The Monstrefact: The Miraluka of "Star Wars"

In this episode of STBYM’s The Monstrefact, Robert discusses the Miraluka of "Star Wars."

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Hi, my name is Robert Lamb and this is The
Monster Fact, a short form series from Stuff to Blow
Your Mind focusing on mythical creatures, ideas, and monsters in time.
I've covered a number of Star Wars species and creatures
in the past on The Monster Fact, and since we're
celebrating Star Wars Week here, I have won more for you,

(00:32):
a force sensitive humanoid species known as the mirror Luca.
The mirror Luca have existed in Star Wars comics and
novels for decades at this point, with specific examples falling
into canon or extended universe status, but we're not going
to get too wrapped up in this division. The mirror

(00:53):
Luca look like typical humans, except they have no eyes
and generally keep their vestigial eye socket it's covered with
a blindfold. While other species in the Star Wars galaxy
possess only varied levels of connection to the force, the
Meriluka all possess enough force to manifest a kind of
force sight, an ability to sense their surroundings via forced

(01:15):
sensitivity in a way that makes up for their lack
of visual sense. Organs. This of course, plays on a
long standing Star Wars trope in which a forced sensitive
individual trains with a blindfold or some sort of blindfold
like device on so that they can better trust their
innate force sense of their surroundings. We see Luke do

(01:35):
this in the original nineteen seventy seven film. In Star
Wars Rebels, the Jedi Canonjaris sustains a blinding injury and
is forced to depend on his forced senses in this way.
And if you like me, played the video game Star
Wars Jedi Night Dark Forces two back in oh nineteen
ninety seven, you'll remember the game's chief antagonist, the Dark

(01:58):
Jedi Jerrik, played by christ Her name was also blind.
Subsequent Star Wars media retcon Jerrik to be both an
Imperial inquisitor and a member of the Mira Luca species.
Christopher name, by the way, has come up on Weird
House Cinema before, as he played Johnny Alucard in the
Hammer horror film Dracula AD nineteen seventy two, opposite Christopher Lee,

(02:23):
who of course has his own Star Wars heritage. But
I found this idea quite fascinating. The humanoids of the
Mirror Luca home world benefiting from species wide force sensitivity,
might have evolved to depend on the force as their
primary sense. To the degree that their eyes atrophy away

(02:45):
like some manner of organisms adapted for life in say
deep caves or the deep ocean, or something exposed to
the presumably much stronger sensory input of for sight, their
brains came to depend on it as the prime sense
to form a mental model of the surrounding world. Now

(03:05):
we don't quite have a parallel for this in the
natural world, but I was reminded of the common rat.
A rat's eye sight is quite poor, but makes up
for it with suburb hearing, scent, and touch via their
whisker sense, which I am tempted to compare it to foresight.
In this scenario, rats excel at life and artificial human

(03:26):
constructions such as the interiors of walls or say in
the sewer, as well as all sorts of naturally occurring
spaces like this, and to navigate these environments, these little mazes,
they depend in large part on high resolution sensory maps,
which they generate in their heads via constant sweeps of

(03:46):
their delicate whiskers. They can also detect slight changes in
air currents with their whiskers. Our perception of reality is
based on the mental models we form based on input
from our senses. Animals with different levels of sensory details,
such as stronger hearing or weaker sight, or different cognitive abilities,

(04:07):
they essentially occupy a different sensory world. So it's a
fascinating exercise to imagine what our own lives would be
like with any of these sensory knobs adjusted even a
little bit, or indeed an entirely new sensory input, perhaps
based on the mysterious force added to the equation. Tune

(04:28):
in for additional episodes of The Monster Fact, The Artifact,
or Animalius to Pendium each week. As always, you can
email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind
dot com.

Speaker 1 (04:46):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,