Star Wars The Clone Wars & The Bad Batch [Spoilers]

[felice]

5 hours ago, DaveSumm said:

The clones growth is accelerated, so I don’t see why 2 years is any crazier than whatever age Omega is.

It's not that accelerated; it takes nearly 10 years for a clone to be ready for deployment. I don't think it's implausible that Omega is the same age as Boba. Possibly the original purpose of the experiments that created the Bad Batch was to produce clones that aged faster, so they might be younger than other clones of the same apparent age?

[Ghostlydragon]

Yeah the bad batch must have been grown around the same time as the ones we see in attack of the clones, or maybe up to three years later,  making them 10/20 or 13/26 in the time of revenge of the sith.

Omega would definitely have been created around the same time as Boba making her around 13 in revenge of the sith due to no growth acceleration.

[Lord Varys]

20 hours ago, Maia said:

But wouldn't that mean that the Bad Batch are like 2 years old, which is absurd? How long did the Clone Wars continue for, anyway?  Omega looks significantly younger than Boba, too, 10 at most. And it is a bit odd that she can remember the Bad Batch being in the lab, while they don't remember it. I mean she has to be at least 3 years older than them for that, if she ages normally, right? And all those treatment chambers in the finale were adult-size, too, hm...

My current impression is that Omega ages slower than normal, which sorta kinda makes sense given her role as a living DNA reservoir. I hope that at some point we get some explanation why she was made female and how she could possibly serve as a template for male clones despite that.

I think we can safely say that the Clone Wars lasting only three years no longer works, not just because of Omega and the Bad Batch but also because of Ahsoka's development throughout the war.

20 hours ago, Maia said:

Except that we never saw them previously, and nothing suggests that they would have relevant skills and experience. All that we were shown previously were some rugged local resistance fighters, leading guerilla wars against the Separatist armies. And most of them were planet-based, with maybe a few fighters or small ships. Also, none of those we saw in the Clone Wars joined the Empire.

As TCW advanced we saw more and more human military personnel but the show sort of dropped the ball in that department. Although I guess The Bad Batch might eventually show where the hell the non-clone recruits they seem to have at the ready immediately after the proclamation of the Empire came from. Palpatine may have built up such structures in secret during the Clone Wars.

20 hours ago, Maia said:

But why not?! And what about the 65 other Orders? I mean, who doesn't want some highly trained and genetically tweaked Janissaries? I can see that the Kaminoans were a weak link and had to be removed, but in "The Clone Wars" the medical personnel were also clones, so it could have been turned into a self-perpetuating cycle, where all of the particpants were bound to follow the Emperor's orders. Their command chain could also be clones, so that no ambitious general could highjack them. A highly competent elite force that is  blindly loyal - what Evil Overlord wouldn't jump at something like that ? I guess the fact that the chips could be so easily removed is a flaw, but surely it made more sense to work on a failsafe than to just abandon the idea?

I'm not sure there are 65 other 'orders' as such - rather I'd think that 'Execute Order 66' is the code phrase used to activate the chip-controlled desire to eradicate the Jedi.

As for why there were not an army of drone clones: I guess the only explanation I can think of is that this wouldn't work. If it had worked, it would have been the best way for Palpatine to stay in power forever.

20 hours ago, Maia said:

Well, yes and no. The conscripts would be cheaper and quicker - they are recruited as adults, can be trained up in a year or less, and imposing the Empire on the galaxy did require many more soldiers than the clone army could provide. But it certainly made perfect sense to keep the clones as an elite force and continue producing replacements - which would have also been indoctrinated from birth in addition to chips. I guess, it would have made the Empire pretty much invincible, though.

I think that the canonical answer is going to be that the chips only worked short-term and the control began to break down afterwards. Maybe the Kaminoans even made it that way on purpose, trying to ensure their own relevance. 

The problem with that is that you need resources and manpower to indoctrinate people whereas that's not the case with the clones. Even although the clones aren't complete drones they are bred to obey orders and they are bred to be loyal to the supreme command. They are potentially much more loyal and obedient than conscripts - who might even be forced to serve rather than volunteer.

20 hours ago, Maia said:

I am still confused re: what this fabled Sith training actually entails. As far as I have seen until now, a powerful Jedi could just go dark and have all the same abilities that the Sith do. My impression is that Dooku just wasted his time being subservient to Palapatine.

From what we know Darth Tyranus - who was just viewed as a placeholder by Palpatine - got Sith training but he was already one of the most powerful Jedi and one of the best duelists in the galaxy. Darth Sidious didn't really have to teach him much.

And it is the same with Darth Vader, basically.

[Toth]

13 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

I'm not sure there are 65 other 'orders' as such - rather I'd think that 'Execute Order 66' is the code phrase used to activate the chip-controlled desire to eradicate the Jedi.

 

[Myrddin]

1 hour ago, Lord Varys said:

As TCW advanced we saw more and more human military personnel but the show sort of dropped the ball in that department. Although I guess The Bad Batch might eventually show where the hell the non-clone recruits they seem to have at the ready immediately after the proclamation of the Empire came from. Palpatine may have built up such structures in secret during the Clone Wars.

We've already seen Palptine's plans culminate in having a clone army ready to be deployed exactly when needed (10+ years in development), it's not much of a stretch that he started planning for their replacements to be ready when the war ended. Why keep using troops once loyal to your pawns when you can have them replaced with an army loyal only to you?

Yes, it's far fetched, but we are talking about someone who can see the future from some all powerful force.  And move rocks. And shoot frickin' lightning from his bony fingers. Littlefinger's got nothing on him.

[Lord Varys]

1 hour ago, Myrddin said:

We've already seen Palptine's plans culminate in having a clone army ready to be deployed exactly when needed (10+ years in development), it's not much of a stretch that he started planning for their replacements to be ready when the war ended. Why keep using troops once loyal to your pawns when you can have them replaced with an army loyal only to you?

Yes, it's far fetched, but we are talking about someone who can see the future from some all powerful force.  And move rocks. And shoot frickin' lightning from his bony fingers. Littlefinger's got nothing on him.

Yes, of course. The issue here is that the writers complicate things unncessarily by replacing the clones with conscripts. Lucas actually had Morrison voice some Stormtroopers in his final version of the OT to imply that they were still clones.

That would make more sense than the conscripts idea.

[Slurktan]

21 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

Yes, of course. The issue here is that the writers complicate things unncessarily by replacing the clones with conscripts. Lucas actually had Morrison voice some Stormtroopers in his final version of the OT to imply that they were still clones.

I know Morrison replaced Boba Fett's lines but I don't recall any stormtroopers having his voice.

[Lord Varys]

5 minutes ago, Slurktan said:

I know Morrison replaced Boba Fett's lines but I don't recall any stormtroopers having his voice.

As far as I know on the BluRays the Stormtroopers on the Death Star have Morrison's voice. Could be misremembering, though, it is something I think I heard in one of the audiocommentaries rather than recognizing the voice myself.

[Maia]

On 8/29/2021 at 5:13 PM, Myrddin said:

 Why keep using troops once loyal to your pawns when you can have them replaced with an army loyal only to you?

A very inferior army, though. And how loyal are the stormtroopers, really? IMHO it made more sense to take over the facilities from the kaminoans and indoctrinate kid clones, so that they could be used as both  capable and  loyal elite force in 4-5 years or so. Oh, well. I guess that they needed an explanation for why the stormtroopers were so useless in comparison. Though they could have just come with some defect in the chip or in the clones themselves. It was tacitly implied that all the kid and baby clones were killed during or prior to the destruction of the facilities, yes?

 

On 8/29/2021 at 7:01 PM, Lord Varys said:

Yes, of course. The issue here is that the writers complicate things unncessarily by replacing the clones with conscripts. Lucas actually had Morrison voice some Stormtroopers in his final version of the OT to imply that they were still clones.

 

Stormtroopers are too worthless to be clones, though, so I disagree. Hastily trained conscripts make much more sense, particularly given the general shoddiness of their equipment. And of course the original trilogy narrows down the possibilities - no capable soldiers were present there, so they'd have to go or get thoroughly sidelined in one way or another.

Concerning the age of the Bad Batch, they are obviously somewhat younger than the oldest clones that were involved in the 2 prequel film, but their designation that honored CT-99 could have been chosen in the final stages of their training, which makes more sense, IMHO than them being 2 years old. Wasn't this the case with the Domino squad, that they got their name shortly before or after graduation?

As to Palpatine preparing large numbers of his volonteers in secret, I doubt that. Too high a chance of somebody getting the wind of something shady happening. I think that we are meant to think that these people under Crosshair fought as part of their planetary militias during the war. IMHO "The Clone Wars" dropped the ball when they didn't show any substantial space forces from the richer industrial planets, which would have been the logical source of the command staff. Ditto more non-clones serving with clones in various positions. Some people among the trillions of the Republic citizens would have wanted to be involved. Particularly those whose worlds were in danger of or suffered from separatist attcks.