The Big Freeze, or, Luke visits Kamino! (A National Retcon Week Special)

Well, as National Retcon Week enters its second day, it?s time to wheel out my second offering to the event ? once again, it deals with the matter of Kamino and the Jango Fett clones. More to the point ? when really was its first appearance?

(Safety warning: you might want to have a few grains of salt handy)

Attack of the Clones, some might argue. Others might throw up Dark Horse?s Jango Fett one-shot, released shortly before the movie, which opens with a young Boba enjoying himself in the apartment (and, for the record, the sooner they bring back Tom Fowler and his artistic talents, the better). Late 2004, might be another argument, in The Official Star Wars Fact File ? two mysterious planets showed up on the included galactic map, ?Geonosis? and ?Kamino?.

For the spirit of this particular retcon, I?d say 1997, and Yoda Stories.

?Stop right there!?, I hear you say, ?Yoda Stories? That?s not canon, it?s just a silly game!?. I?ll point anyone in agreement with that to myself and Rogue_Follower?s ?Yoda Stories: Making it Fit? project, which can more or less annul any argument against including (a slightly altered) Yoda Stories in the continuity.

One mission in the game involves Luke being sent to hunt down and destroy a cloning machine, which is a ?survivor of the Clone Wars? and ?buried under a mountain of snow and ice?.

Snow? Ice? Could it be that, sometime after the Clone Wars, Kamino was hit by some sort of natural (or even possibly, artificial) phenomenon or disaster and ended up once again a frozen ice ball? The statement that ?all the [other (Kaminoan?) Cloning Labs] were destroyed in the great war? are backed up by Geonosis and the Outer Rim Worlds (?extensive damage to the facilities? and The History of the Mandalorians (?devastating blitzkrieg?, ?devastating Kamino?).

?Hold on!? you cry, ?In that very same article it said that Boba had his cancerous leg re-grown by the Kaminoan cloners!? 100% correct, but nowhere in the article does it state that this took place on Kamino (in fact, the very same line holds an implication that the cloning facilities at Kamino are no longer operational).

Couple this to the fact that there?s no evidence that Kamino is still operating in the Classic Trilogy environment (the history in Geonosis and the Outer Rim Worlds only goes up to the ill-fated Separatist attack, and all of the adventure seeds can take place in any era), and we?ve got a pretty solid case. In fact, Yoda?s comments at the start of the adventure (along the lines of, ?I don?t know where to find this?, also imply that Kamino has dropped from the face of the galaxy ? replaced by this desolate iceball, an ?icy hell? in Luke?s own words?)

I promised you clones, and you?ll get clones ? the guardians of the cloning machine, the ?adherents of the old ways? as Yoda describes them (rather bitterly, understandable in the wake of Order 66), look suspiciously like Jango Fett (but with greying hair and weaing strange visors). Several of these characters are spread across the cloning lab, seemingly maintaining it in the absence of the Kaminoans.

[image=http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v229/Tam_Elgrin/fett.jpg]

Warning: I?m about to depart from sheer retcon and embark into the treacherous world of conjecture and theorising. If you?ve not turned to it already, now would be a good time to get that grain of salt.

For a moment, let?s assume that I?m not in fact spouting reams of nonsense and this icy planet is, in fact, Kamino. This throws up a number of implications ? for one, what?s the significance of this ?ancient key? Luke finds during the course of the quest, an artefact that looks surprisingly similar to both the Rakatan relics from Knights of the Old Republic, and to the general look and feel of the Sith Empire in the Tales of the Jedi series. Did the Rakatans create the Kaminoans? Did the Kaminoans create the Rakatans? What is the link be

 

[blinks] Big retcon for only Day 2 !

 

I like the theroy a lot up to the ancient sith connection part. I think it's very probably that Kamino turned into an ice planet again, and that Jango clones are still there, having not played the game I can't really comment on it, but sounds like a good retcon.

 

>>"I like the theroy a lot up to the ancient sith connection part"<<

Well, that was less a theory than just a wild grab, building off my initial reaction from seeing the "aincient key". I doubt very much the Kaminoans had very much to do with the Sith (aside from, like, creating an army for them).

 

I don't own the game, but I've been seeing it in a shop near my house where it's been collecting dust for years. It's for Game Boy Color and I have one of these. I bet they'd give it to me for free. Should I get it? Anyway, the theory has only two problems mesa thinks. First, how can a Kamino become a Hoth in 20 years? Is it possible? I have no idea. If it does, then okay. Second, do these guys look enough like Jango Fett? 'Cause if the do, that's the strongest point of your ret-con and it's the one that could make it work. I highly doubt it but, are there any pics of them around? If in 20 years a water planet CAN become an ice ball and if these guys DO look like Jango's clones, then congratulations on a great ret-con!

 

>>"Should I get it?"<<

Not the GBA version, it's dire. The PC versions good fun, though.

>>"are there any pics of them around?"<<

[image=http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v229/Tam_Elgrin/fett.jpg]

Bear in mind, Luke doesn't look much like Luke in this game, either. They've got the right skin colour, tho and when viewed from the back, the guys obviously have fading black hair. I know there was a clone trooper with white hair in one of the Empire issues, set at around about the same time as this (give or take 2-3 years).

 

Are you sure that's hair? Looks more like they're in 'Hoth fatigues' to me.

 

1. Yoda Stories is an EXCELLENT game. I put in a lot of hours on that little game.

2. Nice theory on Kamino. Scientifically speaking, I don't think the entire planet could progress into an ice age in just 20 years, unless something catastrophic happened; like a nova or asteroid collision.

 

Very interesting retcon


never playd the game myself, but still, very interesting. I wouldn't be surprised if Kamino was somehow destroyed, since there's no trace of it after the PT. If an astroid hit or supervolcano or two went off, it's believeable that it would turn into an ice world. It wpuldn't be as cold as Hoth, but then, it doesn't need to. Also, I wouldn't be surprised if for some reason Palpatine was responsable for the destruction of Kamino (I always thought it was coming in ROTS )

 

Bad guys somehow used ancient centerpoint technology to move Kamino from its current orbit, to one further out... causing the temperature to drop from liquid water... to below freezing.

or they blotted out the Kaminoan sun, causing massive climate change.

or:

perhaps the planet is only frozen at the poles, and luke only visits those parts. the main cloning facilities were not at the poles and were destroyed in the war, but some of the Jango clones secret reclaimed some material and built a base on the polar ice caps, where the Kaminoans didn't like going. (cuz Kaminoans are cold-blooded?, and can't stand being in the artic regions)

 

Or perhaps they tested the Jokes of Palpatine superweapon on Kamino.

 

>>"Are you sure that's hair? Looks more like they're in 'Hoth fatigues' to me."<<

It does from the front, but when they turn around (I tried to get a screenie of that, but to no avail) it's clearly hair. Even if it is cold-weather gear, doesn't rule out the possibility of being Jango, tho.

>>"Scientifically speaking, I don't think the entire planet could progress into an ice age in just 20 years, unless something catastrophic happened; like a nova or asteroid collision."<<

Blame Waru.

 

Scientifically speaking, a nova would have burned Kamino. Mmm...anybody for broiled aiwha???

 

We do have at least one example of a water planet flash-freezing in Star Wars - the planet Shuldene, in the Greater Javin region of the Outer Rim. Due to an "orbital shift," the planet froze solid, apparently so quickly that the frozen carcasses of aquatic life forms were frozen in place, poking up from the ice.

 

I've never played the game, but I really like this theory up to the ancient Sith part. I don't have scientific issues with Kamino becoming an ice cube in 20 years--far stranger things have happened before in SW. Chalk it up to an asteroid impact, or alien attack, or terraforming attempt gone horribly awry.

 

Wow, that's pretty ridiculous. I'm sure when Lucas put Kamino in AOTC, he was thinking "Oh boy, this will be a treat for the fans. This will eventually become the ice planet in that early 90's video game! *giggle*"

What is it with people and connecting every last little detail of Star Wars? It's a big galaxy, after all, filled with millions of ice planets/moons.

 

>>"What is it with people and connecting every last little detail of Star Wars? It's a big galaxy, after all, filled with millions of ice planets/moons."<<

It's also National Retcon Week. I don't beleive any of this theory, for the record, it's just a bit of fun.

 

Cool Retcon Tam. I like it, could very well be true!!!

This Retcon Week has produced some very cool threads.

 

Would the planet in question be The Icy Planet of Thalduu?

 

No, Thaldo is a completely different planet in the game. The one in question is never named.