Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Did the Empire even do anything evil in the films? I don't recall them doing anything out of the ordinary.

Sure, they blew up Alderaan. That was 1 planet, comparable to a single country or nation in a galaxy wide Empire.
Earth's Empires did much worse than that. Compared to the Romans and Conquistadors, The Galactic Empire was quite tame, imo.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Did the Empire even do anything evil in the films? I don't recall them doing anything out of the ordinary.

Just from Episode IV

They tortured a diplomat with the ITO droid.

They performed an illegal search and seizure on Tantiv IV at the beginning of the movie, shooting a bazillion "body guards" that were lawfully "standing their ground" in the process.

They illegally detained a diplomat.

They performed another illegal search and seizure at the Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru compound on Tatooine.

They recklessly fired at a fleeing spaceship at Mos Eisly Spaceport without regard to the safety of unarmed citizens in the area.

They suspended a lawfully appointed congressional body (The Imperial Senate) without regards to the rights of the citizens.

They placed an illegal tracking device without an official warrant on a private citizen's spaceship.

The first thing to realize about the Empire is that it is not a government. It has no interest in governing anything. It just extorts resources out of the galaxy to perpetuate that selfsame extortion. That's why the Empire murders ~2 billion people at a stroke in A New Hope. If that doesn't strike you as evil, then I'm not sure we can have a meaningful conversation about evil.

SOunds like the US Postal Service to me...

What Manchu said. I've always found the "Empire wasn't evil at all. The Rebels were terrorists!" crowd perplexingly odd. The Rebel Alliance didn't blow up a planet and kill billions of people, hold an entire city hostage, or attempt genocide against space teddy bears.

 kronk wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Did the Empire even do anything evil in the films? I don't recall them doing anything out of the ordinary.

Just from Episode IV

They tortured a diplomat with the ITO droid.

They performed an illegal search and seizure on Tantiv IV at the beginning of the movie, shooting a bazillion "body guards" that were lawfully "standing their ground" in the process.

They illegally detained a diplomat.

They performed another illegal search and seizure at the Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru compound on Tatooine.

They recklessly fired at a fleeing spaceship at Mos Eisly Spaceport without regard to the safety of unarmed citizens in the area.

They suspended a lawfully appointed congressional body (The Imperial Senate) without regards to the rights of the citizens.

They placed an illegal tracking device without an official warrant on a private citizen's spaceship.

Huh, thanks. It's been a while since I saw them.

In the original trilogy we don't see any signs of possible sympathy from within the Empire's ranks. Not a hint of perhaps "these guys are just following orders", certainly from the officers anyway.

They do their duty without hesitation and seem fine with it... when Vader isn't killing them.

This is my favourite choking. "He is as clumsy as he is stupid."

 LordofHats wrote:
I've always found the "Empire wasn't evil at all. The Rebels were terrorists!" crowd perplexingly odd.

My favorite are the folks who understand and concede that the Empire itself is bad but argue ad nauseum about how there are good Imperials. Grand Admiral Mary Sue Thrawn is a perfect example of the blinkered Noble Nazi fantasy. Soontir Fel is another one; a guy who defected from the Empire because, to quote Wookiepedia, he was "tired of the growing corruption after Palpatine's death." [my emphasis] LOLWUT. And of course he hopped back on the Imperial side after Thrawn showed him the Truth About What Must Be Done. EU is about 90% gak and a good portion of that comes down to justifying fascism.

 Medium of Death wrote:
In the original trilogy we don't see any signs of possible sympathy from within the Empire's ranks. Not a hint of perhaps "these guys are just following orders", certainly from the officers anyway.

They do their duty without hesitation and seem fine with it... when Vader isn't killing them.

This is my favourite choking. "He is as clumsy as he is stupid."

Heh, well there's your answer. They killed all the guys who hesitated.
Very Roman legion. Who coincidentally, weren't all that pleasant either.

Aren't the Stormtroopers clones though? I keep running into conflicting sources when it comes to them.
One source says their conscripts, others say they are remnants of the old clone army.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Manchu wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:
I've always found the "Empire wasn't evil at all. The Rebels were terrorists!" crowd perplexingly odd.

My favorite are the folks who understand and concede that the Empire itself is bad but argue ad nauseum about how there are good Imperials. Grand Admiral Mary Sue Thrawn is a perfect example of the blinkered Noble Nazi fantasy. Soontir Fel is another one; a guy who defected from the Empire because, to quote Wookiepedia, he was "tired of the growing corruption after Palpatine's death." [my emphasis] LOLWUT. And of course he hopped back on the Imperial side after Thrawn showed him the Truth About What Must Be Done. EU is about 90% gak and a good portion of that comes down to justifying fascism.

Yeah, Thrawn was a dick.
I mean, the guy was exiled from his race for being aggressive. How is that a good thing?

Aren't the Stormtroopers clones though? I keep running into conflicting sources when it comes to them.

In the original trilogy its never stated if Imperial Troopers are or are not clones. In the EU, many Storm Troopers are clones from the Clone Wars and after, but the ranks are also open to all humans but very few aliens. The Fett Clones were phased out following the rebellion on Kamino where a clone army was raised to oppose the Empire. Only the 501st remained 'pure' Fett Clones.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Aren't the Stormtroopers clones though?

Decreasingly so, after the formation of the Empire. The rationalization goes that clones are too expensive. They are actually really good, effective soldiers but the Empire doesn't really need good, effective soldiers because all it needs to do is bully the very few people who are not themselves corrupted by the Empire.

So by ANH, storm troopers are pretty much just mall cops minus a few special formations like Vader's 501st.

Heh. Yeah, when you put it that way, the Empire looks more like an organized crime syndicate than an actual empire. Which certainly explains a lot.

Like I said, it has no actual interest in governing anything.

The prequels-era Republic was gak to be sure but at least it was a gakky government rather than a just a massive extortion racket.

 Manchu wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Aren't the Stormtroopers clones though?

Decreasingly so, after the formation of the Empire. The rationalization goes that clones are too expensive. They are actually really good, effective soldiers but the Empire doesn't really need good, effective soldiers because all it needs to do is bully the very few people who are not themselves corrupted by the Empire.

So by ANH, storm troopers are pretty much just mall cops minus a few special formations like Vader's 501st.

Also in Episode II the Cloner stated the clones are age-accelerated which would mean they would be dying of old age by ANH/ESB

I dunno if they consistently age at an accelerated rate throughout their life spans or if the acceleration is just until a certain point.

 Hlaine Larkin mk2 wrote:

 Manchu wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Aren't the Stormtroopers clones though?

Decreasingly so, after the formation of the Empire. The rationalization goes that clones are too expensive. They are actually really good, effective soldiers but the Empire doesn't really need good, effective soldiers because all it needs to do is bully the very few people who are not themselves corrupted by the Empire.

So by ANH, storm troopers are pretty much just mall cops minus a few special formations like Vader's 501st.

Also in Episode II the Cloner stated the clones are age-accelerated which would mean they would be dying of old age by ANH/ESB

I always thought he just meant that was until adult hood. It seems silly that elite soldiers would be given such short life spans, especially when they are meant to fight in a galaxy wide war.

 Manchu wrote:
I dunno if they consistently age at an accelerated rate throughout their life spans or if the acceleration is just until a certain point.

Many clones from the Clone Wars era were still serving in the Post-Palpatine Empire, so presumably the acceleration stops.

 Manchu wrote:
I dunno if they consistently age at an accelerated rate throughout their life spans or if the acceleration is just until a certain point.

In the EU (The Dark Fleet Trilogy, specifically), Luke got a weird vibe from the few clones he ran across. Zahn makes a point of showing that the clones are different enough for Luke to be able to tell. To that end, if clones were still around from the Clone Wars and serving as Stormtroopers, Luke didn't encounter them until that point.

Of course, that's just EU propaganda and so forth.

Also, the Empire (whether under Thrawn or the Emperor), is a bunch of evil gets. Arguments to the contrary are dumb.

I think Joruus's clones were a completely different batch, however.

EDIT: Yep, those were Spaarti clones (one year to maturity; even less using ysalamiri) rather than Kaminoan clones (ten years to maturity). The Spaarti method was known to result in insane clones. So that might have been what Luke detected. The modifications Thrawn introduced, cloning under disconnection to the Force, may also have imprinted those clones such that they felt off to Luke.

Also, it appears the Empire filled out at least part of its storm trooper ranks with Spaarti-method Fett clones who were given next to no training compared with Kaminoan GAR Fett clones. So that helps to explain their mall copishness,

Yay! A Star Wars thread.

FirePainter wrote:Also why is it named the clone wars? All wars in our own history are named for the years they were fought, the location they were fought, or maybe the reason they were fought. Wars are not named for the weapons used in them. We don't call World War 1 the mustard gas war. So why call it the clone wars the clones weren't fighting each other?

WHY WHY I SAY?

IIRC the war was originally going to concern illegal cloning and clones weren't simply weapons, but the very reason the war was fought. The name was catchy and Lucas chose to keep it.

Harriticus wrote:Star Wars internal politics rarely make much sense. EU invariably ends up making it more complicated.

Assuming more complicated means flying rodent gak idiotic.

Seaward wrote:I find Star Wars only remains enjoyable if you ignore all but the original trilogy and anything Bioware/Obsidian put out.

It's even better if you pretend only A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and The Sith Lords exist. Lucas' decision to replace Wookies with Ewoks marked the beginning of the end for quality Star Wars. Knights of the Old Republic is fun, but honestly, that game is not groundbreaking by any means. The story is the same cut and paste cheesefest that has appeared repeatedly in the EU since day one. Darth Malak is a one-dimensional antagonist and instantly forgettable. The game is massively over rated by those that think a plot twist reveal is somehow amazing writing.

Manchu wrote:The first thing to realize about the Empire is that it is not a government. It has no interest in governing anything. It just extorts resources out of the galaxy to perpetuate that selfsame extortion. That's why the Empire murders ~2 billion people at a stroke in A New Hope. If that doesn't strike you as evil, then I'm not sure we can have a meaningful conversation about evil.

Two billion people in an Empire of one thousand plus planets is pretty insignificant. The galactic population is in the quadrillions and the Galactic Empire rules over a populace numbering in the trillions. Losing a single planet is a minor event. Evil yes, but I think in terms of scale there have been comparable atrocities committed on Earth.

Manchu wrote:I think Joruus's clones were a completely different batch, however.

EDIT: Yep, those were Spaarti clones (one year to maturity; even less using ysalamiri) rather than Kaminoan clones (ten years to maturity). The Spaarti method was known to result in insane clones. So that might have been what Luke detected. The modifications Thrawn introduced, cloning under disconnection to the Force, may also have imprinted those clones such that they felt off to Luke.

Also, it appears the Empire filled out at least part of its storm trooper ranks with Spaarti-method Fett clones who were given next to no training compared with Kaminoan GAR Fett clones. So that helps to explain their mall copishness,

Different levels of canon. The EU is most likely going to be retconned when Episode VII is released. The explanation for Stormtroopers being mediocre soldiers is simple and doesn't require the explanation of them being inferior clones. It is simply plot armor.

 trexmeyer wrote:

Manchu wrote:The first thing to realize about the Empire is that it is not a government. It has no interest in governing anything. It just extorts resources out of the galaxy to perpetuate that selfsame extortion. That's why the Empire murders ~2 billion people at a stroke in A New Hope. If that doesn't strike you as evil, then I'm not sure we can have a meaningful conversation about evil.

Two billion people in an Empire of one thousand plus planets is pretty insignificant. The galactic population is in the quadrillions and the Galactic Empire rules over a populace numbering in the trillions. Losing a single planet is a minor event. Evil yes, but I think in terms of scale there have been comparable atrocities committed on Earth.

That's what I've was getting at. If you factor in scale, the destruction of a planet in Star Wars is comparable to the Roman Empire brutally putting down some revolt in a city. It's still horrific, but the sad truth is that's how empires operate.
However, considering how the Galactic Empire isn't really an Empire but some guy's play pen, that comparison may not entirely be accurate.

 sebster wrote:


That said, it did lead me to wonder how if Jedi were banned from having relationships, exactly where all those great Jedi family came from.

That's another thing I forgot to bring up earlier... In the prequels, we are told that the Jedi do not have relationships and families. Not everyone in Star Wars is Force Sensitive. Force Sensitivity is tied to biology (somehow... whether or not you accept Lucas' plagiarized Parasite Eve explanation) and the Jedi are being cut off from biological reproduction. The EU indicates that children with Force potential are taken from their families (this is how the Jedi replace their numbers) for training at a very young age. That means that a) Force Sensitivity is a recessive trait (instead of a dominant one) and b) both parents must have the trait before it can express itself in an offspring. If all of the people with the expressed trait pull themselves from the gene pool and don't reproduce, and the Force Sensitive trait is a recessive one, wouldn't the Force Sensitive gene eventually breed itself out of existence?

My understanding of biology is a little rusty, but wouldn't that sort of thing eventually happen? Wouldn't Force Sensitive births become less and less common? Sure, it would take time, but we are talking about an institution that has existed for 20,000 years. That's enough time for some kind of strain to show, right?

squidhills wrote:

 sebster wrote:


That said, it did lead me to wonder how if Jedi were banned from having relationships, exactly where all those great Jedi family came from.

That's another thing I forgot to bring up earlier... In the prequels, we are told that the Jedi do not have relationships and families. Not everyone in Star Wars is Force Sensitive. Force Sensitivity is tied to biology (somehow... whether or not you accept Lucas' plagiarized Parasite Eve explanation) and the Jedi are being cut off from biological reproduction. The EU indicates that children with Force potential are taken from their families (this is how the Jedi replace their numbers) for training at a very young age. That means that a) Force Sensitivity is a recessive trait (instead of a dominant one) and b) both parents must have the trait before it can express itself in an offspring. If all of the people with the expressed trait pull themselves from the gene pool and don't reproduce, and the Force Sensitive trait is a recessive one, wouldn't the Force Sensitive gene eventually breed itself out of existence?

My understanding of biology is a little rusty, but wouldn't that sort of thing eventually happen? Wouldn't Force Sensitive births become less and less common? Sure, it would take time, but we are talking about an institution that has existed for 20,000 years. That's enough time for some kind of strain to show, right?

Yes. Which is why linking the Force to biology was idiotic. It should have stayed a mystical, monk-like sort of thing.

It was pretty much laid out in ANH that the Empire didn't really care about actually governing much of anything:

Tarkin: The Imperial Senate will no longer be of any concern to us. I have just received word that the Emperor has dissolved the council permanently. The last remnants of the Old Republic have been swept away forever.
Tagge: But that's impossible! How will the Emperor maintain control without the bureaucracy?
Tarkin: The regional governors now have direct control over their territories. Fear will keep the local systems in line. Fear of this battle station.

So the crime syndicate line of thought really seems to apply. As long as the regional governors don't actively oppose the Emperor, they are pretty much free to govern their systems however they want.

squidhills wrote:

 sebster wrote:


That said, it did lead me to wonder how if Jedi were banned from having relationships, exactly where all those great Jedi family came from.

That's another thing I forgot to bring up earlier... In the prequels, we are told that the Jedi do not have relationships and families. Not everyone in Star Wars is Force Sensitive. Force Sensitivity is tied to biology (somehow... whether or not you accept Lucas' plagiarized Parasite Eve explanation) and the Jedi are being cut off from biological reproduction. The EU indicates that children with Force potential are taken from their families (this is how the Jedi replace their numbers) for training at a very young age. That means that a) Force Sensitivity is a recessive trait (instead of a dominant one) and b) both parents must have the trait before it can express itself in an offspring. If all of the people with the expressed trait pull themselves from the gene pool and don't reproduce, and the Force Sensitive trait is a recessive one, wouldn't the Force Sensitive gene eventually breed itself out of existence?

My understanding of biology is a little rusty, but wouldn't that sort of thing eventually happen? Wouldn't Force Sensitive births become less and less common? Sure, it would take time, but we are talking about an institution that has existed for 20,000 years. That's enough time for some kind of strain to show, right?

Lucas has failed to clarify is Force-Sensitive relationships occurred prior to the events of TPM. Within the EU Force-Sensitive relationships were relatively common at certain periods in time. It is also heavily implied and at times outright stated that the Jedi have been on a constant decline for the past several thousand years. The EU implies that the Jedi of the Old Republic (1000+ years prior to the events of TPM) were much greater in number and individually stronger than those that appear in the films.

 Manchu wrote:
I wouldn't argue that it is ethical or even prudential to execute captured spies but it's certainly plausible. It's something that spies and spy masters understand is a likely outcome of getting caught. And executing captured spies, much less their prospective execution, hardly supplies the state employing said spies with a justification for war. So none of that can form a legal basis for the Republic's invasion of Geonosis.

At some points in history then execution of spies was accepted, and even standard practice. At other times, such as the Cold War, spies were simply ordered to leave the country. We have no idea what was standard at that point in Star Wars history, so we really can't say whether execution was accepted or not.

About the droid army thing, it's my mistake to have started talking about it as a matter of legality. Whether setting up a droid army under whatever circumstances might be illegal as far as the Republic is concerned is totally immaterial to the Republic declaring war on the Confederacy absent some arms limitation treaty between the parties. Even if such a treaty existed (and we have no reason to believe it did), the Republic would necessarily have violated it by having capacity to invade Geonosis. So that doesn't help us, either.

But the Republic didn't recognise the Confederation as a seperate political body. To the Republic, they were just a bunch of worlds that were pressing a claim for secession, and so they would have still been expected to abide by whatever droid army manufacturing laws the Republic had.

At least, I always assumed that was the case, maybe there'd been some formal seperation between the movies that Lucas didn't bother to tell the audience about.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Did the Empire even do anything evil in the films? I don't recall them doing anything out of the ordinary.

Sure, they blew up Alderaan. That was 1 planet, comparable to a single country or nation in a galaxy wide Empire.

So compare the blowing up of that planet with the blowing up of a single country here on Earth... blowing up a whole country because it is believed that the planet may be harbouring a rebel force would be pretty damn evil.

Nah, I don't think the Republic saw the Confederacy as "pressing for secession." Those guys had been gone for a while.

 Manchu wrote:
Nah, I don't think the Republic saw the Confederacy as "pressing for secession." Those guys had been gone for a while.

Just looked it up on Wookiepedia. They had written their own articles of secession, but the Republic still saw them as individual rebellious colonies.

 trexmeyer wrote:


Lucas has failed to clarify is Force-Sensitive relationships occurred prior to the events of TPM. Within the EU Force-Sensitive relationships were relatively common at certain periods in time. It is also heavily implied and at times outright stated that the Jedi have been on a constant decline for the past several thousand years. The EU implies that the Jedi of the Old Republic (1000+ years prior to the events of TPM) were much greater in number and individually stronger than those that appear in the films.

When debating Star Wars movies, I try to stick to evidence and facts shown on the screen. Lucas does not get a pass because other, better writers come after him and try to sort his gak out (and even then, most don't succeed).

But if we are going to use the EU as a source, It should go on record that SWTOR has the Jedi of 4000 years before ANH not having emotions or relationships. In fact, encouraging two people in love to have a relationship is a Dark Side choice in one quest...

squidhills wrote:

 trexmeyer wrote:


Lucas has failed to clarify is Force-Sensitive relationships occurred prior to the events of TPM. Within the EU Force-Sensitive relationships were relatively common at certain periods in time. It is also heavily implied and at times outright stated that the Jedi have been on a constant decline for the past several thousand years. The EU implies that the Jedi of the Old Republic (1000+ years prior to the events of TPM) were much greater in number and individually stronger than those that appear in the films.

When debating Star Wars movies, I try to stick to evidence and facts shown on the screen. Lucas does not get a pass because other, better writers come after him and try to sort his gak out (and even then, most don't succeed).

But if we are going to use the EU as a source, It should go on record that SWTOR has the Jedi of 4000 years before ANH not having emotions or relationships. In fact, encouraging two people in love to have a relationship is a Dark Side choice in one quest...

And the Grandmaster of the Jedi Order is the ancestor of two Jedi...it was frowned upon, but it happened. A few hundred years before the events of KotOR Nomi Sunrider married Andur Sunrider, a prospective Jedi Knight.

Up to the Great Sith War, some Jedi did practice marriage and were known to have families of their own. There were even cases of families consisting entirely of Jedi, such as that of Andur Sunrider. The children of Jedi families were often gifted in the Force. Even later in the Order, such families existed—though the continuation of the line was through those family members who did not become Jedi. Famous Jedi families of the late Republic included the Koon family and the Diath family.

However, it appears that some Jedi might have been granted the right to marry, not as a special case, but as a norm. Several Corellian Jedi (Keiran Halcyon during the Old Republic, and Corran Horn in the time of the New Republic) were allowed to marry and raise children without repercussion. Whether this was due to an agreement between the Jedi and the planetary government—Corellia is known for its family-centric culture—or purely personal choices made against the Jedi Code is not known, except in the case of Nejaa Halcyon, who married his wife secretly without the approval of the Council. Corellian Jedi often had many other noticeable differences from the traditional Jedi ways, such as in clothing and a reluctance to take on missions outside of their home system.

source -> http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Jedi