Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Invid's Guide to the Star Wars Universe: Alien Species #17

161. Chiss. The first Chiss to appear in Star Wars fiction was Grand Admiral Thrawn, also known as Mitth'raw'nuruodo, and was and is basically the best Star Wars villain not to appear in the movies, and is serious competition for the ones that have appeared in the movies. Thrawn was an exile from his people because of politics, and was the highest-ranked non-human in the Empire's military.

The Chiss Ascendancy is the Star Wars galaxy's greatest power that has never been part of the Old Republic, the Empire, or the New Republic, and played interesting roles in many stories, as it is from an isolated and poorly explored area that is comparatively difficult to travel to and from-they have information on many things that the mainstream part of the galaxy has never heard of.

What I'm more or less saying is that the Chiss fill a very important role, and are pretty great besides.

Rating: 5/5. Did I mention that Thrawn and the Chiss were created by Timothy Zahn? Because they were.

162. Chistori. The Chistori are reptilian people who are "impatient and quick to anger" and "often resorted to violence, and had little use for discipline and order." Cut that out, writers, the only thing more cliched than stupid, violent reptiles is cold-blooded reptiles.

They do have a somewhat interesting cultural trait implied, in that they don't know much about the Force for whatever reason and are superstitious about it, although how members of a galactic society wouldn't know about something like that least a little bit is a bit questionable.

They also look pretty cool.

Rating: 3/5. I'm being a bit generous, mainly because they look cool but also because they at least made an attempt at an interesting bit of cultural background. But doggone do I ever hate reptile stereotyping.

163. Choi. The Choi are from Choi. One got eaten by the Sarlacc on Tatooine. This is known, by the way, because that Choi had become part of the Sarlacc's consciousness and talked to Boba Fett while he was in there.

(And yes, in case you didn't know, Boba Fett was indigestible.)

Rating: 1/5. It's just a name. There's no actual species attached to it.

164. Chortose. The only known Chortose seems to have been from an RPG sourcebook. He was a short, chubby, furry hick with strong mechanical aptitudes.

Rating: 1/5, possibly up to 3/5 if more individuals show up and they aren't just clones of that first guy. Not much to go on.

165. Chroman. Chromans are earthworm people. Not nearly as nifty as a sapient planarian (see #29), but it'll do.

Rating: 3/5. They actually look a little too human for my tastes.

166. Chubbit. Chubbits are short reptilian aliens who look a smidgen like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. They are apparently vulnerable to some kind of high-frequency emissions, and the planet's atmosphere had some kind of effect on industrial machinery that caused the Empire to decide to build a massive high-frequency emitter on their planet that would bathe the entire place in such waves.

Ouch.

Things got better when an Imperial plot gone wrong destroyed the transmitter while they were attempting to capture Luke Skywalker. Then, some while later, the Yuuzhan Vong showed up.

Again, ouch.

Also, some of them had black spots; if you're familiar with many older illustrations of dinosaurs, said spots are essentially the same kind of spots that are used to show "dinosaur skin" in some older children's books and cartoons.

Rating: 4/5. I think I may have given them an extra point out of pity.

167. Chuhkyvi. While they look like orange-skinned humans (or maybe Nebulon), they're water-breathers who need to wear fishbowls on their heads out of water.

Which is pretty funny.

They're also a member species of the Iskalonians, an entire batch of different aquatic sapients who were evacuated to the planet Iskalon, where they all lived as a group.

Rating: 3/5. The idea of a collective bunch of species living together in harmony who happen to all live underwater amuses me for whatever reason.

168. Cilare. The Cilare were a primitive warrior species, at least by the standards of the galaxy at large. They didn't develop much medical technology because they thought it was lame-survival of the fittest and all that. In other words, they were written as stupid people.

And then the Yuuzhan Vong killed pretty much all of them.

Rating: 1/5. For once, I'm actually a bit thankful that the Yuuzhan Vong showed up. (Except that these guys were created for a Yuuzhan Vong story... Argh.)

169. Clantaani. All known Clantaani were villainous outlaws in a video game, where they made up a gang that seems to have been styled after Old West desperadoes.

Rating: 3/5. While I prefer diverse species, every once in a while you need to give in to the hilarious things you'll see. Also, they are very distinctive in appearance, and that's usually a plus.

170. Clatear. The Clatear are humanoids who are "recognizable by their horned heads." I can think of at least four humanoid species who appeared just in the movies without even trying hard that all have horned heads, so that's not very helpful in distinguishing them.

Anyway, they and another species who lived in the same general area used to fight with each other all the time, but were stopped by the Empire (after the Jedi had tried for generations to bring peace but failed); when the New Republic was distracted by the diplomatic firestorm of the Caamas Document (which caused a bunch of planets to send ships to blockade the Bothan homeworld because the Document implicated Bothan saboteurs in the destruction of Caamas, the Caamasi homeworld-see #129), they resumed it. [EDIT: Whoops, I left that an incomplete sentence.]

Rating: 3/5. Their purpose is to show exploding tensions in the galaxy during a crisis, and they do that well.

-Signing off.

No comments: