The Quantum Mirror Archives — Recovered Review No. 8
November 21, 1990 | Holiday Film Review
There is a wonderfully absurd moment in The Broken Map when Han Solo, pursued by three heavily armed patrol ships, attempts to escape through a narrow hyperspace passage while a dozen mechanics are still working on the Millennium Falcon.
One of the mechanics asks whether they should stop repairing the engine.
Chewbacca replies with a furious roar.
Han translates: "He says you should work faster."
It is a line that could have come directly from the original Star Wars.
And it captures something of the extraordinary vitality of this latest adventure.
The filmmakers have somehow made a picture about navigation records, vanished settlements and political uncertainty that plays like the world's most elaborate treasure hunt.
Yet beneath the chases and comic disagreements, The Broken Map contains a troubling discovery.
The galaxy our heroes have fought to liberate may never have been quite the place they believed it was.
A treasure map nobody trusts
The story opens several months after the events of The Open Sky.
The New Republic has dispatched expeditions into the Crossings, hoping to establish contact with the newly discovered worlds.
Some have returned with astonishing reports.
Others have not returned at all.
The old navigation stations contain fragments of charts that appear to contradict one another.
Entire star systems occupy different positions in records made only a few years apart.
Commercial vessels occasionally emerge from hyperspace nowhere near their intended destinations.
The phenomenon is not supernatural.
It is the consequence of a vast, changing system of gravitational conditions, orbital movements, and obsolete navigational assumptions.
The established hyperspace routes were not necessarily the only routes.
They were simply the routes for which reliable records had been maintained.
Kera Venn believes that the scattered records of the old stations can be assembled into a more complete picture.
But somebody else has reached the same conclusion.
The man with the keys
The film introduces its most entertaining antagonist, Orlan Sile, proprietor of a private interstellar transportation syndicate.
Sile is not a Sith Lord or a military dictator.
He is a genial, extravagantly wealthy businessman who has spent years buying abandoned navigation stations, obsolete survey records and the legal rights to commercial transit corridors.
He possesses an exceptional talent for recognizing the value of things other people consider worthless.
And now he owns much of the surviving infrastructure necessary to navigate the Crossings.
Sile has no particular interest in destroying the New Republic.
He would prefer to sell it a subscription.
The character is played with magnificent confidence by an older British actor who seems to regard every attempted escape, robbery or act of piracy as an unfortunate misunderstanding between reasonable businessmen.
He also possesses an enormous private fleet.
The ships are not especially impressive individually, but they are numerous, fast and maintained by some of the finest mechanics in the galaxy.
Their crews are paid promptly.
Han finds this deeply suspicious.
A race across the frontier
Kera discovers that a complete set of early navigation records may survive at a remote survey installation called the Meridian Observatory.
The station was abandoned before the Clone Wars and subsequently erased from most government archives.
Leia authorizes an expedition.
Han and Chewbacca provide transportation, somewhat reluctantly, after learning that their competitors have acquired faster ships.
Lando Calrissian joins the mission, claiming that he has been attempting to purchase Meridian for years.
Nobody believes him.
Luke accompanies the expedition because the observatory appears to contain records of ancient Jedi journeys into the frontier.
The resulting journey provides an astonishing sequence of adventures.
The Falcon pursues a stolen survey vessel through the rings of a gas giant.
The crew attempts to retrieve a navigation cylinder from a city suspended beneath floating mining platforms.
Han and Lando enter an illegal racing competition in order to obtain passage through a restricted corridor.
Chewbacca discovers that the competition's organizers have rigged the outcome and responds by dismantling the timing equipment.
Luke finds himself trapped aboard an abandoned survey ship whose machinery has been slowly operating for centuries.
None of these sequences depends upon the destruction of a world or the survival of the entire galaxy.
They are simply marvelous adventures, expertly connected by the central mystery.
The New Republic's dilemma
Back on Coruscant, Leia faces a growing crisis.
Several exploratory expeditions have vanished.
Refugees are accumulating at poorly equipped frontier stations.
Private transportation companies are demanding payment for access to passages they have begun claiming as commercial property.
Republic military officers warn that unrestricted routes could allow armed forces to bypass established defenses.
One of those officers, Admiral Cael Renn, emerges as an increasingly important figure.
Renn is a veteran of the Rebellion, a capable commander and a man whose loyalty to the Republic is beyond serious question.
He believes that the New Republic must establish a unified navigation authority before another conflict begins.
His reasoning is understandable.
A galaxy in which ships can appear unpredictably behind defensive lines may be impossible to protect.
But the proposed authority would possess powers that even the Empire never entirely achieved.
It would control the official maps, license passage, establish security corridors and prohibit navigation through unauthorized routes.
Leia is urged to support the measure.
Several of her oldest colleagues are among its strongest advocates.
No one suggests placing an Emperor in charge.
They simply want a reliable system.
And Leia knows from personal experience how dangerous an unreliable system can be.
The observatory
When the expedition finally reaches Meridian, the filmmakers unveil one of the most spectacular environments in the series.
The observatory is built around a tiny airless moon orbiting a brilliant blue-white star.
Hundreds of delicate mechanical structures extend into space, forming an enormous instrument that has been measuring gravitational changes for centuries.
The installation is not a weapon.
It is a measuring device.
And much of it still works.
Kera discovers that the original surveyors never intended to produce one permanent map of the galaxy.
The Crossings change too frequently.
Instead, they developed a method of continually updating navigational knowledge through reports exchanged between ships, stations and inhabited worlds.
The system was imperfect and sometimes dangerously inaccurate.
But it improved whenever new observations were contributed.
At some point in the Republic's distant past, the most reliable routes became the official routes.
The others were gradually removed from general navigation records.
Later governments added restrictions for military and commercial reasons.
Eventually, nobody remembered that the familiar map was merely one maintained selection from a far larger and changing network.
The galaxy had not physically become smaller.
Its inhabitants had gradually stopped looking beyond the routes they were given.
The discovery that changes everything
Kera reconstructs part of the old observational system.
The process requires measurements from several distant stations.
Meridian alone cannot produce a complete chart.
Nor can any single ship, corporation or government.
Information must be exchanged between independent observers, compared and continually corrected.
No participant possesses the whole picture.
And as the measurements accumulate, previously unknown passages begin appearing.
Some are dangerously unstable.
Others may be safer and shorter than established routes.
One leads toward a region of inhabited systems that have had almost no contact with the wider galaxy for centuries.
The discovery is exhilarating.
It is also commercially disastrous for Orlan Sile.
If independent navigators can continually update their own charts, his exclusive control of old stations becomes considerably less valuable.
He decides to seize Meridian's instruments and destroy the records required to reproduce the process.
The battle at Meridian
The film's climax is a wonderfully chaotic struggle across the observatory's enormous rotating structures.
Sile's ships arrive, followed by a Republic patrol group commanded by Admiral Renn.
Renn has orders to secure the station and prevent its navigation data from being stolen.
Sile insists that he possesses legitimate ownership documents.
Han insists that both sides are idiots.
Within minutes, the observatory becomes the setting for an extraordinary three-sided battle.
The Falcon races through enormous moving instrument assemblies while Kera desperately attempts to transmit the recovered observations.
Lando commandeers one of Sile's vessels by convincing its crew that their employer has sold the ship to him.
Luke rescues technicians trapped in a damaged observation chamber.
Chewbacca attempts to keep the Falcon operational while pieces of its exterior are literally torn away.
The entire sequence depends upon a splendid piece of timing.
The observatory's rotating instruments must align for a transmission to reach the distant stations.
If Sile destroys the central equipment first, the recovered observations will be lost.
Han flies the Falcon into the gap between two approaching structures.
The ship barely fits.
Its communications array is torn loose.
Kera improvises a replacement using the radar equipment from a pursuing vessel.
The transmission succeeds.
Navigation records begin arriving at hundreds of independent receiving stations.
Sile watches his commercial monopoly evaporate.
Renn orders his ships to stand down when he realizes that destroying Meridian would serve only Sile's interests.
The battle ends not with the annihilation of an enemy fleet, but with a distinctly satisfying sight: Sile being presented with an enormous invoice for damage to Republic property.
The trouble with the truth
The return to Coruscant is less triumphant.
The discovery has transformed the navigation debate.
The New Republic now possesses the means to develop a far more comprehensive understanding of interstellar travel.
It also possesses the means to control access to that understanding.
Admiral Renn argues that the records must be placed under centralized protection until reliable procedures can be established.
Several senators agree.
Kera objects that the observations belong to the people who contributed them.
Leia recognizes both arguments.
In the film's finest quiet scene, she finds Luke studying the newly assembled charts.
He tells her that the Jedi once believed they understood how the Force should guide the Republic.
They were wrong about many things.
Leia remarks that governments cannot survive by constantly assuming they are wrong.
Luke answers that they probably cannot survive by assuming they are always right, either.
Then he asks whether she would like to come with him to see one of the newly discovered worlds.
Leia looks at the stack of legislative proposals waiting on her desk.
She laughs.
"More than you know."
The final surprise
The film ends with a startling transmission from beyond the newly opened routes.
A civilian vessel reports that an immense fleet has appeared near several frontier settlements.
The ships bear old Republic military markings.
Their identification signals are obsolete.
Their commanders claim to be operating under emergency orders issued during the Clone Wars.
And they refuse to recognize the authority of the New Republic.
Admiral Renn orders the defense fleet to assemble.
The Senate begins preparing emergency legislation.
Far away, Kera studies the incoming navigation reports.
She notices something peculiar.
The unfamiliar fleet has not attacked anyone.
Its ships are moving between isolated settlements, collecting passengers.
And several of the vessels are transmitting distress signals.
The film ends before anyone learns why.
Our verdict
The Broken Map is perhaps the most exuberant picture in the entire Star Wars series.
It contains more chases, escapes, ingenious mechanical disasters and amusing disagreements than its predecessor.
Yet it also introduces a fascinating complication.
The New Republic has discovered a technology—or, more accurately, a neglected collection of methods—that could transform its understanding of the galaxy.
The question is whether the Republic can resist the understandable temptation to make itself the sole custodian of that knowledge.
The answer may be less important than the extraordinary adventure required to discover it.
And after that final transmission, next Christmas suddenly seems a very long way away.
Next: The Far Shore (1991) — The fleet from another age, the greatest rescue in galactic history, and a Republic forced to decide what victory really means.
Editor's note: This review is part of the fictional Quantum Mirror Archives. The film, release and production history described here belong to an imagined alternate timeline.
