Subject: TAN: Re: SPOILERS - Phantom Menace
From: jsn@concentric.net (John S. Novak, III)
Organization: Cynics Central
Date: 21 May 1999 17:58:36 PDT
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written.robert-jordan

On Fri, 21 May 1999 14:31:49 GMT, Jeff Stockwin
<jdastockwin@limaindiasierra-alpha.com> wrote:



>>Darth Maul was *scary* because he actually threatened the good guys.
>>Darth Vader seemed to kill more people on his own side (re promotions)
>>than he killed other people. Darth Maul was a threat because he
>>basically held his own against 2 Jedi knights for quite a while and
>>killed one of them. 

>I hate to break it to you, but Darth Maul was losing.  He was retreating
>and scrambling to keep up.  He was smart enough to retreat until he had
>a one on one fight.

I hate to break this to _you_, but let's recap here:

There was a fight between a Sith Apprentice on the one hand, and a
Jedi Master (one apparently enough of a bad-ass to be on the Jedi
Council, if he weren't such a _maverick_!) with his apprentice-- and
the apprentice is basically good enough to be a Jedi Knight in his own
right.

There mere fact that Darth Maul was able to hold his own and beat an
orderly retreat indicates that he is a Bad Ass of the First Magnitude,
because there was no chivalry in Qui-Gon's and Obi-Wan's attack-- they
double teamed the sorry sumbitch from the word "Go!"

Now, add in the fact that he not only beat a hasty retreat, but came
reasonably close to killing Obi-Wan _while he was being
double-teamed_.  (You can quibble over this, but if Obi-Wan had slid
another foot, he'd have been out of the fight permanently.)  He also
managed to beat an orderly enough retreat that once he had even a
split second advantage, he realized that Obi-Wan was not out of the
picture but still made his advantage permanent by leading Qui-Gon into
the conveniently located energy fields.

He then proceeded to beat the living shit outta Qui-Gon and
ultimately killed him.  Obi-Wan only managed as well as he did
because he was running on sheer rage and adrenaline-- as soon as that
settled off, Maul maulled him.

It was only because Maul forgot to read the "Don't Gloat" entry in the
Evil Overlord's Handbook and delayed for a few seconds that Obi-Wan
managed to knock him off.

So.

To summarize:

We have a bad-ass capable of handling a Jedi Master and a Jedi Knight
at the same time.  He's good enough to separate them, and _smart
enough_ to separate them, capitalizing on a split econd advantage to
(damn near) win the day.

And he is AN APPRENTICE.

The thought running through everyone's mind at this point should be,
"Whoah.  So he was the apprentice.  Just how bad a bad ass is Sidious
going to turn out to be?"  

But while we're on the subject of Maul, though, I whole-heartedly
approved of the fact that he had all of maybe two lines of dialogue.
The sheer and utter contempt he felt for Qui-Gon was physically
palpable in the lack of taunts and banter, and in the restless apcing
he did while the energy fields separated him and Qui-Gon.

>Which isn't to say that I didn't like him or that he wasn't scary.  I did
>and he was.  But the guy was introduced as an apprentice, he almost
>never talked, then he got in 2 fights and didn't win either one of them.
>He looked cool and fought like a bastard, but he wasn't ready to be any
>sort of ultimate evil in the galaxy.

Sidious idn't choose him for brains.
Sidious is the brains in this operation.

-- 
John S. Novak, III		jsn@concentric.net
The Humblest Man on the Net