Of Course They Took a Honeymoon Cruise

There is no part of the Star Wars Galactica Cruiser that isn’t getting worse.

That includes the part of it that doesn’t even exist.

The ship’s backstory. 

I have been made of aware of a truly awful comic book about the Halcyon that Marvel published and had the nerve to charge $5 for it.  Now there is nothing new about either of those two things.

However, this thing is nothing but an ad for a Disney World attraction, and Disney has a history of producing ads that are a lot more entertaining than this thing.

For once I felt bad for a Marvel comic book writer because the ironhanded editorial commandments he was laboring under.  

Disney Exec:  Your next title is a comic book that is really just an advertisement for the Star Wars Galactic Cruiser.  You have to show how fun it will be for kids.

Marvel Comic Book Writer: I’ll die first.  I’ll commit suicide before I write that thing.

Disney Exec:  Not a good idea once you’ve signed a contract with Disney.  It’s not like we’ll let you go even if you’re dead.  Did you know that all the dolls in the It’s A Small World Ride regularly have to have their hair trimmed?* There’s a reason for that.

Marvel Comic Book Writer: Oh, my Go…

Disney Exec: DO. NOT. SPEAK. HIS. NAME.  That is also in the contract you signed without let or hindrance and of your own free will.

 Marvel Comic Book Writer: So, uh, boss? Do you have any notes?

Disney Exec:  You have to include all the activities on the Halcyon.  Arriving by launch pod…

Marvel Comic Book Writer: You mean the box-truck?

Disney Exec: Yeah.  Also, have a little kid say he wants to go to the lightsaber training pod.

Marvel Comic Book Writer: Wouldn’t that be illegal as hell under the First Order?

Disney Exec: What is this “illegal” thing you keep talking about?

Marvel Comic Book Writer (shifts his chains to a more comfortable position): It’s nothing you’d understand.  What else?

Disney Exec:  It needs to include a single-page flashback to the Clone Wars featuring Anakin and Padme, and then rip the audience right out of that subplot like cracking a whip.

Marvel Comic Book Writer (cowers at the mention of whips): Okay.

Disney Exec:  And then another flashback to the High Republic.  Include the Wookie padawan.  You can never go wrong by putting a dog in it.

Marvel Comic Book Writer: I used to believe that.

Disney Exec:  Put in an attack by space pirates and the brave cast members of the Halcyon heroically defending their ship, crying “For the Halcyon!”

Marvel Comic Book Writer: Cruise ship workers are the worst-paid people on Earth.  Why would they ever do that?

Disney Exec: Because failure would entail explaining themselves to… Mickey.

Marvel Comic Book Writer (shivering in horror and replying meekly): Yes, sir.

And now on top of that thing, there will be a novel coming out soon that will chronicle the honeymoon of Han Solo and Princess Leia on…you guessed it…the Halcyon.  Which I think, but am not certain, is a retcon of the Third Trilogy.  I’m not sure if Han and Leia were married in the Abrams Abortion. Well, I’m pretty sure that JJ wasn’t all that certain what he was setting in stone from minute to minute so why should any of us care?

Here’s the blurb I was sent by Disney:

“The story begins on the forest moon of Endor, where Han proposes in the elation of the rebel victory against the Empire. After a ceremony at the site of the victory celebration at the end of the film, (* a ceremony performed by god only knows who*)

The newlyweds depart for a honeymoon aboard the Halcyon starcruiser, the luxury vessel at the heart of the new Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser experience at Disney World Resort. In their most desperate hour, with the war still raging but the Empire nearing its last gasp, the couple must outwit the Imperial remnants clinging to power.”

Everything is being bent to make this lame hotel a major part of all Star Wars canon. This is so typically Disney and it is so cringe to see it happening to Star Wars again. I thought I was all out of cringe but I was so wrong.

I think that the lamest and most pathetic thing about this hotel is the Halcyon’s backstory, and how little they are doing with it.  The Halcyon is supposedly a six hundred years old ship.  And it’s always been the most glamorous cruise ship in the galaxy. 

Seriously. That’s all the Imagineers and the Star Wars Story Group could come up with. It has always been a cruise ship and it has always been the best in the galaxy. In six hundred no other ship put a scratch on its reputation.

Here’s a better, zero effort backstory that I spent all of thirty seconds thinking about.

 When it was first launched 600 years ago the Halcyon was indeed the finest and best in luxury travel between worlds during the (*gag*) High Republic.  But the Halcyon was fated to reflect the hubris of its age because XX years after her launch, it vanished with all passengers and crew.  For decades afterward, there were scattered sightings of the Halcyon.  Blurry, distant, the ship would come and go and it would always vanish completely before any ship could reach it.  Occasionally there were grabbled transmissions, what voices could be made out were screaming and there were…other…voices in those transmissions as well.

200 years after she was reported lost, the Halcyon drifted into the Bespin system. She was completely unpowered but otherwise totally intact.  To include all of her life pods still being in place.  There were only a few cryptic words written on the bridge that gave any clue at all to the fate of the passengers and crew, “XXXXX XX XXX.” 

The salvage company that had boarded her, sold off the Halcyon’s fine appointments and then auctioned off. She went to work as a tramp freighter for decades but she was finally seized by the Old Republic because her skipper had used her for smuggling spice.

Then in the early days of the conflict that would become known as the Clone Wars, she took to space again as a Q-ship, or commerce raider depending on circumstances.  This was officially Anakin Skywalker’s first time as a ship’s captain although Obi-Wan was the real commander of the operation.  

Chancellor Palpatine was fascinated with the Halcyon and when he became emperor, he made it the Imperial yacht.  There were rumors that he had strange ulterior motives for doing so.  

After the fall of the Empire, it was auctioned off again and this time it was bought up by Tremulus (or whatever the hell it’s called) Starlines and restored to her former glory as a cruise ship as she had been when she was first laid down six hundred years ago and is now ferrying passengers across the galaxy as the pinnacle of overpriced luxuriousness. 

Disney Imagineers used to come up with truly dream-worthy backstories for every aspect of their rides.  The first thing they did was tell the story of what they were going to build.

But the Star Wars Galactic Cruise is a product of the new breed of Imagineer.  The Stories Matter generation that has created nothing of worth because they have no creativity.  They can only warp and corrupt that which came before.

“The Shadow that bred them can only mock, it cannot make: not real new things of its own. I don’t think it gave life to the orcs, it only ruined them and twisted them; and if they are to live at all, they have to live like other living creatures.”

*That is totally true by the way.