Star Wars The Clone Wars Season Five News and Discussion

[Set Harth]

I've always felt that "Jedi Knights" as a general reference should refer to both Knights and Masters. Maybe even the padawans too in a sense. But as a rank Knight is the place we find Anakin at the beginning of ROTS, or Obi-Wan at the end of TPM, when each is neither a padawan nor a Master.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

The crawls at the beginning of each of the three PT films refer to "Jedi Knights." Certainly in the case of TPM and ROTS, they are referring to a Master. In the case of TMP, it's a Master and a Padawn, at that. Weird.

 

[Christopher]

Okay, so the films do use "knights." Maybe it's just the Clone Wars show that tends to use "Jedi" as a noun rather than an adjective?

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Well, no, not exactly, either. As JD pointed upthread, Luke declared himself "a Jedi" to the Emperor, and the film was called Return of the Jedi. On the other hand, earlier in the film, Luke introduced himself to Jabba as a "Jedi Knight."

In ANH, Ben said,

"A young Jedi named Darth Vader, who was a pupil of mine until he turned to evil, helped the Empire hunt down and destroy the Jedi Knights. He betrayed and murdered your father. Now the Jedi are all but extinct. Vader was seduced by the dark side of the Force."​

So, even the films of the OT use Jedi as a noun too, sometimes, so it's not strictly a binary thing. Maybe that's what's caused some of the misunderstanding.

 

[Christopher]

^I never said it was binary. Of course I know "Jedi" was used as a noun before -- like you say, it's right there in the title. I just had the impression that the "Jedi Knight" formation specifically was being used far more rarely than it used to be. I don't have any hard evidence to back that up -- it's just that while watching last week's episode, I heard characters saying "a Jedi" this and "the Jedi" that, and the thought struck me, "Whatever happened to 'Jedi Knight'?"

 

[Mr. Adventure]

Padme could tell you some stories about those Jedi Nights....

 

[JD]

No, Christopher, I'm not treating this like a competition. I was simply clarifying what context those remarks were made in, because it's unfair to say that someone's reply is in error when it's not.

Huh?? I didn't say the reply was in error, I just said it wasn't addressing the particular question I was asking. The conversation seemed to branch out in a different direction from what I was asking about. I was only trying to clarify what I was asking in the first place.

And no one's hijacked anyone's conversation. If you think that that's happening, that's just bizarre.

What I meant was that your reply sounded like you were criticizing me for trying to divert the conversation away from what you were talking about -- which was strange, because I was the one who started the conversation.

Yes, I've noticed that Knights are mentioned less, but I haven't data-mined TCW transcripts to count occurrences, and I'm not going to. Besides, how do you measure many vs. few relative to the OT, when there are only 6+ hours of OT vs. I don't know how many hours of PT/TCW.

But as I basically suggested in my immediately previous post, there would naturally be [in some sense] sparse mentioning of Knights in TCW relative to the OT, since almost none of the main Jedi characters in TCW have the rank of Knight, but in ANH apparently all Jedi were considered Knights.

Has it been established that Knight is a distinct, limited rank among the Jedi? If so, who actually has that rank and who doesn't? I've just heard/noticed it being used so little these days that I wouldn't know if that's the case or not. I'm sure a lot of this stuff is well-known to dedicated SW fans, but I'm just a casual viewer asking some entry-level questions and there's a lot I don't know.

Knight is the specific rank that goes after Padawan and before Master. I think Jedi Knight is also used a general term for the whole order.

 

[Admiral_Young]

Yeah it usually goes like this:

-Youngling
-Padawan Learner
-Jedi Knight
-Jedi Master

Then the head of the order (in this case of course Yoda) is called the Grand Master.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Here are some estimated counts of the number of occurrences of various substrings, within the OT and PT scripts from BlueHarvest.net and IMSDb in the case of ROTS.

Long TL;DR: This approach is quick-and-dirty to estimate the number of occurrences using the standard tool, grep, so there are important caveats. The count is of the number of lines in each web archive that match the search criteria. The search is case-insensitive. This should be a good estimate of the number of occurrences, because lines are sort, especially in the case of dialog. Unfortunately, the IMSDb script breaks words in the middle, to limit HTML line size, because it uses word-wrap to format the HTML, instead of relying on a static line size. Also unfortunately, not only are both dialog and directions searched by this method, but also the raw HTML and other archive data is; however, the text of the scripts should dominate the matches, since the other data is expressed in computer language. [ETA: It looks like it is possible to get text-only scripts using my browser. I should have gotten those to begin with, so that's a goof on my part. However, even if I reran this with text-only scripts, the process still wouldn't be perfect, because it wouldn't be restricted to just dialog.] Additionally, for two word phrases, it isn't precisely the same as counting all matching lines, because even if it took whitespace into account in a foolproof way (which for clarity I opted not to do), due to the limitation in the program it couldn't take into account line breaks anyway. Additionally, note that the web archives (which were fetched yesterday) do not necessarily reflect the final versions of the scripts or exactly what's on screen.

Medium TL;DR: Experienced UNIX users understand the strengths and limitations of the standard grep tool.

Short TL;DR: It's offered as-is. If someone cares, they can pick up the baton and crunch more accurate data.

$ ls
BlueHarvest.net - Attack of the Clones Script.mht
BlueHarvest.net - Return of the Jedi script.mht
BlueHarvest.net - Star Wars_ A New Hope script.mht
BlueHarvest.net - The Empire Strikes Back script.mht
BlueHarvest.net - The Phantom Menace Script.mht
Star Wars_ Revenge of the Sith Script at IMSDb..mht

$ grep -ic jedi *
BlueHarvest.net - Attack of the Clones Script.mht:167
BlueHarvest.net - Return of the Jedi script.mht:43
BlueHarvest.net - Star Wars_ A New Hope script.mht:17
BlueHarvest.net - The Empire Strikes Back script.mht:20
BlueHarvest.net - The Phantom Menace Script.mht:96
Star Wars_ Revenge of the Sith Script at IMSDb..mht:247

$ grep -ic knight *
BlueHarvest.net - Attack of the Clones Script.mht:5
BlueHarvest.net - Return of the Jedi script.mht:3
BlueHarvest.net - Star Wars_ A New Hope script.mht:8
BlueHarvest.net - The Empire Strikes Back script.mht:1
BlueHarvest.net - The Phantom Menace Script.mht:8
Star Wars_ Revenge of the Sith Script at IMSDb..mht:2

$ grep -ic youngling *
BlueHarvest.net - Attack of the Clones Script.mht:3
BlueHarvest.net - Return of the Jedi script.mht:0
BlueHarvest.net - Star Wars_ A New Hope script.mht:0
BlueHarvest.net - The Empire Strikes Back script.mht:0
BlueHarvest.net - The Phantom Menace Script.mht:0
Star Wars_ Revenge of the Sith Script at IMSDb..mht:5

$ grep -ic padawan *
BlueHarvest.net - Attack of the Clones Script.mht:11
BlueHarvest.net - Return of the Jedi script.mht:0
BlueHarvest.net - Star Wars_ A New Hope script.mht:0
BlueHarvest.net - The Empire Strikes Back script.mht:0
BlueHarvest.net - The Phantom Menace Script.mht:4
Star Wars_ Revenge of the Sith Script at IMSDb..mht:2

$ grep -ic learner *
BlueHarvest.net - Attack of the Clones Script.mht:4
BlueHarvest.net - Return of the Jedi script.mht:0
BlueHarvest.net - Star Wars_ A New Hope script.mht:1
BlueHarvest.net - The Empire Strikes Back script.mht:0
BlueHarvest.net - The Phantom Menace Script.mht:2
Star Wars_ Revenge of the Sith Script at IMSDb..mht:1

$ grep -ic master *
BlueHarvest.net - Attack of the Clones Script.mht:97
BlueHarvest.net - Return of the Jedi script.mht:43
BlueHarvest.net - Star Wars_ A New Hope script.mht:14
BlueHarvest.net - The Empire Strikes Back script.mht:19
BlueHarvest.net - The Phantom Menace Script.mht:41
Star Wars_ Revenge of the Sith Script at IMSDb..mht:79

$ grep -ic order *
BlueHarvest.net - Attack of the Clones Script.mht:41
BlueHarvest.net - Return of the Jedi script.mht:23
BlueHarvest.net - Star Wars_ A New Hope script.mht:18
BlueHarvest.net - The Empire Strikes Back script.mht:19
BlueHarvest.net - The Phantom Menace Script.mht:22
Star Wars_ Revenge of the Sith Script at IMSDb..mht:50

$ grep -ic 'padawan learner' *
BlueHarvest.net - Attack of the Clones Script.mht:2
BlueHarvest.net - Return of the Jedi script.mht:0
BlueHarvest.net - Star Wars_ A New Hope script.mht:0
BlueHarvest.net - The Empire Strikes Back script.mht:0
BlueHarvest.net - The Phantom Menace Script.mht:2
Star Wars_ Revenge of the Sith Script at IMSDb..mht:1

$ grep -ic 'jedi knight' *
BlueHarvest.net - Attack of the Clones Script.mht:3
BlueHarvest.net - Return of the Jedi script.mht:3
BlueHarvest.net - Star Wars_ A New Hope script.mht:4
BlueHarvest.net - The Empire Strikes Back script.mht:0
BlueHarvest.net - The Phantom Menace Script.mht:8
Star Wars_ Revenge of the Sith Script at IMSDb..mht:2

$ grep -ic 'jedi master' *
BlueHarvest.net - Attack of the Clones Script.mht:4
BlueHarvest.net - Return of the Jedi script.mht:1
BlueHarvest.net - Star Wars_ A New Hope script.mht:0
BlueHarvest.net - The Empire Strikes Back script.mht:3
BlueHarvest.net - The Phantom Menace Script.mht:2
Star Wars_ Revenge of the Sith Script at IMSDb..mht:5

$ grep -ic 'jedi order' *
BlueHarvest.net - Attack of the Clones Script.mht:4
BlueHarvest.net - Return of the Jedi script.mht:0
BlueHarvest.net - Star Wars_ A New Hope script.mht:0
BlueHarvest.net - The Empire Strikes Back script.mht:0
BlueHarvest.net - The Phantom Menace Script.mht:0
Star Wars_ Revenge of the Sith Script at IMSDb..mht:6

$ exit

 

[CorporalCaptain]

If we divide the number of times the word Jedi occurs, by the number of times the word Knight occurs (whether upper or lower case), we get a measure of how much more frequently the word Jedi occurs without the word Knight. If the two words always occurred together, the ratio would be exactly one. But the more the word Jedi occurs without the word Knight, the greater that ratio is.

Using grep and a multi-part bash command, that ratio (as an integer, without remainder) can be straightforwardly calculated, according to the limitations described above, and the episodes sorted from least to greatest ratio. The results are:

$ for f in *; do echo $f:$((`grep -ic jedi "$f"`/`grep -ic knight "$f"`)); done | sort --field-separator=: --key=2 --numeric-sort
BlueHarvest.net - Star Wars_ A New Hope script.mht:2
BlueHarvest.net - The Phantom Menace Script.mht:12
BlueHarvest.net - Return of the Jedi script.mht:14
BlueHarvest.net - The Empire Strikes Back script.mht:20
BlueHarvest.net - Attack of the Clones Script.mht:33
Star Wars_ Revenge of the Sith Script at IMSDb..mht:123

The general trend is evident. Generally speaking, as movie release date increases, the word Jedi is used more and more without the word Knight accompanying it. The final ratio for ROTS is roughly two orders of magnitude higher than that for ANH.

This probably isn't exactly what Christopher was asking about, but this is something objective that we can put a handle on, that I think is a step towards answering his question.

ETA: Taking a look at the occurrences of the word Jedi in ROTS, many of them are in the directions, e.g. "The JEDI STARFIGHTERS extend the stability foils on the ends of their wings." But given that the word Knight was detected on only two lines of the whole script [and a manual text search in fact finds only two matches at all], we can conclude that there almost certainly is a definite shift in just the dialog, as indicated.

 

[Stephen!]

"To Catch a Jedi" second preview
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jfV3F1vGYY

 

[Mr. Adventure]

My head's still spinning at CorporalCaptain's analysis.

 

[Christopher]

The general trend is evident. Generally speaking, as movie release date increases, the word Jedi is used more and more without the word Knight accompanying it. The final ratio for ROTS is roughly two orders of magnitude higher than that for ANH.

This probably isn't exactly what Christopher was asking about, but this is something objective that we can put a handle on, that I think is a step towards answering his question.

Actually that's pretty much exactly what I was asking about. Thanks for making the effort.

It's not a linear trend, though; "Jedi Knight" seems to have been used a lot more in TPM than in any other film except ANH. Still, it does seem to be a less common usage than it was when SW first began.

I imagine it would be prohibitively difficult to factor The Clone Wars into such an analysis, though.


So if "Knight" is the rank between Padawan and Master, what characters are there in the Clone Wars era who actually hold that rank? I'd think that Anakin would be a Knight, because he graduated from Padawan sometime after AOTC, yet Ahsoka calls him Master. I assume that's "Master" in the sense of a master/apprentice relationship, so a Padawan might call him that even if his actual rank is Knight rather than Master, though it's confusing. (No more so than "captain" in the Navy, though.)

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

Didn't Luke say he was a Jedi, like his father before him, not a Jedi Knight?

Yes, he did.

Also, the film was called Return of the Jedi, not Return of the Jedi Knights.

Actually in Germany it was: Rückkehr der Jedi Ritter

 

[CorporalCaptain]

The general trend is evident. Generally speaking, as movie release date increases, the word Jedi is used more and more without the word Knight accompanying it. The final ratio for ROTS is roughly two orders of magnitude higher than that for ANH.

This probably isn't exactly what Christopher was asking about, but this is something objective that we can put a handle on, that I think is a step towards answering his question.

Actually that's pretty much exactly what I was asking about. Thanks for making the effort.

Appreciated. The actual inspiration took about a millisecond, and the execution of the commands took just a few minutes. Far more involved was typing up the explanatory text.

I imagine it would be prohibitively difficult to factor The Clone Wars into such an analysis, though.

One main set of difficulties is in locating a complete set of accurate transcripts online, that are in a format that's preferably both uniform across all episodes and suitable for straightforwardly performing the separation described in the next paragraph, and downloading them efficiently and so preferably under program control.

In order to efficiently and reliably separate the extraneous text from the dialog, chiefly the directions and other metadata, a next set of difficulties involves accomplishing that separation programmatically.

Having accomplished all that, overcoming the limitations of grep would be—relatively speaking—straightforward and just a token bit of extra effort.

So, yeah, all that's just too much work, especially if in the end it would only shed just a little additional light on this single issue.

So if "Knight" is the rank between Padawan and Master, what characters are there in the Clone Wars era who actually hold that rank? I'd think that Anakin would be a Knight

Yeah. Remember in ROTS, Anakin was incensed that he wasn't promoted to the rank of Master when he was put on the Jedi Council.

it's confusing

Yep!

---

Actually in Germany it was: Rückkehr der Jedi Ritter

Ah, thanks! So a literal translation of that is Return of the Jedi Knights, then. Neat!

 

[Admiral_Young]

Anakin's actual rank is Jedi Knight, just as Obi-Wan's was in "Attack of the Clones" and yes even though he has the rank of "Knight" he is referred to as "Master" due to the nature of their mentor/student relationship. Obi-Wan seems to have been promoted to the rank of "Master" in between AOTC and ROTS and was assigned a seat on the Council. Only Jedi Masters can sit on the Council, which is why Anakin was upset about that.

 

[Set Harth]

So if "Knight" is the rank between Padawan and Master, what characters are there in the Clone Wars era who actually hold that rank? I'd think that Anakin would be a Knight

Yeah. Remember in ROTS, Anakin was incensed that he wasn't promoted to the rank of Master when he was put on the Jedi Council.

If only someone had already mentioned that...

 

[Christopher]

I liked the "don't hurt anybody" fight with Ahsoka and Ventress against the troopers. You don't usually see pure hand-to-hand action on this show; it's either energy weapons or Force pushes. So this was a nice bit of variety in the action choreography.

I'm afraid it's pretty obvious now that Bariss Offee is the traitor. She's the one who sent Ahsoka to that warehouse, the only one who knew she'd be there; and she was pretty evasive about where she got the information. The Expanded Universe has established her still being with the Jedi up through the events of Episode III, so I guess this is more evidence that the EU is not so canonical after all.

I'm kind of hoping this will end with Ahsoka alive but permanently leaving the Jedi. That would explain her absence in ROTS without requiring her to die like everyone expects.

 

[DarthPipes]

I'd be funny if the twist really was that Padme had done it because she wanted to keep jailbait Ashoka away from her husband.Really good episode once again. I always love when it's set on Coruscant because the work the animators do there is consistently amazing. I also enjoyed the return of Ventress, who is such a fun character.

 

[Set Harth]

I liked the "don't hurt anybody" fight with Ahsoka and Ventress against the troopers.

Which retroactively turned into "don't kill anybody" after it was over, because I think they did hurt somebody.

You don't usually see pure hand-to-hand action on this show

I've missed quite a few episodes over the last couple seasons, but I've seen a lot of it recently, most notably in last season's Bounty. And I think there was a lot of it in Wookiee Hunt.

The Expanded Universe has established her still being with the Jedi up through the events of Episode III, so I guess this is more evidence that the EU is not so canonical after all.

"Luckily" she didn't make it onto the screen in ROTS, but she was in the script.