Part I: The Watsons

So the PT characters missed the boat on the whole "but who ordered the clones?" issue. And didn't do too well tracking the Sith despite having 13 years to do it... and didn't start suspecting Palpatine was up to something until the end of his 13 years as Chancellor... despite a lot of the answers being "elementary, my dear Padawan." That's not such a good track record.

But how do the OT characters stack up? Are they as oblivious to plot devices as their parents and mentors?

Nope.

Luke, for all his "what's-that-flashing?" farmboy naivete, is often good at connecting the dots. Hmmm... the stormtroopers traced the droids to the Jawas, which means they probably followed them all the way... home! And Leia... Leia is his sister! (Either he's really in tune with the Sherlock side of the Force in that scene, or a bunch of clues just clicked. Maybe both.) He doesn't realize the little green guy is Yoda, but what evidence does he have? Beings all over the galaxy wear robes like that, so that's no help. The only reason the audience knows it's Yoda is that it's a movie, so it has to be him. He also doesn't figure out Vader is his father in advance, but again, what evidence does he have? He doesn't have a reason to believe Ben lied, and has no knowledge that contradicts Ben's story. His big mistake seems to be not realizing Vader is using his friends' pain to trap him, but he might just not care what the cause of their suffering is, in which case his mistake is actually recklessness. Overall, I think Luke does passably.

Leia looks at the four TIE fighters who attack the Falcon and says, hey, this isn't how Imperials act when they want to catch you; they let us go. She also realizes there's something sinister behind Threepio's absence in Cloud City. Her accuracy rating seems to suffer with "Vader wants us all dead", but actually she's right. Vader probably expects that Jabba will kill Han. He gives orders for Leia and Chewie to be taken to his shuttle; he knows he won't get information out of Leia, and last time she was in his custody, she was slated for execution, so what do you think he's going to do? He wants them dead, all right; he just doesn't want them dead yet. Leia also doesn't realize the torture is a plot to lure Luke across the galaxy, but it's possible she doesn't know the Force works like that. If her advice in ROTJ to Luke to "run away" so Vader couldn't find him was serious and not just grasping at straws, I'm inclined to think that's the case. And remember, she doesn't even know whether Luke is alive at this point. Overall, she does pretty darn well.

Han is definitely at his best improvising under pressure, but even he is pretty good at analyzation when he puts his mind to it. He knows exactly how hard he hit the probot and that the blaster bolt can't have destroyed it, and realizes it must have self-destructed. He also does well in the asteroid cave: hmm, the cave is unusually moist and unstable... Ah! We're in the throat of a giant space slug! Pretty good, yes? Unfortunately, Han follows these impressive displays by not worrying about Threepio's disappearance and trusting Lando despite signs something is wrong. He also gets the wrong idea about Luke and Leia - but that's a little more understandable. (Twins separated at birth? Why didn't I think of that?) Overall, Han's pretty sharp. He just seems to get a little off his game whenever he's focused on Leia. (Not as far off as Anakin got when focused on Padme, though )

The minor characters are pretty sharp too. Out of all the millions of details to look at in the Death Star plans, the Rebels manage to find the critical weakness extraordinarily quickly and act on it. Compare that to the ineffective Nubian offensive and Ani's "whoops" moment in TPM. And by analyzing the Rebels' attack pattern, at least some of the Imperials realize the station is in danger.

When you think about it, the whole OT got started because the Rebels followed the trails of money missing from government coffers and ships and workers not being where they were supposed to be back to the Death Star. Considering that the Death Star must have been built very slowly, those were probably hard trails to follow. Much harder than, say, figuring out that an army you didn't actually order is nothing good. You don't even have to know who did order it to know you shouldn't use it. (Though Ben does improve a bit by the time the OT rolls around; he does figure out that the Sandpeople didn't attack the Jawa crawler.)

I don't want to knock the PT characters too much. They did realize there was more to the Naboo situation than a simple blockade, and they did connect the dots between an immaculately conceived, super-Forceful child and an ancient prophecy. Wait - that was nearly all Qui Gon. Too bad he wasn't around longer!

I also don't want to give the impression I think the PT characters are huge disappointments because they aren't as mystery-savvy as their descendents. The PT is a tragedy. The characters are supposed to have fatal flaws that bring about their downfall. This widespread weakness fits in very well with the apathy and complacency that characterize the last days of the Old Republic and the Jedi Order.