Full Series The Clone Wars - Episode 5.3 - Front Runners - discussion thread

Good point about the King. Unlike guys like Riff Tamson so far the new king seems to have a roar but no bite. Nobody has died yet under his orders or his hand.

 

It seems that bad king Sanjay Rash is about to execute "good king" Ramsis Dendup (the stupidest name they have came up with during this season) but ends up to be killed by Killanee. What is the reason onderonians hate Rash should be told- he has a lot of droids that civilians seem to fear though. Still I would be angry for rebels cutting of my power so I'm not really understanding the civilian behavior there...

Problem is that after they do that people are suddenly on their side- that felt odd... Idea was the one you said but suddenly all people are happy not to have electricity

 

Definitely agreed -- honestly, the plot here has one of the most polarized good/evil baselines we've seen on this show. We have incredibly generic heroes, an ridiculously generic villain, and thus far NOTHING majorly unexpected has happened. The rebels got what they wanted right away. I was hoping that at least *some* of the citizens of the city would react with fear toward their tactics, but even that element of potential moral ambiguity was quashed as soon as they revealed the citizens 1) were unanimously of the opinion the king should be overthrown and 2) the weapons didn't affect humans.

They're buying into every cliche in the book with the story right now. TCW has success in the past with morally ambiguous, unique plots. Even in Season 1! So how could they produce something dull and predictable like this?

"I could kill you, former king!"
*Doesn't bother.*

"This could actually work in our favor!"
*Calls Dooku rather than hatch an ingeniously diabolical plot*

 

after a long thought about this lousy script and a good coffe i maybe can save the writers ass with a theory of mine.

The Fact that the droids was bad, much more than Droids which fight clones usualy.

Maybe Droids are as good as they commanders/generals which use them?

Maybe droids have a standard adjustment when they are beeing delivered from the weapons factories to the front and CIS bases? Maybe a good general would readjust them before he uses them. Adjust their target systems by fire practise before battle? Maybe thats the reason why grievouses Droids are a danger even for clones, and why this lame puppet kings droids are as lame as him. I mean one of them even failed to hit bonteri once with several shots out of a very near distance. Lux could even spit on that b2 droid.

Thats my personel apology for the lousy writing. They can use this if they wish.

 

It is going to be a repeat again of the Mon Calamari arc where we had Lee-Char about to be executed by Riff Tamson's men but is saved by Nossor Ri. But the king will not turn good I think.

 

The story is starting to pick up. I'm actually wondering how the King plans on turning it to his favour. Dooku's new general looks promising.

 

I was hoping they'd address this, but they completely glossed over it. TCW can be frustratingly superficial in the way it addresses (or doesn't address) what should be controversial questions.

 

Moustache general looks like Pelly. i wonder if its deliberate.

 

Hmmmm...maybe Saw & Steela are heirs to the throne? Could be why they kept their familial connection hush-hush. That would explain what seemed to be their "flirting", if the king is looking for a brother & sister.

Also: I remember almost identical posts of "deep disappointment" after what was "promised" halfway through the Umbara arc...chill out, give the story a chance to finish. I also find the word "generic" applied to Star Wars as a pejorative hilarious: Star Wars is by its very nature "generic"! But if they did something else the same people would be complaining anyway...

 

This arc and several others totally slide on the surface and not even explore the rich environment they have and it's culture and it's people. Same was done to Umbara and Dac.

Eternal_Hero Umbara had promise but failed!

 

What makes it worse is that this is the central question of the freedom fighter vs. terrorist dichotomy: is guerrilla warfare an appropriate tactic if the goal is noble?

TCW accepts the "ends justify the means" position, with bare lip-service given to the idea that the civilians may not see it that way. I thought someone was going to call Steela out on her "The people will support us if they see we are strong enough!" crap, but it never happened. Lux did mention the importance of getting the civilians to trust them, but even that was not followed up on.

Perhaps this would be less annoying if the show's creators weren't congratulating themselves for addressing these big questions.

 

Not as good as the first part. This arc will need to regain its momentum in the next two parts.
+ Nice to see Ahsoka's continuing conflict with her feelings vs. Jedi attachment philosophy.
+ Steela's "he's my brother" comment reminded me of Leia's same remark from RotJ. In fact watching the first part of this arc, I was not sure Saw and Steel were siblings until I read their character bios on starwars.com. I'm sure that the writer wanted to bring a Luke/Leia sibling vibe and the ambiguity of that relationship to this episode.
= The King describing the rebels as “terrorists” is thought-provoking. The rebels have not killed any sentient beings – only droids. However, if their actions harm or kill citizens, could they be considered terrorists? Were the rebels in the OT considered terrorists because they killed stormtroopers, or were those deaths made more palatable because the stormtroopers were masked?
- Some of the skirmishes were too simplistic and tidy.
- the populace coming out of the blue to cheer the rebels was not believable. Likely, they'd be cursing the rebels for all the chaos created and the power being taken out.

 

Just so you guys know, regardless of my personal feelings towards this show, I'm not trying to be a constant downer.

But does anyone think that the constant allusions to terrorism is going to get overbearing?

 

Reminds me of an episode of Gargoyles when the word terrorist was awkwardly edited out.

Goliath: "I will never be like this--" END

Weird Sister: "We were not talking about this--" END

 

It was just a handfull onderanians out of many thousands which directly supported the Rebells. Thats believable. I think the majority will blame and hate them when this suffering of the civilian population will go on. CIS will bring harsh rules and blame the rebells for this. Anyone wants to live in peace and when the opression is not that big than most people chose to stay still and move with the mass.

 

Not sure exactly why this episode is getting hate, I thought it was great.

I can understand feelings about War on Two Fronts, though

 

Cause people are never gonna be happy that's why

 

This was better than A War On Two Fronts but far from the perfection of the Hondo episode of the premiere.

The problem with the TCW in episodes like these is that they over spend time with only one side of the issue but do not explore the other side. WHAT ABOUT THE PEOPLE WHO ARE HAPPY LIVING UNDER CIS RULE!?
TCW crew says: Fudge them, we follow the Jedi.

People can be happy and many times we, the people, are happy with an episode. Now we can not all be like you - all blissful and joyful for even the worst of the worst episodes but there are times like in the case of "Carnage of Krell" or "Trespass" that the audience that is us has been unanimous about how great the show is during episodes like the ones I mentioned.

 

Eh, I just thought it was boring.

BLASPHEMY!

 

BLASPHEMY! LOL

 

Yeah. I didn't think cutting the power would go over all that well in winning friends. Maybe I'm over thanking this by comparing that to a real world situation considering its mainly the lack of air conditioning, TV, and internet that get to me, lol (I've only been without power 3 weeks before but I'm not sure that really counts when the McDonalds down the street still has power). I know if somebody blew up a power plant here (unless its the nuclear one cuz then I'm dead. x.x; ) it would be like the really early episode of Family Guy where Meg and Peter crash into the TV transmitter and knock out television in Quahog and everyone grabs the pitch forks.

 

Thank you Seerow!

You rock. I knew I had seen a similar situation in comedy,.... this is further proof that the Rebels are doing more harm than good but the show is not interested in that cause it is biased.

 

Newsreel: "The Jedi have formed a rebel alliance..." Um, no they didn't. It was already formed, they just helped them to fight droids better. It's offical, battle droids are now completely worthless. This ep relied WAY too much on droid incompetence and dumb luck, and it's not at all realistic. For one thing we're talking about rebels here, who got about a day of training, not soldiers. Sure they can fire blasters and elegantly roll poppers but that's about it. Then we have droids who were designed for combat, as well as enhanced optics! They may rely on strength in numbers but that doesn't mean when there's fewer of them they stop shooting, which is practically what happened when the rebels took the AAT. Later when the commando droids emerge from the power station we see several of them but only one get taken out.

As others have stated, Iziz and the 'king' looked excellent.

Though we can't be sure if they're back on Coruscant yet I wondered this too. I'm not saying Rex should be in his full gear and the robes should be off but there's no harm in taking off the helmet and hoods.

Overall this ep wasn't that bad, but not lowering the bar for the bad guys, yet again, just to make the good guys look better would've been nice and it could've easily been combined with the previous, making this a three-part arc, and not missed a thing IMO.

 

So Kalani is a Super Tactical Droid.

I'm betting we'll see Super Commando Droids soon.

 

I do think a major problem here is early on in the episode setup it seemed like the show was going to go into a gray area with the citizens fearing the rebels. It was pretty cool how they freaked out like when someone gets shot in GTA when Saw intervened on the ID thing and when Steela sniped droids to drop 'dead' at random in front of them. They could have gone really dark with this with regular citizens getting arrested. The whole 'They don't think we can win thing' changed what had been set up and was watered down. The least that could have happened was a sharp division after the power station was blow up instead of everyone being like "Grab your horses and your guns". I may still be over thinking this since we're probably still seeing only a small handful.


Lol, I noticed a couple a golden eyed and golden haired Xerxians on the 2nd viewing, particularly at the end there. xD