Carnage of Krell Review

[Throttle84]

To Chuck*,

Thanks for this. I'd actually forgotten I'd requested these and was pleasantly surprised to see my usual handle come up in the title cards. The last couple years have been kind of rough on me, and I've had precious few reasons to smile in my day to day lately. Despite the grim content, this has done a lot to lift my spirits.

Hey all,

I'd requested these episodes a few months after the passing of my favorite author, Terry Pratchett, among whose work I most enjoyed those stories and novels focused on the Ankh-Morpork City Watch. "Guards! Guards!" was meant to be a day in the limelight for the hapless fantasy setting guardsmen and constables whose only purpose in most stories was to die or run away while being locked out of the loop of the decisions of more important characters. Despite only meaning for these poor dupes to be the stars of a one off novel, they'd been invested with too much personality, especially Carrot and Sam, to be contained and they quickly became a regular focus in the Discworld series**.

As a big Star Wars fan as well, I couldn't help but see shades of this with the Clone centered episodes of The Clone Wars, with Rookies and The Hidden Enemy leading the way to episodes like The Deserter and then Clone Cadets and ARC Troopers fleshing out Domino Squad. I'd felt the Umbara Arc was easily the best of the Clone focused Stories and really wanted to bring it to peoples attention to show everyone just how good this "Kids Show" could be.

* Because we're all friends here
** To the point he once opined that it was now difficult to set a story in Ankh-Morpork now without it becoming a Watch Story.

[Aotrs Commander]

The most frightening thing about Krell in the first three episodes is how realistic he is.

No, really.

They didn't EVEN need to make him Secretly Evil - there is a tragic litany of real generals across history that genuinely thought along those same lines that he would have been completely believable as someone who had got into his position by luck (or unheralded 2-i-Cs), but was actually completely bereft of actual tactical ability.

Plenty of those - veering into only *slight*-overexaggerations of the review-mentioned Zap Brannegan - actually existed.

E.g. Just from this end of the pond, the British Army and Navy all too often in the latter third or so of the last millenium had sadly plenty of examples, where the generals, admirals and officers seemed to take the wrong message away from those instances of great heroism diplayed when lead by a charismatic and skillful leader, decided that if the troops would just fight hard enough and show enough grit, it was a substitute for actual tactics. It lead to stuff like the Royal Navy being out-fought by the US navy in the revolutionary war - most ironically, often ships crewed by defectors who were not actively mistreated, and funnily enough, fought better). And into WW1, where parachutes were forbidden, on the basis that the craven coward with a parachute would escape instead of fighting to the death (nevermind that was explictly the exact opposite effect of what actually happened).

Or there was the general (I forget the specifics and can't be arsed to go look it up) who decided that recon was [insert degrogatory term here], and that his army would attack this heavily defended fortress head on straight through all the fortifications... And had he but sent one man off to actually LOOK, he would have found the fortress's rear was basically completely undefended and this the fortress had all the metaphorical substance of the proverbial cardboard-cut-out western one-horse town.

Geoffrey Regan's Military Blunders series is worth checking out for any interested in this sort of thing, it's fascinating (and often tragic) reading.

[AndrewGPaul]

So, can anyone explain the significance of House of the Rising Sun? I’m not familiar with the interpretations of that song.

[Sir Will]

"I'd requested these episodes a few months after the passing of my favorite author, Terry Pratchett"

*looks it up* You forget how big the queue is. Glad it brought you some joy. I hope you life gets better soon.

[Scififan]

The idea of Jedi leading the clone troopers never really made sense to me. Jedi are not soldiers and they wouldn't get training for that. Hell in the original trilogy Luke is not in command in ROTJ Han and Lando are. They are best as specialized operatives, doing more espionage work or anything other than commanding ground troops.

As Todd said in the movie Soldier, "Soldiers deserve Soldiers".

[TrueMetis]

I think the "Jedi were evil assholes and losers" was often more a projection by certain elements of the fanbase rather than something that was actually there, even in most EU stories.

The Jedi were flawed, made mistakes, and had a few bad eggs, but were ultimately well-intentioned and generally a positive influence; despite that, way too many people seriously argue that they are just as bad as the Sith, usually based on a simplistic understanding of what the Sith are actually about (seeing the Sith as individualists rather than, in actuality, extreme and murderous egoists).

That's why I don't like Karen Travis's depiction of the Jedi, because she tend to portray them as incompetent self serving idiots living in a cult as best and malicious child stealing slavers at worst. I don't know why her depiction of the Jedi got so popular.

Lets not just blame Traviss, Bioware and Avellone are just as much to blame for the 'Proper' Sith aren't really the bad guys nonsense.

TBF to Bioware, it's a lot more nuanced than I recall the Traviss stuff being. Like a lot of the "the Jedi are the real bad guys, it's all their fault, did I mention the Jedi suck?" stuff did ultimately come from... let's say biased sources.

I mean if we look at how the Jedi acted in Kotor for example, they didn't want to get involved in the mandolorian war because they thought there was more going on than seemed to be... and they were right, it was the Sith Empire that orchestrated that. Also at the end of the day the Republic should have been able to handle the Mandolorians on their own. One of the biggest weaknesses of the Republic is that it relies much to heavily on the Jedi. Their handling of the situation when Revan defected left something to be desired, but honestly I can't really see a good option there.

Once you filter out the people who clearly aren't being truthful or are unable to be fair in their assessment you're left with a story that shows the Jedi as flawed, but ultimately good people trying to do their best. Much like the prequels try to show.

Kotor 2 paints the Jedi in a worse light, up until you remember that the Jedi you see are the last survivors of the Jedi's extermination, and the person who talks about the Jedi most is fucking Kreia. Plus that one ends canonically with the main character recreated the order anyway, which does kind of suggest that order is a force for good.

[CrypticMirror]

The idea of Jedi leading the clone troopers never really made sense to me. Jedi are not soldiers and they wouldn't get training for that. Hell in the original trilogy Luke is not in command in ROTJ Han and Lando are. They are best as specialized operatives, doing more espionage work or anything other than commanding ground troops.

As Todd said in the movie Soldier, "Soldiers deserve Soldiers".

Primarily, it had to tie in with A New Hope where Obi Wan is referred to as General Kenobi who fought in the Clone War.

And, in universe, also because that was the way Palpatine set it up. He had the clone army set up in the name of a suspiciously recently deceased Jedi master, and programmed to obey the Jedi, then set it up so that it would fall into Jedi hands just when the Jedi had a crisis that needed a lot of manpower to resolve, and then as chancellor used that as an excuse to ensure that the Jedi were basically forced into acting as generals for it. It was part of his grand scheme to keep them busy while he amassed ever greater power as well as using the violence involved in soldiering to basically further groom Anakin to the dark side.

[TrueMetis]

As I recall the Jedi also realized how suspicious it was and so that's one of the reasons they allowed themselves to be put in charge, they thought they would be able to better keep an eye on things that way. Sort of the opposite of how the Kotor era Jedi handled things.

[Thebestoftherest]

To me the gray Jedi should be those Willing to go against some Jedi teaching with reason but at the expense of some of the light side power.

[Robovski]

It's like having Mr. Rogers as your babysitter for the longest time, and then for a week he's replaced by Doctor Evil.

While in general that doesn't seem entirely wrong, in this case Mr. Rogers is Anakin. So Mr Rogers crashing ships and yelling 'come on you apes, do you want to live forever?!' while he gets beaten up by Sith Lords.

So maybe more Captain Kangaroo than Mr. Rogers then.