The Official Star Wars: The Clone Wars: No Prisoners Discussion Thread (Spoilers Allowed)

I didn't really see it that way; as was mentioned above, KT smoothes out Callista's backstory very nicely in both No Prisoners and Order 66. I know that when I read Children of the Jedi years ago, I was pretty interested in Callista's history and how she came to be a... well, a computer. Traviss not only does an excellent job of explaining her background and origins, but fleshes out the entire Altisian Order seamlessly as well, something that I thought stole the show in No Prisoners. I found myself anxious to get back to the scenes that involved Callista and Geith, and even more so with Djinn Altis. It was refreshing to get into his head - especially when he meets Anakin for the first time and senses his passion for his own attachment - and felt that his views on attachment and love in general compared with Yoda's were a stark contrast to what we, as readers, are used to...which is always nice.

Besides the fact that I felt Pellaeon's character in No Prisoners was more similar to his character in Revelation as opposed to the wide-eyed, semi-inexperienced admiral we see in the Thrawn Trilogy, I have no other complaints about this novel so far. I'm a little more than halfway through at this point, but I definitely have enjoyed it - especially Hallena's covert/undercover mission, something that I feel has been regrettably underused in the SWU in recent times.

 

ROMIBUS- aren't the clones and the mandos basicaly the same thing. except for the mandos of the kotr era and before, the clones of the GAR became the mandos and their offspring right. for the most part anyway.

Errr...the offshoot order died out because Vader killed them all

Callista survived

 

Some of the ARCs and the Nulls - and quite a few troopers - deserted and either became Mando or bounty hunters, but we also have to remember that a lot of the clones we're seeing now (especially the new additions to Torrent Company) are fresh off Kamino. If you also recall from Order 66, the Republic had its own cloning lab, so a lot of them weren't trained by the Mando Cuy'val Dar, IIRC. My impression was that a lot of the clones who were old enough to have survived the war deserted after the Clone Wars. But the fresh Centax clones (some of them didn't even know what Kamino was when Darman asked in O66), stayed on, mostly as Coruscant shock troopers or stormtroopers (Commander Appo and a few others come to mind in Dark Lord). The fresh clones didn't really seem to have that connection with the Mando culture to the point that they'd desert to retire to Mandalore.

So, no, I wouldn't quite say that all the clones became Mandalorian. The tapered life-spans would have killed a lot of the Centax clones as well, the ones who weren't able to get the "cure" from Skirata.

 

My impression was that a lot of the clones who were old enough to have survived the war deserted after the Clone Wars.

Actually, I think it was only supposed to be a very very small number that deserted.

And no, they're not Mandos.

Rex doesn't even seem to have had a Mando tutor.

 

Correct, it was mostly only the Skirata clan who deserted to Mandalore, as far as we know. But other clones, like Spaar, might have ended up on Mandalore or taking bounties. It's something that I think KT will go into a bit more with Imperial Commando.

 

Callista survived in a computer until she took over another woman's body and lost the ability to use the Force. She then taught Luke a bit about the old Jedi ways, with the retcon now being that she taught him the Altisian ways, which were actually the pre-Ruusaan ways. There's a wide gulf between between one person living and a whole Order.

Also, I'm not really sure why the GAR = Mandos brainbug keeps surviving when even the RC novels go out of the way to show that's not the case. The Cul'Vay Dar taught the commandos, but the only bit of culture that was passed on was Vode An, the marching song, and one other song. Some basic Mando phrases filtered through the ranks, but from incidents like the Galactic Marines giving the "Mando Boys" of Omega crap to even Delta Squad, which had a Mandalorian instructor, being bothered by the way Omega had taken to the culture, we see that the GAR were influenced by Mandos because they had 75 out of a hundred Mandalorian trainers, and a few overly-jealous Mandos like Kal who wanted to pass the culture on, and did with his Nulls and Omega.

The rest of the GAR didn't have anything besides flash trained marching songs and phrases, and once the initial batch were deployed we see that post-Geonosis clones didn't have that connection at all. The non-Kamino clones and even the Kamino clones that came after Geonosis in KT's own work don't speak or in some cases recognize Mando'a.

Lastly; just going off O66, it's pretty specific that it's only the Nulls, Omega, and another commando squad that break out at first, and only because they were exceptionally "Mandoized" by their trainers. Delta doesn't even think about going over the wall, and neither do most of the other troopers besides a clone captain in the form of Captain Levet, who was a touch exceptional because of his exposure to Omega and Etain, and Spar and Sull, both already shown to be deserters.

TCW cartoons also show that some regular troopers could become rogues, but that wasn't due to being Mando, that was downright traitorous action that caused other brothers in arms to get killed.

The GAR doesn't become the Mandos because there are already Mandos around; it was just that most of the military of the Clans had ground themselves up in the Civil War between Visla and Jaster's forces. Jango took off in disgust and signed up with Dooku and hired 75 Mandos and 25 others to become the trainers of the army known as the Cul'vay Dar, so not all of them were even Mandalorian. In the later RC books, it's a major plot point that not all the GAR likes the Mandos, having had to fight against Mandalorians, and the Mando trained teams like Omega are slightly frozen out by their brothers, and later still the non-Kamino clones don't even recognize Mando'a at all, meaning that their training program has utterly changed (hinted to be because they're being grown so quickly to use as shocktroopers).

 

Everyone has already said this but in answer to JM, no the Clones are not Mandalorians. Because of the way Mandalorian culture encourages adoption it was a relatively simple exercise for Kal Skirata to adopt his boys. Thus those few do become full fledged Mandalorians, but the other clones are not.

Certainly other Clone deserters could have tried to follow suit but as a whole the clones are not anymore Mandalorian than the Battle Droids are Geonosian. Well maybe not exactly but you see the point.

I only brought it up because I know there has been critism in the past that Karen wedges Mandalorian stuff in general into her books, sometimes in seemingly strange places. In this book, to Karen's credit, that does not happen.

 

okay. thanks for the info

There's a wide gulf between between one person living and a whole Order.

tell that to luke skywalker

 

I agree, though, that's my point; Altis' Order didn't survive, and Callista was changed and rendered force-blind by her time in the computer, so she can tell Luke some basics about how she was trained, which resembles more the old ToTJ era Jedi Order which allowed marriages and such, but she can't really help him because she can't feel the Force. Luke was still on his own and created his own Order by doing what he thought was right and talking to whomever he could find and reading whatever he could to make the NJO into something that was uniquely his.

 

Not the best book Traviss has come up with, but at least it's not her worst. Jedi-bashing got a bit nauseating toward the end, and Ashoka seemed OOC, but there was none of the usual rubbish about 1.5 million and no Mandos. Seemed a bit short, but was a good read if one ignored Altic's lines. A few nice references and foreshadowing. (Callista and Leveler especially)

Is it just me, or is Altic indirectly responsible for leading Anakin to go nuts in ROTS? Also, Pellaeon's opinion of the Dark Jedi who broke away from the Republic seems to be unintentionally hilarious.

 

WHAT Jedi bashing?

 

It's the Altisian POV's, though I don't think I'd quite qualify it as bashing. It's more like a debate where only one side has a voice. While the Altisian's talk politically when they open their mouths, their internal POV's are not nearly as kind.

Altis spends most of the book telling his followers to think kindly of the Jedi but that is lost somewhat to his realizations in the book's last chapter on Yarille.

"The Force seized him by the collar, shook him, made him look. See what your kind have done, Altis. Feel the pain and misery that empty piety begets."

See where this differs for me from the many unflattering Mandalorian POV's toward the Jedi in the other books is that Altis was a Jedi Knight, even probably a Jedi Master before he left the Order. He should know better than to look at the war and blame the Jedi in some fashion for the atrocities on the battle fields.

Many know I find fault with the Old Republic Jedi myself. I don't like them very much. I do find fault with them for commanding the Clone Army in the fashion they did, but ultimatly the war would have happened with or without the Jedi.

Altis should know this, or at the very least I would hope he would suspect this, rather than simply placing all the blame on the heads of the Jedi. The Jedi likely had no impact on those bodies Altis is viewing on Yarille, or those displaced by the war.

Maybe we're to view Altis as a crazy lunatic, maybe that would help, a true heretic prophet of some kind, deranged and dangerous. He just doesn't come across that way to me. He seems very level headed, very sincere. A former Jedi Master with an ideological difference with Yoda, a difference that forced him to leave the Order.

Thats the difference between his critism of the Jedi and the critism of a man like Kal Skirata, or even Jusik for that matter.

Skirata is a killer with loose morals and a big mouth. I find it easy to accept his critism of the Jedi because he's an outsider looking in. It's an view formed from ignorance and fear.

Bardan on the other hand(a character I don't like at all) is very young during the Clone Wars and finds himself shaped by his bad experiences serving the Jedi Order and the GAR. He was looking for something good in his life and there was going to be no way he'd find it with the Jedi Order, during the war, so he fled. Period. He has reasons for his POV, some shaped by Skirata and his cult like leadership skills, others shaped by the horrors of war he had to face.

This is why I have so much difficulty with Altis's POV. On one hand he seems to really respect the Jedi, on the other he is very critical of them, culminating in an intense POV right at the book's end where he suddenly decides he's had a moment of clarity where he seems to blame "his kind" for the war.

I like these kind of discussions that Karen Traviss forces us to have, its one of the things that makes her books stand apart for me. But I personally had too much difficulty with Djinn Altis's POV's and his part of the story in general to enjoy the book as a whole, as I've outlined. I hope I'm not being repetive here, its just the more I think about the Altisians the less I like their role.

 

What's your take then that Altis said flat out that he'd do everything that Yoda had done and admonishing his students for thinking they would have done anything different? Altis is quite clear, in the matter of the Clone Wars, he has no moral superiority to the Jedi.

I think there's something to be said, Robimus, for respecting the Jedi Knights as heroes and champions of good but also believing they're dogmatically flawed. I don't think we were ever supposed to think the Jedi were perfect. Far from it, Lucas did an excellent job of creating a Jedi Order that was arrogant and complacent.

Lucas confirms this was his intent as well.

Hence, Altis is a better Jedi than most because he was willing to look beyond this and become a better man for it. The same for Master Zao. They aren't better people than Yoda or Master Windu but they see clearer the flaws of the Jedi Order.

 

I'd need to see the quote becasue I don't remember it being quite so flat out. I do recall him saying "Who's to say we wouldn't have done the same thing if the Republic came to us?". I do not recall him saying "I'd have done it the same as Yoda."

Even without moral superiority, as he does like to lump himself in with the Jedi Order in his thoughts, he's still blaming the Jedi for a great deal. The fact that he is actually no longer with the Jedi does make his self blame a little strange.

I completely agree that the Jedi were flawed, but its the amount they can be blamed for that I'm taking issue with. They were not reponsible for the actions of the Sith, or the actions of the Seperatists, or the actions of Dooku. The Jedi got fooled, tried to do what was right for the galaxy(even if it may have been wrong for the clones.....thats debatable) and failed.

The Republic the Jedi decided to defend was corrupt beyond their ability to fix. They unwittingly served the Sith, but the whole war was not their fault. Every dead clone was not their fault, every displaced person was not their fault....

See what your kind have done sounds a bit harsh to me. Its subtle but pointed. Maybe a different interpretation beyond my own exists. If so I'd love to hear it, but it screams to me of Altis blaming the Jedi(and strangely himself) for basically everything everthing under the stars.

 

I'm about half-way through this one. And while I thought the beginning was a bit slow and boring, I am really enjoying it since.

I really like the introduction of a different Jedi sect, as I enjoyed the introduction of the Grey Paladin Jedi in Coruscant Nights.

It adds a really cool dimension to Jedi and Force philosophy.

The book is very much a Karen Traviss novel in that she always makes you think and work out moral dilemmas and see things from different perspective. She leaves things very ambiguous, which I like.

I've had no problems "recognizing" characters. If anything, she gives them more depth.

 

patchworkz7: IIRC, his son doesn't make his underlings wear clothes in I, Jedi either. LOL

As for Ahsoka, the general stance has been that the Jedi consider there to be many paths to the Force. For all the comparisons to the Catholic Church we make, from intended to unintended to silly, the Jedi don't believe in only one road to the Force. My bigger thing is that we get to see Ahsoka as more than just Wesley. About time.

BandofClones: It's not that OOC. Ahsoka flirts with Anakin all the time. Maybe Togrutas are like Twi'leks, in that their females are encouraged to sleep around pursue pleasure.

Grey1: The first "Han shot first" was in the Han Solo adventures, so it actually pre-dates the Special Edition.

And Anakin doesn't want an "open marriage"; if he did, he'd have no problem with Obi-Wan being seen leaving Padmé's apartment at 500 Republica at three in the morning.

JediAlly: I agree, if Anakin had trained under a schismatic Jedi (and I don't mean a Sith), he would've been able to talk about Padmé's pregnancy. But the schismatic Jedi win out in the end; Luke's whole Order allows marriages and seems indifferent to what the other Jedi do in bed, except for Mara, where he cares very passionately about that issue. *wink wink nudge nudge say no more*

Charles: Traviss doesn't so much "bash" the Jedi. In the OT, the Jedi were the heroes. In the PT, though, they come off as theocratic, hypocritical, and clueless. Notice that she has never bashed Luke or the NJO. The closest Luke's Jedi Order comes to eugenics is having a line of clones who can only eat supplements (KJA's a bit heavy-handed with the metaphors.) in their ranks, and that begins with the 81st clone of that line. "But she had Jacen kill Mara!" Jacen was a wannabe Sith, and that wasn't her idea anyway. Every SW author has to stick to the script.

I'm just surprised she knew the Jedi had teh sex0r. I thought jokes about people who spent three weeks in line waiting for the prequels being celibate had drowned out the Word of God.

It's good to know that Anakin's deviant, though. Anakin was a fascist in AOTC. That by itself puts him closer to the dark side. His lust for UNLIMITED POWA!!!!!1 was the final nail in the coffin.

If Luke went darkside and killed Vader, he would've subsequently killed Palpatine, taken the name Darth Zoon, and proclaimed himself Emperor. Then he'd turn his attention on the various injustices of the galaxy, perpetrating a lot more injustice to solve them. The Hutts enslaved his sister? You may fire when ready. Those Imperials who killed Owen and Beru? Apology accepted, Captain Needa. Finally, he would start a group of Jedi Enforcers to execute his will across the galaxy. Some would call him a tyrant, some would call him the apotheosis of Palpatine's vision of galactic peace. Oh, and he'd marry every redhead in the Empire, but always love his lovely Hand above all the others.

Qui-Gon believed in the Potentium. I'll let you decide what that means.

colojedi7: Pellaeon isn't the same man he will be in forty years.

Matt: If you could call that living.

 

Couple of points, Darth Iktomi

1:] Traviss' treatment of the Jedi Knights in the Legacy of the Force series seems to act as if Luke Skwyalker's order was the exact same one as the Prequels according to a lot of fans. Furthermore, I consider the Jedi Knights of the Prequel era to be heroic if flawed figures so I find your statement about her bashing them to be defensible to also be off.

2:] Qui Gon was a follower of the Living Force. The Potentium is a Sith spawned heresy, so I sincerely doubt its remotely related.

 

I am not sure I ever see where Karen Traviss "bashes" Jedi. She's very objective. From what I gather, she was warning (through other characters, if I remember right) that Luke's Jedi might be going down the same path as prequel Jedi because no one basically did a darn thing about Jacen's fall to the Dark Side. It was ignored, no one paid attention to the warning signs, just like with Anakin, until it was too late.

 

she is very pro mando. sometimes her fascination with them and Fett downplay the jedi. it is bordering on an anti-bias at times

 

Blaming the Jedi for Jacen is sort of like blaming the United States for Stalin.

It sort of misses the point for the people who handed him the galaxy.

 

Mr. Denning and Mr. Allston seem to roll with the idea well enough

 

The futility and absurdity of a blame has never stopped anybody from assigning said blame.^^

 

I got side tracked earlier in answering the question since this isn't a Karen Traviss thread, but my point here is yes, that's pretty ridiculous. And it's also ridiculous the way GL set up the prequels to say the same thing about the old Jedi Order concerning Palpatine and Anakin. So if she criticizes the new Jedi order (I don't think focusing on Mandos is a criticism of Jedi, that's like saying any focus away from Jedi is Jedi bashing, im my opinion) I think it's to show how similar it could have become to the old one.

But the bottom line is: Jacen was gonna do what Jacen was gonna do. And the characters had to realize that in the face of a lot of angry folk who blame the Jedi for not doing what everyone else thought they should have done. Coming up with great resolutions after the fact is easy, so is pointing the blame. The difficult part is now up to Ben and Luke who are making it their mission in FOTJ to see if they can, at all possibly, learn where Jacen really went wrong.

Anyway. Back to No Prisoners.

 

I don't think he did.

 

Just an observation, but it's kind of funny how people criticize KT, but when they discuss the actions of characters, such as Jacen, they often talk of them as if the acted of their own free will. Apparently their actions were not controlled writers.