Full Series The Clone Wars- Episode 106: Downfall of a Droid Discussion Thread (Spoilers Allowed)

Yeah, I realize that, but even so, I thought they'd leave some kind of nominal power to the side/rear deflectors.

 

Sorry, I should have said that spoilers for this particular episode are allowed here since that's what he highlighted in his post.

I agree, Obi-Wan is a Jedi Master, he should know that attachments and emotional connections are a big no-no in regards to being a Jedi so I don't think that he's being droid racist or unfeeling towards droids, it's just that he's following his Jedi training.

 

"On a related question- if Production Order #1 is the Christophsis episode of the movie, and PO #2-3 is this Artoo duo of episodes, what was the PO#s for the Teth & Tatooine episodes of the movie?"

Is it possible that the Teth and Tatooine parts were created especially for the movie and the Christophsis episode(If it is in fact the 1 before Downfall of a Droid as 2) was just changed to be a part of it?

 

We'll have to get confirmation, but I believe the Jabba plotline was added specifically for the movie.

 

[image=http://www.hotflick.net/flicks/1983_Star_Wars__Episode_VI_-_Return_of_the_Jedi/Thumb/983SWJ_Dalyn_Chew_001.jpg]

It looks pretty much the same as Geonosis, which we know was "hospitable" to some forms of life.
And according to the OS:

But if you suggest we should just ignore the OS, I'm fine with that. I've felt the need to do it before.

 

I liked this episode, thought it was pretty tight. Great action, very cool space battles. Coleman did a good job directing. Liked seeing a darker Anakin. Ahsoka was pretty cute here too.

Didn't mind the music, it's a good thing they're not afraid to mix it up.

Bring on part 2!

 

About Bothawui, at one point you can see a green planet in the background. They're probably just duking it out a little further out in the system.

 

Unfortunately, I leafed through the CW Visual Guide at Borders and was spoiled on a few plot points.

 

I'm an idiot; I was going back over some information from months ago, and I believe the Jabba episode was originally indeed supposed to be #1.

Christophsis was later, and then the episodes were re-written for some more cohesion.

 

One thing that didn't make sense was, when Anakin and Ahsoka are in the salvage ship, R2 signals to Anakin (really vividly). However, a moment later Ahsoka just says, "He's not here!" and they take off.

Because that salvage ship was the most probable location for him, and because he'd heard him, it seemed silly that he'd just leave simply because Ahsoka yelled at him.

One final gripe: when they docked with the salvage ship, I immediately thought of the sci-fi show 'Firefly' which is about a group of space pirates who do, among other things, salvage jobs. This got me expecting that we were about to be introduced to empathetic characters. Instead, we got another ugly dude who's corrupt and who we're all supposed to hate.

Would it kill them to include any character depth in here? Why are all the Separatists "cowards" and all the Republic characters heroic and noble? (After all, both sides are being equally manipulated by Sidious and Dooku!) The continuation of cliches is just gnawing at me!

 

I don't see the Separatists as bad guys, they're just wanting to seperate from a Corrupt Government, and the Republic is trying to stop them from seperating.

 

I would agree, and that's a big part of my problem. Think about it:

-The Republic is corrupt (as Padme says in TPM)
-Most of the Separatists would probably have very legitimate reasons for seeking freedom.
-In the opening crawl of ROTS, it says, "There are heroes on both sides."
-AOTC shows that the Clone Army was created under the most dubious possible scenario, and Obi-Wan, Bail Organa, Padme, and countless others were very, very weary of the whole war.

....And yet all of that is swept away 100% in CW. Here, all we see are earnest, heroic Clones (incidentally, with none of the genetic modifications discussed in AOTC), upstanding Republic generals, all tearing through "cowardly" and corrupt Separatists.

CW has absolutely altered the tenor of the actual Clone Wars as discussed in AOTC and ROTS, turned everybody into one-dimensional heroes or villains, and has not even hinted at the fact that the entire war is a massive set-up for Palpatine's power-grab. It's mutated a complex false-flag war into, like, some lame John Wayne interpretation of WW2.

I enjoy the show (although I can enjoy just about anything with the words 'Star Wars' associated with it), but this is now six episodes in, and the flat out rejection of so many of the movie's elements is bothering the heck out of me. (I thought that I'd be poking fun at Anakin magically having a Padawan, forced in-joke references to the movies, or screwy retcons, but none of that has really been an issue. It's just this willful, childish simplification of a war that destroyed a great civilization that's standing out.)

 

I think the citizens on Seperatist worlds have very valid reasons to leave the corrupt Republic. But to me, they lost all credibility for their cause when they joined forces with that very same corruption in the Trade Federation and the Commerce Guilds. The Viceroy and his ilk are criminals, plain and simple.

 

I guess it's not so easy to sense droids in the Force?

 

I think the corruption they were fighting against was not the companies but the senate. The companies are merely doing what they are supposed to....well, if you really stretch the definition of a company.....well, no expects better from them at any rate.
The senate is supposed to be above that though. And at least when the companies take your money, you get something back. What did Jabiim ever get back for its taxes?

The bigger issue with their cause is that, like Zeon, this war is clearly one of aggression and conquest on their part, not one of independence.

Course, none of that rejects the possibility of good people working for them. Even the Empire is full of good people.

 

Just saw the episode and I thought it was great. I was thrown off by the Matrix Kung-Fu music but overall the action was great. Very family oriented yet not childish. Rookies and Downfall have been two episodes that didn't make me cringe with the knowledge I'm watching a kid's show.
This is also the first cliff hanger where I really wanted to see the conclusion now.

 

Well, I actually really liked the Trandoshan, but I totally agree with you here, Brennan.

My suspension of disbelief can only go so far, and Anakin just agreeing that Artoo wasn't there (Occam's Razor, Anakin, honestly!),

and then not realizing that R3 was being more than incompetent....

 

This is just my belief, both in the real world and Star Wars, but I think that if something is corrupt the best thing to do is to fix it (counter to what Dooku says in the deleted AOTC scene). It'll be long and it'll be painful, but there's less bloodshed this way and it's better than starting over with scratch (aka anarchy).

 

The CW is definitely missing some of the dramatic richness I thought the prequels had in terms of politics and ambiguity.

But I did like this episode. It gave some development between Anakin and R2 and provided a real cliffhanger. I look forward to part 2 and see that little guy get rescued.

 

Well, there was Palp's manipulation of Padme in 'Destroy Malevolence', where Dooku makes it obvious that he sent her to Grievous, but your point is a good one. One the other hand though, the clones that appear at the start of RotS are pretty heroic (Oddball and Cody at least), and it's essential that none of the 'heroic' characters are aware of Palpatine's scheme, so when episodes focus on the heroes it may be hard to get the situation across in 22 minutes.

For me the pointlessness of the war is always the biggest problem in enjoying anything set in the Clone Wars period, so I can see why a kid's cartoon might try to skirt around this core issue. There's a fundamental conflict between the stated aim of Star Wars to showcase the struggle of good and evil with the moral vacuum that is the Clone Wars. In some ways making the clones individuals does give us a reason to care about the struggle in the short term (as Yoda tells them, their survival is important), and makes their betrayal all the more evil.

Not to say I'm not enjoying the series hugely.

 

Tordelback,

If I understand you correctly, you were saying that the show is (a) for kids and (b) has just 22-minute episodes, and is therefore limited from getting into plot complexities or political nuance.

However, my issue wasn't just that the changed the tenor of the war, but they made real, material changes to it (among these changes: Clones are no longer genetically modified harbingers of tyranny, but now they're noble GI Joes, Separatists are all evil and Republic is all good, the war isn't just a giant scam which Yoda, Obi-Wan, and many others were deeply suspicious of, etc., etc., etc.)

And as far as the time limit, remember that 'Malevolence' ran over an hour and it appears that this missing R2 arc could well run that way, too. Therefore, I don't think that time limitations are an excuse.

I think that the real reason they made the changes is simply because they were trying to copy the age-old schlock war movie formula: the war is a binary system (either you're good or bad), and the motives for the war are all pure and good - politics doesn't play any role at all. If they'd wanted to make a TV show like that, fine; but they should not have materially altered 'Star Wars' to retrofit it to this stupid cliche`.

 

I loved it! The eps are all too short...I want them to all go on for hours and hours. lol. But I figure when the entire run is finished, I will have one kick LONG CGI Star Wars to re-watch again and again. Hours and hours of enjoyment. I love the R2D2 focus - hope he does more slick stuff in the next one. R3 had me rolling, what a catastrophe! But even if he had been the bestest droid ever, Anakin would never even consider replacing R2D2. Still his mistakes were great, this whole show is right up my alley humor wise and too, exactly what I had hoped for. I had GREAT expectations and they are living up to everyone of them. Someone had to be completely happy with it - I guess that was me.