Lit Sam Witwer "Karen Traviss, She Didn't Get Everything Right"

He also ordered a battle station that was to be invincible... then some idiot put an exhaust port there.

 

Hey, don't blame Palpy, blame Hahrynyar.

 

Oh, I agree--though I think his personal hatred of Kenobi is the only reason I buy even that one call being separate, given that these are people with ESP who can detect when one another are killed.

On Rex--frankly, I don't care what Filoni has said, or believes personally; I would be absolutely astonished if we end up seeing Order 66 come down and Rex goes all zombie-pupils and starts shooting. I think their modus operandi right now is to make Rex genuinely distrust the Order as much as possible.

 

It's also entirely possible that Filoni is lying.

People don't normally go around giving away future plot twists during interviews.

 

And Rex isn't the only one- Fives was even more prone to disobeying those who'd lost his respect, like Krell.

Then there's clone traitors (Slick) and clone deserters.

"Totally obedient" seems like an exaggeration.

My guess is that Traviss figured genetic psychology will always be an inexact science, even in the Galaxy far-far-away. You can't engineer total obedience- though you can change genes commonly associated with rebelliousness to genes commonly associated with conformity, it will never be a guarantee.

Changing the genes, and putting them though massive psychological conditioning, aversion therapy, etc, is needed, and even then, there is never perfection.

I wonder- perhaps Palpatine gave a recording of himself to Dooku, Dooku had it put into the aversion therapy program as the default image and voice, and as a result, every time they disobeyed an order by the recording, they got massive electric shocks?

Or the nearest equivalent, for the Star Wars universe?

Result- while fairly obedient- they are super-obedient to that specific face and voice.

 

You haven't been following Filoni very well have you? That's all the guy talks about. "Hey guys, we know that last arc sucked, but trust us, this next one will be the bomb! *Proceeds to show fifteen minutes worth of preview clips* "There, see? See?!"

 

While that's true to an extent, it's normally only the broad strokes that get previewed, like "OMG! MAUL'S COMING BACK!", without us being given the specifics -- hence the year where we all came up with much better ideas than Spider-Maul.

Whereas telling us "Yeah, so, Rex isn't going to want to shoot Ahsoka" is pretty much telling us exactly what'll happen, when the entire suspense moment would be not thinking that is possible.

If anything, if Rex is going to disobey, I'd expect the previews to suggest the opposite with us seeing him pointing a gun to her head, leaving to everyone wondering "Omg?! Is this how Ashoka is gonna die?!"

 

Even if they've sold their first batch of clones- we know from TCW that they were planning on selling more to the Republic- so it makes sense for the Kaminoans to talk them up.

 

Yes, Yes. This. Also, I'm sure TCW would give clones zombie eyes (seen in a TCW episode)...

 

It's also worth keeping in mind that we're talking about behavior modification, which is one way of ensuring that a clone will obey orders, while Witwer seems to be talking about an embedded code phrase, which is quite another. The latter would still allow for all the personal growth we've seen, only for it all to go out the window when they hear "Execute Order 66". That could yet be the case, but I still just don't think it's going to happen. For one, the code-phrase scenario implies that a great deal of clones may very well not want to shoot their Jedi, but do it anyway--which suggests a certain degree of PTSD afterward, which we have no evidence of whatsoever. RotS, certainly, suggests very strongly that either the clones we're seeing post-66 were cool with it already, or that the code phrase flipped a permanent good-evil switch somewhere.

 

The 501st at least showed no restraint, since their commander was still alive and not being purged. People like Gree and Jag sounded rather subdued when the Order came down.

There's also the 501st Journal from Battlefront 2. On the question of loyalty and ignoring orders, they said this:
"Perhaps, but nobody said a word, not on the flight to Coruscant, and not when we marched into the Jedi temple. Not a word."

 

But Zorr, no one could make that shot! I have it on the best authority:

 

wait, wait, wait a minute . . . what is all this talk about zombies?
The clones were just following orders right? they weren't "brain-washed" by order-66 any more than they already were genetically modified to be loyal.

 

Rewatching the sequences now, the "It will be done, my Lord" response, repeated by 3 clones on different planets in response to the order, is rather conspicuous. However, it could just be a preset phrase built into the contingency order, or which the Clones were trained to give in certain circumstances. "My lord" is not necessarily that strange a form of address for the Star Wars Galaxy.

 

Or in Dark Times a Clone stated "Even the Younglings?" And carried on with it

 

"My lord" doesn't have to mean "My lord Sidious", it can mean "My lord Chancellor".

 

Contingency order > "brainwashing"

 

"Genetically modified to be loyal" is a problematic concept in itself.

What are these "loyalty genes" anyway?

 

****ed if i know. It's star wars.

if they can make hyperdrive generators then they can do anything

If you start trying to look into the science behind some of these concepts, you've already failed

 

Regarding Rex, they already have made an interesting statement: When Rex is not around, Appo is the one working with the crazy Jedi General. Marching on the Jedi Temple, Appo is there with the crazy former-Jedi General; Rex isn't. The only question for me is if they show Rex dissenting the order, especially since he's had more indivual thinking going on than Cody, going back to the deserter episode; or if they spare him from order 66 completely by tragically killing him off before it happens. Which might work even better, since we'd never know if any amount of individuality would have been enough (disregarding all EU interpretations for a moment).

Fives can definitely be a different story, since he's ARC material, and (taking in EU interpretations for a moment) ARCs aren't as modified/"stable" anyway. It's also been pretty clear on Umbara that Fives can do as he pleases while Rex really has to fight against his conditioning/training/whatever.

By the way, I'm not sure if that came up already, but I think it's also an interesting question whether you interpret Order 66 to have included the temple slaughter. Which is the implication, in my opinion (but which hasn't been clearly stated, of course). So it's either "kill your direct commander" or "kill every Jedi on sight, including children". If it were the former, it would have been wiser to mention the vague possibility of order 66 on Umbara, even if there was no-one around to issue the order ("I'm sure Coruscant would issue Order 66 if they knew about Krell"). The more interesting implication about Umbara was, in my opinion, the fact that the clones went up against a Jedi, not just against a commander, and that it feels as if there's really no precedence, no concept for clones killing their Jedi general. It's not just mutiny or setting things straight; it's the darkest battle in darkness that can darkly happen.

 

Traviss interpreted it as "kill those specific Jedi Officers"

Order 66: In the event of Jedi officers acting against the interests of the Republic, and after receiving specific orders verified as coming directly from the Supreme Commander (Chancellor), GAR commanders will remove those officers by lethal force, and command of the GAR will revert to the Supreme Commander (Chancellor) until a new command structure is established.

 

I know that. But that's the debate, isn't it.

 

And that's clearly not what we see on screen in ROTS or what the ROTS novelization says.

 

Quite frankly, it is pretty obvious that Order 66 is a brainwashing/genetically implanted code. There is absolutely no other way it could make sense. Are you telling me hundreds of millions of clones can be trusted to keep this Order secret if it was an official order? No freaking way. They didn't know they were programmed with this order, until Sidious spoke it.

 

Would they have needed to keep the order secret, though?

The Jedi aren't exactly Sith, don't think themselves above the law, like people to respect them and think they're as accountable as anyone else, so I can't see why they'd have worried about the existence of an order that they always would have just seen as a formality that never would be used in practice but which made them look to the public like they weren't above the system.

Lots of dictators have had similar stuff written into the law... doesn't mean they ever expected such laws to be used.