The 181st Imperial Discussion Group: Rogue Planet

Okay then; I?ve been asked to host this month?s discussion thread as the usual host is out of pocket for a bit. I?m quite honored actually; this is the first time I?ve been asked to do something in the Lit Forum besides ?leave now please? or ?just let Survivor?s Quest go already.?

I usually glance at these threads, but the discussions are generally so long by the time I catch them that I stay out of the discussion for fear of simply restating what?s already been said. But I think I have a more or less clear picture of how all this goes. So, without any further introductory matter, let?s get started and I?ll figure this out as I go along with, I?m sure, your help. ?

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Rogue Planet (2000) ? Greg Bear

TF.N Staff Review (Official Motto: ?Missing the Entire Point Once Again for Posterity?)

A lot to talk about with this one; I?m sure we?ll range very widely and with good reason, but just to start things off, let?s jump in with three questions.

What are your thoughts on the ways in which Rogue Planet breaks the traditional mode of the EU novel? Is Rogue Planet unique among the EU? And, if so, is this a positive or a negative trait of the book, in your opinion?

What is Rogue Planet trying to say about the Force and Anakin?s place in it? Is the appearance of Vergere in this novel significant as more than a NJO tie-in? What about the Potentium and the heretical teachings they espoused? Finally, what does Obi-Wan believe about the Force? Does he believe the same thing about the Force at the end of the novel as he did at the beginning?

What do you make of the unholy trinity of Siener, Tarkin and Ke Daiv? What are they meant to represent, both individually and as a group? Do their characters ring true? What do they believe in and do these beliefs continue over the entire course of the book or do they change?

And, since we?re discussing this book already and have the chance, here?s one just for fun:

Let?s settle it once and for all! Worst cover of the EU? Track down covers you think are worse and post them here and we?ll make the definitive decision at last!

Well, as you can see, we have a lot to talk about; frankly, I got a plum assignment. I can?t think of another EU novel this decade with more depth and more fascinating things to talk about. Not even Traitor, in my opinion, is more thought provoking.

I have more questions for you later, though if we end up talking about just these three all month, that?ll be fine too. I plan to put up a new question on 10/13, 10/19 and 10/26. So, let?s go; who?ll be brave enough to step into the water first?

 

What is Rogue Planet trying to say about the Force and Anakin?s place in it?

This particular question is what intrigued me most about the book. I actually really liked the depth in which Anakin's connection to the living force was explored - and Obi-Wan's intrigue with his apprentice in that regard. I felt that Obi-Wan would have experienced these nuances under Qui-Gon, but I put his responses down to the fact that he was dealing with his Padawan as Master and the newness associated with that. Then near the end, Bear hit me with the same old same old regarding Anakin with Ke Daiv. It seems like there is a dire necessity for author's to show seeds of who Anakin would one day become in their work - but to me, in a generally overblown manner and that was the case here.

Here, we find anger and hatred are lying just beneath the surface, and like a switch, Anakin turns them on - unwittingly even. Despite his real desire to stop his emotions from running away with him (and all of his inherent power), he is a helpless waif of the darkside and "pure willfull self" floods his tissues so that the urge to protect and destroy become one. His eyes become pitch black and he cannot command himself to stop - he can do nothing; he can't hold back the tide any longer - and must unleash the darkness within. Then Anakin turned into some kind of blood oozing, white-eyed zombie creature. . I was greatly disappointed in the way that this was portrayed - and later to cap this off; months after Thracia Cho Leem counsels the young Jedi, Anakin, over his horrifying experience, she leaves the Jedi order without explanation. This rendering ruined what was otherwise one of the most engrossing and interesting EU books I'd read to that point when I first read it. But re-reading it now I find it has been surpassed by other works in this regard. To me, this child could not grow into Anakin Skywalker, hero of the clone wars - he would be committed or a Sith Lord, long before then, imo. It was doubly disappointing because the lead up to this moment was excellently rendered, in my view.

Anyway, that was a start; the rest of my thoughts are more positive, but I'll add on as we go...

 

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First off, as far as the covers go, I admit that this cover and the Clone Wars one are just plain "meh". The Millennium Faclon one isn't so bad, in my opinion. I attribute that to the vague sense of familiarity between that cover and the covers for the Rogues/Wraith novels, though these novels pack more bang per cover, so as to speak.

Now as to the novel itself. It did break from the traditional format of novels. Since then, there have been several other novels that have come out in a different-from-tradition format. As I recall, there was never any chapter division in the Force Heretic trilogy. Parts, yes. But no distinct chapters. Then you have the combination of chapters and parts in the ROTS novelization. As for Rogue Planet's format, I think Outbound Flight followed it to a small degree - very short chapters towards the end. I might be wrong about that, though. It established a sense of precidence, but does it work for this novel? I can't say one way or the other.

I admit that the canonical debut of Vergere, the Potentium, and the first reference to the Far Ptsoder serve as significant tie-ins with the NJO and the Dark Nest Trilogy. Fortunately, I think we can avoid bringing in any long-term discussions about those two and the Vergere/Sith debate. I think this serves as a foreshadowing of sorts for the PT Jedi. I mean, here they were, firmly set in their views and beliefs. Nothing seemed too much out of the ordinary. Nothing seemed to serve as a significant threat to their security. Then, WHAM-O! TPM. The Sith practically saying "WE'RE BACK!!" when in fact they never even left. Qui-Gon's death. Anakin's entry into the Jedi order. All these events shook the foundations of the Jedi Order. Now we throw in the reappearance of the Potentium. In light of how things turned out in the PT, I have to wonder if maybe these occurred in order to make Yoda, Mace, Obi-Wan, and the PT Jedi see that it might be time to change the way they do things. I think that is evidenced in the following statements from other novels:

Dark Lord, The Rise of Darth Vader - Obi-Wan realizing that the Republic was never worth fighting for. That the Senators and the populace grew tired of democracy and allowed it to die out in favor of a new form of government - one where the Jedi had no place because the ends justified the means and where single-minded control came from the top. This was something nearly all the Jedi never realized and/or accepted. As evidenced from Labyrinth of Evil and Revenge of the Sith, Anakin was the only one who openly embraced Palpatine's intentions even before Palpatine revealed his Sith persona to Anakin.

Revenge of the Sith novel - Yoda coming to his startling revelation during his fight against Palpatine. He probably recalled Obi-Wan saying in AOTC that Anakin's abilities have made him arrogant. Yoda said it was a flaw more common amongst the Jedi - so sure of themselves, they are. Even older, more experienced one. He suddenly realized his rebuke should apply to him as well. He realized he couldn't defeat Palpatine, and he realized why. A millennium had passed since the last overt conflict between the Jedi and the Sith. The galaxy had changed. The Sith had changed. The Jedi hadn't, because he wouldn't allow them to change. He was so certain that his way was the correct way. At the end, he realized that this wasn't so, and because of his unwillingness to adapt, his attachment to the old ways (as Djinn Altis hinted at in No Prisoners), the Jedi as a whole were unprepared to fight against this new incarnation of the Sith.

When you consider this, it becomes obvious that the shake-ups in TPM and Rogue Planet were warning bells that nearly all of them missed, and those who heard the bell did so when it was too late to do anything about it. Only those who survived Order 66 came to understand and accept the truth. And only Obi-Wan and Yoda were in positions to do something about it, adapting different methods in their teachin

 

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This is not just the worst Star Wars cover. This is in the running for worst cover ever in the history of covers. That's a cover that says, "We cannot even be bothered to make the slightest effort just to pretend we tried."

Honorable mention goes to Jedi Eclipse, for just being aggressively bad computer art.
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Oh, the book. Right. I'm not sure Rogue Planet is absolutely unique, but it is definitely outside the mainstream as a very quiet, slow, thoughtful book. And it benefits immensely. I think Bear was a great choice to write the first-ever prequel novel, as he makes the whole book not just some tossed-off Jedi adventure, but a meditation on the era. Obi-Wan and Anakin as Jedi, struggling their way through a relationship that will have its joys and its sorrows, and showing expertly the aspects of that. Tarkin as the rising New Order, hard and ruthless and xenophobic and ambitious and skeletal. Sienar's the master stroke, in a way -- he's the declining Golden Age of the Republic, a patrician genius devoted to quality work bemoaning the loss of trust, of pride in craftsmanship, of elite yet individualist aristocratic greatness. But at the same time, he's the corruption of the Republic that he despises -- the cold, ambitious, elitist, genteelly cutthroat corporate overlord allying himself with the soulless Empire and losing his soul in the process.

Rogue Planet is very much about the golden age, but moreso about the dark tide rising that's about to sweep that golden age away. The ending and especially the coda is a huge part of that. Anakin saves himself but cannot control his anger. Obi-Wan rescues Anakin but misses his first step to darkness, and he still can't reach Qui-Gon. Jabitha dies in the middle of a snow world. Thracia Cho Leem sees the darkness coming and flees in terror, unable to confront it and too scared and selfish to warn the Jedi. Sienar is subsumed by the Empire he despises yet is such an integral part of. Tarkin ingratiates himself with Palpatine and the Death Star is set in motion. Charza Kwinn, ally of the Jedi, is left a simple pirate, desperately preying on the Empire alone in the spaceways of a galaxy consumed by evil.

The prequel era -- the saga in general -- is in desperate need of more books like this.

 

Covers are meaningless, move along

Rogue Planet was a book I wasn't high or low on upon my first read of it. It was only after I came to the realization about its ties to the NJO that it gained a great deal in my eyes. I love the idea of attaching the Prequel Era to the NJO Era in the way it did.

It was an unexpected prequel and that in itself made it all the more special.

 

All excellent point and many of them touch on some of the later questions I had intended to bring up. So perhaps we'll let those lie.

I think Ke Daiv's function is something a little deeper than has been stated already however. I particularly liked the moment when someone said above that Anakin saw him as no different from Sebulba, Watto, etc. But of course, I feel at least, he is quite different.

He is, in fact, a being consumed with honor, shame, atonement, redemption. His self-loathing seemed to me to be somewhat prophetic in itself; he has lost his honor and his name and, I think, a great deal of his self-respect. At the heart of all his crimes are the fact that he's been manipulated by Tarkin; he's been manipulated specifically into believing, or half believing, that he can only regain the things that he has lost by performing acts that, at another time in his life, he would probably have rejected out of hand

The fact that he?s trying to save what is important to him so desperately that he is easily manipulated by an evil authority figure and the fact that this process ends, as it always must, in self-loathing . . . well, I think Ke Daiv?s isn?t Anakin?s first kill by accident. Anakin is seeing, I think, in Ke Daiv, the road he will be traveling and that very shortly. Ke Daiv, having lost his honor, would do anything to regain it; Anakin, having lost his mother, would do anything to keep his wife. And, as always, anytime anyone is willing to do ?anything,? no matter how well intentioned they are or how lofty their ultimate goal, there is always a Tarkin or a Palpatine lurking just offstage to show that person what ?anything? really means.

Ke Daiv is almost, in my opinion, the most tragic figure of the novel.

 

Rogue Planet is one of the few SW novels that I?ve read twice. I bought and read the hardcover just after its release in 2000, fell out of the EU for a couple of years, and then read it again in 2002 after seeing and buying The Approaching Storm in an airport bookstore rekindled my EU interest (and now, here I am today ). Seven years later, there?re quite a lot of nuances about the novel that I can?t call to the front of my mind, and it?s already packed away into storage for the next year, sooooo.... I?ll remember what I can. Hopefully your posts will help jog my memory.

Granted, I was pretty young, but still, the novel was good enough to warrant a re-read. It always held a special place in my EU heart, and in 2005, when I read Force Heretic Reunion, I was elated to see Jabitha in the Dramatis Personae. Ditto reading about the New Jedi Order going through the seed-bonding process in The Unifying Force --- that was like cocaine to me.

The master-apprentice relationship is one of the treats of reading prequel-era EU. The Qui-Gon ? Obi-Wan dynamic was fantastic in Cloak of Deception, and the Obi-Wan ? Anakin dynamic was similarly fantastic here in Rogue Planet. We got deep insights into both of their characters, as well as into their relationship. Next to Matt Stover?s Revenge of the Sith, it?s the best of any of those three aspects that we?ve ever gotten in any of Star Wars.

Rogue one-and-a-half reviewed Rogue Planet in his journey thread back in March, so I hope it?s OK if I quote from there too. I want to echo a couple of his comments (link for those who view thirty posts per page; if not then go to March 14th)...

The best thing about this book, something it is almost alone in really reaching, is its incredible understanding of the relationship between Obi-Wan and Anakin. It?s shown in all its modes; frustration, depression, anger, love, compassion, hope . . .
*And that last sentence is what this book has been about. Anakin?s journey, though important, is not as significant as Obi-Wan?s journey. Now, three years out from taking Anakin on as his apprentice, we see him finally grow into the role of master.

 

I missed that part. I'm left wondering why Thracia Cho Leem didn't address her findings to Yoda or Obi-Wan. Unless she realized that as advocates of the strictness of the Jedi Order, they were incapable of doing anything about what she had sensed. In any event, we're left hanging in the air - what ever happened to Thracia Cho Leem. It's the same story behind Olee Starstone and the other Jedi/AgriCorp survivors from Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader, the girl and her Bothan Jedi Master from Into the Unknown, and many of the other Jedi who survived Order 66. Now granted, we're getting some of those stories - Dass Jennir in the Dark Times comics, and Scout from Dark Rendezvous might be in the forthcoming Imperial Commando novel coming out in a few weeks. But there are avenues of possibilities still open.

 

Thracia Cho Leem was a figure that I felt needed to be discussed a little more, actually. One of the follow up questions I was going to post was in regards to the small characters.

I'll just ask a question about my favorite small character, the Magister. Obi-Wan and Anakin meet him just once in the course of the novel and even that meeting is an illusion.

What do you think Bear is trying to say in that scene? What, if anything, true do we learn about the Magister? What, if anything, true do we learn about the planet? What is the significance of the dialogue our Jedi heroes share with the Magister? What does the Magister represent? Is Bear saying something larger about the state of existence? I think so, but what exactly would that be?

Run with it!

 

I think part of the answer lies in my response above - hinting to the Jedi Order that it might be time for them to take a hard long look at established doctrine, take a hard long at the galaxy, and determine if it's time for some things to change. It might be hinting at the Potentium and how it might work for the Jedi. I also think it might hinting at the revelation Anakin Solo discovered in Conquest - that there's something deeper, more profound than the Force. A will of the Force, to use the terms from that novel. Something that the Jedi for the most part have long since forgotten. If anyone from the Prequel Order discovered, or should I say rediscovered this, it might have been Obi-Wan and Yoda after ROTS and perhaps Zao, that blind Veknoid Jedi Master who went where the Force willed him to go. "Like a leaf blown about by the wind" - I believe Master Zao said this phrase to describe himself to Quinlan in the Darkness comic arc.

 

In light of AOTC and ROTS, I wonder if there was a conversation at LFL like this:

"Greg, you want to put the origins of the Death Star in there? No, I doubt Lucas is going to revisit that. Knock yourself out."

 

I feel what you are saying is logical, but to me, it doesn't dove tail with my view of the canon for two reasons. First, the idea (in my view) was that it would take an extremely personal, passionate and horrific event to trigger a crazed response from Anakin like that with the Tuskins. There, he had just held his bloody, beaten mother and watched her die in his arms. The Rogue Planet event did not nearly rise to that personal, passionate or horrific level - in terms of the impact it would have on Anakin - at least not to me. Anakin's fault was anger - but I will never in this lifetime be convinced that wanting to save everyone shows anything except compassion. His willingness to use any means to do so would come later (emerging slowly but surely after the Tuskin event).

Second, the way it was written was as you indicated - as if there was this darkness simmering deep within Anakin from the start. I disagree completely. I think he was prone to passion and anger (like most regular non Jedi individuals have within them in varying amounts) - but there was no 'darkness' of the type I felt was portrayed in the book. Anakin was fighting against the darkness coming over him during the whole scene, attempting to combat what was happening to him and he was absolutely unable to do anything about it at all. The whole point of the Tuskin event to me was to make it so extraordinary an event, that he acted in the heat of passion, allowing his anger to rule him - without thinking or trying to combat what was rising within him. What Bear's rendering does to me, is actually reduce his culpability for the Tuskin incident, because given this rendering, even if Anakin had tried to stop himself from killing all of the Tuskins, he wouldn't have been able to do so anyway. It was like he was driven by inner forces that he had no control over in this scene - completely without autonomy to act, despite his fervent desire to do so.

I asked myself the same thing. Thracia sees this and leaves the Order - but Yoda, Mace and the rest of the Masters cannot see it - or can and don't rely on it in a similarly dramatic fashion? I don't see why the strictness of the Jedi Order or Code would prohibit her from speaking up on an issue she found so potent with doom that it caused her to leave the Order. Meanwhile, the unwitting Jedi continue to train this monster in waiting that she apparently could have warned them about very early on. It was like she foresaw that all of the Jedi would die and got out while the going was good, leaving everyone else holding the bag.

This, together with what I said above, made me feel this particular aspect was way overdone and it simply didn't fit with my idea of young Anakin or of how a Jedi of Thracia Cho Leem's standing would behave. On the other hand, she was also Vergere's master, and I question Vergere's judgment and mentality as a young Jedi quite a bit based on things we learn in the NJO/LOTF/Legacy about her, so Thracia's standing

 

Personally, that's something that's always bothered me about how Anakin was handled in the PT era. The stories convey this notion that there's something inherently WRONG with him, that his turn is inevitable.

Which runs completely counter to the image of Anakin and the Dark Side we're given in the OT. In RotJ we're supposed to believe that Luke could turn, just because the Dark Side is THAT powerful, when we've never seen anything in his character even APPROACHING the darkness we see in Anakin long before he turns.

 

Admittedly, I don't remember what the actual event in Rogue Planet was. However, I don't think that the scale of its horror is necessarily important, as I'll discuss below...

It's what caused his fall to the Dark Side...

Would it, though? I think that there were signs of it creeping through even before the Tusken event. Like trying to save his mother in the first place --- what was his biggest regret after she died? ?I wasn?t strong enough to save you.? He wanted to be the hero who saved his mother. And he failed. And that?s where a lot of the anger came from. That was Anakin?s tragic flaw. Which is why I disagree with this:

The whole point of the Tusken event to me was that he allowed his anger to rule him based on the fact that he had failed to save his mother. And he was completely aware of that. I respect that you disagree, and I?d love to keep discussing it --- Anakin?s fall to the Dark Side is, to me, one of the major aspects of the prequel trilogy that doesn?t get the respect it deserves.

In light of Revenge of the Sith, I think that the idea of Anakin having darkness simmering deep within him from the very beginning of his life is a very complex, and perhaps even beautiful, idea. Is that the result of Darth Plagueis creating him? Is it what caused him to be so passionate about his desire to save everyone?

There are many different reasons why a Jedi could turn to the Dark Side, and I don?t think that we were ever intended to believe that Luke was tempted for the exact same reasons as his father. Luke never had the desire to save everyone that his father did...

And I don't think that Anakin's fall was inevitable. Yes, he did have a tragic flaw, but there were countless different catalysts --- the mishandling and lack of support from the Jedi Council, Palpatine's machinations, an engineered galaxy-wid

 

Perhaps we are saying the same thing in different terms, maybe not. But I mean to say that the impulse to save everyone in itself is the motivation for every superhero out there. It underlies the notion that all life is equally valuable and worth saving. There is a little more urgency when Superman saves Lois; Batman saves Robin or Anakin saves Obi-Wan - but all of them wanting to save "no name Jo" just as much is in my eyes a good thing and necessary to their heroic nature. That goal would never make an individual dark, in my view. Slipping into darkness happens either because the 'hero' uses dark means to achieve the goal of saving others or if as a result of not being able to save the person or merely in retaliation, they take revenge outside of the bounds of justice.

Well to me that is something else. That isn't merely a desire to save someone - that is carrying one's attachment to the level of greed and desiring to stop death. That is distinguished from attempting to save people in general - that is what Jedi do. Shmi was still alive when Anakin arrived, but she was on the point of death and could not be saved - that is what he meant in terms of "I couldn't save you" - it was a power save he was after in that case. Had he had arrived sooner and she wasn't in such a bad state - and he saved her life by getting them both out of there, there would have been nothing at all "wrong" in that scenario.

I am not sure to what extent you are saying this played a role in his killing the Tuskins. Do you mean to say that if Yoda and he went to try to save Shmi together, and Anakin couldn't save her from the brink of death, but Yoda DID save her and carried her home - that Anakin would have stayed and killed all the Tuskins anyway just because he himself didn't have that power?

What I tried to do there was take Shmi's death out of the picture, because it seems that is what you are indicating as well. That it wasn't so much her death that affected him, but that his inability to be "big powerful Anakin" was all he truly cared about. Yeah, that would be dark, but more than dark, it would mean he didn't really love his mother or anyone else all that much. But the idea in the PT was that he was truly a compassionate boy, who dearly loved his mother and was very attached to her. The only reason he didn't turn into a Sith Lord after that event was because he truly did have love and compassion in his heart - and killed all the Tuskins out of revenge in the heat of the moment. Once he cooled off, he declared he was better than that because he was a Jedi and he recognized that what he'd done was wrong. His desiring the power to stop death was something else on top of that - power he determined he wanted so no one else he was attached to would ever die again.

 

No. I don't think the ability of Plagueis allows for any kind of alignment fix. It's about midichlorians. (Unless we're to assume that heightened Force sensitivity automatically leads to internal darkness. But I'm thinking the concept has more to do with Anakin's having been a slave.)

 

Ola!

First off, I'd like to thank Rogue for hosting a great discussion - thank you so much for stepping in. Sorry I'm so late in showing my face here - I did get back from vacation about a week ago but had some dumb real life stuff pile on top of me as is so often then case.

But hey, coming back to such interesting discussion makes up for that.

And now, some...disjointed and not-as-detailed-as-they-should-be thoughts.

Originally I had no interest in reading this novel, I have to be honest. When I first found out about it, I thought to myself: Self, you do not like the PT. You do not really like Anakin Skywalker. You are not an enormous fan of Obi-Wan. And it's pretty much a standalone, except for that planet which you already know about, and you're obsessed with The Big Picture. Skip it, Self.

Then my friend Ricky - who was just getting into the EU - picked it up and read it and told me, you know what, this is pretty amazing. It's one of his favourite EU novels.

Now, I can't claim conversion on the same level as his. This isn't one of my favourite EU novels, but...it is a good novel. The reason my friend loved it - which informed my perspective on it - is very similar to Havac's comments about it being the end of a Golden Age - already lost to corruption and decay, but still grandiose, perhaps all the more so for its imminent extinction.

While I completely understand why many people think it's the worst of the six movies, TPM is actually my favourite prequel movie. Yes, I cringe with everyone else when Jar Jar opens his mouth. Sure there I wish Anakin had never yelled "Yippee" and that we weren't stuck with midichlorians. Frankly, the movie was childish in many respects (which is entirely different to being a child's movie). However, one thing that TPM did for me that neither AoTC nor RoTS managed, was to convey the enormous diversity and depth of the SW universe. The latter movies were too computer-slicked for my liking and somehow, even though RoTS dealt heavily with the Senate, never showed me the, well, dying grandeur of the Republic. Bluntly, I could imagine Han Solo in the world of Ep I far more easily than II or III.

(Honestly, I've got a point!)

Rogue Planet feels like a real sequel to TPM in ways AoTC did not. To me, there was a real shift in the aesthetics of the universe between Eps I and II, and it's rare, now, to see novels that capture the TPM aesthetic, but novels such as this one, and Cloak of Deception manage it wonderfully. Because they take away the childishness that many people can't see past and show us what TPM might have been like with the sensibilities of ANH or ESB.

As to Anakin himself, I don't quite agree with anyone here.

I have no problem, in principle, with Anakin either struggling all his life with the dark side because he was made by Plagueis (in fact, I love that theory as it helps address how Anakin's dark side tendencies sort of came outta nowhere [to me] in AoTC).

I have no problem, in principle, with a life of slavery and fear over losing his mother and others eventually contributing to a tragic fall to the dark side.

My problem is that I do not think they did either issue well. I still feel the Tusken Massacre came out of nowhere and was not sympathetic, but equally I can see xx_Anakin_xx's point about the way agency was removed from Anakin in this novel. I find the description of his as zombified particularly intriguing - literally transformed against his will into a mindless servant of evil.

I'm not saying I think that's what happened, but I do find the imagery very powerful.

On a related note, I find the fact that every author ever is constantly trying to foreshadow Anakin's fall to the dark side while constantly trying to foreshadow Vader's return to the light very irritating because it rapidly becomes farcical with Heroic Anakin getting so frequently foreshadowed as evil he turns into a jerk and Evil Vader getting so frequently foreshadowed as good-again he

 

You're definitely right. I guess I didn't clarify, or perhaps even realize, in my earlier posts that what differentiates Anakin from your everyday hero is his reasoning behind wanting to save everyone. His isn't born out of the notion that all life is worth saving --- rather, he loves the idea that it's him, Anakin, who saves everyone. Again, recall what he said at his mother's funeral --- it wasn't "I wish you had survived", it was: "I wasn't strong enough to save you." What do you think he was he really upset about --- his mother's death, or his own powerlessness in saving her?

So, yeah, I don't disagree with your next point:

If someone else had saved his mom from the Tuskens, I doubt he wouldn?t have slain them, but he definitely would have been pissed off that it hadn?t been him who had done it. Being ?big powerful Anakin? wasn?t all that he truly cared about, but it was pretty important to him. He had become arrogant in his abilities, and he loved being the hero.

As for his desire to stop death so that nobody else he was attached to would ever die again --- I can?t help but think that there was still some selfish motivation behind that as well. Revenge of the Sith (on film) does an... okay job of hinting at that. When Anakin is worried about Padme dying, he asks himself ?How will I live without her?? He?s thinking about himself.

Not what I meant; sorry if I didn?t make that clear. I

 

My answer is no. I think Lucas was trying to make a point. This is the Anakin Skywalker we started with - not a little boy who was inherently prone to darkness. There is nothing in TPM to indicate this inherent darkness in my opinion - which is why I didn't like what Bear did in that sequence in Rogue Planet. I also acknowledge that I might be misreading Bear's intent - he may not be implying that inherent darkness, but that is how I understood it.

Basically I don't agree with that idea, nor do I agree with the understanding that Anakin was on a power trip to the extent you indicated. Anakin did want to be powerful - the greatest of Jedi - but not simply because he loved the idea of being hero worshiped. I think Lucas would have very easily shown us his desire for fame if it were true by making him relish in the extensive holonews coverage of himself during the clone wars (the hero with no fear), or looking smug and not bothering to take issue with Obi-Wan over which of them should meet the press after Anakin's successes associated with rescuing the chancellor from the Trade Federation ship. So while I apprecate your take on it, that was just not the understanding I took away from Anakin's characterization in the movies.

Anakin was very powerful and he knew it, and he wanted the recognition of the Jedi for that (wanting a place on the council) and the freedom that would garner him in attaining more power (their not holding him back any longer). However, underlying that desire was not a simple need for everyone to tell him how great he was or to shine in the daily press. He wanted to be able to use that power so that he could have control over that which mattered to him: saving those he loved from death or destruction, based on his attachment to them. It would also allow him to save more people in general, another very important factor to him as shown in the movies.

 

The character with the next-highest midichlorian count that we know of was Yoda, and he wasn't born to darkness.

 

I think you can have Anakin not be prone to darkness, and still have these slips into darkness. Not because he's evil but because he's human, and everyone has those cracks, and there had to be something there for his eventual fall to build on. He's not constantly holding this tide of anger back -- he's a nice, gentle, well-meaning sweet kid -- but when someone's threatening someone he cares for, and he's angry and feeling powerless, and suddenly it comes out in one quick burst and he's sitting there going "Where the hell did that come from? What was that?"

Anakin's a good kid, but he's not perfect. If he were perfect, he wouldn't have fallen. So I think you can show a moment of weakness causing a dark act, even a succession of moments of weakness causing dark acts, without portraying him as prone to darkness. A portrayal of him as really a bad seed, out consciously doing bad things without moments of weakness, or doing bad things because he thought he could get away with them -- that would be prone to darkness. Him consistently choosing the wrong over the good when faced with a difficult choice, that would be prone to darkness. I don't think this, whatever other problems it might have as the start of the "Oh look Anakin does something bad, ooooh foreshadowing" deluge, falls into that particular trap.

 

I agree with that ^^. But in RP, I felt Bear was implying inherent darkness because Anakin went through a long ordeal, desperately attempting to stop the darkness from coming on - literally giving all he had to try and stop it because he felt it was wrong and didn't want it to overcome him. It was like a battle with darkness that he wanted to win, but couldn't, no matter what. And then Thracia reads him and leaves the Order, lol. As I say, it is possible that Bear was trying to get across what you were saying, or something other than inherent darkness and I am just misinterpreting his intent.

 

First off, congrats, Jeff! I hope the teaching is going well. Wave to the city for me! And let me know if there's anything you think I might be able to help with, information-wise.

Secondly, I think that Jeff nailed it when he asked whether there was too big a gap between TPM Anakin and AoTC Anakin. Now, like xx_Anakin_xx, I prefer the young, selfless, good-hearted kid of TPM. I respect that others might, perhaps, have preferred to see more of the underlying darkness in TPM but...that's not my preference. I think it's a more tragic story if a good man falls than a man who has always struggled with the darkness. But ultimately, the two characters are very different. And there are a whole host of legitimate ways an optimistic, helpful child can turn into a petulant, angry teenager. There are, after all, 10 years we don't see. But that's the problem, we don't really see them and there's never any time given to explaining the development. And since we all know he's gonna be Vader one day, I feel, if anything, it's MORE important to show how good and heroic PT Anakin is (pre-Fall) than to spend so much time on his less attractive character traits that led to his converstion to the Sith. The story is tragic because the Anakin Skywalker we all imagined from the OT was so heroic and so amazing even Yoda spoke of him in a tone of awe.

That said, and while I do think that I'd probably have to count Rogue Planet as another in a long line of obsessive Vader-Foreshadowing-Moments if I were being scientific about it - I think that this one works much better than most. As Havac says, here he doesn't come across as horrifyingly vengeful as I felt he did in the Tusken Village incident (where he didn't just kill those who had killed his mother, he murdered children too). Here he is a child, made to feel powerless, angry about that and trying to defend himself. The fact that he's made into a "zombie" (great description) is...if anything all the more tragic as it's one more indication to me, not that he is incapable of responsibility for his own actions (OMG THE DARK SIDE MADE ME DO IT!) but rather that, to be honest, he spends much of his entire life powerless. With one group or another making decisions for him as a vessel of this power rather than as a human being whose name is Anakin.

I think a lot of it does come down to him being a child, actually, which makes his response very understandable to me, and also explicates his powerlessness and the fact others are constantly making these decisions for him based on his midi count not on himself, much more literal and immediate than they otherwise would be.

So, I guess what I'm saying is, while part of an unfortunate pattern, I ultimately come down on the side of Bear's inclusion of this event. I only wish the other instances of Vader-Forshadowing were done in ways I could get so well behind?