Tycho Celchu: Manchurian Agent or Not?

It’s Tuesday! For some of us, it’s the day before a national holiday. But I’m not letting that serve as an excuse to slack off on my favorite feature on the blog, Trope Tuesday. This week, we’re looking at a trope called the Manchurian Agent.

Memory Gambit and Neuro Vault meet Deep Cover Agent. A person is Brainwashed so that, on a certain trigger (either a situation, or else a phrase only someone in the know would ever say), they will go from their normal self to The Mole; they will most often remember nothing afterward.

See also Brainwashed, Berserk Button, Morality Dial, Tomato in the Mirror, Conveniently Unverifiable Cover Story and Lotus-Eater Machine. Compare Memory Gambit, which is when you do this to yourself. May require Deprogramming to cure.

Since we’ve been focusing a lot of the blog activities over the last month on the X-Wing series, it’s only appropriate we chose another trope that fits those books well. One of the central subplots of the first four Rogue Squadron books was the mystery surrounding Tycho Celchu. Throughout, there was the suspicion that he was the Manchurian Agent, just waiting for the signal to turn on his squadron mates.

A bit of a subversion there, but this trope was played a bit more straight in the Wraith Squadron books. The trigger phase “Wedge Antilles hops on one transparisteel leg” was used to activate one such sleeper agent in Solo Command, setting off a series of unfortunate events that would wreak havoc on the Wraiths and the New Republic military.