Retcons - good, bad, ugly...

The A-Wing was supposedly a racing craft, all it really required was 2 Engines and a cockpit.
The combat model was somewhat more complex. 2 Engines, 2 Lasers, 2 missile launchers, a jammer, a cockpit, a hyperdrive, and shields. The energy drain for all those systems would likely meant the A-Wing is slower than it's stock model, and there is little power to go around for shieldings. It's not meant to fight much, anyways, it's meant to zoom in, hit, and zoom out. Lather, rinse, repeat.

 

TIE Defenders have mini tractor beams, and more systems than what you said. They manage the housekeeping.

 

Except that a "B-wing-looking" ship is seen in the opening credits of the Droids cartoon. My assumption is that the ship in question is an obscure Verpine vessel, later used as a testbed/prototype for the actual B-wing. (Again, echoes of the R-22 Spearhead.)

EDIT: Or it could be an offshoot of the Tempest bomber.

Dan

 

I don't know what was behind the decision. I believe, in fact, she was identified as Wroonian in the databank before the new info came online.

Dan

 

Katie wanted to be a Twi'lek? *shrug*

 

In answer to the original question, one of my favourite ret-cons is the linking of Hethrir's Empire Reborn, with Desann's Reborn Jedi.

Firstly, it is so bloody obvious, I can't believe I (and presumably many others) never saw it straight away.

Secondly, having a strong link between the novels and computer games is just cool.

Thirdly, the combination of the groups makes them seem much more significant.

 

Whoa...reverse thrusters. When did Bevel Lemelisk become an errand boy for Dooku?

I was under the impression that while Sienar developed the early concept (of a planetoid battle station), the Geonosians made the early designs....Lemelisk was the scientific genius who actually made the superlaser concept a reality.


Any retcon for a video/computer game makes me laugh....esp the Dooku thing, though I have to admit, I do like the doppleganger idea.

I actually liked the Mereel/Fett thing, too. ("It was always about the Jedi"=bantha poodoo.)

 

Time to be the bad guy again.
Many people here know my feelings on 'oopses'. Oopses are ok. Just say, 'Hey, we were dealing with incomplete information or changed information so now this doesn't jive.' I think bowing down gracefully saves more face than 'Oh, no, see, this is what really happened.'
Especialy when it comes to retconning something from the movies. The movies are the source of the spin-off material. It should be the spin off material that has to adjust, not the movies from which the matial is based off of.
So, right off the bat, I don't like retconning of the movies from the spin offs. The obvious example is retconning the end of RotJ SE's celebration scenes. 'Oh no, you see, the good guys didn't win. See, the movies are wrong. Those were just riots that were put down oh yes.' While it certainly works, it cheapens the end of the movies. Thrawn could still evade and post RotJ EU is safe.
All they had to do was say 'Well, the source story changed, so this stuff doesn't count anymore. Sorry, but it happens.' Discontinue the books with the oppses and watch their later value skyrocket. Fans will either accept that sometimes these things happen or, more likely in the continuity-crazed mass EU fandom has become, they'll scream bloody murder and shoehorn the books in anyway.
It keeps the official story, however, more streamlined, more focused, with less backpeddalling.

Another, lesser exaple is anything to do with the Jedi. LFL really should've considered with the new movies coming out that would explore the Jedi era, a lot of new info would come out that may not jive with what the main story had in mind. However, it's a no win situation. If you don't do something with the Jedi, fans become disinterested, if you do, you run the risk of contradictions.
This isn't nearly a big a problem in the Tales of the Jedi comics as the order could evolve, and it's not too terrible an issue with the NJO as they don't have a clue (although Luke really should be wiser than he is).
I'm talking like Ki-Adi being a knight on the council. OK. Then RotS contradicts this. While you can blame the movie character who's giving us info into the workings/history of the Order, it's more proper, I feel, to say 'well nevermind, we were wrong.'

Other retcons I don't like are the retcons that make the story far more complicated than it ever needed to be. Boba Fett and the Death Star comes to mind.
Now, I don't particularly mind Bona coming out of the sarlacc alive. It's a tad contrived and reeks of 'Fett is so cool!' but it's liveable. What I don't like is how every single version of his escape just had to become canon. Now, he's not cool, he's just a moron with a freudian complex with gaping, pointy holes in the ground. Just pick an official story and go with it. The others can either be oopses or, if you insist that every ding dong point has to be canon in some way, say the rest were legends that got spread.
The other issue with Mr. Fett comes with his retconned past. While the fixes were creative, to make them a genuine part of the story contrives the story and overall arc so much...

The Death Star. Again, though a lot of effort when into it, it feels retconning becomes more of a game instead of people realizing just how convoluted they're making what many consider to be the whole story.
"Well so and so came up with the idea, so and so did this, so and so did that, then they built a test version and sent it into a black hole, then they built another one but there's also a third one out there."
BAH!
Oops out the fat, and get a streamlined story here. That's even if you must.
Movie-only folk just have to deal with bugs.
Sienar and Lemelisk temporarily worked for the Techno Union in conjunction with the Geonosians with money supplied by the IGBC. Viola. Yes, it means some unimportant details get left out, but I'd be willing to bet the world would not end.

Finally, the third type of retconning I'm against is trying to shoehorn in things that probably wer

 

The Coruscant celebration scene makes little sense. Of course the Imperial military would have cracked down on any kind of anti-Palpatine gathering like that.

To me, the Coruscant celebration scene IS a retcon, and a poorly conceived one at that, especially in the light that ROTS sheds on the popularity of Palps' rise to power. Some people believed that the Empire was good for the galaxy. Especially on the planet known as the Imperial Center!

Imagine a group of Iraqi citizens toppling the statue of Saddam Hussein while being surrounded by Iraqi military forces loyal to Saddam Hussein. The scene would have gotten really ugly methinks...

 

They stormtroopered a 100k in the Impy Plaza, according to that straw head, Castin Donn. You can have a party, but it takes time for the military to arrive. That scene is fine.

 

My burning riddler is why they didn't just hover an air capable star destroyer over the crowd and bombard. Much faster and easier than napoleoning troops into the plaza, and in this case there would be nary an opposing ship or ground defenses. That way you save some of your 2 million plus stormtroops to suppress other uprisings.

 

They did that on Atravis or somewhere, as the Hutts were discussing in a Crispin book. Some ships hovered over a demonstration, loudspeakered dispersal orders, and farted efflux when defied.

 

It was Tarkin, and was it Atravis or Ghorman?

There was also the BFC Xo who was imprisoned for aiding in using an Impstar to boil water and cook resisting villiages.

 

Some people believed that the Empire was good for the galaxy. Especially on the planet known as the Imperial Center!

Well apparently the destruction of Alderaan changed their mind.

I don't care if it makes sense or not.
The thread asked for my opinion, not unadulterated truth, and I gave it.
I feel the movies, changed or otherwise, should take precedence.

 

Lt Sconn, exec of the Impstar Forge, yes. And I agree with his turbo steaming of 200k Plovin. As he grumbled, the finbacks were refusing the guv'nor his due. You know what an orbiting warship can do, and you still defied what you can't change?

It's mouse droids rebelling against droidekas, and it's just not on.

 

An intersting conundrum. So far, it's generally accepted that the release order of the variations of the movie determines their primacy in canon conflicts between them. 2004 > SE > Original. This is based on release dates. But now that the originals are being released again, is there any particular statements about which version is preeminant? By release date, the Originals are on top again.

 

I always thought it'd have been better if the Coruscant celebration was retconned as taking place after the fall of Imperial Center or even as a celebration of Endor Day years after the fact... for one, the rioting matches the massive looting described in Children of the Jedi, and for two, if you look closely the crowd-surfing stormtrooper is a bit overly large, making an effigy a perfect explanation.

The destruction of Alderaan? Nobody knows what destroyed Alderaan, although if I remember right there was speculation that something being done on the surface might have caused the detonation... Or are you one of those conspiracy theorists who thinks the Empire's behind everything bad in the galaxy?

 

Everyone knows Alderaan was destroyed by hiding Jedi, who, bent on assassinating His Majesty Emperor Palpatine, used the mystical "Force" to cause the explosion of the planet's core after a Rebel-planted rumor that His Majesty arrived on Alderaan to hold an informal meeting with His Highness, Prince Bail Organa.

Hey, video games are meant to be in continuity! Some, at least. For KOTORs, everything continuity-affecting went to Lucasfilm for approval.

 

Jedi? I heard it was a some sort of terrorist plot by those Mon Callymar fish creatures. Everyone knows the Jedi were rightly and justly liquidated by His Imperial Majesty's armed forces years ago.

 

I respect this...

...and this as well.

I just think it's unrealistic to conjecture that Imperial loyalists wouldn't have brought down the hammer on the Anti-Palps Coruscant party.

 

Assuming you're reffering to my post, that was part of a tongue-in-cheek omni-retcon proposal (which I forsee becoming an official part of canon any day now... ,) not a canon fact. (Yet... )

I'm thinkin' it was Ghorman.

Y'know, I never really thought about it, but..

Someone in the system made a holorecording. The Empire denied the destruction of Alderaan 'till the recording surfaced, then hastily 'ret-conned' that it was in fact a necessary Imperial operation to halt 'Bail's Biowarfare Virus.' The public, by far and large, didn't buy it. (Perhaps Bail was concocting this virus as a response to that Jedi Padwan that threatened him at the temple all those years ago? ) So the Empire has it's continuity issues, too!

 

I don't get what's implausible about the victory celebration. Just because there wasn't an Imperial response in the film, doesn't mean there wasn't one.

And if there wasn't, would that be so hard to swallow either? The Empire was suddenly thrown into disarray...who's to say that the guys in charge wouldn't see how....urm...politically unwise it would be to murder thousands of people in the capital city. That's where the power base is.

 

I'd argue yes. The Empire believed in military solutions to any/every problem that they were tasked to solve.

I would imagine that the Empire would immediately have gone into a militarily controlled state of martial law if anything ever happened to topple the power base that Palpatine ruled the galaxy from. If for no other reason then to establish order, but seeing as how I think that some within the leadership structure within the Empire were driven by how much power they could gather to themselves and still avoid becoming an assignment for one of the Emperor's Hands (if you catch my drift), Palpatine's death would have been an opportunity for their greed to replace any true loyalty they may have had for their tyrant or especially for the citizens of the Empire whom they would more than likely perceive as "subserviant" to them.

And this is all predicated on the idea that everyone actually would have believed that the Emperor was dead. Based on what exactly? Are we to believe that the Empire wouldn't have control over the flow of information into and over Coruscant to some degree at the least. Now obviously the news did filter throughout the galaxy somehow but I'd still wager that some of the Imperial "leadership" would have stayed loyal to Palpatine just out of the fear they would have that he wasn't actually dead. Plus there were probably plenty of Imperial "higher-ups" whom truly believed that Palpatine was the glue that held order in the galaxy together. So even though they may have not been grabbing for power, it's because they would have been satisfied with the amount of power they had accumulated because of their loyalty to him.

Again, I do think that SE-ROTJ Coruscant gathering is possible, it's just that I think that a violent reaction by the Imperial military would have been inevitable to such an act of treasonous behavior.

That's my 2 cents.

I'm curious...what sources deal with this issue? I'd be very curious to read the canonical interpretation of the State of the Empire immediately following Palpatine's death.

 

Or a bunch of East German citizens toppling the Berlin Wall while being surrounded by East German military forces loyal to East Berlin?

Not that I dispute the EU's interpretation of events, but there are ways to imagine that the Coruscant celebration could be part of a Happily Ever After.

 

Good point.