracking, before crashing on the planet Telos and fighting dozens of enemies as you travel across its surface to reach the polar region, where you can finally start the main story.

 

The game's extensive first act alone was one of the major deterrents that kept me from playing it as many times as its predecessor. The other, of course, was the infamously incomplete ending and abundance of obvious cut content in the original Xbox version. 

Less fun to play, but better written.

 

If the original Knights of the Old Republic was somewhat comparable to The Force Awakens in how it drew on the tone and structure of classic Star Wars to tell a modern Star Wars story, The Sith Lords and The Last Jedi can be compared for how they subvert and deconstruct both their immediate predecessor and Star Wars as a whole, and how The Sith Lords does it correctly and The Last Jedi sucks. 

In KotOR, the player character goes through the whole Star Wars hero's journey, including Jedi training, a romantic arc, redemption for sins past, and saving the galaxy from certain doom, before finally arriving at happily ever after. The game acknowledges how awesome you are and everyone gets a medal. In the sequel, set a brief five years later, everything has gone to shit. The Jedi are all but extinct, the Republic is on the verge of collapse, the Sith are back and more dangerous than ever, and your character from the first game has vanished and all his friends are sad. As Avril Lavigne once said, so much for my happy ending.

 

Of course, The Force Awakens infamously did the same thing to Return of the Jedi, and didn't have much of an ending itself. Instead it left things on a cliffhanger for the subsequent film to pick up. J. J. Abrams showed the audience a box and asked "What's inside it?" then handed it over to Rian Johnson, who gleefully ripped it open and declared "Nothing! It's empty!"

 

Snoke in TFA: "I want the girl alive!"  

Snoke in TLJ: "Kill the girl!"  

Snoke in TFA: "Bring Kylo Ren to me so I can complete his training!"  

Snoke in TLJ: "Kylo your mask is dumb, now gtfo lol."  

Han in TFA: "Luke went looking for the first Jedi temple."  

Luke in TLJ: "I don't care about the first Jedi temple."  

Rey in TFA: "The one thing I want in all the universe is for my family to come back, but by the end of the movie I've accepted that they never  will."  

Rey in TLJ: "The one thing I want in all the universe is to know who my parents were."  

Rey's parents in TFA: *drop her off and leave the planet in a working spaceship*  

Rey's parents in TLJ: *so poor they have to sell their daughter for drinking money then die on the same planet*

Finn in TFA: "I've suffered a massive spinal injury and I'm in a coma!"  

Finn in TLJ: "nvm lol"  

Maz Kanata in TFA: "Nothing matters more than the fight against the dark side."  

Maz Kanata in TLJ: "I'm too busy with a union dispute to help the fight against the dark side, even though my whole business operation got blown up in the last movie."  

Kylo Ren in TFA: "I love Darth Vader!"  

Kylo Ren in TLJ: "Snoke made fun of me so I hate the past now!"  

Hux in TFA: "I'm a frothing-at-the-mouth true-believer Hitler Youth fascist!"  

Hux in TLJ: "I'm slapstick comic relief!"  

The First Order in TFA: "Oh no, like six X-wings showed up! We must retreat! Also our whole planet exploded!"  

The First Order in TLJ: "We rule the entire galaxy, somehow!"  

Kylo Ren in TFA: "My unique custom-built lightsaber got destroyed and my helmet got blown up!"  

Kylo Ren in TLJ: "Never mind I have a whole wardrobe full of them apparently. Also my scar is in a different place now."  

 

Snoke in TFA: "We must stop Luke Skywalker from returning at any cost! He is the only one who can stop us!"  

Luke in TLJ: *does nothing*  

Finn in TFA: "I started off trying to run away from my problems, but I've grown to care about something larger than myself!"  

Finn in TFA: "I started off trying to run away from my problems, but I've grown to care about something larger than myself, again!"  

Maz Kanata in TFA: "I'll tell you how I got Luke's lightsaber in another movie!"  

Maz Kanata in TLJ: "But not this one!"  

Finn in TFA: "I don't know how to pilot a vehicle!"  

Finn in TLJ: *pilots a vehicle*  

Snoke in TFA: 

Snoke in TLJ: 

 

The Sith Lords also tackles an entirely different set of themes. While the first game was a love letter to Star Wars, a "greatest hits" remix of the classic trilogy's most iconic moments and concepts, the second takes a much more critical, introspective view of the franchise. Written by Chris Avellone, whose résumé doubles as a list of some of the greatest RPGs of all time, KotOR II has a lot to say about the Jedi and the Force, little of it complimentary. His criticisms don't feel entirely dissimilar from those made by Rian Johnson in The Last Jedi, but the difference is that, coming from The Sith Lords, they feel more genuine and earned. Chris Avellone spent ten months reading the entire Expanded Universe as research for the game, whereas I'm still not completely convinced that Rian Johnson has ever actually seen a Star Wars movie.

 

I'm being facetious, of course; it's clear that Johnson has at least seen the prequels, that he didn't like them, and also that he missed the point of them completely.

The core theme of the prequels wasn't that the Jedi are fundamentally flawed as a concept, it was that the Jedi of that particular era had lost their way and become so fearful of the dark side that they exchanged their humanity for religious ideology, and were destroyed because of it. The titular "Return of the Jedi" was the next generation rejecting the mistakes of the old and starting a new path forward.

For Luke to suddenly be an ascetic prequel-esque Jedi in The Last Jedi and The Book of Boba Fett reveals a lack of imagination by the people writing these stories. Instead of logically following from the end of Return of the Jedi, they can only ape what they saw in the prequels, while completely missing the point of it.

 

In the original trilogy, Luke became a full Jedi by rejecting his teachers and choosing love over the strict dogma of the prequel-era Jedi. He didn't undergo the life-long training and brainwashing of the old Jedi Order. When he starts rebuilding the Jedi, you would expect his philosophy to reflect his experiences.

 

But The Last Jedi is like nah, Luke's just as bad as the prequel Jedi after all, it's actually Rey who has to do everything Luke was supposed to do because the actor who plays Luke got old in real life so there's no way he can be the hero anymore.

 

Now compare all of this to the way KotOR II followed the first game. Yes, things have gone to shit, and there's never any clear-cut resolution to it all (why would there be, when Obsidian thought they were making only the second game of what would be a trilogy? There's another point of comparison for you: The Sith Lords said its say with consideration for both its predecessor and its assumed follow-up; The Last Jedi burned its forerunner's blueprints and pulled the ladder up behind it). But it built more than it tore down. 

 

More importantly, Chris Avellone's interrogation of the Jedi Order was clearly framed as one writer's voice asking questions while the established setting endured around it. Despite the widespread consequences The Sith Lords brought to its isolated era of Star Wars history (consequences that ultimately didn't amount to much thanks to BioWare's subsequent storytelling in The Old Republic), it never truly upset the apple cart; KotOR II never had the equivalent of Luke Skywalker sucking down green walrus milk and then dying like an idiot.

 

Your original character could always return (in fact, the ending of the game depends on that premise). Five of your party members from the first game could potentially appear in the second, if you didn't kill them, and nothing prevented the other four from returning in the future. The only significant returning KotOR character to be killed in The Sith Lords was Ed Asner's Master Vrook, and who wasn't thrilled to see that?

The Jedi Order was destroyed, but by the end of the game it had been rebuilt, free from the influence of the obdurate Jedi Council. Compare this to The Last Jedi's resolution, where the man who rejected the obstinacy of the surviving Jedi Council members of his own day is killed with no legacy to leave behind, whatever lessons he had to teach replaced by the stolen Sacred Jedi Texts. "Page-turners, they were not." Wow, I bet Rey's Jedi Order is going to be super-cool and exciting when everything they know is based on the Dead Sea Scrolls and none of the lessons Luke Skywalker learned fighting the Empire and saving his father. Sign me up for Episodes X, XI, and XII!

 

Oh . . .

 

It is December 19, 2017. For two days I have grappled with my feelings about Star Wars: Episode VIII – The Last Jedi. "The A-plot was a really good anti-nostalgia 'Star Wars is dead and you are a fool for liking it' deconstruction of what people want and expect from these movies," I tell Bryant, "but for some reason they decided to weigh it down with terrible B- and C-plots that take forever and go nowhere."

 

Looking back, I'm not sure I still agree with all of that assessment. Like Twin Peaks: The Return before it, The Last Jedi seemed to be saying to its audience, "Did you really expect this to be the same as the thing you loved a quarter century ago? It's not; it can't be; it never could have been." But when Twin Peaks was disproving its own pop-cultural simulacrum in 2017, that question came from the lips of the same men who had first built that shadow's caster. 

 

Who the hell is Rian Johnson to decide what Star Wars is or needs to be? No George Lucas. No David Lynch. Not even a Chris Avellone.

 

With Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, Avellone addressed everything he found objectionable about the hypocrisy of the Jedi as he saw it in the prequels and the EU, but he respected the setting enough to understand that he was just a visitor passing through, saying his piece without forcing the audience to agree with him. By contrast, The Last Jedi burned the setting down around it to make its statement about failure and letting go of the past (and animal rights and war profiteering and divine birthright and), while actually saying nothing. The Jedi returned, just not the Jedi we wanted to see. A Nobody from Nowhere finally became the hero, as had been happening in Star Wars since 1977. Good was tempted by evil, and easily overcame that temptation with no effort whatsoever. What a subversion of expectations! The best Star Wars film since Empire! Bring on the Johnson trilogy!

 

Oh . . .

Disney should just give up on trying to get any new Star Wars films off the ground and instead put all the money they would have wasted on that into having Chris Avellone write Knights of the Old Republic III. It would be better written, and more fun to play.

 

 

Epilogue: I realize that I've spent significantly more of this post whining about The Last Jedi than celebrating The Sith Lords, and I regret that; I have spent too much time complaining about The Last Jedi already. But it's easy to go on and on about poor, misguided things. The special things, the things that matter, the things you remember—those are the things it's hard to talk about, because what they mean is only what they mean to you.

 

When I was in high school, our future class salutatorian was running for student council president and asked me for a quote to use in her campaign. Without hesitating, I said nonsequitously, "ONE BROKEN JEDI CANNOT STOP THE DARKNESS THAT IS TO COME," Darth Sion's portentous line to Kreia when he arrives on Peragus II. 

 

She used it in her speech and had it printed out on posters. One hung on the wall in the cafeteria well into the next academic year, long after the election was over. I can't remember who won, but I still remember that poster.

Star Traders

Wanderer of Worlds

Author: John Dunivant

Medium: Short story

Publication date: October 1996 in Star Wars Galaxy Magazine #9

Timeline placement: c. 7 BBY

 

"Wanderer of Worlds" is more of a vignette than a true short story, a first-person, present-tense introduction of the Eirrauc species for players of The Star Wars Roleplaying Game. Daushoroc and Tamoss, two Eirrauc traders and potential quest-givers, are wandering the Tatooine wastes in search of a crashed courier ship, the Athallian Messenger. Many have sought the vessel's valuable cargo over the decades but none has been successful. The Eirraucs hope to find the lost treasure so they can buy the freedom of some of their people, who have been enslaved by the Empire. They trade water and a Tusken battle talisman with a band of Sand People in exchange for directions to the crash site and permission to venture into their territory.

 

This story was written and illustrated by John Dunivant, who created the Eirraucs for Star Wars Galaxy Magazine's Design an Alien Contest, most famous for creating the unsurpassed Jeby and Yoda's Jedi Master, N'Kata Del Gormo. The Galaxy editors were so impressed with Dunivant's submission that they turned it into its own independent article and added RPG stats for his creations. Pretty cool, but not cool enough for it to warrant inclusion in Pablo Hidalgo's The Essential Reader's Companion. Although "Wanderer" muddies the line between short story and RPG flavor text, other Galaxy stories of a similar length made it into the book, so for consistency's sake I think it should have been included.

The Brief Return of High Inquisitor Tremayne

Dark Vendetta

Author: Eric S. Trautmann

Medium: Short story

Publication date: July 1996 in Star Wars Galaxy Magazine #8

Timeline placement: 10 BBY

 

Extremely short but very cool, "Dark Vendetta" features the earliest in-story appearance of High Inquisitor Antinnis Tremayne, a Darth Vader expy from The Star Wars Roleplaying Game first introduced in 1993's  Galaxy Guide 9: Fragments from the Rim. Like Vader, Tremayne was a fallen Jedi who served the Emperor and had several cybernetic prostheses, as well as a penchant for telekinetically strangling his minions. The backstory of his lightsaber duel with fugitive Jedi Padawan Corwin Shelvay, which cost Tremayne his right arm and eye, was detailed in Fragments from the Rim before being depicted three years later in "Dark Vendetta."

 

On Coruscant, now called Imperial Center, Corwin Shelvay has just been rescued from Imperial interrogation by his Jedi Master, the Sullustan Darrin Arkanian. As they attempt to rendezvous with Rebel pilot Captain Rashh, they are confronted in an alley by High Inquisitor Tremayne, commanding a detachment of Imperial troopers, presumably of the storm- variety (but since this is Coruscant, it would be badass if it was these guys). Arkanian duels Tremayne, who wields a green-bladed lightsaber. Remember when authors could give Jedi and Dark Jedi any color lightsaber they wanted? Those were the days.

 

Tremayne admits that Arkanian may surpass him as a swordsman, so he orders his troops to shoot Corwin unless the Jedi Master surrenders. Darrin Arkanian deactivates his lightsaber, and Tremayne quickly cuts him down. "Dark Vendetta" gives every indication that Arkanian dies here, but the original version of this story in Fragments of the Rim had him escaping with Corwin to die of his wounds a few days later.

 

Corwin still escapes, though, as he calls his fallen Master's lightsaber to him with the Force, and, drawing on the dark side, brutally defeats Tremayne in combat, severing his right arm below the shoulder and slashing the right side of his face across the eye. What follows is the most interesting part of the story, a unique glimpse into the EU's pre-prequel assumptions about the prequel era. To this day, Timothy Zahn still gets shit from fans for including vague details about the Clone Wars in his Thrawn Trilogy books that were ultimately contradicted by Attack of the Clones, but Eric S. Trautmann really swung for the fences.

 

As he recuperates from his wounds in a bacta tank, Tremayne has flashbacks to his early life and time as a Jedi. He was accepted for Jedi training at the age of 15, impossibly old according to the standards George Lucas introduced in the prequels. Some years later, a courier met with him and revealed that Palpatine (no Senator, Chancellor, or Emperor, just Palpatine) had been watching Tremayne's progress with great interest and wanted him to study under his agent Darth Vader to weed out corruption in the Jedi ranks. Vader, already wearing his armor, promised Tremayne that they would work together to restore the Jedi to their former glory and bring order and justice back to the galaxy.

 

It's very rare for a '90s EU story to get so specific when touching on details from the rise of the Empire. Generally they just weren't allowed to do it, so I wonder how this one got through. It's very cool that it did, even though it got almost everything wrong.

 

Tremayne awakens from his fever dream and finds that his lost body parts have been replaced with grotesque cybernetics. Fragments of the Rim claimed that he deliberately selected his cybernetic parts to intimidate his victims and subordinates, but "Dark Vendetta" changes this so Vader had the Imperial medics turn Tremayne into a freak as punishment for his failure. I prefer this version, as young Tremayne is characterized as a vain man obsessed with appearance, so his choice to advance himself by doing evil ultimately leads to the ruination of the aspect of himself he most values.

 

Vader browbeats Tremayne, then warns him not to fail him again. Suitably humbled, Tremayne begins planning for his next meeting with Corwin Shelvay, something which never happens in recorded Star Wars canon.

 

3 out of 5 Death Stars. The writing isn't anything special, and the story is too short to accomplish anything of merit, but it's always awesome to see High Inquisitor Tremayne and this early attempt at prequel lore is fascinating, even if Vader fighting Obi-Wan, going into the suit, and still not being on the Jedi's radar despite being openly evil makes no sense.

From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker: The Lost City of Tatooine

The Lost City of Tatooine

Author: David West Reynolds

Medium: Short story

Publication date: July 1999 in Archaeology's Dig

Timeline placement: 3 BBY

 

A little known and very rare short story featuring a 16-year-old Luke Skywalker and an ambiguously aged Biggs Darklighter, who according to the illustrations is already sporting the full mustache he'll have three years hence in A New Hope. Luke has finally saved up enough money to buy his own landspeeder, and he and Biggs are joyriding through the Douz outpost on their way to the city of Metameur to gawk at spaceships like a couple of yokels. They decide to take a dangerous shortcut through the Desolation Canyons, though a racist mechanic warns them that that's Sand People territory. They might also run across the fabled lost city of the Ghorfas, a race who lived on Tatooine in ancient times but was exterminated by the Sand People, but all explorers who have gone looking for it have never returned.

 

Entering the canyons, Luke and Biggs are immediately caught in a sandstorm. Luke pilots the landspeeder to safety, and when the storm passes they find that they have run across the fabled lost city of the Ghorfas. Turns out it wasn't that hard to find at all. It was actually super easy, barely an inconvenience.

 

Luke and Biggs examine the ancient tombs and discover that at some point the Sand People started burying their dead here as well. There is a clear transition between the old Ghorfa art and architecture and the more recent Sand People construction, and Luke realizes that the Sand People didn't exterminate the Ghorfas—they are descended from them! 

 

Luke and Biggs study the carvings on the city walls and learn the history of the Ghorfas. When early settlers came to Tatooine, they used their technology to suck up all the water from the Ghorfas' wells, forcing them to abandon their city and become the nomadic Sand People. Of course, we know from playing Knights of the Old Republic that Tatooine was actually transformed into a desert planet by orbital bombardment by the Rakata, and the Sand People became nomadic wanderers thousands of years before humans settled there. It's possible that the Sand People still maintained some reservoirs that were plundered by colonists, or that the lost city of the Ghorfas was the only remaining permanent settlement when its inhabitants were forced to abandon it. The story itself seems to suggest that all of Tusken Raider society as we know it originated from brutal colonization, but since the Rakata colonized Tatooine long before humanity did, that can still be true, from a certain point of view.

 

Also KotOR suggests that the Sand People may somehow be genetically related to humans, something never brought up in any other source dealing with Tusken history, so who knows what to believe.

 

A party of Tuskens comes across Luke's landspeeder but he and Biggs escape in it with ease. Later, Luke tells his aunt and uncle about what he discovered, but Uncle Owen tells him that the past is best left alone. 

A very cool and interesting story, and blessedly short as well. High marks. Also so obscure that Pablo Hidalgo just plumb forgot to include it in The Essential Reader's Companion. Physical copies of the Dig magazine it appeared in seem to be very rare and expensive, but it's been archived by fan sites and is easily found online.

First Victory

Once Upon a Galaxy...

Writer: Uncredited 

Penciler: Martin Asbury
Medium: Comic

Publication date: October 1982 in TV Times Magazine

Timeline placement: 0 BBY 

 

A two-page comic appearing in the UK periodical TV Times to recap the backstory of Star Wars before its British television premiere, this story probably wasn't actually intended to be titled Once Upon a Galaxy, nor is it clear if it was even officially licensed by Lucasfilm or just something the TV Times editors threw together for fun. It's never been reprinted, not even in Dark Horse Comics' Wild Space Omnibuses, which collected many rare UK-exclusive Star Wars comics for the first time, or Marvel's comprehensive Epic Collections, but is that because this is an unlicensed fan work or because it's so obscure no one knew to include it?

 

As far as I can tell, it's also unknown who wrote this comic's text. Martin Asbury did the art, but he's only credited as "illustrations by"; the magazine contains no mention of who wrote the story, which consists mostly of brief descriptions of the film's major characters: Luke Skywalker, Ben Kenobi, R2-D2, C-3PO, Stormtroopers, Darth Vader, Princess Leia, Grand Moff Tarkin, Han Solo, and Chewbacca.

 

The part that makes this comic notable for EU fans, however, is the five panels and seven speech bubbles of narrative that tell a seemingly original story. A squadron of Rebel Alliance X-wings celebrates their "first great victory," the theft of the Death Star plans, while an Alliance spy transmits them to Princess Leia's ship before being blasted by stormtroopers. An Imperial officer reports the news to Darth Vader. "FOOLS!" he thunders. "Prepare my battle cruiser! We must find that ship! Neither it nor Princess Leia Organa can escape!" What will happen next? Watch Star Wars on ITV to find out!

 

Of course, the theft of the Death Star plans is a story that has been told an infamous number of times in the EU. It was done most famously by Kyle Katarn in the Dark Forces video game, but different and often contradictory versions were shown or described in a variety of other stories. Rather than try to work yet another version of this event into an already unnecessarily convoluted timeline, it might be best to simply relegate Once Upon a Galaxy... to the dustbin of Star Wars apocrypha.

 

Buuuuuuuuut, there may be one thing yet worth salvaging. While the journey of the Death Star plans from Imperial custody to Princess Leia's hands has been told far too many times, the "first victory" against the Empire won by "Rebel spaceships striking from a hidden base," as mentioned in the 1977 opening crawl, was never depicted in the EU. That event, established in the Star Wars radio drama as an attack on an Imperial convoy transporting the plans, can be assumed to be the "first great victory" of the Rebellion illustrated in this comic. Here it is!

 

 

Another untold story told at last.

A Long Time Ago....

Alien Exodus

Author: Robert J. Sawyer

Medium: Unfinished novel

Publication date: N/A (canceled; Chapters 1–2 and Outline archived online)

Timeline placement: "An even longer time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...."

There are a lot of annoying things about the Star Wars fandom, but one of the most tiresome for me is the subset of fans who over-literalize the magical fantasy setting that is the Star Wars universe. This takes many forms, but Alien Exodus was commissioned as a response to one in particular: how can humans, a species that evolved on Earth in the Milky Way Galaxy, exist "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away"?

 

How is it possible??? It makes no logical sense! I can suspend my disbelief for the Force, and faster-than-light travel, and giant vacuum-breathing slugs that live on asteroids, and Natalie Portman dying of a broken heart, but humans living in the Star Wars galaxy, speaking English and knowing about Earth things like "an aluminum falcon" and "the letter X"? Preposterous! Clearly the Star Wars language of "Basic" is just being translated into English for the audience's benefit via the magic of cinema, and Star Wars' "humans" aren't really humans, they're aliens portrayed with human likeness so the audience can emotionally connect with them.

 

If we're expected to believe that human beings, indistinguishable from human beings in the real world that evolved here on Earth, exist in the Star Wars galaxy, there must be a story behind how they got there, right? That's the story Alien Exodus was intended to tell, until someone realized that publishing a trilogy of novels solely to placate the most pedantic and literal-minded fans probably wasn't the best idea and canceled the whole thing.

 

(Forget about Star Wars, my question is how did humans get from Earth to Thedas, or Nirn, or Earthsea, or Abeir-Toril, or "Planetos," or Discworld? Why is no one asking these questions??)

 

Throughout the 1990s, the Star Wars publishing license was held by Bantam Spectra. Ace Books decided that they wanted in on that action, however, and entered into negotiations with Lucasfilm for the right to publish a trilogy revealing the origins of the major races and cultures of the Star Wars galaxy—a "Silmarillion of Star Wars," if you will. Canadian science fiction author Robert J. Sawyer was brought in the handle the project, and turned in the first two chapters of the first novel and a 10,000-word outline before negotiations failed. 

 

Lucasfilm decided that Ace Books would proceed with the trilogy but would not be allowed to use any existing Star Wars elements; instead, it would be a new property set in an original universe. Sawyer had only taken the job because he wanted to write for Star Wars, so he backed out of the project despite not being paid anything for the work he had already done. The Alien Exodus trilogy eventually became the Alien Chronicles trilogy, written by Deborah Chester.

 

Sawyer's sample chapters aren't the worst thing I've ever read, but, while his outline did intrigue me enough to want to read the rest of the book if it existed, the story doesn't justify the expense: demystifying the entire Star Wars setting by establishing a definitive connection between its fantastical universe and the real world.

 

In Sawyer's story, George Lucas's first film, 1971's THX 1138, takes place in the far future of Lucas's second film, 1973's American Graffiti. Dale Hender, a descendant of Richard Dreyfuss's American Graffiti character Curt Henderson, is part of an underground resistance movement fighting against the dystopian society of THX 1138. Along with "dashing and adventurous" Paxton Solo (gee I wonder if he's related to anyone we know), Hender is one of 5,000 people who escape Earth aboard a giant spaceship built for harvesting comets. Bound for the Alpha Centauri star system, they encounter a wormhole that transports them across the universe as well as billions of years back in time. "Antonia makes the announcement to the crew: it is now a long time ago, and they are in a galaxy far, far away..." Yay she said the thing.

 

The humans set down on a lush paradise world, but are soon beset by an arriving fleet of Rodian and Gamorrean slavers. Paxton Solo's girlfriend, Antonia Corelli, is killed, and the humans bury her on the planet, naming it Corellia in her honor. But soon another species arrives, drawn by the collapsing wormhole: giant insectoid conquerors called Varlians. Seeing they are technologically outmatched, the Rodians and Gamorreans gift the human slaves to the Varlians and pledge themselves to thralldom.

 

The humans are taken to the planet Forhilnor, where the Varlians plan to send all the peoples they enslave in their galactic conquest.

 

Five generations later, Forhilnor is now home to nine slave races: humans, Bith, Ithorians, Kubaz, Ortolans, Kitonaks, Twi'leks, Mon Calamari, and Sullustans. Each race has a representative on a secret slave council that meets surreptitiously to discuss their conditions and possible plans of escape, and the de facto leader of all the slaves is Dale's descendant, the hero of this book: Cosmo Hender.

 

 

Cosmo is sent to the palace of the Varlian Governor Kaxa, where the governor's daughter develops a fondness for him and teaches him to read. In the palace library, Cosmo finds a book called The Human Exodus, a Varlian translation of the chronicle of humanity's history and arrival in this galaxy. Inspired by the heroism of his ancestor, Cosmo concocts a plot to win the freedom of all the slaves.

 

Cosmo discovers that the governor has been using a giant crystal to leech the collective life energy of the slaves and use it to move the entire Forhilnor star system through space to launch a surprise attack on the Varlian homeworld and seize control of their empire. This is done through some mysterious power, some "Force," that seems to be shared and generated by all living beings. Cosmo discovers that he himself can tap into this power, unconsciously using it to cause himself to levitate, leading to the other slaves bestowing him with the nickname of "Skywalker." Boo! Booooo!

 

The slaves poison the Varlians' water supply, causing a deformity among larval Varlians that prevents them from spinning a cocoon and transitioning into their adult insectoid form. As a result, all young natives of the planet Varl will remain giant slugs with greedy, temperamental personalities and a fetish for gold bikinis.

 

Cosmo then tricks the governor into letting his people go by fabricating the return of a legendary Varlian plague spread by the slaves. Kaxa allows the slaves to leave, but upon discovering their deception, his heart is hardened, and he sends his forces to recapture them. But the slaves have stolen the Force crystal, and Cosmo uses it to move the red stars blocking their escape, then releases them on the pursuing Gamorrean starships, destroying them. This act ages him decades and Cosmo dies an old man before ever reaching his people's promised land.

 

The surviving slaves travel to Corellia, where Cosmo's wife and their infant son, Freedom Hender, will pass down the legend of "the Skywalker" for generations to come...

 

What the hell would the other two books in this trilogy have been about? Who knows, but I think it's fairly obvious why Lucasfilm decided not to go with this pitch: because they didn't want Luke Skywalker to be descended from this dork, that's why.

 

 

Despite its intriguing premise, I'm glad that this story never saw the light of day in Expanded Universe canon. Somebody made the right call by realizing it worked better as its own original story, so the best thing I can say for Alien Exodus is that it made me a lot more interested in reading Deborah Chester's books instead of these ones that don't exist.

 

2 out of 5 Death Stars.

KOTOR and The Force Awakens: The Wages of Nostalgia

Knights of the Old Republic

Developer: BioWare

Medium: Video game

Release date: July 2003

Timeline placement: 3,956 BBY

 

"Savior, conqueror, hero, villain. You are all things, Revan... and yet you are nothing. In the end you belong to neither the light nor the darkness. You will forever stand alone."

 

It's December 19, 2015. I'm wearing a Star Trek shirt and standing in line for Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens. I expect it to be a competent, well-made movie, but I don't expect to love it; it feels like it's been a long time since I was excited for Star Wars. Father Merrin speaks the first line of the film: "This will begin to make things right." I laugh to myself.

 

I had loved Star Wars since I was nine years old, but as I'd grown older I'd grown more critical, and Star Wars had grown worse. George Lucas had said the 1997 Special Editions represented his "original vision" for the classic trilogy, but he continued to make increasingly obtrusive changes for the 2004 DVDs and 2011 Blu-rays, as well as preventing any further releases of the unaltered films. 2006 saw the release of the first book in Drew Karpyshyn's Darth Bane trilogy, which ran roughshod over Darko Macan's Jedi vs. Sith, in my opinion the best Star Wars comic in the EU. That same year also saw the beginning of Legacy of the Force, a terrible series that gutted the accomplishments of its predecessor, The New Jedi Order. 

 

In 2008, The Clone Wars debuted on Cartoon Network, kickstarting the biggest and longest continuity clusterfuck in Star Wars history as Dave Filoni tapdanced all over the meticulous timeline of the 2002–2005 Clone Wars multimedia project. The Force Unleashed came out the same year, needlessly rewriting the early history of the Rebellion every time you failed a QTE. Meanwhile, Republic Commando author Karen Traviss was busy trampling her own corner of continuity; Abel G. Peña's article in Star Wars Insider #80, "The History of the Mandalorians," had done the seemingly impossible task of reconciling decades of contradictory Mandalorian lore, only for Traviss to pull it all back apart again. The coup de grâce, or sai cha if you will, came in 2011, when BioWare's MMO The Old Republic and its assorted tie-in media drove the final nail into the coffin of Knights of the Old Republic III, discarding the legacy of two of the best RPGs ever made in favor of a new story nobody asked for.

 

By the time George sold Star Wars to Disney, my favorite parts of the franchise had been eroding for more than five years. I hadn't read a new EU novel since Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor; Star Wars was essentially dead to me. Suicide by Star Wars Apocrypha was just my way of processing the loss.

 

It still annoys me to no end that this DeviantArt drawing remains the best image of the KotOR party all together.

 

I must have been sixteen the first time I played Knights of the Old Republic, or maybe seventeen, I can't remember. I had played a few Pokémon games but I was far from a gamer. My brother, on the other hand, had an Xbox, a GameCube, and half a dozen Star Wars games. For some reason I decided to start playing them.

 

My high school years were the height of my EU fandom, and what made KotOR so special, beyond the story and characters and music and writing, was how it put me into that universe that I had invested so much of my adolescent time and emotion in. I could explore planets and talk to aliens I'd read about. I could fly a starship and build a lightsaber and use the Force. I could exist in the Star Wars galaxy and act like myself, or at least a version of myself that I could imagine being.

I played it over and over and over again, until I'd exhausted every dialogue option, every quest path, every character variation. After a while I wasn't in high school anymore, and I didn't care about Star Wars quite so much. From time to time I'd start another KotOR run, but I'd never make it off Taris before abandoning it again. This compounded over multiple attempts, my familiarity with the tiresome opening planet becoming a wall, a psychological block on my progression. I'd played the game so many times already, and I just didn't have the time or stamina to power through it the way I once had. Best to stop trying.

 

I sat in the theater and watched the lights dim. A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.... appeared on the screen, for the first time without being preceded by the 20th Century Fox Fanfare. Its absence felt like visiting a grave. But then something peculiar happened. The text faded way, and when the Star Wars logo filled the screen and the first chord of John Williams's main Star Wars theme blasted throughout the room, I felt it in my chest, in my heart, snagged behind my breastbone as if with a fishhook, and I couldn't help but grin like an idiot.

 

It turned out that my original prediction was right: I liked the movie, but I didn't love it. It was a competent film, or seemed so at the time, but at the end of the day, it just felt like watching Star Wars again.

 

Playing Knights of the Old Republic had felt like watching Star Wars for the first time. See the difference?

 

Star Wars had started life as a pastiche of Flash Gordon, The Hidden Fortress, Joseph Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Frank Herbert, old adventure serials, World War II iconography, classic Westerns, contemporary political commentary, and George Lucas's abiding love of cars. Someone put all of those things into a machine, pushed a button, and created something new.

 

KotOR was a pastiche of Star Wars, a remix of scenes, ideas, images, themes, and archetypes given the voice and stylings of BioWare, at the time the best RPG studio in the business. Something not entirely new, but done in a new way. Something that felt like Star Wars, but also like itself.

 

The Force Awakens was less pastiche, more Gus Van Sant's Psycho. But it still felt like Star Wars; it had been a long time since anything had. There were plenty of criticisms to be made, and I would eventually make many of them; for example, the scene where Finn witnesses the destruction of a planet light-years away in the sky of the planet he’s on and then nonsensically runs around screaming “The Republic! It’s the Republic!” (the equivalent of Washington, D.C., being bombed and someone declaring “They just blew up the United States!”) is possibly the dumbest and worst scene in any Star Wars movie.

But all this would come later. For now, I sat in the theater and allowed myself to enjoy Star Wars uncritically one last time. I was twenty-eight years old and watching a movie people had dreamed of since before I was born.

I was seventeen and telling Bastila her face was all scrunched up like a kinrath pup. 

I was nine and staring with envious eyes at my classmate Robbie's Micro Machines Darth Vader playset, and all the world yet new.

Luke Skywalker has vanished—and again that tugging in my chest, that fishhook buried in my heart.

After twenty years, Star Wars still had me. I suppose it always will.

The next time I booted up Knights of the Old Republic, I made it off Taris.