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My apologies, I saw it again this week (HBO) and have noticed a few
things that I found odd. I don't read much of the EU and maybe this
stuff was explained there.

1. WHO ordered the Clone army? Who paid for it?
yeah they mentioned some Jedi Master in Ep 2, but if he ordered the army, and paid for it, he must have had good reason. But why would he
do all that and then not even bother to tell anybody about it?
Besides, Jango said he was recriuted by Tyrannus. So Trannus was
in league with the dead Jedi Master? I'm lost.....

2. Why did Amadala die? Because she was depressed about Annie?
"lost the will to live"? WTF!?

3. WHy did the Emporer dispose of the Trade FEd goons? They were perfectly happy to do his bidding. It seemed like a waste to me.

4. Why did he stay disfigured? In the SW universe they can give Luke
a mechanical hand and Vader a mech body. But there was no plastic
surgery? WTF!?

Equinox2003 wrote:3. WHy did the Emporer dispose of the Trade FEd goons? They were perfectly happy to do his bidding. It seemed like a waste to me.

He had achieved his objectives of grabbing political power and destroying the Jedi, so there was no longer a need to continue with the Clone Wars. The Separatists may have listened to Darth Sidious, but they sure as hell would not have surrendured right away.

4. Why did he stay disfigured? In the SW universe they can give Luke
a mechanical hand and Vader a mech body. But there was no plastic
surgery? WTF!?

His disfigurement gave him the people's sympathy, and I guess Palpatine had other things to do besides lying down for plastic surgery. It's not like Palpatine even cared about how he looked.

1. WHO ordered the Clone army? Who paid for it?
yeah they mentioned some Jedi Master in Ep 2, but if he ordered the army, and paid for it, he must have had good reason. But why would he
do all that and then not even bother to tell anybody about it?
Besides, Jango said he was recriuted by Tyrannus. So Trannus was
in league with the dead Jedi Master? I'm lost.....

Jedi Master Syfodias ordered the army, at Dooku's behest (and finanical backing, presumably). It isn't explained at all in the movie, but Labyrinth of Evil does explain the situation in some detail; however, I haven;t read it in a while, so I'll let someone else field the specifics.

2. Why did Amadala die? Because she was depressed about Annie?
"lost the will to live"? WTF!?

Either that, the Force choking did more internal damage than external, or Anakin inadvertantly was drawing on Padme's life force to sustain himself while he was on the verge of death; take your pick.

3. WHy did the Emporer dispose of the Trade FEd goons? They were perfectly happy to do his bidding. It seemed like a waste to me.

They were no longer needed, and keeping them around would have been an unnecessary liability; the Viceroy had already been betrayed by Sidious once before, and no doubt if he was double-crossed again, he might have been inclined to find another use for the CIS droid armies.

4. Why did he stay disfigured? In the SW universe they can give Luke
a mechanical hand and Vader a mech body. But there was no plastic
surgery? WTF!?

As Raynor pointed out, the disfigurment both lent credance to his "assassination" story, and he simply didn't care about how he looked.

On the disfigurement. It seems to be a purely Force-related injury, his own lightning deflected back onto him. It might not even be fixable with any SW technology.
Even if it was, Palpy's disfigured look suited him just fine in his new role as the evil Emperor.

Noble Ire wrote:

1. WHO ordered the Clone army? Who paid for it?
yeah they mentioned some Jedi Master in Ep 2, but if he ordered the army, and paid for it, he must have had good reason. But why would he
do all that and then not even bother to tell anybody about it?
Besides, Jango said he was recriuted by Tyrannus. So Trannus was
in league with the dead Jedi Master? I'm lost.....

Jedi Master Syfodias ordered the army, at Dooku's behest (and finanical backing, presumably). It isn't explained at all in the movie, but Labyrinth of Evil does explain the situation in some detail; however, I haven;t read it in a while, so I'll let someone else field the specifics.

As I recall, Sifo-Dyas ordered the army because he expected the Republic to need it; meanwhile, Dooku ahd made contact with Sidious and been persuaded to become his apprentice. When he learned that Sifo-Dyas had ordered the Clone Army, he was afraid that this would screw up their plans, but Sidious said it could be worked with, sent him to kill Sifo-Dyas (thus the reason he never told anyone), and had him take over the process. This included arranging for Jango to serve as the template and train the more elite members of the army.

Also, Sidious killed the CIS leaders because that had been their role from the beginning: take all the blame for the war and eerything bad that happened to the Republic, then kill them off. Keeping them alive would have been a very bad PR move.

It might not even be fixable with any SW technology.

I would think it would be "fixable" with 1990s technology. I saw a documentary about a decade ago about a woman who was a fire-swallower who happened to get her face totally crisped by an itinerant crosswind...the documentary focused on the cutting-edge technology used to literally "grow" new epidermal skin to rebuild her face.

There's a pre-ROTS comic that shows Sidious switching between his normal and prunefaced self. He probably could have cooked up something to reverse any real damage later on, but why bother when you can gain sympathy points?

I also thought it was said somewhere that Dooku persuaded Sifo-Dyas to order the clone army after becoming Sidious' new apprentice, then killed him to seal the deal as a Sith.

Not having read any of the EU material here is my take of the situation of the ordering of the clone army based purly on my own interpritation of the moves.

Perhaps Sifo-Dyas was infact Darth Palgues and his last act before being killed by by Dath Sidious was to order the clone army. The timing of this act would be correct as we know that the order for the clones was placed 10years before the start of "The Attack of the Clones".

Now as for payment the army was supposed to have been ordered by a Jedi Master on behalf of the republic. This order was placed at a time when the jedi were still highly respected. It is likely that no payment would be expected till delivery had taken place. By the time delivery had taken place Palpatine had emergancy power and authorisation from the scenate to form an army. So actual payment came from the treasure of the Republic.

The timing of this act would be correct as we know that the order for the clones was placed 10years before the start of "The Attack of the Clones".

How do you figure? 10 years before AotC coincides with The Phantom Menace, in which Palpatine is clearly the master and Maul the apprentice.

Even if we don't take into account the EU, there are two canonical facts that would debunk the Darth Plagueis = Sifo-Dyas theory:

1) 10 years before AOTC was TPM... Darth Maul is already a fully fledged Sith Lord then.

2) "Only Two There Are" which, as far as I can tell, is a Sith tradition that Sidious subscribes to.

Edit: Anguirus got the jump on me.

Now as for payment the army was supposed to have been ordered by a Jedi Master on behalf of the republic. This order was placed at a time when the jedi were still highly respected. It is likely that no payment would be expected till delivery had taken place. By the time delivery had taken place Palpatine had emergancy power and authorisation from the scenate to form an army. So actual payment came from the treasure of the Republic.

I find if hard to believe a planet dedicated to the production of clones (they say they have built others so I assume it’s a big planet wide industry) would operate on credit for ten years! Comparing it to other government contractors none of them would even dream of operating such a large-scale project on the basis of being paid on delivery. How would they meet their operating costs? And they couldn’t have gotten themselves a loan from a galactic bank to run the contract until they were paid, assuming they were given some huge incentive to accept such a contract, as they were cut off from the galaxy and having contact with a major financial institute would jeopardise that.
You are probably correct however that it was paid for by the Republic, I doubt the Sith would have put their secret at risk by funding something which could be traced back to them directly and the cost of creating the army would likely be small in regard to the overall Republic budget so some creative accountancy on behalf of Palpatine would easily hide the figures.
Alternatively the book Rogue Planet shows the Jedi Order as being stinking rich so maybe they paid for it?

Oh yeah I forgot Wong was doing that page of his reactions to Episode III.

I guess that never got finished. I always look forward to reading his "analysis" and stuff. I don't think he needs to worry about spoilers now...

VT-16 wrote:There's a pre-ROTS comic that shows Sidious switching between his normal and prunefaced self. He probably could have cooked up something to reverse any real damage later on, but why bother when you can gain sympathy points?

I also thought it was said somewhere that Dooku persuaded Sifo-Dyas to order the clone army after becoming Sidious' new apprentice, then killed him to seal the deal as a Sith.

Really! Here I thought this was what they were going to do all along once I saw the ROTS trailer, but I never saw this comic you speak of. Anybody know anything more about this? Are we just supposed to ignore it now?

Kurgan wrote:

VT-16 wrote:There's a pre-ROTS comic that shows Sidious switching between his normal and prunefaced self. He probably could have cooked up something to reverse any real damage later on, but why bother when you can gain sympathy points?

I also thought it was said somewhere that Dooku persuaded Sifo-Dyas to order the clone army after becoming Sidious' new apprentice, then killed him to seal the deal as a Sith.

Really! Here I thought this was what they were going to do all along once I saw the ROTS trailer, but I never saw this comic you speak of. Anybody know anything more about this? Are we just supposed to ignore it now?

Its one of the Visonaries books, stories from the visual artists at LucasFilm, some are better than others.

Watt Tambors is fucking insanity, Grievous' isn't too bad, and the Cyborg maul versus Obi-wan has a pretty good fight in it.

I thought that Uncle Owen being the one to finally put down Maul was breathtakingly hilarious. But yeah, that's not even CLOSE to canon.

Side note since I didn't see it mentioned. Another reason to kill off the CIS leaders was so that their assets could be nationalized by the Empire.

Darth Fanboy wrote:Side note since I didn't see it mentioned. Another reason to kill off the CIS leaders was so that their assets could be nationalized by the Empire.

that and then the secret of Sidious = Palpitine is absolutly safe from being found out. The Seperatists are a loose end that needed to be closed.

That's great, but then why doesn't the Empire ever use battledroids? (Yes, I realize they finally use them in Dark Empire, but that's decades later, why keep the army in mothballs all that time? And don't get me started on the Dark Trooper project, which was squashed so quickly and easily by one man, how could it have been so easy if they had billions of battle droids just lying around ready for use?)

The Dark Empire battledroids were standardized models and Galactic Civil War veterans. The Empire used them all the time, but just as heavy fire support instead of infantry. And for all we know, they used infantry, too. It's a big galaxy.

So how come we never saw them until Dark Empire? Palpy seemed to wait to bring out all these "big guns" (the dark side ghost pilot powered cyborg fighters, the war droids, the super weapons) until after he'd "lost" to the Rebels.


Oh well, you're saying they were just "off camera" not that Palpy was an idiot and forgot to use them, if they were really so badass and useful...

white_rabbit wrote:

Kurgan wrote:Really! Here I thought this was what they were going to do all along once I saw the ROTS trailer, but I never saw this comic you speak of. Anybody know anything more about this? Are we just supposed to ignore it now?

Its one of the Visonaries books, stories from the visual artists at LucasFilm, some are better than others.

Watt Tambors is fucking insanity, Grievous' isn't too bad, and the Cyborg maul versus Obi-wan has a pretty good fight in it.

I think most of the Visionaries stories are canon (except for the DM vs. Obi-Wan story), so it would be a canon explanation for at least part of his transformation trick.

I even think it takes place inside the "hospital tower" from ROTS, where the Sith have their secret lair filled with holocrons and mystical crystals and shit. 8)

Kurgan wrote:So how come we never saw them until Dark Empire? Palpy seemed to wait to bring out all these "big guns" (the dark side ghost pilot powered cyborg fighters, the war droids, the super weapons) until after he'd "lost" to the Rebels.


Oh well, you're saying they were just "off camera" not that Palpy was an idiot and forgot to use them, if they were really so badass and useful...

The EU only gives us a limited window into the real SW galaxies. There may seem like a lot of books to us, but when you think about it, it's only a couple dozen stories about a galaxy of tens of millions of inhabited worlds. And most of them only follow the exploits of a small group of the same characters. There are entire ship classes that are supposed to be standard and common in the Empire, but which we never see.

They've got Dark troopers up to their ears in the Battlefront games and Empire at War expansion pack (set in the years after Yavin). None of that might be canon, however, but they do seem to serve a storytelling purpose in the latter, so it might be canon. (Hell, anything to combat and retcon old minimalized stories is a good thing!)

Yeah but in the video games the Dark Troopers aren't droids, are they? (other than Dark Forces I where they originated of course, I should say)


And good point about the "off camera" stuff, it's just that when you've got all the material basicing ignoring (granted, it's based on the problem of the prequels being created after most of the EU) it, you start to imagine that stuff just doesn't exist.

Sort of like if they made a Star Trek movie and told us that the Federation had armored battle tanks "all along." It'd create a huge believability problem, wouldn't it?

Even in Dark Forces, the product of the Dark Trooper program was an exoskeleton for a human (clone?) operator. The mission briefings show that the project was produced in three phases, with the third phase being the product of the whole shebang (and Phase III very clearly contained a human operator, no doubt about it). The first two were concept tests for weapons, armor and motive systems.


I don't see the problem that Imperial war droids only see very limited use. In Star Wars, clone armies replaced droid armies. Yeah, the logical reasons behind effectiveness are kinda iffy, but the political reasons are definitely still there.