See, this is why I always wished the only canon novels were the Star Wars: X-wing series and anything by Timothy Zahn. The rest of them all contradicted each other, or more importantly, contradicted my self-imposed canon.

 

Eh, everything got tighter with keeping to established canon after the 90s. Until the fucking Clone Wars cartoon.

 

Yep. As much as the New Jedi Order series - running from 1999 to 2003 - has been panned over the years, it was the first big EU project (that I can remember anyway) that really worked to bring a whole swath of older, disconnected EU materials together. It was filled with references and returning characters from a bunch of older sources that had previously only nominally been part of the same universe, which was nice to see.

I think it was also one of the starting points for the big retcon campaign they launched to rationalize the EU as a unified whole. They kept that up right to the moment Disney scrapped it all. By that point, the only really glaring continuity issues left in Legends that hadn't been reasonably well-addressed yet were the drastic changes The Clone Wars tv series made to the characters and universe, and a few persistent problems stemming from Star Wars: The Old Republic and Bioware's casual disregard for prior lore.

 

What changes did the Clone Wars cartoon make that are such a problem? I know some of the bigger changes: Order 66 being enforced by biochips, Mandalore going all pacifistic, Ahsoka Tano. I liked the series, myself, though I didn't read much of the EU, barring some KOTOR era stuff.

 

It pretty much completely invalidated almost every single bit of lore and every character arc that ever existed prior to it for the Clone Wars time period. There were a few things that crapped on older time periods like the Old Republic, but most of it was thankfully confined to the Clone Wars era.

Some of the absolute best products of the EU, like the Star Wars: Republic comics line and the truly excellent Mace Windu-focused novel Shatterpoint were completely shitcanned by it. Most infuriating of all, the show was not shy about stealing characters, events, ideas and locations from those older bits of lore, only to twist them beyond recognition and dumb them down to the level of the kids they were aiming the show at. Actually, now that I think of it, that's exactly what Disney has been doing with a lot of the stuff it mines from Legends, so maybe TCW just started the trend.

Also, the whole Mortis Arc. They took the Force, this amazing, compelling, mysterious, spiritual thing, and reduced it down to a ridiculous Zoroastrian knock-off where Generic Good Deity A and Generic Bad Deity B are eternally squabbling.

 

It also broke the magnificent ending to the Darth Bane trilogy, made Dathomir boring, broke the themes behind the trio of Darth Maul/Count Dooku/Grievous by bringing Maul back, and transformed the Clone Wars from the grueling grind that shattered the moral ground of the Jedi into a literal children's cartoon. Additionally: the clones were better pre-cartoon, Siri > Satine, and Order 66 happening because of biochips is and forever will be dumb. I dislike Filoni's sheer arrogance in disregarding previous Star Wars lore because only George should have that right.

Brilliant cartoon, fucking mess as Star Wars.

I will say though, Mortis was made better by Fate of the Jedi.

 

Well, he did have that right. Lucas approved or co-wrote every single arc in Clone Wars seasons 1-5. Filoni was the director, but he was very much second in command creatively until season 6. Clone Wars is Lucas' baby. Filoni was taken in and taught the ropes of how to care for the baby directly by George.

Let's not pretend Lucas had great respect for the EU. He did not. Have you read his sequel trilogy pitch? The man doubles down on midichlorians and microbiome force shenanigans. AND he wanted Maul back as the main villain, Darth Talon as his apprentice, retconning the entirety of the Darth Krayt and Vong storylines.

 

Agreed on everything but the biochips and Mortis. I don't think anything will make me stop despising the entire core concept behind Mortis. Demystifying the Force in any way was a huge mistake narratively (see: Midichlorians), and especially to do so in such a trite, cliché way that explicitly invalidated every other possible in-universe interpretation of the Force but the Jedi and Sith Orders' dualism (sorry Aing-Tii Monks, but nope, the Force isn't a whole spectrum, you're just dumb; sorry Jal Shey, but the Force is not anything you can even try to understand scientifically, because it was actually just gods all along; sorry Blackguard, but the nature of Dark Side is pretty much exactly what Sith Philosophy thinks it is - not a potential path to better understand the Universe - because it's god is basically the back-stabbiest, sith-iest of all Sith)...

As for the Biochips, I've seen a bunch of people complain about them, but I don't think I've ever seen someone actually articulate what was wrong with them. To me, it made vastly more sense than the original "because Clones are super likely to follow any order just because" justification. I'm aware that there was a little more to it than that, what with their psychological conditioning, but if anything can damage psychological conditioning, it would be years of extremely high-stress, high-emotion, high-trauma activity like fighting a drawn-out war.

Between that and the strong bonds that often formed between the Clones and their Generals, it never made much sense to me that almost all of them followed the order without thought or question, when that simply wasn't how they'd operated up to that point. And the idea introduced by Temuera Morrison's otherwise excellent Battlefront II narration (specifically the part about leaving Felucia and heading to Coruscant) - that the Clones knew everything ahead of time - was just stupid. The idea that a galaxy-spanning conspiracy can go off without a hitch and without anyone being the wiser for years when you have literally millions of knowing co-conspirators is patently ridiculous, especially when you consider that the conspiracy revolved around A) Knowing that Palpatine was Darth Sidious all along and B) fatally betraying the people they'd been serving and fighting alongside for years, the only people who'd ever shown them a lick of empathy or kindness.

A plan with that many failure points and built-in uncertainties is quite simply a bad plan. But to make something that physically overrides a Clone's ability to defy the Contingency Orders? So you don't have to depend on potentially unreliable conditioning or the unanimous willing silence of millions of individual conspirators? That is a much more secure plan, so long as it's technologically possible in the first place.

 

As we've... meandered pretty far from Obi-Wan (only a few more hours until next episode release at time of writing this post) this'll be my last post on this path we've gone down.

My problem with the biochips can essentially be put as "they're the easy and lazy way out for Order 66."

The FotJ, successfully in my opinion, reframed the Mortis Celestials from being actually Gods to Force users that went through what is essentially a more extreme version of what Kyle Katarn did at the Valley of the Jedi and Desaan did at the Force nexus below the Jedi Academy on Yavin IV.

 

I will say that I saw the mortis arc as just potential avatars of one potential interpretation of the force and fulfillment of prophecy.

but the Jedi/Sith are both corruptions of balance between light and dark based on the whole origins comic thing.

 

Derailing media threads into obscure lore discussions is what DLP does best.

 

Man, I knew this was going to be the episode where Obi-Wan was going to start the process of being himself again.

EDIT: Was also nice to see some Purge Troopers, and the mausoleum was chilling.

 

It's good to see, but it's also rather by-the-numbers writing. There wasn't really any good reason for why he was so rusty in the first place (as Yoda shows, the force is a spiritual/mental act, not based on physical fitness, and years meditating in the desert should only increase Obi-Wan's powers). Nor is there any real reason why he has now improved from his low point, beyond the fact that it's episode 4 and Obi-Wan needs to be ready for the climax.

Very visible strings on all the characters.

 

I don't think Disney recognize this as a thing

Honestly, I'll just repeat what I said awhile ago. Disney writes these stories in a vaccuum. There is not a consistent lore wizard who points out inconsistencies like this and holds the writers to the fire. There is very little attempt to build a consistent universe in terms of power levels. The force is turned into a PIS point rather than a mystical system.

 

Have we been watching the same show? Because I thought it was exceedingly obvious that Obi-Wan's shame and guilt for Anakin's fall and "death," exacerbated by fear of being caught and Owen's refusal to let him have anything to do with his one hope for the future. You know, a spritual problem he can't let go of due to his attachments?

He may have been trying to meditate. But it's absurdly obvious he hasn't succeeded. After all, only when the eyes are closed can you truly see.

 

It's clear that this is the reason the show presents. But I don't think it's a good reason. He's a Jedi Master and a war veteran besides; he should just be able to release those feelings into the force. And on top of that, he was able to fight Anakin in ROTS and was still able to use the force at the top of his game then, even though that was the peak of his emotional turmoil, when the anguish was still fresh.

It's a circular problem for the show. The show wants him to suck at the force because he's tormented by uncontrolled emotions. But he would only be tormented by uncontrolled emotions if he already sucked at the force.

That's the problem you create for yourself when you centre your story around zen warrior monks whose space magic helps them keep their zen even when a regular person could not. But it's still perfectly possible to tell good stories and character arcs with zen characters. You just can't have them fall to pieces emotionally.

 

and when they do, they add Darth to their name.

 

Obi-Wan has been dealing with a lot. The Republic he spent his whole life serving fell into tyranny, the Jedi Order who was his family and way of life was eradicated from existence, the clone army he had been fighting side-by-side by for three years were the ones who killed all his friends, and the war he fought in turned out to be a sham to put the Sith in power. Not to mention the whole Anakin situation: his brother in all but blood turned to the dark side and helped slaughter children in his home (Jedi Temple), practically killed the mother of his own children, and fought Obi-Wan until he was forced to cripple him and let him burn to his apparent death. Then he spent the next ten years in isolation watching over his friend's son, every time seeing him probably reminding him of Anakin (being on Tatooine probably reminding him of when he found him with his master), while not being able to interact or train him due to Owen. He didn't use the Force for fear of getting him and his charge caught, becoming out of practice in the meanwhile. There seems to be the implication that Qui-Gon's ghost is refusing to meet with him, enhancing that feeling of failure. Then there is the constant dreams of Anakin, bloody and burnt, screaming at Obi-Wan about how he hates him.

Any wonder all that fear, loss, and PTSD is screwing with his force powers?

 

Eh it kinda ignores that Jedi Masters are supposed to give all those emotions to the force. They don’t deal with their emotions they literally give those emotions to an energy force.

failure to do that sends them down the dark side like mestre said

 

I think the episode was decent...if you switched off your mind and ignored some stuff.

I love how they gloss over the fact, that it's basically Tala's fault that Leia got captured in the first place.
That Tala woman is as threatening and dangerous as a wet handkerchief and can still Rambo and bullshit her way through guards and soldiers.
Dialog is clunky and cookie-cutter, that interrogation felt jerky as hell.
Don't know what to think about Reva managing to put a tracker on the droid. Did she really expect the kid to get away so they can follow her?