Falling Out With Star Wars - RE: Dark Disciple

So a couple of weeks ago I was meandering through Barnes and Noble with little real idea of what to look at or get, I was just kind of killing time one lazy afternoon while out of state visiting family. Eventually I found myself in the Sci-Fi aisle staring at the Star Wars section now dominated by orange bars on almost all the titles saying "Legacy," which indicates that those are the old extended universe books that are no longer canon after the Disney takeover. Only a handful of titles lacked the bar and as I flipped through some I stumbled on Star Wars: Dark Disciple and on the cover were Quinlan Voss and Asajj Ventress. When the Clone Wars show was cancelled I remember a few interviews where the production team talked about some of the unfinished arcs dealing with Darth Maul and Asajj Ventress being covered in either graphic novel or novel form so I had kind of been expecting this book but I had also not been looking out for it or avidly following news. I just sort of knew that eventually it would come and I would eventually stumble upon it and lo and behold that is exactly what happened.

Part of the reason I was so unwilling to look forward to this book or keep an eager eye on Star Wars news is because I have long had a love-hate relationship with Star Wars, it's products and it's universe. For every good thing I love about Star Wars either George Lucas or someone else involved with the franchise has to do something that I absolutely hate. I loved Knights of the Old Republic, but the sequel was a rushed pile of shoulda--coulda-wouldabeen-better. I loved Force Unleashed but the sequel was a dumpster fire. I loved the original movies but the remasters were horrible (*cough*Greedo shooting first*cough*). The prequels were a hugely mixed bag with some good elements (Darth Maul) and some truly horrific elements (anything to do with Anakin and Padme). The original Clone Wars short-form cartoon series was epicly-awesometastic in every way with some of my all time favorite Star Wars moments ever. These moments included Saesee Tiin commanding a pirate-style boarding action and capture of a droid army warship in the middle of the space battle over Coruscant and the Arc Troopers rescuing Ki Adi Mundi and friends at the opening of the second season that served as the reveal of General Grievous. The Clone Wars animated series on the other hand opened with Clone Troopers abandoning a position of hard cover to attack an advancing droid army in melee combat with predictably disastrous results, easily one of the stupidest and most inexcusable moments of the entire series. The moment was so dumb even the animators pointed this out with one clone trooper punching a droid only to do no damage and pull back shouting and clutching his broken hand before he is subsequently shot dead. When the plot of your own production is so stupid even your own production is making fun of it there is a serious problem.

I have a hard time finding anything in Star Wars that I can look back on with a hundred percent positive feeling, everything is mixed with some excellence and some utterly miserable nonsense. Which brings me to Dark Disciple. Now one of the constant problems with the Clone Wars series was that there was never any tension or serious suspense in any of the episodes despite the plot or action because the characters involved were all known and present in Episode III of the prequels. From Mace Windu and Yoda to lesser known characters like Kit Fisto and Plo Koon and even the villains Grievous and Dooku had no suspense because we knew their ultimate fate in Episode III. No matter how many times these characters were hurt or captured their fate was already set in stone and so no suspense, tension or emotional investment was possible. The show really always should have focused (as apparently was initially intended) on lesser known characters absent from the scenes in Episode III. This is why those characters unique to the show such as Ashoka Tano and Asajj Ventress were so interesting and were easily the most stand-out elements of the Clone Wars show. Because the fate of these characters was not written in per-established movie canon they did command emotional investment in their stories, when they were captured or imperiled the audience did not know if they would emerge unscathed.

The ultimate fate of Ashoka in the series when she is essentially betrayed by the Jedi order and leaves it even after Anakin clears her name the impact to the audience was so much greater than anything that solely involved Anakin or Obi-Wan in the entire series. Similarly the character evolution of Asajj Ventress (who actually first appeared in the original clone wars cartoon) was much more interesting and captivating. From frontier Jedi Padawan to Dark Jedi Gladiator to Sith Assassin to Droid Army General to Night Sister Assassin to Bounty Hunter the life and career evolution of Ventress was absolutely fascinating and made her my second favorite Star Wars character of all time (after Revan from KoTOR). When Ashoka appeared in the new Star Wars Rebels, a show I like much better than the original Clone Wars show, I was excited to see what would happen with Asajj. Simultaneously I feared what the notoriously hit-or-miss Star Wars franchise would do with my beloved character, would she see a return to the screen like Ashoka, would she get shelved or vanish indefinitely, or maybe would she even be killed off? I dared not speculate and so I studiously ignored the news and refused to get my hopes up.

It would seem my reservations were well founded for a quick flip to the back of Dark Disciple confirmed my worst fears, Ventress was killed off to save Quinlan Voss. I closed the book and stuffed it back on the shelf with disgust. Ventress dies and Voss lives. I am not exactly a Quinlan Voss hater, he is certainly one of the more interesting Jedi of the Clone Wars era but as a complex and evolving character he utterly pales next to the history of Ventress. Yet it didn't stop him from continuing to exist in the new canon while my favorite character of the entire Clone Wars Era dies stupidly, lamely, at the end of a single novel. Once more Star Wars let me down, the latest in a never ending series of failures, foul-ups, poor decisions and poor quality products going back decades. I mean I never did even mention the cancellation of Battlefront III and the aborted mess that was EA's new Battlefront. I refuse to get my hopes up for the sequel. It doesn't help that the Clone Wars series made Ashoka vanish at the end of Season Two, and Season Three saw the returned Darth Maul killed off in a short and very anticlimactic clash with an old-man Obi-Wan Kenobi. My favorite characters vanishing one-at-a-time in very disappointing fashion while less interesting new characters get pushed forward. Ezra and Kanan are not as bad as Anakin and Obi-Wan but would it have killed Disney to more fully include Ashoka or to add Ventress as a recurring character on rebels? As a long-time fan of the franchise despite all the ups and downs this feels like yet another kick to the teeth.

So far I have refused to even try to engage with the new comic series covering the original characters like Han Solo, Luke and Leia. What has reached me down the grape-vine has not been good with many fans I talk to baffled and horrified by poorly written new characters like Sana Starros and Doctor Aphra. Maybe what I have heard isn't fair but I can hardly blame the critics, characters like Ashoka, Maul and Ventress set a high bar even as relatively minor characters and their replacements just do not seem up to the challenge of matching their predecessors. I don't know who made the decision to kill of Ventress, or why. Why such an interesting character who could have been a recurring subject of books, comics and episodes of Rebels for years to come was discarded like yesterday's rubbish, I don't know. I cannot conceive of the logic behind the decision and it certainly doesn't add weight or emotional investment in the Dark Disciple story, I just don't care about it or Voss much, I wanted to read more about Ventress and now I won't get that chance.

I don't know how much longer my love for Star Wars will win out against my frequent disappointment and dislike for Star Wars, but somehow I do not think it will be long if Disney continues down this path.

So long Asajj Ventress, you will be missed.