Palpatine's Royal Guards - the Clone connection?

When do you ever have someone, a person, described as "white", because I sure haven't. But every time there's a dark skinned character, I notice they're mentioned that way. That's all I was saying.

For eg, Calrissian, Kalenda, Fett's father, Shalla Nelprin---all are dark skinned, and are mentioned that way. But it's a writer's blindspot---that isn't the case for Skywalker or Solo.

This is my own eg.

"Lando's dark face flushed darker with concentration."
"Luke's face flushed darker with concentration."

See what I mean? I've seen this both in and out of SW books.

 

It's because the majority (if not all) of the Star Wars books are written by white authors and (in a totally innocent way) unless otherwise mentioned white people will automatically assume someone mentioned in conversation etc is also white. It would be the same in a predominantly chinese environment - like China! - unless otherwise mentioned, people would just assume someone was Chinese.

 

Uhh, how is it biased? It is descriptive.

Try to tell me that black guy over there isn't black. Please, I dare you. He'll tell you otherwise. I know I'm pale and white, and I'd thank you to describe me as so if you enjoy being accurate.

Your point holds little water, as I see it. If anything it's politcal correctness, not any sort of alienation. And that makes me feel just as icky.

 

Ok, getting back onto topic - does anyone think that at any time, the Emperor used Clones for the Royal Guards?

And wasn't there actually a level ABOVE the Royal Guards, weren't they called the Imperial Soveriegn Protectors? I wonder if they were Clones as well?

 

my guess is the clone-to-stormtrooper deployment worked in phases like this:

1. the first clones were developed and trained on Kamino from samples of Jango.
2. after Jango died on Geonosis, they realized that the shelf life of Jango-based clones was limited, so they started supplementing the ranks of clones of individual human males other than Jango. this would partially explain why individual stormtroopers we've seen with their helmets off from later periods don't all look like Jango. they could all be clones, but not necessarily of the same person. they would still need clones at this point, because otherwise there will be a gap between Episodes III and IV where the clones are too old and natural-born replacements are too young, but they couldn't keep getting fresh new samples of Jango, because he was dead.
3. sometime during the Clone Wars or immediately afterwards, Palpatine starts taking normal human infants and raising them in conditions like the training facilities on Kamino. because they don't have growth acceleration, they don't start feeding them into the mix until the OT era, but lots and lots of them start to become ready at that time.
4. during the period between Yavin and the return of Thrawn, most of the clones are phased out and replaced with the generation of natural-born stormtroopers, which are probably easier and cheaper to develop in large numbers. my guess is that the clones would be better on average, but the numbers of the stormtroopers would make up for it.
5. by the time the Thrawn trilogy begins, the NR is surprised to learn that Thrawn's Imperial forces are again using large numbers of clones.

the Imperial Guard* probably did not work the same way, however. we know that they're elite stormtroopers, they first appear shortly before AOTC, and no one knows where they come from. that would seem to suggest that the first bunch are clones of Jango from Kamino, but the Kaminoans don't have any direct contact with the Republic between Sifo-Dyas and Obi-Wan, so that rules that out.

it's possible that Dooku/Tyranus arranged to whip them up on the side somewhere, but i have no idea where he would do that, and how.

i think the most likely explanation is that Sidious secretly started developing the Deep Core facilities really, really early, possibly even before the Battle of Naboo, and the Imperial Guard came from there. this would mean that they were not Kaminoan clones, and definitely not clones of Jango.

it's also possible that he didn't develop them at all, and that some Sith Lord between Bane and himself basically established himself a secret elite military order, something like a combination of the Jedi auxiliary organizations and a group like the Mandalorians or the Morgukai, and just kept them a secret. once his plan was in motion, Palpatine just dressed them up in red robes and brought them public as if he had developed them himself.

either way, it was probably only later, most likely during the early years of the New Order, the Imperial Guard was integrated with the ranks of the stormtroopers.

* i always call them the Imperial Guard. i know that numerous sources have them listed as the "Royal" Guard, but that's just poor terminology. "Royal" means "of or pertaining to a king, queen, or kingdom." The word for "of or pertaining to an emperor, empress, or empire" is "Imperial." Palpatine never claimed the title of King for himself, as far as we know. he was, in his time, a Senator, a Supreme Chancellor, and an Emperor. while they served him as Emperor, they should properly be called an Imperial Guard. Royal Guard is incorrect, and Imperial Royal Guard is just a mess.

 

I don't understand why nobody has mentioned 'digital cloning'.
Why can't they just copy jango's DNA sequence into a computer and use that record to construct the DNA from amino acids and what-not, instead of having to take the actual DNA out of Jango's cells and create the clones from that? - Or just geneticaly modify cells from another human so they are changed to be identical to Jango's.

 

Jango was not the only clone source. This is why Lucas says the stormtroopers are clones (mostly) despite having different heights and such. As DarthRotten mentioned, the reason behind stormtroopers being such poor shots may be because as the Empire solidified itself and it's own system of corupt politics set in, influential governors and businessmen were able to have their sons cloned for the army so that they can say "Look how much I've contributed to the cause! Entire legions of soldiers were created because of me." The favor system has it's flaws.

 

Why can't they just copy jango's DNA sequence into a computer and use that record to construct the DNA from amino acids and what-not, instead of having to take the actual DNA out of Jango's cells and create the clones from that? - Or just geneticaly modify cells from another human so they are changed to be identical to Jango's.

because SW technology intentionally doesn't make any sense. there are artificial and nonsensical restrictions on the capabilities of cloning and droid technologies to keep more readily-empathetic humans and aliens center stage.

 

There's no in-universe reason for the Stormies being poor shots because in-universe, they aren't.

It's only a story convention that they can't hit Luke, Leia, Han or Chewie.

 

I thought it was a well known fact that cloning a clone is not a sound idea. It's like photocopying a photocopy. The more you copy something the more "static" there is and any mistakes would be multiplied by the copy.

That's not the case at all. A clone is an exact duplicate (unless intentionally modified). Not just a facsimile, an exact copy. Which means there's no such thing as "copy of a copy" degradation. A clone of a clone is just as viable as the original.

 

Yes. Any time DNA is replicated, there is the potential for a transcription error to occur. Many of these errors are harmless, some even advantageous, but as subsequent duplications accrue more and more transcription errors, it becomes increasingly likely that the resulting organism will be basically genetically flawed and will not live, or will have less-than-optimal traits. And these errors are cumulative. So it makes sense o try to keep all clones second-generation.

Additionally, I'd remind that there are many things we just plain don't know about cloning at this point. Remember that lamb, Dolly? Remember how she showed internal aging at an incredibly high rate? As far as I know, there's still no explanation for that. But there are bunches of things about the process we clearly don'tt understand, and any number of them could cause problems given multiple duplications.

-Paul

 

Frankly, its a point that they want to establish the characters are in fact of a different appearence than the others.

I see it as a nice gesture, not an offensive one.

 

Yes. Any time DNA is replicated, there is the potential for a transcription error to occur. Many of these errors are harmless, some even advantageous, but as subsequent duplications accrue more and more transcription errors, it becomes increasingly likely that the resulting organism will be basically genetically flawed and will not live, or will have less-than-optimal traits. And these errors are cumulative. So it makes sense o try to keep all clones second-generation.

With imperfect 21st century cloning techniques, yes. If you want to use an audio analogy (even though I think that's a bad analogy, since audio can be analog while DNA is just an arrangement of four discrete values), we're still at the stage where we're recording on magnetic tape. The GFFA is recording in digital, however, and no matter how many times you copy digital data, they remain exactly the same. In the case of cloning, I think with that level of technology they've all but eliminated transcription errors. Heck, I think at that level of technology, they could manually sequence the genome.

Remember how she showed internal aging at an incredibly high rate? As far as I know, there's still no explanation for that.

Wasn't that because she had the telomers of her source, which were already at the level of an adult? Thus, when she was cloned, her DNA was the equivalent of a sheep many years older than her, and thus her aging was affected by that.

 

I need only point out the Voxyn queen from the New Jedi Order. She was the source for all the voxyn clones. Once she was dead, they could no longer replicate the creatures as the original source had been destroyed.

Despite what would really work that's just how it goes. Until we see something that says otherwise.

 

But that is two totally different technologies you are talking about... the organic technology of the Yuuzhan Vong, and the opposite kind of technology of the GFFA. Plus, the technology is from two different era's also, so it is like comparing apples to oranges.

 

Your point has substance.

It's just that, as of now, we have nothing to tell us that any clones have come about as anything more than a first generation.

 

It's just that, as of now, we have nothing to tell us that any clones have come about as anything more than a first generation.

Not definitive proof, but Jango's descendant on the Death Star (the head-bumper) would be the equivalent of 60 if he was first-generation. I don't think the Empire would be keeping guys that old, especially on the new top-of-the-line battle station.

 

True. But what's the story about human having a longer life span in the Galaxy Far, Far Away than we currently enjoy here on Earth? Sixty is getting up there though . . . perhaps that's why they couldn't hit the heroes, and why he banged his head. Since something like that wouldn't actually be transmitted through genes.

 

Ever tried recording from a recorded tape? It's called "generation loss".

tapes are analog. we're talking about digital. there's no generation loss with digital.

what we're talking about is copying Jango's genome in a digital format on a computer. in other words, making a perfect computer model of his genome, and putting together as many "first generation" copies as you'd like from that. we're not talking about the normal process of DNA replication. we're talking about putting together a set of chromosomes from scratch, by sequencing the base pairs according to the map of the genome you keep on your hard drive. that then gets implanted in a cell and replicates from there. there's no degradation there, and no reason that rates of transcription errors post-insertion would be any different from a natural-born human.

in the real world in the 21st century, we can build viruses essentially from scratch by manually sequencing base pairs. a virus is not much less complex than human DNA sequences in terms of the overall technology necessary to work with tt, and the Kaminoans have much, much more advanced biotechnology than we do.

 

The YV can certainly build organisms from a stored sequence in a qahsa (Nem Yim's lim tree); I see no scientific reason (bearing in mind the fact that this is technobabble pseudoscience) why it shouldn't be possible to do the same with a Kaminoan clone or a Spaarti cylinder - or to use samples from a cell culture... personalities and skill-sets are stored digitally with no damage to the original...

But then there's the problem of the "voxyn queen", which in the light of all this, is just a very silly McGuffin...



Oh, Sith...

- The Imperial Ewok

 

Don't blame the Giraffe aliens. Failure is a hard bite to swallow.

 

The Khomm people didn't seem to have any trouble creating exactly identical clones (despite Dorsk 81 and 82 being Force sensitive)

 

If the Dorsk clones of Khomm are exact duplicates, then how did no. 81 & 82 become Force sensitive?

How do the Midichlorians factor into this? If all the Dorsk clones from 1 to 80 were not Force Sensitive, therefore did not have Midichlorians, then how come Dorsk 81 & 82 suddenly had Midichlorians?

Hmmm... perhaps this needs some explanation?