Episode 1: 11 Parsecs - What is this?

Hello and welcome to the very first podcast of the 11 Parsecs podcast.

My name is Eric. I'm here with my good buddy, John.

Hello.

And we are drinking beer and talking about Star Wars.

This podcast is probably a little different than other Star Wars podcasts you've heard because we are, I wouldn't say novices when it comes to the Star Wars universe, but we also are not full fledged Star Wars geeks.

We have decided what we're going to do, though, is to become those geeks.

We are going to go in chronological order based on the Star Wars universe and try to consume every single piece of media in the Star Wars New Canon universe.

I think the first thing that we ought to do, though, is introduce ourselves.

My name is Eric.

I do have a little bit of new canon knowledge.

I'm a big avid comic book reader.

I've read a lot of the different comic books having to do with Star Wars.

I've read a couple of the books.

Most of those books that I have read were right before the latest trilogy movies came out, and they were smaller books that kind of just gave more background to the movie that was about to come out.

But other than that, I haven't really read too many more of the books.

I definitely have not listened to audio dramas, which is something that exists that I don't know about.

And then also I'm aware of the TV shows.

I've watched a couple of episodes of Clone Wars.

I watched a couple of different episodes of Rebels mainly toward the beginning, but I haven't really sat down and watched and really thought about each episode as I watched.

It was more along the lines of popcorn, sitting with my kids and watching stuff.

John, what's your background in Star Wars?

So I know you don't consider yourself a Star Wars superfan, but far more of a fan, I think, than the average person.

I would characterize myself as more of that average person.

I grew up with the movies, watching the original trilogy.

Then suffering through the prequel trilogy when it came out.

And of course, finally putting the thing to bed with the sequel trilogy, which we'll talk about at some point.

That's the almost the limit of my knowledge.

I did read a couple, just a couple of books way back in the 90s.

They, according to the new canon, no longer matter, no longer exist.

So, you know, what are you going to do?

But I have not consumed any Star Wars media beyond really just the movies and I mean, Mandalorian, right?

We all watched Mandalorian.

But beyond that, no, I don't, I don't know the Star Wars universe by any stretch of the imagination, like I'm sure a real fan would.

So my goal is to approach this, this new canon chronologically with that perspective of, I don't know that much.

Yeah, I think that we should, we should probably add in whenever we say chronologically, it kind of give a background of, of how we're approaching that.

And because even that has, is fraught with peril, I think from the Star Wars Community about how stuff has been slotted into a chronological order and not.

So back in November, when I first kind of had the idea for this podcast, I was looking at the Star Wars subreddit on Reddit and I came across a post by a guy named,

PhillyU19.

It's pretty much a massive timeline in chronological order of pretty much everything in the new canon universe.

Movies, comics, novels, TV shows, video games, short stories, audio dramas, which I didn't realize were a thing.

And he put everything in chronological order as it happened.

Back whenever I first looked at this list, Master and Apprentice was the first thing that was actually on the list from 39 BBY.

Actually, we should probably stop and kind of explain BBY too.

So, so one thing about this podcast is we're really trying to gear this podcast not towards people that know Star Wars really well, just more toward people that want to learn more about Star Wars.

So the way that dates have always worked in Star Wars is that most dates reference the Battle of Yavin as the Zero point.

So think of it as when somebody says something is 40 BBY, that's 40 years Before The Battle of Yavin.

When somebody says something is 27 ABY, they're saying it's 27 years After The Battle of Yavin.

Battle of Yavin being the Zero point being the New Hope.

Now there's a little bit of even cooler confusion in here because in the latest movie, the visual dictionary for the movie, the visual dictionaries are some books that come out that are really cool books.

I definitely want to at least take a look at them next time you're in the bookstore, if not pick them up.

They pretty much give like all this kind of minutiae, photos and stuff from the movie, drawings, things like that, and like really cool details about certain aspects of the people in the movies in that type situation.

But for some reason in the latest visual dictionary, they decided to change that Zero point to the Starkiller incident, which is an incident in the later trilogy of the movies.

Seriously, it was like, I don't understand what the reasoning was behind that.

Maybe it was something to do with that specific movie, maybe it was something to do with that specific visual dictionary, but.

Even as somebody that really doesn't know this universe, you still kind of knew that, didn't you, Jon?

Like, that was the way that you had heard people measure stuff.

Yes, the few times that I've looked into Star Wars history, if you will, I always see the BBY and ABY.

So, originally, years ago, I had to look up what that meant.

So, I was familiar with it, but if you're coming to a cold, you'd have no idea.

Yeah, so that's maybe the first point that we'll kind of touch on, is that we are going to be going by the BBY, ABY kind of standard or non-standard, whatever you want to call it.

The rebel chronological way of referencing when something happened in the Star Wars universe.

Another thing that we probably need to touch on, too, is that whenever I kind of sent you over the list, Jon, and asked, well, first off, whenever I saw the list, I thought, you know, who, out of all the people that I know,

number one still reads books, and number two would be stupid enough to embark on what is probably going to be a multi-year quest to conceal all of these.

Yeah, yeah, no, I'm stupid enough, yes, absolutely.

And you read books! So, I mean, it's even better.

And I read books.

It worked out very well, Jon.

So, I was really happy when Jon said, let's do this.

And then, of course, we had the holidays and then the whole COVID thing.

And so, it's really been kind of good that we've gotten back on the bandwagon, and we've already got a couple of books, at least in part, under our belt.

A couple of them are already under our belt, a couple of them in part under the belt.

We've worked out how we're going to read the comics.

We've worked out movie watching, all that kind of good stuff.

So, the first one, the second podcast that you're actually going to listen to is our take on Master and Apprentice by Claudie Gray, which started out at a pretty high point.

I think that's going to be a really good episode and a really good way for us to kind of jump our feet into this and how it all works.

One thing I do want to talk about, too, is that you've got to – so, there's a group of books that's coming out by what was termed a group of authors called Project Luminous,

which has now been shown to be a whole series of books and comics and media about the High Republic, which was a time that existed about, I don't know, like two to 250 years Before The Battle of Yavin.

So, there's a whole bunch of books that are going to be coming out in the next year that reference times way before the Skywalker Saga.

And we will have already been past that point by the time we read them, so we'll probably end up going back as these books get released, going back and maybe rereading those

and having kind of maybe some special podcasts that kind of deviate from our current list and get those read.

Even the first book actually kind of has a little bit of controversy in that there was another audio drama that kind of maybe took place a little bit before this first book, but we'll get to that one when we get to that one.

I'm excited, John. I mean, are you excited about it?

I am very excited. It's actually something that I've always wondered about the extended universe, and then of course when Disney+ wiped it out, I thought, well, that's done.

I don't have to worry about that anymore. But then they started making new ones, and so now I'm wondering about these.

And yes, the first one, if the first one is any indication, this is going to be quite the fun journey because that really was, I will say, a well-done book, a well-written book.

And of course, we'll get into that more. But yes, I am looking forward to learning more about the Star Wars universe beyond the core trilogies.

Yeah, beyond the Skywalker saga. I keep telling friends that I'm a fan of Star Wars. I'm glad we're moving out beyond Skywalkers.

I think that a lot of these books and stuff are really going to be kind of cool about discovering stuff outside of that.

One thing, too, that you need to know about John and I is that we really enjoy beer.

So there's going to be a lot of beer talk in this podcast also.

John, I know you have a beer. What are you drinking right now?

Tonight, I am enjoying a Sour Monkey from victory Brewing.

You know, they don't know, but you know that I'm a big fan of Golden Monkey by victory.

This was a mistake. I was not meant to get this. I got it by mistake.

And I am not a sour beer fan. But that being said, victory, if you'd like to sponsor us,

this is probably the only sour beer that I kind of like, sort of.

I mean, it's because I like Golden Monkey so much.

Honestly, I'm drinking it tonight because I wanted the crispness to go along with our first podcast.

Something new.

Okay, it's not to get it out of your refrigerator, right?

Oh, I'm definitely getting it out of my fridge, yes.

All right, just making sure that you can restock.

So I'm a huge fan of the Golden Monkey. I love the Golden Monkey.

It's hard for me to imagine something with the delicious hoppiness of Golden Monkey

paired with the sour taste of a sour.

Like, I just can't. It's not my thing. It's not my thing.

It's not my thing. I'm not a sour guy.

Tonight, I'm drinking an Allagash White, which is Allagash brewing up in Portland.

Not Oregon, Portland, Maine. Portland, Maine.

I remember looking them up one time and like, oh, Portland.

I was like, oh, no, it's actually the other coast.

Very nice. Very nice brewery and nice beer. I have not had it in a long time.

Yes, very good. They make some really good beer.

Really good triples too that are pretty delicious.

So, yeah, good, good stuff.

There's gonna be a lot of beer talk on these episodes.

Our goal for these episodes is to be, you know, 30, 35 minute range.

They're not gonna be huge. They're not gonna be long.

I'm not I like to listen to podcasts.

I'm not a big long podcast lister.

I feel like 30 minutes kind of hits the sweet spot.

Of course, this will be a little bit less, but this is more of the introduction.

So we hope to see you on the next podcast.

Podcast number two, Master and Apprentice by Claudia Gray.