Lit Sidious/Palpatine's Co-conspirators in the EU

I stopped trying to get the EU explanation of the clones straight - and it is obviously always changing, anyhow, so there is no final understanding to be had.

My understanding of AOTC was pretty simple, yes:

1) Dooku leaves the Jedi Council 10 years before AOTC (the librarian said this in the script and I believe it was in the comic, too, which I read before seeing the movie.)
2) Working with Palpatine to orchestrate a war which will result in a Sith-controlled (and Jedi-free) empire, Dooku and Palpatine begin plotting to expand the conflict with the Trade Federation. They need an army for the Republic to do this and reason a clone army is best for the reasons cited in AOTC.
3) Sifo-Dyas is murdered or otherwise dies around this time.
4) Dooku recruits Jango as the host clone.
5) Dooku assumes Sifo-Dyas's identity to pose as a member of the Republic and hide his own identity when ordering the clones.
6) Dooku then "switches sides" (though actually always being loyal to the Sith) and aids the Trade Federation, growing them into a full separatist movement. "Lies, deceit, creating mistrust are his ways now."
7) "I have good news, Master. The war has begun." And so, the Sith's power grows, Jedi are killed, etc., etc., etc.

All of this could be inferred comfortably by the content of AOTC. I agree that there were still a few holes and/or confusing elements, but overall I was one of the people who dismissed criticisms that this wasn't elaborated on in ROTS back when that was released. I was like, "It's already answered. Don't you get it?" Then....the EU comes along, and, well....

 

Major DARTH PLAGUEIS spoilers follow below.

Sate Pestage definitely knew. Plagueis is the one who introduced Pestage to Palpatine. Sate Pestage also has an action sequence where he's helping the two Sith Lords, as they're using all of the Force power to survive and enact revenge.

Mas Ammeda also had to have known, he watches Palpatine shoot lightning at Yoda without blinking!



As for the clones, Sifo-Dyas was manipulated by Plagueis into ordering a Clone Army. Dooku is recruited by Palpatine, erases Kamino, officially leaves the order, and his test to become the Sith apprentice is to kill Sifo-Dyas. Dooku then hires Jango to be the host.

 

The only thing the EU has changed- and it can be argued if this was really changed at all- is that Sifo-Dyas was manipulated into ordering the creation of the clones. Doesn't add much convolution.

 

Well, first off, that isn't all that the EU added: the EU added the fact that Sifo-Dyas placed the order for the clones in the first place. In AOTC, it was clearly implied that Dooku had done it and it was impossible for Sifo-Dyas to have done it. If your assessment of AOTC is different, that's okay, but I thought that was pretty close to watertight.

Having some random Jedi have some "vision" of a war, and then having him place an order for an army, opens up all sorts of plot holes. In the first place, it brings into place a form of the grandfather paradox (which I don't at all believe was intentional): how could he have a vision of a prophecy of a war when the warriors wouldn't even exist without that prophecy? That makes no sense - that's not a prophecy, that's causing an action. (It's like eating a steak after dreaming of it. You don't say you had a "prophecy of the steak", you just went out and caused it yourself.) Secondly, where would some random Jedi get the budget for a historically epic Department of Defense expenditure? That's like saying that some random priest is able to just build a hundred million dollar cathedral out of his own pocket. It's just dumb. And if this random Jedi created the Clone Army, then why did Dooku have to go out and get the host clone? Wouldn't Sifo-Dyas have provided the details about his qua-zillion dollar purchase himself? And, really, who has the vision of a war....and then goes out on their own and creates an entire army? How about, oh, I don't know, taking that information to the Jedi Council, to the Senate, to confidantes, to some media agency? It would be a preposterous - and impossible - response to a simple "prophecy".

Most of all, this goes against the implications - certainly as I interpreted them - of the movies, where it was obviously implied that Dooku and Palpatine had done this together: they had the means (Palpatine's coffers as Supreme Chancellor), motive (starting a war to give Palpatine power), and opportunity. Sifo Dyas was clearly implied to have been dead at the time, and his very name in AOTC was - again, at least to me - implied to be a red herring to cover Palpatine's true identity for one more movie.

Obviously, all these things can be rationalized and retconned....and that's exactly what the EU has done. Those rationalizations and retcons are the very things I said I roll my eyes about.

We all have our personal canons, and the Sifo-Dyas clusterf--- of retcons is just not part of mine. But if it's part of yours, that's obviously your choice.

Here's a good Michael Kaminski article on the Sifo-Dyas subplot before the EU got its hands on it: http://secrethistoryofstarwars.com/sifo-who.html
(Although admittedly, it's kind of a mess there, too, but he still succinctly notes, "Viewers, of course, can deduce on their own that Sidious and/or Dooku were behind the whole event.")

(Although I see that the Darth Plagueis novel "corrects" the silly self-fulfilling prophecy aspect of things, to some extent, but that's just cleaning up a mess that shouldn't have existed in the first place.)

 

Sifo-dyas trying to prevent something, only to help it come true? That sounds just like Anakin's story. It's how the Sith operate, they use fear in order to manipulate and control.

It's not a cluster-you-know-what of retcons, the only thing added to the movies is that the Sith manipulated Sifo-dyas to create the army (obviously Sifo-Dyas placing the order is part of that idea, but it's one idea). That's all the EU has added. The Sith used him, then they killed him. It's not even a retcon, it's just filling in the gaps. The shortest path between point A and point B may be a straight line, but things are hardly ever that simple. Still, this new information hardly complicates anything, it just clarifies.

Also, Plagueis funds the army. It's his idea. He's visiting Kamino, setting things into motion, decades before the movies.

 

That's fine. But it still doesn't solve the issue of where he'd get the insane amount of money necessary, why he wouldn't just take his prophecy to the Senate, why he didn't provide the details for his qua-zillion dollar order....etc., etc., etc.

I'm sorry, but if you're saying that this was intended in AOTC, then I absolutely and entirely disagree. That's your opinion, and that's fine, but I have no clue how anybody could extract the "prophecy" story - or anything remotely like it - from AOTC. I agree with Michael Kaminski's assessment: "Viewers, of course, can deduce on their own that Sidious and/or Dooku were behind the whole event."

The laughably outlandish EU retcons aren't a part of my personal canon, but that's each individual's own choice, obviously.

 

I just finished some edits, read my last post again, it should be clearer now.

But a few last things tonight.

- What prophecy are you talking about? Sifo-dyas is just concerned about the state of the Republic, Plagueis convinces him that war is keeping, so Sifo-dyas acts.

- Sidious and Dooku are behind the event. Viewers who deduce that are still right. They just learn how the Sith are behind it. They acted by a proxy named Sifo-dyas.

- How is it "laughably outlandish" ? Or even a retcon?



And as The2ndQuest says, Lucas himself gave this information. You also really should read Luceno's DARTH PLAGUEIS. Seriously, it has all the information you need. And it's an enjoyable book to read

 

Yeah, based upon many comments elsewhere and general inferences, I'm comfortably including Mas Amedda and Sly Moore. Now, thanks to you, I can include the Plagueis book and Sate Pestage, too.

Still, I was hoping for (but apparently won't find) books dealing with the conspiratorial machinations of things. For instance, Palpatine having people cover for him when he was in his robe garb and hanging out with Dooku (I guess that would be like a guy's friends covering for him while he's cheating on his girl), or Dooku and Palpatine having emissaries to handle the middleman work, that sort of thing.

One issue with the PT was that Lucas obviously opted to keep Palpatine's identity a secret, and this choice prohibited great detail in what he was actually doing behind the scenes (hence, the clone army creation issue being much messier than it ought to be).

Anyway, right now, I'm planning on creating little graphics of the Plagueis and Boba Fett books. I'll work on a script to add this into the updated version of the documentary right now, and run it by you guys.

 

I've gotten in arguments about the EU Sifo-Dyas stuff before, and those were never resolved.

Ultimately, I think it comes down to where we each opt to put our focus and credibility - the movies or the EU. Assuming that we can all agree that there are rough patches in the continuity between the two entities (and I hope we all can), and that we can agree that the Sifo-Dyas concept is one such rough patch in the continuity, then we essentially just decide what side of the rough patch to focus on: I focus on AOTC, where I think it's clearly implied that Dooku was behind the creation of the clone army and that the Sifo-Dyas character was a decoy (for both the Jedi and the audience). Yes, I'll concede that there is plenty of wiggle room there for the EU to retcon it, and that's obviously what's happened.

I know that this is an EU forum and so me dismissing the EU out of hand might seem kind of bizarre, but please just try to consider it from my point of view, and hopefully that can be the end of it.

 

I feel like a broken record, but this is exactly the kind of stuff DARTH PLAGUEIS deals with. Seriously. And it's a good read too, in my opinion. The book is as much about Sidious as it is about Plagueis. And the book ends after Episode I, covering a half-century of events in pretty good detail. It has the Sith conspiracies. It has Sidious and Plagueis slipping between their dual identities masterfully, it has several conversations of conspiracy between Sidious and Dooku as well as between Plagueis and Sifo-Dyas, it has Palpatine assigning Sate Pestage as a middleman to do the dirty work of an assassination.

 

Yeah, I'll definitely check out Darth Plagueis - and I'm hugely grateful for your guys's assistance here.

Shadows of the Empire was the first EU novel I ever read (and that was way back in the '90s), and I thought that was okay. I think I tried reading others here and there, but never liked them (even the Zahn trilogy). But Luceno's 'Dark Lord' was the first EU book after SotE that I finished and expressly enjoyed. I listened to the audio book of 'Cloak of Deception' on a big car trip last year, and enjoyed that, too. So I'm kind of looking forward to Darth Plagueis, actually.

 

Yeah, well, I think there are a few mods here who will say that I have a bad habit of blowing things out of proportion. (Though this thread doesn't seem to provoke that in me so much, maybe because I'm asking for help here, and maybe also because you the literature thread draws in more thoughtful and cool-headed people than the average thread.)

I will try to get the last word in, though: I still definitely think that the story implied in the movie (at least as I intrepreted it, as I listed in an earlier post) is simpler and flows much more smoothly than the EU's version. But, again, that's just my opinion.

 

I don't remember anything in the movie implying that Dooku ordered the clones, honestly. I never got that impression just from watching the film. The film said that Sifo-Dyas did it and then never offered any alternative explanations. You could assume that Dooku was behind it somehow, since he recruited Jango, but I don't remember anything that actively suggested he ordered the army. It was like AOTC set up half of a mystery plot and then forgot to ever resolve it.

 

Attack of the Clones is easily my least favorite of the Star Wars movies (I'd go as far as to say it's very a very poorly constructed film), and it's been awhile since I've seen it, so I could be easily misremembering details.

However, I don't believe it was ever hinted at in AOTC that Dooku was the one who ordered the clones. You can infer that, sure, but there's not an overwhelming amount of evidence to support or debunk that, since Lucas does not dwell on it. Sifo-Dyas had been dead for 10 years, as of AOTC. Just enough time to allow the 10 year old clones to grow to adulthood.

From Plagueis, we know that Sifo-Dyas did not have a vision of the Clone Wars. He was just a pawn for Plagueis, Sidious and Dooku. Frankly, I think it makes much more sense for Sifo-Dyas to have been the one to place the order; Dooku couldn't risk doing it himself, and I doubt the Kaminoeans would fall for a falsified identify. I also prefer Sifo-Dyas's murder, at the hands of Dooku, being his "initiation" as a Sith.

Really, Plagueis fixes many continuity problems, rather than adding to them. The entire prequel era still has some major continuity issues, but they are now mainly during the Clone Wars.

Definitely. Also worth noting that subtlety is not among Lucas's strengths as a director. He, like Spielberg, rarely leaves room for interpretation; if he wants you to think something, he flat out states it in his films. In this case, there's a lot of backstory we don't know, but I felt like, if Dooku had been explicitly behind the clones, it would have been something that would have been outright stated, probably by Dooku himself.

 

I agree with that part to an extent. I think that the lack of a resolution was more tonal than logistical, though. I'll just cut-and-paste my summary from earlier, and I think that all of this is in the movie and, at least to me, made it more or less self-contained:

1) Dooku leaves the Jedi Council 10 years before AOTC (the librarian said this in the script and I believe it was in the comic, too, which I read before seeing the movie.) (UPDATE: I just looked at the comic and it was NOT noted in there, so either my memory is faulty or I got the 10 year figure from the screenplay book, which I almost certainly would have skimmed through at the time. But, somehow or another, I always knew that Dooku's departure from the Jedi synched up with the order for the Clones.)
2) Working with Palpatine to orchestrate a war which will result in a Sith-controlled (and Jedi-free) empire, Dooku and Palpatine begin plotting to expand the conflict with the Trade Federation. They need an army for the Republic to do this and reason a clone army is best for the reasons cited in AOTC.
3) Sifo-Dyas is murdered or otherwise dies around this time.
4) Dooku recruits Jango as the host clone.
5) Dooku assumes Sifo-Dyas's identity to pose as a member of the Republic and hide his own identity when ordering the clones. (Identity theft of the dead has always been very common - and is to this day - in civilizations.)
6) Dooku then "switches sides" (though actually always being loyal to the Sith) and aids the Trade Federation, growing them into a full separatist movement. "Lies, deceit, creating mistrust are his ways now."
7) "I have good news, Master. The war has begun." And so, the Sith's power grows, Jedi are killed, etc., etc., etc.

 

I think that I'm going to have about 20 or 30 seconds touching on the EU in the revised mini-documentary.

Actually, it's going to focus on Darth Plagueis - even though I admit I've never read it (or even necessarily heard of it until you guys told me). But I do plan on reading it.

I'm working on the animation right now. The script for that segment of the mini-documentary goes:

"For a variety of reasons - including George Lucas's decision to try and keep the revelation that Palpatine was going to become the Emperor a secret - the Star Wars Expanded Universe rarely addresses the false flag nature of the Clone Wars. In fact, four seasons into the Clone Wars cartoon, that seems to have mostly whitewashed it....or even retconned it out entirely.

"The 2012 novel Darth Plagueis, by fan favorite author James Luceno, is a major exception, though. It goes into a tremendous amount of detail explaining the conspirators' actions leading directly into Episode 1, the Phantom Menace."

I'm going to create a little CG animation of the book, too. Hopefully, I'll have it done in the next four or five hours, then take a long sleep and render it out as I'm dreaming away. I'll let you all know when it's finished. Thanks as always!

 

AOTC established no such thing. It in no way made Sifo-Dyas' involvement "impossible". Sifo-Dyas not being involved was simply an assumption on the part of some viewers. Besides, Darth Plagueis was not the first James Luceno book to indicate that Sifo-Dyas was involved. That already happened in LOE back in 2005. It's nothing new.

AOTC, through Yoda's dialogue, specifically instructed us not to assume anything. Unfortunately, people don't listen.

No, the book says that Sate Pestage knew, as was already stated on the previous page of the thread.

No, it isn't. The EU conflicting with fanon is not the same thing as the EU changing.

You're misrepresenting the sequence of events. That should read "before the film was changed prior to release". Kaminski's take on the situation is based on an early version of the script which was overwritten by the released film, and as such it is no longer valid. As of the release of AOTC, Sifo-Dyas was a real Jedi, not a made-up decoy name, and this became movie canon before the EU had anything to say about it at all.

 

Dooku didn't know until after he was Darth Tyranus.

I would say the following:

Plagueis (Yes, he was real. Yes, he was killed by his apprentice. I'll give you three guesses who his apprentice was.)
Palpatine's various Sith apprentices
A few Senators
Maybe some Confederates (other than Dooku); the Neimoidians were clearly in the dark.

Most were dupes, though: The Jedi didn't catch Palpatine as a Sith. Most thought the Sith didn't exist anymore, and most non-Jedi thought the Sith were a myth. Everyone else wsa just motivated, due to popular support for Palpatine, not wanting to look soft on terrorism, or just because they could use this to their own ends.

In other words, politics as usual.

 

Well, I have bills to pay of course, so those are forcing me to postpone this a little bit so that I can work on another project to get my rent in. My new target date for the revised 'Star Wars & False Flag Terrorism' is St. Patrick's Day.

I did complete a computer model of the Darth Plagueis book. You can see a little turntable of it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJ5E8L9kMTE

(If I had money, I could just buy a camera and a copy of the book to use, but I don't so that's why I built a CG version to use, instead.)

Also, I'm reading Plagueis and enjoying it a pretty good deal. Luceno really is a good writer, in contrast to so many of other EU and TCW writers, in my opinion.

Thanks to everybody. I'll make sure to update this thread when the section is complete. (And I will probably revise the script, The2ndQuest. I'll see when I get there.)

 

Here's a rough version of the E.U. part of the documentary. It needs some massaging, and so there's still work to be done, and I'll be happy to hear any suggestions about the content since it's not too late. Thanks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPvPXvQTdm0

 

On topic: Granta Omega also knew that Sids = Palps, but I don't think I'd call him a co-conspirator per se as he was kinda doing his own thing in order to meet Sidious (he dies shortly after learning the secret).