Star Wars:The Clone Wars S3......so far

[Mr Light]

I think they run the outlines past Lucas and he has veto power but that's it. I recall that Stover originally wrote the ROTS Novelization showing the Dark Side as an demonic consciousness manipulating Anakin but Lucas nixed the idea; the Dark Side does not have a personality or a will.

 

[sikkbones]

I think they run the outlines past Lucas and he has veto power but that's it. I recall that Stover originally wrote the ROTS Novelization showing the Dark Side as an demonic consciousness manipulating Anakin but Lucas nixed the idea; the Dark Side does not have a personality or a will.

Until lucas decides otherwise.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

I recall that Stover originally wrote the ROTS Novelization showing the Dark Side as an demonic consciousness manipulating Anakin but Lucas nixed the idea; the Dark Side does not have a personality or a will.

For it to be simply demonic possession or even akin to drug addiction is a terrible idea. The person has to have enough control to make a moral choice to fall to the Dark Side, not by being forced or by being weak (addiction, stupidity, childhood trauma), but because the Dark Side is attractive in and of itself, particularly to certain personality types (impatient, egotisical, loves freedom/power, strong sense of self-justification), but even then, evil is attractive to anyone. Evil is attractive even to an intelligent, modest, patient, selfless, self-possessed guy like Obi-Wan (and it would go a long way if they'd do a story that deals with Obi-Wan being tempted by the Dark Side).

Possession/drug addiction can be in the mix, but the main idea behind the Dark Side has to be that evil is attractive. Anything else is a cop-out.

The Dark Side and the Force should not have a personality; that's too humanized. It should have a will only in the most incomprehensible and alien sense. It shouldn't be the kind of will a character in the story would have. It shouldn't have an agenda or take sides because it shouldn't care about petty squabbles between Jedi and Sith.

 

[Set Harth]

The only way they could "screw up" is to choose an option that makes for a worse story when they could have chosen an option that makes for a better story.

No, there's another way for them to screw up: by contradicting the films. The show is already very experienced with this type of screwup, since they contradict established EU all the time. If the writers want to tell "a (supposedly) better story" but don't want to work within the constraints of film canon, they shouldn't be writing in the SW universe at all. They should be writing some kind of original, independent sci-fi/fantasy project of their own having nothing to do with SW. So, they can in fact screw up; they don't get some kind of magical exemption from human fallibility.

I recall that Stover originally wrote the ROTS Novelization showing the Dark Side as an demonic consciousness manipulating Anakin but Lucas nixed the idea

I doubt that. Stover had a character in another book outright deny the existence of the dark side of the Force. It's more likely IMO that he tried to inject this same viewpoint into the ROTS novel but was corralled by Lucas. In the same year they released a book by Luceno which had the dark side whispering to Anakin.

The person has to have enough control to make a moral choice to fall to the Dark Side, not by being forced

The vampire can only come in if it's invited in. No one said "forced".

It shouldn't have an agenda or take sides because it shouldn't care about petty squabbles between Jedi and Sith.

Except when so-called "petty squabbles" between Jedi and Sith determine the fate of the galaxy.

loves freedom/power

I always knew those freedom lovers were dangerous! Think of the potential for ruffling the feathers of those who hate freedom. It's chaos in the making.

 

[Hartzilla2007]

The only way they could "screw up" is to choose an option that makes for a worse story when they could have chosen an option that makes for a better story.

No, there's another way for them to screw up: by contradicting the films. The show is already very experienced with this type of screwup, since they contradict established EU all the time.

Well considering the EU was contridicted by the films ie the REAL canon you can't blame the show for doing it too.

 

[Set Harth]

Well considering the EU was contridicted by the films ie the REAL canon you can't blame the show for doing it too.

I was referring to things in the EU that are consistent with the films, such as Ryloth
( which does not appear in the films ).

 

[Hartzilla2007]

Well considering the EU was contridicted by the films ie the REAL canon you can't blame the show for doing it too.

I was referring to things in the EU that are consistent with the films, such as Ryloth
( which does not appear in the films ).

Yes, but again the rules of the EU are basically it's canon unless Lucas contridicts it, seeing as Lucas is running Clone Wars anything they do superseeds the EU, or as I like to see it the reality of tie-in literature.

 

[Christopher]

No, there's another way for them to screw up: by contradicting the films. The show is already very experienced with this type of screwup, since they contradict established EU all the time. If the writers want to tell "a (supposedly) better story" but don't want to work within the constraints of film canon, they shouldn't be writing in the SW universe at all.

Actually, any long-running canon will inevitably contradict itself. Creation is a work in progress, and long-running creations often rethink old ideas or refuse to let them preclude worthwhile new ideas. The goal of storytelling is to tell good stories. Consistency is important to that, yes, but if you're so obsessed with consistency that it keeps you from telling the best story you can, then you're doing it wrong. The great thing about a fictional universe is that it's not real and thus it can be rewritten if it needs to be.

I mean, come on, it's not like the six extant films are entirely consistent with one another as it is. Obi-Wan says in TESB that Yoda trained him, but TPM gives us Qui-Gon. Leia says in ROTJ that she remembers her real mother, but ROTS has her mother die in childbirth. The original films imply that a long time has passed since the Clone Wars and the heyday of the Jedi (Han dismisses the Force as an obscure legend), but the prequels put them only a couple of decades earlier, within Han's lifetime. And what about the revised versions of the original trilogy? Who shot first, Han or Greedo?

A lot of fans think that a canon is something absolutely consistent. That's never true. A canon is merely something that pretends to be a consistent reality, while actually making adjustments as it goes along like any work in progress. To say that you shouldn't be allowed to contribute to a canon if you're unable to be slavishly consistent is holding people up to an ideal that simply does not exist.

 

[Set Harth]

The original films imply that a long time has passed since the Clone Wars and the heyday of the Jedi (Han dismisses the Force as an obscure legend), but the prequels put them only a couple of decades earlier, within Han's lifetime.

The original films also put them within Han's lifetime, since Luke and Leia are younger than Han.

Obi-Wan says in TESB that Yoda trained him, but TPM gives us Qui-Gon.

Which doesn't preclude Yoda handing him off to Qui-Gon.

Leia says in ROTJ that she remembers her real mother, but ROTS has her mother die in childbirth.

This is explained by what the films tell us about the Force.

The goal of storytelling is to tell good stories. Consistency is important to that, yes, but if you're so obsessed with consistency that it keeps you from telling the best story you can, then you're doing it wrong.

This isn't an either-or situation. Good stories can be told while still maintaining consistency with canon. It's been done by certain authors. All it takes is a certain amount of care and creativity.

 

[Christopher]

^But you're making my point for me. Canons contradict themselves all the time, but their audiences accept the conceit that they're consistent and choose to construct rationalizations for the inconsistencies. That's why it's not an either-or situation. So it's absurd to say that anyone who can't keep a canon entirely consistent should be forbidden to participate in it. No canon actually is entirely consistent; its fans just choose to treat it as though it were and use their imagination to patch over the holes.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

No, there's another way for them to screw up: by contradicting the films.

They should keep the stuff from the PT that worked okay (and if any of these were actually established in the EU previously, my profuse apologies for being an ignorant Trekkie ) and scrap the stuff that didn't pan out:

Worked Okay

- The Jedi are a politically important semi-religious cabal who find and raise Force-sensitive children into a demanding and ascetic lifestyle.

- The Jedi run the military part of the Republic, and continually collaborate with the Senate, who run the political aspects.

- The Jedi are required to follow a philosophy of total detachment in order to avoid falling to the Dark Side. Their rules make sense and are not just a bizarre form of egotistical masochism.

- With rare exceptions, the Jedi don't allow marriage because that's almost impossible to pull off without attachment.

- The visuals and the music (they're doing a great job extrapolating on both).

Should be Scrapped/Details that Need to be Added

- Anakin being depicted as a weak, whiny punk. Fortunately, this has already been scrapped (yay!) - now he acts like a grown man, not a self-involved adolescent - so this depiction might have been unintentional all along.

- Padme being depicted as Useless Pregnant Girl, and having little identity beyond her relationship with Anakin (and being a dolt for having a relationship with Anakin). The revision in Anakin's depiction has solved part of this problem - I can now see how a smart, sensible lady might just "ignore" Jedi rules she doesn't value or understand to hang onto a very attractive guy - and Padme's political role in the story is being greatly expanded so that she's emerging as a central character who is helping to drive the story.

She doesn't seem nearly as powerless as she did in the movies, probably because we're seeing more of her initiating political action rather than hanging around being a target of assassins or moping around the house.

- The (perhaps also unintentional) depiction of the Clone Wars as wholly contrived by greedy capitalists and nefarious Sith, without any legitimate grievances from the Separatists. This is in the process of being scrapped (yay!) through the addition of more details to the story.

I'd like to see the legitimate Separatists being the original driving force behind the war, with the capitalists and Sith jumping on the bandwagon in an opportunistic way. This feels like a much more natural way for the war to evolve, and doesn't require the good guys to be ridiculously oblivious or naive.

- The lack of any reference to the morality of using clones as cannon fodder. As of the last episode, there are signs that this may be changing. My own favorite fanwank for addressing this problem is that the Republic isn't really a perfect analogy to our own society, because they don't have the concept that all sentient beings are equal.

We've seen artificial lifeforms like droids that seem just as smart (if not moreso) than flesh and blood beings, yet are treated as inferior. Maybe artificially-made flesh and blood beings are considered equivalent to droids, or intermediate between droids and naturally-occurring species in the Republic's social hierarchy?

I actually like the idea of the Republic being "alien" and a little creepy in this way - hey, it's sci fi after all! - but if this is what's happening, I'd like to see it spelled out.

- The character of Ahsoka is a "detail" that is turning out to be a very good addition to the story, now that the political/military saga is being personified in the conflict between Anakin and Padme (I think that's where they're going), and that conflict in turn is being personified in a tug of war over Ahsoka. As a child growing into adulthood, she represents the future, but whose future?

Still TBD

- As long as the above continues to be expanded upon in the coming seasons, all that's left is to finally delve into more details about the Force. What does it mean exactly to "fall to the Dark Side"? How much do each of these factors play into it? a) demonic possession; b) drug addiction; c) a cold-blooded pragmatic choice (the Dark Side confers more power more easily); d) the sheer attraction of irresponsible evil; e) personality type; and f) whatever factors I may be forgetting about?

 

[Admiral_Young]

Filoni has said that as the show progresses closer and closer to Episode III we will start seeing elements that were explored in that film. Anakin's descent into darkness as well as his status as a galactic celebrity (remember the Hero Without Fear stuff from the novelization?). This season (i guess the second half) will really start kicking off the motifs and themes from Episode III. Also at some point there needs to be a gap where Anakin and Padme haven't seen each other for a long time. I suspect that come Clone Wars season five Padme will have less and less appearances.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

The vampire can only come in if it's invited in. No one said "forced".

What vampires? The degree to which the Dark Side is coercive has not been established. The PT implies its wholly coercive in the case of someone too stupid to be on his guard against it (Anakin) but since Anakin's characterization that allows that to happen has now been scrapped, it's anybody's guess what's going on. I'd like TCW to provide some clarification (and I hope they know enough to keep the coercive component limited to a minor factor).

Except when so-called "petty squabbles" between Jedi and Sith determine the fate of the galaxy.

The fate of the galaxy as defined by the humanoids and other sentients that live in it. But why should that sort of fate concern the Force? It's not like the Jedi and Sith have the potential to completely destroy the galaxy, and even if they do, that's just one galaxy out of the countless number that exists in the cosmos. To the Force, any one galaxy would be amazingly petty and inconsequential.

I always knew those freedom lovers were dangerous! Think of the potential for ruffling the feathers of those who hate freedom. It's chaos in the making.

Freedom and power are the same thing. The irresponsible love of freedom is very different from the "good" kind that is promoted at Fourth of July parades etc, and is all we ever seem to hear about. Americans are culturally brainwashed to regard freedom as an always-positive thing, but it's not. Irresponsible freedom = irresponsible power.

A lot of fans think that a canon is something absolutely consistent. That's never true. A canon is merely something that pretends to be a consistent reality, while actually making adjustments as it goes along like any work in progress. To say that you shouldn't be allowed to contribute to a canon if you're unable to be slavishly consistent is holding people up to an ideal that simply does not exist.

Yep. TCW is contradicting the PT in revising Anakin's characterization, and the addition of legitimate grievances for the Separatists might not be as direct a contradiction, but certainly raises the issue of why this very important element was ignored in the PT. Ahsoka is too major a character to have been ignored in the PT (except that she didn't exist then).

But the TCW's contradictions are improvements over the PT, and I'm all in favor of canon violations that improve a story, especially one as badly butchered as the PT was. If TCW is what Lucas had planned all along, then he's a better storyteller than I gave him credit for. If he's simply realized the ways in which the PT didn't work and is repairing damage through TCW, then I give him credit for being able to admit and fix his mistakes. Either way, he's risen greatly in my estimation, and I'm sorry for all the times I called him a soulless hack who only cares about selling plastic crap to kiddies.

Oh, ps, you forgot my favorite OT mistake: Obi-Wan not telling Luke that Leia is his sister even though he would have had to be completely unobservant not to realize Luke was romantically interested in Leia. I guess we can fanwank that one away by deciding that as a Force ghost, Obi-Wan was in the perfect position to act as an omniscient chaparone and step in, if the need should ever arise, and there was no sense in spilling the beans sooner - it's safer that neither Luke nor Leia know the truth about each other - but after ESB, it would have made sense to tell Leia since she already had learned the truth about Luke at that point. Maybe Obi-Wan figured she couldn't keep a secret or would react "badly" to realizing who her daddy was, and it might impact her judgment and harm the rebellion?

 

[Admiral_Young]

The fate of the galaxy would concern the Force (since when did we start referring to the Force as a single entity unto it's self?) since if theoretically all it's inhabitants were destroyed there would be no one left to use it.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Waitaminute...the Force only operates in one galaxy in all the universe? I thought it was some huge thing that spans all of reality (the entire universe, which could encompass billions of galaxies). The folks in the Star Wars galaxy happened to have learned how to use it, but if they were to pay a visit to Andromeda or the Milky Way, their powers would still operate just fine.

I've never really thought about this, so if there's some dialogue that establishes the Force operates only as far as Star Wars' galaxy extends, then fine. But how would this even be plausible? I've been thinking that the Force is a fundamental law of physics, which operates everywhere if it operates anywhere, or even more fundamental than that, the "thing" that governs all laws of physics (perhaps related to string theory?)

If the Force really does stop at the edge of the galaxy, then it must be some sort of entity that lives in that galaxy, rather than being some sprawling, massive "mind of the cosmos" type thing that I've always envisioned. So it would be like some living being that was born and will someday die rather than something that came into being with the Big Bang and cannot die.

 

[Admiral_Young]

I was using fate of the galaxy as a generic term...we know from the books that the Yuzzan Vong come from a different galaxy where there is no Force.

 

[Whofan]

In the "New Jedi Order" books (taking place some 20+ years after Jedi) we're introduced to a race of extra-galactic warriors who basically are void of the force (Although the Jedi can still use the force push and stuff against them, they can't feel their presence and other things).


Also in the Thrawn Trilogy there are special creatures called Ysalmari who have evolved the ability to create a 'forceless' bubble around themselves. It sounds a bit silly, but it actually works in the context of the story.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

I didn't know that. Well, I don't really like the idea that there are places in the cosmos where the Force doesn't exist (as opposed to being a place where Force users happen not to be born, which could be genetics or something) since it does imply that the Force is a living being whose influence extends only so far. If it were part of the basic fabric of the universe, it would exist everywhere. (If the Yuzzan Vong have developed a way to block the Force and keep it from operating in their galaxy, that's a different matter entirely.)

Maybe the people arguing that the Force is a being with a personality and a will are correct. Or maybe this is just another example of canon that needs to be overwritten. I want the Force to be the strings in string theory.

 

[Whofan]

The Ysalmari come from a world where the carnivorses are powerful in the force, so it's kind of a defense mechanism.


I think there's something in the books about the force leaving the Vong in the books, and I think eventually, some began to feel the force later on or something like that.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

I think there's something in the books about the force leaving the Vong in the books, and I think eventually, some began to feel the force later on or something like that.

So the Force does exist everywhere, but it punishes people for using it wrong or for some other reason? That's more evidence that it's not like a fundamental law of physics and more like a living being. Gravity does not leave galaxies in a huff if people are misusing it.

Also in the Thrawn Trilogy there are special creatures called Ysalmari who have evolved the ability to create a 'forceless' bubble around themselves. It sounds a bit silly, but it actually works in the context of the story.

That doesn't sound silly. If some beings can manipulate the Force in various ways, then finding a way to neutralize it is a plausible idea. Like neutralizing gravity with "anti-gravity protons" or similar treknobabble.

Okay what I mean is this: there are four forces in the galaxy - gravity, electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force and the weak nuclear force. String theory is an attempt to link them all into one universal law of how everything works. So I've been envisioning the Force as the thing that modern physicists are stumbling across in their development of string theory. That would put the Force in the most fundamental and important position possible, the thing that underlies everything, not just living beings, but all matter, which seems to be implied by Jedi being able to levitate huge boulders, even though they are not alive.