Star Wars: TOR - The Lost Suns

This is the latest and final 'The Old Republic' (TOR) series before the new game's release this December. While I wasn't overly impressed with the previous TOR series this one did hold my interest all the way through and is worth a read, especially if you're getting the game.

New Jedi

Ngani Zho
Species: Human
Sex: Male
Occupation: Jedi Master







Ngani Zho was a respected Jedi Master and teacher who after a time training padawans was sent behind enemy lines into Sith space to gather intelligence on what plans the Sith were up to with the territory given them by the Republic due to the Treaty of Coruscant. He decided to help the slaves forced to build weapons for the Empire only to see the Empire test those weapons on the slaves themselves. He lived the life of a hermit, begging and telling stories until he was found by Theron Shan.

Theron Shan
Species: Human
Sex: Male
Occupation: SIS Operative






The son of Grand Master Satele Shan was raised and trained by the Jedi, but he was found to have no force abilities within him. He became an operative for the Republic's Strategic Information Services. He was tasked with finding his former teacher Ngani Zho and returning with his knowledge of Sith Space to the Republic.

New Sith

Darth Mekhis
Species: Human (?)
Sex: Female
Occupation: Sith Lord








One of the most powerful Sith Lords, she had been a key oponent of the Jedi all through the war, battling Satele Shan and other leading Jedi and earning a place on the Dark Council. She was a sith alchemist and scientist, developing warped dark side creations to serve the Empire further, even corrupting captured Jedi into cybernetic Sith Knights. She took drastic measures with the territory she claimed, building new and horrific creations for the Emperor.

Map














For reference the black planets are featured in Flashbacks, Rhen Var is where Satele and other Jedi battled Dark Mekhis and Haashimut is where Theron Shan trained under Ngani Zho.

Story

SIS agent Theron Shan is sent to track down Ngani Zho, once a great Jedi master, now a rambling hermit telling war stories for credits. On the way he picks up a Black Sun operative who reluctantly is forced to aid him. They rescue him from Mekhis's Sith Knights and travel to Vesla uncovering the Sith plot, whixh is using a special weapon called a Sun Razer to convert stellar energy into mass to creat Sith superweapons and superior ships. Working together the rag tag crew destroy the Sun Razer, kill Darth Mekhis and escape back to the Republic, though master Zho loses his life in the battle. .

My Two Credits

This is a great Star Wars story with superweapins and a galaxy of flavour to make it interesting. It is still a tie-in to the game franchise, which limits it's interest if you're not going to get the upcoming MMO, but if you're following the news about the game and it's story then this will certainly be of interest. It's a well told story and worth a read most definitely.

SF at the Movies - November '11

I had a good time down in Cardiff recently at a Doctor Who party hosted by my good friend Caleb of the Impossible Podcast team, we enjoyed watching Who (obviously!!) wearing masks and eyepatches and a Fez sent by the promoters 'Come Around' (the party is to promote the release of the latest series if Who. We also played Doctor Who top trumps and we even tried fish fingers and custard which wasn't too bad actually!!!

Anyway let's look at what's showing this month.

In Time




There's a fan film Superman: Requiem - I don't know if that will make it to your local theatre but it looks good!



And that's it as far as I can tell - though apparently there's some vampire movie out too...

Doctor Who - New series, new species part 36

Right! I'm going to attempt to cover the latter half of Doctor Who in one fell swoop - there weren't too many new aliens present so it should be too much of a job.

Tenza










Night Terrors was quite a decent episode, and it did feature Daniel Mays, who's a great actor in some of the best stuff around. The alien capable of projecting weird telepathic thingies is quite a common thing in Who and in some parts of the Universe 'perception filters' seem to be as common as eyeballs. Nonetheless it was an entertaining monster and while the ending was cheesy it was a nice touch to have the father accept his unconventinally adopted son.

Tenza are a species of mimics, capable of infiltrating other races and growing up as part of that species before moving on. Tenza also had powerful psychic powers, able to seamlessly intergrate into a new situations and also project powerful hallucinations when distressed.

Mentioned but not featured are the Apalucians a two-hearted species who built a facility to contain plague victims and inadvertantly trapped Amy Pond in their facility. They had the technology to alter time streams and built a state of the art facility on their homeworld.

Minotaur










Another myth transformed into an alien being - only this one was quite interesting. It was more than just a monster as it fed on faith not just flesh, using fear to force his victims to face their fears so they called on their faith and he replaced it with faith in himself, which he fed on. More interesting was that this minotaur was sick of it's existence and wanted to die but was brought victims to devour by it's holographic prison ship.

The Minotaur is a powerful alien capable of feeding on the faith of other races. They often set themselves up as gods on worlds they visited, devouring the faith of the primitives they conquered. One individual was captured and fed captives aboard a prison ship.

Tivolians (?)










No proper species name for them, despite the fact that we've got a planet. Anyway, I really liked this race of cowardly rodents, portrayed by David Walliams. The cowardice seemed quite cartoonish at first, but the Doctor slowly revealed an aggressive edge to their cowardice as a well honed survival trait.

The natives of Tivoli are a race of Rodent-like humanoids with a reputation of beingf conquered more than any other race. They plan to be as accomodating as possible to any visitng war ships. They fear only species such as the Weeping Angels who mdevour, rather than invade.

And that's it - apart from whatever species this guy is...










Thanks for reading - SJA next!!