According to that iconic opening credits crawl, the cosmic escapades of the dysfunctional Skywalker family (and the one son who has to keep it all together) happened a long time ago, in a galaxy far far away. Which seems unlikely, since there a very little fossil records that involve lightsabers or TIE fighters. Skulls with knives stuck through them, and kings exhumed in a Leicester car park, but no evidence of Star Wars in our distant past yet. Interstellar, meanwhile, is set in the not-so-distant future; and perhaps gives us a clue of exactly where in our timeline the Empire rises up, ready for the Rebel Alliance to strike them down. Seriously, if the parallels with Wall-E are a little eerie, the way that Interstellar seems to set up the Star Wars universe are even stranger. That little ship Cooper blasts off in to find Brand at the end looks suspiciously X-Wing like (or closer to an A-Wing, but thats splitting hairs), much of the technology used in the film work like earlier models of Star Wars gadgets, the Force is essentially manipulating gravity - which was a pretty big deal - and, most damning of all, there are sassy robot sidekicks. What more evidence do you need?
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
