Legendary Adventures: MedStar I: Battle Surgeons

Barriss Offee and a squad of doctors and nurses discover the horrors of war – will the personal cost of fighting for the Republic wear on this team? Or will they learn the meaning, and pain, of sacrifice? Find out in today’s Legendary Adventure as we explore MedStar I: Battle Surgeons!

“But to see a Jedi, here on Drongar-that was surprising.”

Probably the most identifiable core to the Star Wars DNA is that almost everything is does is a riff on something done before. A New Hope was built on the back of westerns, Japanese samurai films, and pulpy sci-fi. Michael Reeves takes the spirit of this idea to write the Medstar duology. Essentially, the duology asks, “what would M*A*S*H* be like if it was in space and during the Clone War rather than the Korean War? Unlike most Star Wars riffs on classic works, Medstar wears its inspiration on its sleeve, asking us to directly compare the Jedi/clones/doctors to the classic crew. Which is, honestly, not a good look for people like me who had to Google even a single character’s name from M*A*S*H*.

On Drongar, the Republic and Separatist armies wage an endless battle over a valuable resource called Bota. Bota has incredible medicinal purposes, but it also boosts the user’s connection to the Force. Thankfully, neither side knows this yet, but the doctors note early in the novel how useful the plant is in helping to heal wounded soldiers. Unfortunately, the resource is heavily rationed to the point where it cannot be used on trooper patients. In light of the incredible need for troopers to rejoin the fight, Padawan Barriss Offee is sent to Drongar to help the doctors. A Jedi is almost as good as bota, right?

Legendary Adventures readers may remember Barriss Offee’s first co-starring role during the mission to Ansion. During that mission, Barriss proved herself as a valuable healer, able to heal the minds of two goons who eventually helped Barriss (and the rest of her party) mediate a dispute that threatened to end with Ansion leaving the Republic. Her Master, Luminara Undili, sees this mission as the best means by which Barriss could prove herself a Jedi and possibly move into the status of Jedi Knight.

While working at the Rimsoos on Drongar, which are essentially the medical camps, she meets the core of the novel’s crew: Jos Vondar, Tolk le Trene, Klo Merit and Zan Yant. Each doctor has their own personality, sort of. Unfortunately, the pacing of the novel doesn’t really allow us to see these characters develop, but we’ll return to this later. She meets characters far more interesting than these doctors in Den Dhur, a Sullustan reporter, and I-5YQ. Dhur is on Drongar to report on how badly the war is going. He believes that the media is displaying an overly optimistic, and untrue, view of the war to placate the galaxy in order to make them think the Republic is winning, despite what is actually happening in the war.

Readers of the Legendary Adventure will also recognize I-5YQ from Lorn Pavan’s mission on Coruscant. I-5YQ was Lorn’s business associate when Lorn stumbled upon an ancient Sith holocron. After being chased by Darth Maul, who is intent on re-capturing the holocron, across the Coruscanti underworld, Lorn shoos I-5 away to save him from the Sith assassion. After being separated, Lorn is killed and I-5 loses his memory and is brought off-world. Somewhere within the 13 years separating these events, I-5 starts to regain his memory and becomes obsessed with returning to Coruscant to associate himself with Jax Pavan, Lorn’s son.

Enemies and unexpected allies are made during the course of the ceaseless battles. Den Dhur befriends a clone trooper designated CT-914. Den learns about the humanity of the clone troopers and starts to consider his own mortality thanks to this adventure. This is an interesting contrast to the previous novel in the Legends canon, Republic Commando: True Colors, wherein the clones learned that the Repubic would rather terminate clones than do anything to try and help them heal. Readers get an entirely different picture here. Not only are Jedi and Republic personnel brought to intense war zones, the doctors and other sentients start to develop a sort of bond and camaraderie with these clones.

War may be hell, but for everyone who isn’t Karen Traviss, the Republic isn’t going to be the biggest sinner in this hellish conflict. Despite how badly Traviss wants to paint the Republic as villains, it does not seem like anyone else wants to. Reeves goes out of his way to show how the Republic probably spends too much on healing the clones, in fact! That there is a Jedi at all is painted as a miracle, especially if she is not acting as a General in this instance. Instead of being terminated, the highly injured clones are marked for quick identification and are brought to get the help that they need immediately. Only the very worst clones are even considered for termination, but Barriss does not let that happen. Now, I do wonder if Reeves was trying to make a point, or if he was so married to the M*A*S*H* parody that he didn’t really put too much thought into the healing of clone troopers.

As for enemies, the Republic has hired a mercenary named Phow Ji. Phow loves killing Separatists. Well, he may just love killing in general, really. This puts him at odds with Barriss, which makes sense, considering she is a healer. Phow doesn’t just love killing droids: his greater desire is to kill sentients who align themselves with the Separatists. Toward the end, Phow makes a selfless sacrifice…or it seems to be that way when the media spins his self-destruction as a means by which the Republic can start to turn the tide in the war.

The fact that the Republic has hired a mercenary but can actually afford to keep clones in good health presents a slightly contradictory picture of how well the war is going. Phow Ji is hired to make up for the lack of high profile career militants on Drongar, which points to the idea that Republic is on its last legs. Why resort to mercenaries when an entire army is at your disposal, unless the war isn’t going well? On the other hand, though, the Republic clearly has enough supplies and means to keep even the most extremely injured clones in good health. Unfortunately, it is hard to get a real feel for how well or poorly the war is going from these pictures. At least with Traviss’s novels, her unflatteringly and unwaveringly pessimistic view of the Republic was able to paint a picture for how well the war was going.

Oh, and there’s also a side plot involving a corrupt Republic official who wants to pair with a local Hutt crime lord to get off Drongar and return to his home. The Hutt is more than willing to accept Separatist control, so he is happy to help the Republic commander. Oh, and there’s a Black Sun operative who is sabotaging the Republic effort, but we don’t hear much about him in the first half of the duology. I don’t mean to downplay these events entirely, but these stories don’t do much to affect the sequel to this novel. I feel like any good duology is mostly going to stretch between two books; while it is nice that the first book can have *something* wrap up, I don’t really feel like the Hutt storyline was an integral part of the novel. In fact, like I said before in the Clone Wars Gambit duology reviews, this could’ve probably been trimmed to create maybe one slightly longer novel rather than a duology.

Maybe part of the reason that these stories felt so insignificant in comparison is because of the way that the narrative was crafted. Each chapter focuses on a pair or a group of characters, giving them a few pages for the story to germinate. Then the next chapter focuses on a different group of characters. The third chapter then focuses on yet another group of characters, usually. While these stories sometimes overlap, there are a lot of times that these chapters feel so disconnected that I felt the need to review the group’s last chapter to remember exactly what happened. If there was a group of characters you aren’t a fan of (such as the generic doctors for me personally), you were stuck for a chapter…but thankfully, you had two chapters to be rid of them for a while!

My hands are somewhat tied on this book. For the most part, the book was fine, and no one would suffer for reading it. I don’t know how many would totally enjoy it, outside of connection junkies. But, these Legends connections do make for a fun novel, and I like that we were able to follow up on certain characters after having met them before. And this novel does serve as the springboard for the sequel and the upcoming trilogy, Coruscant Nights, with its unofficial fourth book, The Last Jedi. Reeves was the original Claudia Gray, continually revisiting his own characters and creations to create his own substories across the space of half a dozen novels.

Legendary Travel Tips:
-This novel is preceded by young reader novel The Wrath of Darth Maul and is immediately followed by a short story called MedStar: Intermezzo.
-More notes will be included in the review for MedStar II: Jedi Healer.

You can follow Chris on Twitter @ChrisWerms, and of course, you can follow the Manor on Twitter @MynockManor!

Movie Reviews:
The Last Jedi