Symmetry in "Riding the Wheel of If"

by Eshva (eshva_i@yahoo.co.uk)

(Notes: the following essay-sort-of-thingie relates to a classic of TPM slash - "Riding the Wheel of If" by Mrs Hammill and others. It's available on the Master_Apprentice archive. The essay was posted to a mailing list and I'd like to thank the list denizens for their interest. I have made a few edits in response to comments and suggestions, but I've left the argument as originally posted. -Eshva)

A while back I was thinking vaguely about the "Wheel of If" series and a thought occurred to me. Somewhere in the story I remembered reading the proposition that every character has the potential for both good and evil - hence the different versions encountered by Obi-Wan on his travels. But, I thought, if there are no good Palpatines or evil Obis this contradicts the theory. I couldn't actually remember any good Palpies or evil Obis, but I thought I'd better check (excellent reason to read the whole thing again :) )

Now before the Wheel experts jump up and down - yep, my original theory was wrong. There is a good Palpatine and an evil Obi which I'd forgotten about. However, while I was reading through the episodes, I noted down the frequencies of good and evil for various characters. It occurred to me that perhaps the frequency with which a character is good or evil might reflect something about the writers' views about their innate tendencies toward good or evil. And since "Wheel" is really a microcosm of TPM slash fandom, that implies some interesting things about our collective impression of the various characters. (Or possibly it will just be stating the obvious. But stating the obvious with *numbers*. Worse than damned lies :) )

First off, before I get to the numbers, a few notes on method and problems I encountered (ouch, this is starting to sound like a prac report).

I counted each universe (even the ones which only appeared very briefly), because I figured that they were equally as possible as the universes which produced longer segments.  So that's why the total number of universes is higher than the number of episodes. However, I didn't count clones. My impression was that clones in 'WoI' tended to be evil - Obi's clone is evil, and Maul's clones are evil even when Maul himself is verging on the good. Perhaps the clones somehow have less free will or ability to make choices than an 'original' person, as if they are programmed by their creator (usually evil) and can only keep doing his bidding. In the end I decided that clones would skew the results so in one of many arbitrary judgements, I left them out.

I struck a problem with Maul. When I first started counting, I counted every mention of a nasty Sith who killed Qui-Gon (or wounded Qui-Gon, or killed Obi-Wan etc etc) to be an evil Maul. But toward the end of the Wheel series, Maul *clones* start turning up - it's a clone of Maul who actually fought the Jedi. This buggered my counting, since I had no way of knowing if the 'Maul' that had encountered the Jedi in earlier episodes was a clone or the real Maul. So I counted Maul two different ways. The first assumes that the early Mauls were the 'real' Maul, so they were counted as 'evil'. In the second version, if it wasn't made clear whether it was a clone, I counted it as a "half & half". On balance I'm more inclined to go for the second figure. After all, in the last episode Obi-Wan does say that he's a good man.

The last problem was the trickiest - how to define 'good' and 'evil' to classify the characters. In some cases it was easy - eg. Mac's Brother Obi is the nicest, most perfect, wonderful and saintly creature ever to breathe, so he can be counted "good". But there are other instances where good and evil are less clear cut. The Qui-Gon in that same universe isn't evil exactly, just rather selfish and ruthless etc etc, but he certainly isn't in the same category of sainthood as Obi-Wan.

I took a shortcut out of this problem and created a catch-all "half & half" category. So each universe's character-version got 1 point for good, 0.5 for half & half, or 0 for evil.

The final problem was the humour universes, whose characters were very tricky to categorise as good or evil. I don't think I ended up being very consistent about it - just made impressionistic judgements.

Anyway, enough of this rambling - here's how the percentages came out (in order of goodness):

I called this essay "Symmetry and the Wheel of If", and now I've finally got to why. Although my original thought about Obi-Wan being all good and Palpatine being all bad was not borne out, the result was close. They both had only a single exception to their all good/all bad status. By doing this, the underlying theory that everyone has the potential for both good and evil was upheld (just).

Obi-Wan and Palpatine mirror each other - one as the avatar of the Light, the other the avatar of the Dark. It seems that Lightness or Darkness are part of their very being. And the symmetry is maintained when we discover that both Obi-Wan and Palpatine are "riding the Wheel of If". This is an example of the brilliant symmetry embedded in the series, which I think makes it work so well.

Now to the characters between these two extremes. It seems that Yoda is basically all good as well (in fact one of the exceptions is a humour universe which I possibly shouldn't have counted).

Qui-Gon is an interesting case. He has the highest number of different versions - 38 of them. His overall "goodness" tally is fairly high - 82% - but it's interesting that in 10 of the universes I placed him in the 'half & half' category. And in some of the universes where I put him down as 'good' I was possibly being a bit generous (since I do have a weakness for Qui-Gon).

Originally I only counted characters who appeared 10 or more times. Mainly this was because a small number doesn't say much about underlying character traits. And I have to admit I wanted to avoid including Anakin. He is nearly always what we saw in TPM - a nice little young padawan. But that doesn't actually tell us whether he'll end up dark or light. He could go either way - it's quite possible that the nice little young padawan could grow up to be very dark indeed (as indeed happened in the canon SW universe). However, as a result of comments on my original posting, I decided to add Anakin's stats. So I decided to count the nice little padawans as "half & half", to reflect that at this age he could go either way.

The most beautiful example of symmetry is Xanatos. Perhaps by accident, perhaps by design, he came out as being exactly 50/50 - 5 definitely good Xanatos and 5 definitely evil ones. Which makes sense when you consider that his fate is determined by a single variable - whether he was chosen as Qui-Gon's padawan.

The series raising interesting questions about what determines whether a character turns out good or evil. In episode 27 Maul says: "In this reality, you see in me the good which exists in potential in every version of me, just as you saw the darkness in the Qui-Gon who tortured you which exists in potential in every version of Qui-Gon. It comes back to balance. We are all creatures of light and darkness, Obi-Wan. The choices we make determine what we show to the universe."

By this theory, good or evil is based on the choices of the individual. This is supported by the various universes where someone changes sides - Maul turns from the dark to the light in ep 28 or where Qui-Gon turns from the dark to the light in ep 10.

My speculation was that the tendency to choose one way or another might be shaped by the character's innate level of goodness or evilness. For instance, Obi-Wan is innately almost perfectly good, and it's only under extreme circumstances that he is driven to the dark. Palpatine is innately evil, and it's only in a completely reversed universe that he is good.  Qui-Gon and Mace are mostly good, but also have a sufficient tendency to evil that they turn out bad or borderline about 20% of the time.

However, the situation of Xanatos provides a counter example. His fate is not determined by his own choices, but by the choices of others. If Qui-Gon takes him as an apprentice, then he becomes dark. As Obi-Wan says to Xanatos "When Qui isn't your Master, you're fine." So how he turns out seems to have little to do with his innate goodness or badness, but with his training. Presumably it's because Qui-Gon is such a bad teacher (at least for Xanatos) that he turns to the dark side.

I suppose the obvious answer is that the characters' fates are decided by a combination of both circumstances and their own choices.

I think the one small failure of balance and symmetry (to my eyes, anyway) is the outcome for Obi-Wan. He is the avatar of Light (Mr 98%), yet he ends up with Qui-Gon, a character who is much more marginal. On the numbers, it would actually make more sense if Obi-Wan ended up with Yoda, since Yoda is the only other character who approaches him in inherent "lightness". Or, on the theory that opposites attract, he should end up with Palpatine :)

But overall, the "Wheel of If" has an impressive symmetry - a lovely balance of the light and the dark, both in cosmic terms and in individual characters.