Clone Troopers and Midichlorians

[OmniBack]

Why weren't the Clone Troopers made with HIGH concentrations of midichlorians?


And how would the SW universe have changed if they had?

Order 66, and the Vong Invasion?

[Sidewinder]

Why weren't the Clone Troopers made with HIGH concentrations of midichlorians?

I assume it's because neither Sidious nor Tyrannus wanted an army of force sensitives who could potentially overpower them if they mutinied.

And how would the SW universe have changed if they had?

I imagine the Jedi would become political rivals with the Grand Army of the Republic, feuding with force sensitive clone commanders regarding the direction the war was going. Sidious and Tyrannus...

As noted, they will be VERY unhappy with TWO armies of force sensitives who could potentially overpower them if they mutinied. They can play the Jedi against the force sensitive clones to keep them busy, but the risk of them uniting to hunt down the Sith is NOT something they can ignore.

Order 66, and the Vong Invasion?

A clonetrooper ordered to kill a Jedi might unconsciously warn the Jedi of his intent to kill-- described as a "killing aura" in Chinese and Japanese works of fantasy-- meaning you're better off with clonetroopers that aren't force sensitives. As for the Vong invasion...

To my knowledge, the New Republic did NOT use stormtroopers, which means force sensitive clonetroopers won't be used if they were available. The Empire will, but that means the Vong will have to split their forces to simultaneously deal with the Empire and the New Republic. Whether or not that's a good thing, I don't have enough knowledge of the Vong War to say.

[OmniBack]

Well they'd still be clones, I don't think giving them midichlorians would have allowed them to mutiny.


Imagine a warrior/soldier with all the skills of a Trooper/Jedi as well as the armor/weapons of a Trooper now add all the abilities of a Jedi...


TK, PreCog, etc.

[Sidewinder]

Well they'd still be clones, I don't think giving them midichlorians would have allowed them to mutiny.

Clones CAN and WILL mutiny-- read Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader for a scene of clonetroopers refusing to obey Order 66.

Imagine a warrior/soldier with all the skills of a Trooper/Jedi as well as the armor/weapons of a Trooper now add all the abilities of a Jedi...

I don't have to-- I read about such warriors in Star Wars: Legacy. (They're called Imperial Knights.)

[OmniBack]

Clones CAN and WILL mutiny-- read Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader for a scene of clonetroopers refusing to obey Order 66.

That's stupid EU nonsense, that's not how the movie depicted them at all.

I don't have to-- I read about such warriors in Star Wars: Legacy. (They're called Imperial Knights.)

Well assuming that's true, having a massed produced army of Clone Troopers WITH Force powers must be worth trying.

[Sidewinder]

Clones CAN and WILL mutiny-- read Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader for a scene of clonetroopers refusing to obey Order 66.

That's stupid EU nonsense, that's not how the movie depicted them at all.

As much as we'd like to wish otherwise, Lucasfilm policy is that the EU IS canon.

I don't have to-- I read about such warriors in Star Wars: Legacy. (They're called Imperial Knights.)

Well assuming that's true, having a massed produced army of Clone Troopers WITH Force powers must be worth trying.

No, it's not-- as I stated, Darth Sidious and Darth Tyrannus will NOT be happy with an army of force sensitives who can potentially overpower them if they mutiny. The Sith Lords want troopers they can easily control-- a force sensitive will be more resistant to Sith mind control, and undesirable to them.

[TC Pilot]

You would still have to train them in the ways of the Force.

[Coriolis]

And how exactly would one procure Midichlorians? It's not like you could grow em in a lab culture. If you could do that, they'd be selling "Jedi in a Bottle".

[Batman]

Is it ever established that midichlorians are the CAUSE for force sensitivity?
All the movies show is that a high midichlorian count is an INDICATOR of high Force sensitivity. So if you're strong in the Force, your midichlorian count is high. That does not necessarily mean it works the other way round.
Besides, as Coriolis said, who says they can artificially create midichlorians to begin with?

[TC Pilot]

Whether or not midichlorians can be grown or are actually responsible for Force sensitivity is irrelevant given that clones of Force sensitives are themselves Force sensitive.

[Batman]

Whether or not midichlorians can be grown or are actually responsible for Force sensitivity is irrelevant given that clones of Force sensitives are themselves Force sensitive.

It WOULD be irrelevant if the Clone Army had actually been cloned off a Force sensitive. Alas, they weren't. So INTRODUCING Force sensitivity into them DOES raise the question of wether midichlorians are cause or symptom, and wether they can be grown artificially.

[TC Pilot]

Right, because if one was to make a clone army of Force sensitives, it would be made of Jango Fett clones.

[Civil War Man]

Two words: Joruus C'baoth.

I realize he was made with different cloning technology, but it provides an additional in-universe explanation with the possibility that Kaminoan technology might experience similar failures when dealing with Force sensitives.

[Coriolis]

Two words: Joruus C'baoth.

I realize he was made with different cloning technology, but it provides an additional in-universe explanation with the possibility that Kaminoan technology might experience similar failures when dealing with Force sensitives.

Wasn't his growing time accelerated? IIRC, that's what lead to his mental instability.

[Havok]

The Force, whether trough midis or not, seems to be genetic. Vader had Luke and Leia. Horan Coran, Grandfather was a Jedi etc. etc. It doesn't always transfer to a child as we see in Outbound Flight, where one sibling had it and another didn't, but it increases the chances.

Now if you cloned Darth Vader... CLONED, there is no reason to believe that the clone would not have the same affinity in the Force, like we saw with Joruus C'Baoth, and Luuke and Dorsk 81 and Palpatine. There are probably others that I am missing.

[Noble Ire]

Cloning Force-sensitives, especially in large numbers, has a rather poor track record. The Malreaux family of Vjun attempted a similar experiment, and the entire population of the planet ended up going insane (the actual disaster may have resulted from trying to introduce midiclorians into large numbers of people, though; I don't think the specific nature of the incident is ever specified). Nevertheless, even if one managed to create a Force-sensitive clone like Dorsk 81, they would still have to be trained, as some have pointed out. To train an effective, Force-wielding army of any significant size, one would need a prohibitively large number of previously trained Jedi or Sith.

[Havok]

Cloning Force-sensitives, especially in large numbers, has a rather poor track record. The Malreaux family of Vjun attempted a similar experiment, and the entire population of the planet ended up going insane (the actual disaster may have resulted from trying to introduce midiclorians into large numbers of people, though; I don't think the specific nature of the incident is ever specified). Nevertheless, even if one managed to create a Force-sensitive clone like Dorsk 81, they would still have to be trained, as some have pointed out. To train an effective, Force-wielding army of any significant size, one would need a prohibitively large number of previously trained Jedi or Sith.

Why not just have an accelerated training program like the Clones had. It seems to me that quite a bit of training that Jedi go through has to do with keeping with the traditions of the Light Side. Without the moral issues that the Jedi face, you get someone like Darth Maul, where his training can be pretty much focused on the martial skills.

On top of that the clones are blank slates, and with the behavior inhibitors that were programed into them, it would be easy to say, "This is what you do. This is how you do it. Don't do it this way. That way is bad." and that would be pretty much it.

And you wouldn't be introducing midis, they would be there naturally in the template.

[Civil War Man]

Two words: Joruus C'baoth.

I realize he was made with different cloning technology, but it provides an additional in-universe explanation with the possibility that Kaminoan technology might experience similar failures when dealing with Force sensitives.

Wasn't his growing time accelerated? IIRC, that's what lead to his mental instability.

The instability was caused when the abbreviated growth interacted with the specimen's connection to the Force. When ysalamiri were used to isolate the cloning chambers from the effects of the Force, they were able to produce stable clones.

Also, keep in mind that the Kaminoans use growth accelerators. It's how they were able to get the first battalions ready in 10 years instead of 20 or more.

[Lord Revan]

while it might be possible to infuse a living specimen with the (the Reborn and Disiples of Ragnos incidents), those weren't so good (the NJO defeated both without signifigant problems (in fact just 1 person (Kyle Katarn or his apprentice) did most of the work))

[Ford Prefect]

The only way for the clones to be Force sensitive would be for their template to have originally been a Force sensitive. We know that you can clone a Jedi and get a Jedi from the process. However, General Grievous had a blood 'transfusion' from Sifo Diyas himself and got precisely jack and shit in terms of Force powers from it. Clearly, it would seem that ti's more than midichlorians at work here.

[Cykeisme]

It's possible that in Lucas' version of SW reality, clones of Force sensitives aren't Force sensitive..

[TC Pilot]

while it might be possible to infuse a living specimen with the (the Reborn and Disiples of Ragnos incidents), those weren't so good (the NJO defeated both without signifigant problems (in fact just 1 person (Kyle Katarn or his apprentice) did most of the work))

Those Reborn weren't very good because they were never trained. "None of that's going to happen Dessan. Most of your Shadowtroopers are being mopped up by real Jedi, Jedi who have been trained to use the Force. The rest blew up with your ship."

It's possible that in Lucas' version of SW reality, clones of Force sensitives aren't Force sensitive..

It also doesn't matter.

[Starglider]

The three successive Dorsk clones who became Jedi Knights confirm that force potential can be cloned, but that there's no way to skip the long training time required to produce combat-useful force users, which makes the unit cost very high and imposes sharp scaling limits (since only experienced force users can train other force users). Thus even a relatively small number of force-sensitive 'special forces' clones is impractical if you only have a handful of force users to start with, all of which were urgently needed for other duties, which was the exact situation Palpatine was in. On top of the inherent rebelliousness of dark side force users, which no amount of indoctrination can completely suppress.

[Havok]

Thinking about C'baoth. His growth was accelerated, and yet he had the abillity to use Force lightning and impose his will on an entire fleet just as the Emperor did, along with all the other Jedi type abilities that the original had, including lightsaber combat. Do they ever say where he learned these things or are we to assume that Palpatine trained him?

[Connor MacLeod]

As per the ROTS DK visual dictionary and the AOTC novelization indicate that the Kaminoans wanted to use a Jedi (the ROTS VD said a being with a "high midicholorian count") rather than Jango, but that Sifo-Dyas (or rather more probably it was Dooku either through Sifo-Dyas or impersonating him) who chose/insisted on Fett.

It must be noted that Obi-Wan upon hearing this in the AOTC novelzation was rather rocked by the idea of an army of Force-sensitives.

I suspect the main problem with an "army of Force-senstiives" is the potential for destruction that could occur if even a small number of them go to the Dark side (large groups of Dark Jedi in a single location can be rather destructive on a planetary or system-wide scale.) There's no way of predicting it, and given the scope at which the Clone Army would act, containing it would be a tremendous distraction to the Jedi (nevermind a drain on resources.) Think of the Bfasshi dark jedi from the Thrawn Trilogy...

Anyhow, the closest we've come to seeing a "clone army" is probably the "special forces" Darktroopers (DE or SWR variants, take your pick) or the Royal Guardsmen/Sovereign protectors, and neither were large (relative to the Stormtroopers or ARmy proper) nor clones.