No, no I’m not talking about how it might appear that the longer the series seems to go on, the worse it gets, although that argument can certainly be made. No, what gives me pause is the recent popularity of the Old Republic series, the old RPG’s (KOTOR and KOTOR 2) and the new MMO.
I want to go ahead and make the statement that I have only played a touch of KOTOR and none of the MMO at all. This is not a critique of the gameplay or even the plot of the games. All of that is fine. This isn’t even a statement regarding the continuing breakdown of complexity in the expanded universe, where we once had characters like Thrawn that were not simply evil for the sake of being evil and all we seem to have left at this point is new Sith Lord with a really stupidly evil name.
No, I’m talking about the kind of stagnation we talk about when we mention it historically. To be succinct, what I’m referring to is a state in which a culture ceases to develop in meaningful ways, culturally and technologically. Culture stagnation generally occurs when no new material is being introduced and instead all that seems to appear is derivative of already existing works. Technologic stagnation is essentially the same.
So, Star Wars, the prequels and the trilogy, there is an established setting that has a diverse population of humanoid and completely alien life and two different ruling bodies, one a tyranny and the other an ostensible democracy with a single legislative and executive office combined into a senate, so essentially a parliamentary body instead of a separation of powers. There’s a lot of history regarding a body of enforcers that are separate from the government (and apparently derive their authority from a genetic mutation and have no oversight). Faster than light travel not only exists but is easily obtained by civilians and what is likely to be plasma based weaponry, again easily obtained and common technology.
This is where my problem starts. The Star Wars setting gives us a huge, interconnected galaxy related through conflict and trade. Now, if we’re willing to set a few things aside, like how does Thyffera supply literally thousands of worlds with a miracle drug, we end up with something not altogether outlandish considering the technology. Except for one thing.
What is that issue? Alright, I don’t have a problem with the Clone Wars or Galactic Civil War eras, it’s the KOTOR era stuff that’s causing all the problems. All of the technology seems to be the same, the FTL, the weaponry, lightsabers, Jedi, everything, it is all the same. And here’s the real kicker, this setting is supposed to be 5,000 years prior to the events of the movies.
So, nothing has changed in 5,000 years except governments. What is wrong with this galaxy?
Well…they did try to do something of the sort in the Tales of the Jedi comics, but those were also rather wretched.
Plus, how would it be Star Wars without hyperspace and lightsabers…
Though I am more concerned about the societal stagnation – 5000 years and the conflicts never progress past Empire vs. Republic? A brief glance at Europe’s history shows that there’s a lot more to wars and diplomacy than that…
I completely agree, but I’m just picking out the biggest, most obvious bit. In a universe that is a diverse as this one, the fact that it hasn’t completely balkanized is edging up to literally miraculous. If you take a close look at the art and architecture that you see in the games, that hasn’t changed either.
But it’s the tech that really gets me. There was no reason that the Old Republic had to have been in place for thousands of years, hundreds of years would have been pretty darned impressive. If the Sith Wars and KOTOR had been set two hundred years before Yavin, what difference would it have made?
If you were to ask me what Star Wars looked like 5,000 years prior to the Empire, and you threw out the whole thing about the immortal Republic, then I would guess it was an 18th and 19th century Europe, complete with balance of power and spheres of influence systems centered around the most powerful planets. Planets that had mastered hyperspace tech and had the infrastructure to build and maintain a large fleet. Kuat, Corellia, Coruscant, Mon Calamari, Sullust, Duros, these kinds of planets. Locked in a constant state of cold war and conflict when one contender got to be too powerful. Honestly, 5,000 years is still too far back for that, I’d settle for a 1,000 year gap, maybe. Even that feels pretty long, considering.
The real point though is that a truly stagnant, non-evolving state or government is doomed to fall. And considering the fact that nothing has changed in Star Wars for that long, they deserved to get whipped by the Vong.
Huh – I was playing The Old Republic today (for around nine hours…I really need to figure out how to do short questing), and I thought that the architecture had changed quite a bit in that setting. But I will grant you that KotOR definitely stole from the prequels in terms of art design, without much attempt at temporal shift.
Though considering how the prequels approached temporal shift, I don’t much mind that.
The Sith Wars can’t be set 200 years before Yavin…because Obi-Wan says that the Republic was a beacon of something or other for 1000 generations…which, of course, meant exactly 25,000 years. And then Palpatine said that the Republic had stood for 1000 years…which, of course, meant 1) exactly 1000 years, and 2) the Ruusan Reformation Retcon Ridiculousness.
I think your picture looks quite good for 1000 years before. 5000 years before, I’d say we’d still be at some kind of Greek city-state type thing for each planet (if, indeed, we’d gotten as far as one-world governments – after all, Adumar hadn’t, so there’s even some in-universe justification for that kind of alternate history). Now that would be terrifying yet plausible – hyperspace-linked continents at war – try to defend half a world from the other half in 3-D…
But why the Vong? Why quasi-Islamo/Christofascistic sadomasochists with a hatred of technology and a power over biology so bizarre and implausible (seriously? black hole-generating creatures that can sense the approach of plasma and stop it?) it makes lightsabers look sane (seriously? a tube of magnetically contained plasma that somehow uses a crystal to focus it and has some mechanism that resembles a circuit and is self-powered)? Why couldn’t we have some kind of sensible alien invasion? Like the Chiss?
Oh, wait, we had that. It was called “The Thrawn Trilogy,” and it was fun. 🙂
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