Lit Star Wars: Underworld - Better Off Dead?

"Bitter, heartless woman"? Actually, this all makes sense now. We learn that this was Sheev's mom:

 

YES. Kill it with fire before it grows back.

 

This just makes me appreciate "Plagueis" so much more by contrast.

 

Um, assuming the show really would have been as stupid as that quote makes it sound... glad it wasn't made.

I wouldn't put anything as too stupid to make it into canon, especially TV show canon (look at TCW ). We already had TFU make it so that Palpatine accidentally helped create the Rebel Alliance. I hope an idea like that doesn't resurface, but sometimes they have no idea what they're doing (and the quality shows that sometimes).

 

Wait...I was just reading over the Wook...Ronald D Moore was working on this show? That's soooooo strange.

I mean, that quote in the OP doesn't really inspire a whole heck of a lot of confidence, but...I'm now fascinated by a parallel universe where this show was made instead of TCW, and what that would have been like.

 

Didn't Luceno say that he added Palpatine's "I was manipulating you all along" speech to the end of the Plagueis novel because GL said to edit the novel to make Palpatine evil from birth?

 

Well, right. What I meant was that both were in the pipe at the same time, but only one survived, and it would be interesting if the live action was the one that made it rather than TCW. TCW itself already radically shook up Star Wars on all kinds of levels, and had some relation to the eventual decision to sell Star Wars to Disney; how would those things have turned out if the live action show was the one shaking things up?

 

It was Vergere. Obviously.

 

"How Star Wars Conquered the Universe" mentions how the live-action TV writers were not happy with their stuff constantly getting mined for TCW.

 

There's also the possibility that this Palpatine story is a concept that GL did or would have rejected.

 

George was heavily involved with scripting Underworld as I recall, at a supervising level at the very least. If it followed the TCW model, it probably would have been George's ideas that were given to various writers to flesh out. Whether this is one of them or something that a writer came up with on his own we may not ever know.

 

GL told Luceno that Palpatine was evil from birth.

 

GL told Kasdan that learning to use the Force was something anyone could do if they put their mind to it. Like yoga.

GL changed his mind a lot.

 

I'm pretty sure Underworld was cancelled by the time Plagueis was published.

 

But Plagueis was cancelled once, as well, remember? That book was being worked on for a rather long time, it was originally supposed to come out in 2008, got cancelled, and then came back to life in 2010 for a 2012 release. A lot could have changed in four years.

 

But did he in that case? Midichlorians are meant to be in every living being, and to be responsible for someone's connection to the Force. High midichlorian counts mean you're very powerful/talented in using the Force. Having a low count would mean that you're not fit to be a Jedi, but nothing says you couldn't do some good Force Yoga that gives you extra health, or extra jump height or something. Or maybe just a better connection to every living thing around you, feeling what's up in the universe (i.e., empathy). Having no midichlorians and therefore no Force connection is not in the cards (unless you're a Vong - I'm preeetty sure that their Force blindness has to do with their midichlorians having died because of one of their bioweapons / "their aggressive nature"). I doubt Lucas would have meant that Luke's destiny is something that everyone could achieve, that would have undermined the myth aspect. I don't have the context of the Kasdan thing you're referring to, but I'm not sure if he suggested that with the right amount of training, everyone could be a Jedi-level Force user. Hey, wait, didn't the Jedi training mechanism in the customizable card game work that way, that if you were lucky in pulling the right numbers you could get any sentient character up to Jedi Knight level?

By the way, is Dooku a Midichlorian Count?

 

TCW Season 1 Episode 1 (Ambush):

"Clones you may be - but the Force resides in all life forms. Use it you can, to quieten your mind."

 

From the way George often spoke sort of hesitantly/thoughtyfully about the Force in interviews, I often wondered if he intentionally never wanted to specify what the Force was because it was something personal. Like he had no strict set of laws in his mind. Introducing the midi-chlorians was his way of adjusting his scifi religio-philisophy on life to better fit modern science, but I don't think he wanted to get much more specific than that. More like he was entertaining explanations on how people physically felt the Force.

 

It's not why I brought it up. Decide for yourself:

I don't think he was suggesting that there weren't different aptitudes (Luke is still "strong in the Force", after all), but I do think -- at the time this conversation occurred -- he was of the mind that anyone could get up to the basic Jedi standard if their interests lay in that direction.

 

Yeah, totally changed his mind regarding some stuff.

Kasdan being shocked is pretty funny, though.

Regarding whether he changed his mind on Palps, if the name Sheev came along with Underworld's take on Palpatine, we should keep in mind that he'd still be The Destroyer. And that makes me think that even the hardest gods have some kind of love life full of betrayal and kick-pants goddesses that are great at not giving their macho god husbands/lovers what they want.

EDIT: Okay, checking basic wikipedia stuff on Hindu mythology, I find that Shiva's wife Parvati is a nurturing, benevolent goddess; unless we get to see her ferocious, violent aspects, which is when she is called... Kali. Now, where in Lucas' work did I hear that name? Kali representing time and change is nice seeing Palps' quest for immortality. Interesting stuff, which probably would have made as much sense as all the other stuff Lucas has ever thrown into the blender, but I'd like to know what kind of story he would have cooked up for this, using the action figure scenery of Star Wars as an excuse to get people watching.

I mean, people don't like change, that's okay. I find it interesting, though, to have both the pure OT story and the larger PT-based story that turns Vader from someone who probably descended into darkness because he liked being powerful into someone who wanted to save his loved ones and basically lost his belief in the good in the world. We already have pure evil Palpatine (and Robot Chicken deliciously funny evil Palpatine); using the character in another story might have given us an interesting new interpretation. Who will ever know.

EDITTY EDIT:

I mean, come on. Underworld godess with her foot metaphorically on Palpatine's heart. How cool would that have been?

And yes, I felt that it was absolutely necessary to add "metaphorically" when talking about this with people on the internet.