And about the force...listen to Ben and Yoda, they told you everything you need to know, and they didn't contradict each other either.

It's an energy field created by life and binds the Galaxy and everything in it as an interconnected system. Even rocks have the force in them and have connections to everything else. This field is something that can be sensed, tapped into, measured, and otherwise studied by beings who are sensative to it. This field also 'controls' everything and everyone despite being mutable to the whims of individuals. Future events are shaped by the force and patterns can be sensed to predict likely outcomes, and these patterns in the force can be manipulated again by force sensative beings. It might be said that sentient life is the conscious expression of this energy field.

As far as the midichlorians go, I guess they allow life to tap into the force and use its energy to produce effects. Instead of one specific organ able to manipulate the energy it's lots and lots of organelle-like structures found in all life...how it got there, who knows. I'm sure BKL, with his exhausting, uh, I mean exhaustive knowledge of the EU can shed light onto the mechanisms and characteristics on the midichlorians.

Of course there's also the dual nature of this Force, but that's another topic.

ANH showed us a model of what the Jedi were and how they operated. Sure, Ben was I hiding, but look at how he went about while trying to get off the planet. He tried to lay low and only used his lightsabre when he had to (when Luke was gonna be killed by some crazy mo to in a bar). For the most part he tried to blend in, and any action he took was swift and decisive.

He chopped off an arm and showed an entire bar of bounty hunters and scum that like to talk his lightsaber to say hey the Jedi are back when he could have force pushed the guy away from Luke disarming him in the process. Kenobi was a warrior general. He was out of hiding and on the offensive.

When he died to Vader he showed Luke it's a Jedi's job to fight and never retreat from a fight even if unwinnable.

Remember the deathsticks guy? He could have ignored him but meddled in the guy's business anyway knowing none of his story.

Against Anakin he didn't swiftly put him out of his misery. He made him a paraplegic and let him roast presumably to death.

Dude was a showboat, a badass, and awesome.

Obi-wan is also sarcastic as hell.

Even at his most mild moments in ANH.

It's entirely possible...that Obi-wan is not a very good Jedi. And he's just one of the only two that survived because he's a good fighter.

Not being a good jedi is exactly why he survived. Because the mentality of The Jedi is one destined to fail.

Obi-wan is also sarcastic as hell.

Even at his most mild moments in ANH.

<raises fingers> "Only Imperial stormtroopers are so precise".

Offcreen "lols, how gullible can you get? How did they even hit the side of this thing?'

Well, I mean, they're pretty on-point.

When they're not shooting at heroes, that is.

It's entirely possible...that Obi-wan is not a very good Jedi. And he's just one of the only two that survived because he's a good fighter.

Well Qui Gon was eve worse. He was using the force to cheat while making bets, using the force to take what he needed instead of proper negotiations. Not just selling the queen's ship to buy one way tickets for everyone to coruscanf, or buying a cheaper ship with a working hypedrive. Sending his padawan into a seperate landing ship during the battle of Naboo knowing that they might have a chance of not meeting up once on the planet. He defied the council at every turn including 'training' Anakin and forcing Obi wan to train him later. The list goes on and on. Still, you gotta love the guy, he was Liam after all.

Oh and he didn't let the Gungans kill jar jar or kill binks himself.

Well, I mean, they're pretty on-point.

When they're not shooting at heroes, that is.

They CAN hit the broad side of a sandcrawler after all.

Oh and jawas. I guess they were easier to hit than Ewoks, less cover in the desert.

No arguments

Well Qui Gon was eve worse.

Qui Gon was so bad at being a Jedi, I was half hoping that episode 2 would have a line from Mace Windu that was like "That nutbar had this crazy theory where these bacteria in your blood let you control the Force."

Which is funny, because I don't have a problem with the existence of them on their own, just how they operate.

If they'd described it as "They're these microscopic beings that are drawn to concentrations of the Force like a Mynoc is drawn to power cables." I would have had no problem with them. And they'd have still been a useful way to have a machine that could detect Force talent.

I have a problem with those creatures being necessary to use the Force.

That said, Midichlorians do make Vornsky and Ysalamiri make more sense.

^the Plagueis book, I felt, did a pretty good job of moving midichlorians away from terminally stupid.

Thing 1: No, they're not. That doesn't keep there from being mythologized samurai who were able to deflect arrows with their swords

Right, but that's not what he said. He didn't say "lightsabers were weapons that were mythologized to deflect lasers" he said they were built to block shots.

It's clearly a sword, it was built to cut things. The fact that it can also block shots is incidental. It's a weapon designed to kill people.

Thing 2: They're not an order of peace. They're peacekeepers. They're police, marshals, wardens, &c.

I agree that that's what they SHOULD be, but that is not way all of their philosophical teachings, and portrayed through the canon, especially as told by Yoda, portrays them as.

Well, yes, lightsabers are basically the kensai 's sword taken to it's ultimate, futuristic awesomeness.

I think Yoda was the Jedi Order's Willie Nelson: Everybody loves him, but they all know he's higher than a kite at any given time and don't really take him super seriously.

Or like your crazy grandmother/great-grandmother: Crazier than a brick shithouse, but arguing with her will do you no good. You'll either end up looking like an ass for "correcting" your honored, venerable relative, or you'll be brutally smacked down and embarrassed to have been bested by a person with such limited faculties.

In any case, it's safe to say that the Jedi Order more likely than not had its own politics and "political parties" or cliques. So everybody listens when Yoda speaks, but some of them probably roll their eyes (probably not in front of the Jedi Council or Council members of opposing cliques).

Now that I think about it, Jedi politics could have made the prequels and TCW more interesting. I tend to imagine that a lot of Jedi, particularly younger Jedi, would have belonged to an Anakin Skywalker clique and a good number of them would have happily led the 501st's charge into the Jedi Temple.

In order to defeat the jedi, it would also help:

- Not to arrange all your droids squads packed like if it were a napoleonic army, slowly walking forward at snail pace while they are basically getting a rain of enemy fire. That is stupid. It also covers accuracy shortfalls, quantity is a quality all of it's own.

- Not to make laughable bidepal droids that a single blaster hit is enough to destroy, that experience fear and run when overwhelmed, that stop functioning when they are beheaded. Yeah, this is dumb.

- Actually, just don't make them resemble a weak humanoid. There is no point at all for that. Why not just flying things that attack their enemies from above where they cannot be reached by lightsaber? Oldcanon indicates that they were costructed to look like dessicated neimoidian warriors, so probably a psychological tactic.

- If you absolutely must do all of the above, equip them with an internal thermal detonator that explodes when the droid is destroyed (a deadman's switch), and see those Jedi keep their distances and become little else than glorified portable shields. This is actually a particularly bad idea, as that means that blaster bolt that took DX1138 out now also exploded DX1139, 1140, 1141 and 1142.

And in the other way too...

If you are facing an army made almost entirely of clumsy, walking, mechanical soldiers, why not just shoot ion blasts and ion bombs all over the place?

Why shooting blasters against metal men? Okay, you can damage them, but wouldn't it be more intelligent not to use the same weapons you use against flesh and bone enemies?

When your primary enemy is Jedi the weapons those droids had (blasters) probably aren't the best choice. Napalm/incendiary would be my goto. Shotguns and slugthrowers too.

Of course, interestingly enough - had they went with slugthrowers and shotguns, Clones would walk over them roughshod even more than they already did in the clone wars,

The issue with napalm and incendiary weapons is that they would be pretty easy to Force Push back on the people deploying them and shotguns and slugthrowers would have projectiles that could also easily be diverted by using the Force.

In any case, your weapons need to be effective against the troops you're facing 99.999% of the time: Clones and local pro-Republic militias. Arming every battle droid with anti-Jedi weapons would be like fighting the Taliban or Viet Cong or Janjawed with every soldier armed with MANPADs.

And the ease with which battle droids are disabled belies one of their greatest strengths: A damaged battle droid, even one that is off-lined by combat, can much more readily be restored to life than a clone. And a droid that is more easily disabled is probably also easier to repair: One Separatist technician can probably return ten disabled battle droids to fighting trim much faster than a clone medic can restore ten dead clones to life.

^the Plagueis book, I felt, did a pretty good job of moving midichlorians away from terminally stupid.

So, about Rebels itself.

That was a solid episode. Also, the Shadowcast is a badass starship... And clearly a product of Koensayr.

Was not as much of a fan of this episode. I felt that sabine was too quick to trust a supposed enemy.

And the hunter in turn was too helpful.

I liked it. Good action with the Stormtroopers. I like Ketsu.

The ship was awesome! I seen a 2 dice primary turret with the option for a cannon front arc?

I liked the episode, I will agree they changed allegiances pretty quickly, but I think they both had past and wouldn't screw the other over if no one won from it. Example: If she ran with the ship and left Sabine on the shuttle, she'd get her bounty but have left a friend to die a horrible death and not have Chopper's help getting away from the imperials. The bounty hunter seems an opportunist and practical more than anything.

It's entirely possible...that Obi-wan is not a very good Jedi. And he's just one of the only two that survived because he's a good fighter.

Well Qui Gon was eve worse. He was using the force to cheat while making bets, using the force to take what he needed instead of proper negotiations. Not just selling the queen's ship to buy one way tickets for everyone to coruscanf, or buying a cheaper ship with a working hypedrive. Sending his padawan into a seperate landing ship during the battle of Naboo knowing that they might have a chance of not meeting up once on the planet. He defied the council at every turn including 'training' Anakin and forcing Obi wan to train him later. The list goes on and on. Still, you gotta love the guy, he was Liam after all.

Oh and he didn't let the Gungans kill jar jar or kill binks himself.

I actually consider QuiGon the best Jedi of those we saw in the PT. The reason the council disliked him was because they had become so obsessed with rules they had forgotten their purpose. As for trading the ship for another he would need the Queen's ok an have to find a ship to buy, confirm it was functional and transfer everyone from the yacht to the new ship which would take more time then what his plan did.

The thing with qui-gon that bothers me. He was obviously willing to, basically, swindle watto with a mind trick to get him to accept republic credits. But the mind trick didn't work on watto and they didn't have anything else to barter with. So why didn't he find another dealer he COULD mind trick, and yes the credits to buy stuff to trade to watto?

The Lightsaber idea does require lots of suspended disbelief, unfortuantely.

If the Jedi are a police force, then pretty obviously they should be using non-lethal weapons (stunners, shock-prods, clubs) as opposed to maiming/decapacitating criminals. Even if you are an evil policeman, apprehending criminals mostly intact (for interrogation) is more effective than cutting them in half.

If the Jedi are a military force, lightsabers are ludicrously ineffective as a front-line weapons.

But the worst part is how easy it should be to counter the Jedi in the Clone wars. Close-combat specialists that can deflect some incoming projectiles? And they're a problem?

Solutions:

Projectile saturation: use shotguns and miniguns (up to 6000 rounds per minute) as opposed to blasters, which seem to have a poor rate of fire. A battle droid armed with two miniguns would fire 200 rounds per second, and even if the Jedi had the reflexes and speed necessary to block that volume of bullets, the strain of doing so would rip his muscles apart

High-explosive munitions: if the shrapnel doesn't kill them, the blast/heat wave will do the trick

Non-projectile weapons: Napalm sticks to Jedi, or at least can't be deflected with a sword. Flamethrowers (real ones, not the funky little gas-burners Bobba used), poisonous gas, radiation - most of the above would do.

Nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

Another solution is mass firepower. Which we saw worked in EP2...

It's entirely possible...that Obi-wan is not a very good Jedi. And he's just one of the only two that survived because he's a good fighter.

Well Qui Gon was eve worse. He was using the force to cheat while making bets, using the force to take what he needed instead of proper negotiations. Not just selling the queen's ship to buy one way tickets for everyone to coruscanf, or buying a cheaper ship with a working hypedrive. Sending his padawan into a seperate landing ship during the battle of Naboo knowing that they might have a chance of not meeting up once on the planet. He defied the council at every turn including 'training' Anakin and forcing Obi wan to train him later. The list goes on and on. Still, you gotta love the guy, he was Liam after all.

Oh and he didn't let the Gungans kill jar jar or kill binks himself.

I actually consider QuiGon the best Jedi of those we saw in the PT. The reason the council disliked him was because they had become so obsessed with rules they had forgotten their purpose. As for trading the ship for another he would need the Queen's ok an have to find a ship to buy, confirm it was functional and transfer everyone from the yacht to the new ship which would take more time then what his plan did.

Also not everyone from the yacht had to go, they could have come back for non essentials like...everyone but the queen.

Let's face it, Qui Gon was going too heavy on the gin, or what ever he was drinking.

Or he was just in tune with the force, and knew he would win.

THAT'S THE WHOLE POINT OF THE FORCE! It's not just space magic. It's the essence of the light side of the force. It's WHY they are space ninja-wizards who can dodge a blaster bolt like Kanan in the 1st ep of Rebels.(Sorry Rebels haters, you all have to admit that was cool).

The jedi mind trick as seen in star wars is basically the same as the Bene Gesserit voice from Dune (a real sci fi). Now, I will admit that the way Qui Gon uses it at times is questionable, but maybe he was intending on coming back later and repaying Watto? Qui Gon - like Anakin used the force with good intentions, the difference is that Anakin used it in aggression .

I am sure everyone can interpret the Jedi and Sith codes in different ways, myself I always preferred the Sith one (you might notice I tend to get aggressive when worked up).

Vs

There is no emotion, there is peace.

There is no ignorance, there is knowledge.

There is no passion, there is serenity.

There is no death, there is the Force.

Now, that peaceful acceptance from the first line allows the jedi to basically become Christian Bale's character from Equilibrium (more accurate than neo, but fine, neo). So dodging bullets by literally a millimeter because a millimeter is all that is required. To be in tune with the greater universe around you and not necessarily seeing but sensing how things will go.

Compare to the dark side which is a lot less passive, where you are constantly forcing change. More importantly you are giving in to your emotions. Hey, let's revisit Dune again, remember the Gom Jabbar? Just saying...

Shhhh enough about Dune, they'll send you to the Spice Mines of Kessel...

Yeah Star Wars owes a lot to dune... now that I think about it a lot more than I realized.