Advanced Recon Commandos of the Grand Army of the Republic

Mission name: FACTS-2007

Classification: TOP SECRET, for review of Supreme Command alone.

Mission target: Locate and question the next three subjects: Naboo Ace Fighter Pilot Ric Olié, Vice Chair of the Galactic Senate Mas Amedda and Jedi Master Plo Koon

Mission Transcript:

[08.00]

The three subjects mentioned have been located by a detachment under the command of Commander Bacara. They have gathered in a place called Ghent-Belgium on the planet E-Arth. As soon as the encryption keys of the transmission checks out, a detachment of Blue ARC Troopers is sent to intercept.

[10.35]

The detachment of ARC Troopers arrives at planet E-Arth. A Carrier Transport takes them to the city of Ghent_Belgium; they are deployed near a building that is called the ICC, which is rumored to harbor the three fugitives. The leading trooper call-sign is A-17. He calls in as soon as he is landed. The next voice recording is registered:

[10:37]

ARC Trooper A-17:

This is Trooper A-17 to base; we have entered the ICC premises. There seems to be a large public gathering going on; we will proceed with extreme caution.

[10:39]

ARC Trooper A-17:

We have come across a large number of humans in the meantime … they look mostly Corellians to me; we are obviously in the middle of some kind of Smugglers market; a lot of contraband is being sold. There are multiple hundreds of them here; the Smugglers area takes up at least 2000 square meters. This is way too much for our squad to secure! We post some sentries who will relay their visual recordings as soon as possible so that you can asses the situation and provide assistance.

In the meantime, we will proceed to the second floor …

[10:41]

ARC Trooper A-17:

The second floor has been checked and is secure. Except for more Corellians, we have encountered a number of other species on this floor too … Gamorreans and Wookiees to name just a few. Except for those, there are also a large number of astromechs rolling around. I even spotted a protocol droid there too.

Wait a second! I have a confirmed visual of Jabba the Hutt here! He must be running this operation for sure! I can identify at least some of his entourage too!

I request further orders. Do we need to intervene or not? I repeat … do we need to intervene and make an arrest or not? Come in, Command, do we ne … what? … Really? … Okay, we will keep a low profile.

[10:42]

ARC Trooper A-17:

ARC Trooper B-17 has reported in that he has encountered a fair number of what look like fellow Republic Forces, but they seem rather confused.

Maybe they have been stationed on this planet for too long already? … The dials in my helmet tell me the air is very polluted here; it can’t be good to walk around for too long in here. I will see if I can some intel out of one of them anyway …

Ah! This one looks quite friendly.

[13:00]

ARC Trooper A-17:

Pfew … that was quite the conversation! I even had to buy a number of lottery tickets to get away from him! It seems they have some action going on here for charity. I didn’t quite get all the details … but more importantly, I have also gathered some information about our three targets. They seem to have been disguised to look like the local people and if the intel is correct, we should now also know their exact location. I’m transmitting the data as we speak.

Oh! There they are … their appearances match the information we just received! They are being escorted into a large room for a … Q&A?

Okay … I’ll tap into the conversation and just plainly relay what I intercept to you. Here it comes …

Let's see if actors are vain … or in other words, do they collect the action-figures made after the characters they played?

Ralph readily admitted he had picked up the food promos that featured his face and one issue of the Hasbro Ric Olié figure (which indeed sports a rather good resemblance with Ralph) but added quite dryly that he actually was disappointed that he actually had to buy them. After all, these items do show his face rather recognizably and he would have appreciated if he could have been sent a free set out of courtesy.

It obviously is sitting quite high with many an actor of which an action figure was made that they didn’t see one cent of income for those.

David made the impression of a cowboy who shoots from the hip and answered that his mother collected the action figures that were made after his likeliness. While I still won’t really believe that (David is a politician in real life), he did add that he felt kind of honored to be made in plastic. Apparently it’s considered quite the thing between actors to be immortalized in plastic. “You have made it if you have seen plastic”.

Alan proved rather relaxed about the entire merchandising and collecting hype, even if he uttered the opinion that it fed on the fans a bit too much. He claims picking up figures of the characters he played, but assured us that they get handed out again just as quickly when some nephew would visit and laid eyes on the “cool figure”.

After a lengthy answer to the question if the actors watched the movies they had played in (which apparently none of them did, except Ralph who thought it was a good way to learn how to improve his acting – and right you are, Ralph -) I could still ask Ralph what it meant that he’s famed for “reciting his dialogue with a relaxed, slow voice and very precise enunciation of words”. You probably noticed that very same sentence in the introduction of this article; I actually read that same information on various locations on the internet, so it was kind of bugging me what it actually meant.

Ralph answered that he didn’t know. His best guess was that the comment was about the effort he usually puts into getting foreign accents right. It only goes to show how much of the stuff on internet you can actually believe…

[13:32]

ARC Trooper A-17:

Hello Command? I got the entire conversation down. I’m sure you also noticed that everybody just kept calling Ric Olié “Ralph”, Mas Amedda “David” and Master Koon “Alan” … they must be some kind of code names, I guess. I can’t make any sense out of it anyway; this entire thing is surreal and to be honest with you, it’s getting on my nerves! I think we should simply withdraw and just leave this be, Command. There’s nothing we can do. We’ll await your confirmation.

[14:07]

The detachment of ARC Troopers gives rendezvous with some local females on the Korenmarkt, which introduce them to a local dish called “Gentse Waterzooi”.

Since they ate it, they broke all contact and haven’t reported in anymore every since.

Mission status: Aborted … to be picked up within one E-Arth cyclus, around the same time of the year again.