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elenathehun · 3 years

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Watching the Clone Wars, part 7

Well, this is a better batch of episodes than last time, solely due to not having to actually skip an episode because it was too awful to watch. With that said, click on keep reading to see reviews of "Brain Invaders", "Grievous Intrigue", "The Deserter", "Lightsaber Lost", "The Mandalore Plot", "Voyage of Temptation", and "Duchess of Mandalore".

"Brain Invaders" (2x08)

I'd rate this as above-average. I am not really into horror as a genre, as I previously noted, so I was pretty grossed out by the brain worms. However, it was a pretty nice Ahsoka and Barriss episode, although I think it's a bit weird that four Jedi Knights/Masters are necessary to interrogate Poggle.

Anyway, it's not an episode of The Clone Wars without some unexpected graphic clone violence. I don't blame Ahsoka or Barris for killing poor Trap - I even think this was well-written and conveyed the desperation of their situation well - but good god, it was startling. Also tense: that final approach to the medical station.

Not good: Kit Fisto entering a ship that's infested with brain worms with no PPE. C'mon, man, I know your headtails are majestic, but keep it covered up! Also not super great: Anakin and Ahsoka's little talk at then end. A lot of their interaction just feels forced. I honestly feel like this should have been a dialogue of some kind between Ahsoka and Barriss.

"Grievous Intrigue" (2x09)

Sort of a meh episode. I understand Eeth Koth is a bit of a bad-ass in the comics, and that does sort of carry over in this episode, but mostly it just seems like a vehicle for various Jedi Masters to quip while crossing blades with this somewhat delightful murder-cyborg. Obi-Wan gives a furious monologue to Grievous, which rings a bit hollow since the clone army has had precious little screen-time (at least relatively speaking) to exhibit their loyalty or spirit.

Shout-out to Cody and those 212th soldiers dog-piling Grievous. If only you'd had a lightsaber, Cody, you probably could have killed him right then and there. And if the writers let you and your fellows out of the background more often, Obi-Wan's speech would have rung more true at the time this episode aired.

"The Deserter" (2x10)

I struggled with accurately summarizing why this episode left me cold. After all, the focus is split between Rex and the pursuit of Grievous, and I love most of the clone-centric episodes I've seen thus far. But after some thought, I realized this episode felt like the culmination of a character arc that never actually occurred for Rex, at least on-screen. After all, this episode is only the third time he's been promoted to something more than the token Clone Character Who Doesn't Die At The End - the previous two episodes I thought were legitimately Rex-centric were Season One's "Rookies" and "The Hidden Enemy". We still barely know the guy, but in this episode we watch him wrestle with doubt about his role and reason for existence when faced with a fellow clone who's made radically different choices than he has, before triumphantly stating his place is with the army. This feels like it would be a great episode, if only we were more attached to the character. Writers have to build-up to those kind of moments, or they ring false.

Anyway, is it just me or is Obi-Wan getting a little angry in this episode?

"Lightsaber Lost" (2x11)

I wasn't expecting much from this episode, but it was actually very good. Aside from the annoying Cad Bane arc at the beginning of the season, the Ahsoka episodes have been improving a lot this season - possibly because she's been separated from Anakin for a lot of them. Losing a lightsaber feels like the sort of problem a Padawan might face, and the solution feels like the sort of thing an impatient teenager would resort to. Tera Sinube is a gem - I am always a sucker for the elderly teaching the next generation, and he does it so well! The animation was well done too, especially in the chase scenes.

I've been ragging on TCW for it's lack of interconnectivity between episodes and episode arcs, but this is a stand-alone episode done right: it focuses on what a secondary character (yes, I know she's supposed to be a main character, but she doesn't feel like it quite yet), allows them to learn a lesson that develops their characters in an organic way, and reverberates through future episodes (I hope!).

"The Mandalore Plot", "Voyage of Temptation", and "Duchess of Mandalore" (2x12 -2x14)

Oof. So, this was the arc that actually made me quit watching TCW the first time around. I am very lukewarm on Mandalorians in general, so that wasn't great. But aside from that, and from the well-attested issue of everyone on Mandalore looking like a Storm Front fantasy, this arc exhibits the same structural writing defects the entire show has shown far - and honestly, life is too short to watch bad TV. At this point, I know this main issue will never be corrected in the entire show run, so I can accept it and push through in the name of completionism and writing research, but at the time I wasn't active in fandom and it was enormously easy to just stop watching and move onto other, better, shows and books.

Now, I thought long and hard about how to review these episodes, but I think it's useful in this case to interview them as a singular block instead of individual episodes. The story is largely cohesive, if a bit strained. It is essentially Palpatine's PT plot writ small: he wants to take over Mandalore (a reason is never really explicated in the actual story, so who knows why), and he's doing it by essentially creating a false war between the CIS proxies, Death Watch, and the Republic proxy, which is Duchess Satine. If all goes according to plan, Satine will be shown as ineffectual and unable to rule her people, and the GAR can occupy Mandalore for reasons of "public safety". This will inflame the Mandalorians, who aren't part of the Republic and don't want to be, and send them rushing in the arms of the CIS-allied Death Watch, starting a cycle of radicalization and violence which will end (at least from Palpatine's POV) with Mandalore firmly in his grasp, and all potential opposition killed in the Civil War he engineered.

As enormously stupid as the whole plot sounds, it's a valid historical tactic for imperial powers looking to expand. And that's lead us the the primary flaw of this story: The Jedi are the Bad Guys. Just ignore the tangled mess of Mandalorian canon, retcons, and expanded universe, past and present - in the show itself, they are presented as a smaller, weaker neighbor-state, and the Jedi are acting as agents of an expansionary military power, interfering with their internal politics specifically for the purpose of a soft invasion. And that's an interesting story! But that story is deliberately obfuscated and hobbled because the writers and producers of TCW were and are ever-so-concerned with making the Jedi as sympathetic as possible, even in situations where they shouldn't be.

Part of that hobbling is Satine's character. Satine is badly written, but she's badly written in a very specific way that has been common to most of the non-CIS political antagonists the show has presented thus far. Satine's most interesting characteristic is that she doesn't want to involve Mandalore with the war - and who can blame her? The Republic and the CIS have nothing to offer to her or her people. The only thing that will happen is the exploitation of Mandalore's natural resources (at best) or the destruction of her people, caught between two Great Powers who obviously don't care for her people's struggle. That's an interesting character, right? A POV we haven't seen in this show so far, which has consistently been from the Jedi POV, which is pretty firmly in the CIS = monsters and Republic = assholes (but democratic assholes!) camp.

But it's a POV that is pretty uncomplimentary of the Jedi role in this war, which means Satine must be crippled by an obnoxious belief in pacifism, like the unlikably-written Lurmen in season one, and also weighted down by a personal connection to an avatar of the Republic, like Senator Farr and his "family friendship" with Padme overcoming the fact that his people are starving and getting no support from the Republic. I have heard people argue that TCW, written as it was in the late 2000s, is reacting against the excesses of the War on Terror. I am less than convinced, mostly because every single anti-war character is reduced to a flat caricature of an annoying pacifist that can be safely defeated by the ever-so-kind warrior monks in the space of an episode or two before being cast aside for the next adventure.

Because Satine's motivations are poorly written, her actions don't make a lick of sense. In "The Mandalore Plot", she's clearly escorting Obi-Wan around under duress - but in "Voyage of Temptation", she's apparently going with the Senators willingly to the Coruscant, to essentially beg the Senate to not invade. Why not write her as an unwilling "guest" of the Republic, invited without recourse to defend her people's sovereignty? Well, that would show Obi-Wan in a very unflattering light, wouldn't it? But in "Duchess of Mandalore" she's back to being a prisoner in everything but name, escaping custody to receive an unaltered copy of her dead minister's speech.

Now, Obi-Wan helps her at that point...but it's clearly due to some poorly-written romantic feelings. I am not interested in any Padme/Anakin parallels, mostly because I find it incredibly tedious and honestly not helpful in exploring Anakin's Leap into the Dark Side. This story is a gigantic missed opportunity to show the Jedi (or at least, a representative of the Jedi) wrestle with their roles as avatars of the republic, when the republic is so obviously manufacturing a reason to invade Mandalore. Palpatine is obviously orchestrating this whole thing, but he still (at this point in the show) requires the consent of the Senate to essentially annex more territory - and the Senate is perfectly happy to give him that consent, by the way. There is a fantastic story on the Jedi side about the clash of ideals vs realities, and the writers totally side-stepped it.

But pulling the focus out a little further, that has actually been par for the course for most of the Obi-Wan stories of season 2. He's been consistently more and more irritated about the war as the season has gone on, and made some off-hand comments about the ungratefulness of the Republic populace that, in the hands of a more competent writer, could have been a multi-season character arc about loss of faith in fallible human institutions, which would dovetail pretty well with his characterization in both RotS and ANH. Instead, his character remains the static wise-cracking Good Guy; Satine is the Designated Love Interest, unable to develop along more interesting and independent lines; and this arc falls deeply flat as a result.

They're not the only characters who are horribly underwritten. I mean, here we are at the end of Season 2, and have we yet seen a sympathetic CIS character, or an accounting of how Palpatine was able to take advantage of already extant fractures in the Republic to create a shadowy cabal dedicated to tearing it apart? No. It's all war crimes and evil laughter so far. The Good Guys always win (until they don't), the bad guys are always Very Bad, and there are no shades of gray in this massive galaxy. Again, ignoring the complicated Mandalorian backstory, Death Watch is extremely under-baked as villains. There could have been a fascinating interplay between Satine and Pre about their different visions for their people's future, but just as Satine is a flat Pacifist caricature, Pre is a dull Terrorist caricature.

I have to give a special mention to the horrible Love Confession of "Voyage of Temptation". This is the episode where Satine is written most consistently as Peak Pacifist. If she had instead been written as anti-war (but not necessarily a philosophical pacifist), her escape from Tal Merrik would have been a great inversion of that trope - and in fact, I thought it was at first, when she "confessed", and then had to make an annoyed face when Obi-Wan didn't immediately play along. Instead, they played it straight, and I've never felt more simpatico with a villain than when Tal Merrik complained about their timing. That fact that Satine's "pacifism" is then used as an excuse for Obi-Wan and Satine to hesitate to kill a terrorist, leading Anakin to kill him...like, c'mon. I get it, the writers want to show his fall to the dark side, you gotta play the ominous theme music, but is this really a particularly evil act by Anakin? I'm gonna be honest, if a cop or an armed civilian kills a mass shooter, no one is castigating them for doing so, but instead congratulating them for stopping a murderer from killing again.

Final note and the only one that explicitly addresses the Mandalorian elephant in the room: I hate the Darksaber. Like, I know we all gave KJA shit for the original Darksaber novel, but the fact that Filoni (or Lucas?) repurposed the name for a SPECIAL MANDALORIAN LIGHTSABER fills me with intense rage. They're fucking gun knights, you coward, stop inserting your weird Arthurian hard-on into my western samurai sci-fi pastiche.

And that's it for this batch of episodes. Up next: Boba Fett makes his first appearance in our chronological viewing, and we return to Mandalore a second time, much to my sorrow.

#watching the clone wars #star wars #star wars tcw #television is hypnotoad

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anotherhawk · 5 years

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Some thoughts about how the clones spend their downtime

It's Saturday night, it's time to drink tea and think about some world building.

So I think we can say with some certainty that the clones didn't have many things to do for fun on Kamino. I'm thinking in their downtime they had sparring, officially mandated strategy games, and whatever word games, complicated versions of tag etc that they made up themselves. But once they were out in the galaxy, even in the midst of the war, there would have been so much more and I like to think that their Commanders, and to a lesser extent their Generals, would have tried to ensure they get to experience as much as possible.

(I'm mostly going to be talking about the 212th on the Negotiator here, but that's just for my own interests. Assume this is happening to a greater or lesser extent everywhere the clones are allowed even the smallest hint of self expression.)

It starts in small ways. Vod come together to learn new specializations from each other, and try to learn new martial art styles from holoclasses. Things that they don't think anyone can object to. From there they go on to watching less professional material...terrible rodian action films, and holodramas with Jedi who make dramatic speeches and swoon, overcome, in the face of cruelty. If pressed they could still claim that this is strictly research....but no one presses. Not even General Kenobi when he walks in in Drifter and Trey watching the climactic finale of 'A Light in the Temple' and remarks that if he wore THAT under his tunic he would die of chafing halfway through a fight, before apologising and leaving them to it.

Films. Holodramas. Documentaries. The holonet is open to them and soon there are little clubs forming all over the ship, groups of brothers who come together to watch THEIR shows, to talk and laugh and be together without having to hide it. And sometimes there is only one brother left from the original watching club, except that there is NEVER only one brother left. They are vode. They support each other, and that means sitting through Rylo's karking awful medical dramas as surely as it means watching his back in battle.

And then, of course, the clones create. They've been painting their armour and themselves from the beginning, but the first time the early shift goes to the mess hall to find someone has painted a mural of a stormy Kamino night on the wall outside there is nervous silence. No one asks who did it. (No one has to, Gregor's work is unmistakable.) The tension is palpable for the rest of the day, until Cody stalks off the bridge in search of caf, comes face to face with the mural and scowls. "Fantastic. Rain. You couldn't have gone for a nice sunrise?"

The next mural is a sunrise. In fact a lot of the next ones are. When asked about their battalion colours the 212th will swear blind to a man that they were chosen because "Commander Cody likes sunrises." Meanwhile, the living areas of the ship become a riot of colours.

There is a shipwide message board where clones can look for others who want to explore the same interests. Brothers who are interested in games and hobbies come together. An a capella choir, specialising in old Mandalorian battle hymns forms, right alongside an intense synth pop group. Once every two weeks the small rec room is taken over by a dedicated group of roleplayers, under the direction of Mercer, who leads his vode on a journey of adventure and daring deeds, where THEY are the heroes, the ones that matter, and where they get to live and win.

Cody monitors the message board carefully. Cody looks out for his brothers. When a small group forms with the vague idea that food is nice and cooking sounds interesting, some extra supplies come in the next delivery and one of the kitchens is opened up for general use....on a strict schedule, naturally. Paints are always available. Yarn is procured, somehow, for Cy and Sideswipe, who decide, buried under six feet of snow on Hoth, that learning to knit would be amazing.

Gradually, word gets around. If you have an interest then make it known and if at all possible it will be accommodated. Somehow. ("Chopshop wants to take up woodworking," Cody tells his Jedi despairingly over drinks late one night. "Do I look like I just carry trees in my back pocket?" They figure it out. They always do. And the somewhat wobbly wooden chairs that pop up in the rec room are the most fought over seats on the ship.)

(For those hobbies and activities that require equipment or expenditure in some way there is a line in the GAR budget marked "Sentient Resource Support and Development". Obi-Wan is careful to make sure that all the money for it comes from the funds of the Jedi order so no one can actually challenge them even if they do investigate.)

There's a converted storeroom deep in the heart of the ship that's full of plants and greenery. A communal garden in the middle of a Star Destroyer. General Kenobi can often be found there in the middle of the night when he's supposed to be sleeping.

Education is something that Cody can't offer on his own, but the Jedi can help. For those troopers who want to learn any of the several subjects he's well versed in, Obi-Wan is happy to teach classes whenever he can. In long journeys through hyperspace his lessons on galactic history are especially popular. (You can tell how well the Cloned Sentients Rights Bill is progressing by the content of the lessons. On particularly bad days he tells them all about planets with successful histories of collective action and civil disobedience.) For other subjects he calls in favours from all over the galaxy. Many experts, authors, scientists and university professors are happy to teach a class of eager and attentive troopers in their spare time, whether over holo or those times when the 212th are on Coruscant for more than a few days. Senator Amidala gives separate lessons in Senate politics, the culture and history of Naboo, and fashion and make-up which are all equally well attended. No matter what a vods interest might be, someone can be found to help them meet it.

Most of the vode are interested in learning more about Mandalorians. Duchess Satine might have issues with General Kenobi, but no matter who the messenger might be, she is willing to help mando'ade who wish to learn. Somehow, professors from the newly established universities of the new Mandalorians all independently decide to get in contact with the many children of Jango Fett and offer them another side to their history and culture

There are groups that form to try and better their brothers lives. These tend to cross over the entire GAR. Groups that write letters to senators about their lives, their working conditions, their need for freedom. Groups that research the laws of the Republic and try and turn all the ways their existence is a crime into an argument about how they are people, not just flesh-covered droids. Groups who look ahead, to the future a kind galaxy might grant them, and research how they might start a colony of their own.

What I imagine is a whole newly emerged culture full of people trying to establish who they are and what that means. People who have been thrust into a war, not if their making, who are intent on seizing every new experience, who find joy in between moments of pain and destruction. Just...clones having fun. Please. It's important.

#star wars #star wars: the clone wars #tcw #my writing #headcanons #clone headcanons #clone culture #212th attack battalion #commander cody #obi-wan kenobi

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