Reproduction in the GFFA

[klcthebookworm]

This post didn't get much discussion when I put it up on Tumblr, so let's try it out here. It was inspired by a comment thread on JediMordsith’s The Gift Chapter Eighteen. I hope to spur a discussion or provide some meta and head-canons, because I can’t remember anyone discussing baby making before. Canon for this post are the saga films (most of the cited evidence comes from the original trilogy and the prequels trilogy). Clone Wars and Rebels television series are part of the canon, but I haven’t watched either shows, so someone else will have to provide examples from them. EU Legends and Disney EU supplement the canon and will be cited so others can use those tidbits or set them aside according to their personal preferences. Everybody ready?

I’m writing this before the Last Jedi opens, so we are working with seven saga films and one anthology film. Out of those eight, only one character is shown pregnant and giving birth, Padmé Amidala. The only other character to talk about giving birth is Shmi Skywalker when talking about Anakin to Qui Gon Jinn. So the experiences of these two characters gives us natural reproduction according to their species. For the purposes of this discussion, natural reproduction means without the assistance of technology; sexual reproduction for humans and possibly many more alien species in the GFFA and potentially asexual reproduction as well though I don’t have any examples in my memory. The Hutts were hermaphrodites in EU Legends, but according to Wookieepedia Disney EU has decided to divide that population along male and female now.

Even with the pregnancy examples, we the viewers aren’t taken along on any medical check-ups to see what kind of assisted reproductive technology the GFFA has. In fact the fandom has wondered if it was lack of prenatal care that actually killed Padmé if her keeping her pregnancy secret extended to never seeing a medical droid or practitioner. But we shouldn’t overlook the fourth parent shown in the prequels and how he got his child: Jango Fett and his clone son Boba.

As part of his compensation for being the genetic template for the clone army the Kaminoans created, Jango requested a clone who did not have the same genetic modifications such as behavioral conditioning and growth acceleration. We meet Boba as a ten-year-old child in Attack of the Clones, and presumably Jango has been raising Boba since he left the cloning tank as viable infant. My respect for Jango has gone up a notch; it’s not easy to be a single parent no matter what galaxy you’re in. And with this information, cloning tanks have to be added to a list of assisted reproductive technology the GFFA has.

But just because the technology exists doesn’t mean it is available for the masses. Figures weren’t quoted in the Attack of the Clones, but the Grand Army of the Republic was not cheap and the Kaminoans took ten years to grow and develop their clones for this purpose. Cost prohibitions can be inferred further by how the Imperial military moved into enlistment and conscription models to maintain stormtrooper numbers. I think we can safely say that the normal population of the GFFA couldn’t afford to clone a baby even if the Empire did not restrict access to the technology. EU Legends developed a separate technology for cloning with the Spaarti cloning cylinders (invented by Timothy Zahn before George Lucas figured out what the Clone Wars were all about) that worked faster–a fully grown and trained clone in a year rather than ten–and could work even faster if the Force didn’t interfere with the speed by making the clones mentally unstable. This technology was locked down by the Empire, and was thought destroyed since the Clone Wars by the rest of the population.

While we don’t know how Jango Fett donated his genetics to the Kaminoans, all the adult clones were a physical copy of him on screen. But a plot point in EU Legends had a clone of Luke grown from his preserved severed hand. So how ever cloning works in the GFFA, it’s not limited to gametes (sperm and ovum or whatever alien equivalents are).

So what about real assisted reproductive technologies? Are they present in the GFFA? We have no canon evidence of ultrasounds, artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization, or gestational surrogate pregnancy but it’s hard to think that if we have all these things, they must have them too. After all they can replace limbs with fully-articulated prosthetic parts that can be permanently attached to the body.

Research time! While I didn’t go much deeper than Wikipedia and Google searches (go deeper for sources if you’re writing for a grade), I was surprised to learn that most of these things that are now ubiquitous with pregnancy are developments younger than I and A New Hope. Artificial insemination in humans turned out to be the oldest, first successfully done in 1884. Sperm banks started in Iowa in the 1920s, making donated sperm available for couples with fertility problems as well as women without male partners.

Medical ultrasounds developments started in 1940s in several countries. Professor Ian Donald, Tom Brown, and Dr. John MacVicar published their findings as “Investigation of Abdominal Masses by Pulsed Ultrasound” on June 7, 1958. Afterwards, they continued to refine their techniques to obstertic applications to measure the growth of the fetus at the Glasglow Royal Maternity Hospital and in the new Queen Mother’s Hospital in Yorkhill. But it was only in the 1970s that the technology became widely used in American hospitals and further refinement has led to our ease of determining the sex of fetues. (https://www.livescience.com/32071-history-of-fetal-ultrasound.html). Before ultrasounds, detecting multiple fetal heartbeats was the only way to determine if there was more than one child but it is a more inaccurate process.

The first successful birth of a child from in vitro fertilization was in 1978. A woman carried the first successful gestational surrogate pregnancy in 1985. Surrogacy is a method or agreement whereby a woman agrees to carry a pregnancy for another person or persons, who will become the newborn child’s parent(s) after birth. The next step is artificial wombs, which moved forward in 2017 with animal trials. It’s aimed for helping a premature fetus develop normally rather than taking over the whole process. That is still in the realm of fiction.

Lois McMaster Bujold created uterine replicators for her Hugo-award-winning Vorkosigan Saga series. Star Wars fans you will like these books: space opera, exotic worlds and cultures, political intrigues, family dramas, strong women characters, and the main protagonist is disabled and keeps fighting to show his worth to his culture. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorkosigan_Saga) Genetic manipulation is commonplace, though of varying degrees of acceptance depending on the culture. The uterine replicators are essential to this process because it allows complete in vitro human reproduction. The embryo and fetus can be genetically modified as benign as just removing a genetic disease so it is finally eradicated to controlling the sex and appearance of the fetus, which led to the creation of the Quaddies. The freedom and safety this technology provides is also a plot point in the series since Miles’ disabilities are the result of poisoning his mother went through while pregnant. His cousin Ivan–while born naturally perfectly healthy–was nearly murdered in the womb when his parents were caught by a rebelling faction during a civil war. The other nifty factor is they can use any cell from the parents to create the embryo, though gametes are the easiest to work with, and donated oocyte if there is no ovum from the mother. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolly_(sheep) for how that works.)

I came to the Vorkosigan Saga after Star Wars, so my light bulb was phrased “uterine replicators are just like Star Wars cloning tanks!” The technology is virtually identical, the only difference being parents’ blended DNA instead of creating a copy of the donor. I’m head-canoning that this exists in the Star Wars universe as assisted reproductive technology, probably with a different name to keep it separate from cloning and probably priced out of financial reach for most of the population in GFFA. I haven’t coined a Star Wars-ish name for it, so suggest away please.

Besides allowing for reproduction for infertile, same-sex, or extremely-unable-to-accommodate-pregnancy couples, this technology allows for hybrid babies between two species that are unable to reproduce naturally. I can’t think of any examples of this in pro-fic (Wedge had a non-human girlfriend for a bit but she got shunted off-stage pretty quickly), but this is a situation that we fanfic-writers love to exploit and fill-in-the-gaps. It’s an option along with the ones we covered that we can use right now in real life.

Thank you for sticking with me to the end of this long look at reproduction in the GFFA and our own galaxy. I’ve gained a new point of view considering this topic and the films. Lucas not putting in what turned out to be cutting edge technology in the original trilogy of his space opera, I can give him a pass on. It wasn’t necessary for the story he was telling Padmé skipping prenatal check-ups to keep her pregnancy a secret from the Jedi Order can explain the lack of knowledge that she’s carrying twins but only to a certain point. How come all the Force users around Padmé missed it? The only good explanation I’ve got is the twins kept hiding each other in the Force from all the other Force users, and Obi-Wan and Yoda were too polite to scan her. Did Stover come up with a reason in the novelization? I still need to read it. Share your thoughts please. :D

Comments

[atamascolily]

Yeah, I find the depiction of Padme's pregnancy to be confusing on a number of levels. I'll look for clues when I re-read Stover's novelization of Ep. III, but I don't know how many of these are addressed.

I suspect that the Jedi who encounter her know she's pregnant, but it just doesn't register for them as something to be concerned about - like, they probably assume she has her reasons for keeping it quiet, and respect her privacy since she's an important Senator and all that. And there's no reason for any of them (except for Obi-wan) to suspect that Anakin's the father.

I mean, the Jedi also missed Darth Sidious and he was hiding in plain sight the whole time...

(Of course, if Darth Sidious is manipulating peoples' perceptions of Padme in order to further his schemes involving Anakin, this might explain a lot. Especially if you think he also manipulated Anakin's conception via secret Sith techniques, too.)

I'm so disappointed - but not surprised - to learn that Disney has decided to make the Hutts less interesting by having them follow the conventional human gender binary. Boo. It doesn't make Jabba's fetish for scantily clad humanoids any less creepy, though.

[klcthebookworm]

If we're going on a theme of Jedi obliviousness/clouded Force, I think I would put it down in terms of politeness and not necessary because of the structures with the blood test. We Jedi have no reason to cause the Senator any embarrassment even though we can sense the Force and perhaps the twins in her womb when the tests will be administered after they are born and we and the Senator can decide what future they have in the Temple then.

It works; I just wish it had been mentioned in the novelization if not the movie. Though it has been a while, does Padmé have any dealings with anyone besides Obi-Wan and Anakin? Yoda while she's on her deathbed doesn't really count. I'm not remembering any right off hand.

I'm juggling a half-formed idea now that maybe the secret of Skywalker twins would have been better served with more physical division of the main characters in ROTS. Obi-Wan's arrival at Polis Massa the first time he had seen Padmé in over eight to nine months so "what, twins?" gets a more reasonable shock value. Maybe Palpatine working on Anakin's stability by sending Padmé on a Senatorial mission she can't refuse. Anakin knows she's pregnant, they had time enough to chat about that but they can't talk about it now and he can't be with her between the Jedi Council and the Chancellor and he's dreaming of her death in childbirth.

*Sigh* I don't want to rewrite the Prequels; I have enough to write already.

[rather_a_lark]

Uhm, if I recall correctly there isn't any additional information about Padme's pregnancy in the novelization.

I always assumed that Luke and Leia picked up on Padmé's anxiety on being caught, and somehow hid their force-sensitivity and their presence. Surely a difficult force technique but, hey they are the offsprings of the Chosen One, I'm sure for them was an easy, even if somehow uncouncious, feat.

Still, as for artificial insemination and the like, I too agree that there's surely some technology like that in the GFFA, since they have technologies that can do even complex things like cloning.

The change in the new canon is unfortunate to hear about, sadly another unique concept scrapped.

Honestly, I understand why there isn't any scene, aside for the one in which she gives birth, that shows Padmé having a medical check-up, ROTS is already a long movie with many things at stakes, so I guess showing a scene like this would be mostly useless, more a waste of time than anything.

[atamascolily]

I don't know if it would be a waste of time to show a medical checkup - it could be interesting to play off Anakin's fears if the audience has seen that her check-up is fine, and nothing's wrong. Done right, it could heighten the dramatic tension (waiting for something to go horribly wrong, wondering if it's all in Anakin's head, etc). It all depends on how the scene is cut/presented in context of the story.

[rather_a_lark]

Uhm, yeah, I hadn't thought about how the scene could be presented.

Nevertheless, I've skimmed a bit the ROTS novel and there are two mentions (if we don't count the birth of the twins) of medical check-ups (with a medical droid)

The first one is said by Padmé after Anakin has had his dream, to reassure him:

"And I have a top-flight medical droid, who assures me I am in perfect health. Your dream must have been … some kind of metaphor, or something.”

And the second is by Anakin while they're discussing if the baby is a boy or a girl.

“He keeps kicking.”
“He?” Anakin asked mildly. “I thought you’d ordered your medical droid not to spoil the surprise.”

So, according to this, Padmé had medical check-ups.

[klcthebookworm]

Oh good, Padmé was getting medical care if you count the novelization as canon (some people don't).

[klcthebookworm]

I never thought about Padmé's anxiety and the twins picking up on it. I always get she wants the baby stuck in my head, but really both would be true and doubly true considering the war situation.

[joysweeper]

Unrelated to technology, I like playing with the idea that humans in Star Wars are just naturally, if rarely, parthogenic - that is, sometimes forming an embryo that can become a baby without having had eggs fertilized - under the right highly specific circumstances.

That way Shmi's statement that her child had no father and Qui-Gon's lack of reaction are like "oh, one of those". Really documented cases would be quite rare but of course, if someone is having sex at the right times they usually assume that's what happened, so many cases aren't known about.

[klcthebookworm]

I like it. I always came down on the Shmi said that to not talk about her rape if we toss out the Sith Lords were meddling theory, but this idea is fun. Especially if you team it up with someone else's fun idea that Palpatine keeps taking samples from Anakin to clone a new version and they all come out as copies of Shmi instead.