Oook, okay, I see what the problem is with some of the episodes in S3 - corruption, taxation and tainted kiddie drinks just aren't all that interesting unless there are interesting ideas behind them. If they're handled in a generic way, the result is paaaaainfully boring.
Star Trek can do politics interestingly, but
Star Wars just doesn't have the knack. Maybe it shouldn't be trying.
Star Trek is complex,
Star Wars is simple - and to do a good, strong, simple story can be a big challenge, so I don't discount the value at all.
Ever since the beginning of the PT (and not counting novels, comcs, etc),
Star Wars has been trying to add some Trekkian complexity to its cosmos, and so far, it's been a failed experiment. Maybe
Clone Wars will finally change this track record, but the evidence to date tells me that I think they should have stuck with the original notion of
Star Wars as a grand saga built around the very simple idea of Good vs. Evil.
Don't start implying that the Jedi might be kind of corrupt just like the Sith. Don't drag in real-world political metaphors or build the story around politics or (ugh) economics. Make the core story an internal struggle as Jedi are forced to confront their own dark sides, not because of their psychological makeup or in response to a crumbling Republic, but because the inherent nature of life is a balance between Good and Evil, and mere humans will never be able to avoid the struggle and occasionally fail because that is the tragic nature of the cosmos, even if they can never accept that.
So far, what
Clone Wars isn't delivering is any sense that there's something grand and epic to the very idea of the Force. We have a grand and epic war, sure, but even that isn't very grand or epic since we know it's all a fraud and the participants (except for Palps) are chumps. It's high time we had more mythology built around the mystical or even theological aspects of the Force (light side and dark side alike). So far we've seen that it's a handy tool to use when swinging around a lightsaber. But it's gotta be a lot more than just that.
But I keep going, thinking the next episode will give me the
Star Wars I am looking for. Next up, the one where Ahsoka teaches school...
Well, more to the point, Lucas had to use clones somehow because he'd used the term "Clone Wars" as a throwaway reference back in A New Hope
There are other ways to explain the term. Have the bad guys be the ones doing the cloning of soldiers or have the clones be slaves who are the source of the conflict but not combatants. Either would have been better options. I particularly like having clones being the reason for the war, just so nobody even needs to discuss taxes or trade routes.
But I think that when the time came along to do the prequels, Lucas had other issues that he was more interested in exploring, commentaries he wanted to make on the real world, and so the whole "clone" thing became something of an afterthought, a reference he was stuck with using somehow but wasn't really all that invested in.
Lucas should have left the political metaphors to
Star Trek. I think the trouble is, he just isn't very good at that type of writing. I can't even tell what he's driving at - I see things that seem like they're reprehensible that are treated matter-of-factly, and I wonder if this society simply doesn't have the same values that we do.
Maybe they honestly don't regard clones as equal to other sentients, or regard torture as immoral. In the real world, using children as combatants is a war crime, but in
Star Wars, nobody minds if Ahsoka and other adolescents risk their necks on a daily basis, besides being far too young to give informed consent about it. If I can't even tell what the ground rules are, then analogies are built on shifting sand. Maybe they're there, maybe I'm just imagining things. It might be more interesting if the "good guys" in
Star Wars really don't have the same default values I do, but in that case, political metaphors become untenable.
Well, seeing as how the clone army turned on the Jedi and murdered them all in ROTS, I don't think he was.
The clones didn't murder the Jedi because they were angry at being oppressed by the Jedi or the system the Jedi represented, but because Palps programmed them to. The former would have carried the analogy through properly; the latter just sidesteps the analogy because it's a plot contrivance that has no real-world resonance. The Jedi were never portrayed as anything but moral and upstanding in the PT, and
Clone Wars is continuing that theme pretty consistently.
If Lucas wants us to believe the Jedi are evil and corrupt, he's going to have to be a bit more up front about it. Even when Mace, Obi-Wan and Anakin in effect tortured Cad Bane (and risked turning him into a vegetable), I got no sense that the writers/producers wanted me to disapprove of this behavior. It was presented matter-of-factly, and the heroes were in no way punished for what they did.
As far as the movies were concerned, I think Lucas saw the clones as being little different from the droids -- programmed cannon fodder. The portrayal of the clones as individuals is more a product of the current TV series.
Either way, it's a crime against humanity (but I'm not sure which portrayal is the bigger crime).
TCW is in kind of an awkward position, because they have a lot of moral ambiguity in their premise -- their main "hero" Anakin being a murderer and future genocidal monster, their "heroic" clone troopers being a ticking time bomb whose very creation is ethically questionable -- but they can't really address it within the format of an adventure cartoon about heroes versus villains.
That really is the essential problem. Are we seeing an adventure for children, in which case we shouldn't worry about any moral implications of clones or child soldiers, and therefore political analogies are impossible (because the moral universe presented is too far off base from our own) or are we seeing a story intended for adults, in which case poltical analogies are possible, and we can also have grownup complexity involving politics and economics, but care needs to be taken not to
accidentally present these people as being morally culpable, which I'm pretty sure is happening through sheer carelessness.
The only ambiguity in the premise that they couldn't avoid is having a future psycho be the main character. But it could still work okay as a child's story or an adult's - kids won't mind what Anakin does later as long as he's cool today, and adults can enjoy the entire saga as a tragic tale of hubris gone horribly wrong. But they need to jump one way or the other, and stop muddling around in the middle. And Anakin isn't "ambiguous" as long as you have a viewpoint about him and use the story to express that viewpoint.
Not to mention the intimate connection between the Dutchess and Obi-Wan, especially since the Jedi rule is to have no romantic ties to anyone. What they've been telling Anakin he couldn't have, Obi-Wan already did. It plays into Anakin believing the Jedi are hypocrites. How does that not factor in?
I don't see how Anakin could regard Obi-Wan as a hypocrite since he gave up having a relationship with Satine in favor of the Jedi - or, if he had chosen Satine, would have left the Jedi Order (and I wonder if Anakin overheard that conversation). That's exactly how a Jedi should do it - choose one or the other. Anakin refuses to choose. More likely, I think Anakin might regard the Jedi as stupid old nannies who make up rules needlessly. He doesn't seem to acknowledge that there's any value to avoiding attachment, so why should he feel it applies to him? Or maybe he thinks he's such hot shit that he's a special case.
.
) inexplicably surviving a HUGE crash (dragged from the wreckage my Vorta ass). 
