(Illustration: Joe Corroney)

Ever wonder whose job it is at Lucasfilm to make sure Star Wars planets and characters’ names are spelled correctly on everything from video game menus to Happy Meal toys? Wired magazine’s Chris Baker ventured over to Lucasfilm to meet with continuity master Leland Chee also known as the Keeper of the Holocron — “a searchable repository of more than 30,000 entries covering almost every character, planet, and weapon mentioned, however fleetingly, in the vast array of Star Wars titles and products.”

Excerpt:

Chee spends three-quarters of his typical workday consulting or updating the Holocron. He also approves packaging designs, scans novels for errors, and creates Talmudic charts and documents addressing such issues as which Jedi were still alive during the Clone Wars and how long it takes a spaceship to get from Dagobah, where Yoda trained Luke Skywalker, to Luke’s homeworld of Tatooine. The Keeper of the Holocron takes this very seriously: “Someone has to be able to say, ‘Luke Skywalker would not have that color of lightsaber.’”

“The thing about Star Wars is that there’s one universe,” Chee says. “Everyone wants to know stuff, like, where did Mace Windu get that purple lightsaber? We want to establish that there’s one and only one answer.”

There have been some egregious missteps, like the Jar Jar lollipop. It looks like a plastic bust of the hated character, but push a button and it opens its mouth and sticks out a hideous candy tongue for children to suck on. “The tongue had bumps on it,” Chee says, wrinkling his nose.

Read the full article here:
Meet Leland Chee, the Star Wars Franchise Continuity Cop (Wired.com)

Be sure to read Leland Chee’s Blog here:
Keeper of the Holocron’s Blog (Blogs.starwars.com)

Tags: Books, Leland Chee

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