Su cuy'gar, everyone! With this post I bring you not a review, but something different! Something new and exciting! Welcome to the first segment of Making Sense of Star Wars!
Like most fans of the Star Wars saga, I would really like to make sense of the series. However, there are times when that seems impossible, even with Leland Chee and his Holocron continuity database. Sometimes things need more explanation, sometimes books, shows or movies don't fit in a conclusive timeline, and sometimes things just defy explanation. George Lucas certainly has made a mess of his saga, especially when it comes down to the Clone Wars. A lot of the timeline of the saga is relatively solid (with some canon issues here and there), but this three-year period between EpII and EpIII seem to be the messiest part of George Lucas' grand vision. And that's where I come in! With this blog entry, I aim to create a sub-division of the posts I make here at Clone Army Reviews, called Making Sense of Star Wars. When I come across something I would like to explain, speculate about or make sense of, I'm going to post it as a MSoSW post, and try my best to shed some light on the issue. In these segments, I'll try and explain the subject matter as best I can in a way that can be easily understood by someone actively reading and absorbing the information, but if I really go off the deep end and start babbling on and making no sense, leave a comment, directly quoting (That means copy/pasted, in quotation marks "") the part that didn't make sense to you and I'll try and explain it better.
So, that said, let's jump into the first segment of Making Sense of Star Wars!
And what have I got in store for our first segment?
The timeline of the Clone Wars, of course! Nothing is quite as in pieces as the Clone Wars' timeline.
I was in the middle of writing my review for Heroes on Both Sides, in which I try to explain why Ahsoka suddenly looks like she's at least a year or two older. I realized that, to explain anything relating to the passage of time in The Clone Wars, I first needed to make sense of the Clone Wars as a whole. I went off on a mad rant explaining how everything fit together, before I realized that it broke the flow of the review, and I would probably be best off writing a separate blog post explaining the timeline, as I might have ended up writing more about the timeline than the actual episode I was reviewing. This post consists of that explanation, and concludes it, providing a timeline with both Genndy Tartakovsky's and Dave Filoni's cartoons. It does not deal with the specifics of Ahsoka's physical maturity, that is detailed in the Heroes on Both Sides review.
As I have not read the comics or plowed through all the books (Note: There is a small aside at the end about where the books/comics fit in the whole timeline), today I'll mostly be dealing with the two main media outlets for The Clone Wars; the television shows. Genndy Tartakovsky had a go at telling a grand tale of Star Wars once, and by the Force was it grand indeed. Then Filoni came along, and with Lucas' help, made a mess of the timeline. Well, we have all the pieces in front of us, let's try and figure out what's what!
NOTE: This explanation does not take into account direct clashes in canon, like the Battle of Coruscant, which was depicted in both Genndy's 2003 Clone Wars cartoon and the novel Labrynth of Evil. Karen Traviss' novels are another matter entirely, and I will attempt to mesh them with the Mandalore story arcs of Filoni's Clone Wars cartoon in another Making Sense of Star Wars segment.
It's an established fact that the Clone Wars lasted three years (22 BBY to 19 BBY). For ease of explanation, let's divvy up the war into three sections, each represented by a year- Year 1, Early War (22-21 BBY, when the conflict began in its early stages) Year 2, Mid War (21-20 BBY, when the war reached a turning point and everything started to become muddled and unclear) and Year 3, Late War (20-19 BBY, when pretty much everything went to hell). If we try to mesh Genndy Tartakovsky's cartoon with Dave Filoni's, we more or less come up with something like this- Genndy's story from the beginning of Season 1 to mid-Season 2 (when Anakin is knighted) details the very beginning of the Clone Wars, probably taking up a good part of Year One, the Early War year. From Anakin's knighting to the scene that takes place directly after the ceremony, there is actually a huge time gap (Even though the show's pacing and editing would lead us to believe it is a much smaller time frame). The time period between before and after Anakin's knighting in Genndy's show is where the entirety of Dave Filoni's (so far) takes place. Much like Episode II and III, which jumped from the very beginning of the war to the very end, Genndy too leaves us with a large, unfilled gap, which is slowly but surely being filled by this new show. This actually works well because, while Genndy's cartoon was very grand and very busy, it detailed only a handful of key events in chronological order; specifically the Battle of Muunilist, the Battle of Mon Calamari, the Battle of Dantooine, the Battle of Illum and the Battle of Hypori, which takes place off-screen. Other key events that happen in Seasons 1 and 2 are Asajj Ventress' introduction and presumed death, along with the introduction of Grievous at the end. The battles on Muunilist, Mon Calamari, Dantooine and Illum are all concurrent; happening at the same time. Anakin's battle with Ventress on Yavin 4 didn't last any more than a day (As the Battle of Muunilist, which Anakin was fighting in when he left, was drawing to a close when Anakin left, and the clones and Obi-Wan were cleaning up when he returned. Also, on Yavin 4, late day became night during the fight, and had not become day again while Anakin was there.) The beginning of Season 3 of Genndy's cartoon (when the show had become fifteen-minute mini-episodes instead of the five-minute microepisodes the first two seasons had done) wraps up the Battle of Hypori and then proceeds right into Anakin's knighting in Year 1, then jumps to the third year of the war, the Late War year of 20 BBY to 19 BBY, leaving out a large part of Year 1 and completely skipping Year 2. The period before the time jump, because it detailed only a few key battles and events that were all happening at about the same time, could have been told over the course of somewhere between a month to half a year, give or take. (The same idea of things happening at the same time could be applied to the new cartoon as well, if we begin to have continuity issues later on top of the ones we already have.) Dave Filoni's The Clone Wars picks up more or less right after Anakin's knighting. (SPECULATION: Given that Anakin has grown out his hair a bit and he has matured slightly, I estimate that the period between the knighting and the Clone Wars film spans somewhere between a few weeks and two months.) It picks up in the middle of Early War (22-21 BBY), and if we approximate a rough timeline, Season 1 and somewhere between the first three quarters to almost all of of Season 2 cap off the Early War year, and mid- to end-Season 2 is when the Mid War year begins, which then leads into Season 3, somewhere in the early to the middle of the Mid War year, which takes place between 21 and 20 BBY. This puts this episode, the "current" episode, which constitutes where in the war we are now (since the next episode, Pursuit of Peace, is an out-of-order episode from before Onaconda Farr is murdered, as Farr is still alive in that episode), placing us somewhere in the Mid War year, probably either at the end of 21 BBY or the very beginning of 20 BBY, assuming the years change in the middle of the year-long periods. To make a rough timeline of it all...
Genndy Tartakovsky's Show
Genndy's Season I, Season II, Season III Pre-Knighting (Battles of Muunilist, Mon Calamari, Dantooine and Illum)= GTS1, GTS2
Undisclosed Period of Time = UPT
Genndy's Season III Post-Knighting (Concluding battles of the Clone Wars) = GTS3
Episode III, Rise of the Empire, end of the Clone War = EpIII
YOU ARE HERE = Where in the timeline we are now as of the most recent episode, as of this writing, with Heroes on Both Sides being the latest episode. This will not be updated, so essentially this means where Heroes on Both Sides is.
Timeline graphic: (Notes: Timeline reads from top to bottom, events are bolded for ease of reading. V indicates forward direction of time passage, and order in which events take place.)
GTS1
|
V
GTS2
|
V
GTS3Knighting
|
|
V
UPT <- YOU ARE HERE
|
|
V
GTS3
|
V
EpIII, End of Clone War
Filoni's Show (Out-of-order episodes not taken into account)
Dave Filoni's Show
Dave's Clone Wars Film = DFCWF
Dave's Season I, Season II, Season III = DFS1, DFS2, DFS3
Dave's future seasons, unproduced episodes = DFFS
Timeline Graphic:
DFS1
|
V
DFS2
|
V
DFS3
|
V
DFFS
|
V
Other events
|
V
EpIII, end of Clone War
Now, if we mesh these two timelines together, what we get looks something like this...
Timeline graphic:
GTS1
|
V
GTS2
|
V
GTS3Knighting
|
V
DFS1
|
V
DFS2
|
V
DFS3 <- YOU ARE HERE
|
V
DFFS
|
V
GTS3
|
V
EpIII, End of Clone War
Now, when we take all this into account we need to remember that, even between episodes, there are gaps that can be filled, and events that can take place in between the episodes of these shows. The period between two battles can span anywhere between a day and a month, if not longer, so a number of events can occur either concurrently or between episodes. These events are detailed in the comics and books, among other media. While the comics and books do not enjoy as high a canon status as the films and shows, they are still a vital piece of the Star Wars saga that can fit in between these stories. One example is Jedi Trial, which tells a tale of Anakin before his knighting, where he befriends a particular Jedi Knight and leads a battle on the Outer Rim world of Praesitlyin. Because individual battles in either show are never set in stone as to exactly WHEN they take place (I.E. the Battle of Muunilist could have taken place mere days before Anakin is knighted, but by the same token, it could also be a period months, enough time to wage more battles on more planets), Jedi Trial could take place anywhere in the war before Anakin's knighting. Many, if not all of, the books' and comics' stories, many of which center around characters other than Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi (unlike the shows, which focus most of their energy on the pair) could be melded into the timeline in the same manner, being explained as concurrent events, battles occurring between episodes, and so forth.
And there you have it, Clone Wars' timeline explained. Whoo, what a rush! I hope that made sense to you, 'cuz I swear it made sense in my head as I was writing it.
Be sure to catch the next segment of Making Sense of Star Wars, where I try to mesh Karen Traviss' Republic Commando novels with Dave Filoni's Death Watch story arc, which takes place on Mandalore. Said segment might end up being a good bit of speculation, but I will cite only canon information relating to the books and episodes and try to come up with a solution, provided Filoni doesn't bring us back to Mandalore. (If he does, Vizsla needs to shoot Satine in the face.)
Well, until next time, k'oyaci!
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