Fyraltari watches The Clone Wars (2008) for the first time

[Fyraltari]

Where was I? Oh, right.

Season 2, Episode 2: Cargo of Doom

Spoiler: Recap

Show

Cad Bane has captured Master Bola Ropal off-screen (as you do) and Anakin and Ahsoka are in hot pursuit. Windu, Kenobi, Yoda, Secura and Fisto are apparently not needed for this crisis. After all this is about the future of the Jedi order, therefore these two ar clearlye the most qualified.

Spoiler: Clearly

Show

Anyway, Bane was given command of a Separatiste frigate* and has Brought Ropal to an interrogation room. Thre's amoment where a B1 looks intimidating. The mercenary wants the Jedi to open the Holocron. Why? Just deliver the thing to Sidious, Ventress or Dooku, looks intimithey could open it no problem. there's no need for you to dally here.
Ropal refuses so Bane cranks up the electric torture and ignores the warnings of the droids, resulting in Ropal's death. You know I thought American children's television was more snitized than European's but a guy just got tortured to death, so apparently not. Anakin, Ahsoka and the Resolute are clearly winning the battle. Yularen wants to destroy the ennemy frigate but the Jedi need to get onboard to rescue Ropal, the Holocron and the crystal. However they don't have any boarding craft. So Anakin decides to use ground vehicles to board the ennemy ship. Because these are also space-worthy for some reason. This would be more impressive if we hadn't already seen Anakin use a similar move against grievous. They literally drop the vehicles ontop of the ennemy ship (guess that bit of TLJ had precednt after all) and blast their way through. Anakin jsut added a spaceman helmet to his uniform and Ahsokah did the same, wearing a full body variation of her usual attire. Apparently whatver material the Jedi's clothes are made of is pretty isolant.

Bane meanwhile as gotten on the main bridge and is talking to Gunray. Gunray was ordered by sidious to lend the Bounty Hunter a small army and isnsits on getting it back or being reimbursed. Bane tells him that Sidious will ahppily pay. He confesses that his Jedi is dead but he sees Anakin and Ahsoka on a cam footage and syas he has a better idea to get a Jedi to cooperate. He then orders the droid to start the ship's autodestruction sequence and transfer all control to his wrist thingie. Said wrist thingie has three buttons and no interface whatsoever. He then leaves throught he vents. Anakin and Ahsoka reached the detention block and found their comrade's corpse. Yularen wants them to come back as the ennemy ship is being destroyed but they refuse. Yularen wonders why he ended up with Skywalker of all Jedi (maybe he pissed somebody off?) They lead their troops onto the bridge. The commander droid says he's not in command and points to another droid as the leader. A clone blasts that droid. the commander droid says he is in charge then. A clone blasts him. Okay, that was funny.

They figure that if Bane isn't there, he must be trying to leave and head for the hangar. He's there and uses his sonic screwriver wristband to turn off the artificial gravity. This results in a pretty intense an dunique firefight as Bane and the clones use magnetic boots to anchor themselves wherever they can, the droids float haphazardly, Ahsoka manages as well as she can and Anakin just throws himself at Cad Bane. Bane manages to escape (after surpising everybody by switching the gravity on), though, with Ahsoka hot on his heels despite Anakin's warning that it's a trap. One droid however accidently fires on a canon shell resumting in a an explosion that takes everybody out except Bane and the padawan. Bane taunts her for a bit and they fight. She actually manages to kick his ass until he grabs a hold of her ankle and shocks her.

Anakin comes to. Rex and some clones survived. He tells them to find a way out of there while he goes to find his Padawan. Bane locked her up in an airlock while he is guarded by two Superbattledroids. There are three regular battle droids outside, who immediately get slaughtered by Anakin presumably only there so that bane would knwo the Jedi was coming. Oen dorid wants to fight, another wants to flee and the third jsut accepts the seet embrace of death. That was funny too. Bane explains to Ani that only one press of his omni-tool wristband will send Ahsoka to her spacey death so no funny business. He wnats him to open the Holocron for him. Anakin obliges despite Ahsoka's pleas not to. Bane places the crystal inside the Holocron. Anakin then draws both of their lightsabers to him
and attacks. Bane opens the airlock. Anakin throws a saber at the control opening the barrier between him and Ahsoka. Bane leaves as the both manage not to be sucked byt the depressurisation.

Bane calls Gunray to tell him he's got what he was after. Gunray wants him to send him the data directly, just in case. This obvious ploy immediately fails and Bane glances (from an overlooking plateform) at a shuttle Rex and his guys secured, saying he's found a way out. Just at this moment two clones attack him. Ahsokanakin reacht eh shuttle as the ship comes apart around them. Time to leave. As they do, the hear gunfighting and see Bane's silhouette fall over the plateform railing, shot by a clone. They pick up the clone, he's wounded but assures them he'll be alright. Everybody fail to notice he sounds nothing like the rest of his clone.

They get back to the Resolute. Yularen asks for a debrief and Anakin says they didn't save Ropal not recovered the data but neither did the Separatists, so... success?

Spoiler: Anakin right now

Show

*Guess that means thzt bane knows Dooku isn't the real leader of the Separatists.

Spoiler: My thoughts

Show

So. Yularen and Anakin's relationship was visibly more strained than usual this time around. I can't really tell who is supposed to be commanding whom, though. Are they of equal rank or what?
Anakin whoosing Ahsoka over the cystal (location of children/secret of the Jedi) is your classic "loved one vs mcguffin" set-up, but it nicely foreshadows Vader.

Now, Bane. It took me a while but I think I cracked the character. He's a Lee Van Cleef homage/clone. More precisely, of Angel Eyes/Sentenzia from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Both in looks (general cow-boy get up plus the metal plaques giving him some serious sinister cheeks) and behaviour. This makes a lot of sense since Bobba Fett was insipred by Clint Eastwood's Man With No Name, also from The Dollar Trilogy. He's an uncomplicated thug. He acts professional but his occasional bouts of gratuitous cruelty (his treatment of Todo, his getting carried away by the torture of his helpless prisoner) show that he fundamentally chose this profession because he gets to hurt people. And I'm fine with that. I'm on the record saying that I prefer villains with some complexity, but bane is a henchman, not a member of a dark magic cult, nor a fallen hero nor a barley-living killing machine. He's just a bully with a gun, pretty simple. Why is he that way? I dunno, maybe he wasn't hugged enough as a child. We don't need his backstory. Which isn't to say it shouldn't be done. The Mangoose from the XIII comic book series was a similar character a "mean guy with an ugly face for whenever [the author] needed a bad guy" and the spin-off gave him the incredibly powerful backstory of an East-German forced into crime to help his father figure under the regime he lived in and becoming addicted to it. Was it in any way necessary? no. was it good? Hell, yeah! Maybe there's a great Cad Bane origin story out there somewhere, in this show even, but I don't thnik this show needs it and I won"t fault it for not having it.

So right now Cad Bane is pretty good fighter whose main qualities are his ability think quickly, his willingness to fight undehanded and his general ruthlessness even at the expanse of his allies. But also, his ennemies having a plot-mandated drop in intellingence because, seriously, how did you fall for the "dressing up as the ennemy" trick twice?

I'm guessing the next episode will be about Sidious going after these children, not sure how the Jedi are going to know about it since they've jsut lost their contact info, though.