SWFA: The Anatomy of a Ret-Con

7 Star Warsesque Essays

III. The Anatomy of a Ret-Con

or, The False Problem of Clone Dooku (…and Vader to boot)

This is the third informal essay in a series of seven exploring some of the more murky and enigmatic aspects of the Star Wars Universe. The subject this time is the popular fan pastime known as “retconing,” i.e. retroactively establishing continuity or correlation between two (sometimes more) Star Wars sources that originally were not necessarily meant to share any relation.

This activity is often undertaken to appease what has been dubbed fan-logic. Simply put, fan-logic is a kind of common sense in regards to “what should happen” or “the way things should be” that comes with being intimately familiar with a particular subject. For the super Star Wars fan, an expanded understanding of the interconnected Star Wars Universe reaching omniscience – omniscience in this case being a familiarity with all existing elements of official Star Wars lore – activates a sort of radar capable of spotting incongruence of various kinds. This includes spotting out-of-character actions as well as the dreaded continuity error, in which two events seem to be at complete odds with one another. For instance, a continuity error would be having Character X is plotting to take over the galaxy in Book 1, only to have Character X depicted being choked to death in Comic 1, which takes place in Star Wars time before Book 1.

Follow? This is (or was) essentially the dilemma of the character Grand Vizier Sate Pestage, who was said to be helping the Emperor plot galactic domination in the Dark Empire Sourcebook, which takes place five years or so after Pestage was “killed” in the comic X-Wing: Mandatory Retirement. Since in real time the latter source was published after the former, the former could not possibly offer an explanation for its now seeming silliness. Thus, a patch or retcon is required to explain how both of these stated facts, that the man is dead and that years later he is also alive, can simultaneously be true. This continuity error has since been addressed by Lucasfilm by pronouncing the dead vizier a clone of the plotting one.

It is such a problem as is examined in the following essay, written in response to a question by fellow Star Wars author Joe Bongiorno. This time, however, the stakes are much higher, as the character in question is none other than one of the principle villains of the films Episodes II and III, Count Dooku. The conundrum occurred when LucasArts released the Gameboy Advance game New Droid Army, the events of which take their place after Attack of the Clones and before Revenge of the Sith, yet have Anakin Skywalker indeed slaying the Count. Because Christopher Lee was contracted to appear in Revenge this summer, I took the chance to create a band-aid for this apparent death while writing on Count Dooku for Lucasfilm’s Star Wars Fact Files series in order to reconcile the disparity between these two sources. As always, when continuity conflicts of this kind come up, Obi-Wan’s advice of taking a certain point of view is always helpful. Thus we have dubbed this particular dilemma, The False Problem of Count Dooku. The story is detailed below. As an added bonus, due to a particular similarity of circumstances, Darth Vader’s duel with Luke Skywalker in the infamous early spin-off novel Splinter of the Mind’s Eye is also addressed.

The reference to a “clone” Dooku in the Fact Files cards I wrote on Count Dooku (and later also appearing in Sean Stewart’s Yoda: Dark Rendezvous) is actually an attempt to fix a very silly plot point in the Gameboy Advance game New Droid Army. In the game, you play as Anakin Skywalker and have to defeat several Dark Jedi. The last "boss" in the game is Count Dooku, who you actually have to kill in order to beat the game. After Anakin slays him, Dooku's body disappears, if I remember correctly, and the game says, "You have defeated Count Dooku. Your quest is complete."—or something like that. Whether this defeat implied that Dooku was dead, or simply that Anakin even successfully defeated Dooku in pre-Episode III confrontation is hard to swallow, particularly occurring in such an obscure source. And in the gaming world, the Gameboy Advance, while popular, is perhaps one of the least adult-accessible platforms to have had such a momentous event occur on. The situation has some parallels with the pre-Empire Strikes Back Luke/Vader fight in the novel Splinter of the Mind's Eye, but at least in that book we had a bunch of narrative to at least make the particulars of that improbable confrontation somewhat palatable.

The death of "Dooku"

When I was asked to write a couple of articles on Dooku for the UK Fact Files magazines, I figured I'd kill a few birds with one stone. That it might have been a Clone Dooku that Anakin beat was of course a ready idea, but I'm so sick of having to use that stupid, cheap last-resort fix. I personally have already used it twice, much to my shame, in order to resolve two extreme cases: that of Sate Pestage, in order to account for the killing of the character in the X-Wing comic series, and that of ARC Trooper Spar/Alpha-Ø2, whom I substituted for “Boba Fett” in Mandalorian Fenn Shysa’s recollections on the Clone Wars from Marvel #68. Thus, I felt it was time for a more creative approach.

This one wasn't too hard. For years I've wanted to see some author use that neat dark side doppleganger trick Luke used in the Dark Empire graphic novel, where Leia and Han think they've rescued him from the dark side world Byss, and then once aboard the Millennium Falcon, the doppleganger-Luke sort of mocks his rescuers, saying he's actually still on the planet. He then proceeds to dissipate ghost-like. According to the Dark Empire Sourcebook:

"The doppleganger is an illusion, but to those who interact with it, it will seem real. The user can sense all normal senses through the doppleganger, and the duplicate seems to have form and substance: the doppleganger registers as normal on all droid audio and video sensors. Those who are with the doppleganger believe it to be a real person. The doppleganger acts with half the skill dice of the person using the power...if the Jedi stops using the power or the doppleganger is fatally injured, it simply fades away." – pg 70.

Nifty trick. And it sounded like all the right ingredients. Explaining away the Dooku that Anakin defeats in New Droid Army as a doppleganger in the Fact Files card, we explain how Anakin could win against the Sith lord in such a confrontation (the doppleganger is only half as strong as the original), how Dooku could "die" and "disappear" as he does in the game, and maybe most importantly, how this confrontation wasn't in a sense actual—an out-of-universe climactic problem that still plagues the pre-Empire Strikes Back Luke/Vader confrontation in Splinter of the Mind's Eye to this day.

But hell, maybe that Vader was a doppleganger too. Redundant? Or poetic?

In regards to that infamous pre-Empire duel in the novel Splinter of the Mind’s Eye, perhaps it is enough to merely have the reader suspect that the Darth Vader which Luke Skywalker defeats is a doppleganger. This is similar to the approach Luigi Pietrobono takes in interpreting the controversial case of Count Ugolino in Dante's Inferno. The problem for most readers here (and more so scholars, who are clearly fanboys and girls of a kind) is whether Ugolino did or did not feast on his own dead children in the Tower of Hunger. The canninbalists say that the text makes it obvious that he does, while Ugolino’s defenders say that the text stops short of explicitly stating as much, and thus it is not so. Among the lame excuses proffered in further support is that cannibals are technically relegated to an altogether different circle of Hell.

Pietrobono, however, suggests that any attempt at a definitive assertion one way or the other is missing the point completely: "The [scene] does not affirm Ugolino's guilt, but allows it to be inferred, without damage to art or to historical rigor. It is enough that we judge it possible." Jorge Luis Borges, in "The False Problem of Ugolino" expands upon this idea further:

"Did Dante want us to believe that Ugolino (the Ugolino of his Inferno, not history's Ugolino) ate his children's flesh? I would hazard this response: Dante did not want us to believe it, but he wanted us to suspect it. Uncertainty is part of his design."

Likewise, I think to suggest the possibility that the Splinter Vader might be a doppleganger would be a simple way to satisfy the rigors of creativity and Star Wars continuity. A beautifully executed example of this delicate ambiguity can be found in the way in which Darth Maul is resurrected for his confrontation with Darth Vader in the Tales #9 short, “Resurrection.” Is this Maul a clone? A Dark Side demon? The original Maul, pasted back together, perhaps. We don’t know, and we don’t have to. It’s enough that we can surmise any of these possibilities.

Postscript: Though we have the "I am Ben Kenobi" line that a novice-Luke utters in Splinter of the Mind’s Eye to explain how he was able to triumph over Darth Vader in that novel when he could not in the Empire Strikes Back, (and, I believe, author Dan Wallace, in fact, definitively established in his portion of the Story of Anakin Skywalker book the idea that the spirit of Ben Kenobi temporarily takes over Luke’s body in Splinter’s duel), there continues a nagging issue with this confrontation the specificity of which I first saw concrete expressed on a website once maintained by Star Wars author Jason Fry. The issue is this sort of internal incongruence one feels knowing that Luke and Vader had an all-out, slam bang duel prior to their duel in Empire; that Luke actually won such a duel is only the eye-twitching tip of a larger Hoth iceberg. Here is an instance, where, if we assume that the Darth Vader which Luke fights on the planet Mimban in Splinter is the actual Vader, then whenever we watch Empire, the dramatic impact of that confrontation (now then being the second between Luke and Vader) must be considerably diminished. It is the same issue that perhaps plagues all sequels to one degree or another—“We have seen this before.”

I understand that some people can counteract this argument by simply admitting – or more cynically, claiming – that he or she does not feel any such diminution of impact despite having an understanding of this prior duel having occurred. Such a proclamation obviously solves the problem for the said individual, though it doesn't solve the problem for what my experiences have suggested to me to be the popular opinion at-large concerning this pre-Empire confrontation. The problem is somewhat circumvented too, or more appropriately eclipsed, by the sheer visual power of cinema, overwhelming and dizzying. But, in my opinion, one need only "remember" for a brief instant that Vader and Luke have fought before while watching them go at it on the Cloud City catwalk to feel at least a moment of disgust as the climactic Empire duel is cheated of its full, remarkable virtuosity.

It's for these reasons that I believe the suggestion that the Darth Vader which Luke Skywalker fights in Splinter might be a dark side doppleganger is a near-necessary compliment to an already existing, incomplete fix (Luke’s assertion of "I am Ben Kenobi"). This addendum circumvents, strictly speaking, the repetition of a similarly required fix in the case of Anakin Skywalker defeating a Clone Dooku in New Droid Army, and perhaps raises Star Wars literature’s admirable devotion to this chimera called continuity from the ranks of self-parody to the heights of something poetic.

Abel G. Peña is a fanboy who “made it.” He has written numerous articles for multiple Star Wars publications, including Star Wars Gamer, Star Wars Insider, Star Wars Fact Files, Dungeon/Polyhedron, the Official Star Wars Website and the Wizards of the Coast website. His latest pieces are “The History of the Mandalorians” for Insider #80, the “Dark Forces Saga” for the Wizards website, and “Droids, Technology and the Force: A Clash of Phenomena” for starwars.com’s Hyperspace section.

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