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

Ditto.

And I agree with a good majority of you guys on the subject of continuity.

 

This gift horse is a zombie horse. And it keeps biting the other horses and infecting them.

 

If people here think TCW sucks, why do they watch it?

Is it some sort of completionist thing borne out of the idea of a complete continuity? Why not just watch/read/play the stuff you like and not worry about the stuff you don't like?

I'm really not getting this "I have to do everything Star Wars, even if it sucks, and then I'll just talk about how it sucks." Who is the winner in that scenario? Not the person suffering through something they don't like...

 

I don't watch it. I keep up with what happens in it via this thread and the Wook.

EDIT: You know what, I say a lot of bad things about TCW, so I'll think I'll say one positive thing about it. I like that Eeth Koth is alive. I never liked the fact he had died the way he did, when Sora Bulq had survived.

 

So far as I see it from the conversation thus far, at least here in Lit, TCW has created the following duality: You either view George's work/inflence as Daimanite, breathing life into the universe through his new creation, or as Odionite, in that it is bringing about ruin. Correct?


Lucas: I have decided that the planet Ryloth will now have a day and night cycle.

Filoni: As my lord knows... Ryloth is a tidally-locked planet. If we're going to include it in this trilogy, we'll have to--

Lucas: It will function as I desire.


So would this make Leland Chee into Gub Tengo? Fascinating...

 

Why keep up with it at all? I'm presuming that you think it sucks, since you don't watch it and replied to me asking why people that think it sucks watch it.

I'm trying to understand the masochistic mindset pervasive throughout this thread of the fan that is having TCW inflicted upon them and bemoaning how terrible it is while they continue to tune in every week, or otherwise continue returning to the thread to bemoan how terrible it is.

 

Technically speaking, you would especially not want to look a zombie horse in the mouth, for that puts your brains right in front of the mouth.

Though speaking of horse corpse metaphors, these particular topics have been discussed to death. Nothing is really going to be settled until the continuity team sorts everything out, and they aren't doing that until the show is over...which won't be for a few more years at least.

Possible new topics for discussion:
1. How things could be worse: Retcons could include childish insults aimed at the original. ("I though Ryloth was tidelocked." "What kind of moron would believe that?")
2. How proper continuity could have improved an episode: Going with the original script for "Innocents of Ryloth", in which Ryloth's tidelocked nature is used to explain why they could only land at one location, would have gone a long way to making the battle feel more real and logical. So many land battles in Star Wars are arbitrary, so i didn't notice, but a little detail like that would be much apprecaited.
3. Little thing that bugged you: I prefer Savage with an axe to Savage with a lightsaber. Not only does it make him less a Maul clone, but it is nice to see a wider range of weapons in general, and to see someone actually use an axe with skill in particular. Similarly Asjai and rope-scythe.
4. Little thing you absolutely love: The use of hand held shields by many characters in the show. Particularly the energy ones used by the commando droids in the upcoming episode. After they were used effectively in episode one, I thought the technology was underused in the EU.

 

I don't think it sucks, quality-wise. I know I can come off as hating it, espically with the zombie horse comment, but I have no opinion on its actual quality, having never seen a full episode. I'm sure it is quite good, and from the clips I have seen, mostly fight or action ones, it looks kinda cool. I just don't really like animated shows. A lot of them give me a headache for some reason.

I keep up with what happens in it because of the controversies it causes with the EU I do read. The zombie horse metaphor I used was just in reference to how, for some reason, all these contradictions with continuity keep cropping up, which spreads to other works quicker with each one that appears.

If people do watch it even thought they hate it, I find that very strange. There is really no reason to do that.

Very true!

 

Excellent metaphor. It works very well.

 

You guys are giving Filoni too much credit. I'm pretty sure he's part of the issues with TCW, but most of the time the criticism goes toward Lucas.

 

Having watched the commentaries on TOS I've decided to not care about continuity for right now. I can understand that they don't want to be hemmed in by a comic made eight years ago. All the power to 'em. Honestly there have been 8 out of 62 episodes (so far) I can say I hate. The rest range from watchable to awesome. Even Savage Oppress was better than expected. So, I'm going to sit back, enjoy the show while its on, and sort out the pieces when the dust settles.

I just hope it doesn't last more than five seasons or they may have Ashoka jumping a speeder over a nos monster.

 

Continuity problems are only Filoni's fault insofar as he's a proponent of the EU-inclusion philosophy - for those of us who'd rather see iffy EU than none at all, he's doing some pretty impressive work. I really can appreciate the "none at all" perspective, but even after all the lumps we've taken, I still think TCW will have been a net positive when all's said and done.

 

Because enjoyment of media isn't a binary proposition. For those who watch it, there are moments in the series which are enjoyable. But this the Lit forum, and this discussion thread is specifically for continuity discussion. Coming here and basically saying there shouldn't be continuity discussion is less than productive.

No, it's the idea that a consistent universe is a more enjoyable one, one of the reasons that Star Wars EU - as opposed to other sci-fi franchises - enjoys a significant popularity, in my mind. Again, you seem to imply that "completionists" are demanding 100% compliance with the EU, which is nonsense.
I'll repeat it again - there is absolutely no reason whatsoever for purely EU material to be mangled by the CWAS. None. As you put it, who is benefiting from this? The casual fan that doesn't care about the references? The EU fan, who is irritated by the inclusion?

Read carefully what you just wrote.

 

While I understand (indeed I have geeked out over many of the things that have appeared in this show) and agree that it is overall a net positive (if nothing else, Battlefront 2 is getting more canon all the time.), but I can't help but feel that "none at all" is a win-win.

People who don't care about continuity would watch it and enjoy it anyway.
People who do care would not get their toes trampled on.
Plus, it would make the Star Wars universe that much bigger, that much more diverse. (Granted I absolutely love new stuff so I am biased.)

I can't see any way anyone loses...though I admit I have the feeling I am missing an important point of view here.

 

Love it

 

Where have I said there shouldn't be continuity discussion? As far as I'm concerned, I am discussing continuity. I'm just not anal about whether a planet is tidally locked or what planet Maul hails from. I don't think Star Wars is ruined because one story says Ryloth is tidally locked and a visual story doesn't necessarily depict it as such.

The writers of the show? I think SuperWatto provided a rather compelling reason for the continuity to not be 100% consistent. It's not always consistent in the Expanded Universe in general; when you're dealing with a creative team the size of TCW's team of writers and directors, and the breadth of material they're covering, to account for every. single. obscure piece of SW material is simply impossible. Most of the stuff listed a few pages back as continuity breaks is rather minor stuff that doesn't have a major impact on SW continuity as a whole. I'm not losing sleep over the Atlas placement of Rodia, the homeworld of Darth Maul, and whether Dooku was on the Jedi Council or not. The biggest things I think are the general timeline and Ventress' backstory. The former was necessary for the premise of the show, and the latter was handled rather well, IMO. And generally speaking, the biggest effect that TCW would have on are future stories set in the Clone Wars. The stories that preceded it are already set in stone. And people haven't really been writing Clone Wars since Episode III.

And frankly, I told Havac this in a PM, I think continuity in Star Wars went out the window when after the New Jedi Order series, the Yuuzhan Vong and the effects of that war were completely swept under the rug, and the entire premise of that series was subsequently reframed from -- I hope Havac doesn't mind me quoting his PM reply to me here: "a story that was about the Jedi expanding their understanding of the Force to allow them to act against an enemy and triumph with a peaceful, reconciliatory conclusion was actually a story about the Jedi being corrupted by the Sith and using Sith teachings to win the war." Compared to that, anything TCW does to damage continuity is a minor cut. Post-NJO stories are a massive gash. Seriously, that's the equivalent of Dark Empire revealing that Yoda was secretly a Sith Lord and Luke was trained to be a Sith all along and joined Palpatine, only to be killed by Leia. Awesome continuity. Y'know, actual continuity in terms of the story and characterization and themes, not minutiae like whether Ryloth is tidally locked.

I also find it funny that the same people complaining about Ventress having her backstory rewritten are a lot of the same people that loved Vergere having her backstory rewritten. So it seems people got over that, so I think everyone will eventually get over TCW.

 

You don't see people talking about it currently because she hasn't shown up for a number of weeks in TCW now. I'm still rather upset by the sudden change of her backstory, but there's no reason to bring it up in the blue. Not only that, Greedo's backstory change.

 

I bring it up because nothing TCW can possibly do will ever rival that in terms of completely crapping all over continuity, and people seem to have gotten over that and weren't wringing their hands over the slippery slope that presents when it happened. Now GL is doing it to a lesser extent and it's an issue? I'd be more bothered by people that aren't GL doing it, and doing it so it completely reshapes a story after the fact.

 

Except we aren't exactly talking about some passing reference in a 80s RPG that people forgot. We are talking about things people knew about, carefully researched and changed anyway. Sometimes for good reasons, sometimes for silly reasons, but most often without us knowing the reason at all.

Ryloth is a prime example. It wasn't that the team wasn't aware of the tide-lock: the original script called for that to be a plot point. And frankly it made the plot a great deal more logical (see my earlier post this page). Then, those references were removed and new ones were added, and a new scene shot which served no purpose but to change Ryloth's nature. Even then, those were so minor and ambiguous that most people ignored them until the Atlas went with the change.
We did lose something. We lost many elements of Twi'lek culture (no more banishing people to the bright lands), he lost vivid descriptions and visual depictions of a world split in two, of shadows that never moved, or heat storms ravaging mountains rising into eternal twilight. We lost the Nightlands race course in Racer's Revenge, the Rlyoth scenes from Tales of the Jedi and a large portion of the plot from the Diversity Alliance series. We are just left with a generic desert planet.
And for what? How did this change benefit the plot? What did those references and that one short scene add to the episode?

Of course, some complaints are more valid than others, but you can't dismiss everything as a trivial detail.

To end on a (hopefully) humorous note:
"What do you have to show for all your retcons, what have you to gain?"
"The future. A future where there are no post-NJO novels. The story of Luke Skywalker ends here."

 

Which scene of the episodes precludes Ryloth from being tidally locked? Given the amount of material which you've listed that depicts it as tidally locked, I wouldn't be surprised if Leland Chee just says TCW is wrong. T-canon being above C-canon doesn't mean crap for the Expanded Universe continuity -- LC says the conflicts are handled on a case by case basis.

Your post-NJO joke went over my head. And I would rather Luke Skywalker's tale end with TUF rather than what we got.

 

So where George Lucas has made tweeks, be they subtle or significant, we're suppost to automatically like every change without thought or question? As if Lucas has waved his hand and done the Jedi mind trick on everyone?

I think you will find, if you spend some time here, that the enjoyment some fans take from Star Wars as a whole is the idea of one timeline. Taking every part of canon and finding a way to fit it together. It's not completely my thing but I fail to see why there is anything wrong with that.

For some of these people this has been a hobby of over twenty years involving a massive investment of time and money. When you spend decades caring about something its difficult to just throw the emotional off switch and pretend everything is alright.

Now if your looking for TCW discission laced with more positive vibes I'd suggest you should venture over to the Force.net Lacwac forums.

Honestly this thread is very tame so far as critiquing continuity goes on this forum.

 

Please explain what exactly was gained by it. Why refer to Ryloth in the first place if someone like you doesn't care? Why not just make a new planet and not refer to the EU at all?

Which is why I've said repeatedly that's not what EU fans are asking for. You engaging in strawman creation here.
I'll ask - yet again - what purpose was served by making EU references and then misusing them? This isn't about "accounting" for obscure pieces of SW material. There was no reason for the usage of Ryloth, or Rodia, or Maridun or any number of EU places, people or other bits of information.

Again, are you reading what you're writing? You're complaining about continuity issues.
And that's fine that you think that continuity "went out the window" - the thing is, the people that haven't given up on SW continuity are still concerned with it and how it relates to the CWAS.
And yes, you seem to still be saying that Clone Wars continuity shouldn't be discussed, except to say either that people should get over it or that the NJO was much worse in your opinion - neither of which is particularly enlightening.

 

I'm not arguing that anything is gained or loss. Maybe they should have made a new planet and said the Twi'leks originate from there instead of Ryloth, but then everyone would complain about that instead. I don't know their reasoning for having the Twi'lek homeworld rotate on its axis; I'm not one of the writers. If they had it in the script and removed it, I'm guessing they had a reason.

What discussion in this thread is enlightening? "I think TCW kinda sucks"? I'm not entitled to express my opinion that I think the continuity issues in TCW are not that big of a deal to me, and that I think that continuity has been "mangled" far worse by things other than TCW, and that until TCW starts "mangling" continuity to that extreme, it doesn't particularly bother me? Come on. This thread isn't titled "Complain about TCW's continuity," so I think the fact that I sit on the other side of the fence doesn't preclude me from expressing my thoughts.

 

While you may not find it "enlightening" there have been a ton of people discussing how to make the changes in continuity brought on by TCW work with what previously existed.

This thread has been ongoing for three years with a lot of productive discussion within it, stuff that rises above the hating and gushing.

I wonder how far I'll have to go back to find a postive/productive comment in this very thread that you just generalized.....Lets see......

 

I'm just going to bow out of the thread -- I don't want to escalate this into an argument any further than it already has been, because I realize now I'm not going to convince anyone to agree with me -- or if they dislike the TV show, to like it. I apologize if I was rude to anyone previously.

I'm sure that when the show is completed, the discontinuity will be corrected through new stories, SW Insider articles, and essential guides and other sourcebooks.