Scruffy said:lordjedi said:Why do they need to continually have a Sith rise up to control the galaxy every 50-100 years? According to the PT, no Sith had been in power "for a millenia", so why the hell does it need to happen so often now? Are the Jedi even dumber than they were before to continually let these Knights cross to the Dark Side and then take over the galaxy?Well, yes. The Jedi were practically extinct after RotS, and the Sith had controlled the galactic government for decades.
The Sith? Try not to accept Lucas' rewriting of history to much. Two Sith (Palpatine and Vader) pretty much controlled the galaxy for 23 years (20 years from ROTS to ANH, 3 years until ROTJ). After that, the only thing to contend with was the imperial remnant and that pretty much got easier and easier as time went on.
So, Luke trains up a bunch of Jedi using what little knowledge he had or could find. Sets up some basic rules that are actually a little looser than the old Jedi ways. Then, lo and behold, 20 years after ROTJ, his own students start becoming Sith. First it was Kyp Durron, he goes all Sith and then becomes a Jedi again. Then one of the Solo kids. Then this guy in Legacy. How many times does it need to happen before people stop trying to "rescue" the fallen Jedi and instead just put them down right away? How often does the galaxy need to suffer because some Jedi doesn't have the balls to take down his best friend or whoever it might be? It's like none of them ever learn anything from history. "Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny."
Scruffy said:For literary quality, yeah, I agree that new formulas should have been tried. Too few authors were creative enough, or given enough leeway, to try that. In-universe, I have to agree with KJA: If they Empire built one Death Star, they would've built other superweapons. Other powers would have built superweapons. As a corollary, if the Sith were powerful enough to take control of the government in 20 BBY, they would've been powerful enough to contend for control of the government in 20 ABY. Sith-of-the-week would be popping up for years.
I'd take KJA's answers with a big grain of salt. I fully expect the Empire to build more than one super weapon, but I also expect Palpatine to have spies all over the place making sure no one else but him is making them.
As far as Sith taking over the govt 20 BBY, that's at least plausible since they had been thought to be extinct for "a millenia". After that, I'd expect everyone to be on the look out for at least the next 100 years and be ready to put down anyone that even appeared to be taking over the government. In short, I'd expect people to actually learn from history and not have these "surprises" come up with Sith taking over every 20-50 years. Sith of the week wouldn't be popping up for years because I'd expect the citizens and the Jedi to take them out quickly.
If people in the real world were that stupid, we would have had at least two Hitlers by now.