Lit Books Jude Watson Universe discussion

Jedi Quest, Jedi Apprentice, Last of the Jedi, etc

What are your thoughts on the portrayals of characters like Anakin and Obi-Wan?
I've seen criticism that Anakin was portrayed as too dark early on by Jude Watson, but I've personally been a fan since childhood of her chapter books.

I've read almost all but I only own Jedi Quest 2 and 5, and Last of the Jedi 1 and 5. I have also read all the Rebel Force books which are by a likely pseudonym called Alex Wheeler.


I felt Obi-Wan in particular was very believable, especially regarding his transition from his TPM to AOTC self.
I enjoy Anakin's friendship with Tru Veld and Darra Thel-Tanis, as well as his rivalry with Ferus Olin. Last of the Jedi is my favorite of these books probably. I also like Obi-Wan's dynamic with Siri Tachi between the JQ books and Secrets of the Jedi.

Not to mention the multiple generations presented in Legacy of the Jedi, starting with Dooku.

 

I love her books and style and wish we'd get more.

Lets not forget that Alex Wheeler is another alias for Jude Watson and the "Rebel Force" book series is part of her universe thus. Given the obvious cameos in it from her other books.

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Jude_Watson

See a nearly complete lists of her contributions here. Her short stories and other rarer works are excellent too, like the Leia journal, the PT journals and the short stories! The Alex Wheeler stuff is not on her wook page yet it seems but here:

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Alex_Wheeler

 

Ferus Olin was an interesting character after ROTS. I enjoyed his interactions with Darth Vader.

 

I think it was just this February when Pablo Hidalgo revealed the identity of Wheeler

 

Huh, "Alex Wheeler" never existed? I actually just came here to ask if it was known how Watson felt about Wheeler killing off her lead character.

 

Alex Wheeler exists as much as Jude Watson in that they are both pen names for Judy Blundell.

It was always so obvious Jude Watson and Alex Wheeler are the same person. Not only is the writing style exactly the same, and of course Rebel Force is very much a followup to Last of the Jedi, but there's also a lot of little details that only Watson uses that are also used by Wheeler - for example, the Phlog species from the Ewoks cartoon. Their only appearance in books outside an Ewoks tie-in book are in the Jedi Quest series and the Rebel Force series.

 

I have only read the first book in the Jedi Apprentice series so I can only comment on that. I found the first part of it not to my liking - with the Jedi younglings life feeling like something from an Earth boarding school, the whole "any youngling without an master at an certain age are automatically sent to the agricorp" stupid and that they acted like being part of the agricorp was some kind of punishment just as stupid. The second part on-board the shipping ship and after it had crashed do I remember as okey too good.

 

I like that there was a place for Jedi who aren't Knight Material.

 

fully agree on that, but the way the book treated it so was agricorp more of a place for failures and/or a kind of punishment, not some kind of alternative path.

 

Isn't the issue though that there just isn't a master available for Obi-Wan (since Qui-Gon initially rejects him), not that his teachers think he's too incompetent to be a Knight?

Given what we know of Obi-Wan's career that seems like it could have been a massive oversight (and an interesting jumping off point for an alt-universe fic ...).

 

Specifically, the issue is that Obi-Wan Kenobi beat his rival badly in a brutal lightsaber fight because he was so determined to impress Qui-Gon Jinn and get himself a master. No Jedi Master wanted Obi-Wan Kenobi and Qui Gon Jinn was the last chance he had. The problem was that Qui-Gon saw this and due to his experience with Xanatos, rejected taking on another apprentice.

Fourteen was the cut off point to get a master but it was Obi-Wan's willfulness and rebelliousness that prevented him from getting a master at that point. As we see with Qui Gon, he repeatedly butts heads with his master and even a permissive one has to reign him in. Obi-Wan only becomes the arch-conservative he does later in life because he actually leaves the Jedi Order at one point.

 

I wonder how much input Lucas had in the deepdive into the Jedi, the Jedi Apprentice series had with some of his main characters. Especially if the Jedi Corps were his or Jude's idea.

 

Not sure about JA, but had some degree of input with Watson’s work. She considered having LotJ portray Yoda’s youth but I read that George vetoed it. Vetoing could have been his only role, but Ahsoka’s age in TCW may suggest that he does not agree with the idea of sending 13 year olds off to the Agricultural Corps.

 

It's funny that Obi-Wan really is a hothead and incredibly rebellious in the series. You can see why he almost got thrown out multiple times.

 

Indeed it was a missed opportunity to not use the Corps on the show in one episode. But I am not sure if he disliked the idea because of that. Ahsokas age is fine and no big deal. I mean, different species age differently and may have different limits. Baby Yoda f.e. would be accepted beyond 13 I bet.

 

Good extrapolation from TESB though:


Much anger in him, like his father.
Was I any different when you taught me?

You are reckless!
So was I, if you'll remember.

 

Well this is not 100% befitting this topic but since this is a Kenobi topic I thought I post it here:

I just realized how the "No attachement" rule really struck hard for him around ROTS. As the PT went on, he grew a large circle of friends, fellow Jedi, politicians, soldiers, etc. always helping, always saving others and protecting them. And with some like Satine there was attachement. Even if some of his folks died during ROTS, Obi Wan had to flee, bring Luke to safety and settle down to never know what would happen to all others, with the darkest of thoughts and possibilities on his mind the most likely outcomes. All those that rebelled, dead. All those that got purged. All those that he saved, protected and served with gone or dying over the course of 20 years till ANH in their continued fight.

How can a man be so content, so dutydriven that he would not wish to check the holonet for them or their fates? To not build a network of supporters for him and his mission as well as them by bringing them in to his fold and hideout. It really takes quite something, not just fear of personal death or protection of Luke, to leave all that behind and not even peek for any peek or holonetsearch may give the enemy clues about where he is.

Imagine you'd have to suddendly and without any preparation cut any connection and just go to never look back. No contact or inquery about your parents, friends, children, coworkers, loved ones? Just click and run, click start a new live. Do not build new connections, do not become too noticeable due to your skills. You cannot use them to save others even locally for you would be recognised. Just stand back and watch, let others do their jobs and do not intervene or save them. Live below your standard, your skills and just exist. No hobbies, not even someone to talk to much.

I know the Kenobi novel showed a great deal the dangers and benefits of his appraoch and how he nearly ruined it by too much contact and helping. The Kenobi show will deal with this too in new ways.

But out of countless Order 66 surviving Jedi, Kenobi and Yoda really achieved a surprising feat.

 

I used to read The Last of the Jedi books back in 5th grade. Good stuff. Book 4 with an Inquistor trying to uncover the truth about Padme's death was a great one.

 

I read the Jedi Apprentice series for the first time last month. I thought the first few books were really well done in how they led into each other and built up a reasonably detailed universe. The later books with their more mission-of-the-day feel did little for me. The Obi-Wan / Qui-Gon interaction was great throughout and I think foreshadowed quite a few of Obi-Wan's later issues with Anakin quite nicely.

I read the Anakin series too, mostly to learn about where Ferus Olin came from. I dipped into Last of the Jedi at some point in the past but remember thinking "so who's this guy supposed to be?" So meeting him again for the first time in Jedi Quest was interesting - he was in there a lot less than I had anticipated, and in the surprisingly non-cliche position of a serious elder Padawan who always seems poised to become either an antagonist or an ally but somehow refuses to do either. His warning / premonition about Anakin was also really well done IMO. I'm looking forward to going back into the Last of the Jedi series soon, after I've finished Coruscant Nights.

Legacy of the Jedi was a bit of a disappointment IMO, with a weak villain and little insight gained through the different time steps apart from a few platitudes.

 

I missed this! Where did this happen?

IIRC Lucas had some things to say about Padawans in the DVD commentary for TPM that were somewhat at odds with the Jedi Apprentice lore, such as Padawans usually being chosen by age 7 or somesuch.

 

This was where I found out about it:

 

This is interesting. I really should listen to commentaries some day but I already loath podcasts and commented youtube videos.

Well, for TPM it makes sense that 10 year old Anakin is too old, requiring a younger entrance age like 7 to a one on one apprenticeship as TPM portrayed the Jedi. Only AOTC years later introduced us to the Youngling clans before the Padawan stage and elevated the Padawan age to 13-14 years.

Did Lucas mean that around TPM Jedi kids started their career no later than 7 years old and already in a one on one apprenticeship from the get go? Like the Jedi who found one had to keep it and train it? With oldest accepted into the order being 7 years old? Or did he mean that they enter at infant stage and only at 7 earliest can become Padawans.

It'd be interesting to keep this as 7-14 year agerange for starting the Padawan stage. And the age of youngest/oldest Jedi accepted into the order was in flux always anyway. Look at A'sharad Hett. Or aliens aging different in general.

It'd be intriguing if the humanocentrist Republic enforced laws by human standards and ages on aliens that do not fit that criteria aging wise. I mean, aliens who have a Senate lobby or senator even probabbly get exceptions but those who do not? There apply standardized laws I fear.

 

It's interesting that they took the opportunity to kill off Yaddle, who wasn't present in the Council scenes of AOTC, in the sixth book of the Jedi Quest series. There's even a nice little bit of continuity with the earlier Dark Horse Tales story featuring Yaddle, in that she's still remembered as 'the One Below', as she was called in that comic.

 

I think it's the last one.

Who are togheter with the Correlian Jedi in headache creating story problem.

That's one of the problems I have with the idea that if a youngling has not become a padawan at 14 they are no longer allowed.

Is it the Republic that's humanocentrist or just the human authors who have a tendency to focus on the human parts?

 

Wow, quite the rabbit hole there. After reading the discussion and a little Googling, it seems the issue isn't really settled: Pablo's account isn't public, so this can't be directly checked (which is why it's not on Wookieepedia), and Judy Blundell herself continues to deny writing the series, though she also doesn't appear to remember details about her character's fates in Rebel Force but doesn't deny writing them there. Although her not remembering doesn't mean she had a hand in writing them, and in fact is not inconsistent with her assertion that she didn't write the books.

It's possible that they're both right. Perhaps Blundell wrote one or more of the books, with the others being ghost written under a pseudonym she started, and she just doesn't remember ten years later, or perhaps she was going to write them (maybe even outlining the series) but wasn't able to, and Pablo was misinformed. Perhaps even some of the many Jedi Apprentice/Jedi Quest/Last of the Jedi books were partially or entirely ghostwritten by writers sharing Blundell's "Jude Watson" pseudonym, and they continued to do so for Rebel Force as "Alex Wheeler" without Blundell's involvement, and that's where the confusion lies. (Animorphs, also published by Scholastic around the same time as Jedi Apprentice, had a regular author who was credited for every book but also had several ghostwriters.)

In any case, I'm sure there's a reasonable explanation but all we seem to have at this point is a literal he-said-she-said situation. The only thing we can say for sure is that Alex Wheeler certainly seems like a pseudonym, and the creative carryover from the Jedi series had to come from somewhere.

From what I recall, it was just that they were apprenticed to a master around age 7--it was only the age that was different from the EU. (Some kind of pre-apprenticeship was implied by TPM itself since we know Yoda trained Obi-Wan before Qui-Gon.) I don't remember if Lucas stated that this is what made them a Padawan or an apprentice or both. Going strictly by the films, it's not exactly clear that "Padawan" only refers to Jedi that have been chosen by masters as apprentices, which is mostly the interpretation adopted by the EU. While Anakin is chosen by Qui-Gon as his "Padawan learner" and Yoda states that Qui-Gon can't have more than one, Yoda also calls one of the younglings a Padawan in AOTC.

Getting back on topic, one of the things I remember most about the Jedi Apprentice series was that my sister and I followed it religiously, from the simultaneous release of the first two books in 1999 all the way to #18 just before AOTC's release. Those three years seemed like ages at the time, and we agonized over every cliffhanger. (Even though we knew what happened in the films, things like Obi-Wan leaving the Jedi and Qui-Gon's anger after Tahl's death were big deals for us.) My sister would buy them, so I would have to wait until she finished before I could dig in. (I was the faster reader, so I was annoyingly impatient and definitely less grateful than I should have been, lol.) It wasn't just that it was a fun series to read. In the days before Star Wars came back to TV, Jedi Apprentice was one of the few ways for us to get a dose of the prequel characters and setting on a regular basis between films. (I didn't start getting the comics until after Attack of the Clones came out, so it was pretty much just this and Episode I Adventures for me.) It was also something that clinched my interest in the EU, since even though this was a kid's series, it was included in the early New Jedi Order timelines as part of the larger literature universe.

Given that it came out in regular installments, it was interesting to see the series adapt to the ongoing continuity in something like real time. When Ki-Adi-Mundi made a premature appearance on the Jedi Council, a later book explained that he was serving in a temporary capacity until Giiett, the character he replaced in the comics later in the timeline, returned from a long mission. Jocasta Nu and Dexter Jettster appeared in Watson books taking on roles originally filled by Jedi Apprentice characters ahead of the release of AOTC.

After the Jedi Apprentice series ended, the Watson books lost some of their unique appeal to us. The Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan relationship had a dynamic that the Obi-Wan and Anakin relationship couldn't quite match, plus jumping backward while their Clone Wars adventures were continuing forward made them seem less interesting. Scholastic added other ongoing series, more adult prequel books were released, and the gap between Quest releases was longer than for the Apprentice series. My sister didn't even read the first two books, and while I continued getting them (along with all the other Star Wars books), they just didn't have the same special place they used to. (That being said, I still geeked right out the identity of Granta Omega was revealed.)

It's been neat to see other sources serve as unofficial additions to the series by filling in the gaps, like the early chapters of the Life and Legends of Obi-Wan Kenobi and the Jedi-The Dark Side comics (though these reinterpreted the Jedi Apprentice backstory a bit.) I'm still excited that Phindians have made it into the mainstream via The Essential Guide to Aliens and the Clone Wars, and I'm a little disappointed that we'll never see a Watson-like Legends take on Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan's mission to Mandalore.