What do you LIKE about the EU? — Page 13

I think the genetic template idea was introduced because all of the pre-2002 EU having recruited/conscripted soldiers. I'm not sure there was ever a definitive statement, and it is still contradicted in older EU (wait until "Heir to the Empire", where clone troops are discussed at length). I've always been of the opinion that they tried to make clones of clones, which are really low quality who can't shoot properly. ;-)

I'm not really sure what there is to make clearer. There are clones in white armor, of which we see various versions over time. They're the soldiers of The Republic which becomes The Empire. ~20 years pass, and The Empire still has soldiers in white armor, but they don't all have the same voice anymore. I don't really know what you would explicitly state, other than a solution to the voice "problem".

Well, the gist of the clones and stormtroopers is this:

The original clone troopers during the Clone Wars were all cloned from genetic material of Jango Fett by the Kaminoans and trained by a hundred hand-picked (by Jango Fett) mercinaries, 75 of which were Mandalorians; this combination of good breeding and training over a ten-year growth span made them super awesome soldiers.

After Mace killed Jango, the Kaminoans could only made a few more batches of clones before the sample of his genetic material was rendered useless (something about the process makes it less and less viable as you clone from it).

At the end of the Clone Wars, the clone troopers were reorganized into the stormtrooper corps which were made the elite as they were Jango clones, and Palpatine recognized that he had to make what he had left last for awhile. Around this time there was a clone uprising on Kamino wherein the Kaminoans wanted to separate from the Empire because they were tired of having their services monopolized by Palpatine and used Jango clones to attack the Empire. Palpatine crushed that uprising and destroyed most of Kamino's cloning facilities; this is where the ban on cloning came from, in order to prevent this kind of thing happening again and keep anyone else from creating a clone army to take over the Empire like Palpatine took over the Republic.

A bit later on, the need to begin replacing the fast-dwindling stormtrooper corps became apparent, and so they slowly started to bring in normal recruits, as well as other cloned soldiers from other outstanding Imperial/Republic soldiers using Spaarti technology (which was not as good as the Kaminoan technique due to even more accelerated growth). This replacing caused a lot of animosity between the Jango clones and the new recruits due to the Jango clones' superiority, causing them to look down on the new recruits.

After a time, the 501st was the only pure-clone legion left, which was a point of pride for them. But eventually, even they started to have to bring in other recruits to keep the unit going. By the time of the Battle of Endor, most of the Jango clones had been replaced.

Other than the part where they don't just force Boba to give them genetic samples, that all made remarkable sense.

timdiggerm said:

Other than the part where they don't just force Boba to give them genetic samples, that all made remarkable sense.

I figure, though, that since Boba himself was a clone, using genetic samples from him would eventually result in a "copy of a copy degradation" situation (because even if it worked, I doubt he'd continue to just offer up genetic samples whenever they needed them unless he were kept prisoner... or was paid handsomely). Otherwise, they would've just taken samples from any of the current clones and continued creating them indefinitely.

Overall, I too like that explanation of the whole cloning situation. It does a neat job of explaining the differences in the Kamino and Spaarti technologies, with the Spaarti technology's inferiority explaining why the Kamino clones didn't exhibit Force-resonance-induced mental instability (presumably the Kamino technology had a way around it).

Yeah, cloning from clones doesn't work. Boba just grew up slowly like a normal person.

Oh right. I forgot that clones are..not..the same...or....

You guys are now starting to remind me of what I don't like about the EU.

There we go.

I miss wondering what the Clone Wars could have been like. The line of dialogue in Ben's hut was more impacting to the imagination than anything else.

That single scene can tell anyone just what is wrong with the Prequels. Old lore, longing for times long gone, deep pain of events from the past, gently nudging a youth towards a more righteous life, hearing a desperate plea, a connection to a lost father, a youth yearning for something more in his life, introduction of the Force, thoughtful stroking of the beard. I think that's more plot and emotive elements than I-III combined.

Lucas must make everything explicitly clear for anyone new to the films. This is something your arguments have made clearer to me. Beginning with ESB the whole universe of the story began to constrict on itself. There were less places to go and less things to do in order to escape the possibility of being repetitive. While ESB still turned out extremely well, by the time of ROTJ it seemed like even George couldn't think of what else to do. The length of the Jabba's Palace sequence could almost be construed as an attempt to take up screentime.

Of course, the last time I saw a work of fiction purposely not answer every question and leave things mysterious, all the LOST fans complained.

And once again, a thread derails from its intended purpose into "b*tch about that fracking evil a**hole George Lucas" territory. You guys just can't help yourselves, can you?

Clone DNA degrades fairly rapidly due to the accelerated aging process, so it makes cloning from a clone less effective as that clone will experience DNA degradation exponentially faster. Even unaltered Boba had to deal with genetic degradation.

Also, after doing some research, it seems that I was wrong about  the reason the Fett clones were phased out (or at least my knowledge on the subject was outdated), and that it had less to do with the loss of Jango Fett and more to do with the Kamino uprising and Palpatine losing faith in an army made up of only one man, feeling that an army made up of more than one donor would be less susceptible to being turned against him again.

The reason a lot of stormtroopers can't hit anything is because billions of them were produced using the Spaarti method (which Palpatine preferred). Due to the Spaarti cloning process, which condensed the growing time down to one year, it left only a few months for training, resulting in much less intelligent and capable clones, but with the ability to very quickly replace losses. And as we all know, Palpatine preferred quantity over quality (which is why TIE fighters don't have shields as it was cheaper to just replace a TIE than to keep one running apparently).

Also, the 501st didn't accept other clones or recruits, so they were still pure Fett.

The explanation I always heard was that Palpatine didn't want his pilots having hyperdrives, life support or shields because that would allow them to desert. Plus, the lack of shields would make men fight harder so that they wouldn't be killed.

Yeah, all three of those explanations has been given at some point in the EU. Never in any movies, though.

I guess it was a way to explain why it only took one shot to down a TIE and a few to take out an X-wing, since Wedge and Luke both get shot and don't die and because they're mentioned as having them. Not that it's a terribly important distinction to make, but it adds a little colour I suppose.

Anchorhead said:

Tyrphanax said:

Palpatine preferred quantity over quality (which is why TIE fighters don't have shields as it was cheaper to just replace a TIE than to keep one running apparently).

That's something I find very interesting about the EU in general - the different ideas people have for things.  It's back to the imagination part of the equation.  Plus you can take or leave whatever you want.  I haven't seen the last two films, so I don't know where that shield explanation comes from (film or EU novel).

In Death Star, the TIEs don't have shield generators, hyper-drives, or emergency life support systems because those all add unnecessary weight to the craft.

Wait. What??

The empire is worried about the tie fighters having unnecessary weight.... In space?????