textfiles/sf/bane_of_

Episode III is the Bane of the Jedi.  It is a seriously written
tragedy and romance set in the waning years of the Republic
immediately following the Jedi victory in the Clone Wars dealing with
the rise of a young, newly married and ambitious Jedi hotshot named
Anakin Skywalker.

The name refers both to the Dark Side of the Force and to the
corruption rotting the insides of the Republic manifested
particularily in a Senator named Palpatine.

It starts out with a "flashforward" of the now famous scene of the
rebel starship fleeing as the huge imperial star destroyer lunges
forth across the screen -- the Scene that Started it all.  Then the
fade out and flashback to the more peaceful setting of the late years
of the Republic and the rest of the story is a tragic account of "how
we got to here".

The young pilot is a celebrated hero from the War, he returns to home
to his longtime lover and they marry and it seems that from there on
it would be yet another "they lived happily ever after".  But it
doesn't take long for him to feel the restlessness of the homelife.
He has everything: he's a young extraordinarily handsome widely
celebrated hero married to a beautiful and loving wife, and yet he
still feels empty inside.

A General from the War, also an arrogant Jedi who thinks he's hot
stuff takes notice of this pilot, particularily the stirrings in the
Force emanating from him, and takes him under his wing.

At first, things seem okay.  They'll go to Dagobah, where Anakin can
receive thebest possible training under the Reknowned Master Yoda.
But Yoda patently refuses to take on this new student in words to be
reflected at a later time "Too ambitious.  Too reckless is he.  No
good.  A Jedi he will never become."

General Kenobi refuses to accept the Master's assessment.  They get
into a serious conflict that almost ends in their friendship.  Kenobi
decides to take on the student himself in a rage of hubris.  "I don't
need you.  I can teach this boy just as well.  I am, after all, a Jedi
too."  Yoda's main worry stems from the worrisome sensation of a dark
stirring in the Force.

Set across this panoramic backdrop is the "palace intrugue" that is
concurrently taking place in the upper echelons of the Republic.  The
source of the dark forebodings lies in a young Senator, also a Jedi
war veteran, with unbounded ambition and lust for power.  The feelings
bring him early on face to face with the Dark Side, and this is where
both meaning of the Bane converge.

Like Ben, he also sees potential in the young pilot and succeeds in
luring him away from the tutelage of Master Kenobi.  Ben's constant
admonishions against the aggressive and ambitious use of the Jedi
training drive his student into the arms of the Senator.  It doesn't
take long before the Senator succeeds in corrupting Anakin into
sharing the same lust for power.

Kenobi grows desperate over his folly and tries to take back his
student by force before it's too late.  He confronts Anakin in an epic
Light Saber duel near a lava pit, partly out of anger at himself and
desire to punish Anakin and teach him a lesson.  But what happens
instead is that in the ensuing fight Anakin slips and falls into the
lava pit as Kenobi holds out a hand trying to save him from almost
certain destruction.  In a highly symbolic gesture the student refuses
to take the hand and slips in and Kenobi leaves him for dead.

It's only with the greatest strength and resolve that the young pilot
manages to climb out of the pit barely clinging to life, barely able
to breathe.  His nearly dead form is discovered and he's rescued just
in time.  His ability to see and smell with his natural senses is
permanently gone, and in order to survive he's forced to take on
prosthetics to help him see, hear and breathe.

Never again to see or feel the warm sensations of the world about him,
he pretty much becomes engrossed in the one all-consuming desire to
exact revenge on his teacher Ben, on all Jedis, and in fact on all
things good including his wife.  From that point on he becomes a
disciple of the Senator Palpatine and his chief assistant in aiding
the Senator's rise to the top and the new Emperor, and changes his
name to Darth Vader disowning everything he stood for before the
accident.

Kenobi takes the tragic news to Anakin's wife, who by now (unbeknownst
to Anakin) several months pregnant with fraternal twins.  She never
really recovers from the shock of hearing of Anakin's 'death' and dies
while giving childbirth.  Kenobi, knowing about the forthcoming
danger, takes the children (Luke and Leia) and stows them away in
hiding, one being taken to Aunt Breu and Uncle Owen in a way out of
the way place, and the other adopted by a royal family as their own.
Neither Vader nor the Emperor to be ever find out.

Kenobi, feeling the weight of the guilt over spawning what turns out
to be the wholesale massacre of the Jedi guardians at the hands of
Vader and Palpatine, withdraws in despondency to Tatooine where he
pretty much decides to live out the rest of his days as a hermit.  So
he lives basically the rest of his life with the burden of his hubris
from the time he and Yoda were in conflict.

The years pass by and Palpatine succeeds in exerting a tighter
authoritarian grip on the Republic.  Little by little, with the aid of
Vader he chips away at the Republic's liberties and freedoms until
finally he's got enough power to virtually declare himself Emperor.

It's at that point that the collective outrage of the worlds lying in
the domain of the Republic erupts into a rebellion, and basically this
is where the Famous First Scene of the rebel ship being pursued by the
huge imperial star ship is reenacted, and the story ends with the
quote "A New Hope."