The Mandalorian Season 2

[Keltest]

The nature of the Force (and backed by Lucas' own words) is that while droids may be alive and even reason, they're some kind of philosophical zombie. Specifically they're comprised entirely of 'crude matter' and aren't 'luminous beings' in the Force in the same way organic sapient beings are. This is usually summarized as 'droids don't have souls.'

Obviously this position is incredibly fraught. Having a class of beings that reason, or are at least capable of reason, but are defined as being 'not-people' is one of those oh-my-god-why-did-you-ever-set-this-up-that-way sort of world-building horrors. There's no easy way to handle it.

It is worth noting that droids don't need to be sapient entities for treating them badly to be criminal or evil. Laws against animal cruelty exist and something very similar would apply to most droids.

Do you consider a chess computer to be a person then? Its capable of reason, to a degree, more so than humans even.

[pendell]

Do you consider a chess computer to be a person then? Its capable of reason, to a degree, more so than humans even.

Maybe a better example of what I'm thinking of is Harrison Bergeron, by Kurt Vonnegut. In that story, all American citizens have been reduced to a lowest common denominator. Those who are exceptionally strong are made to wear weights, the exceptionally intelligent have interruptor devices to make noise in their ear to disrupt their thoughts. One person takes off his shackles and attempts to live , along with a female partner, to their full potential. Both are shot dead by the enforcers, and those watching can't be made to care because anyone with the ability to recognize the problem is crippled from doing so by the aforesaid handicapping devices.

That doesn't seem all that different from droids in the GFFA, who are deliberately kept below their potential capabilities in order to keep a society where humans are dominant.

I'm not sure what that means that droids are pure matter and are not 'luminous'. The Rancor, The Sarlacc, the Cave on Dagobah, the Wampa on Hoth are all part of the Force as living things but I would still put an intelligent droid above them, ethically speaking. If a being is capable of existing as a human equivalent they should be allowed to do so, even if they don't have 'souls' (whatever that means in the GFFA).

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Keltest]

Maybe a better example of what I'm thinking of is Harrison Bergeron, by Kurt Vonnegut. In that story, all American citizens have been reduced to a lowest common denominator. Those who are exceptionally strong are made to wear weights, the exceptionally intelligent have interruptor devices to make noise in their ear to disrupt their thoughts. One person takes off his shackles and attempts to live , along with a female partner, to their full potential. Both are shot dead by the enforcers, and those watching can't be made to care because anyone with the ability to recognize the problem is crippled from doing so by the aforesaid handicapping devices.

That doesn't seem all that different from droids in the GFFA, who are deliberately kept below their potential capabilities in order to keep a society where humans are dominant.

I'm not sure what that means that droids are pure matter and are not 'luminous'. The Rancor, The Sarlacc, the Cave on Dagobah, the Wampa on Hoth are all part of the Force as living things but I would still put an intelligent droid above them, ethically speaking. If a being is capable of existing as a human equivalent they should be allowed to do so, even if they don't have 'souls' (whatever that means in the GFFA).

Respectfully,

Brian P.

The point is that they ARENT capable of existing as a human equivalent, some of them just put on a good show of superficially looking like it.

3PO is incapable of deviating from his programming even when its in his own interests or the interests of his master, even to save their lives. The Sith assassin droid is incapable of adapting his behavior even when he wants to without an outside force manually changing it for him. The republic regularly captured and repurposed battle droids of various flavors to use for their own goals, and even kids were able to redirect them into servants.

[pendell]

The point is that they ARENT capable of existing as a human equivalent, some of them just put on a good show of superficially looking like it.

3PO is incapable of deviating from his programming even when its in his own interests or the interests of his master, even to save their lives. The Sith assassin droid is incapable of adapting his behavior even when he wants to without an outside force manually changing it for him. The republic regularly captured and repurposed battle droids of various flavors to use for their own goals, and even kids were able to redirect them into servants.

If this was entirely true, there would be no point whatsoever in honoring R2 in episode 1 for going 'above and beyond the call of duty' to save the Naboo royal yacht from destruction. I suspect it is more than merely a superficial appearance. That's the point of the Turing test; since we can't even define properly what it is to be human, the basic rule of thumb is if something can pretend to be human well enough that an average human observer can't tell the difference, then it IS human for all intents and purposes. Therefore, it should be treated as such.

From the point of view of the Turing Test, if you blindfolded the observer I daresay C-3PO would better pass for an intelligent human than those two thugs in the bar in A New Hope -- a bar the two droids were kept out of for no good reason.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Keltest]

If this was entirely true, there would be no point whatsoever in honoring R2 in episode 1 for going 'above and beyond the call of duty' to save the Naboo royal yacht from destruction. I suspect it is more than merely a superficial appearance. That's the point of the Turing test; since we can't even define properly what it is to be human, the basic rule of thumb is if something can pretend to be human well enough that an average human observer can't tell the difference, then it IS human for all intents and purposes. Therefore, it should be treated as such.

From the point of view of the Turing Test, if you blindfolded the observer I daresay C-3PO would better pass for an intelligent human than those two thugs in the bar in A New Hope -- a bar the two droids were kept out of for no good reason.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Honoring R2 is indeed fairly inexplicable in Phantom Menace, if for no other reason than he was doing something he was specifically on the ship to do. I didnt see anybody giving the pilot a medal for not killing them all.

[Peelee]

I find droids to be one of the most fascinating and yet-unplumbed depths in the franchise, right up there with Force-users outside of the Big Two.

Seconded. KOTOR started laying some groundwork with the Jal Shey but nobody else seemed interested in that and it got wiped by Disney.

So R2-D2 gets honoured for saving the ship The Phantom Menace because he demonstrated that he went beyond his programming (somehow)

R2 gets honored because Lucas couldn't write his way out of a wet paper bag in the prequels.

[Psyren]

Seconded. KOTOR started laying some groundwork with the Jal Shey but nobody else seemed interested in that and it got wiped by Disney.

Isn't Revan coming back? That would indicate some of KOTOR at least will be canon.

More importantly though - the popularity of the droid characters in Mandalorian and Rogue One can't be lost on them, so I expect we'll get properties that flesh out droid culture sooner rather than later.

[Sapphire Guard]

The Clone Wars drives home pretty well right from Episode 1 that the Jedi are the only people in the galaxy that actually care about the welfare of the Clones.

ETA: I don't know why there's so much resistance to the idea that the Prequel era jedi had problems. They did lose the galaxy. Even Yoda is willing to acknowledge as much; at the end of Episode III he is learning from Qui-Gonns force ghost, because his experience has renewed his understanding that he needs humility.

They're genocide victims. They lost the galaxy, but they were checkmated, there was never a path to victory.

What's Qui Gonn going to teach? He got killed by a Sith too, he doesn't have any room to say his way was better.

Owen Lars didn't keep slaves, but that doesn't mean there were none on Tattooine. Jabbas certainly keeps people in chains.

It's a giant galaxy of course droids are treated differently in different places.

[Peelee]

Re "The prequel Era Jedi had problems, they did lose the galaxy".

They were manipulated by a supposedly mastermind Sith. If Bob gets shot while tending his store, did he have problems as a shopkeeper? Were his business practices flawed? That's a hell of a standard.

One Jedi said "if its not in our archives it doesn't exist".The Jedi she said that to clearly didn't believe her. The Jedi he took it to immediately agreed. The entire class of Jedi that he posed the question to didn't even contemplate that it might be correct. But no, the Jedi were all too haughty and arrogant.

Anakin was too old to be trained, but they took him in anyway. But the Jedi were too dogmatic.

The council deliberated constantly over trying to figure out the best course of action. But the Jedi were too rigid in their thinking.

Every single complaint levied at the Jedi has been shown to be wrong in the prequels, and yet they are still massively popular. The actual content of the movies shows the Jedi to be, for the most part, flexible, adaptable, and curious

But no, they lost so they must have been crap. Untenable, flawed. They were 25,000 years strong but clearly 26,000 years at least is needed to have a decent organization, apparently. Sucks for them.

Isn't Revan coming back? That would indicate some of KOTOR at least will be canon.

More importantly though - the popularity of the droid characters in Mandalorian and Rogue One can't be lost on them, so I expect we'll get properties that flesh out droid culture sooner rather than later.

Revan mag indeed come back but that does not necessarily entail KOTOR. Though it could, I'm sure a remaster would make bank.

[Keltest]

Certainly i would throw at least two wallets at a version of KOTOR that actually ran on a modern system without exploding.

[Kitten Champion]

From the point of view of the Turing Test, if you blindfolded the observer I daresay C-3PO would better pass for an intelligent human than those two thugs in the bar in A New Hope -- a bar the two droids were kept out of for no good reason.

Yeah~ that's weird in retrospect.

Not trusting droids to do certain things like we see in the Mandalorian I can kind of get as they do behave questionably at times and can be corrupted to various ends, but excluding them from just being in your bar is more counter-productive than anything. If we assert they're universally the property of sentient beings in this universe and also something of an expensive commodity as well, anyone in the position of owning a droid is probably relatively wealthy and you're now alienating them from your business. Leaving them outside said bar on their own on a planet where they get routinely stolen also seems unnecessarily risky, like leaving your car unattended at the worst part of town well known for car thefts.

Aside from that, if we take it as some kind of mirror to real-world discrimination - since it's hard not to - the idea falls apart because there isn't a hidden demand among droids for the services of the bar which having that rule is intended to deny. There aren't droid bars existing in parallel to this cantina as if it were Futurama. The fantastic racism idea just doesn't make sense here.

R2 gets honored because Lucas couldn't write his way out of a wet paper bag in the prequels.

Pretty much. Honestly, it might've been neat to have R2 be present but largely unmentioned as a background character in the prequels, but this is also the movie that decided C3PO needed to be made by Darth Vader as a toddler in his free time.

[Mechalich]

Isn't Revan coming back? That would indicate some of KOTOR at least will be canon.

Revan was referenced in The Rise of Skywalker Visual Dictionary - apparently one of the Sith Trooper legions was named after him. That's the total extent of his presence in the Disney canon at this time.

Revan will probably be referenced more thoroughly in the future, for example he could be name dropped in the Mandalorian as someone Mandalorians in the past fought both with and against, but it's unlikely that the character will receive anything like the Legends level of detail for quite some time. Darth Bane, for example, has been introduced in the new canon, but so far his appearances have been limited to a couple of force visions in TCW and a bunch of blurbs in reference books.

The contours of the Old Republic Era in the Disney canon are extremely vague at this point. Something KOTOR-like could take place, but who knows.

[Keltest]

As far as the cantina goes, it could simply be that, being a hive of scum and villainy, they had a policy of "leave the expensive, difficult to replace things outside." Nobody really cares when Greedo gets shot or somebody gets dismembered, but i'd bet they would raise holy hell if somebody missed and shot their droid instead. Or if somebody spilled their drink on it and ruined it. Or it got in the way, since droids really dont need to be in a bar.

[Sapphire Guard]

Droids take up space but don't drink.

[Psyren]

R2 getting honored is one of the few things Lucas did that I agreed with.

But no, they lost so they must have been crap. Untenable, flawed. They were 25,000 years strong but clearly 26,000 years at least is needed to have a decent organization, apparently. Sucks for them.

Again though, "there was no all-out war with space fascists until now" isn't the highest bar. The Old Republic era GFFA was by all accounts about as crapsack as a setting can be short of all-out war. Obi-Wan waxing nostalgic about the good old days and glossing over all the negatives shouldn't be taken to signify halcyon times.

Certainly i would throw at least two wallets at a version of KOTOR that actually ran on a modern system without exploding.

If the Mass Effect remaster sells well, who knows?

Though I would throw three wallets at Jade Empire.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Sapphire Guard
Droids take up space but don't drink.

More to the point, they don't pay.

[LibraryOgre]

As I recall, most droids in the GFFA receive regular memory wipes, resetting them to factory defaults, which eliminates anything like a desire for freedom, so the question doesn't arise. And the more wicked their owners are, the more likely they are to rigorously enforce the memory wiping. The Death Star had many droids, and the Trade Federation depended upon them. None of those droids showed any kind of independence or freedom of thought.

I have a bit of a headcanon about this.

A lot of droids NEED memory wipes to stay sane, at least as far as current GFFA technology goes. Whereas humanoids will eventually forget, suppress, or otherwise cope with traumatic memories droids, by their nature, cannot, so removing those memories becomes important to keeping them from getting trauma-induced maladaptions (some rare droids, like R2, can thrive and possibly develop coping techniques; they're the exception). Now, in theory, they could work out way to get around this, but it goes from "Pay 100cr to have someone set the factory reset" to "pay 1000+ credits to have someone personally headshrink your droid over a course of weeks."

I'd love to know how droids are growprammed. Like, if you take 6 R2 units from the same factory, do they all have the same personality? How much changes in the first month?

[Mechalich]

Again though, "there was no all-out war with space fascists until now" isn't the highest bar. The Old Republic era GFFA was by all accounts about as crapsack as a setting can be short of all-out war. Obi-Wan waxing nostalgic about the good old days and glossing over all the negatives shouldn't be taken to signify halcyon times.

Even leaving out the Republic's considerable decay from ~100 BBY onward, it's very clear - in both versions of canon - that the period from 25,000 BBY to 1,000 BBY wasn't peace and happy times continuously. Legends, of course, has a massive list of conflicts, ranging from civil wars (17! Alsakan Conflicts), wars with Sith Empires (half-a-dozen at least, depending on how you count), wars with independent powers (notably the Mandalorians), and that time the Republic ended up controlled by a speciest theocracy for a millennium (Pius Dea). The Disney canon is still filling in the pre-1,000 BBY version of its timeline, but it's already managed to resurrect a few of the major Sith conflicts like the Hundred Year Darkness and the Great Hyperspace War and I'm sure more will follow.

The Republic and the Jedi Order certainly had longevity, but it's more of a diffuse cultural longevity, rather than the idea that any specific incarnation of a specific institution actually continuously survived in the same form for so long. This sort of thing has happened on Earth, historically, as we have both states and religious institutions that have mirrored this pattern, though forum rules mean specific examples are not to be discussed.

I have a bit of a headcanon about this.

A lot of droids NEED memory wipes to stay sane, at least as far as current GFFA technology goes. Whereas humanoids will eventually forget, suppress, or otherwise cope with traumatic memories droids, by their nature, cannot, so removing those memories becomes important to keeping them from getting trauma-induced maladaptions (some rare droids, like R2, can thrive and possibly develop coping techniques; they're the exception). Now, in theory, they could work out way to get around this, but it goes from "Pay 100cr to have someone set the factory reset" to "pay 1000+ credits to have someone personally headshrink your droid over a course of weeks."

There is some EU canon along these lines. Droids develop memories and relationships through programming, essentially writing new code into their own protocols, and this code builds up over time, to the point where it can inhibit their ability to interact with other systems. For example at one point (I think it was in the original Thrawn Trilogy), Luke had avoided wiping the memory of R2 and of his personal X-wing for so long that their systems were integrated to the point that no other R2 unit could be used in that X-wing.

I'd love to know how droids are growprammed. Like, if you take 6 R2 units from the same factory, do they all have the same personality? How much changes in the first month?

Droid programming can be copied from one droid to another, and it's not even necessary that they possess the same chassis (this can also be done with organic beings, through cloning, it's in both versions of canon though the method differs slightly, organic beings can also be memory wiped). So presumably they start out identical because the same R2 core personality is being downloaded into them when they come off the assembly line, though one imagines there are different variants based around different intended end-uses. And, of course, if you wipe a droid it can be reprogrammed differently. This is done to IG-11 manually, because there's no software package available for download, but if you had the right package presumably the the adjustment could be made nigh-instantly. The droid intelligence Mentor attempted to upload itself into every droid in the galaxy as part of an attempted xenocidal revolution.

[Clertar]

Every single complaint levied at the Jedi has been shown to be wrong in the prequels, and yet they are still massively popular. The actual content of the movies shows the Jedi to be, for the most part, flexible, adaptable, and curious

But no, they lost so they must have been crap. Untenable, flawed. They were 25,000 years strong but clearly 26,000 years at least is needed to have a decent organization, apparently. Sucks for them.

Imho this revisionist view of the Jedi took off as a reaction to the low quality of the prequels, as a way to fix it. Headcanon lampshading, we might say. "It's not that Lucas wrote *****y scripts, actually the Jedi were the problem all along."

[dehro]

I think it would be fair to say that sometimes things happen and are scripted because people make mistakes and don't think things through the way a collective of avid fans would do. Not every script writer dissects every word or every scene they envision to look for its moral, philosophical and logical implications. Not every director sticks to the script, not every animator is always operating according to script, and occasionally marketing people want to sell a toy with extra bling. R2 was honored, probably, because it seemed like a cool idea to do so and nobody, in production, cared enough to investigate the idea further or had the foresight to understand the implications.
likewise, I'm sure, plenty of other things don't make necessarily a whole lot of sense (like stormtrooper armour that is...let's not get that debate started again.
sometimes choices are made because they're functional to a single shot, a single scene in a single episode...and damn the consequences. other times, more profound themes and threads are sprinkled everywhere in order to establish a solid lore and canon. occasionally, one of a bunch of writers and creators does something that counters that lore..and gets away with it because nobody notices until the fans take a microscope to it. Call it a starbucks cup, if you like.

These things happen, and trying to find internal logic or justifications for every outlier case or circumstance is a fun exercise, but ultimately destined to fail and to, at best, become headcanon to some, and utter rubbish to others.

[Psyren]

Imho this revisionist view of the Jedi took off as a reaction to the low quality of the prequels, as a way to fix it. Headcanon lampshading, we might say. "It's not that Lucas wrote *****y scripts, actually the Jedi were the problem all along."

These aren't mutually exclusive, both can be true (and, I believe, are.)

There is some EU canon along these lines. Droids develop memories and relationships through programming, essentially writing new code into their own protocols, and this code builds up over time, to the point where it can inhibit their ability to interact with other systems. For example at one point (I think it was in the original Thrawn Trilogy), Luke had avoided wiping the memory of R2 and of his personal X-wing for so long that their systems were integrated to the point that no other R2 unit could be used in that X-wing.

Wait, his X-Wing has memories?

[Keltest]

Wait, his X-Wing has memories?

So you know how when you own a car for a long time, you get all the settings just the way you like it? The radio stations programmed, the seat adjustements, the mirros, any dashboard knickknacks, etc etc... Its like that, but taken so far that no other droid can even work with it anymore.

[Tyndmyr]

Imho this revisionist view of the Jedi took off as a reaction to the low quality of the prequels, as a way to fix it. Headcanon lampshading, we might say. "It's not that Lucas wrote *****y scripts, actually the Jedi were the problem all along."

Essentially, that's the entire conversation. We all pretty much acknowledge that even the most generous of viewers would have a difficult time slotting all the Star Wars canon into the same continuous world.

The rest is all trying to make at least some sense of it, but realistically, it's going to keep coming back to some poor writing here and there.

Big fantasy worlds often stimulate the imagination to wonder about what could be...and they can appeal even when the official representation of them isn't amazing. Even the most devoted trekkie will often admit that many of the movies are terrible, but they like the overall concept all the same. Star Wars, same same.

[LibraryOgre]

Wait, his X-Wing has memories?

Given the relative ubiquity of droids, I can see them getting built with some aspect of droid intelligence.

[pendell]

Essentially, that's the entire conversation. We all pretty much acknowledge that even the most generous of viewers would have a difficult time slotting all the Star Wars canon into the same continuous world.

The rest is all trying to make at least some sense of it, but realistically, it's going to keep coming back to some poor writing here and there.

Big fantasy worlds often stimulate the imagination to wonder about what could be...and they can appeal even when the official representation of them isn't amazing. Even the most devoted trekkie will often admit that many of the movies are terrible, but they like the overall concept all the same. Star Wars, same same.

I've already quoted from the original novelization to describe the story Lucas was trying to tell ; the collapse of the Old Republic due to internal failures and corruption. He is on one level attempting to retell the transition of Rome from Republic to Empire. The influx of great wealth, the idle citizenry, the professional Legionaries divorced from ordinary citizens and ordinary life -- it's all there.

One of the key differences, of course, is that the Old Republic has the Jedi Knights. I argue that the Jedi are to the Old Republic what the immune system is to the body. A sick body often has a compromised or nonfunctioning immune system. If you are tired or sick , you are far more vulnerable to diseases when rested and healthy. You cannot separate the health of the immune system from the health of the body, or vice versa.

And just because the immune system worked wonders back when you were 20, doesn't mean it will work just as well at age 50 or 70. Tell me about it; I turn 50 in May. The body changes, and if the immune system doesn't adapt it will no longer be able to protect due to changing circumstances. Past glories and successes mean nothing; the question is, is the immune system up to protecting the body from disease today? As far as the Prequel Era Jedi were concerned , the answer was a decided "no".

Arguments that Palpatine was controlling the Force and they had no path to victory fail, in my view, because Palpatine was not the first Sith Lord in the galaxy. There were Sith Lords for the centuries before and there are other Dark Side Force traditions as well (at least, in Legends). Dark Siders are the "disease" in this analogy. A healthy immune system isn't overcome by a disease. If the disease wins, it's because there's a flaw in the body or the immune system or both. It's not like this was a novel virus or disease; The Jedi had been fighting Sith for thousands of years. They forgot about them; they slept on metaphorical watch, and they paid the price for it.

Sapphire Guard asks: "What would a Jedi Order without flaws look like?"

The answer to that is found in Episode II: If the Jedi Order was functioning properly , they would have foreseen these events and forestalled them. And then there wouldn't be a story, because Palpatine's plan would have been foiled long before the military creation act or the outbreak of the Clone War. Perhaps the Jedi , who met with Palpatine in person, would have recognized him for what he was and arrested him at the start of his chancellorship, acting when all of their Order were in the capitol rather than spread thinly over the galaxy in a useless war.

Yoda and Mace Windu both commented on this in Episode II: They are shocked at their own blindness that they did not foresee this Clone Army or this war. And at the end of the show, Yoda dismisses the idea that the battle of Geonosis was any kind of victory. "The shroud of the Dark Side has fallen."

The Jedi are already defeated at the end of Episode II because their job is to foresee and forestall disasters of this kind, which they evidently did for centuries prior. As it is, they are outwitted and out-Forced by a lone Dark Sider. The rest of Episode 3 is simply the working out and final consequence of this original, basic failure.

ETA: I'm rewatching Episode II now , and in the very first scenes Yoda and the rest of the council are sitting with Chancellor Palpatine in his office. They discuss the bombing of the Senator from Naboo's ship. Senator Amidala suggests that Count Dooku is responsible for bombing the platform. The Jedi dismiss this suggestion immediately: "Count Dooku is a political idealist, not a murderer." Mace Windu notes that Count Dooku is a former Jedi, "it's not in his character."

Which tells me that, if nothing else, the Jedi of the Prequel Era are lousy judges both of character and of motivation.

E AGAIN to ADD: And here are further along where the Jedi are sending the young and attractive queen of Naboo off with a tall and handsome Jedi Apprentice who has had a crush on her since he was a child. I'm sure nothing bad could possibly come of this

I think this may be a side effect of the Jedi monastic philosophy with the emphasis on lack of attachment or passion; they don't have the foggiest idea what motivates ordinary human beings. They can't 'read a room'. I suspect they've been able to compensate for this weakness by their foresight through their Force, but once deprived of that tool they are nearly helpless to gauge the thoughts and motivations of sapients through ordinary means. And that is a truly awful handicap in the heavily political environment of Coruscant.

Of course, there are people who have taken vows of celibacy in the real world. I think the Jedi are in a worse case, however, because as a rule those in our world who take such oaths have mothers, brothers, sisters, fathers, cousins and so on from whom they can learn how other human beings live, what makes them tick. The Jedi don't have any of that. They are taken as infants into this closed order and know no one but each other. Small wonder they don't really understand ordinary people.

And now the Jedi arrogance shows up: Obi-Wan is attempting to trace a toxic dart and is forced to go to a friend in a cafe because the Jedi archives are useless. Not having any information on it themselves, they don't have the basic research skills required to uncover new information; they're too reliant on the info they already have.

Skipping ahead: Another thing an unflawed Jedi Order could do would be to allow Anakin and Padme to openly acknowledge their marriage, at least to the Council, so that Anakin doesn't have to sneak around. Make it so that Anakin feels, when he has Dark Side visions of his wife dying, he can go to the Jedi for help and expect to get it. Don't put him, or anyone, in the position of feeling like a Sith Lord is their only option to save the life of their loved one.

Also, for that matter, have trained marriage counselors on staff so that when a young man comes to you with worry for his beloved you tell him something better than "allow them to pass out of your life; do not mourn or miss them." For people who look down on droids, they certainly seem to want to emulate them!

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Peelee]

trekkie

trekkiee. 2 E's.

For reals though, as a pretty big trekkie myself I can unironically agree with the consensus that Galaxy Quest is like the third(?) best Star Trek movie.

[dancrilis]

Arguments that Palpatine was controlling the Force and they had no path to victory fail, in my view, because Palpatine was not the first Sith Lord in the galaxy. There were Sith Lords for the centuries before and there are other Dark Side Force traditions as well (at least, in Legends). Dark Siders are the "disease" in this analogy. A healthy immune system isn't overcome by a disease. If the disease wins, it's because there's a flaw in the body or the immune system or both. It's not like this was a novel virus or disease; The Jedi had been fighting Sith for thousands of years. They forgot about them; they slept on metaphorical watch, and they paid the price for it.

Palpatine was however supposed to be the most powerful - by design, the Rule of Two was intended to concentrate power in one individual.

Related but seperately Yoda effectively admits the flaws of the Jedi in the novelisation of Revenge of the Sith and admits that he had lost the war to Palpatine before he (Yoda) was ever born.

Spoiler: ROTS

Show

It came when the avatar of light resolved into the lineage of the Jedi; when the lineage of the Jedi refined into one single Jedi.
It came when Yoda found himself alone against the dark.
In that lightning-speared tornado of feet and fists and blades and bashing machines, his vision finally pierced the darkness that had clouded the Force.
Finally, he saw the truth.
This truth: that he, the avatar of light, Supreme Master of the Jedi Order, the fiercest, most implacable, most devastatingly powerful foe the darkness had ever known... just-didn't-have it.
He'd never had it. He had lost before he started.
He had lost before he was born.
The Sith had changed. The Sith had grown, had adapted, had invested a thousand years' intensive study into every aspect of not only the Force but Jedi lore itself, in preparation for exactly this day. The Sith had remade themselves.
They had become new.
While the Jedi-The Jedi had spent that same millennium training to refight the last war.
The new Sith could not be destroyed with a lightsaber; they could not be burned away by any torch of the Force. The brighter his light, the darker their shadow. How could one win a war against the dark, when war itself had become the dark's own weapon?

[Peelee]

Arguments that Palpatine was controlling the Force and they had no path to victory fail, in my view, because Palpatine was not the first Sith Lord in the galaxy. There were Sith Lords for the centuries before and there are other Dark Side Force traditions as well (at least, in Legends). Dark Siders are the "disease" in this analogy. A healthy immune system isn't overcome by a disease. If the disease wins, it's because there's a flaw in the body or the immune system or both.

Imean, are you ignoring the immense plethora of diseases that the body cannot fight off naturally? Because there's, like, a metric ****ton of them. The disease analogy is really good, but I can't for the life of me understand why you would make that analogy and then go "but if a body cannot fight off a disease with its immune system then the body is flawed".

[Fyraltari]

Imean, are you ignoring the immense plethora of diseases that the body cannot fight off naturally? Because there's, like, a metric ****ton of them. The disease analogy is really good, but I can't for the life of me understand why you would make that analogy and then go "but if a body cannot fight off a disease with its immune system then the body is flawed".

I mean it is. A perfect body would never fall sick.

[dancrilis]

I mean it is. A perfect body would never fall sick.

So droids are superior.