Full Series Order 66 on TCW

Eh... I'm on the fence, leaning more toward the side that the clones as portrayed in TCW was such a blatant contradiction to what had been revealed in AOTC.

But on the same token, it never sat well with me that people like Padme or the Jedi were cool with an army cloned, without freedom, and sold into a life of servitude (i.e. slaves) that were loyal to the Republic merely because they were told to be, rather than having any kind of stake in the Republic to warrant patriotic sentiment.

The idea that the clones were fairly individualistic was kind of a distraction in that I had to consciously stop and recall "...wait... these are STILL slaves" since the way that they were depicted in TCW didn't make it immediately apparent.

But really, if they wanted a loophole for individualistic clones, they could have used the degrading Jango DNA as an excuse. Make something up like the Kaminoans resorting to improved cloning techniques and improved growth acceleration to make the process even faster to keep up with the Republic's demand to replace clone casualties, with some of these new clones proving to be "faulty" and too independent for it to be worthwhile to continue cloning and also accelerating the need for Order 66 before too many of the "old guard" got replaced by these faulty clones.

I much rather would have liked to have seen clones more akin to how they were described in AOTC and the dilemma among Bail, Padme and the Jedi in regards to this army (without it, the Republic is defenseless, but with it the Republic is keeping slaves). Which could also have been a sore subject for Padme. She was troubled by the fact that the Republic's anti-slavery laws didn't extend to Tatooine in TPM, and now the Republic would have a slave army defending its borders.

 

Thanks! Been lurking for a while and decided to jump in.

It seems from what I've seen in the movies, EU and TCW, the vast vast vast majority follow the order-and really those clones aren't very interesting from a story telling point. So I don't mind seeing stories about those individualistic outliers.

I don't really buy the genetic modification as the main contributing factor for obedience- the years of training in very controlled environment can easily account for the clones following orders.

 

I feel like everything on Naboo could've happened elsewhere and in a much shorter amount of time.

 

I take the Kaminoan's sales pitch to Obi-Wan with a grain of salt- like I do any salesman really. They are trying to play up their elite uber cloning skills to their client so they get paid. Besides, we really hear nothing about the clones except from the Kaminoans and Jango and nothing about the clones from the clones.

I agree, some protest from the heroes was in order.

As a biologist, the degrading DNA excuse is stupid. Especially in a galaxy far far away where they have space travel and lightsabers. Star Wars is not hard sci fi so I am not expecting an explaination per se, but we can keep DNA and cell lines indefinitely IRL to think that the "cloners" can not for like two years is ridiculous.

 

moonjump05

I agree about the degrading DNA being stupid, it just seemed like baseless technobabble to lay the groundwork for the explanation as to why there don't seem to be Jango clones (or at least not many of them) by the time of the OT.

But then again, it's also stupid that Anakin, upon seeing that Padme would die of complications in child birth, did not propose a c-section, but instead went to go sell his soul to the devil with logic that he has to kill people to become powerful enough to save people.

It requires suspension of disbelief. Just like you're not going to splice frog DNA with dinosaur DNA to fill the massive sequence gaps of the latter and get anything that looks remotely like a dinosaur (or get anything at all).

But within the internal logic of Star Wars, they could have ran with the (non realistic) excuse that without the original DNA donor, subsequent clones will see more and more defects.

Or they could have just made up any excuse they wanted, that they cranked up the speed of growth acceleration and the clones weren't being indoctrinated properly, or that the Kaminoans started cutting corners to reduce costs or whatever.

As you say, it's not the most scientific franchise, so I'm not expecting the most thorough, scientifically sound excuse.

But it defeats the point of having a clone army, if there are apparently patriots standing by that will flock to recruitment offices and are more prone to following orders (Filoni's excuse to why we'll see a shift away from clones in Rebels).

 

I agree the DNA degradation is just an excuse, but it is one that bothers me OOU more than it really should.

IIRC, the sped up cloning did happen towards the end of the war, and the presumably more thorough Kaminoans were eventually replaced and taken over by the Empire. Besides, the clones were dying left, right and center the entire time- and Palps wanted this to not only prolong the war as needed but to gain more powers from the Senate as the Senators were more and more desperate the longer the conflict ensued. The clones were merely an expendable placeholder. Once the war itself was over, and Palps was emperor of a united galaxy of human order- who wouldn't want to join the Empire? New recruits would be filled with patriotism for their leader and would draw friends and family to support them and subsequently the Empire. Now the Empire's ranks wouldn't be filled with clones, but actual people who would be very much less likely to die.

 

I would think that expendable clones dying left and right would cause less panic and concern, and generate less patriotic fervor than peoples' fathers, husbands and sons (and mothers, wives and daughters?) going off to fight and die for the Republic to defend from the armies of the sadistic General Grievous. I mean, when something like the terrorist attacks on the WTC happened, American patriotic fervor sky rocketed. If everyone that dies is just an expendable clone that nobody really knows or cares about and that can be replaced with a big enough pocket book... who cares?

 

"Who cares" is right, doesn't that one senator in TCW say something like "Who is dying? The clones?" and shrugs it off, much more concerned with winning than the death toll. Palps needs the war to continue until he wins. If huge numbers of patriotic citizens joined at the beginning of the war and then subsequently died in needless pointless ways, there would be much more backlash against the war than was shown when it was just the clones dying.

By having clones instead of citizens, Palps is more in control of how long the war lasts.

And then after the war is won, he can recruit cheaper citizens to spread propaganda on the greatness of the Empire.

 

Palps wouldn't be any less in control of how long the war lasts since he's controlling both sides. He can arrange victories and defeats. Order 66 also doesn't go quite as planned if clones are less reliable than patriots. Instead of clones - that can be genetically and psychologically manipulated through a decade worth of indoctrination and training in their first years of life - being more dependable than recruits with patriotism (Filoni's answer), we get the opposite, which weakens the justification for every having clones in the first place since Order 66 was the key event that needed to happen for Order 66 to happen, and apparently Palpatine surrounded Jedi with those less likely to obey that order.

Lastly, why would the senate ever panic and give him more and more emergency powers if the only ones actually dying are clones? That's far more impersonal than citizens being killed. And no, I do not feel like there would be backlash against the war with citizens, no more so than people going off to fight and die in something like WWII. Grievous appeared to be a war mongering monster and Dooku was seen as the aggressor in the war. This isn't like Vietnam where people are getting recruited to go off and die in a war that the population doesn't think is worth fighting to begin with, this should have been a war with people fighting to defend their homes and becoming martyrs, stirring up patriotic fervor until a "if you're not with us, you're against us" attitude develops to the extent that the senate applauds when the "traitorous" Jedi are labeled enemies of the state and hunted down, and makes Palpatine's political opponents fall in line and be afraid to speak against him, lest they be accused of being unpatriotic and ridiculed by their peers and those they represent.

The war as portrayed in the prequels and TCW is just as hard for me to swallow as clone DNA degradation is for you. Everyone panics over a potential split in the Republic and then over the course of the war everyone is content to just keep handing Palpatine more and more power, when there's hardly a crisis portrayed. The Republic and Jedi win more than lose, and when they lose the only deaths are clones that nobody cares about. Where's the justification?

The war needed to be more like Rome (Republic) about to fall to barbarians (Grievous' droid army) with the senators throwing as much power to Palpatine as they can because their lives depend on it and with citizens flocking to the army to defend their homes. Instead, all throughout TCW there was hardly a crisis portrayed, and day to day life seemed to continue just fine.

 

Palpatine arranges a party with 65 Jedi. He orders a pizza for each of them and Tup overhears.

 

^Is is wrong that I read that as, "Pizza the Hutt"?

 

Not at all. In fact, it's awesome.

 

What if it was to be confirmed and shown irrefutably, that Captain Rex... the loyal, brotherly, honorable, dependable Rexster... was in the army that marched into the Jedi temple. Indeed, he was front and center, the man marching right behind Vader... and then he gets shown as the onslaught progresses, personally gunning down multiple Jedi, including adolescent padawans and pre-teen younglings.

Would you like to see that? Or would it annoy you or piss you off?

Obviously we won't get it in TCW now, and Rebels is 14 years later so not there either... But some future show or movie might address it. Perhaps a Rex spinoff movie.

 

As far as I know, Commander Fox was the leader of the 501st during the raid on the Temple.

 

I believe Appo led the 501st on that occasion; Fox led the Coruscant Guard.

 

"They didn't have calamari pizza because Mon Calamari are people and I did not know that."

 

To be honest, I hate the idea of a clone army, especially if it it just done away with by the time of Rebels. If the clones have a greater capacity to disobey orders than recruits, then it defeats the point of having a clone army, and the concept of a "place holder" army is silly, IMO.

Lucas on several occasions has spoken of Star Wars as being a morality play for young people, and in the prequels he's trying to show how a Republic can become a dictatorship, and in no real life example where this very thing happens can I think of a single instance of a place holder army, and I think the use of clones to begin with was unnecessary and weakens the practicality of having the narrative have any kind of realistic application when you establish that Palpatine became a dictator because he had a clone army of child slaves accelerated into adulthood and carrying a subconscious trigger that he can activate at any time by saying "execute Order 66" and killing all the Jedi (or the vast majority of them anyway).

Palpatine should have been more like space-Hitler, space-Napoleon, or space-Caesar, IMO. All had to navigate the political arena and turn public favor towards themselves and against their enemies. Caesar didn't have a clone army that he could just give an order to and annihilate all his rivals, he had to manipulate people, make political deals, and use threat of force and coercion in instances. People like Caesar, Napoleon, and Hitler all had ambition and were very active in getting what they want.

Palpatine just kind of stares at his feet depressed and questions who would propose that he be given emergency powers. He seemed so non-passionate, non active, passive, etc. And I get that that's the point to absolve him of any suspicion but the fact that the guy makes Chancellor because of sympathy was just dumb IMO. "Well, his planet was illegally invaded, he really didn't do a whole lot, the Queen of Naboo did, but gosh, he's a real trooper and deserves to be Chancellor for the next 10 years."

So I think much of Palpatine's rise to power is just ridiculous in that regard, even before you bring Order 66 into the equation, which takes the human aspect out of it. That when it came to things like the Nazis, these were at one time "normal" people, with families, loved ones, that would have gone through much of the same mundane-ness of everyday life as people today. But that the political and economic scenario of post-WWI Germany fostered sentiments that ultimately culminated into a war mongering Fascist regime where people are joining the Nazi ranks and participating in heinous acts, such as the Holocaust.

It's a complicated situation that led to everyday people doing terrible things in the name of patriotism and ultra-nationalism. That kind of narrative serves as a warning/lesson to young people. And they could have done such a narrative within the context of the Star Wars universe with Palpatine being more active and a "grab the bull by the horns and get the Republic through the war" kind of guy. Not some uncharismatic individual elected on sympathy with a brainwashed clone army in his pocket. That eliminates the aspect of corruptible humanity from the narrative, and it seems like giving the clones greater individuality in TCW and then saying that they are not as dependable as patriots (Filoni's words in reference to Rebels) just seems like a too little, too late decision to put some of that humanity back in by giving the clones a greater degree of choice in their lives than we were initially led to believe they had.

 

If it's done well i am down with Darth Rex.

 

I admit that it would probably upset me. Granted, watching Order 66 always gets me, but I see what TCW might have gone wrong in giving the clones individual personalities, because it puts more on them for following Order 66. Truly free-thinking individuals know that it's okay, if not necessary, to disobey immoral orders.

Trust me, I am on Tumblr and I can assure you that the Captain Rex fangirls(myself included) will be more than a little angry/upset if there's emphasis on him following the order, especially if he guns down Ahsoka(who is no longer a Jedi but the order extended to former Jedi).

Sent from my addictive smartphone using TapaTalk 2.

 

I'm sure the Ahsoka-haters would love that.

 

There was a Fox in the 501st too

Sergeant Fox killed Jett Jukassa and was the one who said "Don't worry, let him go" referring to letting Organa leave the Temple

And their numbers are different

 

I love that clones who are shown carrying out Order 66 in ROTS appear in "good guy' roles in TCW. It makes them more than "that clone who followed Order 66".

 

Ke narir haar'ke'gyce rol'eta resol!

It would be interesting to hear these words uttered (most likely not in Mando'a though ) at some point during the Order 66 arc, if they choose to go that direction. Presumably they'll return to Kamino, so we might yet see more of the Cuy'val Dar, assuming Bric and El-Les were among their number in the episode Clone Cadets; I'm certain Shaak Ti will show up based on the Polish trailer. Yeah, I'm still keen on seeing more of Jango Fett's legacy before the show concludes, and even the barest hint that the man was a Mandalorian would be most welcome.

If the order was indeed programmed into the clones (or maybe a later batch of clones than Rex and Cody) Manchurian-candidate style, I am sure we'll find out more of just how much in cahoots Lama Su and the higher-ups were with the Sith---this could well be a fail-safe to ensure that clones who became too independent or free-thinking over time would still be compelled to obey the Order. It might not be the case for every clone, though...like I said, perhaps Rex wouldn't respond to it the same way as say, a potentially 'younger' clone like Tup does. And perhaps Cody and the original clones that obeyed the order did so not because of programming, but due to indoctrination and other subconscious triggers; we'll have to wait and see what kind of explanation the Order 66 arc gives and how much it deviates from the official EU explanations, if any, before any of us jumps to conclusions based on the preview clip shown back in March.