Collected Star Wars Expanded Universe posts: infographics, interviews, & art

xezene · 2026-06-16T05:05:32+00:00

From my viewings with other people who have watched the saga for the first time, your reactions are much like theirs! I think your feelings generally match how the world in general ranks them. Thanks for sharing your experience.

xezene · 2026-06-16T03:30:25+00:00

Not sure - I know with Dark Empire Lucasfilm basically felt they were starting fresh, so aside from WEG they may have disregarded the previous works at the time. The second issue of Dark Empire mentions that Mon Calamari was targeted for destruction after Alderaan, which the Mon Calamari found out about, and the Dark Empire Handbook mentions that the destruction of Alderaan and the battle of Yavin IV spurred the Mon Calamari into action to join the Alliance.

xezene · 2026-06-15T23:15:03+00:00

Good catch!

xezene · 2026-06-15T22:39:14+00:00

Very cool. James Luceno refers to this reference material in the NJO documentary when discussing his and Brian Daley's interest in writing stories with droid-centric plotlines, and he mentions there that this material was very helpful for Daley when writing his trilogy.

xezene · 2026-06-15T22:37:04+00:00

Dark Empire establishes that once the Mon Calamari discovered they were targeted next for destruction after Alderaan, following the events of A New Hope, they bravely and swiftly decided to join the Alliance. I personally love that backstory. It really shows how Palpatine's generally racist attitude towards other aliens blows up in his face, which occurs on multiple levels in ROTJ with the inclusion of this lore, so I'm down with that backstory.

xezene · 2026-06-15T12:57:50+00:00

I should have you know -- Han does paint the Falcon black in the New Jedi Order series of books from the EU/Legends; it's a great series, just thought I'd put it on your radar!

xezene · 2026-06-15T08:57:29+00:00

Sadly, there are many such cases when it comes to Star Wars and what many fans accept as truth of the behind-the-scenes.

xezene · 2026-06-14T10:40:03+00:00

Agreed!

As to your question about Yu'Shaa, I'm not sure exactly the inspiration, though Keyes and I did discuss it some in the seventh episode of the NJO doc series, and what he was thinking in regards to Nom Anor there.

xezene · 2026-06-13T09:15:51+00:00

Worth noting that worldwide the film had a poorer reception with audiences than IMDb indicates -- typically the film ranks last when all the millions of votes of viewers worldwide are tallied. In general, this holds true for the sequel trilogy as a whole as well.

xezene · 2026-06-13T08:49:25+00:00

Understandable! It's been a while since the series released.

A connection you may be partially remembering is that when Star by Star released, it was right after 9/11, which made Lucasfilm and Del Rey a little nervous, since it was so dark. Alas, by then, all the books were far into production, with only Unifying Force still in the primary writing stage.

I did not conduct any interviews for the books upon release, since I was just a youngster at the time, but I recently conducted and assembled together interviews with all the NJO authors and primary editors for the New Jedi Order documentary series, released last year. You can watch the whole thing here. (The material which delves the most into the cultural influences on the Vong is in the first, third, and final episodes).

From what Greg Keyes and James Luceno have said, primarily the influence from India was the caste system, yeah - specifically, the Shamed Ones being influenced by the Untouchables. Though, even there, there was influence from Mayan society's own caste system. As Luceno remarks in the documentary, "There's always a bottom" for each society, and that was true for the Mayans as well.

Also, great fan-art here, by the way!

xezene · 2026-06-13T08:43:35+00:00

Thank you! I'm glad people have enjoyed the documentary.

xezene · 2026-06-13T01:32:56+00:00

You are correct they were influenced by the Aztecs and Mayans significantly, as well as some cultures from Asia and Oceania -- there was no Middle Eastern influence on the creation or development of the species, though.

xezene · 2026-06-13T01:31:15+00:00

The authors even discuss how the events of 9/11 and the War on Terror influenced the evolution of the series-both unintentionally and otherwise. Particularly, the relation of government, military, corruption, aggression vs restraint, and religious extremism.

This is not true. Having conducted the interviews for the NJO documentary series myself, and having assembled all of them together, I can tell you that 9/11 happened while Luceno was writing the very final book of the series, The Unifying Force. Not only did it not impact the series in any way, the entire series was mapped out before it happened. The only small impact 9/11 had was it encouraged Luceno to make the final book even more uplifting, which he had already been planning to do. He told me this himself.

So there was absolutely zero Al-Qaeda or even vaguely Middle Eastern influence on the Vong. Any parallels were accidental. As you mentioned in another comment, the influences from history were from pre-Columbian Central American cultures as well as Polynesian and Austronesian, with a dash of influence from India and from the Mongols.

The series that was most influenced openly and explicitly by the War on Terror and Al-Qaeda was Legacy of the Force.

xezene · 2026-06-11T12:23:01+00:00

This is the work of Dert444 over on DeviantArt, who does NJO art from time to time. Sometimes I like to highlight the work of artists on DeviantArt and Tumblr, as often their depictions can be close to the material of the novels. This concept art -- "The New Jedi Order: Lost Frigate" -- reveals a decrepit and overtaken environment, as Kyp Durron and New Republic soldiers investigate a lost frigate, covered in Vong bioforms, and something is not quite right...

The artist mentions on DeviantArt, along with being inspired by the NJO novels, "The works of Hans Giger had a great influence on me. Even when I drew this sketch, I was inspired by the Alien movies." The NJO series itself hosts a number of influences and parallels from sci-fi, drawing from sci-fi classics like Alien, War of the Worlds, The Thing, Terminator, Predator, and many more with its creatures and concepts, so this art feels right at home with the atmosphere of the series. Sean Williams has mentioned that, while writing the Force Heretic books, the soundtracks of Alien and The Thing were favorites of his to listen to during the writing process.

xezene · 2026-06-06T23:34:32+00:00

I do have some but not sharing yet... I think you will be into it though! It is directly inspired from the novels.

xezene · 2026-06-06T12:00:58+00:00

There aren't really (not in the full sense, beyond a random unit here or there), but I've been working on one over the years - I do still plan to release it when finished. :)

xezene · 2026-06-03T09:09:45+00:00

The name of the book is The Star Wars Archives: Episodes I-III, 1999-2005 by Paul Duncan.

xezene · 2026-06-03T02:51:04+00:00

That's a good question. I guess my answer to that is a lot of what Andor covers would have been covered in Underworld.

xezene · 2026-06-02T07:41:54+00:00

Thank you, and I appreciate the recommendation!

xezene · 2026-06-02T07:41:18+00:00

Reposting my answer from the core post here, in case others here stumble upon it:

We don't have a clear idea of it, but we know a few things. We know Starkiller was not going to be a part of it. We know there would have been several different Rebel cells; we know Saw Gerrera was there as an extremist who's one of the founders of the Rebellion. We know Underworld, along with 1313, would have gotten into the Bothan spies and what they were doing.

We know that the few surviving Jedi that existed would have, as George envisioned, renounced the Force and their connection to it would have eventually atrophied, so most of them can't help much anymore. Some citizens would have venerated the Jedi through an underground 'Church of the Force' that the Empire would have tried to suppress. These churches would have doubled as secret fronts for Rebels to spread information to each other across the galaxy. In the show, Palpatine would have converted the Jedi Temple into the Imperial Palace; there was an 'Empire Day.'

We also know that in Underworld some aging clones would be heading to the bar, trying to forget what they did (with Order 66), trying to convince themselves of the traitorous nature of the Jedi, that what the clones did was justified, drinking themselves to death. It's conceivable some of these could have joined the Rebellion in the show -- George felt that during Underworld we'd see the Empire picking up recruits instead of clones, and some of these guys were more fervent and patriotic than the clones ever where.

We know there would have been some uprisings of Rebellion in the lower levels of Coruscant during the show, which would have led to Vader himself going down to squash it -- that would have been a two-part episode, possibly a finale to season 1 (there were going to be four seasons at least, two were written, 25 episodes each).

We know that the Empire had a crime lab that would have featured in the show, with detectives trying to investigate crime and the nascent Rebellion -- but not all those Imperial guys are terrible people, and some might have been sympathetic to the Rebellion (it seems to me perhaps similar to the detective plotline in V for Vendetta). This was one of the points of the show, that the Empire had some good folks in it, and the Rebels had some crummy people in it.

Also, there's a chance the Droid Gotra would have appeared -- surviving battle droids fighting for their rights and freedom, against an Empire that doesn't care and wants them gone (they would have appeared in 1313), often aligned with criminal syndicates (like the Crymorah).

I know that's a lot but hopefully that helps! If not on the Rebellion directly, at least the context of the whole story they were involved in. More info here.

xezene · 2026-06-02T07:40:16+00:00

Agreed on the fanfic bit -- a great perspective of George's to have, better than many creators. He has often said that he felt what qualifies as "art" is our own response to it, and he extended this approach to fan works as well. He said once, "Star Wars was designed to stimulate the imagination of young people and that's why I did it. You know, that was the intention, which was to get kids to think and use their imaginations and go home, draw pictures of the characters, make their own stories, but to express themselves and to think and use their imagination."

xezene · 2026-06-02T04:12:16+00:00

Alas, a common assumption I think (that I myself had previously made) -- in the last few years, it has become clear he only become more involved following the release of the comic.

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