Maen had no cards, but she did have a sort of holographic chess-game. Either way, the Doctor's plan worked. By asking whether we could play a card-game (or any game) she forgot all about our use of the word "Earthlings", so I didn't have to explain to her where I was from. Which got to remind me, why didn't she ask anything about where the Doctor came from? After all, he was the one with the bigger-on-the-inside booth, shaped to look like something which Maen probably never saw before either.
Anyway, Maen was playing the game against the Doctor (I'd have loved to, but I'm barely any good at Earth Chess, so I didn't think I'd be any good with this). After a while, C3PO entered the rec room.
"Master Maen." he said, "There is a problem with the engines."
"What is it?" she asked him.
"I don't know, they're not making any sense." he replied.
Maen sighed as she got up: "Be back in a moment."
"This isn't your tactic to win the game, is it?" the Doctor questioned.
"No." Maen said, "The droid ain't very good at lying."
With this she left the room. This was a time for me to ask other questions.
"Does that droid even know the difference between a man and a woman?" I asked.
"Do you mean why he addresses Maen as "master" instead of "mistress"?" the Doctor asked for clarification.
"Well... yeah?" I replied.
"It must be Maen's own preference." the Doctor said, "Maybe "mistress" implies something else in her mind, so she prefers "master" instead."
Hadn't thought of that. Then again, so far she seemed quite... boyish. In a way, it shouldn't surprise me she would demand such a thing from others. As that thought crossed my mind, I saw something else was on the Doctor's mind.
"Something you're not telling me?" I asked.
"This Darth Vader is part of the Force now." he explained, "In other words, he should know better than others what he's doing to the rest of the universe."
Why did that surprise him?
"By the sounds of it, Vader is just a conqueror." I deduced, "He must know he can never conquer the whole galaxy, or even the universe, so if he resorts to changing it instead..."
"You don't understand." the Doctor interrupted, "If he changes the fabric of our universe, he'd also be changing the Force that's keeping it together."
I paused: "Right. So?"
"He'd be changing it into something in which he himself can't live either." the Doctor finished.
That was weird indeed: "Could he really be so bent on conquering everything, he'd rather destroy it than lose it?"
"I don't know." the Doctor said, "If it were the Emperor under whom he served, yes. But Darth Vader himself... I find that hard to believe."
"The Emperor?" this was the first time I heard of him.
"Yes." the Doctor replied, "While it was Darth Vader who lead the troops, and therefor is the one that most people remember, he was merely doing the bidding of an emperor."
A thought crossed my mind: "Do you think this Emperor is now pretending to be Vader?"
"If so, to what end?" the Doctor questioned, "There is very little they can do against him, now that he's one with the Force. Especially since he's spending time killing off Jedi's."
That was weird indeed. If this Emperor was hoping to turn all of the Jedi's against Vader, then why would he kill so many of them?
"Oh, I wish R2D2 were still here..." I heard C3PO whine as he came back.
"Ah! You're back." the Doctor immediately addressed Maen.
Maen used some tech-babble as a reply, but from what I could gather, the ship wasn't in the best of shapes (big surprise), so she had to do something to it so it would hold on until we reach Dagobah.
"Er..." I started, "How sure are you it would hold on for that long?"
"It never broke apart before." she replied, flatly.
This person needed to learn how to reassure people better.