Implications of the *new* continuity fix for The New Droid Army (Y:DR Spoilers)

In The New Droid Army, a fine GBA game, Anakin fights and defeats Count Dooku, leaving him for dead inside an exploding factory on Metalorn. Well, that won't do, especially as he appears in Revenge of the Sith, not to mention plenty of stories taking place 11+ ABG.

The fix for this was Dooku appearing as a doppelganger, a Force power seen in Dark Empire. Pretty good fix, and in the Fact Files it became canon.

However in the newly released Yoda: Dark Rendezvous, we are given a different explanation for this. It was a clone of Dooku himself who Anakin killed at Metalorn - Dookuu perhaps? . I didn't like this explanation at first, but I'm coming round to the idea.

Now (not having read the novel at all myself) I'm told this is just a throwaway line. However it has big implications.

How do we know it wasn't the real Dooku killed at Metalorn, and the clone Dooku who has been going since (although under the impression that he is the "real" Dooku, and the other is the clone)? How do we know that it was the "real" Dooku appearing in sources like Red Hands and The Clone Wars?

This fix makes quite a lot of sense actually - with the Republic after Dooku ("If we catch him we can end this war right now!") in the months following Geonosis, what better way to confuse them than to clone the guy, and have him spotted in every far corner of the galaxy?

Thing is...how many Dooku clones were made? How many were killed? Could there be any left over after the war? Could Palpatine have stored Dooku's DNA?

If (and I'm assuming he will) Dooku dies in Episode III, how do we know that it wasn't a clone substitute that died, and the real Dooku is still at large?

Could we be seeing Dooku pop up in the Dark Times era? The Civil War? Or even in the NJO era?

Y'know, the Sith might not be vanquished after all...

Just a few thoughts I had last night. Feel free to tear them apart.

Oh, and if the novel gives any context or resolution to the matter that severely affects the theory, please point it out, thanks.

 

I used to envision the Clone Wars being Jedi having clones of themselves and fighting dark clones of themselves. In this case, at least, that is not far off. Who's to say how many Dooku clones there are, if this is the case. Some interesting possibilities are opened up, indeed.

 

The clone reference in Dark Rendezvous (at least the first one; I don't know if there are any others later on, I haven't finished the book yet) is a general one - i.e., it doesn't specifically refer to New Droid Army's events. The references starts along the lines of "Dooku had heard Anakin had killed a clone of his", which could refer to some other heretofore unseen incident and leave the doppelganger explanation made in Fact Files (and this forum) intact.

That said, it is very probable that the author intended it to be a fix for New Droid Army.

The biggest reason I like the "clone Dooku" thing is that it can be used a springboard to provide more background for Pellaeon's impressions of clones in Heir to the Empire: if there were insane Spaarti (I'm assuming that any Dooku clone would've had to have been made using the Spaarti method given its lifespan/personality/abilities) Doookus running around that the Republic had to kill (or even just the one clone mentioned so far I guess), we have a tidier fix for the "Zahn Clone Wars" than the weak ones made so far.

 

I asked about this on TOS and am currently still awaiting an answer.

 

Or you could go with the standard procedure of dropping bits of video games that don't fit...

 

I very much hope they don't drop the Anakin vs Dooku battle in The New Droid Army - it's a key point in Anakin's character arc.

 

In the Reversal of Fortune webstrip on the Official Site, Yoda mentions that Dooku has beaten Anakin twice; what was the second time? They dueled briefly in Clone Wars (PS2/Xbox) on Raxus Prime, but Anakin got shot in the back by Dooku's guard at the time, which is hardly a fair fight

 

It was just a computer game. They should have let Anakin defeat Dooku and Dooku just flees to fight another day.

Did they also explain how and why enemies vanish into thin air after being killed? No? Why not?

Their pedanticy to explain everything is what causes probs.

When Mario touches a star and attains temporary invincibility, I don't need to know the biological ramifications of it.

 

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In the Reversal of Fortune webstrip on the Official Site, Yoda mentions that Dooku has beaten Anakin twice; what was the second time? They dueled briefly in Clone Wars (PS2/Xbox) on Raxus Prime, but Anakin got shot in the back by Dooku's guard at the time, which is hardly a fair fight :([hr][/blockquote][/b]
The "second time" was probably the duel betwixt Dooku and Anakin over Kashyyyk, cut short by Cydon Prax's "intervention." Which begs the question -- was Skywalker holding his own in that duel, enough to stand Dooku off and necessitate Prax's stun-dart?

Apparently, but as the late, great Dennis Miller used to say, [i]"That's just my opinion -- I could be somethingsomethingsomething."[/i]


[blockquote][b][hr]The biggest reason I like the "clone Dooku" thing is that it can be used a springboard to provide more background for Pellaeon's impressions of clones in Heir to the Empire: if there were insane Spaarti (I'm assuming that any Dooku clone would've had to have been made using the Spaarti method given its lifespan/personality/abilities) Doookus running around that the Republic had to kill (or even just the one clone mentioned so far I guess), we have a tidier fix for the "Zahn Clone Wars" than the weak ones made so far.[hr][/blockquote][/b]
[i]The New Droid Army[/i] is obviously (and necessarily) unclear on any cloning details -- in fact, it was confirmed by the game designers in this forum a couple years back that George Lucas himself approved of the Count Dooku "killing" in the game, and that "it was intended to be the actual Dooku."

The "cloned Dooku" fanfix has wafted around ever since, but this is the first official confirmation -- to my knowledge -- of the incident. Which is where swinging Occam's Razor comes into play, [i]vis-a-vis[/i] Mr. Stewart's intention in making that reference.

 

Leto II: in fact, it was confirmed by the game designers in this forum a couple years back that George Lucas himself approved of the Count Dooku "killing" in the game, and that "it was intended to be the actual Dooku."

Okay... let's work with this... the Dooku "killed" by Anakin was a Force doppleganger; it was also "the actual Dooku"; and it is percieved by the Dooku in charge of the Separatist movement as being a clone of himself...

Well, all that meshes quite nicely, if you think about it...

Given his POV on these events, the Dooku in charge of the Separatists during the later stages of the Clone Wars can only be a clone, although he believes himself to be the genuine article... given his POV, it seems likely that he is a Spaarti clone rather than a Kaminoan one, and thus that he represents some machination of Palpatine's...

The real Dooku is last recorded faking his own demise at Anakin's hands, and is thenceforth off doing something else, completely off-camera...

Now, I don't think it's a spoiler to say that Anakin becomes Darth Vader, or that this implies the prior demise or desithification of Darth Tyrannus, ie Count Dooku. Bearing this in mind, there seem to be two options: either there's something bizarre and convoluted going on which will involve the clone Dooku dying and the real Dooku reappearing; or else, the "Dooku" who will cede place to Anakin is in fact the clone...

Using the clone to fake Dooku's death would imply that the clone was part of such a strategy, which would make Palpatine's involvement likely; but that seems awfully convoluted, and, so far as I know, there's no rumour to that effect current...

Alternatively, if the real Dooku has, in fact, already disappeared, and doesn't reappear up to Ep. III, then he's presumably outmanoeuvred Palpatine, and gone into hiding while the stench from the massive stink-bomb he detonates fades away...

Jedi 1, Sith 0

Of course, it's possible that George didn't intend the earlier fix, and thus that from his POV, the real Dooku is dead already - but the fix exists, as do its implications...



- The Imperial Ewok

 

>In the Reversal of Fortune webstrip on the Official Site, Yoda mentions that Dooku has beaten Anakin twice; what was the second time? They dueled briefly in Clone Wars (PS2/Xbox) on Raxus Prime, but Anakin got shot in the back by Dooku's guard at the time, which is hardly a fair fight <

That was probably the second time. The first, of course, was on Geonosis during AOTC.

TC

 

That's what I figured; it was just hard to consider that a defeat given that Dooku wasn't the one who actually took him down

I'm pretty sure Doppelganger is a dark side ability; I'll have to double-check the entry in the Dark Empire Sourcebook later today.

The way it's phrased in the book, it doesn't really seem like clone could be slang/another name for a force doppelganger, as Dooku would have to be actively maintaining the apparition, would he not? Dooku's wording implies he was nowhere near the Anakin/clone Dooku duel, and only heard about it after the fact.

Again though, there's nothing I've seen so far in the book that flat-out says the New Droid Army incident is where the clone Dooku died, so there's still some wiggle room until it's clarified elsewhere.

 

I think GL first intended that Dooku wasn't gonna be in ROTS at all, it took a while before we were sure Christopher Lee had been recasted.

 

If there's a clone of Dooku running around, you know it's only going to be a matter of time before someone creates that fanboy matchup of Yoda vs Dooku on Dagobah - to explain the dark side presence in the Cave of Evil....

 

In point of fact, that was one of my early, early, early, immediate-post-AOTC-release theories circa May 2002, that the final Dooku showdown would occur on Dagobah, mano-a-toad, on the site of the tree. Slightly contradicting Zahn's account, but there was enough there in Empire to suggest a prior dark side presence.

As far as Lee's EP3 participation went, it was never a question of him getting knocked out of the circle -- most recurring characters in sequels typically ain't officially announced until well after the contracts have been signed; there are still "unconfirmed" actors in the flick up to this moment.

 

Mariochlorians.

Than you. Now I've spit the coffee all over the screen.

 

I've come up with a 'fix for a fix', which allows for both explanations.

The Fact Files is an in-Universe document (it's the New Republic trying to create a data archive so the history is not lost in the Vong war). Therefore we have to assume it was the interpretation of the historian that Dooku used a doppelganger, so that went in the history books.

However Dooku and Sid know the truth, it was a clone, as revealed in Dark Rendezvous.

 

That may not be necessary: the line in the book concerning the clone says Anakin killed it "recently"; however, New Droid Army is placed almost 2 years before Dark Rendezvous on the official timeline. It seems highly probable now that these are separate incidents, allowing the earlier doppelganger explanation to stand for NDA.

 

McNoghri! You forgot to make the obvious tie-in to the Jorus C'baoth = Count Dooku thread! This makes it fit even better--now we know roughly when the clone was made, and what it was doing pre-Wayland.

(BTW- is the doppleganger abiltiy darkside?)

We've seen it done twice, correct? Once by darkside Luke in DE, and whatever it is that Dooku does.

Oh, and assuming that Dooku =/= C'baoth, we now know who the real Joiner King is.

 

Dooku isn't C'boath; the real C'boath appeared in Cloak of Deception, which was set prior to The Phantom Menace.

 

Since when has that ever stopped McEwok? It's merely a hypothesis, and I'm just surprised he didn't try to tie these together.

 

>That may not be necessary: the line in the book concerning the clone says Anakin killed it "recently"; however, New Droid Army is placed almost 2 years before Dark Rendezvous on the official timeline. It seems highly probable now that these are separate incidents, allowing the earlier doppelganger explanation to stand for NDA. <

I thought that too, but check the passage again. Dooku reflects on Sidious's stated impression of Skywalker, which was given after he (Sidious) learned that Anakin had *recently* killed a clone of Dooku. It was Dooku reflecting on Sidious reflecting on a recent event, not something that had happened recently, if you see what I mean.

TC

 

By jove, you're right; I should pay better attention

 

The whole clone thing doesn't seem too likely. First off, Dooku probably wouldn't have access to Sparti cloning cylinders, and regular cloning methods would require quite a long time for the clone to reach the age of the original Dooku, not to mention that it would have to be trained all over again.

I haven't read Dark Rendezvous, but are you sure that the term 'clone' wasn't being used in the biological sense, but just as a word to describe the force doppelganger?

I don't know too much else about the whole force doppelganger concept, but I also thought of another possibility. Is it possible that perhaps Yoda doesn't know that such a power exists, and that Dooku merely lied about it being a clone in order not to reveal the existence of such a secret Dark Side power? Yoda might be suspicious, since Anakin fighting a clone Dooku isn't likely for all the reasons I mentioned above, but he might think it's the only possible explanation and go along with it.