Books The Official Outbound Flight Discussion Thread (Spoilers Allowed)

Mine.

 

*sighs, pushes activation plate on lightsaber, and stabs killfire with it to stop this annoying tendency to make posts on the end of a page for no reason*

What is inspiring that little madness of yours, anyway? Claiming important ones as your own or some such silliness?

- Keralys

 

Your reaction, maybe?

 

You'll note that in your spamming, you caused Keralys to get the more significant post -- the 501st.

 

That's right. I was wondering how long it'd take for someone to notice.

- Keralys

 

Only for stormtroopers.

Back to the OF discussion. I'm close to finishing the book and IMHO it is one of the best SW books in a long time. Does anyone know what the Springhawk's supposed to look like - from the interior description I pictured it as an equivalent to the Defiant; also the UR had a DS9 feeling.

 

Funny, I imagined it looking like a Marauder Corvette, but now that I think about it, they sorta look like the Defiant.

 

Hmmm...Been here lately, I have not. But read over 20 pages of replies, I most certainly will not.

*clears throat*
So anyways, I pretty much loved the book. However, there are still questions left to be answered. I want to know what exactly happened with thrawn after the end of the novel. I mean, we all KNOW what happens, but the way the book left it off, it sounded like Thrawn was pretty well off, and that the Defense Fleet had a good chance at winning the upcoming political battle...so what happened?

Oh, and apparently the regular Jorus C'boath was as crazy as the clone...

 

A one-off comment.

Zahn did something the entire Del Rey stable couldn't do - he wrote a novel without any of the Big Three and only token appearances by Obi-Wan and Anakin and not only made it a great book, but also successful.

KW

 

Um, Stackpole?

That's why I think Zahn and Stackpole are the creme of that crop, because they didn't need to hang books on movie faces. Outbound Flight is perhaps one of my favourite Star Wars books ever, and it had something I haven't really noticed in recent SW outings (cough Dork Nest) - an emotional core.

Since the characters are OCs and you know they can't be immortal per se, you're left wondering what their fate will be and when Thrass and Lorana make the call they make at the end, and the story finishes, I was really impressed with the sense of sadness you have.

I think this cements it for me - I'm rereading Survivor's Quest, and I'm never entertaining the idea anyone could be as good an EU writer as Zahn. Feel what you may, my mind is made up.

E_S

 

If I have any complaint its that Obi and Anakin were cameos.

 

yeah that's it for me too, I was left with this great sadness. Weird really,now I have to re read everything all over again.

 

Yeah, except Stackpole's writing is abysmal.

Since Luke & Mara played around with their skeletons back in '04, I wasn't exactly in suspense.

I agree though, it was sad.

Cameos? Kenobi's a viewpoint character, and the two are in it for the better part of the book.

 

Um, yeah, that wasn't me you were quoting there old bean.

Actually, I do have one complaint; I'm not really a fan of this hagiographic redrawing of Thrawn as a visionary anti-Vong warrior. I'm sorry, Mr Zahn, your writing is for me the only worthwhile stuff in Star Wars and I wish you'd write a book undoing Dark Nest's many crimes; but Thrawn is best suited to a villain, who revels in his victories and the dance of tactical minds rather than being reborn with a size 9 halo and an a doctorate in intergalactic prescience.

E_S

 

Whoops, my bad. It's fixed now.

I personally didn't mind portraying Thrawn as a sympathetic character in his youth-- I saw the destruction of OF as the beginning of the end of his youthful idealism.

It's making Thrawn a hero later in life that's irritating.

 

viewpoint or not.

Obi Wan and Anakin would have better served the plot by having a serious effect on the plot. Obi Wan standing up to Joruus and Anakin defending the kids.

 

Likely they would have, had Palpatine not pulled them off as soon as he realized they were aboard...

 

Well, I can understand a little how Thrawn went from OF Thrawn to TTT Thrawn, but I agree; he's a major villain, not a misunderstood hero.

E_S

 

Well, there's an awful lot of discussion to read through here, and I am sorry to say I can't bring myself to read through it all before posting some thoughts.

I just finished OF, and I have one odd little observation to share: Palpatine was aware of the Yuzhan Vong as far back as before TPM. In fact, OF suggests that Palpatine engineered his little empire in order to put an end to the Republic's stagnation and in-fighting and prepare a proper military to fend off the inevitable Yuzhan Vong invasion.

How are we supposed to take this information? Are we now to believe that Palpatine, rather than being a twisted Sith Lord who sought nothing less than absolute power, was a Sith Lord with only the best of intentions? Or should we believe that, while Palpatine might actually have foreseen the Yuzhan Vong, he simply used that knowledge to win over certain followers, such as Kinman Doriana, to a cause that they otherwise would have refused to serve?

I'm also still having a problem understanding how Thrawn, who has now been made into a mostly honorable character, ended up serving under (or working with) Palpatine, who has never been anything but the purest incarnation of evil. For Thrawn to stoop to an alliance of convenience with Palpatine would make Thrawn considerably less noble than he has been made out to be by Zahn's Spectre of the Past, Vision of the Future, Survivor's Quest, and Outbound Flight story arc. There's a lot more to be told about Thrawn, and a lot of justification to be given for turning his character, who first appeared to be avidly dedicated to reestablishing a vile tyranny, into a hero. The Empire is supposed to represent pure evil, but this Thrawn arc has been steadily ennobling and un-demonizing some supposedly key components of the Empire by revealing hidden motivations.

What's next, claiming that Palpatine was merely misunderstood and if he had more time to dedicate to preparing for the inevitable Yuzhan Vong invasion without having to deal with a Rebellion, the galaxy would have eventually come to see his great wisdom?

 

I wouldn´t be surprised if the later Sith of LoTF and Legacy would
really use just those excuses to win converts: The evil rebels and
Jedi destroyed the noble plans of the Sith and so made the galaxy
vulnerable to the YV... Which, of course, is basically true.

 

Why do people think that acting on intel on the Vong that he's had for two years is some sort of seedy attempt to whitewash Palpatine? You're overreacting.

And Thrawn was an idealist, sucked into the Empire to protect his people and stop the Vong. At some point he got comfortable and bought into it, but he never lost his initial motivations. Where's the contradiction?

 

Can't it be both? I don't see why Palpatine planning decades in advance to defeat the Yuuzhan Vong would go against his character. He's planning on ruling for eternity, remember, and a race of force-invisible invaders would put a damper on that. Plus we all know how Palpy loves to have a plan to procede as he's foreseen.

 

I never got the impression that Thrawn was 'sucked' into the Empire, more likely got the Impression he wanted to have the opportunity to work there because his own people did not allow pre-emptive strikes. This was implied heavily in the short story, Mist Encounter. If I understood it right Thrawn used the Empire to get what HE wanted and he was unafraid of the Emperor. Even from the earliest books it is stated that he stood up to the Emperor when he felt palpatine was wrong.

I don't know that i see the gradual change in character as a trip from villan to hero but more of a showing of complexity. After all in the HTTE set we see him from two points of view, Pelleon's (sp) and the Rebellion's. Saviour vs devil. It's very black and white. I think that the gradual shift in charater perception is more about trying to round him out, making him more complex. I don't know that it an attempt to make him a hero but rather an attempt to make him more ( god dare I use this word) human.

In DFR Mara Jade fears and hates him because he is not honourable in his bargain with her, calls him a red eye'd freak if I recall correctly. But in her times as EH I have to wonder about her use of honour... in the later comic that followed there was a definate swing to shift her from evil emperor's hand to neutral force tool of palpatine because she was not given a choice. ( in the eventual journey towards becoming Luke's wife...she could not be 100% evil and marry him so...)In The HTTE books she is also not presented as the world's nicest person. And I am quite sure her record of what she did and carried out durning the Imperial Rules would not show the nicest of actions...

I think that the stories and the comics and the gradual shift in character that we see in Thrawn in particular is not an attempt to hero-fy him but rather an attempt to make him more complex while stripping away some of the coldness that he has in the origional trilogy. To make him even more interesting.

 

Can somebody please tell me what this joke is? I am waiting for the paperback version.

 

^ It's something about not letting any Gungan near OF, more a snappy comment thana joke.

As much as I leked OF I have now several problems with SQ:

1)Why would the Vagaari pose as Geroons to steal a fifty year old dreadnaught? Theit rechnology seemed to be at least equal if not superior to the Chiss technology in OF. Fifty years later, one dreadnaught wouldn't make much difference against Chiss pumped up with Imperial technology.

2)Why would Formbi want to go for OF? His powerplay failed fifty years ago, what could he hope to achieve? Instead of his own house phalanx he is guided by the Expansonary Defense - which should have known where to search for OF fifty years earlier - and as an outcome of SQ Formbi leads the Chiss in DN but is not in FH???