Should The Original Clone Wars Be Declared Non Canon?

Jedi Trial and the cartoon have nothing to do with each other. It's the cartoon and Labyrinth of Evil that contradict.

 

I mean, I get a good sense of why Anakin is made into a Jedi Knight with the cartoon, and as such, I think the EU can live without Jedi Trial.

 

If the new Clone Wars was declared non-canon, it would be somewhat more enjoyable for me.

 

Well, it's all subjective, sure I'd be quite happy to throw out Jedi Trial and anything written by Traviss or Karpyshyn, but not everyone else would be. That's why the best approach is to keep everything in, smooth over the cracks, and try to avoid outright contradiction.

One man's "this is way better" is another's "that's stupid.".

 

It's a little... bes'karla, as the Mandalorians say; it's not just that Karen Traviss has left because of changes in Mandalorian continuity have placed existing stories out-of-contact with new canon - it's that a lot of fans seem to be celebrating this...

Continuity needs to be protected, even where the authors make a fist of it. While Karen's depiction of Spar and Fenn might provoke some , that doesn't mean we should be really happy about stuff that overwrites the stuff she wrote that wasn't contradictory before now...

Why do Bothawui and Ryloth provoke headdesks and creative retcons, and this doesn't?

SAVE MANDALORE!!!!

- The Imperial Ewok

 

Right now, it's impossible to retcon the Mandalorian plotline when we don't even know the full extent of the changes yet.

 

Exactly. Traviss hinted in her blog post that there are much bigger things afoot that haven't seen the light of day yet.

 

I expect once we get more details it'll cue the rethinks. Do we currently know anything more than "stuff that makes it unworkable"?

I gather something but I'm out of the loop as to what TCW has done this time... I'm not really following it that intensely. Regardless of details though, HC is just about some commandos, so I don't see any particularly major issues there. TZ made a bit more of the whole Mando thing, but as the whole three million stuff has completely gone out the window in exchange for more like three billion I'm just going to conclude "The ones in the books conveniently just happened to all come from one particular branch who were particularly Mando friendly." Bardan and Zey then become chiefs of just one particular special unit.

When you get to TC... the subplot about hidden cloning and more overt Mandalorisation of the Grand Army starts to filter through a bit more, but, again, in my own mind I'm just going to carry on looking at these like I would "Emperor's Hands are the only secret darksiders". It requires a slightly larger worldview, but I can't inherently see the need to go and stamp it with "Non Canon" per se. At least, no more than we need to throw out the Thrawn Trilogy for talking about Bpfasshi Dark Jedi or contradictory Clone Wars accounts. I never understood the need to throw the Bpfasshi stuff out either just to fit one totally random comment that "Yoda had never been to Dagobah before", but I can't say I've let it kill my enjoyment of Thrawn.

O66 I can't speak for as I'm still only halfway through. I gather the plot covers the whole secret cloning in more depth? My initial conclusion from that though is if there was secret cloning going on we're just going to have to conclude "It was going on in even way, way, way bigger numbers than the guys in the book discovered". Obviously it wasn't what the book intended, but I can still see it being jiggled around to avoid having to just discard it.

Now, if we get an episode in TCW about the Battle of Mandalore where there are thousands of Mandalorians still around to fight? Yeah, that will go against the grain. However, even then, I expect some kind of "True/Not True Mandalorian" mentality being applied to the Skirata-camp would at least somewhat cover that. Is it ideal? No, but you can probably more or less can end up with a small group of fundamentalist Mandalorians who only consider themselves the real deal living in one little part of Mandalore, and then elsewhere on the planet all the modern upstarts who they weren't even willing to acknowledge existed. Rather like "The last of the Jedi will you be" and all that.

(For an even more extreme retcon, I'd even be open to "Mandalore" being kinda like "Bastion": only a designation of the nomadic home planet of Mandalorian culture, like Bastion started out for the Remnant. That would then allow the Skirata-based group of Mandalorians to have a "different Mandalore" to the "TCW Mandalorians' Mandalore", if that makes any sense at all.)

It's definitely not pretty... but I can't say TCW is going to stop me finishing reading O66 when I finally get the time, even if it does make as big a hash of the timeline as trying to make cohesive sense of Marvel, Rebellion and Empire.

The main reason I think this feels more problematic is because the old stuff is still fresh in our minds. If Marvel gets overwritten... not many people care. If stuff about a Bpfasshi gets overwritten... people have moved on and are willing enough to not get beat up over it. Had this happened in ten years time? Probably the same thing. Because it's still new (as apparent by the fact I haven't even finished O66 yet), it certainly is going to be a bigger kick in the teeth... but the actual creative retcon process is the same basic scenario.

I can't say I'm going to let this turn me paranoid about the way continuity is heading though. ANH-to-ROTJ has always been a minefield. TPM-to-ROTS was alw

 

Not quite my point; I'm sure a retcon's possible, even if crazy (i.e. all the "Legacy of the Force" Mandalorians were clones created using the income of the "Dread Pirate Boba" scam, by Bardan, the Skiratas, and... *mutters and sprays the thread with expletives* Bardan Jusik is the blond Boba Fett... )...

*ahem*

No, what concerns me is that people are seeming to think that this massive retcon would be a good thing...

Also, ironically, people are welcoming a story that seems to accept Traviss's main retcon - vast numbers of Mandos...

If this story has Spar and Fenn and kid Boba leading a newly-raised unit of 212 Mandalorian supercommandos, mind you, I'll be very happy.

As far as I can tell, a GAR of three million clones (plus capital ship crew) remains entirely workable (since commando raids and bombardment are the main tactics)...

But that's NOT the theme of this thread.

 

Make that Tobbi, Fenn and Boba... they wouldn't even need to lead them, as long as they survive.

 

There no reason why Jedi Trial can't be set say a couple of weeks after the events of AotC, there's nothing in there that's really timeline specific other than it being the set during the Clone Wars.

 

If the schutta does well and truly hit the fan, that's the kind of image I have in mind, yeah. As a similar analogy, the majority of people in Britain would probably call themselves "Christian" on the basis of coming from "a Christian country", but if you asked a devout Catholic they'd consider the notion of most people still actually being Christians farcical. I could picture a similar situation with your old school Mandalorian traditionalists not recognising people who just happen to have been born on Mandalore as "real" Mandalorians.

In real life, it used to be racism by skin colour ("You're black. You're not American"), in Skirata Land it'd be racism by lifestyle ("You might have been born on Mandalore but you're still aruetti").

If Mandalore gets retconned into an ecumenopolis or something completely crazy like that though, then I fall back on my idea of "Mandalore" is a designation like "Bastion" and potentially as nomadic as its culture, ergo there could be multiple "Mandalores" depending on which group you asked.

 

Are you suggesting we ignore the Spar/Padmé retcon and go back to the Marvel continuity? In that case, we need to into extend their service into the Galactic Civil War.

This does raise an interesting question, though - how much can we retcon the pre-cartoon chronology with reference to that massive Palpatine misinformation campaign that some older sources described?

Can we squint enough to have Skywalker know about Neeja Halcyon in No Prisoners, though? And can we squint enough at Jedi Trial for everyone on Corellia to know that the Halcyons keep marrying?

I think they'd see them as still Mandalorian, but maybe some sort of "misguided Mandalorian" - they're not aruetiise, but they're close to being dar'mando... which is really what Venku was saying anyway...

- The Imperial Ewok

 

I think it was too "over the top". Of course it's not cannon!

Really, do you think Mace Windu was powerful enought to take on thousands of battle droids at a time, or yoda powerful enough to pull ship out of orbit and crash them in to the ground? For pete's sake, Count Dooku was flying!

 

Technically Dooku was falling gracefully, and why is that out of the realm of possibility for people that can levitate a karking X-Wing after it's been submerged in a kriffing swamp? Vader pretty much fell a shorter distance just as gracefully in ESB.

Do I think Mace could take on thousands of battle droids at a time? Yes, particularly in the conditions we were seeing. Lone dude, lost of dust and battle droids aren't exactly known for their intelligence. Even those of the "super" variety. I mean, a couple of them slipped and slided on an oil slick that Artoo splished on under their feet and were promptly set on fire when Artoo lit his little jets. Regular battle droids call each other "stupid" and "idiot" and even look for their targets in such confusion that they fall of cliffs. Moreover, Mace Windu in Tartakovsky's Clone Wars confirms other elements of Star Wars EU and Jedi powers in relation to battle/war droids. Think Arca Jeth and Luke Skywalker.... both of them dismantled multiple battle droids on the field of battle with narry a flick of their wrists, in TOTJ: DLOTS and DE respectively. Luke's also been known to levitate himself to the point of it being hardly distinguishable from flight... Children of the Jedi comes immediately to mind.

 

They weren't in orbit. They were practically right in front of him. And he crashed one into the other, as opposed to crashing them into the ground.

Gliding downward, to be precise, or slowfalling in fantasy RPG parlance.

 

All that having been said, the power levels of the Clone Wars cartoon (The first one) offer up one very basic, fundamental contradiction: If the Jedi were that powerful, why did they suddenly forget when it really mattered? (in other words, while battling the Dark Lord of the Sith to try to prevent him from taking over the galaxy?)

Yoda can smash two gigantic droid landing ships together with seeming ease in the midst of a pitched battle, but has trouble with a few senate pods?

 

One of the easiest explanations is derived from Dark Forces II:

"Jerec has the uncanny power to absorb and overshadow one?s connection to the Force? like a dark cloud. A deep, empowering grasp of your will is what you need."

I like to assume that Dooku and Palpatine (all the Sith Lords in the movies, actually) are better at this than Jerec, too. Not that I tend to view the CW cartoon in anything more than broad strokes insofar as canon is concerned... just saying that, if you want to take it all at face value, it doesn't require too much tweaking.

 

Sure, but that may well be stretching it when it comes to say, the Battle of Geonosis...was he dampening every Jedi there? Mace and Yoda at the same time, either of whom could apparently have ended the arena slaughter with a couple waves of their hand?

 

I think you just need to enjoy the micro-series as a good time and if you really must impose your expectations of the Jedi on it... well, it's a bit of an embellishment. How do you deal with some of the comic book or novel powers? Palpatine does crazier things than fly in DE. The novels are repleat with things that are just as over-the-top that you'd never see in the movies.

 

I recall seeing two Jedi fly out of a TF ship hallway as fast as lightning and then later one of said Jedi running at normal speed to try and save his master from dying. If the movies can't stay consistent in their display of Force powers they aren't exactly the best reference point to use in an argument.

 

Point well made.

The movies don't even have their own continuity straight... 1,000 years or 1,000 generations, which is it?

So perhaps continuity is something imposed almost entirely from without, and ultimately matters little...

 

One of the reasons why I'm not a major continuity nut is because errors in continuity are a problem that can't be avoided in a franchise as massive as Star Wars. I don't like them, but I don't get in a super tizzy about them either, although I tend to be more forgiving of mistakes than I do when a creator knowingly stomps all over continuity.

 

Ahem.

 

Jedi mishaps for the win!

I used to try and do continuity for Star Trek, and then realized that their system was designed to not even consult the novels as reference works. An episode could overwrite a book without a second thought. Case in point, the first Lost Era novel and second Titan novel said that the "Interspatial rift" in TOS: The Tholian Web led to the Magellanic Cloud. Then, years later, ENT: In A Mirror Darkly refuted that, saying it led to the Mirror Universe and 110 years in the past.

Then they started writing the books as complementary to movies or episodes. Like the nine-part "A Time To..." series that explained the weird situations as of Nemesis (e.g. why is Worf there? Why is Wesley there? Why isn't Riker's dad or Troi's mom there? etc.)

Perhaps Star Wars should do that a bit more. For the prequel era, start sticking with books that tie directly into TCW and maybe even try to reconcile some of the events we see in the TV series (in a book, explain why Aurra Sing is suddenly out of prison, and give a more definitive date for the events when she went to prison. Repeat with some of the other events). Ignore the Dark Times altogether until the Live-Action series, so as to ensure that nothing new contradicts the old. And then have novels and comics that build upon, are intentionally unrelated to, or actively retcon the Live-Action series. Otherwise, stick with post-ROTJ and pray to The Force that the unnamed animated TV series will ignore that area.