Star Wars

Holy crap! Abeloth is The Mother!

Holy double crap! The Force-wielders from The Clone Wars are the Celestials!

maybe. Killiks are not the most reliable of sources. I have the theory that while the Ones were indeed Celestials, they were just leftovers after the rest ascended/left beyond the galactic rim/whatever, because they dipped in the font of power which chained them to it (as they eventually relocated to Mortis this link weakened and they died after "some" time, while Abeloth was still kicking). And Abeloth was once just a mortal who stumbled over them

when Father as the oldest started to die he figured he needed someone to keep his kids in check untill they kicked the bucket too. So he tried to hijack the Chosen One prophecy for his Family

My personal, pre-Apocalypse theory about the Celestials was that they were, well, the Celestials, or at least a reference to/Mythology Gag toward them based on the fact that Star Wars used to be a Marvel property...

I'm just figuring that most of them are kinda like Babylon5 first ones. At some point they simply decided to see whats beyond the edge of the Galaxy, or they ascended to another plane

Weren't there huge robots like the Great Heap from Star Wars Droids and the ones that appeared to the Lando Calrissian trilogy? I wonder if they would fall under the category of Expy or Captain Ersatz of Transformers? Either way, I can understand why they've pulled a Brother Chuck (probably due to legal issues and all that).

Personally, I feel bad for Raynar Thul. First, he ends up becoming part of the Killiks and is Brainwashed and Crazy. Then he spent 8 years trying to pull himself back together. Then, wouldn't you know it? The first mission he goes on involves the very thing that left him broken in the first place. Isn't that always the way? Now he's become part of the hive again. I hope he'll be all right. I didn't have much of a beef with the Killik trilogy, by the way.

Dan Wallace did an excellent bit of Continuity Porn regarding those robots in his New Essential Guide to Droids. Turns out there's entire species of both of those, the Abominor and Silentium respectively; they're sworn enemies. In addition, it was revealed that the Abominor are the reason the Yuuzhan Vong became Scary Dogmatic Aliens, an an invasion of Yuuzhan'tar by the Abominor thousands of years ago was so devastating that it essentially left the entire race traumatized.

Big "WHAT?!"! Holy kriff, that actually explains so much! If those two robot factions (nice play on the words "abomination" and "silent", by the way) are not based off of Transformers, then I'm a Kowakian monkey-lizard's uncle!

The beauty of Star Wars Continuity Porn, my friend: where something from an ill-regarded, canceled-in-one-season cartoon can become the lynchpin for a krillion-volume epic novel series!

I saw a number of episodes from that series put together as one long episode on a VHS tape years ago. I thought it was okay, but I won't deny that it some things about it struck me as a little odd:

1. A number of scenes got cut out on the VHS. The most obvious was when Artoo and Threepio discuss how they intend to find out Mistress Jessica's status at the hospital...and suddenly they're at the lobby and Threepio is saying that she left ages ago, under escort of the Vizier's guards! A scene between those two parts got cut out, I'm sure of it! I blame whoever was in charge of the editing.
2. Artoo and Threepio are sure drawn weirdly, especially with Threepio blinking. Then you have an Imperial Star Destroyer that looks like a two-pronged fork (i.e. a square gap between two pointy front parts) instead of an arrow or diamond-shaped ship! I wonder if this qualifies as Did Not Do The Research or They Just Didn't Care.
3. In one scene, Uncle Gundy moans about what he's supposed to do with two prissy droids and a banged-up android. This is weird, because "droid" is supposed to be a shortening of "android", and this is the only Star Wars source I know of that actually makes a distinction between the two terms!
4. There are lines like "Ah, you've got the spirit, the fire I've been searching galaxies to find!" and "If I tried to remember every face I've seen in every galaxy, I'd burn out my circuits!" You would think from lines like these that travel between galaxies is commonplace. However, many sources in the franchise pretty much make it clear that inter-galactic is possible, but not at all common (i.e. Outbound Flight and the Yuuzhan Vong), which makes those lines sound a little out of place.
5. Then you have the fact that at the end of Episode III, Artoo and Threepio were put into Captain Antilles' hands. This begs the question of how they switched from one master to another when they were supposed to stay in his hands. Sure, there have been attempts to answer the question, like how they got separated from him, and eventually ended up back in his hands.

To be fair, this cartoon aired in 1985, and a lot of details had obviously not been set into stone. I will say that finding out the Abominors (and maybe the Silentiums) being responsible for the Yuuzhan Vong's technophobia has now made me very angry at the Abominors. If it weren't for them, that whole chain of events with the Y.V. would never have happened, and poor Chewbacca would never have died from that!

Boy, we were talking about the books, then the comics, then the video games, and now western animation! Do you think we'd be better off setting up a Star Wars thread in a more "general" part of the forum?

Didn't they use the term android when they were speculating about whether Entoo Nee was a mechanical being? I always thought that was the distinction — the ones covered by metal are droids, and the ones covered by flesh are androids.

Well, they call flesh-covered droids "droids" too. Guri, for example, is a "Human Replica Droid."

Yeah, "Human Replica Droid" only entered the Star Wars franchise in 1996, with Shadows Of The Empire. It seems the cartoon was trying to say that "android" is a human-shaped robot, and "droid" is a non-human-shaped robot. Even then, that distinction had some flaws. While R2-D2 would be considered a "droid", C-3P0 should technically be an "android". The "android" in the cartoon turned out to be a completely organic fellow named Mon Julpa, who was wearing metal coverings and a cloak-like cloth. The cartoon really put its foot in its mouth on that one!

Eh, yeah...but those cartoons are from the pre-Zahn EU. Aside from basic lore (the Abominor, for example), it's pretty easy to just ignore them. Early-Installment Weirdness, you know?

Interestingly enough, it appeared as though Revenge Of The Sith threw those cartoons out entirely, as the ending shows the Droids aboard the Tantive IV and gives no indication they didn't stay there... until the cartoons were gloriously written back in in the backstory for some random background character aboard said ship. The kicker? Said backstory was submitted in a fan contest. Yes, that's right, a fan saved the Droids cartoons from the black hole of un-canon-ness. This is just one of many awesome retcons in the Star Wars galaxy, along with... basically everything Abel G. Pena does.

edited 30th Mar '12 9:31:11 PM by HamburgerTime

I decided to pull out Dark Empire again. Found this instance of pure Narm◊.

Yeah, I think Luke would have been better off saying something like, "What? What's this stupid helmet doing on my head? Get it off!" Yeah, looks like Palpatine is trying to do a Hannibal Lecture on Luke.

Speaking of Palpatine, have you guys read Darth Plagueis? That book reveals quite a bit about Palpatine, and it's not pretty! Funny enough, Palpatine was a redhead with blue eyes. I wonder if that's supposed to symbolize his ability to be ice-cold and emotionally fiery at the same time. Still, it confirms that he was rotten apple even as a child. By the way, was I the only one who noticed that his family seems to have some Roman-like structure to it?

At least that book helps in understanding some of his behaviour in Dark Empire. Like when Luke said he found great isolation, sadness and fear in the Dark Side, and when Luke said to Sidious's face, "These were the feelings my father felt. The feelings even you feel, in your moments of darkest triumph," prompting Palpatine to throw a tantrum. I found that weird, because Palpatine is supposed to be a psychopath, and such people aren't supposed to feel isolation, sadness and fear. Now I know he went into a hissy fit because Luke basically told him that he's a slave/servant to his own emotions, and Palpatine really hates being a slave/servant to anything and anybody!

I've got somewhat mixed feelings about Palpatine being the equivalent of the Antichrist as a youth. I mean, it's sort of necessary, in order to prevent badass decay, but still...

Oh, and his father's name? Cosinga Palpatine? That's pretty narmy. Who names their kid that?

^ Well it's not like the SW universe is overflowing with Toms, Dicks (well, okay, there's quite a few of the lowercase-d variety ), and Harrys.

edited 31st Mar '12 5:27:29 PM by Nohbody

Well, yeah, but better that it be something that doesn't sound inherently funny.

I mean, I can't take Count Dooku seriously at all because of his name. And apparently, that's the only one he's got. What a bummer.

It's a Mythology Gag to a very early stage in Palpatine's development where his name was "Cos." This was back when they were still thinking he'd be a spineless patsy, I believe.

edited 31st Mar '12 7:48:18 PM by HamburgerTime

Well, you could call him Darth Tyrannus. (I actually kind of like it.)

So, there's a new Essential Guide coming out in a couple days, the Essential Guide to Warfare. It's being written by Jason Fry, a friend and collaborator of the aforementioned awesome Dan Wallace, and it's apparently going to include all this stuff, so it sounds like it'll be awesome. It was originally going to be written by Karen Traviss, but then she flounced after The Clone Wars kicked her in the proverbial shin, and much lulz were had. I'd imagine that if she had delivered the final product, it would contain approximately six pages of warfare and then two hundred more with information on the rainbows that shine out of Boba Fett's ass.

The Essential Guide to Warfare looks like it's going to rock.

As much as I hate TCW for being so sappy and stupid, I will always have it to thank for kicking Traviss the hell out of the Star Wars EU.

Karen "3 Million Clone Troopers" Traviss writing a guide to warfare? *shudders at the thought*

edited 1st Apr '12 2:51:17 AM by 3of4

Jason Fry is that dude who wrote this article about attachments playing a role in Star Wars. His article essentially made the Jedi Order look like a bunch of Lawful Stupid Jerkasses. He essentially said that Qui-Gon was just as Lawful Stupid as the other Jedi, because when he couldn't get Watto to release Anakin's mom, he just gave up and didn't bring in a squad of Jedi to go rescue her. He also said that Obi-Wan and Yoda basically treated Luke the same way they treated Anakin...poorly.

You don't have to agree with what he says, but he makes some interesting points.