h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I remember reading in "Star Wars: The Guide to Ships and Vehicles" that said that Alderaan wasn't the first planet that the Death Star destroyed, it was the planet it was constructed in orbit around, on which was a penal colony. The problem is, I completely forget the name of the planet. Could someone help me here?

The answer is 'Despayre'

I'm not actually a fan - I just stuck "death star constructed orbit penal" into the mighty Google search engine.

Thanks.

I just happen to know the name, 'cause I seem to remember that kinda stuff; Despayre. I think that's how it's spelled.

Yeah, its an obvious pun, but I'm not making it up.

"That kind of stuff"? Are you referring to what's in the post before my last one?

[gesture with hand and with the Force] The question /has/ been answered.

Sorry. I didn't read the other guys answer carefully enough at the time to relize it WAS an answer. I went ahead and posted my own response without thinking, and by the time I saw that I made a mistake, it was too late to do anything.

The moral is: Read carefully kids, because ya can't delete a forum posting! And that might really tick off the dark jedi/sithlords (Yes kids, even a sithlord who wears a tie should not be messed with)!

[raises lightsaber, lowers mask] GRRR!

{Zips away cartoon-style, leaving puff of smoke}

He he!

I'm guessing we're going to finally find out the answer to this question shortly...

Ah - but the film may well contradict the books and that will doubtlessly upset the people who were upset that 'The Force Awakens' contradicted the books...

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"The Force Awakens"? Why, I've never heard of such a thing....

I *like* the fact that the new films contradict the books. The books - the "Expanded Universe", if you must - was always a cynical marketing ploy to continue separating Star Wars fans from their money long after they stopped going to the significant effort of actually making any more films. It *sucked*. It was the most concentrated form of fannish w4nk I've ever seen, made all the worse by having, until recently, the Official Approval of the originators of the universe in which it was all set.

To my mind, canon is what's on the screen. If it's not on the screen, it's not canon. And that goes for ALL the character names. If you didn't hear their name spoken on screen THEY DON'T HAVE ONE. This bullsh1t started with the very first line of 12 action figures. Those guys who ride banthas in the first movie? Sand people. That's the only thing they're ever called. And yet the action figure had the phrase "Tusken Raiders" on the packet. Where the hell did that come from? Not the film.

The next set of eight figures had another. Greedo's name was spoken out loud, so that was fine, and "Hammerhead", "Snaggletooth" and "Walrus Man" were descriptive names for weird cantina creatures, which I was fine with - I guess they had to call them something. Couldn't work out why they got figures, though - two of them were on screen for a second, if that, and the other is a gibberish-spouting throwaway thug. "Death Star Droid" was ok, because it was exactly that - a droid on the Death Star whose number was never spoken, again hardly surprising given that it was seen incredibly briefly. But there was also the red droid, the one that Uncle Owen buys from the Jawas. Luke SHOUTS the words "This R2 unit has a bad motivator, look!", and yet the action figure packaging says "R5-D4". Are we expected to believe that Luke, hugely talented bush pilot and landspeeder tinkerer, doesn't know the difference between an R2 unit and an R5 unit? Bullsh1t. That would be like Guy Martin saying "This Harley Davidson's carburettor's knackered" while clearly standing next to a Triumph motorcycle. It makes NO sense.

And then in the Empire Strike Back it gets worse. All the bounty hunters get names - Bossk, IG-88, Dengar... characters who never speak or in some cases even move. Worse still, the action figure of an insectoid looking thing which the Expanded Universe will tell you is called Zuckuss was labelled 4-LOM, and the action figure of what is clearly a droid and should have had the label 4-LOM was labelled Zuckuss. Lando's mute slightly robot-looking aide who is never called by name is labelled "Lobot" (really??) and the little pig-dudes are apparently "Ugnaughts".

Then in Return of the Jedi it just gets stupid. Every background Muppet in Jabba's palace gets an action figure. Three do, in fairness, initially get descriptive names - the hilarious "Prune Face", "Squid Head" and "Yak Face". Most, however, are given names, despite in the main never speaking, being spoken to or even in some cases moving. Three different species even "hilariously" are named Klaatu, Barada and Nikto, ho ho ho I've seen The Day The Earth Stood Still, aren't I clever?

Most egregiously of all, no fewer than EIGHT separate Ewoks were immortalised as action figures with their own names (one of them even inexplicably gets a first name, a surname and a bloody MIDDLE INITIAL), despite not only none of them having names in the film, none of them ever uttering a word of English, but even the word "Ewok" NEVER BEING SPOKEN BY ANY CHARACTER. Those teddy-bear things on the moon of Endor? Nobody knows what they're called. Threepio maybe does, but he NEVER SAYS.

What I could never understand, way back when I was a kid collecting these things, was that these blink-and-you-miss them background Muppets were made into action figures, and yet huge, main, plot-driving, played-by-properly-famous-actors characters didn't.

Look at the first film - it's not actually got *that* many speaking parts. And yet in the original run of action figures in the 70s/80s there was no Grand Moff Tarkin, no Uncle Owen or Aunt Beru, no cantina barman, no dude-who-attacks-Luke-and-gets-his-arm-lightsabered-off (yes, I know - Dr. Evazan, Expanded Universe nerds), no Wedge, no Biggs, no Rebel General (yes, Dodonna, if you must).

When Lucas started getting REALLY greedy in the 90s figures of all these characters did turn up, but why not in the first run?

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Breathe.

*Trying to build up enough (Caravan of) Courage to reply*

Yep, the books were of varying quality, I read a lot of them over the years as they're cheap to buy second hand, but though most were better than the Ewok films there are definitely very silly bits in them. Such as the Huts building a Death Star that doesn't work, or that IG88 was about to conquer the universe through a computer virus. Oh, and everyone ends up cloned at least once. I never saw them as anything other than stories set in the 'Star Wars' universe. The thing is, as the Emperor had died they tended to suffer from a case of 'we'd better come up with a bigger baddy than the Empire'.

And not everything was included in the Expanded Universe anyway, as it leaves out 'Splinter of the Minds Eye' and the books in which the Emperor's grandson is a three-eyed Jedi prince. Some characters from the expanded universe do make cameo appearances in the prequels, but that's not really saying much.

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I don't care whether YOU like it Hooloovoo.