the visual dictionaries

I have them all, and they're surprisingly resilient even since the EU canon was wiped away. I'm looking forward to the next one (and the inevitable vol. 2s that will come out after a few more years of NuCanon.)

 

I felt motivated to revisit my OT Visual Dictionary by Dr. David West Reynolds and - like his OT cross-sections - both still stand out as the best pseudo-scientific books we have, despite a few flaws.

What I really liked (and IIRC also wrote him) that he added a lot of findings based on (a) accurate (b) research which the folks from West End Games so miserably failed to do.

But the OT Visual Dictionary could and should have been three times bigger. All the three original films were squeezed into one Visual Dictionary while each prequel movie got one of its own.

But as it seems Lucasfilm doesn't use it as often as a reference book as they should. Reynolds concluded (quite correctly) that the white, black and orange shoulder "epaulettes" of the sandtroopers are indicating the rank of the wearer.

And what do we get now? In Rebels all non-sandtrooper squad leaders wear the orange epaulette, but in the upcoming Star Wars Battlefront game all sandtroopers wear orange (with black being worn by the "magma stormtroopers"). And what now are white epaulettes for?

Obviously the nuCanon has neither a clue nor a concept and introduces new continuity conflicts. Unbelievable!