The Piett Effect

[Konig15]

While I haven't read a lot of sci-fi, I have read quite a bit of fanfiction and there seems to be a shift in view as either a series progresses or an author gets his hands on it.

I call this the Piett Effect. See Firmus Piett was the admiral of the Executor in Star Wars. In the films, Piett is a cookie-cutter back character: he is competent, capable, and has no personailty at all except he hates bounty hunters.

In fanfiction, Piett really comes into his own. He is the embodiment of what is good in the Empire: loyal, brave, capable, seeking his own kind of justice in the universe, and more than that, he's thoughly decent. He doesn't often get any real power, but he is a rallying cry, and often a stalwart ally of a Vader in redemption. Sometimes he lives when he should die, and in one story, to emphasize the union of the Empire and the Alliance where the Empire has reformed, he has become the lover of Mon Mothma. (Angel of Alderaan, might be other place but can be found a fanfiction.net I cannot emphasize enough that you should read it.) Piett makes you WANT the Empire to win, because you can see through him what it could BECOME.

Many stories, more than I'd expect, involve Vader, Luke or Leia becoming Emperor and turning the Empire into a Constituional Monarchy, where the Senate is restored and the worst offenders of the old regime are punished. I think this has to do with the fact that we've seen the Old Republic and many think it too cruel to force the Galaxy to return to that.

A very similar thing happens with the Peacekeepers in Farscape. At first they were the villians, but the more I learned about them, the more I liked them. Yes they were brutish and mercenary, but many a world gladly paid for their protection which was fairly just and effective. Peacekeepers were the good guys, plus or minus. That's why my fiction is screwed up like it is because I want to see the Peacekeepers: brutal, nasty, relentless people who are nevertheless ultimately the HEROES. Officer Sun is a renegade from the Peacekeepers but just about everything that is good and bad about her comes from being a PART of the Peacekeepers, not being seperate from them. Crition may never agree with me but hey...

Now I'm to the right of Attila the Hun, so my interpretation may be flawed, but I think the flawed, but heroic society has to do with leftist infiltration of the media and people's reaction to it.

Back in the 50s, America could do no wrong. We were right, Commies not. By throughout the 60's, 70s and 80s, leftists saturated the airwaves with the crimes and misdeeds of the free world in general and America in particular. Suddenly, we have a crisis of conscience as to whether we are going the right thing, going in the right direction. Don't get me wrong, I grew up on GI Joe, so I know the old school is still there. Yo Joe!

We need characters like Officer Sun and Piett, who despite serving powers seen by some as evil, are fundementally good. We need them to be decent in the face of the excesses of their superiors and still cling to a notion of right that involves serving them.

We need Bilar Crias on Farscape and Piett in fanfiction who become good guys while still being fundemntally true to the dictates societies they grew up in. And we need to see the Peacekeepers as flawed, but immanently fixable, and the Empire as fundementally good if only the pus on top were removed. It's about the abilty to change and redeem oneself. Because if you deny redemption to Piett, you deny it to yourself.

That's just my oppinion, I could be wrong.

[ScottSF]

I think Piett was a great character actually; he was the Empire's Wedge. Since I watched the movies way too many times I noticed that he was actually more than just a dull background character. He was willing to go against his superiors when he knew he was right since he argued with the admiral when he had a gut feeling about the generator on Hoth back when he was just a captain. Also he was really curious about what was under the mask when Vader was in the meditation chamber but didn't want to get caught looking. He acted very well under the pressure of knowing if he failed he would probably face a force-choking. I thought it was a sad waste of talent that he had to die. He was just a guy doing his job. On the other hand, he probably saw plenty examples in his career of how brutal the empire was and could have tried to defect.

I can’t think of a way Piett may have survived. I think that A wing crashed right into the bridge. I’ll have to double check so I can start my own Piett-Wars to battle Wedge-Wars


Isn’t that the way of it? The bad guys start out as indistinct (storm troopers) cold (borg) or bestial (Klingons) and then as we learn more about them they become fascinating (borg) honorable (Klingons) and. . . um. . .clones of a Maori Bounty hunter (storm troopers).