Darths & Droids

Except that they don’t need to take the time to hijack the Star Destroyer because they have a handy-dandy ship specifically designed to shove it off course, thank goodness.

Convenient, that.

I think "Turnip" is in the strip title just because Jim misremembered Admiral Raddis's name as "Admiral Radish".

Is this the first time they've made a transcript-only joke?

Episode 1716: Boom or Bust

"Hey, guys, let's just disable a Star Destroyer. We could have done it at any time, of course, but we have a pathological fear of victory."

If Keybounce is mad about this part, he's going to be absolutely livid at what happens next.

Edited by Fighteer on Oct 11th 2018 at 7:32:18 AM

I also have not seen the movie, and I have also come to Keybounce's conclusion.

IIRC, in the movie they didn't do the bombing run on command; they did it when they finally found/made an opening for it (having been trying to take out the gate from the start of the battle).

I actually liked the first part of what the movie did next, but tossing in the second star destroyer broke my suspension of disbelief.

Edited by Medinoc on Oct 11th 2018 at 2:29:35 PM

In fairness, the comic is inevitably going to come across as disjointed compared to the film. We're getting a series of screencaps, often with the context rewritten, over a period of months, whereas the film experience is a two hour block of continuity.

It's impossible to get a fair representation of the actual film this way. I still recommend you see it, although some of the plot points are very nearly as stupid as they seem in the comic.

This is part of what I mean. The context is shifted around here: the Rebels were trying to get through the shield from the very beginning. And there is a certain logical consistency if you imagine that the Rebels have various resources available, but they are finite and not easily replaced. An ion bombing run on a Star Destroyer is only something you can do a few times, because you run out of bombers whereas the Empire doesn't run out of Star Destroyers. A ramming ship likewise.

TLJ even calls this out, with Poe expending a tactical resource during the opening battle which the Resistance subsequently no longer has access to.

The expenditure of resources here means that there are vastly fewer Rebel fleet assets to fight against the Empire in Episode IV, helping to explain the narrower scope of that film. Continuity!

I wonder if they're going to do Solo next, or jump into Episode VII with the promise that IX will be done by the time they get to it.

Edited by Fighteer on Oct 11th 2018 at 8:47:24 AM

They held off on doing VII and detoured into Rogue One instead because they wanted to see the plot of all three Sequel Trilogy films and plan accordingly. Since it doesn’t look like IX will be out before they’re done here, Solo is the logical next step.

That said, I don’t know how they’re going to work The Backstory of Greedo into their continuity. The premise here is that they actually did run this campaign before IV and are just retelling it now for the benefit of an absent player. It strains credulity to do that twice.

I was wondering about Solo myself. It'll certainly be interesting if they do attempt it.

It won't be Greedo, it will be Alberto.[1] [2]

That’s impressive. I can never remember any of the details in this strip.

Hey folks! We're still thinking abut exactly what we'll do after we're done with Rogue One. We won't start Episode VII until Episode IX is out. The options are either do Solo to fill the time gap or take a break for a few months. We do have some ideas on how to tackle Solo and personally I'd love to do it, but we've also been going for 11 years now, and we could use a breather. The decision will be announced when we make it.

Appreciate the info, thanks.

Has it been 11 years? O_O

I wonder what the names in-between were. Alberto, Bernardo, Claudio, Domenico, Ernesto, Freddo, Greedo?

Edit: Wait... (Solo spoiler) Tobias Beckett is Alberto!!

Edited by Medinoc on Oct 12th 2018 at 12:55:24 PM

Alberto Becetti?

I imagine one of the potential "twists" for Solo being that Han (or whatever his real name is) starts the story as a true-blue Imperial patriot who tries to rat out Beckett's crew when he notices they're not really troopers.

Episode 1717: Helming the Man.

Still using the beet pun in the transcript, I see. Unless that was an oversight?

The shout out in panel 6 makes me wonder - Since Star Wars doesn't exist, I'm guessing Spaceballs doesn't, either.

Keybounce: Viking ramming ships? Um, yeah, kinda.

Isn't their version of Spaceballs called Noteballs, or something like that?

Just did a bit of research. According to The Rant of this strip, Spaceballs is actually a documentary about the practical applications of Buckminsterfullerenes.

Episode 1718: Huge Success!

Episode 1719: Dishing it Out

Keybounce has a point here. Why put a control panel for the dish atop a tower that can only be reached by climbing in a place you aren't supposed to be climbing and getting through deathtraps?

That said, there is an alternate access route, because Krennic uses it later.

It is odd, though, that there is anything other than access panels and maybe basic movement controls for maintenance purposes up here. The actual datacard slots and transmission controls should be back down in the secured lower levels of the tower. But, no, there just has to be a Climbing Climax.

Maybe the Empire wanted its maintenance personnel to be able to conduct tests of the equipment on site without having to comm their superiors for permission and coordination, but that doesn’t seem like a very Imperial philosophy.

It's reasonable for there to be a local control terminal. It is not reasonable for that to be the main terminal, but we've seen nothing to indicate either way.