2005-12-06

On the EU and Tech Concerns

As I've noted previously, the EU's official continuity policy (OCP) was a creation intended to keep the storylines of individual licensed products continuous and uniform . . . and as we've seen, this care and concern did not necessarily extend into the technological arenas. (That's not a denigration, mind you . . . merely an observation.)

This is how we've ended up with A-Wings with titanium hulls (not unlike the old US spyplane the SR-71 Blackbird) on the one hand, and an uber-advanced neutronium-hulled culture in the other. This is how we ended up with EU fighter weapons that over the years have managed to leap from kilojoules to kilotons and starship weapons that have leapt from terajoules to teratons. In both cases we're looking at an increase of, oh, only about four-hundred twenty billion percent.

Of similar interest is the meandering history of cloaks in the EU. Just check out how many times the author, a writer of SW EU reference books, mentions retcons (retroactive continuity fixes . . . i.e. rationalizations of past continuity glitches and absent info), and how many of the ideas still make only sporadic sense even when repaired.

And yet this is what the EU Completist Vs. Debaters would prefer to use for tech info over the films . . . provided, that is, that they get to choose only the highest possible figures.

(I mean, really . . . how many times did you see Imperial admirals order weapons set to 0.000000000002% yield?)

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