Latest / Aggressive Negotiations: A Star Wars Podcast / Issue 320: Cooking With Midichlorians

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Issue 320: Cooking With Midichlorians · Aggressive Negotiations: A Star Wars Podcast

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Traveling through hyperspacing like Dustin Kropp's boy. Welcome to the note polity. Hi,
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this is Nick Nastasu, story editor on Star Wars, The Clone Wars
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and Star Wars bad Batch, and you are listening to Aggressive Negotiations. Thank
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you for joining Aggressive Negotiations, the Star Wars podcast that pokes at the different
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corners of the Star Wars galaxy. I'm one of your hosts, Jedi Master
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John Mills, and here on this deep galactic journey through time and space.
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Joining me is Jedi Master Matthew Rushing, finishing his latest bucket of Mandel mix.
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Master Rushing, how do you not have a stomach ache yet? Well,
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I mean I try to just think about, you know, how Wrecker
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would handle the situation, and I do that that and I take copious amounts
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of ant acids so that I can continue to eat them mandelbix because well it's
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delicious, so it sure seems so I can't wait to get my hands on
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some because I'm just going to keep putting it out there into the universe.
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That Disney needs to put this at Galaxy's edge or somewhere where we can lay
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our hands on it, because if they can come up with Haunted Mansion limited
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edition popcorn at the parks. They can do something for those of us watching
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the bad Batch, but something that everybody listening can do. You can go
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over to the Apple Podcasts app whatever you want to call it, give us
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a star rating and review, be a big help. And you can of
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course follow us on Twitter at the Jedi Masters, and you can follow the
1:48
network at joy nerd Party, and you can look for the Nerd Party on
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Facebook and Instagram. So, Matt, here we are in the aftermath of
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season three of The Mandalorian, which we recapped over on the six or two
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Club, and one point in particular, with the casual fans that I've spoken
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with, there's been some discontent with one of the plot points, which is
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the idea that Moff Gideon was trying to create clones of himself and graft force
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ability onto them. We know that he was doing that now that it doesn't
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tie directly in to bringing the Emperor back in human form, although we know
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this will eventually tie into the experiments that lead to Ray Palpa Skywalker Team.
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I want to put it out there for you that I have a way in
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my brain of ameliorating things, and I think I know where they're going to.
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But I think it's worthwhile to address this head on and just ask the
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question, because I spoke with somebody who insisted they completely reject this idea.
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Do you think it would actually work at any point to graft force powers to
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a non naturally force using person or their clone by injecting mediclarians into the mix?
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I think you you really in many ways, you know, you are
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left with this idea. And we know from from Lucas that that every single
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part of the Star Wars galaxy, and everybody that you know is a part
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of the Star Wars galaxy, um has the force a part of them?
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Right? Because the force is in everything and every living thing, every living
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thing, yes, um, and and and so it permeates everything in that
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way. And so therefore, if that's the case, it would be about
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and again the science of it would be about trying to find a way a
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tow up one's Mediclurian count And how would you do that? And I think,
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and especially with here like because we're asking, okay, how how do
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you make somebody force sensitive in the sense that they can use the force that
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can'ts and which is obviously a different question than asking, you know, how
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do we clone somebody who has forceability so that they actually have forceability in their
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clone? But I think what the interesting part about that is that the two
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questions are actually linked because it has to do with in many ways. I
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think, um, just how difficult it is for technology, even technology that
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is suppose to be one for one, how that is kind of thwarted by
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the force itself like it. And so I think it's just it really is
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to me a very interesting question. And so I I'm interested to see.
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You know, obviously you just sprung this queet. We didn't talk about what
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we're going to talk about here in this episode at all beforehand, and so
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it sounds like you have been giving this some thought, and so I am
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fascinated to see what your thought process is on it. Not really, I
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mean, I did spring it on you because it didn't occur to me to
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talk about it till right before we turned on the microphones, because I was
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sitting here and we had said, you know, well, what are we
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going to talk about this time? And I remembered that conversation just before we
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turn on the microphones because I had it earlier today, and it's sort of
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it must be, it must have been sitting in the back of my mind.
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But what I said at the time was the first thing I asked the
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person who rejected the idea was had they read the Heir to the Empire trilogy,
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the original Throng trilogy, and they said no, And I said,
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well, if you get to that one. You know, originally it's put
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forth that clones would go nuts because they, you know, they were not
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created within a natural order. You had to have the e Salimari in order
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to create force bubble so that clones could be grown without going crazy. But
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then you had Druius Sabbath, who was a crazy clone of Joris Sabbath,
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and it's explained that that extra letter showed that in all of those sorts of
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things. And so the person acknowledged and said, well, yes, if
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you clone somebody who's a force user, then yes, I can buy that
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that transferred over to them. And the real sticking point was manipulating the mediclarians
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in such a way that the person would suddenly become a force user. And
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it's more that I'm bouncing it off of you, because one of the things
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that I hit on is we know Thraun is coming back. Is this a
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way back into having one of the plot lines resuscitated in a new way.
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Thraun is obviously resuscitated in a new way. Is this part of our build
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to giving us a pseudo heir to the empire storyline? Because Thraun will step
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in and say, no, no, you're going about this all wrong.
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You need to do X, Y and Z. I think that's one thing
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I'd love to get your thoughts on. The other thing is, even if
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you were to inject a ton of medicalorians and make somebody force sensitive, I
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think that a massive miscalculation is that doesn't mean they're going to walk out and
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be Ray Skywalker about it, right, Like they're not going to know the
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Force just because you're born with the ability. Anakin didn't know, Luke didn't
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know. You have to encounter somebody who knows the ways of the Force and
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can train you, and so that become Does that tie into thrown? So
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I just want to bounce those two things off you. I don't think that
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Thron is going to come in with anything to do with the Force, because
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one we know how Thron feels about the Force and Cannon. He's not a
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fan of it and doesn't understand it and has a really hard time quantifying it.
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So I don't think that's going to be the case. But you know,
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what makes this an interesting question, I love that you were going down
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this road, was the fact that we know that from Cannon that Snoke was
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a created being, yes, that had the force, and so that there
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is and of course the Emperor himself being kept alive by or cloned or whatever
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like. So there is this this ability for that to happen. But what
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seems to be the case is that by disrupting the natural order of the force,
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you are actually creating beings who, while they may be powerful, they
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almost seem to have like a half life or like Voldemort wise, right,
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you know, you know, and I think of and Harry Potter and the
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Sorcerer's I think of Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone, where you know,
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they talk about the idea of drinking unicorn blood and how it keeps you even
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if you're a moment from death, it can keep you from dying, but
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you have a cursed life and a half life, and it almost seems as
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though, by playing with the Force in ways that are so unnatural. This
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way, it creates a being that has a very short life, or seems
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to have a very painful life and or deformed life, like Snoke and or
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the Emperor. So maybe that's kind of where some of the answers come.
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It's possible, but it's not pretty, you know. It's it's like the
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Genie saying, you know, I can bring people back from them dead.
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It's not a pretty sight. I don't like doing that. You know.
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The Force is basically saying the same thing. All right, A couple of
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things I want to jump on with that. First off is I'm completely rejecting
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your entire argument because you said Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. It's Harry
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Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. I don't care what it was called over in
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England. That's the title over here in America, and that's the official title.
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Now, No, it is not, Yes, it is JK.
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Rowling, the actual author. Oh I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I have
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a book on my shelf right now, says saucers Stone. You know,
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hey, yeah, that's because you're a dumb American and they didn't think Americans
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would read I may be dumb, and I may be an American, but
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I forgot what your counterpoint was. So there you go. So okay.
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So another couple of things. Yes, the Emperor says Snoke was my creation,
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but does he possibly mean that Snoke was a forced user that he then
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did what you're talking about, where he kept him going through cloning and transferring
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his essence or even just hitting the restart button the way that Doctor Venture does
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with his sons in the Venture Brothers. Anybody who watched that show got that
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joke. And so it's possible because the thing is that he obviously had a
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back catalog of snokes. Judging from the opening of Rise of Skywalker, he
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had a whole treasure trove. Oh snow and for all we know, if
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we want to torture this Voldemort comparison, they were snow cruxes that he had
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instilled some of his soul into. So you know there are snow crux there
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you go, You welcome everybody. But you know, I think that,
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um, I think that. I think somewhere in the span of our three
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hundred plus episodes, we have to have touched on this at some point.
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That the medic Chlorians aren't just like an additive, like you know, putting
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a Vitamin B twelve shot into your pop tarts in the morning. They are
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a living organism, right exactly. So there's a sense I would say to
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play into your half life idea that it's a tortured, shorter existence, is
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that the medic Clorians themselves would rebel against the idea of being forcibly injected.
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So I would maintain that Gideon's clones were destined for failure from the beginning.
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No matter what, Gideon's clones would be a failure. And even if right,
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but let's say he hatches them and they all walk out, they're not
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him, and so he's just created you know, there were eight of them
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there or something like that. So he's just created eight cranky four sensitives who
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are going to turn on him. You know. It's a classic sort of
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thing where evil always overestimates exactly how loyal, Yeah, people are going to
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be sort of thing. But do you think Gideon's clones were just basically destined
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for failure then well, I mean I love your idea that you know,
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when you think about the fact that, as we know, the many quarians
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are beings all in of themselves, and they are the way in which sentient
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beings like humans or any other alien in the galaxy has connection to the force.
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And so then by working to manipulate the natural system that allows a being
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to either be force sensitive so that they can be in tune with a force
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in a way that allows them to be able to harness it and work in
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concert with it and control it in some sense. I mean, I think
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all of this is an absolute reason why if you're playing with that and you're
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screwing with that, and you're doing it in an unnatural way, like you
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said that, they would rebel and it would create this corruption of what is
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natural and beautiful and create the alternative to that. You know, it's basically
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the antithesis of life because it's turning what was good into basically what it was
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evil and is evil because evil is trying to control something in a way that
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it's not meant to be controlled. So I really, I really love that
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because I think it's really on target with why this is so difficult to do
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one and two you know whether or not, you know, somebody like doctor
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Pershing would actually be able to make this work. And three, if he
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made it work, would those clones have actually of Gideon actually been able to
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receive it? How would they have turned out? I mean, would they
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have just become these deformed monsters? You know? I think all of that
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creates a really great question, and I think we actually are kind of digging
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into why this has only worked a couple of times. I mean, and
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especially when we go with what we get in Cannon, the fact that there's
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a entire planet of the Sith there on Exagal, and they are working to
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uncover these type of mysteries because they don't care about the repercussions, because they
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don't care about what's normal. They only want control. I think it really,
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you know, that's actually a good and it's an unfortunate thing that it's
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not able to be explored, you know, throughout all three of the sequel
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trilogy movies in some depth, because I think there's actually a very interesting thematic
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element to be unpacked there and would have been fascinating to actually have that unpacked.
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I agree with that. It's definitely something that is a thread that would
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have been interesting to Paul. Something we're overlooking here, which is especially surprising
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as fans of The Bad Batch is Omega. We've toyed with the idea that
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Omega might What is it about Omega that is so special about her? And
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is it possible that Omega in season three of The Bad Batch winds up being
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a key to all of this that we don't know yet, and so our
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answer might come about by Omega provides the key for how this can be done,
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because remember, the Camonowens created her, and the Camonowens were the best,
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yeah that were there, and so that but I mean, I guess
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doesn't that then tie into what you're talking about, where the Sith are so
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focused on the short term goals that Palpatine can't even see that by destroying the
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Camonowens, he has screwed his long term goal of getting done what he's hoping
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to do, which is very obviously regardless of how Return of the Jedi goes,
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Palpatine makes the error of not wanting to die the way he's supposed to.
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Like the whole thing about the Sith, and this is one of the
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things that I've sort of loved about. What contributes to Palpatine's downfall is when
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the Apprentice is ready to take out the master in the sith one to hold
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power, one to crave. It is once the apprentice a sends, they're
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supposed to be an acceptance because the cause, I mean, they're the ultimate
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idealogues. The cause is greater than the seth. Right, You're willing to
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die so long as it means that the cause will survive. And of course
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there's a whole bunch to unpack with Vader not really being Scythe at heart,
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etcetera, etcetera. And Palpatine's first key mistake is going for Dooku instead of
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going back to the drawing board and starting from childhood. But this is one
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of those things where this experimenting with everything speaks to that ultimately, like Palpatine
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always wants to be the one to come out on top, he is actually
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a very quote unquote bad Scythe because he's not as committed to the cause as
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he should be. He's committed to the self, which you could argue,
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well, that's the ultimate problem with evil people is even if the system is
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set up to support them, you know, they all eventually go pullpot or
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Stalin or castor with it. I mean, I love the idea, and
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obviously it is a part of Star Wars to which the villain always ends up
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undercutting its own desires because of this desire to be in ultimate control. You
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know, we know from the Bad Batch, and I think you're right in
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pulling on that thread, is that they destroy the Camonohans so that they control
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cloning, and by seeking to control that technology, they actually then cut themselves
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off from the ability to continue to work with them and get the best out
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of them and realize there's always a possibility to take them out when they need
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to. There's no reason to do this this early, especially when they do.
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You know, you can do that whenever you want, So why not
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just continue to work with them, push them towards what you're working towards,
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and get them to basically give you what you want, and then take them
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out. And so, you know, I think that's you're one hundred percent
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right in that. I think there's there's such a correlation there between the idea
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of the way in which evil tends to defeat itself because it can't stop itself
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from wanting to have control in this way, and I think which ultimately yeah,
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no, I'm sorry, which ultimately which we know from the way Lucas
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constructed the backstory is what took the Sith out in the first place, and
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why the rule of two got instituted, right, was because the Sith couldn't
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help themselves from what you're talking about, exactly, and so it took somebody
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with truly great discipline like Darth Baine and his apprentice Darth Zanna. Right.
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It took true vision and true commitment to the idea of the Sith as opposed
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to the success of the self. Although the Sith always fascinating because there's that
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walking that fine line exactly how much of self and how much of cause is
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truly the motivating factor there. So just to wrap it up, though,
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let me ask you this question, I think it's fair to say the two
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of us not entirely satisfied with the way everything wrapped up with Season three of
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The Mandalorian, especially this particular plot line. Yes, correct, Do you
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think we will get satisfaction in some way regarding all of this in either Ahsoka
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or one of the future shows that's coming. I think it is very clear
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that everything right now that they are doing seems to be working very diligently at
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tying as much of these story points from the prequels all the way to this
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equal trilogy together, and one of those things has to do with the idea
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of cloning, force cloning and all of that stuff, because it becomes such
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an important story point for this equal trilogy. And so I really do see
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that we are that they have a plan to do that, and that we
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are going to get some resolution to that story. And part of it's going
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to be through the third season of The Bad Batch, and I believe the
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rest of that's going to come here with what we're doing in the Mandalorian Ahsoka,
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you know, maybe even what we do in Skeleton Crew, who knows,
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and of course with the film that Dave is going to do to kind
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of bring a lot of these story ideas together. I think that that's that's
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the reason that they're doing it, and so I do believe it's going to
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happen. I just believe, you know, that they're having to lay a
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lot of groundwork, They're having to do a lot of legwork, because in
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all honesty, that's something that the sequel trilogy didn't do. It told a
23:17
story without a lot of context, and in all honesty, that's been my
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biggest complaint against the Equal Trilogy from the very beginning, where's the context here?
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And so now they're having to go back and they're they're building that context,
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but they're not just doing it in the timeline of the Mandalorian. They're
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actually building that context all the way from the prequel era and the Dark Ages
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into the rest, so that the answer we get becomes more holistic than just
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oh well, it was just this one, you know, this thing.
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You know, we're making it a part of the whole, and I think
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that's the better way to do it. And I think that ultimately what we
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all truly hope is that somehow they find a way to bring back Captain easter
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Grass Christmas Tree from The Mandalorian and his band of Mary Pirates. Kevin easter
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Grass Christmas Tree could be I think that's your breakout character. If you can
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find a way to clone him and make him for sensitive, you have your
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villain for Filoni's movie right there. That's what I'm sticking with. But Matt,
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I think that people should talk to you about my brilliant idea that I
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just laid out there. Where can they find you online? Well, if
24:37
you do want to poke holes and John's theory, which is not difficult with
24:42
easter Grass. You can find me all over social media under the name Matt
24:47
Rushing Zoe to Twitter, Instagram, letterbox and Varro are the places I'm most
24:49
active. Of course, you're on the network. I also did owl post
24:52
with Ray Kaufman as we talked about every single chapter of the Harry Potter series,
24:56
one chapter at the time. You can also find over on the TFM
25:00
network with a bunch of shows. One is the six or two Club.
25:03
John mentioned the fact that we broke down the entire season the Mandalorian over there.
25:07
We talk about all the phantoms we love and so please check that out.
25:11
And I'm doing literary treks about the books and the comics of Star Trek.
25:15
The orb about Star Trek Deep says nine, We're five about Star Trek
25:18
Enterprise, Saddle Up about Strange New Worlds and the Artificial Tango just wrapped up
25:23
as we talked about the final season of Star Trek Picard season three. But
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John, if people wanted to catch up with you, you know where would
25:33
they fight, Well, they can find me hanging out with Captain easter Grass,
25:37
Christmas Tree as Kessel Junkie Online k s s l Ju and Kie.
25:41
Trust me, probably letterbox is the best place to hang out because that's where
25:47
I get the opportunity just to talk about movies. And that's pretty much all
25:51
it's worth talking about in the world today, I'd say. But you can
25:56
also find me right here on the network co hosting a show called house Lights
26:00
with Darren Moser and Tristan Riddell, where we look at the works of directors
26:03
through all sorts of crazy combinations and lenses and different ways to give us excessive
26:10
homework to rewatch a ton of things. But all of that being said,
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Matt, I think that I need to go get an injection of mediclorians to
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try to make myself a force user. Unfortunately, I don't know. This
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needle seems a little odd and it's on one of those interrogator droids. But
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figure, what the hell, what is there? What is there to just
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say no? Just say no? John? Uh, Well, I got
26:34
a big experience. It's it's time to close and these negotiations because well they
26:40
are closed. Indeed they are Join the revolution, Join the nerd Party.