Lit A/V Clone Wars Continuity Discussion (Spoilers Allowed)

The 1790s French-American diplomatic crisis dubbed the XYZ Affair came about when an American commission sent to deal with the post-Revolutionary French government was accosted for bribes in a pay-for-access scheme, thus offending the American commissioners and blowing up the negotiations before they began. President John Adams's Francophile opponents accused him of scotching the talks out of partiality to the British, requiring him to release the commissioners' reports to corroborate the story, which scandalized the public. The names of the French middlemen handling the shakedown were redacted as W, X, Y, and Z, thereby giving the issue its name.

 

dang -- right! I knew I pulled "XYZ Affair" out of some dark recess of my brain.

 

It does sound like the name of a summer novel: The Omega Initiative, The XYZ Affair, and so forth.

 

It's actually exceedingly likely, given that Filoni has no doubt watched the orginal Star Wars films many many times and shows no outward signs of being a complete dullard, and rather has displayed an exceptional understanding of the films on the one occasion that I heard him talk about them on a podcast.

I actually forgot that this supposed saying of Filoni was relayed to us second-hand. Given that this indeed appears to be the case and no one really knows what he actually said, people should probably stop harping on about it.

 

If that acronym is what I think it is, then no.

 

Don't feel bad. First thing I thought of was the Rush song

 

I had to Google it. Just like everything else, these days.

As for Filoni, I can't say his working on the next animated series would bother me. I think canon issues stopped mattering to me around '97, if they ever really did. Whatever the truth about Even Piell is, it doesn't really affect how I look at Coruscant Nights I or the Citadel arc. I still am glad I read Reversal of Fortune (still my favorite of those web comics). At this point, story quality matters to me more than continuity, which to me The Clone Wars had more decent episodes than not each season. Much like the EU books.

 

Well said, MistrX. It's the quality of the story, not whether it's 'canon' or not that I think is the most important. It's nice with continuity, but it becomes a problem when said continuity gets bloated and hyperinclusive as is the case with the SW EU (and this is from someone who used to be a staunch canon defender).

 

Can we put this in the banner?

 

It'd cramp Yarael Poof's style.

 

It had too much filler to me by the 4th season or so

 

TCW was often very much like a pendulum. As soon as there was an awesometastic episode we would get hit by a real zinger that made us want to find a drink so we could hopefully purge those brain cells and forget about it.

And re: filler episodes -- I can't even remember half of Season 5. The Onderon and Droids arcs could each be summed up in a few words. They were ridiculously predictable to the point of cringeworthy.

 

...and that's coming from a LACWAC mod.

 

Sorry, but CWAS didn't even really keep up with the movies, much less the EU.

And since the discussion about canon and quality has been gone over many times before, I'll just refer to the Peter David quote.

 

The continuity stuff would be forgiveable if there was quality to back it up. But the last couple of seasons missed so much more often than they hit. Season 5's painfully-dragged-out four episode arcs almost made Fate of the Jedi look like it had good pacing.

 

I think it would have worked better if they would have integrated the Maul arc into the series in intervals, more so than all at once as we got it. It would have given us the impression that Maul had actually ruled Mandalore for a significant amount of time that allowed him to impose his will.

I don't think the pacing was that bad, but putting them one after the other made the pacing seem worse than it actually was.

 

...which was the point MistrX made that started this line of thought. Not that TCW's storytelling is perfect, but that it's not excessively worse than the EU's.

 

I'd say that it really is, perhaps intentionally.

By choosing to go the non linear route they did in the first three seasons one never really had an idea where they were in the timeline and we still don't know how or where many episodes of TCW fit with other events from the EU in a grand sense.

Nevermind that TCW isn't internally consistent with itself, a lot. Wether it is Mandalorian children changing from little kids to adults in two years, or Adi Gallia being killed only to appear on the Jedi Council again the next week, there is a ton of internal stuff.

It would have been like FOTJ killing Kenth Hamner in Vortex, only to to mention how he is still running the Council in the next book.

Add that TCW was produced by the great one himself, thus trampling everything in its path, yet could not even be consistent with itself (or the films for that matter) for more than some very brief periods of time makes its faults stand out way more to me.

Yet, I'm a forgiving soul. I think one has to be to try and fit this universe together, but I'm also not going to forgive subpar to terrible story telling just because one can point to some instances in the EU that are just as bad.

 

exactly there is plenty to shame the EU but a lot of the really poor stuff is a while back or has the hand of lucasfilm in it.
fate of the jedi wasnt terrrible - abeloth was a poor idea but done quite well = the return of the sith an awkward idea = but again done quite well/

TCW = lots of poor ideas largely poorly executed. clashes of continunity with itself and the films - things thrown in for the seeming sake of it that pi$$ over other sources and gain little but exclusively but yes MAul - looking at you

 

What other source did Maul contradict?

Silly thing =/= continuity error.

 

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: the only thing that disappoints me about Maul's return is that Lucas didn't think to do it in the movies, instead.

Can you imagine how amazing the ending of AotC would have been if Tyranus had turned out in the end to be a Dark Jedi patsy reporting to Maul? It would have been ridiculously awesome. I'm getting goosebumps just imagining that kind of reveal.

 

You just ruined the PT for me if it wasn't already ruined that is.