Books The Official Outbound Flight Discussion Thread (Spoilers Allowed)

Thats my guess I plan on reading Rogue Planet, but it is hard to read because it is boring.

 

I thought it was just me...

I've been reading it on and off for a few months and still can't finish it. The jacket calls it "pure adrenaline." I disagree. The last action scene was 200 pages ago.

 

Am I the only one who liked Rogue Planet?

 

YES.

 

NO.

 

I thought it was okay.

 

Well... eventually. Because OF, if things had gone as they should have, might not have even returned to the galaxy in any reasonable amount of time. Certainly Palpatine wanted to prevent C'baoth from creating that private Jedi army though.

I don't put a lot of stock into the "Empire created to fight the Vong" idea either, because Palpatine WAS in it for the Ruling the Galaxy with an Iron Fist after all... he's a Sith Lord. Mostly I dispute it because it's coming out of Doriana's mouth for Thrawn's benefit. The Vong are still a factor since Palps and Jorus and others all sensed the big "something" out there...

 

As an aside, I think we can infer from certain events and statements in OBF that C'Boath is unusually powerful and that Palps/Sids felt it in his best interest to get C'Boath out of his way. (Of course, C'Boath also strikes me as a horrible Sith apprentice candidate, so chances are he's just a waste of matter in Palpatine's eyes.)

 

From an interview with Zahn at the official site:

Thrawn's character in Outbound Flight is surprising. He seems too smart and basically decent to become the servant of Palpatine that he later becomes.

Ah, but is he really Palpatine's servant? My sense has always been that he was manipulating Palpatine just as much as Palpatine is manipulating him. After all, he only came to the Empire so that he could gain command rank, collect all the military hardware Palpatine was willing to give him, and then get himself kicked back out to the Unknown Regions where he could start his long-term preparations for the coming war against the Yuuzhan Vong.

Not that Palpatine was fooled, of course. I'm sure he knew perfectly well what was going on and figured he was getting as much out of the deal as Thrawn was. Possibly a little more.

What is it about Jorus C'baoth's character that makes him susceptible to the dark side, and why doesn't Palpatine/Sidious turn him and use him for his own purposes, as he later does with Count Dooku?

I don't think C'baoth would be good Sith material. He wants to stretch and extend Jedi power and authority, but he hasn't rejected the overall Jedi philosophy the way the Sith have. However, his arrogance and self-confidence definitely make him someone Palpatine can manipulate and use in more subtle ways.

 

I don't understand why the Jedi Order wouldn't expel him. He is certainly not the best Jedi. He is a senate lackey it seems. He is the opposite of Dooku. A jedi like C baoath would only reinforce Dooku's belif that the Jedi serve a corrupt system and that some are indeed corrupt.

 

They don't expel him because he's useful.

Every organization has a Jorus C'Boath---a self-righteous, self-absorbed, narrow-minded, yet capable, jerk. Usually, you just learn to ignore him (or her), while still assigning him to roles that accentuate his strengths.

 

hivemind2nd: Since I'm diving into the end of the thread, anyone figure why Palpatine would have the last-minute blood samples taken so he could have C'baoth cloned? Did he figure that Jorus was prime Dark Side material with just a bit of nudging? Because the clone wouldn't have grown up the exact same way... and all that.

Well, if Noghri are really Ewoks, then the Jedi Master on Wayland was OB-2 Kenobi...

As far as the neutron bomb thing: Count on Thrawn to figure out in his first meeting with the Jedi that the safest way to deal with them was to blow them all up BUT GOOD from a safe distance.

Y'think he was just lying to Doriana about the "I wasn't supposed to kill 50,000 innocent civilians" stuff?

Oh, and McEwok: I'm alive again.

Next time, bring Anakin Solo with you, will ya'?

Knight_Wanderer: What, just him? I don't get a mention? I'm gonna take the BPT and leave.

All 1,000,000 lines of it?

Just leave a shrubbery by the door as you go...

As for C'baoth and Palpatine, there's no saying C'baoth wasn't Palpatine's advisor at one point. Maybe the relationship just soured. As for the genetic sampling, I was more intrigued at the notion that Palpatine would then have genetic material from both Anakin and Obi-Wan as well . . .

*nods*

- The Imperial Ewok

 

What I liked most was the fact that Thrawn was not just shown as the cold genius, but as a being with emotions.

I think it rather fits: He was described differently in the original Thrawn trilogy, but I guess years in Imperial service do that to a man - especially Imperial service as an alien.

 

C'Baoth as Palpatines advisor... supposedly this takes place during Claok of Deception or that period?

Perhaps Palpatine was looking for someone more politically minded than Maul already, and was playing the field. He may have pushed C'Baoth's political ambitions, but when C'Baoth went overboard, gave up on him and approached Dooku instead?

 

I imagine likening C'baoth to a fanatical religious fundamentalist would explain why he would never have made a suitable apprentice for Sidious.

He had the dark side spark, but he was too much of a Jedi. He firmly believed what he was doing was right, even if what he was doing was anything but right. He would also still have hated the Sith though.

Its the cliche pacifist who turns to violence. They still condemn violent actions by others and preach mercy and love but will behave violently themselves if they think they have the moral authority to make those decisions. C'baoth might have created a good Sith Order, but he would never have joined one, as hating the Sith would have been part of the core beliefs that ironically were what drove him to the dark side.

I imagine Palpatine groomed him while he was his advisor, but realised while C'baoth had the potential to be what he needed in an apprentice he would never have joined him.

 

But Sidious could have had other uses for C´Baoth. He could have been a far more convincing cultprit as a claimed leader of a Jedi rebellion than Mace Windu or Yoda. And he also could have been used as a wedge to drive the Jedi apart... But then, maybe Palpatine just didn´t want to compete with another role-model when it came to Anakin?

 

Isn't everyone forgetting that Palpatine cloned Jorus... and put him in charge on Wayland...?

- The Imperial Ewok

 

Well, you know I'm not convinced it was actually a clone on Wayland anyway . . .

KW

 

Well, not a clone now, or not a clone when TTT was written?

 

I just ordered this book off of amazon.com. I haven't read a SW novel in 3 years.

 

Not a clone now. And I think Thrawn knew. He tried too hard to convince Pellaeon it was a clone.

KW

 

I'll have to check Survivor's Quest to make sure, but I think Thrawn's bomb kinda messed up any chance of having C'baoth still alive. Or... you think the C'baoth on Outbound Flight was a clone and the real one was in Wayland, right?

 

Isn't everyone forgetting that Palpatine cloned Jorus... and put him in charge on Wayland...?

I haven´t got the book at hand, but didn´t Joruus C´Baoth kill a Dark Jedi that had been put on charge at Wayland and who Thrawn expected to meet instead of the second coming of C´Baoth? I could be wrong, my memory isn´t anymore what it used to be, though...

 

I think everyone was under the impression that it was all in C'Boath's mad little head and didn't actually happen.