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

Was it the beginning of season 2 or the end of season 1? This could be a substantial issue.

If it's the end of season 1...you can condense.

If it's season 2...yeah...that'll be harder.

 

Anakin + demotion = Sith even without Palpatine pulling strings.

That's the type of slight, that to think he EVER could go on without bringing it up would be hard.

Continuity might be saved...but at a cost to Anakin's characterization.

 

It was at the beginning of season two, but it's still not a problem. There was previously a gigantic jump there anyway; in the course of one episode, we jump from about 5 months post-Geonosis (Greevy & Ki-Adi on Hypori) to two-or-so-years later (Anakin gets knighted).

It's actually less stupid if the jump simply doesn't happen.

 

EDIT: Never mind.

 

No, Padmé sees his scar for the first time in the montage that kicks off the second episode.

As for Threepio... the RotS novelization established that he'd been gold-plated immediately after Anakin and Padmé's wedding, so there's already a discrepancy-- but it's one that I'd argue is minor, since it's (mostly) merely visual.

And, again, I think the best way to handle this is compacting the timeline-- moving everything prior to, say, Dreadnaughts of Rendili into the first six or eight months of the war. The only big thing it'll mess with are the HoloNet News dates, and even then I don't think it'll effect much.

 

Next week: How Anakin gets his scars, has Padmé notice them, gets them healed, gets new scars, has Padmé see these new ones, gets them healed again...


Actually, I think it should have been this way all along - Anakin being a knight shortly after Geonosis. Especially since the Jedi need everything they can throw at the seperatists. And to be honest, the first CW cartoon did this, too - having Anakin knighted after the events of season one, then have him grow as a Jedi (and having his hair grow) until the interesting parts prior to episode 3 begin.

Incidentally, only yesterday I told my brother, "See, once The Clone Wars is through, they should do another one called The Civil War set between 4 and 5." Even if it bites everything from Marvel onwards. Because then we'd get to see X-Wings on the screen again.

I'll say again that I'm not as interested in canon wholesomeness anymore as I used to be. I'm interested in good stories, and if I have to shut down the parts of my memory which read Jedi Trial to enjoy a promising movie and tv series, I'm all in. I can remember the novel some other time.

 

If I'm remembering the timeline correctly, it goes Jedi Trial, Dark Rendezvous, and Dreadnaughts of Rendili in that order with, IIRC, nothing in between any of them. Obviously JT would fall in with the material that needs to be compressed, but is there anything in DR that necessitates that kind of a move? Anakin is already a Knight in it, and the story really suffers if it doesn't take place near the end of the war.

The only problematic thing I can think of is that I believe Anakin says something about how it's difficult not to think of Obi-Wan as his Master anymore since he was just recently Knighted, but... I think we've fudged worse things in the past. If DR stays where it is, there could also be a chance to correct a previous continuity error. IIRC, the book makes reference to a battle at Rendili that, according to the current timeline, shouldn't have happened yet. With all the material preceding DR compressed into a few months, there's more room for an earlier Battle of Rendili, though presumably not as important a one, to have taken place.

I don't know, I'm just throwing this out there because I love Dark Rendezvous and wouldn't want to see it suffer for this new cartoon. We'll just have to wait and see what happens.

 

I don't see any reason why Dark Rendezvous couldn't be earlier.

One issue is that Anakin gets his scar at the end of Dreadnaughts of Rendili, so pushing everything back would fix the scar issue. It would, however, mess up Quinlan Vos's timeline like nobody's business.

It's possible to have Asajj come back between the Coruscant duel and Obsession. I could see it. Anakin just has to kill her again

 

Didn't we all know this was going to happen sooner or later? Lucas has always had the right to change whatever he wanted to, irregardless of what EU had already set down. Believe me, as a reader of the Marvel series in the early 1980's, it kinda sucks to see your favorite stories written out or never referred to again. You get used to it, though!

 

In the defense of Marvel (which is totally off-topic, sorry), I don't think there's been many, if any, stories that have been completely deemed "non-canon". Many of them have been left in tact, referenced, or retconned. There's still a large group that remain a mystery as to how they fit into canon, but I don't think that means they've been booted out of the continuity altogether. The retcon-artists just haven't gotten around to those stories yet. Yet. I'm loving reading the Marvel comics and, with all the new material that has "fixed" the botchy continuity, it's still just as relevant.

Therein lies the unique beauty of Star Wars EU.

 

Marvel should still be completely canon except for like 2 stories, one of which was later retconned back into continuity on the WOTC site.

 

The solicitation for Shipyards of Doom disagrees; she certainly doesn't die, and it seems like she'll be sticking around through the new series.

 

Canon Go Boom.

And I just won a bet!

Woot!

 

It looks like this CW cartoon, with Anakin as a Knight, starts right after Geonosis, because if he's knighted and then given a Padawan right away...it can't be THAT long after Geonosis.

So, on the plus side we don't have to worry about them fitting all this into six months, and on the plus-plus side; added hilarity of watching people tie themselves in knots trying to explain this.

I wonder when TPTB intend to make an announcement/discuss this?

 

patch, I'm still not quite sure WHY it is you hate the notion of an established, immutable canon which was around in Star Wars since, at the very least, 1987? Every post you make on the subject seems to be of the notion that those of us who. y'know, actually care about it are delusional in some fashion and that you can't wait for it to be destroyed which, to my sensibility, would be no different than a movie purist coming in here and bashing the EU simply because...

I understand Karen's thoughts on it as she's written them, though I wholly disagree with them obviously as I was the main target in her editorial on the subject, but I don't necessarily understand yours. Can you elucidate?

 

Thanks, dp. You said that a lot better than I would have.

(this is one of the reasons I'm worried about the Karens monopolizing the Clone Wars novels)

 

I guess I'm curious why this was thought to be a good idea... I'm sure we'll get through it. But my frist thought definitely was, "Well, we can fix most everything except Quin." It seems unwise to me to go down this road, but to be fair it's not exactly new.

Is it worth noting that it seems that the decisions we've seen in other eras/settings before this in terms of a more fluid approach to canon were actually a reflection of this, which we of course were unaware of but which has obviously been well known for a long time?

And, here's the big one, why as a businessman does GL seem to have so little respect for the EU? I certainly get the desire to do your own creative thing, but he's definitely been distancing himself from it recently (comments in interviews going farther than ever before, and so on). Interesting change from his previous not-caring but largely hands-off approach.

- Keralys

 

Well, if we have to lose a book...

Regardless, there are ways to handwave dates of rank. For example, you could just say it's a temporary wartime rank, and that he "really" became a Knight in Jedi Trial/Clone Wars Chapter 21. After WWI ended, Patton went from a Colonel to a Captain, Eisenhower went from a Lt. Colonel to a Major, and so forth. Heck, the GAR was brand new and expanding rapidly. It's only natural that stuff would be in turmoil.

Yes, it clearly all makes sense.

 

If the Asajj/Anakin parts of Rendili were severed somehow from the Obi-Wan/Quinlan parts, it could work. Though it'd be messy.

 

Isn't there communication back and forth there, though? It's been quite a bit since I read it (like, a couple of years), but aren't the two intrinsically linked together by the very nature of the story?

- Keralys

 

I agree. If Jedi Trial is all that suffers, I'll consider this a quality canon revamp.

By the way, didn't we have a clone wars timeline thread somewhere? I suppose that should help here.

 

http://boards.theforce.net/message.asp?topic=9386719

Good luck, Quest.

 

And patch, it's not like people are freaking out in here. A semi-mutable canon (which to be honest, is what we've had for a while) can be a good thing. It depends on how it is run.

When you marginalize bits of dubious quality within canon and keep the good parts, for the most part the readers don't complain and may even approve. Very few people are seriously clamoring to bring back Ken Palpatine, or Aing-Tii teleportation. The Clone Wars, while individual parts were sometimes good, kind of completely failed in cohesion. And a lot of people disliked Jedi Trial for some reason

But.

When you marginalize or destroy parts that are good and bring back bits that are bad, readers get much, much whinier, and with good reason. That's some of what's going on with LOTF and in the Invincible thread.