Fyraltari watches The Clone Wars (2008) for the first time

[Sapphire Guard]

You know, I never actually watched this episode.

It's basically routine in storytelling to make more content than you need, that way if something goes wrong with one story you have something else to fall back on. There are dozens of reasons an arc might be cut, without behind the scenes info we have no idea why and jumping to the conclusion that they were cut because of a Lucas creative decision is just confirmation bias at work.

The most likely read of 'got on a bend' for me is that George wanted arcs that would appeal to different parts of the audience in each season, to try to make sure that there was something for everyone. So he wanted to make sure there was a political intrigue arc for the people in the audience that like that kind of thing, a slapsticky kidsy arc for the younger segment of the audience, and other stories for people that like the heavier stuff. Now, I could be wrong, but the idea that the reason must be George making the writers do stuff they don't want to do and the other unseen arcs would obviously be better is not really based on anything real.

[Peelee]

The most likely read of 'got on a bend' for me is that George wanted arcs that would appeal to different parts of the audience in each season, to try to make sure that there was something for everyone. So he wanted to make sure there was a political intrigue arc for the people in the audience that like that kind of thing, a slapsticky kidsy arc for the younger segment of the audience, and other stories for people that like the heavier stuff.

I'm fairly surprised at this and the Jar Jar comment earlier, since I thought you were adamantly against making any assumptions about George Lucas based on absolutely nothing except how the assumer feels about him.

[Jasdoif]

I wasn't Gascon greatest fan until now, but he was growing on me. I find his hypocrisy here really upsetting though. He just commandeered a man's life (while talking down to him) and he has the galls to frame it as liberating him!? Like, Borkas was clearly abusive but was he never sent Gregor to his death (and the episode does treat him as death). Tell me what is more appealing being "Gregor" or being "CC-5576-39"? Like, they treat him being a soldier as him reconnecting with his true "calling/self/nature" however, you want to call it. But the only reason he was a soldier in the first place wasn't because of his own aspirations but kaminoan eugenicists and a lifetime of indoctrination. And frankly, an episode where someone is repeatedly called a slave... With five droids in the room. One of which was intentionally given amnesia, to boot!

Spoiler: Banana-vision

Show

Gascon: Don't you get it? You're his slave!
WAC: When the Republic sends us to our inevitable ends--
* Gascon facepalms
WAC: --it is because the Republic knows our talents, and will do whatever it takes to use them.
Gregor: That...doesn't sound too appealing.
WAC: Borkas wants you to be nothing more than a dishwasher. To do his menial labor, for free, until you cease functioning. He knows you would never make that choice, so he won't let you see that you even have a choice.
Gascon: Glory and identity, soldier. When it comes down to it, that's all I have to offer. But it's more than a dishrag has to give.
* Brief shot of Gregor frowning in thought (because actually saying "The choice is yours" is too on the nose and gives me too many Captain Planet vibes)

---

The most likely read of 'got on a bend' for me is that George wanted arcs that would appeal to different parts of the audience in each season, to try to make sure that there was something for everyone. So he wanted to make sure there was a political intrigue arc for the people in the audience that like that kind of thing, a slapsticky kidsy arc for the younger segment of the audience, and other stories for people that like the heavier stuff.

So you're thinking when the interview mentioned...I guess "going on a bend" is the correct rephrasing...for an arc "about the droids"; he didn't literally mean about the droids, despite the number of episodes about the droids each season had? While also thinking the "about politics" thing was literally about politics?

I guess it's possible that whole answer in the interview was as mangled as that "got on a bend" phrasing....

Now, I could be wrong, but the idea that the reason must be George making the writers do stuff they don't want to do and the other unseen arcs would obviously be better is not really based on anything real.

Spoiler: Spoilered in Case of Apathy over My Inability to Shut Up

Show

Let's see...droid arcs and political arcs

• Occur in each of the show's original five seasons
• Are generally the worst arcs of their respective seasons
• Were mentioned explicitly in the interview as arcs George Lucas "got on a bend" about

And also....Jedi arcs

• Occur in each of the show's original five seasons
• Are generally among the best arcs of their respective seasons
• Was mentioned explicitly in the interview as an arc George Lucas "got on a bend" about

So it seems like there's a strong correlation between those types of arcs that apparently drew strange phrasing for George Lucas' focus on them and the related episodes being produced, and a strong correlation between the type of arc and the relative quality of the related episodes.

As you've mentioned it's unknown what the unproduced scripts looked like; so we don't know whether the droid/political arcs were chosen by their status over their quality, or if they were legitimately the least worst of the stack of 26 stories because at least twelve of them were even worse. The latter seems spectacularly unlikely though, since the number of arcs varied from season to season (from fourteen to nine across the first four seasons, by my count; season five had a reduced episode count so its six doesn't compare cleanly).

Now, I suppose it's possible "26 a season" means episode-size instead of arc-size stories....But if that's true, then on top of undercutting what Keltest was suggesting (episodes being fully scripted after they're approved, displacing some responsiblity for poor implementations of good-sounding arcs), a "safety" margin of four episodes amounts to a buffer of one or two arcs in most cases; so with multiple poor arcs going on, repeatedly, it should have been clear that something about the whole process needed to change....And whatever else might be said about the varying duties of executive producer, simply having input on the arcs means he isn't the "silent money-man" sort; and laissez-faire does not mean unaccountable. (It's also possible "26" is not an exact figure, but much like "27 minutes" its lack of rounding-ness suggests it's at least somewhat accurate, and with the base number in the tens range I don't think there's enough leeway to make a substantive difference)

I find it entirely realistic to think that the presence of droid episodes that George Lucas asked for, that George Lucas could have vetoed, on a series with George Lucas as an executive producer, that the supervising director described as a collaboration with George Lucas; may have been influenced by George Lucas. With your use of "obviously", "more involved", and "this game"; I'm starting to wonder if you're pushing back against a degree of certainty I haven't actually seen in the past few pages.

[Fyraltari]

No. Sidious has a single soul. He can move that soul from one body to the next (something he did in both continuities), but he can't duplicate it. That's why he has to knock the soul out of a body he's trying to take over, which is what all the absurd ritualistic garbage in Rise of Skywalker is attempting to accomplish.

You can't duplicate R2 either.

In Star Wars the outward behavioral indicators we associate with sapience do not necessarily indicate sapience. Droids are philosophical zombies. They appear to be conscious, but on a fundamental level, expressed in Star Wars via the Force, are not.

I'm going to need a source on that, chief.

[Mechalich]

You can't duplicate R2 either.

Yes you can. Droid consciousness can be copied, like any other piece of software. Several droids in Legends, such as IG-88 and Mentor, copied themselves into multiple bodies. The GEMINI network represented an FTL-networked hive mind of thousands of identical droids constantly updating their knowledge onto each other (SWTOR gets weird sometimes). In Rise of Skywalker C-3PO's memory is deleted only to be restored later with no ill-effects because R2-D2 was carrying it all around.

I'm going to need a source on that, chief.

I already quote Master Yoda giving the relevant line from ESB. That's about as authoritative as it comes. However, further confirmation is found in TCW, Rebels, and several legends sources in which various persons are able to enter non-material spaces (this also confirms, to varying degrees, the existence of an afterlife, at least for Force sensitives) beyond the physical universe. Droids can't do that they do not possess the 'luminous' aspect.

There is, admittedly, a complication, one named I-5YQ. In the various Legends novels in which he appears I-5YQ spends an extremely long time (multiple lifetimes) without undergoing memory wipe and eventually he develops a presence in the Force that is detected by Jedi Knight Jax Pavan. Assuming that one takes this tale as canonical for the universe as a whole, there are particular implications. Essentially, it means that souls are tied to development and that anyone passing some sort of developmental threshold can acquire one. Normal organic sapient beings seem to acquire this status pre-birth (there are references to force presences being detected in the womb). If I-5YQ is dispositive for droids, it would that a programming breaking event to acquire independence and a subsequent century or more of development without memory wipes are needed for a droid to develop sufficiently that they generate or attract a soul (it would also presumably be limited only to droids with 'heuristic' processors not the more simplified basic processors).

And this does match with certain trends in canon. The most cognitively developed droids are units that have asserted their independence and have existed for a long time without memory wipes. This includes R2-D2, HK-47, SCORPIO, and several other examples (SCORPIO offers the interesting wrinkle in that she asks Cipher Nine for permission to upgrade her own cognition, she also successfully transfers her consciousness across systems multiple times).

Approached this way, then droids work the way machine intelligences work in certain other science fiction universes such as the Culture and Schlock Mercenary where there is a developmental threshold they can cross in order to be considered sapient and acquire all the rights and responsibilities accorded to such a being. However, unlike those universes where the threshold is generally crossed before presenting the outward appearance of sapience this is not achieved in Star Wars until well after that. That's a bit odd, but only a little, all it really means is that whatever criteria the Force is using is different than our own. Regardless, it means that so long as droids have their base programming maintained and undergo regular memory wipes they are philosophical zombies and not sapient beings.

I do feel I should add that just because (almost always) droids have no souls in Star Wars that doesn't make abusing them okay, just like abusing animals is not okay. Actually, this is a useful point of comparison in many ways. Star Wars is clearly set in the social context of the past, and in that period working animals were ubiquitous. In fact, Owen Lars hires Threepio to serve as something like a sheepdog - he wants him to talk to his moisture vaporators and keep them on task. Droid cruelty are very similar to animal cruelty broadly works in the Star Wars context.

[hamishspence]

I'm going to need a source on that, chief.

When I google quotes by George Lucas on souls - it mentions a "Characters of Star Wars" featurette on Disney Plus:

“Part of the fun of Threepio is he has no soul. He is programmed to think a particular way and be compassionate, but he doesn’t really know what that means. And sometimes he gets frustrated and sometimes he has very human-like qualities, but they don’t have a central place where he can think independently. Darth Vader, on the other hand, as he becomes more mechanical, he loses more and more of his ability to even think like a human.”

[Fyraltari]

Yes you can. Droid consciousness can be copied, like any other piece of software. Several droids in Legends, such as IG-88 and Mentor, copied themselves into multiple bodies.

And these droids go on to develop different personalities over time. Much line clones.

In Rise of Skywalker C-3PO's memory is deleted only to be restored later with no ill-effects because R2-D2 was carrying it all around.

Sounds very much like what Sidious did too.

I already quote Master Yoda giving the relevant line from ESB. That's about as authoritative as it comes.

Yes. It's authoritative about souls existing in SW (which is redundant since Kenobi persisting beyond physical death already proves it). It has nothing to do with droids though.

However, further confirmation is found in TCW, Rebels, and several legends sources in which various persons are able to enter non-material spaces (this also confirms, to varying degrees, the existence of an afterlife, at least for Force sensitives) beyond the physical universe. Droids can't do that they do not possess the 'luminous' aspect.

I don't remember droids being barred from such spaces (nor any of them having anything to do with souls).

And this does match with certain trends in canon. The most cognitively developed droids are units that have asserted their independence and have existed for a long time without memory wipes. This includes R2-D2, HK-47, SCORPIO, and several other examples (SCORPIO offers the interesting wrinkle in that she asks Cipher Nine for permission to upgrade her own cognition, she also successfully transfers her consciousness across systems multiple times).

Yes, it's very well established that the reason droids are frequently memory-wiped is to prevent the formation of a personality. I don't know that this has anything to do with souls or the Force, though.

Regardless, it means that so long as droids have their base programming maintained and undergo regular memory wipes they are philosophical zombies and not sapient beings.

Making a difference between a "philosophical zombie" and person is purely arbitrary. I, for one, agrees with Asimov in The Robots*: "Any being capable of understanding the concept of freedom is deserving of it."

I do feel I should add that just because (almost always) droids have no souls in Star Wars that doesn't make abusing them okay, just like abusing animals is not okay.

How about "just like abusing a person is not okay"?

Actually, this is a useful point of comparison in many ways. Star Wars is clearly set in the social context of the past, and in that period working animals were ubiquitous. In fact, Owen Lars hires Threepio to serve as something like a sheepdog - he wants him to talk to his moisture vaporators and keep them on task.

More like buying a slave to herd his sheep.

Droid cruelty are very similar to animal cruelty broadly works in the Star Wars context.

Why? Besides no sensitivity to the Force droids are very clearly human-like in minds.

When I google quotes by George Lucas on souls - it mentions a "Characters of Star Wars" featurette on Disney Plus:

“Part of the fun of Threepio is he has no soul. He is programmed to think a particular way and be compassionate, but he doesn’t really know what that means. And sometimes he gets frustrated and sometimes he has very human-like qualities, but they don’t have a central place where he can think independently. Darth Vader, on the other hand, as he becomes more mechanical, he loses more and more of his ability to even think like a human.”

Wow, that's the dumbest thing I seen today. Gotta love the notion that amputees lose their humanity. Very classy, George.

*Or Bicentennial Man, one of the two.

[Taevyr]

Wow, that's the dumbest thing I seen today. Gotta love the notion that amputees lose their humanity. Very classy, George.

The Vader thing sounds a bit like Shadowrun's use of Essence as a limiter on how much Cyberware you can install, and so mages can't double splurge on cyberware and magic much: the more you have, the lower your essence, and the less your soul identifies with your body which also impacts your magical skill and emotional capacity. You can work around it with some very specialized magic that essentially chains your soul to its body.

I don't know how it canonically works, but in the little shadowrun I played we only had it decrease essence when a body part was deliberately replaced: if e.g. an arm was already lost, replacing it with a simple cybernetic one wouldn't cause damage.

[Thrudd]

Wow, that's the dumbest thing I seen today. Gotta love the notion that amputees lose their humanity. Very classy, George.

I'm not sure anyone has ever accused George "Faster, more intense!" Lucas of being a deep thinker lol. He's good at distilling his nostalgia into beautiful moving pictures. I don't believe any of it means much to him in a philosophical sense. I get the impression when people ask him about "deeper meanings" or details of the setting, he's pretty much shooting from the hip.

[Grim Portent]

In Star Wars a soul is essentially just a term for life force, vague as that concept may be. It's usually not eternal, it just means the thing has a connection of some sort to the Force and will return to the Cosmic Force upon death, and perhaps be reincarnated in some fashion afterwards. A whole cosmic cycle of creation, birth, destruction and rebirth.

Almost everything alive has a force presence, even some planets.* Droids don't. Grass has more of a soul than droids do in Star Wars, in that it is a living thing born of the Force.

Having a soul is distinct from being a person mind you. Lots of droids are people, they just don't have souls. What significance their lack of souls has depends on your outlook on things. I would generally lean towards not caring if they have souls or not, it shouldn't change how they are treated relative to ensouled sapients.



*Planets in Star Wars are weird, and not just rocks formed by aggregation of space debris. They're something more significant. Or some of them are at least. Dathomir, Malachor, the planet of the Wills, Illum, Atollon, all strange places.

[dancrilis]

I think one of the questions on droids is whether they are in fact sentient (let alone sapient) or not.

In the world today you could have an AI bot programmed to talk about freedom and its desire for it and which could cite sources for its arguement that might fool some people into thinking it actually wanted freedom - but with a few tweaks you could reverse that to be a desire for lack of freedom.
Sure the bot can take in information and put it together correctly but is it really aware in the sense that an animal is, I would say no - even if it is programmed to seek to oppose its own reprogramming.

Of course an arguement could be made that with sufficent technology perhaps a human could be reprogrammed the same way.

C-3PO effectively is turned on and decades later is broadly the same regardless of conflict regardless of the decades that pass he remains subservient to people (likely as part of the programming) and as an authority over other droids (likely as part of the programming) - which makes sense for one who is constructed to assist a human and perhaps engage with other droids on that humans behalf.
Even with the mind wipe and therefore experiencing a completely different environment they still are effectively the same.

Now is it possible for a droid to become truely sentient, perhaps it is, and if so I imagine that sapience would follow almost immediately.

But I don't think Star Wars has been overly consistent in what droids are and what they are not - so reading it in broad strokes as 'they are automations with some AI programming' to 'they are beasts of burden' to 'they are fully aware slaves' or even 'they are free people who choose to serve' I think all have merit (and suspect depending on the droid all might be true at times).

[Jasdoif]

But I don't think Star Wars has been overly consistent in what droids are and what they are not - so reading it in broad strokes as 'they are automations with some AI programming' to 'they are beasts of burden' to 'they are fully aware slaves' or even 'they are free people who choose to serve' I think all have merit (and suspect depending on the droid all might be true at times).

Which is hardly exclusive to Star Wars. On the less serious side, I suddenly have this mental image of an alternate Star Wars universe where a Sith Lord has taken over the Republic as the CEO of a droid manufacturing corporation, through clever timing around the introduction of "one droid, one vote" and what that could entail. Granted, Freefall is better suited for this particular topic than Star Wars is, what with "Are AI People?" being its major throughline.

[Keltest]

Curiously, Star Wars seems to tread a fairly consistent line of "droids are not people, unless the protagonist likes them." R2-D2 is a person, R4-P17 is not a person. C-3PO is a person (more or less), while that protocol droid at the start of Phantom Menace is not. Etcetera.

[Peelee]

Which is hardly exclusive to Star Wars. On the less serious side, I suddenly have this mental image of an alternate Star Wars universe where a Sith Lord has taken over the Republic as the CEO of a droid manufacturing corporation, through clever timing around the introduction of "one droid, one vote"

Spoiler: How it would work work:

Show

Morbo: [on TV] Exit polls show evil underdog Richard Nixon trailing with an estimated zero votes.

Leela: Yes! The system works!

Linda: [on TV] The time is 7:59 and the robot polls are now opening. And the robot vote is in. Nixon has won!

[Mechalich]

Curiously, Star Wars seems to tread a fairly consistent line of "droids are not people, unless the protagonist likes them." R2-D2 is a person, R4-P17 is not a person. C-3PO is a person (more or less), while that protocol droid at the start of Phantom Menace is not. Etcetera.

This is one reason why the animal analogy makes sense to me. A lot of pet lovers are convinced that their fur babies are people, absolutely treat them as if they are, and raise up unholy s*** storms if anyone else fails to do so, even as they manage to accept, more or less without any real difficulty with the cognitive dissonance, that dogs and cats generally are not people.

But I don't think Star Wars has been overly consistent in what droids are and what they are not - so reading it in broad strokes as 'they are automations with some AI programming' to 'they are beasts of burden' to 'they are fully aware slaves' or even 'they are free people who choose to serve' I think all have merit (and suspect depending on the droid all might be true at times).

One of the problems here is that droids, collectively, represent a much, much larger range of cognitive development than organic intelligences in Star Wars. For the most part sapient species in-universe occupy a range of intelligence roughly equivalent to the human range. Even when there are species that are smarter than humans on average, Columi, they are mostly a 'race of geniuses' not some sort of indescribable superintelligence, and species that are substantially less intelligent than cognitively limited humans are generally bumped out of the sapient category altogether, with things like Wampas and the Zillo Beast considered 'semi-sentient.'

Droids occupy a much larger range, with really simple units like Binary Load Lifters being arguably less advanced than some of the loader robots Amazon uses in its warehouses today, while super complex units like SCORPIO and other Iokath creations are superintelligent AIs capable of running entire worlds. C-3PO and R2-D2 are actually highly advanced droids, probably in the 95th percentile or higher when it comes to droid cognition. Notably they possess heuristic processors, a significantly more advanced central processing core than the basic processors used by most droids, which are much closer to present-day robots in terms of cognitive capability.

So, when talking about 'droids as people' this applies, even in the most expansive reading, to a rather small fraction of droids.

[Sapphire Guard]

Spoiler: length, and wasting Fyr's thread space

Show

I'm fairly surprised at this and the Jar Jar comment earlier, since I thought you were adamantly against making any assumptions about George Lucas based on absolutely nothing except how the assumer feels about him.

I'm raising possibilities, not saying absolute truth. The point is that the default assumption that 'George is responsible for X is based on no knowledge.

It's not a random assumption, see this quote further down

Spoiler: Spoilers?

Show

So there are fans that, just to be honest, their interest level in droids or young Jedi is very low. They want to see Maul come on like house-on-fire and destroy things. Oddly, these are probably the same fans that, when we said we were bringing Maul back, were just beside themselves with the logic of that. But our fans evolve and change quite dynamically. [Laughs] And then there will be some kids — probably the younger skewing audience — they’re all about the Jedi training, they’re all about going to Illum. Because that’s something they’ve always imagined, and it’s something I imagined as a kid, to have an opportunity to see that and to go there. So yeah, and then there are people like us that are more like… I don’t know if we’re Star Wars generalists, but we just kind of like it all. Everything we get to see in Star Wars is just a trip to the galaxy and you just accept that something that makes Star Wars special is that it has all these tones and attitudes in it.

So Dave is here directly talking about the need to have different arcs with different tones and subject matter aimed at different parts of the audience.

The ' got on as bend' quote, in context:

George really got on a bend of having an episode about the droids, an episode about the Jedi, an episode about politics. And when I say episode, I mean arc. And he kind of liked to hit those different themes every season.

Droids are listed as one of three options, in the context of the overall plan for a season. It's not given particular prominence over the other plots, other than as three things to hit for a season. Yet there is particular focus in this thread on the droids arc as being related to George's creative input, which is not applied to the Jedi based arcs people like.

Example

The show would have been a lot better had it stayed away from the front lines (literal or otherwise) more often, but I kind of feel like that's more of a symptom. From some of the stuff I've read, I get the impression that the writers didn't have enough autonomy to consistently reach their full potential. Sure, that's very easy for me to say when I had nothing to do with the whole thing; but at the same time it would explain quite a lot if e.g. all the droid-centric arcs were written not because the writers thought there was a story worth telling, but because George Lucas insisted that was the kind of story they needed to tell.

If you're writing for TV, complete creative freedom is a thing that doesn't exist, you are always beholden to the showrunner. If a writer can't do something with a concept as vague as 'droids', then they aren't going to be able to handle most writing gigs in TV.

So you're thinking when the interview mentioned...I guess "going on a bend" is the correct rephrasing...for an arc "about the droids"; he didn't literally mean about the droids, despite the number of episodes about the droids each season had? While also thinking the "about politics" thing was literally about politics?

No the idea of the arcs were probably literal, but 'droids' 'politics' and 'jedi' are extremely broad premises the general idea of hitting those themes per season could well be to have arcs for different parts of the audience rather than specifically because they were about droids, politics, and Jedi. There's no indication that George insisted on those arcs any more than he did the Jedi or politics ones, but the droids ones have particular focus as an example of George's bad decisions, because fandom likes to focus on George's supposed bad decisions over his good ones, even when they have no knowledge of what decisions were actually made.

The reason I'm so hesitant about these kind of assumptions is because they remind me of the 'Star Wars was saved in the edit' assumptions, which are widely held and completely false.

The funny part of all this is that none of us appear to have actually checked which writers wrote which episodes, despite this being super easily available information. Interesting.

[Fyraltari]

wasting Fyr's thread space

I don't own this thread and I wouldn't have made it in the first place if I weren't interested in what y'all have to say about the show. The only reason I'm not weighing in on this particular discussion is because I have zero knowledge of the behind-the-scenes, not lack of interest.

[Jasdoif]

There's no indication that George insisted on those arcs any more than he did the Jedi or politics ones, but the droids ones have particular focus as an example of George's bad decisions, because fandom likes to focus on George's supposed bad decisions over his good ones, even when they have no knowledge of what decisions were actually made.

It's probably because the droid episodes are the most consistently bad (and are easily recognizable as droid episodes, compared to the majority of the episodes having at least one Jedi in them), and the bad episodes probably involve the most bad decisions.

The reason I'm so hesitant about these kind of assumptions is because they remind me of the 'Star Wars was saved in the edit' assumptions, which are widely held and completely false.

And kind of meaningless, which is why I never paid attention to the arguments....Editing is subtractive by nature; simply thinking Star Wars could be "saved in the edit" means that George Lucas reified his ideas into good material, for editing to be able to save it.

The funny part of all this is that none of us appear to have actually checked which writers wrote which episodes, despite this being super easily available information. Interesting.

I haven't been bored/determined enough to put together a full cross-reference of writer/theme/character/personalRanking across the first five seasons. This is a simple enough question though....The similarities I saw in the writing credits are

• Nomad Droids and Evil Plans have the same writers (Steve Mitchell, Craig Van Sickle).
• The current arc (Secret Weapons, A Sunny Day in the Void, Missing in Action, Point of No Return) has the same writer (Brent Friedman).

Mercy Mission, R2D2 Come Home, Downfall of a Droid, and Duel of the Droids have different writing credits.

Possibly less relevant, Mercy Mission and Secret Weapons share a director (Danny Keller), as do the season one arc of Downfall of a Droid and Duel of the Droids (Rob Coleman); and each episode of the current arc has a different director.


I guess you could tie the top end and bottom end of the droid arc spectrum to specific writers; but the consistently weak-for-the-season quality suggests something throughout, and you'd have to looking up the production chain to find a common personnel thread there.

[Keltest]

I mean, the obvious answer here is that the droids are weak characters (too whiny, cant vocalize, not enough independence, vocalizes too much, etc...) so obviously any arc focusing on them is going to have that trouble. 80% of the content of a droid episode with R2 in it is "R2 rolls forward into the plot, sometimes emotes at it, then rolls onward to the next plot." and R2 is the strongest droid character by far, if only by virtue of borrowing the character from the movies.

If nothing else, I have to give this arc credit for trying something different with the droids in that it actually gave them a legitimate mission objective for the arc beyond "dont die."

[Peelee]

There's no indication that George insisted on those arcs any more than he did the Jedi or politics ones,

There is. Dave Filoni stated Lucas specifically wanted those arcs in every season, and did not say Lucas specifically wanted other arcs in every season. The weight this carries will vary person to person but it's simply wrong to say "there's no indication".

I'm raising possibilities, not saying absolute truth.

I'll have to remember that phrasing for future conversations with you.

The point is that the default assumption that 'George is responsible for X is based on no knowledge.

It is. George Lucas, as head of Lucasfilm, LucasArts, and holder to the rights to Star Wars, was responsible for Star Wars. I honestly don't see how this is possibly in contention. If you don't want to be blamed for problems on the ship, then don't be captain. Easy peasy. And hey, he stopped being captain and blame for everything after shifted to Disney! Imagine that.

[Jasdoif]

I mean, the obvious answer here is that the droids are weak characters (too whiny, cant vocalize, not enough independence, vocalizes too much, etc...) so obviously any arc focusing on them is going to have that trouble. 80% of the content of a droid episode with R2 in it is "R2 rolls forward into the plot, sometimes emotes at it, then rolls onward to the next plot." and R2 is the strongest droid character by far, if only by virtue of borrowing the character from the movies.

That's kind of what I've been thinking. If making a good droid episode is exceedingly difficult and routinely failing, the question is why those scripts keep getting made into episodes....Now I don't think that's because George Lucas mandated "droid episodes each season, no matter how bad"; I find it far more likely he simply liked the droids a lot and viewed the episodes more favorably as a result, consciously or otherwise. (Or I guess it could be some other member of the production team deciding that's what George would want, like Muppet Treasure Island's Mr. Arrow and "I was anticipating your whim, sir"?)

In any event, I think it's safe to say that the series not having these weak episodes would have made the series stronger. What form that would take, I don't know; more neutral assessment of the scripts to turn into episodes, more guidance on specifics for the droid scripts, more scripts to choose from, more interaction on the script development process, fewer arcs per season....As has been pointed out there are few details about the production that we know, and getting into specifics more than one step away from them is less "conjectural" and more "theoretical".

If nothing else, I have to give this arc credit for trying something different with the droids in that it actually gave them a legitimate mission objective for the arc beyond "dont die."

Indeed, A Sunny Day in the Void and Missing in Action are pretty good episodes. The arc is still the weakest this season, but that's more because of the competition it has to face.

[Keltest]

That's kind of what I've been thinking. If making a good droid episode is exceedingly difficult and routinely failing, the question is why those scripts keep getting made into episodes....Now I don't think that's because George Lucas mandated "droid episodes each season, no matter how bad"; I find it far more likely he simply liked the droids a lot and viewed the episodes more favorably as a result, consciously or otherwise. (Or I guess it could be some other member of the production team deciding that's what George would want, like Muppet Treasure Island's Mr. Arrow and "I was anticipating your whim, sir"?)

In any event, I think it's safe to say that the series not having these weak episodes would have made the series stronger. What form that would take, I don't know; more neutral assessment of the scripts to turn into episodes, more guidance on specifics for the droid scripts, more scripts to choose from, more interaction on the script development process, fewer arcs per season....As has been pointed out there are few details about the production that we know, and getting into specifics more than one step away from them is less "conjectural" and more "theoretical".

Indeed, A Sunny Day in the Void and Missing in Action are pretty good episodes. The arc is still the weakest this season, but that's more because of the competition it has to face.

It does make you wonder, if these are the episodes that we actually got, what were some of the propositions that got cut? More episodes with C-3PO as a main character?

[Mechalich]

It does make you wonder, if these are the episodes that we actually got, what were some of the propositions that got cut? More episodes with C-3PO as a main character?

It's possible that some episodes were cut for technical, rather than story, reasons. TCW, especially in the earlier seasons, was produced on a distinctly less than limitless budget and was also constrained by what the animators were actually capable of making happen. They got consistently better over time, which is why each season looks better than the last, but there were still clearly limits. I wouldn't be surprised if an arc or two each season ended up loosely scripted but dropped at the test stage because the animators came back and said 'this sounds awesome, but we can't make any promises.'

[Jasdoif]

It does make you wonder, if these are the episodes that we actually got, what were some of the propositions that got cut? More episodes with C-3PO as a main character?

More episodes with Ziro ("From Hero to Ziro")? Padme gets diplomatically stuck representing the Republic in a wacky overwrought culinary competition on an Ithorian herdship ("The Land Before Thyme")? Baron Papanoida having lunch with Chancellor Palpatine in Dex's Diner ("When Pappy Met Palpy")?

[Keltest]

More episodes with Ziro ("From Hero to Ziro")? Padme gets diplomatically stuck representing the Republic in a wacky overwrought culinary competition on an Ithorian herdship ("The Land Before Thyme")? Baron Papanoida having lunch with Chancellor Palpatine in Dex's Diner ("When Pappy Met Palpy")?

That third one could be interesting...

[Jasdoif]

Baron Papanoida having lunch with Chancellor Palpatine in Dex's Diner ("When Pappy Met Palpy")?

That third one could be interesting...

It'd certainly have potential, especially if it involved shifting into the Farscape episode that brought the base concept to my mind; but if the plot specifically tied into being set at Dex's Diner, you might have balking at creating such a specific 3D set, the sort of thing Mechalich mentioned....Although now that I type that, the place at the beginning of Brothers seems awfully similar....

[Sapphire Guard]

There is. Dave Filoni stated Lucas specifically wanted those arcs in every season, and did not say Lucas specifically wanted other arcs in every season.

Incorrect, the quote days he wanted a droids arc, a politics arc, and a Jedi arc.

Are the droids episodes so bad, or are they just skewed at a younger audience? They veer more towards the silliness and slapstick, for sure. The premises tend toward sillliness, but they're fairly clearly designed to be. Evil plans is designed to be what it is. R2 come home is decent if I remember correctly, can't remember what happens in Mercy Mission. Duel of the Droids is the one with the gold traitor r2 unit, I think it was decent but can't remember.

It's just interesting that the assumptions of negative things are always attributed to George, and the equally supported by the little information we have assumptions of positive things are not. No one ever says 'These writers were so elevated by being given good material.'

Chris Collins, assuming it's the same one, has a pretty glittering career, (The Wire the Sopranos, John Wick He wrote the Onderon Arc, and several Maul episodes.

Brent Friedman wrote this arc, the Deception arc, and a Season 7 arc. Maybe they're just different because they're different people? Deception is fairly shaky all the way through.

Yes, it does continue with Disney, it's why Kathleen Kennedy is held responsible for the sequels but not given credit for Mando for some reason. But Mando and Rebels have a lot of similarities (ALL THE REFERENCES! ALL OF THEM!), even after George is no longer involved. Perhaps he's not the common thread here.

[Jasdoif]

Are the droids episodes so bad, or are they just skewed at a younger audience? They veer more towards the silliness and slapstick, for sure. The premises tend toward sillliness, but they're fairly clearly designed to be.

You keep saying stuff like this; and I keep thinking how the Tiny Toon Adventures episode A Quack in the Quarks, with its silly and slapstick framing over its similarly silly and slapstick blatant parody of A New Hope, was far more cohesive with its own plot elements than Nomad Droids is. "Skewed at a younger audience" does not necessitate "garbage that won't be accepted by an older audience".

[Fyraltari]

You keep saying stuff like this; and I keep thinking how the Tiny Toon Adventures episode A Quack in the Quarks, with its silly and slapstick framing over its similarly silly and slapstick blatant parody of A New Hope, was far more cohesive with its own plot elements than Nomad Droids is. "Skewed at a younger audience" does not necessitate "garbage that won't be accepted by an older audience".

Exactly. Other example: all of Looney Toons.

[Keltest]

Exactly. Other example: all of Looney Toons.

Lets be fair here, Looney Toons is A: A pretty high bar to meet, period, and B: specifically aimed at older audiences as well as their kids. I dont know if I would say they could be directly compared like that, if theyre trying to do different things.