The Quantum Mirror Archives — Recovered Review No. 9
November 27, 1991 | Holiday Film Review
The most extraordinary scene in The Far Shore takes place during its final hour.
Hundreds of spacecraft are attempting to cross a region of dangerously unstable hyperspace.
Some are Republic warships. Others are civilian transports, battered freighters, converted mining vessels and privately owned ships whose captains have apparently never obeyed an official instruction in their lives.
Every ship is transmitting its own navigation observations.
Some are incomplete.
Some are wrong.
Others contradict reports received only moments earlier.
At the center of the confusion, the Millennium Falcon is attempting to coordinate a rescue operation while its hyperdrive repeatedly fails.
Han Solo demands to know who is in charge.
Kera Venn replies that nobody is.
Han considers this.
Then tells Chewbacca that they may finally have found an organization worth joining.
The sequence is funny, terrifying and unexpectedly moving.
It is also the culmination of a new Star Wars trilogy that has accomplished something few would have believed possible six years ago.
It has given the galaxy a future without requiring another Emperor to threaten it.
The fleet from another century
The film begins where The Broken Map ended.
An immense collection of warships has appeared beyond the newly charted Crossings.
The ships bear the markings of the Old Republic.
Their identification codes predate the Galactic Empire, and several transmit orders that appear to have been issued during the Clone Wars.
The New Republic fears that it has discovered a forgotten military formation, perhaps one that continued serving the old government long after its disappearance.
Admiral Cael Renn dispatches a reconnaissance force.
Han Solo, inevitably, gets there first.
What he discovers is extraordinary.
The old warships are not preparing an invasion.
They are escorting an immense migration of civilian vessels.
Some carry entire communities whose ancestors were evacuated from collapsing settlements during the Clone Wars.
Others contain descendants of Republic personnel who remained beyond the established navigation routes when the network was abandoned.
A number of the oldest ships are commanded by soldiers descended from the original clone armies, families whose ancestors were never permitted to return to the Republic they had served.
They have spent generations moving between isolated worlds, establishing settlements, repairing vessels and attempting to preserve fragments of a civilization that vanished before many of them were born.
Their records are incomplete.
Their political institutions have evolved.
Some still believe the Republic exists.
Others believe it betrayed them.
And now, after generations of isolation, they have discovered that the government they remember is gone.
An old soldier's last mission
The fleet is commanded by Captain Doran Pell, an elderly officer whose family has preserved a military commission issued before the fall of the Republic.
Pell is not a conqueror.
He is a navigator, engineer and administrator who has spent much of his life coordinating the evacuation of settlements threatened by deteriorating hyperspace passages.
His fleet is running out of fuel, spare parts and safe destinations.
Several inhabited systems have become inaccessible as gravitational conditions shift along the Crossings.
The fleet has been gathering people from isolated colonies, hoping to find a route back to the populated regions of the galaxy.
Pell does not ask the New Republic to recognize his military authority.
He asks for somewhere to take his passengers.
It should be a simple request.
It is not.
The Republic faces a familiar choice
The arrival of the fleet creates chaos.
Some senators welcome the refugees.
Others fear that the old military vessels may conceal hostile forces.
Several systems refuse to accept large numbers of displaced people without substantial financial assistance.
Admiral Renn believes the approaching fleet must be brought under central command before it enters populated territory.
His proposal includes mandatory navigation registration, restrictions on independent travel through the Crossings, and emergency military authority over the surrounding systems.
These measures are presented as temporary.
Leia is familiar with that word.
But she is also aware of the practical problem.
Thousands of ships moving through unstable corridors could cause a disaster, and many civilian vessels lack the equipment necessary to navigate independently.
It would be easy for the film to turn Renn into another authoritarian villain.
Instead, he remains an honorable man trying to solve a very difficult problem.
He has seen what happens when a fleet loses coordination.
He has buried friends.
He has no wish to repeat the experience.
Leia understands him better than he knows.
She also knows that an institution does not need an evil leader to acquire dangerous powers.
Sometimes it needs only a crisis and a succession of reasonable people trying to prevent the next one.
Han Solo's ridiculous plan
Han proposes an alternative.
Rather than waiting for the Republic to establish permanent control over the Crossings, independent ships could begin transporting supplies to the stranded fleet immediately.
Kera believes the updated navigation network can support such an operation if enough vessels contribute real-time observations.
Lando offers to organize the civilian transports.
Chewbacca volunteers to supervise repairs, an offer several of the other mechanics will come to regret.
Luke agrees to accompany a reconnaissance expedition into the most unstable region.
Leia points out that this is not a plan.
Han says it is an excellent plan.
She asks how many ships it requires.
He says that depends upon how many people are willing to help.
Leia stares at him.
Then, very slowly, she begins to smile.
It is one of the warmest exchanges between the two characters in the entire series.
The gathering
What follows is a glorious succession of interstellar adventures.
Lando visits former commercial associates and attempts to persuade them to contribute vessels.
Some refuse.
Others agree in exchange for future trading privileges.
One captain volunteers immediately, provided Lando settles an outstanding gambling debt.
Han seeks assistance from smuggling communities that once supported the Rebellion.
He discovers that many have become respectable businessmen and are appalled at the suggestion that they should engage in unauthorized navigation.
Chewbacca recruits a group of Wookiee engineers who regard the Falcon as an insult to the mechanical profession.
Kera visits the settlements of the Crossings, bringing navigators who have spent generations maintaining their own local knowledge.
Some distrust the New Republic.
Others are willing to help but refuse to surrender their charts to its military authorities.
Luke travels to an ancient Jedi waystation, believing that its surviving records might contain observations of the unstable region.
Instead, he discovers that its archives are nearly useless.
The Jedi who once maintained the station apparently considered the region too dangerous to explore.
Luke finds this exasperating.
In a small but wonderfully revealing moment, he remarks that being a Jedi would be considerably easier if the old Jedi had been better at keeping records.
A failure nobody can conceal
The rescue mission begins badly.
A group of vessels attempting to reach the refugee fleet encounters rapidly changing gravitational conditions.
Several ships emerge from hyperspace far from their intended positions.
A transport is severely damaged.
Others lose communications.
For a time, it appears the expedition has created precisely the disaster Renn predicted.
The New Republic Senate responds by authorizing the military to close the Crossings to unauthorized traffic.
Leia reluctantly accepts the order.
Han is furious.
Kera is devastated.
The civilian captains begin withdrawing.
And then something happens that changes the course of the film.
A damaged transport reaches a remote frontier settlement whose inhabitants know nothing of the Senate's order.
The local pilots come out to assist.
They do not ask who authorized the expedition.
They simply know how to navigate the nearby passages.
Their observations are relayed to another settlement.
That settlement forwards updated measurements to ships waiting elsewhere.
The information begins spreading.
Different communities possess different fragments of the solution.
No one has a complete chart.
But together they begin discovering a navigable route.
The breakthrough is not announced by a scientist or delivered as a revelation by Luke Skywalker.
It emerges from the accumulated efforts of ordinary pilots, mechanics and station operators who are trying to bring stranded people home.
The great convergence
Kera recognizes that the constantly updated observations reveal a temporary opportunity.
The shifting gravitational conditions will briefly allow several of the Crossings to connect, creating a passage large enough for the refugee fleet.
The opportunity will last only a few hours.
The catch is that the corridor cannot be reliably mapped in advance.
Its safe boundaries will have to be established as ships approach, with every vessel contributing observations and altering course in response to information from the others.
It will require an immense degree of coordination.
And there is no guarantee that it will work.
Admiral Renn objects.
He believes the fleet should remain where it is until a conventional rescue can be organized.
Captain Pell explains that several of his vessels can no longer support their passengers.
Waiting will cost lives.
Renn has no answer.
Leia receives a report that the Senate intends to extend the navigation emergency indefinitely.
She looks at the order.
Then at the latest transmission from the stranded fleet.
She makes a decision.
The Republic's military ships will participate in the rescue, but the operation will be directed jointly by the experienced navigators of the Crossings and the commanders of the participating fleets.
Renn warns that such an operation would place military vessels under the guidance of civilians who possess no recognized authority.
Leia replies that most of the people who helped defeat the Empire had no recognized authority either.
Renn almost smiles.
Then he orders his fleet to prepare.
The greatest chase in Star Wars
The final forty minutes are a triumph of filmmaking.
The rescue begins with dozens of vessels moving toward a narrowing region of hyperspace.
New observations arrive constantly.
Navigation computers struggle to reconcile the changing measurements.
An old Republic cruiser becomes trapped near a gravitational boundary.
The Falcon races to reach it, while Han attempts to tow a damaged engine assembly clear of the ship.
Chewbacca warns that the Falcon cannot withstand the strain.
Han reminds him that he said the same thing at Kestrel's Gate.
Chewbacca replies with a long and very pointed complaint.
Meanwhile, Luke boards a damaged transport filled with frightened children and helps its crew keep the vessel stable.
He senses changes in the surrounding gravitational environment, but his abilities are of limited use.
He can perceive danger.
He cannot calculate safe routes for hundreds of ships.
For that, he must rely upon Kera and the navigators.
Lando leads a convoy of commercial vessels through a narrow passage, improvising maneuvers that appear to violate several fundamental principles of spacecraft operation.
At one point, he orders a group of freighters to rotate and use their enormous cargo hulls to shield smaller vessels from a stream of dangerous debris.
The maneuver succeeds.
Barely.
Then the refugee fleet begins moving.
The enormous old warships, scarred by generations of repair, proceed through the temporary corridor accompanied by hundreds of civilian vessels.
Each ship passes its observations to the others.
When a route changes, the information moves throughout the convoy.
At times the process seems impossibly chaotic.
Yet the fleet continues.
Not because anyone possesses the perfect plan.
Because the participants are correcting one another's mistakes quickly enough to keep moving.
The last ship
Captain Pell's command vessel is the last major ship remaining beyond the unstable region.
Its engines are failing.
Several civilian transports still depend upon its life-support systems.
Pell refuses to abandon them.
Han arrives in the Falcon, offering to transfer the remaining passengers.
There are too many.
Admiral Renn, watching the situation from a Republic cruiser, makes a decision of his own.
He orders his vessel into the narrowing passage to provide additional power and evacuation capacity.
His officers warn that the maneuver is unauthorized and may endanger the entire ship.
Renn asks whether anyone aboard knows a better way.
Nobody answers.
He tells them to proceed.
The Republic cruiser reaches Pell's vessel as the corridor begins collapsing.
The two ships transfer passengers through hastily assembled docking connections.
Kera guides the vessels using an increasingly unreliable stream of navigation data.
Han and Chewbacca maneuver the Falcon between them, using its damaged engines to stabilize the connecting structures.
Luke assists the final passengers across the failing docking passage.
The last transfer is completed.
But Pell's vessel cannot escape.
The old captain refuses to leave his ship.
Kera contacts him.
She reminds him that his commission was issued by a government that no longer exists.
Pell answers that his duty remains.
Kera tells him that his passengers are safe.
His duty is finished.
For a moment, the old officer does not respond.
Then he leaves the command deck.
Han brings the Falcon alongside the damaged vessel, and Chewbacca personally hauls Pell through the emergency hatch.
The ancient cruiser is abandoned.
Moments later, the last ships emerge from the Crossings.
The passage closes behind them.
The evacuation has succeeded.
And for once, nobody has had to destroy an enemy in order to win.
The Republic's first grown-up decision
The concluding scenes return to Coruscant.
The rescue has become an enormous public celebration.
Senators praise the military, the civilian navigators and the frontier communities.
Some attempt to claim credit for having authorized the operation.
Leia pointedly declines to correct them.
But the unresolved question of navigation authority remains.
The New Republic cannot simply abandon responsibility for interstellar safety.
Nor can it pretend that every independent navigator will act responsibly.
The proposed solution is considerably less dramatic than the rescue.
Instead of creating one permanent authority controlling all navigation, the Senate establishes a public system for sharing observations, verifying charts and coordinating emergencies.
The participating worlds retain the ability to maintain their own routes.
Information contributed to the common charts can be challenged, corrected and independently checked.
Some corridors remain restricted where genuine dangers can be demonstrated.
Others are reopened.
The arrangement is imperfect.
Commercial interests complain.
Military commanders remain anxious.
Several worlds refuse to participate.
And yet it is something the Republic has rarely attempted: a practical system that expects disagreement and error, rather than treating them as threats to its legitimacy.
It is not presented as the final political solution to all the galaxy's problems.
Merely an arrangement that has proved useful enough to deserve a chance.
The dinner
The final major scene is not set in the Senate.
It takes place aboard a transport hosting a crowded and thoroughly disorganized celebration for the rescued crews.
There are musicians, mechanics, navigators, former soldiers and refugees from worlds whose names most Republic citizens have never heard.
Han is attempting to persuade Lando that the Falcon deserves a share of the expedition's salvage rights.
Lando points out that the expedition was a rescue, not a commercial venture.
Han says that is precisely why the financial arrangements should have been discussed beforehand.
Chewbacca laughs.
Luke is sitting with a group of young people asking questions about the Jedi.
One wants to know whether he can move a spaceship with his mind.
Luke says that depends upon the spaceship.
Another asks whether he knows everything that is going to happen.
Luke answers that he has had more than enough trouble understanding what has already happened.
Across the room, Leia is speaking with Admiral Renn.
He admits that the rescue would have failed if he had insisted upon commanding every ship.
Leia replies that it probably would have failed without his fleet.
Renn considers this.
Then suggests that perhaps both of them should be grateful nobody asked Han Solo to write the regulations.
Leia laughs.
The far shore
The film's final scene begins at dawn on a newly charted planet.
The refugee fleet has arrived at a world whose inhabitants have agreed to receive the displaced families.
There are no triumphal arches.
No enormous military formations.
People are unloading cargo, constructing temporary shelters and searching for relatives among the arriving passengers.
Children are running through the grass.
Kera stands beside Han and Chewbacca, looking toward a mountain range beyond the settlement.
Han asks whether she intends to remain.
She says there are still many unexplored passages, and the surviving maps are terribly incomplete.
He tells her that the Falcon is available.
She says she has inspected the ship and remains unconvinced that it is safe.
Han replies that safety has never been its strongest feature.
They return to the Falcon.
Luke and Leia have already arrived.
For once, there is no urgent military briefing, no approaching enemy fleet and no crisis requiring the immediate attention of a Jedi Knight.
Han settles into the pilot's seat.
Chewbacca powers up the engines.
Kera enters a new destination.
Han examines it.
There is nothing on the chart.
He asks what is there.
Kera says nobody knows.
He grins.
The Millennium Falcon rises from the valley and heads toward the morning sky.
As it climbs, dozens of small vessels can be seen leaving the settlement in different directions.
Not warships.
Explorers, traders, surveyors and families beginning journeys of their own.
The familiar Star Wars theme swells.
And the Falcon disappears among the stars.
Our verdict
The Far Shore is a joyous conclusion to an unexpectedly ambitious trilogy.
It has brought the saga back to its origins as a celebration of courage, friendship, humor and the extraordinary possibilities of an unknown universe.
But it has accomplished something else.
The Republic has finally begun learning from its own history without becoming imprisoned by it.
The central characters are still fallible.
The institutions remain imperfect.
There will be future disagreements, disasters and conflicts.
But there is no longer any suggestion that civilization must inevitably descend into tyranny and be rescued by another heroic rebellion.
The galaxy has not become wiser because someone has discovered a perfect philosophy.
It has become a little more capable of recognizing its mistakes.
And in a series that began with a young farm boy looking toward the stars, perhaps that is the happiest ending imaginable.
The heroes are not finished.
The adventure is not finished.
And the universe, wonderfully, remains larger than any map of it.
Editor's note: The Quantum Mirror Archives presents imagined films and contemporary reviews from a fictional alternate history. This installment concludes the invented 1989–1991 Second Dawn Trilogy.
