Lit Republic Commando series by Karen Traviss

Don’t think there’s any real active discussion threads here about this series, but it’s one that has long eluded me. Finally catching up to it with my first read through of Hard Contact - and with The Mandalorian and the resurgence of the sort of edgier Karen Traviss version of Mando culture, was wondering if anyone would care to join me on either rereading or starting the series.

I’m about 80 pages through Hard Contact - definitely way grittier than most other EU novels I’ve read. Wasn’t really feeling the characters at first and thought it was too cold, but the scene of Darman experiencing normal human emotion upon seeing a river for the first time drew me in.

 

Recently read through all of Traviss' SW books a couple months ago. Enjoyed it tbh, the excessively pro-Mando stuff wasn't as grating this time around. Hard Contact is quite different in style from the rest of the Republic Commando series, becomes a bit of a soap opera by the end. Series peaked at Triple Zero for me. Skirata, Jusik, Vau and the Nulls were all fantastic additions to Omega Squad, and necessary to keep it engaging.

 

I found her RC series way more boring than hrr LOTF contributions. The only one which had a sense of urgency was Order 66.

 

Hard Contact is by far her best work for me. Triple Zero is where the Mando love-in went straight to 11 and only increased from there, plus:

Spoiler

The whole 'oh, Kal Skirata, you're so manly, please have my babies while treating me like total crap' thing.

Traviss needed a serious editor.

 

Hard Contact is the only book that's actually about Republic Commando's, the rest of the books are about how Mando's who raised child slave soldiers for money are actually the most morally righteous people in existence.

Traviss added a'lot to Mando as a culture and I will always appreciate the diversity she injected into them. I genuinely like Etin, Zay, Maze and Omega squad when they arent being used to prop up Skirita. But her specific Mando's are awful monsters treated like morally righteous heroes and its the worst **** ever.

Never forget, Walon Vau brutalized Atin so badly during training that he had PSTD before he ever saw combat.

Vau is not punished for this, he ends the series mega rich, having secured a future caretaker for his disgusting pet, having become friends with Skirita, with Delta Squad still worshiping the ground he walks on and having made "peace" with Atin.

It's horrific, Atin gets gaslight into forgiving his abuser and its treated as just a couple of proper Mando boys working things out like men.

I could go on, but as someone who has people close to them who went through things like Atin, his treatment is so ghoulish that I don't want to type more as it makes me so ****ing angry.

I'm just glad stuff like the Mandalorian and Rebels brought back the diversity she brought to the culture while also dropping her absolutely horrid morality.

 

I read the whole series a while back but as of late I've reread bits and pieces. It seems the series is really great but also a bit awful.

The plight of the clones is so unique and I believe this series is the best portrayal of clones that we've ever gotten. Karen Traviss really humanizes the clones so well and spells out just how awful their situation is. Other media will portray them as less than human (Republic comics) or just say that they are human but they're happy being slaves (TCW), either way dodging the problem. Republic Commando plainly states how bad things are. Even a super well-meaning "ally" like Kal doesn't always understand the clones fully.

Plus, I believe the concept of the Clone Wars was meant to be anti-war from the beginning. Basically, you weren't supposed to cheer during the battles the way you did in the OT. It was a wasteful, pointless war. I feel a lot of Star Wars media misses this and tries to portray the Clone Wars as a righteous conflict of good and evil, even thought that really wasn't the case. Sure, TCW has plenty of episodes where the conflict is more nuanced, but there's waaay more episodes where the heroes are completely justified in fighting their evil foes. Republic Commando never portrays the war in a flattering light. From the beginning to the end the war is a waste of life.

On the other hand, I think the portrayal of the Jedi was poorly handled, to say the least. The Jedi obviously have problems; they aren't really meant to be great in the PT after all, but I think Republic Commando goes way too far. While the Order is pretty bad, I don't feel the series really recognizes that the Jedi are just as much brainwashed as the clones are. Yes, the GAR is a cult, but the Jedi are just as much. I feel like the series really tries to justify Order 66 as something the Jedi deserved. Maybe the author didn't feel that way herself, but if you have characters go along with the genocide and receive no comeuppance for it, it really makes it seem like the book is condoning their actions.

 

Considering Palpatine is the one pulling the strings, it's definitely within his power to make the Separatists as monstrous as possible, if for no other reason than to keep the war going as long as possible. And if the clones and Jedi are doing genuinely heroic things, that makes it more difficult for people to criticize Palpatine's gradual accumulation of power.

 

Anything's possible in-universe. I'm strictly speaking in a meta sense, that TCW undermines the Clone Wars' themes as an anti-war narrative.

 

God I wish the hypocrisy had been intentional. You could tell a great story with that.

Instead we got Walon Vau being treated with more sympathy and as a better person then Zey and the whole thing lost any sense of irony or self awareness.

 

Actually, taking the meta perspective into account, I think I still like the TCW approach better. The war looks and feels good and heroic to us, the out-of-universe audience, even though we know full well that Palpatine is engineering the conflict. So I guess Palpatine's ruse really is that good that it can partially fool the out-of-universe audience...and maybe it says something about us as well.

 

QFT

This applies to the PT as a whole really and a lot of times this gets missed (part of that fault falls on the films themselves). The OT is very classic obvious good guys vs obvious bad guys; the PT is failing people in a failing society. Like the Jedi Order shouldn't be viewed as this Justice League of heroes, rather they are blind snobs.

 

One of my wishes for the now-defunct expanded universe was always for the Rogues or the Wraiths to end up going up against Traviss-style Mandos. If only because I'd love to see what Wedge would make of them, given the total lack of time he has for Proud Warrior Races (see Starfighters of Adumar).

 

Yeah, the fact that the Jedi are treated as responsible for almost everything that's wrong with the Republic and the Clone Wars and the clones as innocent victims, despite being in extremely similar situations, is one of the more screwed up things about her books. You get the feeling that she pretty much wrote from the premise "I like clones, I don't like Jedi" and ignored pretty much anything about the universe that didn't fit that.

 

There's a lot about the expanded universe that I'm able to enjoy even though other people don't for exactly this reason - because whether the writers understand this or not, it actually makes sense in-universe. The flanderization of Thrawn into a noble demon rather than a bad guy is my go-to example for this - I understand why it annoys people, but a lot of what's going on can be explained as him actively developing his cult of personality in-universe. Traviss' irrational Jedi-hate, despite what I just said, is another example - it might be unfair, but this is in fact exactly how a lot of people are supposed to be feeling about the Jedi right around this point, so it kind of makes sense to have at least one writer going from that perspective. And of course the Clone Wars fits too, since we know the CIS is being set up behind the scenes as essentially a bogeyman by people who never intended it to succeed, so it's natural that it would be that vile and that people would be cheering for the Republic.

 

The entire war is set up to both destroy the Jedi and get the galaxy to wilfully sign up to Imperial ideals - it is very successful at that.

But, if you go to the other extreme of perceiving the Jedi as a bunch of total bastards that got what was coming to them, the tragedy aspect of the PT falls apart.

The way I saw it was the Jedi's tendency was to always prioritise a dark side evil above all else, Sidious knows this and exploits it by setting up Dooku as a visible, dark side adversary, knowing they will look only at him. Add in other tendencies like always trying to be moral and protect others and it's a certainty they'll command the clones, even if with serious reservations. It's not hard to set up a game to be won if you're the only one playing it and Sidious was.

 

Oh I don't view the Jedi that negatively - they're still generally good people trying to be heroes, they just fail at it. Largely because they've been forced into a no-win situation

 

Yeah. Almost as if by design...

 

I still have, and re-read these books, quite often. Although Triple Zero has totally disappeared, of late, and may be stuck in some niche of the attic, or struck behind a shelf, somewhere. I do remember just how... disturbing, the end bit was with Etain and Kal. I did generally tend to take much of the whole series as unreliable narration on Kal's part, through his POV and prejudices. Although he DID later seem to forgive Vau far too easily.

 

When I see dates on this stuff it just makes me feel old and depressed, 10 years since the cancellation of the last book.

 

Don't worry, it'll soon be ten years since Matthew Stover was said to be writing Imperial Commando 2.

I still need to read past True Colors but I sorta threw my hands up when Ben Skywalker was saying how amazing Mando'a was in LotF. More curious as to how No Prisoners approaches the Jedi attitude since The Clone Wars movie adaptation's story was already in place.

 

I loved the Republic Commando books. Even if Traviss fangirling and marriage rampage went over the top, even if Order 66 failed its epic name, she wrote the best Boba Fett ever in Bloodlines and reconsiled all previous Fett versions with a tragic backstory. A true masterpiece. That aside she tried to work out some messy TCW bits like clone numbers and wrote parts of guides (WOTC TCW guide for one) and informational articles truly worth it. Even her Vader short story in Vader: The Ultimate Guide is very well done. And picking up other stray characters like Callista, Altis and Scout is glorious and truly apprenciated.

 

I always find Traviss books such a slog to get through. And after the first book, they basically become a bunch of rogue agents answerable to no one. I would have been far more interested in reading about the regular troops than what seems like the Section 31 of clone troopers. Also, am I the only person who has a hard time keeping all the clones straight? It's funny to say, because it's in book form, but I have a hard time telling the clones apart, except the ones she spends quite a lot of time on.