I don't see why they couldn't have made Qui-Gon just a fellow Jedi Knight instead of his master, or at the very least ONE of his ex-masters, the other being Yoda.
Bingowings said:
I'm taking Ben at his word which naturally generates problems with his track record. His. "the guardians of peace and justice" blurb carries over to TPM's crawl so clearly Lucas didn't intend them to be a couple of hundred people.
He could be puffing up the order. "Morgan Cartewell is the guardian of oral hygiene in the universe" (that sort of thing) but unlike Luke's family relationships Ben hasn't got a reason to exaggerate or fib and his claims seem to backed up by what the Rebel and Imperial leaders say so yeah...that implies a large body of people doing stuff in a very open way...to me.
I find this discussion fascinating because it brings out the imagined universes people create around these films. I agree that there are more Jedi Knights than just a couple hundred, but then again, it would be very difficult to exterminate an entire religious order if it was immersed within the galactic population and consisted of millions of individuals. Keep in mind that even though we assume that the Star Wars galaxy is much like our own, the Milky Way is very large for a galaxy. In fact, a galaxy can have as few as a thousand stars:
http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/space/stories/just-how-big-is-the-smallest-galaxy-in-the-universe
If only one in five of these stars could have a habitable planet (as recent estimates claim), then this galaxy wouldn't need more than a few thousand Jedi to intensely police these two hundred worlds. Of course, the Star Wars galaxy has always been depicted as having spiral arms and a "bright center", implying that it is larger than this diminutive galaxy, but I don't think that it's a stretch to assume that the number of inhabited worlds is no more than a few thousand. Otherwise, the Empire's search of planets using "thousands of probe droids" would be absurd, and this sets a realistic upper limit on the number of stars in the galaxy. It certainly wouldn't make sense for the Empire to be searching the Milky Ways' 100 billion stars with a few thousand probe droids, especially if a ship can easily traipse across such a galaxy in a short amount of time.
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Episode 9 Rewrite, The Starlight Project (Released!) and ANH Technicolor Project (Released!)
Tarkin back in episode 4 said that the Death Star would be able to tie a million star systems together in fear. I doubt the Galaxy is small. A million Jedi in a Galaxy that contains probably quintillions of species is pretty small.
Frankly, I think the Jedi should have numbered in the multiple billions, especially prior to the Clone Wars. It's only after having their numbers whittled down over the years spent in constant warfare where they should have became so weak that Palpatine was able to snuff their religion out.
Remember when people talk about habitable worlds that's human life.
There seems to be life in the Star Wars universe that can survive situations we can't imagine from a scientific view point.
and artificial environments where humans can live comfortably.
I think the childrens television workshop(sesame street) needs to fashion T-shirts with that grover design on it ;)
Padme
So on this forum there is the belief that Vader personally hunted down an killed every living Jedi, and also the belief that there were billions of Jedi.
Interesting.
Personally, I'm okay with the PT numbers. In the tens of thousands, maybe even up to a hundred thousand or so. Plenty to have enough to send in pairs or so around the galaxy to mediate hot spots when they deem it necessary, enough that people will have heard tales of their power and prowess in battle, enough for them to have entered into a mythological state, but not enough for everyone to have seen one or even believe the tales of their existence or powers.
I honestly never saw this as a problem. Of course there weren't enough Jedi to send one to every planet in the galaxy at a time, but not every planet is going to be experiencing turmoil requiring Jedi mediation at the same time, and not every planet falls within the jurisdiction of the Republic.
Keep Circulating the Tapes.
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Tyrphanax said:
So on this forum there is the belief that Vader personally hunted down an killed every living Jedi, and also the belief that there were billions of Jedi.
Interesting.
There's a lot of stuff on this forum.
Thanks, Ric.
Keep Circulating the Tapes.
END OF LINE
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Just throwing in my two cents into the pot here:
I believe Yoda and Obi-Wan were more like teacher and student, as opposed to Qui-Gon who was more like a job supervisor that was training Obi-Wan for a position.
GE, i never thought of it that way. but i really like that analogy.
Padme