Books STAR WARS: A NEW DAWN (September 2014)

SW ones seem a bit more generalist in the movies - with there being speciality variants - scout troopers, snow troopers, etc.

 

Point, although the RPGs certainly ran with the concept as well. But the variants tend to be what I would expect with a galactic elite force. And note that they have distinctive looks for the variants- it would be curious that the stormtroopers showing up in positions where elite forces would normally be deployed would have the identical appearance as ones that were just common ground troops.
Unless we haven't seen the latter, in which case, it's just a matter of semantics about the "Imperial Army".

Eh, FFG already has made the distinction, and that's all I care about.

 

Do you think AT-AT drivers are Army or Stormtroopers? Their helmets look very stormtrooper-ish



but that may not mean much.

 

Maybe Head-Bumper is part of the 501st.

 

Maybe that'll be their new name - instead of the Legends "Vader's Fist" they become the NEU "Headbangers".

 

Watching the movies, I assumed stormtroopers - but I also assumed the AT-ATs were elite units.

In any case, re-reading Jim Bambra's work on defining the stormtroopers/Imperial Army units during the WEG days, there's nothing that really overtly conflicts with the depiction in the movies (naturally) or here - it's just annoying to me that the stormtroopers are implied to be the 'only' Imperial army troops.

 

Interesting enough some sources claim they are Army like AT-ST pilots, others say they are Stormtroopers.

 

I always got the same feel whenever I watched the OT too. Whenever I heard something like "Only Imperial stormtroopers could be that precise" [ignoring the fact that for film narrative requirements they actually couldn't hit a thing ] it made it sound like when the Empire sends its elite corps in, then the proverbial had hit the fan and you might as well get out the white flag already. By extension, I then assumed that ordinary policing was just done by... normal people.

 

Ordinary policing on regular planets, you mean?

 

Stupid question which I am sure has already been answered in this thread but I don't want to search through 15 pages to find it:

Is this advance edition the whole book or just, like a couple chapters?

 

Should be the full thing. It's pretty common for books to get into people's hands a month or more in advance. That's typically where the web spoilers come from.

 

I mean anywhere, Coruscant, wherever. From watching the OT, I never really felt the idea was that the whole galaxy was patrolled by stormtroopers on every street corner, but that they were the military, and sent in strike forces to root out Rebel insurgents.

Certainly, the Empire wasn't meant to be a nice place, but... I also always felt that lots of people naively thought it was, and that stormtroopers were therefore the scary things that only the bad people had to deal with. I mean, given the Empire was originally modeled on the Nazis, by extension I constructed my image of the Empire in the same mould, with the worst of the Empire's atrocities not being something that bothered the everyday lives of the average Imperial citizen, who only got exposed to the "good" side.

Long story short, I guess I just imagined the Empire as more realistically designed than the cliche space dictatorships you get in most other sci-fi.

 

Or at least get "dealt with" by the not military branch of the regime, be it secret police, normal police or "political police".

 

Yeah, who-- again working on the assumption it was based off Nazi analogies-- I always pictured more as the police who "look like your friends" even when in actuality they're going to take you outside and shoot you.

Unlike stormtroopers, who just look like they're going to shoot you right there and then.

 

So, has anyone who went to SDCC read this yet? I'm assuming it's good, since it's JJM. Is there any indication of how many years after RotS or before Rebels it is (I love knowing timeline placements.)

 

I haven't finished reading the SDCC advance edition yet (it's the whole novel), but here is what I've noticed so far:

Spoiler

"The Imperial Navy had been in existence by that name for less than a decade..." (pg. 16). By this quote, I'm guessing the novel takes place in 9 BBY (10 years after ROTS, and 4 years before "Rebels" in 5 BBY).

Kanan is mentioned several times to be in his early twenties during the novel. Kanan is listed as 14 during Order 66, making him (going my calculations above) 24 in the novel and 28 during "Rebels".

I doubt "Shatterpoint" can fit into any timeline anymore. Kanan is mentioned several times to have had some training under Master Depa Billaba during the Clone Wars, but there is no mention of her going insane/imprisoned etc. (which she should be per the events of Shatterpoint). On pg. 68 Kanan thinks: "There he'd been, fourteen years old... And then, all at once, the Republic and its clone soldiers had turned against the Jedi. Depa Billaba fought to protect him--and he fought to protect her. She died. He fled." This strongly implies that Master Depa Billaba was an active Jedi during Order 66 in ROTS, and ignores "Shatterpoint" entirely.

I'm somewhat disappointed that the author used Master Billaba as Kanan's master, unless he had no choice and it was a Disney-ordered mandate. I know the EU is all non-canon now, but some of us would like to see the stuff, if not acknowledged, at least not actively overwritten when other options exist. I don't think it would have made any difference to the novel (from what I've read so far) if, say, Eeth Koth were Kanan's master instead. Unless Depa is going to be showing up in "Rebels", I'm not sure what the need to use her was other than to actively overwrite the EU. "Shatterpoint" was one of the stronger EU novels (the paperback edition even had a prelude written by George Lucas) and to have to excise that from my own (and possibly fans') personal timelines seems needless, other than just for Disney to make a statement that they can and will overwrite the EU even if it's for no reason at all.

 

Well that's just...

I don't suppose you noticed anything being recanonized that could take some sting outta that?

 

I'm still working on finishing the novel, but if I see anything notable being recanonized I'll try to remember to post it here.

 

sidv88 given this is by JJM, I imagine it must have been a Disney and/or Filoni instruction, as JJM's usually the sorta guy I'd have seen leaving things like that open to fan interpretation as much as he can, rather than going out of his way to do the opposite.

 

Well..... zarghleblargh. That was my one of my favorite council members too.

Was sort of hoping...

Spoiler

...Stover would get a chance to finish what he started there. I remember in his old Shatterpoint interviews, when asked why he hadn't killed Depa, that he had kept her alive because he didn't think her story was done and didn't see a reason to kill her yet.

I'll read the book -- JJM's stories are awesome. But this change is a bummer. Probably not his fault at all though.

 

It's referenced in the RoTS novel. Under the "aligns with what's on screen = does not contradict what's on screen" interpretation, the basic idea that a certain Jedi Fell during the Clone Wars, still works.

Maybe they were "redeemed" - on probation, and given a apprentice as a test?

 

Spoiler

Yeah, but I was just hoping they'd do something more interesting with her. You just can't let Ms. Kurtz go at the end, only to kill her offscreen (er, offpage?) years later.

 

What would Kar Vastor be, in this analog? I've never actually seen Apocalypse Now.