Señor Spielbergo said:
It is a rewrite. IMHO, even if the characters are different, I'd rather not have to ingest a bunch of made-up names of characters and planets. I'm working around the source material, not completely throwing it out.
Ah, my mistake. I guess I'm not interested, then.
Familiar character names are for convenience and context.
Er... how convenient is it and what context do you get when they're not actually the same characters?