THE CLONE WARS EPISODES 114/115

WATCH REPORT FOR: April 16, 2022

WATCHED: The Clone Wars "Defenders of Peace" and "Trespass"

SUMMARY: Anakin, no longer on the verge of death but still not at full strength, along with Ahsoka, Aayla and the clones, attempt to defend the Lurmen led by stalwart pacificst Tee Watt Kaa from a Nemoidian Separatist, Lok Durd, testing a devastating new weapon. When the younger Lurmen take up arms to defend their village, the Jedi are able to turn the tide against the droid army.

Later, Anakin and Obi-Wan travel to Orto Plutonia to investigate a non-responsive outpost and find the troops stationed there have been slaughtered. Separatists are suspected but the true killers are native creatures called Talz. The elder Pantoran representative, Chairman Cho, seeks vengeance and to subjugate the savage Talz, but dies in battle, clearing the way for the more idealistic Senator Chuchi to negotiate peace, despite Cho's dying wish for retribution.

OVERALL REVIEW:

Once again we have two episodes which make an interesting pair as a study in contrasts. The Lurmen start out as pacifists willing to die rather than get drawn into war, deeply devoted to their belief that violence is never a solution. The Pantorans are more than willing, and sometimes bloodthirstily eager, to address problems with lethal shows of force. Or at least, such is the case for Tee Watt Kaa and Chairman Cho, respectively. In the face of potential genocide, the younger Lurmen come to embrace self-defense at a minimum. And young Senator Chuchi holds out the hope of diplomacy and coexistence to broker a peace with the Talz. Tee Watt Kaa at least gets to live and be bitter about the younger generation's fighting spirit; Cho dies as punishment for being a violent speciesist.

Of the two, from a storytelling perspective, I vastly prefer "Trespass". "Defenders" is yet another typical war story, one that traffics in tropes I'm not altogether comfortable with. I do hold to the old saw that it's nearly impossible to tell an anti-war story in a cinematic way, because movies (or in this case, animated tv shows) just make war look cool and awesome. We are supposed to cheer when the young Lurmen abandon pacifism, because self-defense is such a fundamental human right, but it does overlap a lot with justifying war as a concept rather than condemining it outright as a barbaric practice. And in Clone Wars in particular, there's always the undercurrent of knowing that these adorable simians have thrown off the yoke of oppressive tradition to take a stand and fight alongside the Jedi ... ultimately furthering the aims of Chancellor Palpatine, who will become the evil Emperor and plunge the galaxy into darkness.

Still, you know what saves "Defenders of Peace" on a pure entertainment level? GEORGE FREAKING TAKEI. He takes a disposable character whose name rhymes with "turd" and really makes a delightful meal of it.

Nonetheless, "Trespass" is a better episode. It's a mystery to begin with, and introduces yet another wild card. What makes it less compelling than the episodes featuring Hondo Ohnaka is the fact that the Talz are an entire tribe standing in for alien culture, rather than individuals with personality. And the overarching "don't be a speciesist colonial bigot" message is a good one, but it leans hard into the very "noble savage" tropes it's ostensibly trying to challenge. Again, not having any Talz with dialogue which might reveal individuality is less than ideal.