CT Emperor Palpatine's Extragalactic Influence

This is something I recently thought about, I was wondering if there is any indication of Emperor Palpatine's political influence on other galaxies outside the main Star Wars Galaxy. I imagine him to have substantial influence on the smaller satellite galaxies such as the Rishi Maze. But do you think this could have extended to actually having direct political power of these smaller galaxies? After all, he did have secret control of the clone army production in Kamino. What about larger galaxies, further away?

 

As far as I know, The whole Star Wars saga takes place in that single galaxy far, far away. I've heard about an episode of The Clone Wars where a group of fighters got lost and weren't even sure to be in their home galaxy. That is the only reference to what there is or might be outside the galaxy.
Maybe there's something more in the Expaned Universe (but that's something I know nothing about), and still would be unofficial.

This is to say that there's no evidence of any kind of interaction with other galaxies. And I believe that's the case. At least so far, who knows what's going to happen in the next episodes. But still I wouldn't fancy the idea of such an expansion of the battlefield...

 

That makes perfect sense. We do know very little about these other galaxies, if they do indeed exist. I believe only the Rishi Maze is canon but nothing is known about it. Also at the end of ESP, I believe we do see the actual Star Wars Galaxy. Palpatine's power is certainly an interesting concept.



Me too! I would love to see a Yuuzhan Vong type situation in the canon timeline. All out extragalactic invasion seems too cool!

 

You might be interested in the fact that the Vong were at one point supposed to be the progenitors of the Sith purebloods, but because the Rule of Two was being pushed at the time (1999), they were changed from being strong in the dark side to being "outside The Force." You might also be interested in the fact that in the canon novel "Aftermath," one of Sheev's advisors says that Sheev was searching beyond the edges of the galaxy for "the source of the dark side." Perhaps the old Vong concept that I mentioned could be revisited?

 

This is actually fascinating! I had no idea the Vong were once considered to have mastery of the dark side and suddenly demoted to not having a connection with the force . May I ask, If the force doesn't sustain the Vong, then how do they have life? Something I have always found confusing. I have to read that novel, my journey through the canon novels is slow but certainly interesting. I wouldn't necessarily think the dark side has a physical source, the force is a metaphysical entity and this encompasses the dark side. Nevertheless, a quest for the dark side's source would be great to see, whether it exists or not...

 

The Force doesn't sustain life, and maybe the dark side isn't naturally part of The Force.

 

The force does sustain life? The living force does actually reside in all life and I though that was what gave living matter its life. I thought this was explained in TCW. Also, even though there is now the cosmic and living force both coexisting. I believe these differences are just how people interpret them on an individual level.

That's an interesting thought about the dark side.

 

What I meant is that it's unknown whether life created The Force or if The Force gives living matter its life. TCW and Obi-Wan in ANH both state that they're always found together.

 

Oh I see, that now makes sense.

 

The Dark Empire trilogy depicts Sidious Palpatine with the desire to create a universe-spanning mageocracy. Later EU material showed that Sidious was somewhat aware of the coming Yuuzhan Vong invasion. Thus, he used that as a pretext to justify the expansion of the Imperial military, something he would have done regardless. But neither he nor Thrawn knew much about the "Far Outsiders." Vergere became the first expert.

 

As I had understood, hyperspace stopped working once leaving the bounds of the GFFA. So even at light speed, traveling to a satellite galaxy would take quite a while

Didn't EU explain the setup of hyperspace routes as a result of the Rakatan Infinite Empire?

 

Yes, and it also explained that most spacefaring civilizations reverse-engineered hyperdrives from the Rakatans.

I don't imagine Palpatine had any way of exerting any extragalactic influence. I mean, as far as I remember, hyperspace and subspace communications like the Holonet and subspace transponders took a while to reach even the Outer Rim, and the only extragalactic species that ever traveled to GFFA took a very, very long time to get there. The Vong took ~15,000 years. Although there were some interdimensional beings or something like that (like Waru, and possibly the Celestials), so I'm sure there could have been some cop-out or a way to retcon if anyone ever intended Palpatine to have power in other galaxies.

 

Well... he's pretty famous in our galaxy

 

I doubt anyone in our world or the SW universe would deny other galaxies exist. We may not know much about them but know they exist since the early 1900s. I don't know about the EU but nothing in the SW movies contradicts that knowledge. After all the story takes place in "A galaxy...", not "THE galaxy...". With advanced technology as in SW it's unimaginable that other galaxies had not been observed. If traveling to them is possible is a different question of course.

 

Yes I agree with this, I looked into it and apparently there is evidence of smaller satellite galaxies. I keep banging on about the Rishi Maze and which I think is one of them. This is an image from epII:


To me, this gives a good indication of at least two smaller satellite galaxies and the sheer size of the Star Wars Galaxy when compared to them. I agree with you, I think there has to be other galaxies. The relations between them and the influence they may have on each other is an interesting topic. Great observation with 'A' and not 'The', I've never noticed the clue there before.


Any ideas on what the bottom screen in the picture is indicating? I guess the Star Wars galaxy but what are the faint diagrams around it?

 

In that scene the rebel fleet is on the outskirts of the galaxy, looking inward towards the hub.

 

Are we really certain that near the end of ESB we are actually watching a galaxy and not just a newborn star? The rotation we see is way too fast for a galaxy.

And what about Kenobi's statement that the Force holds the galaxy together in ANH. Does it imply it doesn't exist outside the GFFA (which doesn't sound too farfetched, considering its being created by all living beings whose concentration will be biggest inside a galaxy)?

 

I made a post before about other galaxies. It's a nice concept to think about, like if the force is outside of the galaxy. Then TCW episode was mentioned and people got angry XD

Maybe other galaxies will be explored, they could have done that instead of episode 7. Keep that galaxy's story done, but what we got was neat too! Also what does GFFA stand for? (Galaxy far far away I assume?)

 

Yes that's what GFFA stands for.

 

(In Sidious Voice) Good...Goood....

 

Artistic licence.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Talk:The_galaxy/Legends

The galaxy as seen in ESB, revisited

Also, according to the Audio Commentary feature on the ESB DVD, the film's director Irvin Kershner does indeed refer to this object as "a galaxy," so I'm including that as well.

 

I doubt Kenobi was giving any thought to other galaxies when he said that. He was talking about the Jedi, not the physics of the universe.

 

BEN Well, the Force is what gives a Jedi his power. It's an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together.

That did not sound like a figure of speech to me, he was describing properties of the Force, not the Jedi.

 

As I understand it, Palpatine's power didn't cover the entire GFFA itself, let alone any others. At the time of the PT, the Republic's influence didn't extend to Tatooine or the Outer Rim - by the time of the OT, one gets the impression that the Empire had only recently taken control of such systems, and they still didn't have Jabba the Hutt under control.

Even taking EU stuff into consideration, it's quite clear that extragalactic matters were well out of Republic or Imperial control, despite the occasional dealings with beings purporting to be from other galaxies who turned up now and then. To put things into context, the exploratory mission that Grand Admiral Thrawn was sent upon during the pre-SW/ANH Imperial era (to get him out of the way) was to the 'Unknown Regions' - an unexplored area of the GFFA. If such a region existed inside its own galaxy and required such a mission, one can't imagine that the Empire would have known anything about galaxies outside it.

As far as stuff like the Rebel rendezvous in ESB and 'satellite galaxies' are concerned - they're quite clearly areas just outside the GFFA (and presumably still affected by its gravitational pull), not major galaxies that would require gigantic distances of deep space to reach.

As already pointed out, the shot at the end of ESB is merely a view from the very edge of the galaxy looking upon the core, not from another one. Galaxies aren't so close together as to provide such a view from simply looking out of a window, even if it's from a space station. The closest galaxy to the GFFA would have appeared from that window like just another star in the distance.