THE CLONE WARS EPISODES 101/102

WATCH REPORT FOR: March 5, 2022

WATCHED: The Clone Wars "Ambush" and "Rising Malevolence"

SUMMARY: Jedi Master Yoda's treaty negotiations with the Toydarians are upended by the uninvited preence of Asajj Ventress, representing Count Dooku and the Separatists. The king of the Toydarians agrees to allow Ventress and her droid forces to test Yoda, to prove whether or not the Jedi are worthy allies. Yoda and three clone troopers must evade the droids and reach the Toydarians, and by working together and exploiting the drids weaknesses, do so.

Later, Jedi Master Plo Koon's Republic cruiser encounters the Separatists' deadliest weapon: a ship called Malevolence carrying a portable ion cannon. The cannon destroys the Republic vessel and only a few members of the crew survive in badly damaged escape pods. Ahsoka Tano and Anakin Skywalker, despire being ordered not to search for Master Plo, embark on a rescue mission. The mission is a success but only barely avoids disaster.

OVERALL REVIEW: Gonna try to keep these things shorter as we get deeper into the "war story anthology" part of the ongoing series. "Ambush" is a good showcase for Yoda, not just as a flipping-out lightsaber duelist or a Jedi master of young padawns, but as a military leader. He comes up with good strategies for evading the droids, using their predicatability and his own smaller force size to best advantage. He also inspires the clone troopers when they are ready to give up hope, which makes a crucial difference in their ultimate victory.

All well and good until the last five minutes or so when, realizing that Yoda has ably demonstrated that Jedi are indeed powerful and worthy allies, Dooku goes capital-E Eeeeeevil and orders Ventress to assassinate the king of Toydaria, a sour grapes tantrum move that he justifies by saying "perhaps your successor will be easier to persuade". At the beginning of the episode, I still had the question in the back of my head: why don't rumors of Dooku kidnapping Rotta the Hutt immediately make the Toydarians suspicious of Dooku and Ventress's "reasonable counter-offer"? But fine, maybe the Toydarians think the Hutts aren't trustworthy themselves, and didn't know how much stock to put in the rumors, so they unwisely kept an open mind. Then we get literal attempted murder, and I immediately think, OK, now we're going to have the King of the noble Toydarians himself with a firsthand account of Dooku and Ventress trying to kill him, WITH RED SITH LIGHTSABERS. Surely now the Separatists will be reviled across the galaxy, right? And yet I suspect not. Also, Yoda saves the king's life but lets Ventress walk away. Come on, guys. I get that she's a major antagonist and this is literally the first episode of season one, but come on.

So then we have the first of a three-parter, so it's a bit hard to judge it on its own merits. Except to say it's very dark! I am not exaggerating even a little bit when I say that this episode not only has clone trooper corpses floating lifelessly in space, it actually depicts the moment of their death immediately beforehand. And said demise occurs specifically because the Malevolence sends out hunter droids to attack the escape pods and kill any survivors inside. This, as Donovan is fond of pointing out to me, is definitely a war crime by any reasonable definition! And on the one hand I applaud The Clone Wars for confronting head-on the horrors of war, but on the other hand, DANG.

Also in this episode, a bit more character development for Ahsoka, who reveals that Master Plo was one of the first elder Jedi she bonded with as a youngling at the Temple. So she's not just an idealistic do-gooder who wants to save Plo because it's the right thing to do, she's legitimately concerned for her friend. It's another reasonably nuanced insight into what drives soldiers in wartime, the answer generally being their personal feelings rather than abstract ideals their leaders claim the wars are all about. Again, hope we haven't seen the last of this theme.

HOW MANY TIMES DOES ANAKIN HANG UP ON OBI-WAN? He doesn't. There is some direct disobedience, but for once Anakin does it in a subtle way that doesn't require him to switch off communications while Obi-Wan is yelling "That is an ORDER!" I hope this is an anomaly and not actual maturity on Anakin's part, otherwise this feature of the blog posts will become very pointless.