YJK 3, and some Em Tee Dee

 YJK continues to be bad. Book 3 is The Lost Ones. Rather than continuously whining about Moesta and Anderson's writing, here's the short version:

Brakiss, Tamith Kaii, and the other Shadow Academy characters are back. I never got past Shadow Academy as a kid, so I assumed they were one offs. Apparently the main villains for this arc (or maybe even the whole series?) are approximately as competent as the anime version of Team Rocket. Not nearly as funny though.

"The Lost Ones" are a gang of Coruscant street urchins. They show up for maybe 10 pages in the whole book, but somehow get the whole thing named after them. They get recruited by the Shadow Academy, along with Jaina's friend Zekk.

Brakiss calls the leader of the new Second Imperium and we find out it's Palpatine. I'm 99% sure he's for-real-for-real dead at this point. Hologram? Imposter?  

Again... sigh...

One thing that is kind of interesting is that (at least in Anderson-Moesta's take on the canon) the Empire and Republic have both beat each other up so much that nothing is working. Coruscant is on the verge of falling apart and a single (admittedly large) transport is worth the Empire deploying their super secret space station to capture.

Besides whining about the book, let's talk about MTD a little. Like all "Lucas Accurate" protocol droids, he doesn't actually know anything about social situations. He's specifically programmed for Human-Wookie relations, which means he's vaguely racist against Wookies from time to time. He's fluent in at least six forms of communication (a take on Threepio's six million). Trying to figure out what they probably are.

We know:

1. Basic
2. Shyriiwook

Speculatively, I'd say:

3. Bocce (gotta know space Italian)
4. Binary/Droidspeak (these should be two separate languages, but whatever)

And really reaching:
5. Huttese seems pretty common/practical (possibly a reason not to include it, actually)
6. Ewok? (I like the idea of Threepio putting it in there for the one time he saved the day.

He calls everyone Master/Mistress, because the M&Ms apparently think Threepio does in the original movies. He calls Luke (you know, his actual owner) Master and Leia (his previous owner) Mistress. But no one else. Chewbacca isn't Master Chewbacca, Han is Captain Solo, etc. From a real world etiquette perspective, Master is also appropriate for Luke since he's young. I guess the Solo kids are too, so maybe it's not totally off. (I'd have to go look and see what he calls Peckhum). 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

1. Splinter of the Mind's Eye (1978) by Alan Dean Foster

Image
Splinter of the Mind's Eye Sweet Ralph Macquarie cover art, courtesy of Wookiepedia! Summary: Luke and Leia crash on a swamp planet. Leia has PTSD. Luke has a crush on her. They go looking for the Kaiburr Crystal with cranky Force grandma and replacement Chewie twins. Darth Vader shows up and mostly kicks their asses, but he falls in a hole. What it introduces: Naming things X of the Y : Which would hold for 4 of the 9 movies, 70ish novels, and numerous video games, comics, etc. The Kaiburr Crystal: Shards of which would become the most desirable lightsaber focusing crystals in the later EU. Kyber crystals would make an appearance in the new canon as both lightsaber crystals and part of the Death Star's superlaser.  Commentary:   Splinter of the Mind's Eye is widely considered the first book in the Expanded Universe. It was published in 1978, about half a year after the original release of Star Wars/A New Hope.  Preceding it are a few of the Marvel Comics (which I'll be...
Read more

13: A New Hope Radio Drama (1981)

Image
ANH Radio Drama I've talked before about how the radio drama is my favorite adaptation of the OT. In many ways, it serves the role often played by a novelization by expanding on the original story moreso than the actual novels (particularly ANH). If you haven't listened, bounce over to Youtube: Or The Internet Archive  and have a listen. George Lucas cut the University of Southern California (his alma mater) a sweetheart dollar deal to license the story, music, and sound effects. Brian Daley (who wrote the Han Solo trilogy earlier) did the scripts. In the modern era of big budget podcasts and audiobooks, it's a little harder to express how freaking cool these were as a kid into Star Wars in the 90s (though the Jedi adaptation wasn't produced until 1996). I literally wore out my cassettes. Long story short, these are professionally produced, well directed, and make great use of John William's score (with a few additional cues recorded for the occasion) and a full cas...
Read more

Dark Force Rising and The Last Command (1992 and 1993)

It's been how long since I did one of these? How did I format them? I think after over explaining Heir to the Empire I'm going to go a little more informal with these. Honestly, I don't love 'em. I talked before about how HttE  Thrawn is peak Xanatos-scheming. In the later books, the plans get kind of goofy. The asteroid blockade of Coruscant in particular stands out. 1. A cloaking device in combat (briefly) or when you're not being looked for (slip in) is one thing. Putting them on asteroids and parking them over Coruscant is dumb. Couldn't you just use some space glitter to reveal them? Or make a corridor with tractor beams? Something? 2. They're real trusting about Karrde's count. "Haha! I had more asteroids!" is very Thrawn. The entire "off camera" Katana fleet hijacking is kind of disappointing as well. I get the urge to go for "I did it 35 minutes ago", but it's the climax/set piece for the second book, and it'...
Read more