The Unofficial Clone Wars Site

MEET THE MEDSTAR CREATIVE TEAM

One is an Emmy award-winning screen-writer, one is a best-selling scribe, who also happens to be an accomplished martial artist, and the other is former architect from Boston who is a self-described "fanboy." What do they all have in common? The Star Wars: Medstar Duology, a set of two Clone Wars novels due out this year. Michael Reaves (co-author), Steve Perry (co-author), and Dave Seeley (cover artist) are the three men that made Medstar happen and TUCWS has the exclusive interview with the trio.

STEVE PERRY, co-author

Best-selling author and screen-writer, Steve Perry, has written over forty books including novelazations for the films The Mask, Men In Black, and Titan A.E. He has also written numerous original novels and adaptations.

Most Star Wars fans know him as the author of the best selling 1996 novel, Shadows of the Empire, and its comic adaptation sequel, Shadows of the Empire: Evolution. He's been invited back to co-write (with Michael Reaves) a Clone Wars duology, Medstar I: Battle Surgeons and Medstar II: Jedi Healer, featuring Jedi Apprentice Barriss Offee.

TUCWS: Tell us how you got into writing fantasy and sci-fi for a living?

Steve Perry: When I impressed Mrs. Brown, my gorgeous 11th grade English teacher with a science fiction story I wrote, I knew writing was what I wanted to do for a living. Took a while. I still send her a copy of every new book when it comes out.

TUCWS: Who's your favorite Star Wars character and which film do you like the most?

SP: I have trouble narrowing this down. I like all the orginial characters, they are all wonderful archetypes. I always had a real admiration for Prince Leia, since I like kick-ass women. Although as I'm getting older, the elser Obi-Wan starts to resonate with me more and more. And I always thought Artoo was the smartest character in any of the movies ...

I did like the first three (ANH, ESB, ROTJ) more than the more recent pictures, but I was younger and they were unlike anything else around at the time. Plus I thought the characters were more fun, and we got to see the happy ending first -- the Republic beat the evil Empire. The newer films have to be more downbeat, given the story we know has to happen.

TUCWS: At the time, Shadows of the Empire was the largest multimedia project in Star Wars history that didn't involve a film release. Tell us about that experience.

SP: Oh, it was a delight. Book comics, games, T-shirts, a soundtrack CD, everything but the movie. I got to go to The Ranch, sit down and come up with a story with a bunch of people, and lay out what was essentially the blueprint for the whole thing. It was a big deal, and I was pleased to be a part of it. Very much a collaboration, with everybody contributing stuff. Fun to write, and well-received. My fan mail, which ran over a thousand letters the first year or so, was ninety percent on the approval side. You never please everybody in the SWs universe, but nine out of ten ain't bad.

TUCWS: When writing Xizor, did you intend for him to be the antithesis of Vader, or as an equal-but-opposite that served as a foil?

SP: Both, actually. The name and basic idea came from Lucy Wilson at Lucasfilm. She had, I seem to recall, a Portuguese boy friend, and the pronounciation of Xizor came from that language. I wanted him to be cool where Vader was hot, and as strong as he could be without having the Force at his beck. In a knock-down-drag-out fight, Vader would win, but Xizor needed to be a bad guy with some chops. I also wanted him to have a good reason to hate Vader, and so that was why I gave him the family history I did.

TUCWS: Okay, once and for all, how do you pronounce Xizor?

SP: "Shee-zohr." No accent on either syllable.

TUCWS: Were you tempted to tie in elements from your previous Star Wars effort into Medstar? Will Xizor or Black Sun be involved-- we haven't seen them during the Clone Wars yet?

SP: Well, by the time this comes out, the first book will be on the racks, so it's not giving anything away to say that Michael and I both did bring back elements of our earlier books into these. Black Sun is back, as is a certain clever and interesting droid from Michael's Darth Maul novel.

TUCWS: Why use Barriss Offee as the main character in Medstar out of all the Jedi that are available?

SP: We were doing a medical story, and we needed a Jedi Healer. Barriss was available for that, plus we wanted to show how a padawan actually becomes a Jedi Knight, and she was perfect for that, too.

TUCWS: Is the planet Drongar new or something from the Lucasfilm archives?

SP: Drongar is a new addtion. We would have used a planet from the archives if they'd had one that fit our needs, but they didn't, so they let us create Drongar.

TUCWS: Medstar has been described as Star Wars meets M*A*S*H. How true are these claims? I've read that the surgeons in the books are an "eccentric" bunch, much like the cast of characters on M*A*SH.

SP: That's a good description, since that's what we were shooting for all along. Both of us loved M*A*S*H, the movie and the TV series, and doctors-during-war are interesting characters, so it was a natural. We tried to come up with people who felt real, with personal problems they had to solve.

TUCWS: How was it working with Michael Reaves again?

SP: Pretty awful ... Actually, Michael and I have written a truckload of stuff together over the years -- books, stories, TV animation, even a couple of movie scripts we never sold. We've been friends since before we started working together, and have managed to *stay* friends in spite of working together ...

TUCWS: Explain to the masses the process of how two authors work together to write a book? Like, is Reaves good at at writing action, and you are good at writing drama?

SP: I do the nouns and verbs and he does the adjective and adverbs ...Well, no, it's different not only for other writing teams, but even for us. When we started out years ago, I'd do a draft, then he'd do a rewrite of that, and we'd kick it back and forth until we were both equally unhappy or we ran out of time. On the Medstar books, we would discuss what we wanted to do, either by phone -- or more recently, via an AV link -- plus email. Once we had a direction, I'd write a section and send it to him, he'd write a different section and send it to me, we'd edit each other, and then put them together.

Sometimes I would do a chapter about a character I wanted to showcase, sometimes he would do the same. One of us would have an idea, we'd run with it. Mostly we agreed with what each other did; when we didn't, we'd discuss it and then change it.

We both like to think we have similar strengths, vis a vis action, humor, character, but we both put in stuff the other guy sometimes doesn't expect. Michael is very good at taking a bare-bones scene I did and fleshing it out, adding muscle to it. He has a deft hand with the Star Wars geography and sociology and language.

Michael is more intellectual, I think, in his writing, whereas I tend to be more touchy-feely. It makes for a different blend than either of us would do alone.

TUCWS: Give us a juicy tid-bit about Medstar II: Jedi Healer?

SP: How does a padawan get to be a Jedi Knight? You'll find out here. And if you like the characters in Medstar II, you might want to stay tuned, since Michael is going to be writing more books in the SW's universe that could feature some of them. Also, if you want to know the genesis of the most famous T-shirt sayings in Star Wars? You'll see that here, too ...

TUCWS: Finally, how can you describe your excitement level regarding Episode III? It's less than a year away now!

SP: I am really looking forward to seeing how things shake out. By its nature, the movie will have to contain a whole lot of bleakness. Between Episode 2 and 4, Anakin is going to the dark side, becoming Darth Vader, giving up not only the Jedi and his Master, but his pregnant wife and unborn children. The Empire will arise, and by the end of the Clone Wars, all but two of the Jedi are going to be dead -- only Obi-wan and Yoda "officially" survive. Palpatine is going to become Emperor, and the Sith rule. How much of this will be in Episode III, I dunno, but some of it will have to be. Not the most happy of stories by itself.

Medstar I: Battle Surgeons is in stores now! Click here to purchase it from Amazon.com.

Conducted by Brian Gates and the TUCWS staff, with contributions from JTS and Quest