Lit Vidian

Vidian is a old-fashioned pantomine scene-chewing Imperial like the crazy Space Nazi dentist in The Truce at Bakura.

He's as far from Thrawn and Pellaeon as humanly possible.

Hell, his name is COUNT Vidian.

Which may rub some people the wrong way.

 

One dead manager, two dead manager, three dead managers! Ah, ha, ha.

Oh wait.. Wrong Count.

 

For the first CANON novel I think it was important for New Dawn to have a very simple story, for fans just getting into novels (like myself), with a simple easy to follow threat. Cyborg ******** wants to destroy moon for selfish reasons, heroes stop him.

Personally I loved Vidian and when I first read New Dawn I was hoping by book's end he'd survive to plague the ghost crew in rebels. In retrospect it'd probably for the best as Rebels would only neuter the character and have him defeated by a singing AP-5.

 

It's interesting John Jackson Miller's novel villains tend to be more overthetop than his comic ones.

 

Would Kenobi be the exception to that? I can't remember the guys name but he seemed fairly normal, just got way in over his head and ended up doing extreme things to hold his little dust empire together.

 

I thought Vidian was a great villain - very reassuringly old-school to launch a new continuity.

I just wish we could get an illustration.

 

But you've gotta love his corporate values.

"Keep moving!"

"Destroy barriers!"

"See everything!"

"Forget the old way!"

Those are actually some real-world corporate values that many corporations use.

 

I didn't care for Vidian. He was the weakest point in AND. Thankfully we got Rae Sloane at the dawn (no pun intended) of Canon.

 

Indeed, that was one of the reasons I thought Vidian was somewhat compelling. The man was a Six Sigma Black Belt just waiting to happen.

 

Having worked at a few different corporations at a relatively high level, I can honestly say I've never once heard any corporation espousing things Vidian does... or murdering managers by throwing them in vats of acid and then griping that they aren't dissolving fast enough... or wanting to blow up moons, and not caring if it destroys the planet where people actually live...

 

Theodore Morell was Hitler's personal physician, and therefore highly influential and a very powerful figure at court - but that doesn't mean that he was at all good at his job, or that he knew what he was doing.

 

Having worked and lived in West Virginia--you're lucky because Vidian is basically a very common archetype.

It's just he'd have someone who'd frame how strip-mining the local mountain, destroying the environment, and leaving everyone destitute and jobless in four years was for their own good.

 

It's like the guy above you said... just because someone is hired for a job doesn't mean he's good at it. Vidian, like I said, reminds me of Greivous... except Greivous was intelligent, and wouldn't waste valuable resources.

 

Not beyond the realm of possibility.... ;-)

 

Precisely.

Morell was there solely because Hitler WANTED him there; when other doctors with actual competence came before Hitler with evidence of his incompetence and corruption, Hitler sent them packing. It didn't MATTER if he was incompetent or corrupt - if Hitler liked him and wanted him around, that was expected to be sufficient reason, and not to be questioned.

 

Vidian is very good at his job. His job is to strip mine planets of their resources and work them to death to get the Empire to top working functionality.

Blowing up the planet, though, is just to screw over his rival.

 

Charlemagne's right: we also have to remember that, in the end, Vidian has an agenda all his own, which conflicts quite significantly with his assumed personae as a corporate figure.

 

Admittedly, it's hard to remember because blowing up a sparsely populated planet to strip mine it is Imperial 101.

Possibly because of Vidian.

 

Finally finished the book. Vidian got what was coming to him, and all is right with my view of the Empire again.

 

So, what changed about your view of Vidian between the time you started the book and the time you finished it? What made the difference?

 

Honestly, I didn't like vidian from the start. like I said, it sounds like they were trying to create a civilian Greivous, and that would be a mistake because someone like Greivous would be almost impossible to imitate.

 

No, I mean, what about the book made all right with your conception of the Empire again? What saved things?