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So, the Gungans fought the Droid army, and the Naboo people were supposedly starving, how bad was the aftermath? I ask, because I don't recall seeing a lot of Gun an or Naboo bodies. What does the EU say on the matter?

The Gungans were carrion-eaters. In the extended director's cut Jar Jar Binks was seen wolfing down various baby limbs, and scooping up slimy innards from eviscerated corpses. The long Gungan face with the protruding bill was actually meant to allow for the meat to rot inside of the oral cavity, allowing for the putrefying bacteria to accelerate the rotting process, producing more savory flavors in accordance to the palate of the Gungan. The resulting halitosis was unspeakably foul, which largely necessitated the isolation of the Gungans.

It took the legendary discipline of two Jedi to finally establish diplomatic relations with these noxious creatures. And it should also be now apparent why the Trade Federation opted for a droid army.

I always figured the 'starvation' bit was just disinformation being spread to try to convince the Queen to surrender. Unless the EU says otherwise, I'd keep assuming that. Starving the population isn't supported by the movie when everyone seems well and happy in the victory parade, and it'd be directly contrary to the Trade Federation's goal of exploiting the place as a protected market.

Also if there were mass deaths on Naboo in trade federation prison camps then it would be much more difficult to explain why Gunray escapes any form of criminal sanction. It would be much easier to argue his case without thousands of dead humans hanging around his neck and mass murder is probably not included in an interstellar trading companies standard practice, he does after all seem to ignore Palpatines orders to wipe out the Gungans, taking them prisoner instead.

What was the time span of Phantom Menace, or at least from the invasion of Naboo to it being liberated. Unless I am misremembering it could not have been more than a couple of days or a week tops right? Would it even be possible for people to be dying of starvation on a massive scale in that time?

Sea Skimmer wrote:I always figured the 'starvation' bit was just disinformation being spread to try to convince the Queen to surrender. Unless the EU says otherwise, I'd keep assuming that. Starving the population isn't supported by the movie when everyone seems well and happy in the victory parade, and it'd be directly contrary to the Trade Federation's goal of exploiting the place as a protected market.

IIRC the Darth Plaguies novel mentions that the message Amidala received about the people starving was faked by Maul.

Gunray was heard to tell Governor Bibble that "the people are starving, and you, Governor are going to die much sooner than they are I'm afraid." Or something close to that, so it wasn't just the faked Maul transmission sent to the queen that was saying this.
*edit* Also remember that the orbital blockade had been in place for x amount of time before the droid boots hit the dirt on Naboo. So, assuming Naboo had to import food in order to survive, and the blockade prevented this, there is a possibility of the starvation thing being legit.

Cowl: produce evidence of your claim.

That would be a difficult task indeed, as the above was an attempt at satire, albeit somewhat stilted. The reason for this is that I saw that the thread was left ignored for a appreciable amount of time and I sought to deliver it from oblivion, in the hope that another would return the courtesy for one of my own threads.

Cowl wrote:That would be a difficult task indeed, as the above was an attempt at satire, albeit somewhat stilted. The reason for this is that I saw that the thread was left ignored for a appreciable amount of time and I sought to deliver it from oblivion, in the hope that another would return the courtesy for one of my own threads.

I see. Carry on then.

Hilariously, he's basically describing Darths and Droids Gungans, who eat people and were only kept from eating everybody in Theed by the PCs playing Jedi distracting the PC playing Jar-Jar.

Really, Red Letter Media makes a good point that the power generator that was the backdrop to the lightsaber duel was large enough to power the Naboo...well, basically forever. It's hard to imagine what a pacifistic, sparsely inhabited planet like Naboo would need with such a reactor, but clearly power isn't an issue. Food couldn't be either, unless if the droid army was razing farmland (which we never see), as such a lush planet is obviously self sufficient (see: Earth). The blockade only appeared to have economic consequences, and we never see droids shooting civilians on the street.

Although I've wondered; when the Queen and company take off on the ship to run the blockade, they are fired upon by what appear to be quad turbolasers, or perhaps quad laser cannons. Doubtlessly many shots missed; would they not hit the planet? Would they not cause enormous collateral damage?

ICS calls them quad turbolasers, but remember Saxtons's stuff also indicates that dedicated warships obtain high firepower by diverting almost all power into the main battery. Meanwhile Trade Federation ships aren't dedicated warships, and are clearly underway during the escape. Very little large scale collateral damage would occur meanwhile even if blasts measured in dozens of megatons impacted in the many oceans and large lakes of the planet, and even hits on the dry surface aren't going to leave all that much obvious damage in anything we see in the movie. A planet is a pretty big thing and water soaks up energy like crazy.

Given the damage we see to the droids on the ship's hull, it looks like firepower being used was very low, which is logical given that the goal was to capture and not kill.

Well, we do know there are 'camps', that people will be processed in. Maybe the droids were ordered not to feed the citizens?

Now that you mention it, Luke, we don't hear anything about "food" issues until after the invasion force makes it to the surface. At that point the TF army was gathering people up and parking them in camps where they could be deprived of food, etc. But if that is the case, the invasion army hadn't been there long enough to cause mass starvation after just a couple of days, (sure, folks will be hungry, and the very old and very young will be the first to go, and may do so rather quickly..) so maybe this was just a propaganda piece to try and manipulate people such as the Queen to accept TF demands.

Did'nt that battle for Naboo game on N64 go into more detail about the occupation? Not a novel, but it might fill in gaps....

I find it very hard to believe that Naboo couldn't sustain itself for a few months at least. WHat would happen if Earth was blockaded? We'd be absolutely fine, because we don't rely on space goods.

You just answered your own question. Earth is for the time being a closed system economically speaking. Naboo is not, any more than Earth's nations are currently. The worlds in Wars are a lot closer to countries in the current world with interdependent economies than they are to isolated star sytems faring on their own.

Even so, a lot of countries are agriculturally self-sufficient, or close enough to it that they won't suffer immediate famine if someone blockades them.

Not all are, but a lot are.

btw we do know that Naboo is the sector capital for the Chommel sector, that has over 40,000 inhabited worlds (of which less then 0.1% are "member" worlds), so the orginal blockade could have wrecked havok on the sectorial trade without causing any signifigant death in Naboo itself.

Also do we even know if Naboo had any major agriculture, after all in the republic you could easily import food off-world and keep Naboo as a "resort" world of sorts.

Cowl wrote:The Gungans were carrion-eaters. In the extended director's cut Jar Jar Binks was seen wolfing down various baby limbs, and scooping up slimy innards from eviscerated corpses. The long Gungan face with the protruding bill was actually meant to allow for the meat to rot inside of the oral cavity, allowing for the putrefying bacteria to accelerate the rotting process, producing more savory flavors in accordance to the palate of the Gungan. The resulting halitosis was unspeakably foul, which largely necessitated the isolation of the Gungans. .

Hah, hah. that explains why the Naboo wanted nothing to do with them. yuck!

Please tell me you're either kidding or 9 years old.

Batman wrote:You just answered your own question.

Yes I know. It was rhetorical.