Lit The Official StarWars.com Blog Thread - That's right, I went there

I tend to think of the Celestials as not having technology but being beings of the Force.

 

The shuttle didn't have a cloaking device -- the shuttle also could not see the Venator, which also did not have a cloaking device.

That's a really strange interpretation. Plus I guess it's selectively cloaking itself to certain observers. I dunno...

 

The problem with Centerpoint Station is Han is a Corellian and he discounts the Death Star being a space station based on size -- despite his home system having one of a similar size. The best excuse is that contemporary technology hasn't matched it -- but given that millennia old technology is the norm, even more so now than before in the Expanded Universe, I'm not really buying it.

 

No... I never said that. I said the Death Star was presented as the culmination of military technology; you name dropped Mortis and forgot to include context. I reminded you that I carefully qualified my words: "military technology" so as not to rule out the possibility that certain older civilizations could be more advanced in other ways. You then responded with an abundance of seeming snark and ambiguity and here I am, as confused as I was at the beginning.

So again, I invite you to explain to me what you're getting at.

 

So older civilizations could create microverses (sorry, "magical" microverses), yet this kind of time/space twisting technology would not be useful in a military sense? Even though that's exactly what this article showed with the hyperspace barriers?

 

Why are we ridiculing the notion of "magic" in Star Wars?

 

This whole problem started with the ANH novelization's description of the Massassi Temple.

 

Continue...

 

Well the ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force.

 

Because there is no magic, only the Force and technology (which may or may not be powered by said energy field).

 

The ANH novelization says that the Massassi Temple is ancient and "perhaps superior to Imperial projects".

 

Given that the Force users in question retreated from the greater galaxy so as to avoid razing it and so would have no reason to invest time, effort, and energy into potential military applications... probably. Not to mention that the Anchorites of Mortis and the Celestials and Centerpoint Station didn't even exist when A New Hope was released. We're right back to square one. Nothing that originated with Lucas affirms the Older Is Better trope. That's strictly EU wankery.

Why are we ridiculing at all?

 

The sad thing is, with the Naga Sadow connection, the Temple and his ship, the Corsair, provide similar examples to the Mortis Monolith and the Celestial constructs. The Corsair, powered by the Force, which when amplified through a mystical crystal, could induce supernovas.

No, EU created by Lucas, since he wanted the Force Gods in TCW to begin with.

 

The Nightsisters might claim otherwise --

But if you're going to differentiate between the Force and magic, then it's somewhat of a strawman to claim that the monolith is magical, as no one claimed that, or at least I did not. There's more to the Force than what the Jedi and Sith know -- and I never considered once that the monolith was a technological construct, but rather a metaphysical plane manifest in the GFFA. I don't think Lucas or Filoni or Taylor were making a statement of the technological prowess of the Ones -- Qui-Gon describes it as a "conduit through which the entire Force of the universe flows." I never believed it to be a physical place. But that's just me. I never took Star Wars to be a stranger to more metaphysical ideas and concepts since the films are predicated upon them, and TCW hasn't shied away from expanding upon them further than the films did.

I haven't read Crucible, so I don't know what Denning did with the monoliths. But with Apocalypse I suppose you could take it to be technological since apparently the Ones were big on building massive tractor beam generators.

 

Which is also meaningless since Dave Filoni said their usage of the Force is just a different practice from the Sith and Jedi and Force Wielders. It's still meant to be consistent within the universe as another aspect of the Force.

 

Which is my point.

 

Going by Book of Sith, they do seem to worship a "Fanged God" and "Winged Goddess" whose description hints that they are basically the Son and the Daughter.

 

This is a disingenuous comparison. Lucas's "Force Gods" exist outside of temporal reality. There's no suggestion that their power is the fruit of ancient technology, ancient knowledge, ancient powers. They are manifestations of the Force; age is irrelevant.

What's more, the Mortis arc is ultimately a subversion of that very idea. The Father brings Anakin to Mortis because Anakin, a modern figure, is the only one capable of keeping the Son and Daughter in check where the Father cannot. It's a triumph of the modern over the "arcane."

To be very accurate, that same passage concedes that the civilization that built the Massassi were inferior in other respects and only surpassed Imperial efforts "in certain ways." That, I can accept.

 

Nope, the Father's dialogue with Anakin states in plain they retreated to this personal realm to get away from groups who wanted to misuse their powers. Being "anchorites" means cutting off from civilization to focus on spiritual pursuits. Something you seem to miss with the rest of your analysis.

 

In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the Empire has a bias towards the military.

 

Yep, and when they retreated... where did they go? To exist outside of temporal reality. Where does the dialogue claim that their status is the product of ancient knowledge, ancient technology, ancient hygiene rituals? Nowhere that I can recall. They are manifestations of the Force; their age is irrelevant. And the fact that Anakin, a modern entity, has more power than any of them subverts the notion that Lucas is espousing an Older Is Better paradigm.

Now that we've vividly explored this dead end, can we get back to you cogently explaining the significance of the Mortis monolith vis a vis the Death Star's military application?

 

They aren't manifestations of the Force, if they were, they wouldn't be managing the production of Centerpoint Station. A very physical device that is filled with metal framework, computers and other decidedly non-magical artifacts. If they were truly magical, why even use physical labor forces for this and other engineering projects?



As for the Mortis Monolith, it's a different application of the same technology that brought about the Stations and their world-building/solar system-moving purpose: the folding/bending of time/space continuum.

Think Dr. Who's the Tardis, a machine that could warp space to the point of appearing like a 1960s Police Telephone Box from the outside, but a vast engineering marvel packed into a microverse on the inside. The Stations could be similar devices, just with their own concealment functions turned off, thus exposing the true superstructure within.

Then there's the Tho Yor, which I don't know if had a similar microverse inside.

 

Troy Denning?

 

You're conflating the Anchorites-as-conceived-and-portrayed-by Lucas with the Anchorites-as-warped-and-retconned-by-Denning. As far as Lucas is concerned, there is no hint given that the Ones had anything to do with Centerpoint Station or whatnot.