masterghandalf

Again, I'm honestly not sure if this is cool, or just silly. We don't really see "up-scaled" versions of smaller pieces of technology in the movies, so it seems like Star Wars, despite its loose understanding of engineering principles, still has some form of the square-cube-law. Still, the general idea of a single droid larger than a ship does have a certain appeal...


Counterexample for scaled-up tech - the Death Star II, significantly larger than the original Death Star. I also think in this case, it's pretty clear that while the hunter seekers look like bigger versions of the probe droids from ESB, they're actually fairly different tech with a different purpose.

Okay, but why is he showing it to her, exactly? To tempt her with knowledge and power? Doesn't seem like the most efficient way of doing that, considering the first piece of knowledge it imparts is "Don't trust people like Palpatine."


"Tempting her with knowledge only he can provide" seems to be the answer. He clearly wasn't expecting her to just grab it and bolt. As to why he wasn't expecting something that obvious... blame the fact that he's dying, maybe? *shrugs*

I've noticed they're leaning heavily on "Leia the Jedi" in this story, which wouldn't be a bad thing, except most other parts of her seem to have fallen off in favor of it. Where's "Leia the Senator," or "Leia the Diplomat," or "Leia the Spy," or "Leia the Soldier?" Most other expanded universe stories preserved those aspects of her character quite well, but I'm not seeing much of them here. Although, in my opinion, most other expanded universe stories also don't use "Leia the Jedi" nearly enough. Seems like in a lot of stories, even a lot of the good ones, she doesn't think of herself as a Jedi at all, and barely uses the Force at all, which I think is a waste. It's important to preserve the core of the character, but it's also important not to deny the character the chance to go in exciting new directions.


TBH, I think a lot of this is early-installment weirdness; keeping in mind that this story would've been outlined even before the Thrawn books got properly underway, it seems like Veitch assumed that Leia would throw herself wholeheartedly into being a Jedi in a way that most other EU authors, from Zahn onwards, did not. And yeah, for most of the Bantam era and the NJO, it was pretty clear that Leia was a rather indifferent Jedi at best (not from lack of interest so much as because she just had a lot on her plate between all the other hats she was also wearing). IIRC, it wasn't until the Dark Nest books that she actually took the time to commit to formally wrapping up her training and gaining full Knight status (though I remember it being somewhat controversial because Troy Denning was writing and he picked one of his pet characters, Saba Sebatyne, as Leia's master for the last leg of her training despite Saba being mostly a background character when everyone else was writing and had never been portrayed as having much of a relationship with Leia).

Which "father" is she talking about, there? It's true for both, but which one she means seems relevant to this story's interpretation of her character.


I think Anakin, who is more relevant in this particular context, but yes, it would apply to Bail just as well.

Knowing the Dark Side is a bad thing! That was kind of the point of the movies!


Frankly, I'm not even sure what point Luke is trying to make here at all, or even what sort of knowledge he's referring to (it's not like you need the dark side to telekinetically shove a guy into a wall).

Do they ever use the word "Sith," here? That was another funny aspect of the early expanded universe; while they do use the word in the movies, and I think it was always supposed to mean, roughly, "evil Jedi," they never actually explain that in the movies, and I don't think they explained it to the early authors, either. Hence, misunderstandings like Timothy Zahn initially wanting to call the Noghri the "Sith."


No, I don't think the Dark Empire (at least the first arc; I'm not very far into Dark Empire II at the moment) ever calls Palpatine a Sith or uses the term at all. I do know that DEII introduces some lore that would later be elaborated on in the Tales of the Jedi comics that would relate to the Sith, and the Jedi Academy Trilogy, which introduced Exar Kun and firmly established him as a Sith, came out between the two arcs. IIRC, most of the novels and comics between the Thrawn Trilogy and the prequels followed Zahn's lead and used "Dark Jedi" as the generic term for evil Force users, even those who hadn't actually been Jedi.