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

[Peelee]

Okay, what was Palpatine's angle in this? I don't see how widespread destruction on Coruscant would help him.

Well, here's the thing: Palpatine's eeeevil, and the monster is destructive.

[Fyraltari]

Well, here's the thing: Palpatine's eeeevil, and the monster is destructive.

That's kind of out-of-character isn't it? Sidious is supposed to be a schemer who plays the long game and has managed to stay hidden in plain sight for decades.

[Keltest]

That's kind of out-of-character isn't it? Sidious is supposed to be a schemer who plays the long game and has managed to stay hidden in plain sight for decades.

Well, the Zillo Beast has an alibi now, doesnt it? If it got sent off to some nature preserve, the Jedi would be sticking their noses in on it occasionally. With it dead, they wont do that, and they certainly werent going to just let him kill it.

[Peelee]

That's kind of out-of-character isn't it? Sidious is supposed to be a schemer who plays the long game and has managed to stay hidden in plain sight for decades.

There is a reason that while I like TCW I don't see it as this amazing work that most fans do and frequently point out how childish and over-simplified a lot of the plots and tactics are.

[Fyraltari]

Well, the Zillo Beast has an alibi now, doesnt it? If it got sent off to some nature preserve, the Jedi would be sticking their noses in on it occasionally. With it dead, they wont do that, and they certainly werent going to just let him kill it.

Yeah but couldn't he have had it sent to a research center not on Coruscant.

There is a reason that while I like TCW I don't see it as this amazing work that most fans do and frequently point out how childish and over-simplified a lot of the plots and tactics are.

Fair.

[dancrilis]

That's kind of out-of-character isn't it? Sidious is supposed to be a schemer who plays the long game and has managed to stay hidden in plain sight for decades.

Sidious is pretending to be a politician - if he didn't have at least the occasional bad political decision it wouldn't be a convincing disguise.

[Sapphire Guard]

He just thought unleashing a monster on Coruscant would be funny? The writers wanted to make a King Kong reference?

[hamishspence]

The writers wanted to make a King Kong reference?

More likely a Godzilla reference. It is the Zillo Beast, after all.

[Sapphire Guard]

Touche. I thought of that, but having never seen it, didn't feel qualified to make the connection.

[Kornaki]

I just wanted to say I'm on season 4, and mostly want to keep watching so I know what you're talking about in your recaps when you get there.

I agree the show is kind of dumb in a lot of its stories. It has the upside of being short, which means I can squeeze in episodes much more easily than the 100.

[russdm]

(I just finished all 8 seasons of M*A*S*H, for example, sans the finale).

Can this be explained? I know that there are 11 seasons of M*A*S*H. Did you not count the first 3 seasons as being part of it?

[Fyraltari]

Season 2, Episode 20: Death Trap

Spoiler: Recap

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Anakin and Mace are aboard the cruiser Endurance and about to welcome a Clone Youth Brigade, a group of of clone cadets who are biologically tennish-year old. Their instructor tells the kids that they have the best training in the galaxy [insert distant Mandalorian laughter here] but every soldier will eventually face a crucial moment that no training can prepare for and what they will do then is the core of the soldier they will become. Two of the cadets (Hotshot and Whiplash) start picking on another one who's new to the group (he says he couldn't attend his own unit meeting with JEeis because of a broken arm) named Lucky. A fourth one (Jax) intervenes and tries to make friend with Lucky.

They are greeted by Windu and Skywalker, the latter of which acts like an enthusiastic museum tour guide. It's rare to see Ani this nice and relaxed. The Jedi are quickly interrupted by a call from Obi-Wan while Lucky scowls like there's no tomorrow. Anakin and Windu banter for a bit (still not used to them being friendly with one another) Windu calls Anakin a show-off, which is deserved. The cadets are being shown the ship's guns by a non-clone admiral who has them do some target practice and seems very eager to have them fail (dude, they're just children, calm down). Jax and Hotshot both misses their targets but Lucky shoots his down with a shot each despite the admiral and the gunner making it as unfair as possible. The group leaves and Lucky slips away from them. He calls somebody and DUN! DUN! DUN! turns out he's actually Boba Fett. He then claims to some clones he has a communiqué to deliver to Mace Windu which works despite a fake-out. They call him "Shiny" in a nice bit of continuity. Bobba then plants a bomb inside Windu's quarters and rejoins the Youth Brigade.

Just as Windu is about to enter his quarters a clone tells him Anakin wants to see him ASAP. He gives the clone something he was about to put inside his room and leaves. The clone triggers the bomb. As the alarms start ringing, the instructor organizes the youth brigade and takes them to the nearest safe room. A clone passing by tells them what happened and Boba learns Windu survived. Boba slips away again and no-one notices despite the instructor ordering them to walk in pairs (honestly with Boba infiltrating a unit wouldn't it have made more sense if they were seven or nine rather than eight?). Boba calls his ally again who tells him to blow the ship's reactors. He is hesitant to risk the crew's life but is shouted down. Anakin and Mace learn that the explosion took out the navigation system but barely and it is reparable so while they are stuck in one place form the time being, Windu was certainly the target. They organize a search of the ship for the mysterious assasin.

Boba gets to the reactor room but is spotted by a clone who calls for a trooper to bring him back to "his" brigade. Boba tricks him into giving him his gun and attacks him. The clone begs his brother not to kill him but Boba denies their brotherhood and stuns him. He then shoots the control panels and the reactor and leaves as the room explodes. Well not much of a point in just stunning that clone, then? The explosion creates a breach that ejects two clones but the Jedi manage to save themselves and the admiral. The admiral puts up a face of controlling the situation but tells the instructor to takes the cadets to the escape pods, you know, as a drill. Everyone starts to evacuate as the reactors are beyond repairs. Boba is caught up by the Youth Brigade (the instructor chides him for not staying with the group) the brigade gets into pods (Boba is with Jax, Hotshot and Whiplash) that are set to a rendez-vous point.

The admiral (and one officer clone) refuse to abandon ship for reasons beyond my ken even as the Jedi press him to. Boba sabotages the escape pod so that it'll miss the rendez-vous. As everyone gets to the rendez-vous (except the admiral who's trying a crash-landing) Anakin is informed of the missing pod. The Jedi conclude the assassin is using it to escape. The three cadets have no idea what is going on (besides being stranded in space) and their confusion only grows when the Slave One boards them. Aboard is Aurra Sing and a trandoshan I assume is Bossk (he has the looks down, anyway). She sarcastically congratulates Boba on a job well done and asks who the cadets are. He says he couldn't help but bring them along and asks what they're gonna do to them. She says they have to kill them as they're now witnesses. He doesn't want to but gives up when she threatens to jettison him with them. He apologizes to the cadets, Jax calls him a traitor and he leaves and disconnects the ships. (Obligatory "DEW IT!") Aurra's plan to eliminate the witnesses is apparently to leave them unharmed right where people are going to look for them? Allright. The Jedi finds the cadets and radio their instructor to pick them up. They also say they've lost the admiral's signal. The cadets discuss Boba and say that if he is like them, he'll realize he's wrong.

Spoiler: my thoughts

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That was a good episode. It's interesting to see a young Boba try to avenge himself on Windu one-sided as that fight is (not to mention we know neither of them is going to die). I do wonder what the other two bounty hunters are getting out of it, though? Boba's relationship with the clones probably deserves some more episodes so I hope we get to see some more of him.

Why was Anakin here? Not to mention R2?

[Trafalgar]

Clone Wars has always been one of my guilty pleasures. I like that they let Filoni do whatever he wanted to. I can't imagine Disney - Star Wars approving any of the following ideas:

-Let's base a couple of episodes on "Godzilla"!
-Let's base an episode on "The Seven Samurai"!
-Let' s have an episode based on "Gulliver's Travels"!
-Let's have an episode with a character based on George Lucas!

[Peelee]

Clone Wars has always been one of my guilty pleasures. I like that they let Filoni do whatever he wanted to.

They did not, and even directly told him what to do on occasion. Eg: Truman Capote the Hutt.

ETA: Also, Disney explicitly OK'd The Seven Samurai in The Mandalorian, and I doubt theyd have any issue with the rest of them (which weren't even that good in TCW IMO).

[Sapphire Guard]

It's a big production. Hard to pin down who was responsible for what.

[Peelee]

It's a big production. Hard to pin down who was responsible for what.

True, but we can at least absolutely tell that Disney did not shoot down a Seven Samurai episode and George Lucas was solely responsible for Ziro's voice.

[Fyraltari]

I can't imagine Disney - Star Wars approving any of the following ideas:

-Let's base a couple of episodes on "Godzilla"!
-Let's base an episode on "The Seven Samurai"!
-Let' s have an episode based on "Gulliver's Travels"!
-Let's have an episode with a character based on George Lucas!

Why not? The Walt Disney Corporation has bankrolled a lot of things in its existence I don't see why they would have an issue with either of these.

[Sapphire Guard]

True, but we can at least absolutely tell that Disney did not shoot down a Seven Samurai episode and George Lucas was solely responsible for Ziro's voice.

Spoiler: TCW

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I dunno. George wanted Ahsoka to die, but Dave won him over. We don't know if Ziro's voice was a mandate or a suggestion they could not do if they liked.

George could be sitting on Dave's shoulder mandating what he does, or off in his office running his company wandering down to set occasionally with suggestions or vetoes. It's hard to tell.

[Peelee]

Spoiler: TCW

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I dunno. George wanted Ahsoka to die, but Dave won him over. We don't know if Ziro's voice was a mandate or a suggestion they could not do if they liked.

George could be sitting on Dave's shoulder mandating what he does, or off in his office running his company wandering down to set occasionally with suggestions or vetoes. It's hard to tell.

Spoiler: Ziro

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Regardless of whether it was a mandate or a suggestion, Ziro sounded like a bog-standard Hutt until Lucas said "Make him sound like Truman Capote". So even if Filoni could have opted against, it was still Lucas being responsible; it was not the case, he said to make it the case, it was the case.

Maybe Filoni knew he had to pick his battles?

[Sapphire Guard]

Or maybe he genuinely thought it was a good idea? Who knows? Not us.

[Peelee]

Or maybe he genuinely thought it was a good idea? Who knows? Not us.

Doesn't matter. Wouldn't have happened if Lucas hadn't said "hey do this."

[Sapphire Guard]

It matters, because fandom loves looking at Star Wars and going

ideas they don't like= George's fault (with no one else involved somehow)

ideas they like= thank god other person saved this from George.

It's the same as what we were saying about KK in the other thread.

[Peelee]

It matters, because fandom loves looking at Star Wars and going

ideas they don't like= George's fault (with no one else involved somehow)

ideas they like= thank god other person saved this from George.

It's the same as what we were saying about KK in the other thread.

Except in this case we literally have the show creator explicitly saying "hey it was done this way and then George Lucas said 'hey do it in this different and incredibly specific way' and it is now done in that different and incredibly specific way".

Yes, normally I would agree with you, but this instance is very specifically exactly what it says on the tin.

[Fyraltari]

So basically "sometimes it actually is George's fault"?

[Sapphire Guard]

A bit more complicated than that. Per the Wookieepedia page

Though so far the only Hutt who speaks Galactic Basic onscreen, this was not originally intended. Ziro was meant to speak Huttese into a microphone which would translate his speech into English, but this idea was dropped when the producers felt that younger audiences wouldn't understand what the translator was. Later, George Lucas stepped in and specifically asked for Ziro to sound like Truman Capote. The character was a favorite of the production team, and they planned to have him return in the subsequent The Clone Wars series.[13]

The producers (not Lucas, presumably, as he's mentioned independently later) didn't think young kids would understand if he was translated, so he needed a voice. Sounds like there was some kind of dispute he had to settle.

Also 'the character was a favourite of the production team' so it's not like they were forced into it kicking and screaming.

Does this matter? Not much, but it's more complicated than George just deciding this and forcing it on everyone else, or that he was solely responsible.

[Peelee]

A bit more complicated than that. Per the Wookieepedia page



The producers (not Lucas, presumably, as he's mentioned independently later) didn't think young kids would understand if he was translated, so he needed a voice. Sounds like there was some kind of dispute he had to settle.

Also 'the character was a favourite of the production team' so it's not like they were forced into it kicking and screaming.

Does this matter? Not much, but it's more complicated than George just deciding this and forcing it on everyone else, or that he was solely responsible.

I never claimed they were forced into it kicking and screaming. I never claimed that Ziro wouldn't have ever spoken Basic in any way. My one and only claim was that Lucas was directly and solely responsible for Ziro sounding like Truman Capote. Everything you put forth supports that. Nothing you put forth complicates that. I really do not understand the pushback on this.

[Sapphire Guard]

It's not super important or anything, but the conversation was about 'Dave being allowed to do whatever he wanted', and Ziro was brought up as a counter example. We don't know if that was an example of 'Dave having to pick his battles' (implication: he disapproved, but had to go along with it) or not.

[Fyraltari]

Season 2, Episode 21: R2 Come Home

Spoiler: Recap

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We're following directly from last time with Anakin and windu looking for Admiral Kilian in the wreckage of the destroyer. They're also hoping to find the command crew, even though last episode implied only one clone stayed with Kilian. Windu and Anakin have a little argument over R2, with Windu stating that Anakin is allowing him too much personality. They soon discover dead clones. Who were shot. Windu quickly works out that their mysterious assassin must have come back to confirm his death. R2 and R8 (Mace's droid) are sent away to look for survivors. The Jedi make it to the bridge but the commanding officers aren't there. They conclude they must have been sucked into space and prepare to leave. Meanwhile R2 and R8 are attacked by gundarks (weren't those supposed to only be found on that planet where Hondo captured Dooku?) and R8 is destroyed.

Anakin and Mace discover Jango's helmet in the wreckage and Mace, in what's probaly the cleverest anyone's ever been in the show figures out what Boba's up to, too late to stop Anakin from picking the helmet up triggering an explosive. So, I'm guessing Boba will make a copy of that helmet complete with the exact same impact, huh? The explosion destabilizes the wreckage, saving R2. Boba and his posse (Aurra Sing, Bossk and another trandoshan called Castass) observe from afar. Sing is confident Windu's dead but Boba wants to check. Castass wants to leave with their hostages (Kilian and two clones) they can sell to the Separatists. A fight nearly breaks out and Aurra protects Boba. Interesting. Boba argues that evidence of Windu's death will net them a lot of money from Dooku which convinces the others. So they leave Bossk with the ship and prisoners and head for the wreckage.

Meanwhile R2 makes his way to the bridge and finds Windu and Skywalker buried under debris. Anakin instructs him to call for help with the fighters. However the droid spots the approaching hunters. R2 starts manufacturing accidents to try and stall/kill them. Mace and Anakin realize that trying to free themselves might collapse the ruin so they all they can do is wait for R2 to bring back help. Windu does not trust the astromech with that. The hunters keep bickering for a while until R2 straight up drops a grenade on them. At this point Aurra agrees with Castass that they need a better plan: she uses the antenna poking out of her head to call Bossk and tell him to ready their ship, they're going to blow the wreckage to smithereens. Not sure how'd that help, personally.

R2 resumes his mission but as he approaches the Jedi's fighters he is attacked by a gundark again. You'd think the beast would have figured out he's not food already. R2 manages to bind the gundark to Anakin's fighter and send it flying straight into debris. Hey, look! Somebody else than Skywalker crashed his ship this time! Intentionally even. This tips the hunters off that "Windu" survived and they start jamming communication. R2 decides to take Windu's fighter and get out of range of their signal. The hunters (now back in their own ship) recognize the fighter as Windu's and start blasting. The Jedi witness the aerial battle and Windu assumes R2 is abandoning them. Oh come on, do you not see he's being fired at? R2 makes it to space but his signal is still jammed (makes sense the hunters aren't far behind) and Boba manages to shoot his antenna off for good measure. R2 switches the hyperspace rings on. Both of them. The hunters have a problem, once the rings are in range, they'll only have time to shoot one of them so they must make sure it's Windu's. R2 baits them by feigning going to Anakin's ring (which gets destroyed) and then takes off with the correct one. Castass is despondent: they've just lost a lot of potential money. But Aurra says they can get Windu to come to them thanks to their hostages. Once they've had time to prepare. So they leave.

R2 makes it to the Jedi Temple and rushes in, shoving off two other astromechs in a corridor wide enough for six. Prick. Ahsoka and Plo Koon are video-conferencing with colleagues. Once she identifies him as Skywalker's droid and since he is obviously agitated, Plo Koon asks him to deliver whatever message he has. He shows them a recording of Anakin asking for help. Ahsoka and Plo Koon leave at once. Meanwhile Windu Force pulls the helmet's remain to him and refreshes Skywalker's memory about the whole Fett business. He somberly reflects that Boba saw him kill his father.
Koon, Ahsoka and some clones arrive jsut in time to save them from the ship's collapse. The Jedi will be fine after a night in a bacta tank. Windu says he sees why Skywalker trusts R2 and that he's done a good job. Anakin whines about how he never gets any praise.

Spoiler: my thoughts

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This was a solid episode, nothing groundbreaking but nothing bad. It was nice to see R2 play hero and rely on his brain against far deadlier opponents rather than pull out gadgets and tricks from his ass. Windu and Anakin still seem a bit too close in my opinion but they don't get along as well as in previous episodes.
This episode is really about the hunters, though: Castass is the simplest one, he's just interested in the money. Boba wants revenge and Aurra seems to be a bit of both. While there's definitely a profit motive she seems to genuinely care about Boba and want to make him happy. I wonder why. Was she just interested in the money initially and then he grew on her or did she have some prior relationship with the Fetts and sort of adopted him? Bossk is the big question mark here. What's he getting out of this? I don't know much about him, so maybe he was already established as a friend of Boba's but all I can remember is that they were both in ESB and didn't work together in that one.
The gundarks felt a bit redundant though, the destroyer was already environmental danger enough, I think.

Next episode is the season finale. The previous one was compeltely disconnected with the rest of the season, I'm hoping they don't repeat that mistake. Either make something with the Separatists (though that'd lack build-up so it'd have to be big) or part 3 of this.

Edit: Also this is probably one of the most blatant examples of hyperspace working at the speed of plot I've seen in a while.

[Tarmor]

Boba and Aurra Sing do have history that pre-dates the Clone Wars series. About 2003 there's a Young Reader set of books about Boba that follow on from the 'Attack of the Clones'. A summary of the first few books is:

After Geonosis: Boba meets Aurra Sing, who takes him to Darth Tyranus at Raxus Prime. Aurra gets Slave I as payment. A Republic attack has Boba taken by clone troopers to an orphanage. He escapes with Sing, who had come searching for the boy, in order to gain access to Jango Fett's bank account on Aargau. On Aargau, Fett lost much of his father's money. Boba managed to elude Aurra Sing after she failed to steal Jango's credits, stealing back Slave I in the process.

They don't part as happy friends. Unless the clone wars episode is meant to fit in to the start of the 'Aurra takes Boba to Tyranus' or "on the way to the bank" bit, the episodes don't mesh with the books.

[Peelee]

the episodes don't mesh with the books.

George Lucas creating plotlines in movies/shows that are at odds with the books (specifically concerning Boba Fett)? Say it ain't so!