Wow. Okay. Where to start? The beginning, I guess...
Call it what you will. It is a fictitious ship from a movie.
Then why is it so important that you be right and I wrong?
Up till about 2000, all the licensees called it a Blockade Runner. So please don't pretend like it's not correct, or you are some how more enlightened, because you call it by it's newer name.
I was barely old enough to register the original film when my parents took me to see it. I had the novelization and storybook and read-along audio tape. Then my parents started getting me the action figures and vehicles around the time the 12-backs became the 24-backs. I remember the Holiday Special. Then, by the time TESB came out in 1980, I had Splinter of the Mind's Eye and was collecting the Marvel comics (although Rom Spaceknight #1 gets pride of place as the first comic I ever bought). My folks had gotten me the Star Wars release of the
Millennium Falcon, all the rest of my vehicles were for Empire. Novelization and storybook and read-along tape, too, plus the pop-up book and Marvel adaptation...
I'm not afraid to eat a little crow, when I have to. I hate being wrong, so I try to keep it to a minimum. It still happens from time to time (shock gasp horror!!). In my defense, I was 2 when Star Wars came out. I can't remember a time when I wasn't at least vaguely aware of its existence, but the span from Star Wars to Empire was also a period of increasing sapience on my part. I just went back and checked, since it's been a few years since I'd read the Star Wars novelization. I was... *braces* ... in error where the facts are concerned. The first instance in the outer world of the ship's actual name was the radio drama in early '81. I think I must be collapsing later adaptations in with my earlier memories. Like the manga or the Special Edition adaptation from Dark Horse or something.
That said, not quite four years after Star Wars came out does not constitute "decades". Yes, all through here, up until 1983, when ROTJ came out, Leia's ship was the only one of that type we'd seen. So yeah, the references calling it a "Rebel Blockade Runner" -- all the way back to the script (which I hadn't read yet, by that point) -- weren't incorrect, and for six years we didn't know whether it was the
only Rebel Blockade Runner. Especially even though we'd never seen it run any blockades. *heh* The implication I never saw voiced (at the time) was that it had run an Imperial blockade to get the
Death Star plans. I have seen it called many things. The novelization and storybook call it a "galactic cruiser". The '80s also saw it dubbed an Alderaanian cruiser, Alderaanian transport, and Corellian corvette. None of these are wrong, and none, IMO, supercede any other. But it's name is its
name.
I know not everyone listened to the NPR radio drama (I recommend it), then or now, but that doesn't remove its presence or contribution. The name's been out there for over three and a half decades. I'm not "more enlightened" just because I caught it when it debuted. I just question vehement opposition from those who didn't.
--Jonah