Star Destroyers, Part III

This blog-post originally composed on the 5th of November.

But no:  actually that’s not really significant.

Sorry.

***

Ah, hello there, Bloggers!  Long time no see:  I’ve been busy.  But now I’m back.

You may have wondered if this was all going anywhere.  Well…

Sort of.

So if you stick with me, I believe I can guarantee you a point of some kind.

And also, no fooling:  some weird wild shit, somewhere a little further on.

So anyway, we were talking about what Star Wars got right, and we were talking about what Star Wars got wrong, because we were talking about the thing that makes Sean Witzke roll his eyes even more than discussions of Star Wars — i.e. we were talking about the elusive beast called canon.  So what’s the interest?  What’s the upshot?

As far as I’m concerned, it’s this:  that the original 1977 release of Star Wars is the only thing that really “counts” as Star Wars…and that the original novelization of the movie, along with its “sequel” Splinter Of The Mind’s Eye, and two or three crucial elements of The Empire Strikes Back, function comfortably as part of a deuterocanon…

…And beyond said deuterocanon, there’s nothing else to know.

So, that’s where I’m coming from, and no doubt to many it seems like a reasonably weird place.  Really no Empire, no Return, no prequels, no further novelizations?

Is that really (I hear some of you saying) the best I can do?

Actually, it is…because this is how I choose to assert the “ownership” most fans feel toward Star Wars, in which sense of fannish entitlement I am no different from they.  It’s only that, into that grand space of potential narrative explanation that George Lucas abandoned so totally, I choose to inject my own indifference as an organizing through-line.  Star Wars, to me, is much better off as a splintered failure than a triumph of rational reunification…and so I passionately assert my fannish interest in it to propose that all the wood has gone through the chipper, and all the chips have simply fallen as they may, and the tree is done, but at least we still have its “before” picture to look at so let’s let the past tend to the past while we move on to something else.

However.

If I did have to attempt a recreation of the tree from its chippy constituents, here for your (possible) amusement is what I would probably end up allowing:

The Sith were the original practitioners of “force magic”, and ruled a terrible Empire, until the rebellious, sickeningly “good” Jedi Order arose out of them, and wiped them out ’til there were only a few left.  Sometime later than this, Luke Skywalker’s father becomes a Jedi Knight, and fights alongside Obi-Wan Kenobi and probably Darth Vader too, in the Clone Wars.  But then afterwards, foolishly choosing to go against his Force-peer Vader as he turns to the dark side, Skywalker is killed…and eventually the rest of the Jedi are also killed, all except for Obi-Wan Kenobi, because he has become somewhat depressed.  Perhaps he feels Skywalker’s death at Vader’s hands is his responsibility, his failure…but in any case he survives because he has elected to follow the “guru” path and retire to some out-of-the-way planet as a hermit and teacher.  His motivation in this isn’t entirely pure, however:  he does not teach when he is on Tatooine (because at this point “teaching” would be the same as Rebelling), so much as he simply tries to protect and provide for the son Skywalker left behind there.  This doesn’t really work out for him, though:  he’s rejected both by the Skywalker family, and by whatever passes for Tatooine society.  Heck, they don’t even call him by his right name:  and over time he does less and less about more and more, just a cranky old goat out in the desert, until it doesn’t even matter that he was once a Jedi.

And so in time…he is the only one left, because he really ceases to be one at all.

Meanwhile Vader allies himself with the political forces of the Tarkinites and their Emperor — a very un-Jedi, and even un-Sith, thing to do, but as we shall see he has his reasons.  The Tarkinites fear him, but their Emperor seems to favour him;  so at least in part, the Death Star is built to put him in his place.  Vast scientific forces trump Vader’s obscure power — and yet he is on the Death Star as the Emperor’s enforcer, and everybody knows it.  It’s a funny situation for him to be in, since he’s so dismissive of technology:  but as the Emperor’s enforcer he is there to make sure the Death Star is used as the Emperor wishes it to be used…even though he himself would rather have an Empire of the Force.

Even if he can find no adherents.

But then meanwhile, back on Tatooine…somehow events conspire to bring Skywalker’s son into contact with his father’s teacher, with disastrous consequences.  Luke’s family is destroyed, forcing him into the life of a Jedi apprentice and a political actor…and Obi-Wan feels the currents of the Force swirling around him again, after all this time.

So…it’s a kind of redemption for him?

Or at least:  an opportunity for redemption…

…Finally achieved when he sacrifices himself to Darth Vader’s lightsaber, in order that Luke may escape the Death Star.  And then whatever happens next, remains to be seen.

Cue X-wing bomber runs, Han Solo’s absolutely unanticipated intervention, Darth Vader’s defeat, and the destruction of the Death Star.

And then…on to “The Empire Strikes Back”, which picks up as the Rebels are already fleeing the “ice planet of Hoth”…but nothing of interest really happens until Han Solo flies through the asteroid field.  Thus it is established that Han Solo is awesome, you see?  Which is one of the elements of Empire that made it into my original deuterocanon, as it happens…ohh, that asteroid chase…!

SO COOL…!

…But in it, the Falcon takes a hit from one of the TIE fighters (or something), that cripples its hyperdrive system.  Meanwhile Luke, flying to the Rebels’ rendezvous point with R2-D2, hears Ben’s voice telling him he “must seek Yoda”, the famous and ancient Teacher Of Jedi, though he’s not a Jedi himself — and this is the second important deuterocanonical element — and so Luke flies to the Dagobah system against R2-D2′s wishes, where he meets an annoying creature while spending the whole time looking for the magical Jedi Teacher Yoda, but never finding him.  Along the way, he encounters many problems and must get better at using the Force to surmount them…but of Yoda, there’s never any sign.  Meanwhile again, Han and Leia keep trying to flee the Imperial forces but the Falcon’s hyperdrive isn’t working…they therefore must go to many different planets and moons (including the third moon of Endor) in an effort to evade the Star Destroyers.  After tossing stormtroopers galore at them, Darth Vader enlists bounty hunters to track them down instead, because he can’t just run around all over the place looking for them, because he’s got a job, damn it…and also it’s hard to justify such a huge fleet’s mobilization only for REVENGE, which is what this is:  as far as Vader knows, it was the Millenium Falcon that was responsible for the Death Star blowing up, and the Empire’s enemies must be punished, sure, but…no one’s really ever heard of Han Solo anyway, you know?  And to admit Leia Organa survived the destruction of Alderaan would just be stupid, at this point.  After all, the remnants of Republic aren’t exactly perfectly quelled, you know…

And thus there is a series of showdowns between Han Solo (previously demonstrated to be awesome) and the various bounty hunters who are after him, and he beats them one by one…until the smartest bounty hunter, one Boba Fett (the only one who really plans to sell him to Vader instead of to Jabba), corners him and cleans his clock.  Epic battle:  and then Han is frozen in some kind of ice-block to be taken back to Vader.  Boba Fett doesn’t care about Leia Organa (who by the way is in love with Luke Skywalker) because the specifics of his contract ended up excluding her…nothing personal, Vader, it’s just business…which is a painful irony, because Han might’ve won the big showdown if he didn’t think he had to protect Leia (who he’s in love with by the way) at all costs.  Just before he’s frozen, Han tells her:  “I love you”.  She replies:  “I know.”  Then POOF!  It’s just Leia and Chewbacca and Threepio, and the downed Falcon.  Leia and Chewbacca get it moving again unexpectedly quickly with the help of the Ewoks (because Han was nice to them, or saved them from being blown up, or something), then they head for the Provincial Capitol where Vader and the Star Destroyers will be…the gas-mining colony called Bespin.  Hooray, they’ve got there before Boba Fett, because the Falcon’s so fast!  With some difficulty they evade the Imperials, but then are captured by the (supposedly) less well-trained Governor’s Army.  But actually this army seems pretty darn well trained, you know…

Too well-trained, to not be in the pay of the Empire?

And then finally “Return Of The Jedi” starts with Luke having flashes of Han and Leia being in trouble…just as they’re rescued by Lando, the Provincial Governor who nonetheless owes Han a favour, and who is also (conveniently) part of the anti-Sith, anti-Vader movement within the Empire.  Leia and Chewbacca and Lando (and Threepio) try to rescue Han from Boba Fett…once Boba Fett hands Han over to Vader, though, Lando’s hands will be tied until such time as the anti-Vader movement gives him the okay to “free the Emperor from Vader’s control”.  But gradually it’s revealed that the Emperor is a Sith too, and Vader’s master:  the Empire is just a front, for the resurgence of the Sith.  Leia and Chewbacca (and Threepio) thaw Han out, but then the stormtroopers attack them — then Lando musters his troops against the Imperials, and all looks like it’s going to turn out fine, until Vader walks in and announces that “my Master approaches”.  A super-Star Destroyer moves in, and the Emperor arrives — blowing the pro-Emperor/anti-Vader coalition to bits.

And back on Dagobah, Luke realizes he has to go to Bespin and save his friends.  His annoying native companion reveals himself as the Exalted Jedi Teacher Luke’s been seeking all this time — it was all a trick!  And finally we have the raising of the X-Wing from the swamp, and the “do, or do not” prescription:  Yoda lets Luke go, because “always in motion is the future”, and all the bad stuff we’ve just seen hasn’t actually happened yet.  But Yoda has stayed alive just for Luke, and when Luke goes he will die…so here is the last test, and Yoda will not be able to tell Luke if he’s passed it…he will not be able to tell him if he really is ready.  As Luke flies off to Bespin, insufficiently trained — he really must “trust the Force” now — Yoda’s face is lit in red, and he hears a voice as a ghostly head appears behind him:  the successful Force-penitent Obi-Wan, who seems dubious about the whole thing with Luke, there.  They have a brief conversation about destiny and hope and all that nonsense…with the sense of it being that both Force-Masters must now fade away, awaiting the outcome of events.  If Luke is killed, the Dark Side will have triumphed, and they’ll have no rest in the Force because it will sicken — this is the cosmic dimension of Luke’s story.  But if he succeeds, they’ll be able to come back because the Force will be reinvigorated.  Until and unless that happens, though — they’re out of the picture.

So Luke goes to Bespin, and he fights Vader and is almost killed by him…until the Emperor himself attacks Vader, because he’s decided he would prefer Luke as apprentice instead…after it’s revealed it was Luke (not Han) who destroyed the Death Star even while Vader tried to save it…so it’s Luke who is truly at one with the Force, and that’s a tool the Emperor can use.  Vader roars:  naturally the Sith apprentice must always slay his master, but that isn’t what the Emperor intends, and Vader will not be allowed to choose his time.  They fight, and Vader kills the Emperor…then turns to Luke and says there’s an Evil Apprenticeship available.  But, is it really “evil”?  It’s because of Luke, after all, that the Emperor has died, and Vader has won…clearly the Force “wants” Vader to be Luke’s teacher, now that Obi-Wan is gone…and one day Luke will be Emperor, because there is no more Jedi stock left in the galaxy.  Vader, unlike the Emperor, has a vision of a future bigger than himself:  he was always a religious Force-fanatic, deep down, so he’ll be happy to leave the whole thing to Luke in due time.  Luke can sense Vader is telling the truth, and they have a conversation about Luke’s father, in which Vader tells Luke that it’s his destiny to accept Vader as his new, spiritual father — OMG, just like Obi-Wan was! — and in this way Vader will atone for what he’s done (OMG!), by encouraging Luke to bring a “new balance” to the universe.  No more Sith and no more Jedi:  just Luke and his descendants, bringing peace and hope and order and all that stuff, on into eternity.

But after a little of this temptation, Luke comes to his senses, terminally fries some important control apparatus, and dives down a cooling conduit instead.  The Cloud City begins to fall, and its people, led by Lando, evacuate hurriedly.  The Imperial troopers, alas, don’t make it.  In the confusion, our heroes get away to the Falcon, but the hyperdrive still isn’t working.  R2 unlocks the docking clamps, is about to repair the hyperdrive, then Luke lands on the hull and R2 must go out to retrieve him…so it’s Threepio who must finally get through to the Falcon’s computer, and wire himself in as a hyperdrive shunt –  “OOOOOH-OOH!!! — and they hit hyperspace and they’re gone, leaving Vader to a pretty cool death scene.

Epilogue:  outside the disc of the galaxy, the Rebel’s remaining base floats, and we see the wrap-up.  Luke will go to Dagobah, alone, and live there in the jungle…Leia, conflicted now about her feelings for Han, would nonetheless want to go with him, but the last thing Luke now wants are children so he tells her she can’t.  So Leia and Han and Lando will go to the third moon of Endor, and the Rebellion will go on until a New Republic can be founded.  The various ships depart, and go their ways…we see the ghosts of Yoda and Obi-Wan shaking their heads as they discuss Luke’s sad, self-imposed exile, which they see as a mistake, Vader’s last victory…”That boy was our last hope,”  Obi-Wan says.  But:

“No,” Yoda replies.  “There is another.”

And then there’s a fourth movie that comes out twenty years later, and it’s directed by Peter Jackson and it’s awesome.

And so phooey, Bloggers:  that’s as far as I’m willing to go. So what do you think of my solution?

I mean it pretty much just takes off someplace of its own, doesn’t it?  Awful.  And so surely letting the chips fall where they may would be better than this:  this outright rejection of five-sixths of all that’s “supposed” to be Star Wars.  For heaven’s sake, you know:  talk about entitlement…!

Why it’s practically an atrocity of entitlement!

And yet consider this, too:  my new Internet pen-pal Nate has gone completely in the other direction with it.  And is what I’ve wrought so incredibly different in kind from what he has?

“Just wanted to say I enjoyed your column on the Star Wars prequel
problems.

Upon watching the train wrecks that are the Star Wars prequels, I began
to understand how Lando felt when shafted by Vader in Empire.

To begin with, how can it be that Owen Lars met the droids in Episode
II, when he showed no discernible sign of previously seeing them in
1977’s Episode IV?

How can, when Anakin, already deep in the thrall of the dark side,
echoing the words of George W. Bush, hisses at Obi-Wan, “If you’re not
with me, you’re my enemy,” Ben responds “Only a Sith thinks in
absolutes”, when the whole point was that both the Jedi and the Sith had
fallen into a trap of believing absolutes, with Luke’s task being to
restore balance to the Force? The clear implication was that the Force
had a yin-yang aspect, which both the Sith and Jedi had lost sight of.
The core story arc thus was to be Luke’s restoration of that balance
despite opposition from both the remnants of the Jedi and the Emperor.
In choosing to put those words in Obi-Wan’s mouth, Lucas betrayed his
own creation.

Mon Mothma should have been a young woman on the Senate (Gillian
Anderson would have been perfect). The backstory on Mon Mothma was that
she was a young Chandilaran politico within the Galactic Senate during
the rule of Chancellor Valorum and was opposed to Palpatine being
elected. Despite this she remained a senator after Palpatine’s
disbanding of the Republic into the Galactic Empire and his
self-declaration of Emperor.

Episode Three should also have kicked off the plot of the Bothan spies
in the final.

Anakin picking up with Sith Pirates (i.e. Mandalore Red Guards), whom he
would draft into service for the Emperor, was also overlooked.

Since “A New Hope” practically took the plot of Kurosawa’s “Hidden
Fortress”, the prequel should have included a tribute to his other great
film, “Seven Samurai” with a band of Jedi attempting to take back a
planet from the Trade Federation and their mercenary Mandalore Pirates.
Otherwise, since Campbell’s “The Hero with a Thousand Faces” spells out
the template that Lucas utilised for the Star Wars Trilogy perfectly, it
also includes a section on THE HERO AS A CHILD, so this could have been
used for Anakin’s infamous rise.

There was also no need for a Rebel Alliance in the prequel.

Howard Kazanjian, the producer of Return of the Jedi, on the parallels
between the original trilogy and the prequels:

“In the trilogy, there is a competitive love triangle that develops
between Luke, Leia and Han. This love triangle ends peacefully when Luke
learns that Leia is his twin sister. In the prequels, George has planned
a love triangle involving Luke and Leia’s mother, Anakin Skywalker and
Ben Kenobi. The consequences of this love triangle are devastating with
great betrayals and forever changes the fate of our heroes and villains
in the films. So those who watch the trilogy for the first time after
seeing the prequels will be scared to death that the same horrible fate
that beset the heroes in the prequels will happen to our beloved heroes
in the trilogy because of a dangerous love triangle that divides and
destroys close friendships, but fortunately this does not come to pass.”
27 October 1997

I would therefore have developed this love triangle along the lines of
King Arthur, Lady Guinevere and Sir Lancelot of the Camelot legend.
Arthur = Ben (the oldest of the three), Guinevere = the Young Queen
(younger than Arthur/Ben, but older than Lancelot/Anakin) and Anakin =
Lancelot (the youngest of the three).

In Episode II a 30-ish Ben would court the young Queen, who would then
be in her late 20’s, and asking for her hand in marriage, she accepts.
The young Queen was the focus of Ben’s life and would be the only woman
that he would ever love (that is why he lives all alone as a hermit on
Tatooine because he never gets over the loss of the young Queen).

Enter the conquering hero in Episode II: The young, hot-shot Anakin (in
his early 20’s) becomes one of the most decorated warriors of the Clone
Wars and catches the eye of the young Queen. It is love at first sight
for Anakin and the young Queen and they carry on an affair behind Ben’s
back.

The young Queen consequently leaves Ben for Anakin, completely
devastating Ben, who considers this to be the ultimate betrayal at the
hands of his two closest friends (the young Queen and Anakin).
Consequently, Ben and Anakin’s friendship is destroyed. Palpatine takes
advantage of this situation and lures Anakin to the dark side. By the
time Ben realises what has happened to Anakin, it is too late. As a
result of his turning his back on Anakin and the young Queen, Palpatine
uses Anakin in his rise to power. Ben carries the guilt of Anakin’s
fall from grace and the demise of the Republic for the rest of his life.
And tries to resurrect his mistakes vicariously through the young Luke
Skywalker.

Further ties to Arthur’s story could be drawn with the Jedi Council
being the equivalent of the Knights of the Round Table, with perhaps
Yoda as Arthur, Coruscant their Camelot, Anakin their Mordred whom they
refuse to advance, and Palpatine as his mother.

Or alternatively, after Luke and Leia’s mother becomes pregnant, Anakin
begins to become cold and cruel (like Michael Douglas to his wife in
Falling Down) and she falls in love with Obi-Wan (Greek Tragedy).

Speaking of their mother, in the Empire Strikes Back when Luke says
“there was something familiar about this place,” I would posit that he
and Leia were born on Dagobah, and became separated soon after. Whilst
Obi Wan’s brother Owen Lars was to watch after Luke, Leia was sent to
Bail Organa on Alderaan. Luke and Leia’s mother must have survived the
birth and came under the protection of Bail, since Leia recalls her
mother in Return of the Jedi. Alderaan would have been a better
substitute for the cloning technology to have been developed upon.

I also hated what was done with Boba Fett. My favourite revelation was
his charging Jabba a higher amount than the original bounty price, on
the basis that the frozen Solo had become a unique work of art created
by Darth Vader. But I digress… considering Fett had a string of Wookie
scalps on his shoulder and his ship was named Slave I, perhaps he was
originally a slave-trader for the Empire.

Why did he and his crew exclusively get the Empire’s contracts? Could
it perhaps be that he had assisted Vader in his rise to power.

In Dark Empire II # 2, Zasm Katth and Baddon Fass, two Imperial
Dark-Side warriors, state that Boba Fett was a former Imperial
stormtrooper guilty of murdering his superior officer.

You’ll recall Han Solo had also been at the Imperial Academy, but was
sent packing for some unknown infraction. Had Vader perhaps noted Fett’s
mean streak, and made a deal for him to assassinate an Imperial Officer?
I would posit that the Imperial Officer in question was going to
sabotage Vader’s position at the Emperor’s side, so Darth promised he
would set Fett up with a sweet deal as a bounty hunter if he did this
one little job for him. To ensure Fett was not hunted down for the
crime, Vader manipulated circumstances so the young recruit, Han Solo,
who had a record of insubordination, took the blame for the murder.
This leads to Han escaping the Academy, and stealing the slave Chewbacca
away with him.

Otherwise, the braids Boba Fett has on his shoulder are not Wookie
scalps, but are instead from young Padawans he killed during the
“cleansing” of the Jedi temple.

The Battle Droids in the prequels should have been the chrome war
droids, akin to IG-88, thus further tying in continuity.

I would also eradicate Naboo, retain a planet with underwater elements,
but make the aquatic race the Mon Calamari, from which Admiral Akbar
originated. This would explain why his race was sympathetic to the
Alliance… perhaps even have a Mon Calamari end up being a Jedi.

You could then have the Quarren/Squid Heads (who destroyed their own
planet) team up with the Trade Federation. As part of this alliance,
they are promised the planet of the Calamari, since they need an
underwater world to birth their children in. The planet consequently
falls into a Civil War, hence why the Jedi are called in to start
negotiations.

Palpatine should have had the Jedi hunted down and carted off to
encampments to be mass murdered/ sacrificed, ala the Holocaust, so he
could harness their energy via a Sith ritual to power himself up to
become the Emperor. Those surviving Jedi later develop the technique of
dissolving, so he cannot use their energy to become even more powerful.

And I wouldn’t overlook Tarkin’s role in helping Palpatine getting
elected.

I would liken the Great Jedi Purge and Palpatine’s secret betrayal of
his Separatist Council allies that resulted in their deaths at the hands
of his apprentice, Darth Vader, on Mustafar, to be very much like the
Night of the Long Knives when Heinrich Himmler’s SS troops attacked the
rival SA and killed Ernst Röhm and other leaders, eliminating Hitler’s
sole remaining rival and his power base.

I would have Coruscant alternatively named Chandilar.

Another thing that annoyed me was Ben Kenobi being called Ben in the
prequel instead of Obi-Wan. IIRC, Ben stated in Episode IV that:
“Obi-Wan Kenobi, I haven’t gone by that name, since…oh, before you
were born.”

What with Kessel being the planet where spice was mined, like Arakkis, I
would have made this the birth place of Palpatine, like the Emperor from
Dune.

Since Owen was Ben’s brother, and being a Jedi ran in the family, I
would have made he and Beru Lars retired Jedi, using their powers to
farm moisture on the desolate Tatooine.

Perhaps R2 – D2 could be revealed as more than just an astromech droid,
but rather a Jedi Knight! You’ll recall that a great deal of those
coincidences swaying the course of fortune to the Alliance were a result
of the Force influencing our little friend, including his knowing
exactly where to find Obi Wan Kenobi using the Force, hence the initial
argument with Threepio after the escape pod landed and his insistence on
where to go. Artoo influenced the weak-minded Jawas to turn in the
opposite direction to then pick up Threepio. At the Jawa sandcrawler,
when Uncle Owen selects the red droid, Artoo uses the Force to explode
the motivator on an otherwise good unit, forcing himself to be chosen.
With many of the scenes on the Death Star, Artoo more than just plugs
into the main computer, he influences it and works with Obi Wan in
forcing the hand of fate, as he does in the final Death Star trench
scenes. In Empire and Jedi, the force flows through Artoo like a conduit
in many of the scenes. On Dagobah, Bespin, and in Jedi Artoo ejects the
light sabre to Luke to rescue his friends from Jabba. It all makes a lot
of sense when you watch the movies with this in mind.

In the novelisation of Star Wars, Obi Wan, looking back at the fall of
the Old Republic and the Jedi Knights speaks about “the later corrupt
emperors,” note the plural. This suggests a means by which Palpatine’s
identity could have been concealed with a more obvious evil character in
the forefront with Palpatine lurking in the background maybe as an
assistant or as a co-Emperor.

You could also build a better third movie than what we actually got from
Return of the Jedi with elements from Shadows of the Empire! Imagine, if
you will, that the rescue of Han Solo didn’t occur on Tatooine, but
instead they had to pluck him out of a squabble between the bounty
hunters – that a ‘BlackSun’ sub-plotline lead the action directly to
Coruscant – that the second Death Star was being built over Coruscant
itself and that Luke’s confrontation with the Emperor happened right in
the very seat of Imperial Power! Now THAT would have been a fitting
conclusion to the trilogy! *sigh* – if only…

In Star Wars, you’ll recall Luke saying, “My father didn’t fight in the
Clone Wars. He was no knight – just a navigator on a space freighter.”
So he would fly the Falcon. On Mos Eisley, Obi-Wan knew fate was
helping them when Han introduced himself as “the Captain of the
Millennium Falcon; maybe you’ve heard of her?” “Should I?” answered Ben,
tongue pressed firmly in cheek. Ben knew that the Falcon had once been
owned by Anakin Skywalker.”

Crazy shit, eh?  And I have no idea what Nate is talking about there, mostly;  superficially, he and I are quite clearly at odds in the way we choose to approach our fannish enthusiasm, because where I want to blow it up because of how ugly it’s gotten, he would prefer to save it…

Ugly bits and all!

…And so at first glance it seems each of us must find the other to be something of a kook (really, Nate, Calamari? and what in the hell is a Mon Mothma, or a Mandalore Red Guard?)…

…But if you just give it another look, we are not so far apart.  Because even though it’s in the attempt to save all the crazy, ugly stuff I’d prefer to see abolished and forgotten, deep down Nate’s position on Star Wars is just like mine:  we both recognize that the creative absence at its centre is dragging all the meanings it once carried, or promised, down into a big black hole of Who Cares.  So, I’d just toss it all;  but Nate must actually flirt with destroying it all, finding ways to actively contradict it all, in order to rescue it from the garbage can.  Sadly the wonderful flight of fancy called (I think) The Skywalker Paradigm is beyond my poor Internet reach now, or I’d use it to demonstrate how very close Nate comes to embracing a complete subversion of George Lucas’ brainchild — with Darth Vader the hero, Obi-Wan Kenobi the villain, Luke Skywalker the psychotic Doomsday Weapon of a corrupt counter-insurgency, and R2-D2 as the Force Mastermind behind it all who’s trying to hold it together — and it’s really too bad I can’t find it (although that Adam Star’s Esoteric Star Wars is still out there, even now picture-less, somewhat makes up for that lack), because my point here is that cohesive alternative explanations for all the shit that’s falling down a black hole need alternative attractors, “negative energy” if you will, a sort of narrative “anti-gravity”, if they’re to establish themselves in the slender zone of stability between total implosion and total detonation…which is the only place complexity ever lives.  And so the spinning-up of inconsistencies in the Star Wars movies to create a plausible dismantling of everything those movies claim to be showing us, is a powerful tool for challenging the black hole’s pull;  Nate does offer three other things here, as “anti-gravitic” mechanisms of this type, which are rather more conciliatory than the hilarious “good guys are really bad/bad guys are really good/everything you know is wrong” reconstruction, but I think it’s fair of me to say that it all begins with the possibility of a fully negative reading — fair to say that this negative interpretational possibility is what supplies the licence necessary to find other interpretations that lie somewhere between negative and positive.

And the first bit of “anti-gravity” Nate offers here is (of course!) all the insane ephemera of the Star Wars “Expanded Universe”:  which George Lucas has pretty much asserted his right to cherry-pick elements from without regard to whatever pre-existing consistency they may be founded in…but which Nate points out are not perfectly eliminable regardless, by finding ways in which they actually support the “arbitrary” order which was intended to replace them.  Just as, in the second “anti-gravitic” instance, he points out that Lucas’ Campbellian enthusiasms themselves imply a hidden “mythic” structure to the Star Wars story that can’t be simply hand-waved away.  Myself, I’ve got no time any longer for the love triangle of Lancelot and Guinevere and Arthur, nor necessarily for the Hero’s Journey…but Lucas still does, and so I think when Nate invokes Campbellian formulae to explain how the Star Wars story “should” have gone, the Star Wars canon must be found to tolerate his revisions as at least “possible” or “allowable” ones…

And finally, the last countervailing force arises (again; but we should be expecting this by now) from Lucas’ own willingness to let the chips fall as they may:  as Star Wars comes to be a sort of foster-home for any SF genre-conventions from other sources, that anyone wants to throw in there.  Cloaking devices and spice planets, tractor beams and mass cloning facilities — well, Star Wars began by mashing things like this up anyway, only with a bit of a new shine put on them, and (as previously mentioned) when your universe is one that supports aliens playing Benny Goodman tunes on fucking clarinets you’ve already shown a willingness to take things on board…

But in the absence of a firm authorial grip on this intake, it’s not long before the logic these devices bring with them must start to show, too:  not long before the profusion of details, the accession to convention, begins to be suggestive (again) of an order that’s no less necessary for not being expressed — that is perhaps even made more necessary for that lack of expression.

Or else…

Or else it is all just, in Jog’s (was it Jog’s?) memorable phrase, three-chord rock;  and so legitimately playable by anyone.

And if you go and visit Nate’s blog, you’ll find a lot of this crazy stuff, this mad and obsessive chasing after reconciliation, this heroic attempt to save even the worst of it all…because hey:  what other parts need saving, anyway?…which is not by any means my sort of freak-flag to be flying, but as I’ve said before, the great thing about “trash culture” (name courtesy of the PrettyFakers, by the way) is that it’s a free culture, a culture built on transgressions, on forbidden interactions, on FANTASY, yo…and so even if it’s not my kind of freak-flag, it is still I think a very admirable kind of freak-flag, being so all unapologetic about its geeky energy and affection.  Three-chord rock?  Heck, Nate’s getting twenty-minute prog drum solos out of it, over there.  It’s maddening.  It’s crazy.  It’s technically disallowed.  But that’s what makes it beautiful!

Of course, I would say that…

Considering the sort of thing I write when I think I’m in private conversation…

So here, rather likely not for your amusement, is an excerpt from an email exchange I had with my friend Jack, of the aforementioned PrettyFakers.  Quoth I:

“So the latest thing about the Large Hadron Collider is something that I’m not sure ought to be taken seriously — I mean, I don’t know if I believe the people suggesting it are being serious, it seems more likely to me that it’s a deliberate joke, a Sokol hoax for string theorists.  I certainly laughed when I encountered it for the first time a few days ago… But it made me think of doing a bit of brushing-up, and so I went around the web reading this and that, finally once again coming across the gedanken that I hate most of all, the time-travelling billiard ball.  The billiard ball is struck, and heads toward the corner pocket, within which is concealed a time machine.  KER-PLUNK!  It emerges from the other corner pocket at just such an angle that it strikes its past-self and knocks it off course.  The first billiard ball, Billiard Ball #1, never sinks into the time-machine pocket at all. Now, there’s nothing really wrong with this, it just annoys me when people call it a “paradox” — of course it isn’t one, the billiard balls represent particles interfering with one another, and one particle’s the same as another whether you have a time machine or you don’t.  You don’t even need for there to be a time-travelling particle to stop Billiard Ball #1 from going into the time machine — you could explain your attempted translocation not working in a number of different ways.  As always, what makes the paradox a paradox is incomplete information about the total system, where “incomplete information” doesn’t stand for “outright misprision”:  the casual assumption that “time” exists as either a) something seperate from space in GR, or b) as something we feel justified in saying we know anything at all about outside of GR.  Physical theories of time-travel are all mistakes, woefully premature:  time travel is still, as I seem to keep on saying, primarily a *literary conceit*.  As far as we know, spacetime’s just spacetime, and there are just coordinate locations in it, and that’s the whole of the story.  “Time travel” is a misnomer, as far as physics goes, because our physics currently doesn’t include a conception of this sort of “time” at all.

But anyway.  Then I read something sort of interesting:  a revision of the billiard-ball business that shows it’s possible for Billiard Ball #2 to just nudge Billiard Ball #1 enough that its trajectory is deflected, but it still makes it into the corner pocket. Now this is far more interesting:  the folks who went at this “nudge” scenario mathematically saying they’ve proved consistency can be preserved even in the presence of a notional “time machine” of this type…that indeed for all possible Billiard Ball #1 nudges, a Billiard Ball #2 path is generated that will provide the appropriate nudge.  So, even if you were a person who was wedded to the idea that it was a bunch of time-travelling particles causing the LHC not to fire, you see…even if you were a person who believed in paradox, in a sense relied on paradox, you could still have a “Chronology Protection Principle” (I resent Hawking “coining” that phrase more than I can say) in action that permitted time-travel.

Okay, where this all comes from, and then where I think it all goes:  the wacky things said about the LHC’s failure to discover the Higgs boson are all about the LHC acting as a universe-splitting time machine — nature abhors Higgs bosons, so whenever the LHC gets turned on, the LHCs that have already been turned on in the future interfere with it in such a way as to cause our universe to select itself as a universe where LHCs don’t detect Higgs bosons [EDIT: Because the thing hasn't successfully been fired yet, is what I'm saying].  Now this is actually SF, in fact I believe I read this story many times in the 80s and 90s.  The most hilarious suggestion has been that we ought to make up a million-card deck, in which 999,999 cards say “turn on the LHC” and only one says “DON’T”.  Then we pick from the deck, and if we get the card that says “DON’T” then we know the universe just split, so there’s no point turning it on.

(I swear to God this is a hoax.  It must be, surely?)

Anyway, so to the paradox-minded this scenario presents a problem — if we don’t turn it on, how do we receive the “message” not to turn it on? The “nudge” theory of time-travelling billiard balls sort of solves this imaginary problem, though only generally and not specifically:  you can have a time-traveller change his own time-travelling past without leaving yourself lots of paradoxical loose ends, because the billiard ball can still go into the pocket…and as it turns out no matter which way it goes into the pocket, there’s a way for it to nudge its past-self so that it still goes into the pocket.  In other words there is always room for complication in the liminal, infinitesimal region between “happened” and “didn’t happen”…because the time machine exclusively produces “near misses”…it can’t hit the target, it can only hit around the target…if you like, it can only hit “fractions” of success, and of course we’ll never run out of fractions.

(You were saying something about the Mandlebrot set, I believe?) [EDIT:  he was, and yes I was trying to be clever with that, so sue me.]

So…it’s fine and everything, although I think they could’ve just asked me about it instead of wasting the time of people with genuine qualifications…but I see an interesting situation arising from this whole “nudge” revelation of “Chronology Protection”, which is:  if chronological consistency (I guess that’s what we’re calling it now) is always preserved by these “nudges”, then we get rid of paradox merely by getting rid of the time-traveller’s ability to detect any changes in the past:  because the “nudge” corrects chronology in such a way as to make all [experienced] pasts consistent with all observed presents.  For every trajectory, a reconciling “nudge”;  for every nudge, a reconciled trajectory.  And then why not another nudge, and another, and another, ad infinitum?  It wouldn’t matter:  we wouldn’t know.  The past would be in a constant state of perfect revision.  More:  if time-travel were physically possible, we would have to expect that it is already going on naturally in the universe somewhere:  much as the argument against naturally-occurring traversable wormholes is that if they’re out there, we should already be detecting time-shifted radio signals from them.  So if time-travel were possible, and the “nudges” were factual, we could reasonably expect that the past is fundamentally ephemeral:  one “second” ago it was a different past, and now it is this one…in another second it’ll be something else again.  An old stoner’s imagining:  did you ever really look at your hand, man?

Of course “Chronology Protection Principles” are not very scientific anyway…who says they’re needed?  Who says the universe has to care about the seeming paradoxes that befuddle human beings?  Maybe it doesn’t matter at all, except to us — and maybe the way we’ve chosen to care about it is wrongheaded:  “must get rid of this paradoxical result somehow, it threatens the theory!”  That is, of course, epicyclical thinking…both in that it’s not scientific, and that it’s historically ignorant:  because our model of the universe is no longer one in which we can reasonably wish to “preserve consistency” — we are already long past the point where it makes sense to chase the ideal of some perfect Principia or other, aren’t we?

The other day I ran into a friend of a friend in the liquor store, who studies Philosophy of Fiction, and over a couple of beers we got to talking about that…suddenly in the middle of me trying to explain an idea I had about Japanese SF (basically that Japan has already lived through the post-apocalyptic motif of the West’s SF, so when Japanese SF offers us post-apocalyptic landscapes the usual Western “cautionary” reading of such a story is superficial:  Japanese authors are not warning their audiences that nuclear proliferation is a bad idea, good heavens!  But rather every apocalypse signifies a failure of imagination…), she exclaimed:

“And that’s why communism doesn’t work!”

She’s a self-styled libertarian, thinks Michael Moore is a hypocrite because his movies make money, etc.  Jejeune stuff.  Looking back on it, what I should’ve said (good-naturedly, of course) was:

“Bitch, who the fuck said anything about communism working?  Is that what you think your “side” has as its big sockdologer, it’s big philosophical credential?!  Because if that’s what you think, you need to get working on some fresh material…!”

I didn’t say that, though, and in relatively short order she’d pressed into my hands an SF book she’d been reading, in which all “modern technology” stops working one day — as it turns out it’s a VERY transparent libertarian-survivalist fantasy — ugly to encounter — which I said was something like we’d been talking about, it’s a future that isn’t extrapolative, it’s just arbitrary…but then she promised me, PROMISED me, that in the second book somebody comes up with a scientific rationale for the big change.

So I was reading the book, and noticing some strange things:  all electrical devices go dead, gunpowder doesn’t burn so much as it smoulders, dynamite doesn’t explode…and yet matches strike, and kerosene lamps burn.  Hmm, most peculiar…could this really all admit of a scientific rationale, even one good enough to suit a bit of SF-noodling? I couldn’t wait;  I came up with the best theory I could. I thought, maybe, maybe you could get away with it if you stipulated that every molecule over a certain weight with single-bonded oxygen atoms in it, suddenly had one of them disintegrate into its constituent protons and electrons.  Then right away each molecule grabs some atomic oxygen again, and so the ozone layer’s back up (well, it’s pretty dicey I’ll be the first to admit), but the damage is done:  air’s a good insulator, but it isn’t perfect, and that’d be a lot of current flowing around suddenly — maybe enough to drain batteries, maybe not enough to kill most living creatures.  A couple of very big “maybes”! [EDIT:  Actually it would be a disaster on an unimaginable scale] But then nitroglycerine would undergo a chemical change, and so would saltpeter…but kerosene wouldn’t, water wouldn’t, hydrochloric acid wouldn’t, DNA actually wouldn’t (I was surprised to discover that)…it could, at a LONG stretch, maybe work well enough for soft SF. But then I found out that, in this book — and you are not going to believe this — STEAM power doesn’t work… And then I threw up my hands, and went to Wikipedia to find out what the later book’s explanation was.

Because I mean really, STEAM power doesn’t work?

The answer was:  “high energy densities” don’t exist anymore, because something (I won’t tell you what, because it’s teeth-grindingly hideous) is draining them off. But of course this is really incoherent:  what are “high energy densities” anyway, when they’re at home?

Anyway I have been avoiding the Phil. of Fiction girl when I see her in the grocery store — don’t want to have to tell her that the book is awful junk. [Also she is nice.] But the comparison I was hoping to make here is:  that “Chronology Protection Principles” are basically the same sort of thing as “high energy-density drains” — they’re both things which don’t count as explanations, only as handwaving excuses for continuing to hold a belief in abstract entities that don’t really exist.  For the survivalist-SF book, that abstract non-entity is “modern technology”…an absolutely useless category unless one wishes to attack another abstract non-entity that couldn’t exist without it:  “modern society”…and for a certain kind of physicist it is finality:  ironically, the ability to say that the past is immutable.  We know this, we know that, we’ve settled the matter, we’re moving on…! But of course we are not:  because moving on is what “finality” definitionally prevents.  The essence of the problem of progress, and why Richard Dawkins refuses to be interviewed by philosophers of science…and just incidentally, what Principias everywhere both rely upon and are ultimately demolished by:  definitional prevention.

Oh, how I look forward to my friend Tyche’s “paper” on  “The Rhetoric of Kurt Godel”!  I think physics is in the midst of a war of rhetoric, and no one knows it…more and more, I’m convinced that the application of a little Phil. of Sci. is absolutely necessary, if we want to get past the point of simply shouting our creed at one another.  The key has to be in a more general sort of science education, but I don’t know how we can get it.  I guess I’m trying to do my bit for it here and there, and hoping it all adds up…which I’m sure it will, because things generally do add up…but at the same time I’m hoping it won’t have to add up to anything so drastic as a “revolution in thought”, or anything like that.  That way of framing things in science ought to be damn well staledated too, by now. Well, one can hope it is.

So…short version is, I guess:  how could I do otherwise, but support Nate’s crazy Star Wars fan-fixes?  When, again, he and I are just the same:  neither of us can sit still for stories whose arbitrariness is presented as the entire reason for us to sit still.  One hears it all the time, on the geek circuit:  “The Avengers are whoever the owners of the trademark called “The Avengers” say they are.”

Which is true enough, I suppose.

But:  not at all an explanation of anything.

Uh…see what I did, there?

…

Yeah…yeah, you’re right.

This was a real long one.

So…you think maybe I shoulda quit when I was ahead?

Yeah…

Me too.