This seems like the best day of the year to discuss why man’s best friend has been absent from my Pets of the Old Republic project and why the subjects of today’s post are in no way actually pets: Sam & Max!
Sam & Max: Freelance Police is a nearly four decade old multi-media franchise featuring the madcap stories of Sam, an anthropomorphic dog in a fedora and suit, and Max, his “hyperkinetic, three-foot rabbity thing” partner. Their surreal and truly bizarre adventures span comic books, comic strips, video-games and even an animated television show. “But what does this have to do with Star Wars?” I can hear you asking. Excellent question!
Sam & Max comic strip from The Adventurer newsletter.
Sam & Max’s creator is Steve Purcell who began working as an animator and artist during the early days of LucasArt shortly after Sam & Max made their comic book debut. While working at LucasArts, Purcell drew a series of Sam & Max comic strips for The Adventurer, LucasArt’s quarterly newsletter. These strips featured Sam & Max parodying the genres of LucasArt’s games, including Star Wars. Max himself made some cameo appearances in several LucasArts games. I still recall discovering the secret Max shaped cave in the first Dark Forces, and in Jedi Knight: Dark Forces 2 players can fight alongside or even against Max himself. The duo were so popular that they headlined their own Lucasart’s video game, Sam and Max Hit the Road.
Max’s cameo in the first Dark Forces game.
Max’s appearances in Dark Forces have firmly entrenched him in Star Wars lore, and, therefore, according to the transitive property Sam must also be canonical, and thus is fair game for coverage in this series.
Sam & Max by Steve Purcell.
The image i used for this portrait was drawn by Steve Purcell and comes from my collection of Star Wars themed artwork. I did color and crudely edit the image for this post, so I thought I ought to also present the illustration by Purcell in its original form.
Let Slip the Dogs of Star Wars
“Ok, Sam & Max in Star Wars, I’ll allow it, but why focus on them?” It seems like a reasonable question, but here’s the thing: there are no dogs in Star Wars.
“Wait. What? That can’t be right.” I am exaggerating, but not by too much. There are scattered references to dogs in assorted stories, And certainly there are Akk Dogs, Kath Hounds, and Loth Wolves and more. There are no shortage of creatures in Star Wars that are referred to as dogs, but very few, I’d argue, have the traits of what we’d recognize as dogs: floppy ears, wagging tails, wet noses and fuzzy bellies. Akk Dogs are little dinosaurs, Kath Hounds look more like mountain goats, Loth Wolves are wolves, Vulptices and Vupltillas are foxes. Maybe I’m splitting hairs but there are animals in the lore that we would immediately view as cats, birds, fish and puffins. Heck, ducks are canon! So where are the dogs?
Canine Aliens: Chewbacca, Barada and Pirate Captain Brutus.
“WAITAMINUTE! What about Chewbacca?” Excellent point! Chewie is one of the most beloved characters in all of Star Wars and was indeed inspired by George Lucas’ pet dog, Indiana. And that causes this flight of fancy I’m on to veer into interesting territory. When we do encounter creatures coded as dogs, they are most often intelligent. In researching this topic, I’ve come to the conclusion that there are two possibilities. First Star Wars is “space fantasy”, and dogs are just too familiar and mundane, so dog-like creatures in this setting tend towards the alien and weird. That’s why Akk Dogs are lizards and Corellian Hounds are creepy, hairless monsters.
“We named the dog Indiana.”
But perhaps it’s just down to the fact that George Lucas is a dog person. When we think about our pets, it is not uncommon to consider them members of the family and to some degree even project personhood onto them. Across Star Wars lore, there are feline and avian, frog-like and fish-like aliens, but none loom quite so large as the mighty Chewbacca.
There is another final avenue of dog-lore in Star Wars worth mentioning: robot-dogs. Astromechs like Artoo-Detoo and Beebee-Ate are often treated like dogs by their owners, and they very often show the same loyalty of a good dog. There are also models of droids with the shape of an actual dog, which suggests to me that maybe dogs do actually exist somewhere in Star Wars, but we just haven’t seen them yet.
“Don’t listen to him. We’re dogs too.”
The droid players of Star Wars: The Old Republic will most recognize as canine is the Basilisk Prototype Droid Companion B3-S1, aka “Bessie,” the object of the games first “Venture.” After several months of casual play, I recently completed all the stages to fully unlock Bessie myself. Throughout Legacy of the Sith, I’ve largely taken a break from daily areas, and I took the excuse of training Bessie to revisit the quest hubs I’ve literally avoided for years. It was interesting to reacquaint myself with the Black Hole and Section-X again! The long process of completing the Venture was punctuated with fun interactions with Lane Vizla and HK-24. Ultimately, Bessie is just another companion, but her appearance is absolutely distinctive and I’m glad that I can take my very good girl out for walks and adventures now.
Nevertheless, as a companion, Bessie simply does not count as a pet, so I have to place her alongside Chewbacca in the taxonomy of Star Wars dogs. I do think there should be room in the game for a proper tiny Basilisk Prototype puppy, and I’m a little surprised we haven’t seen one in SWTOR yet.