Full Series Missed or wasted opportunities in the show?

IIRC from the EU, cloning and Force-sensitivity didn't mix well, for whatever reason. Clones made fom Force-sensitive hosts had a tendency to be mentally unstable - deranged and psychopathic. They almost invariably turned to the dark side.

Edit: Oops, didn't see Anakinfan's post before replying. I thought I was on the last page. Sorry bout that.

 

Cloning Force-sensitives would pretty much break the universe.

 

Lack of any Separatist Council members and the other cool Jedi since Season 1. They really should have made arcs concentrating on some these characters instead of the same and usual. Instead of seeing Anakin, Obi-Wan and Ahsoka ALL OF THE TIME.

I think Durge should have made an appearance, since the micro-series and the EU portrayed him as one of the top CIS villains.

More CIS victories. We saw too many major Republic victories, which made the Republic seem too powerful. Which doesn't really make sense, because if this was the case, then they would have won the war in like a couple of months.

An arc to resolve the Zillo Beast story. What ever happened to cloning the creature? Unfortunately, we know that they never wrote an arc to fix this gap. Why couldn't we got a Zillo Beast arc and/or other cool, epic arcs instead of some of the stupid, pointless stories that we saw in Season 5?!?

 

To be honest IMHO the CIS deserved to lose the war for fielding those stupid, stupid, stupid battle droids and expecting to win a war with them.

It's not like they couldn't have fielded much more competent droids. Extremely competent droid soldiers have been shown to exist elsewhere in SW. I don't even buy the economy of scale thing... because the battle droids were so inept, that a really high end droid would literally be worth a hundred of them. At least. How much more expensive would they be if they were made competent? I mean, you don't even have to modify the body - it's the brain that counts. If they put smart brains in them... but no, they mass produced billions of idiot droids. And whowuddathunkit, they lost the war.

Guri, Prince Xizor's HRD bodyguard, would singlehandedly go through legions of B1's, almost as effectively as a Jedi knight would.

 

Yeah, you have a point, but I think Dooku's main reasoning of his droid army's composition was through numbers rather than smarts. The CIS did have smarter droids than the common B1 battle droid, like commando droids, but they were very expensive to mass produce so they didn't make a lot of them. But through huge numbers, they were able to overwhelm and defeat the Republic at several battles (like in Supply Lines). But at other times, it led to embarrassing defeats (ex. Tipping Points). But what I didn't like about TCW overall, was that it showed more of the Republic perspective of the war rather than the Separatists.

 

I can deal with droids being dumber than clones or not being able to adapt to certain situations. For instance the Battle of Naboo seemed like the way wars were fought back in the 18th century (only with semi-automatic blasters instead of muzzle loading muskets). I.E. Troops standing shoulder to shoulder and marching at each other, firing, until they pretty much get into melee range (there were gungans brawling with some droids in the background iirc).

So I could deal with it if that's the route Lucas wanted to go with the droids, that pretty much you just fill a corridor or a battle field with droids and they just march toward their goal, do not retreat and hope to overrun opponents through sheer numbers, while the clones are smart enough to flank, retreat if there's no chance of victory, use guerrilla tactics, etc.

But instead not only did we see dumb droids, but just downright unnecessarily comical droids the kind of which would say something like "Hey.... wait a minute.... You aren't supposed to be he--- *gets taken out by a lightsaber*" And we even see them running away or talking back and it just gets annoying IMO.

They could have been somewhat intimidating despite being expendable. Droids that experience no fear, and just endlessly pour out onto the battlefield no matter how many you destroy. I actually thought they were handled just fine in AOTC during the arena battle for instance, with the exception of the one who body swaps with C3PO.

Alone they might be useless, but as a force of sheer numbers that comes endlessly and experiences no fear, Lucas still could have turned them into something that represents a credible threat. Instead they were used mostly for comic relief.

In the movie Aliens, an individual alien wasn't actually all that imposing. The marines cut down through them with their automatic rifles fairly easily. The threat comes from them just pouring out endlessly and the sheer numbers in which the marines are running out of ammo and the aliens are still coming. Now obviously Star Wars need not create anything so nightmarish as something like the creatures from Aliens, but there were definitely ways to turn something expendable into something that was still very much a threat.

 

AMEN to this post. Yes... the show did lose a lot after ditching the Separatist Leaders and stopping the focus on other Jedi.
The show found a way to balance well the main characters so you would not be sick to the point you never want to see them again, but before that we did not see such balance. There was either too much Ahsoka or too much Anakin, but what is done is done.
The Anakin fans and Ahsoka fans got their treat...

What I still can not believe is that with Season 1 and 2 aside, we got no CIS leaders at all. 64 episodes since the finale of Season 2 and NO members of the Council... NONE!
Filoni time and again replied that they had a hard time fitting Separatist Leaders into stories cause they were not soldiers or generals (he said that to one of my questions during the S4 finale EW chat). There is no logic in that explanation given what the show did in the last 3 seasons.
http://roqoodepot.com/2012/03/12/dave-filoni-live-chat-on-ew-com/

I will leave the quote here, but I will never stop being annoyed at what the show did or, actually, DID NOT do with the CIS.

You do realise that the B1s were just a part of a bigger army that had dozens of variants that comprised it...
There were Tri-Droids, B2 Battle Droids, Assassin Droids, Droidekas and many others. Almost all of them were a problem for the Republic.

But like with other things in the saga, fans like to stick to one aspect of a faction or group and deem it uneffective just cause of that one element. Like you saying the CIS deserved to lose only cause the B1s were the most used.

If you go back and watch "A New Hope" then you will see that the Empire too was comprised of a bunch of officers and soldiers that had the same level of competence or skill as the B1s. I know that are many, many fans that look to the Stormtroopers and see epicness, but in reality the Stormtroopers were as effective as the B1s.
24:00 to 27:15

And I do not know about a legion of B1s, but Guri will most possibly end up eliminated by a droideka or two.
One thing I could totally admit that the show did right was the portrayal of the droidekas as a menace that even the Jedi could not stop. TCW missed many, many opportunities... but it got the droidekas right.

 

Who is this enchanting creature?

 

I guess you have something of a point there.

Also:

Would you believe I popped this out into a youtube window, 720'd and fullscreened it and watched the whole thing? I thoroughly enjoyed it. Thank you!

Cheryl Cole I believe.

 

Yes! Exactly...
It was a total glorious Anakinfest and I am saying it in a good way since even I loved Anakin in the S5 finale (he was amazing in it), but TOOO MANYYYYYYYY missed CIS opportunities. To throw a bone?! Really?! That is an understatement.

I am happy you enjoyed it. It is a really good and original video. Not many would go against the OT these days... you are welcome!

 

By the end of season 5 I was really annoyed that we didn't get to see a CIS centric arc considering Rebels, Droids and Young Jedi getting their own four part arcs.

 

Starkiller in TFU2 is about the only exception- and they cloned a whole bunch of insane versions of him before getting a moderately sane one.

 

The Luxoka ship teasing was an utter waste. Oh! Let's build a WHOLE bunch of what we think is tension between Lux and Ahsoka throughout 3 episodes... Oops, just kidding! He hooks up with some other girl. Thanks for time WELL spent!

 

As for the CIS leaders if the corporation leaders were never meant be 100% Separatist, why did George allow Nute Gunray and Wat Tambor to be done the way they were in the show? Wat Tambor had the role of a war general. I think that maybe George wanted to go along with the corporations being mostly Separatist at first, but then couldn't resist the corporation neutrality idea and then after Senate Spy corporation leaders were either left out so not to add confusion to the corporation neutrality storyline or just because George regrets how he did the CIS leaders. I know we had Poggle after Senate Spy, but he wasn't a corporation leader.

 

Exactly! Why did they decide to do this? They tried to justify this by saying that the Republic would go bankrupt if the Banking Clan or the Trade Federation left them completely. In addition, they said that these corporations are in the middle profiting from both sides, but with stronger ties to the Separatists "secretly". Balogne.

Instead they add a Senate for the CIS, which I'm not against, but why so many changes? Is Lucas like fully against the EU and previous established canon? There's a reason why they are called the Separatist Council.

On a side note, we didn't really even see much of the Separatist senators. Too much Republic and dumb droid arcs.

 

In the case of the Trade Federation, did Cato Neimoidia have a separate senator in the senate in addition to the representatives of the Trade Federation? I just kind of assumed that the Trade Federation, like the Dutch East India Company, may have just taken over several planets and that the Trade Federation representatives weren't just merely representing an economic institution, but also the planets it controlled politically.

Still, I suspect that Lucas just wanted to make a commentary on the role of corporations in politics and the resulting corruption, even in the real world, where people that have heavy economic interests in a particular economic entity are then given political positions.

Example: United Fruit

From Wikipedia

Two brothers with economic interest in United Fruit are also in positions of power and use their positions to protect their economic interest, going so far as trying to overthrow the leader of another country.

I think Lucas just chose to represent that kind of criticism a little too literally by giving the corporations senate seats, rather than depicting senators of planets on the payroll of these corporations (though it is mentioned that some of the bureaucrats have economic interest in the Trade Federation, enough to attempt to block Amidala's call for action against them).

 

Who was neutral? I thought you were talking about the Separatist Senate.

 

I always saw it as a statement about the in-universe Republic, not a caricature of real-life republics.

Here's something TCW should have done: show the clones receiving their phase ii armor rather than just suddenly having them wear it as if it's nothing new.

 

That is the whole Lucas being loopy issue. He likes doing one thing until he decides he does not like how he has been doing it and goes and changes it for no good reason.
Yes, Tambor and Gunray were in the middle of battles and commanded, but the show and the Star Wars universe in general has never had issues of putting Senators and representatives in charge of armies or fight in battles aka Padme and Bail come to mind.

So why not Tambor?!


Poggle was perfect in every episode he was in, he was brave even against Jedi by going out of his comfort zone (the control room) and confronting Jedi in an awesome way.

And having CIS leaders in Seasons 3, 4 and 5 could have worked and it could have been easy to do like with Tikkes in the Mon Calamari arc. Small cameos here in there to remind us that they are around and causing mayhem!

That is exactly what Lucas is like... he is like a pancake!

Yes, the CIS was led by such corporations and by people with personal interests. Some of the times those people would go out of their way to make sure their assets and wantings are met.

Some like Poggle just wanted to prove themselves. He was an odd one out of all the Leaders. Brave and wanting to prove himself to Dooku...

The Banking Clan thing and the Trade Federation thing were issues that did not need to exist. They were fine by being on the CIS side, not neutral.
The whole I am not on the CIS side and I am not on the Republic side DID make me shake my head and ask "WHY!?".

Whatever he wanted to do with the CIS and the Separatist Leaders, he could have and should have stuck with one vision from the start and see it to the end. Not introduce the Leaders in S1 and S2 then ignore then cause he did not like them anymore for some reason and wanted to do the stupid neutrality stories...

It is all about consistency. There was such a thing in the first seasons then it went missing!


ALL IN ALL: IT IS A STUPID MESS THAT LUCAS DID NOT NEED TO CREATE!

 

I'm with you on the whole neutrality thing. GL, how hard is it to understand that CIS leaders are CIS leaders?