Full Series Discuss/Regrade the Episode: S03E08: Evil Plans

Episode 3.8!! Evil Plans​

3P0 and R2 go shopping. ​

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"The failure in planning is a plan for failure"​

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In the middle of a routine shopping trip on Coruscant, C-3PO is abducted by the bounty hunter Cad Bane. Bane is looking for information about the Senate building on behalf of Jabba the Hutt. Finding C-3PO devoid of useful information, Bane and his accomplices kidnap R2-D2 and extract the vital data, before memory-wiping the droids of the incident, and letting them on their way. The floor-plans and security details of the Senate building are part of a plot engineered by the Hutt families to free their imprisoned brother, Ziro the Hutt, who holds potentially damaging information about Hutt activities.​

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http://starwars.com/explore/the-clone-wars/ep308#!/about​

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Now that you've rewatch the episode lets regrade it. Feel free to discuss as much as you like.​

 

Evil Plans is definitely to me one of the show's most pointless episodes. So many things about it made it feel like a waste of time... I really didn't care for Padme throwing a party for Senator Aang, or the adventures of Threepio and Artoo as they go on a quest to purchase some Jogan fruit. Then after 3PO is kidnapped, Cad Bane uses electrical shocks to probe him for information? Apparently, that was simply for the shock factor, and to beat it into our heads that Bane is one cruel b******. Then he realizes 3PO doesn't have the information he wants, but continues to torture the droid anyways for kicks and giggles. The droid spa was somewhat interesting, with the oil bath to cure creaky joints, etc. But R2 briefly evading capture was a waste, as he ends up surrendering anyway due to threats against 3PO...

Really, the only part of the episode that I found interesting was Bane's trip to Jabba's palace to deliver the information to Jabba. We see the Hutt Council for the first time, and get a tantalizing glimpse into the dirty dealings of the Hutt families. We get to see how Bane was recruited into the Hostage Crisis scheme in the Senate to free Ziro the Hutt. Still, I felt we could have done away with this episode and have things happen offscreen. Bane did not necessarily have to kidnap and probe Artoo to obtain the Senate floorplan info, there are other droids that might be available to interrogate. But it is what it is, and they wanted to make this an episode focused on the series's droid protagonists.

I give this episode a 5/10, mostly for Cad Bane being his usual evil self and seeing the Hutt Council for the first time, but I suspect even that may be a generous score, for an episode steeped in so much mediocrity.

 

5/10, nothing really happened in this episode, apart from Cad Bane kidnapping two droids that go to get Padme fruit for a cake... But it was still alright. And it was good to see that Todo 360 got rebuilt after he blew up in the Jedi Temple, I don't know how though, because I wouldn't think Cad Bane would've had time to go down the shaft and get the pieces of him and still escape with the Holocron without being caught.

 

^That about sums it up. 3/10.

 

LOL. I picked that screenshot well if I do say so myself although that isn't how I feel.

8/10 as I actually liked "Evil Plans". It does have a really stupid plot but that's okay because somehow I thought it was cool to see something simple as a shopping trip in the SW universe and how horrible wrong something normal like that can go. Its like Rocko's Modern Life where the show's title character often sets out to do something completely mundane like go to the grocery story and it turns into a comical ordeal. It campy but my kind of camp, I like the slapstick used in this episode. Then Cad Bane's role as kidnapper where he gets so frustrated before successfully capturing R2 and the return of Todo360 top it off. The main drawbacks are the silly aspect of Padme kissing ass and that there were probably better stories to tell.

 

I knew someone would rather quickly let the screenshot with the Padme facepalm sum up their feelings about the episode.

 

This was the worst Cad Bane episode--barring, perhaps the anticlimactic stupidity that was Crisis on Naboo. An episode surrounding around a quest for fruit? Seriously?

That being said, there were some redeeming qualities. The droid spa was mildly amusing and I much enjoyed Todo 360's characterization. Plus Bane's as boss as ever. However, those don't make up for all the blandness in the rest of the episode. 6/10

 

I see what you did there.
Oh, and I like your sig, by the way.


As for the episode...
Evil Plans seems to suffer most from the fact that too many different ideas appear to have gone into this, none of which were ultimately complimentary to each other. There are good elements and bad elements, but rather than balance each other out, they serve to display what a tangled mess is made by combining them.

To start, we have this party. Taking time way from the war for an action-light "moment of normality" storyline is not a bad thing. It can serve as an introspective character-based segment, Anakin's respite from the war to be with his wife, Padme working at casual politics instead of being a Senator-in-Name-Only Adventurer, and a glimpse at everyday life. The series tie-in novel No Prisoners handled a similar situation, and managed to make it quite a touching and believable moment between the couple. Unfortunately, Evil Plans throws this right out of the window, and instead resorts to making the moment of normality instead a spring board for a pointless droid adventure, and can't seem to get away from Anakin and Padme fast enough. I suppose it's probably a good thing considering the show struggles to convey the necessary couples' chemistry for any lengthy character piece between the two, but it's a solid concept that deserves greater effort instead of avoidance.

Then we have the kidnapping plot. Let me just get how unnecessary this all is out of the way right up front. If Bane was looking for building schematics, why not hack architectural records? That's assuming the layouts of official areas aren't simply available to the public in the first place. Assuming that those options are out of the question for some legitimate reason beyond plot contrivances, let's then get into the pointless electro-torture of a droid. It's a droid. It's brain is a computer, accessible via hardwire the same as any other system. An ion shot to neutralize and incapacitate, and a high-spec data transferring cable are all that should be necessary to pry information from a droid; the torturer, the foreboding lair, and even intimidating dialogue are essentially irrelevant to a data download. The whole concept of interrogation or torture is meaningless to a droid that can be hacked as easily as any other computerized system. Having Corey Burton voice the torture droid with the same voice as Brainiac was an unexpected and surprising delight, small though it may be.

That said, if the plot had been directed toward an organic target, things would have made much more sense. I did also enjoy the fact that Bane was shown to be smart enough to operate two teams, including a grab team that had no tangible connection to himself, and had the presence of mind to switch vehicles at a secondary location for added insurance. Someone on this writing team has some real sense, though it's a shame that it only shines through in places that are few and far between. I thought the droid "spa" was rather stupid in concept; of course there are going to be facilities that repair and refurbish droids, but constructing it as a spa treatment was a strange and, I feel, unnecessary idea. Is it really likely that a droid would appreciate the amenities of supposed luxury, or would the utility of the act of being returned to their previous quality be the primary selling point? To put it another way: you send your dog to the groomer to keep it clean, but you wouldn't have its nails painted or its whiskers waxed because it just wouldn't get anything out of it the way a human would. Though I do have to admit, I liked the new design for the attendant droids; more model variety is always a good thing, both for the series and the larger universe.

Once we're done with the droids, however, the episode immediately picks up. The segment placed at Jabba's Palace is infinitely more enjoyable than combined rest of the episode. Back in his own element, Bane again becomes a true character rather than caricature. The debut of the Hutt Grand Council is a good moment for the series, and one that proved to be nothing but beneficial. Not sure why they felt Gorga needed to have the monocle piece, or what's going on with Gardulla, but it's all relatively minor to the episode. And the final ending, with the party back on Coruscant, was nothing to me but a shallow happy ending that everyone knew was coming anyway and did little to make the episode's plot feel truly worth-while. Yay, we succeeded...at getting fruit...so the persnickety politician doesn't have to eat a three-layer cake without a bit of garnish. What would we have done without that?

The poor plot premise of the droids being kidnapped for Senate schematics leads me to deduct two points―for you can't build a house on a bad foundation and expect it to stand―and the unnecessarily electric execution of the information recovery loses the episode another point for being pointless and illogical. Another point for the missed opportunity of any genuine exploration of Anakin and Padme's time together or their secret relationship in favor of the lacking droid plot, and a fourth for the inane childishness of being put in danger over a picky politician not having his favorite fruit on an already quite fancy cake. And finally, minus one for being just generally unentertaining to me. While the Tatooine part was great, it wasn't nearly enough to justify an entire episode's worth of 3PO and R2 bumbling about while Bane plays evil interrogator. So here's a 5 out of 10 from me, and the sooner we can get to some good episodes, the better.

 

'Evil Plans' is arguably one of the most unnecessary episodes and essentially just a big build-up to 'Hostage Crisis', but I still enjoyed it. The droid misadventure plot with shopping on the market taking a turn for the worse was pretty entertaining for what it was; it was definitely rather cheesy and campy but I didn't mind it. Padme preparing a feast for the visiting Senator Aang was pretty good wraparound material which started and ended the episode nicely. There were some fun moments and dialogue, I kinda liked the dissonance between R2 at the droid spa and C-3PO being zapped while searched for vital information, Cad Bane was as ruthless as ever here (and is also shown to do things For The Evulz, needlessly continuing to torture 3PO) and Todo-360 played an important role which was nice. Best scene was the one in Jabba's palace where the Hutt Council gets introduced as Cad Bane watched and had the protocol droid translate the Huttese for him; the shot of him walking into the middle of the meeting and introducing himself was pretty cool.

Overall, definitely not the best episode focusing on the droids but still a pretty okay one.

7/10

 

+ best original Padme outfit in TCW
+ not as stupid of an adventure as Nomad Droids, for example.
- Still stupid.

6/10

 

I enjoy the political ***-kissing aspect, but the whole kidnapping scneario and droid spa made this episode one of the worst in my opinion.

A resounding 4/10. The next one is so much better.

 

I liked it okay. It was a pointless comedy relief episode, but that's not a bad thing in principle, and for what it was it went fine. We've all seen the pointless comedy relief episode done badly in this series (and expanded into a four-episode arc, and given a space frog as its lead), but this had some decent comedy bits, some Coruscant eye candy, a genuinely interesting look at part of the story we don't see a lot of (Padme and Anakin's life as a married couple), the welcome return of one of the show's best villains, and some Tony Daniels. What's to complain about? A little forgettable, but hey, they can't all be Carnage of Krell.

7.5/10

 

Uhhhhhhh Cad Bane was awesome, R2-D2's Spa Day was fun so 2/10

 

1/10
IMO Evil Plans is tied for worst episode of entire series with Sunny Day In The Void. MST3K has prepared my brain for such awfulness, thats the only way I survived...it made me embarrassed to say I'm a fan of the show.

 

Kudos, Seerow, for that perfect image.


Where do I begin.

This is THE episode I watch to remind myself "WHAT WAS TCW CREW THINKING?!"


I mean it is THE CLONE WAR... and instead of having battles, intrigue, betrayals, suffering, things that are kinda mandatory for a show about a war (even an animated one), we have R2 going to a spa and 3PO getting tortured. That was a strong notion in my mind even right after Season Three ended. WHAT!? WHY!? Instead of having awesome Clone vs Droid story, we had such episodes to waste time.

And, especially, when TCW got cancelled I kinda got the almost the same feeling, but doubled. Now the show is over. Filoni is proud to say that they told the stories they told in 100 or so episodes, but I wonder is he...

I mean we got this, but we never got another Plo Koon-centric episode or arc, Kit Fisto-centric episode or a Mace Windu episode. And yes, there the footage of Plo with the saber from the bonus content. But is it out of our minds the fact that the story of Sifo Dyas in the show could just have Plo Koon in the start and then switch to the regular cast of Anakin and Obi-Wan. I hope I am wrong... VERY WRONG...


Back to this episode since the bonus content is another subject for another thread. Even Cad Bane was wasted. The only good thing was seeing TODO 360 again. I love the little droid.

And before the Season started, Filoni teased us about a Manakron system, but that turned out to be a lame throw away line. I would have loved it if they left the planet and went to find this location that has been lost in time or something... an episode about Cad Bane going on adventure with 3PO as his key and not just a prequel to Hostage Crisis.



That is why give the episode a 1. Only cause of TODO.

 

I loved this episode, I give it 9/10

I feel like in general Star Wars best told from the perspective of 3CPO and R2D2 , they are just innoculous and unaware of all the elaborate and sinister workings that surround them. The fact that their memories were erased made none of the events less impactful and I thought it was beautiful that R2 would give himself up to save threepio. To make things better, Cad Bane's evil little droid gave awesome lines like "Thanks for the memories"