Full Series The Clone Wars: Episode 204: Senate Spy Discussion Thread (Spoilers Allowed)

Hmm. I'm somewhere on the fence for this episode. Not something I'd pick to watch in a boxset, but it was an interesting experiment that was, for the most part, pretty well done. I gotta give props to the development team for relying on characters, settings, and feelings, though I don't mind the traditional Star Wars boom-boom-with-a-side-of-philosophy.

+I actually liked the Anakin and Padme interactions, though when he appeared in that first scene, the whole talk on dinners seemed to remind me of an old sitcom couple...XD
+Padme being angry kind of helps flesh her out as being more human, especially since normally she's Anakin's straight man...eh...woman. Likewise, interesting to see Anakin (eventually) throwing the whole 'responsibility' thing up as his alibi...you can see he doesn't enjoy it one bit.
+Cato Neimoidia looked pretty good. The suspended-over-sky-city thing reminded me heavily of Episode 3
+The official episode guide shows a better picture of a NAPOLEON NEIMOIDIAN ON A KAADU. I want an episode dedicated to this guy. XD
-Well...let's face facts. Star Wars is galaxy of adventure, so naturally, a significant portion of its fans have a bias towards adventure rather than politics.
*Senator Clovis was interesting, though I didn't find him that endearing...seemed a little...amorous? Is that a polite word to use? XD
*I found his delivery of the dinner line hilarious in its intensity. One moment he's all happy and charming..the next it's "I'll see you at dinner." ...Well, that's what I got from it, anyway.

To sum up, I didn't mind this episode, though the issues within it didn't hit me that hard. Seemed like an extended webcomic tie-in, though I did think showing the more flawed respects of Anakin and Padme was good. Somehow, though, I think I preferred the 'philosophy' in Trespass and Innocents.

Also...
Three weeks without Clone Wars?
Oh well...at least we're getting what looks to be an awesome action piece later. Which is a pretty weird statement to make given many people saying 'it's not all about wall-to-wall action', I know. I am what I am.

 

Gry,

I think you might be right. Having just rewatched the important political scenes in Episode II, this episode comes dangerously close to screwing all that up.

I mean, technically, this episode is about Klovis. Is he a Separatist spy? At the end of Episode II, Yoda doesn't necessarily believe what Obi-Wan is telling him about Sidious controlling the Senate. Nevertheless, Windu suggest they keep a close eye on the Senate. So, the fact that they want to spy on Klovis is keeping with that plot thread.

With Padme and Lott Dodd, she clearly states that she believes in second chances. Personally, this is lazy writing. While it is in keeping with her characer, would she really do this? The answer lies in whether or not the Jedi specifically told her that the Trade Federation, specifically Gunray, was behind the assassination attempt in Episode II. It could be that Gunray was acting on his own accord in that specific matter but not really. The whole point of Episode II was to get rid of Amidala because she was the leader of the opposition against the creation of the Republic Army. Again, this is just dangerously close to screwing everything up.

As for the Banking Clan, well, Obi-Wan never specifically mentions the Banking Clan in his desperate attempt to relay info to the Council and the Senate inside Palpatine's office in Episode II. But, it's highly unlikely that they wouldn't know about the Banking Clan because I'm positive Obi-Wan would've relaid that message to the Jedi Council once the Battle of Geonosis was over. But, maybe he did and the Jedi are just playing games to find more info. Probably not. I'm sure Obi-Wan would've alerted the Senate about the Banking Clan as well.

See, this is the reason why I stayed away from the series. I specifically stayed away from Season One fearing that this would happen. And yet, I started with this Season Two and I was delighted. But here is the problem. Things like this could happen. Technically, yes, the episode is about Klovis to see if he is a spy and that doesn't contradict anything in the movies. But, certain other details come awfully close to my liking.

I might have to give up the series again just because of this one fear I have.

Everything has to line up. No contradictions. And by my count, just from this episode and the Clone Wars movie, we've had a couple very, very close calls.

 

I've re-watched the commentary again and again hoping something would click, since the story of Senate Spy makes no sense in the context that Dave describes.

For instance, how can Clovis be a traitor if he represents a neutral corporation?

During the commentaries, usually the footage shown that is inter-cut with the interview syncs up with the points that Dave makes. When Dave says that the commerce guilds are "neutral," he uses air quotes. I don't think he meant they were actually neutral, but I think it was just a bad choice of words to describe their position between the two factions, profiting off both sides.

Dave also says that the corporations are, for now, in the Republic. But he then says that having all those corporations would be useful in the construction of an "empire." I at first thought he was referring to the Republic's transformation into the Empire, but the footage shown is of the droid foundry plans. So, I think the "empire" is referring to the one the CIS is trying to establish.

Also, note that in AOTC, the guilds were willing to pledge their services to the CIS with the expectation that their army would be unopposed and that the Republic would yield to their demands. However, the clone army showed up unexpectedly and defeated the CIS in the first battle. In response the corporations may have officially withdrawn from their talks with the CIS.

When Padme says that she believes in second chances, I thought that perhaps she was referring to forgiving the Nemoidians for the invasion of Naboo ten years earlier. But since the CIS threat was far more recent, I figure she could have meant forgiveness for the Trade Federation having entered talks with the CIS.

In the case of the Trade Federation, according to Wookieepedia, Lott Dod denounced Gunray's actions on Geonosis as being unsanctioned by the leading committee of the corporation. As for the Banking Clan, the episode guide says the Banking Clan has shrewdly avoided direct contact with the CIS. And as Dave Filoni says, the guilds are - for now - in the Republic, and though the Jedi suspect them as being criminals, they can't prove it.

I figure the guilds either withdrew from their talks with the CIS following Geonosis, or denounced the actions of Gunray, San Hill, etc. At least officially. The corporations are affiliated with the Republic and are profiting from them by supplying them in war time, but at the same time they have secret dealings with the CIS. Since Filoni also says that they are in the Republic - for now - they could always openly pledge allegiance to the CIS later (maybe following the evidence Padme and Anakin collected).

 

Their is no source for that, however. I do think Filoni and the TCW writers forgot that scene in AOTC.

 

But the thing is, they aren't. Let's have a look at the list of all the known hardware produced by the Banking Clan:
- IG-100 MagnaGuard, IG lancer combat droid, Refresh droid, Ground Armored Tank, Hailfire-class droid tank, Ground Armored Tank, Banking Clan Transport, Hardcell-class interstellar transport, Munificent-class star frigate, Muunilinst gun platform, Harnaidan defensive cannon.

So let's see, how many of these were employed by the CIS or Muunilinst forces against the Republic? Eleven. How many were employed by the Republic? Zero.

How about the Trade Federation, then? Well, the list is too long to bother posting, but I can give you the approximated final score: Hardware employed by the CIS? A LOT. Hardware employed by the Republic? Zero.

The same goes for the Techno Union and Corporate Alliance. To say that these organizations sold hardware and profited from both sides of the war is utterly unrealistic. In over seven years of exploration of the Clone Wars by several sources, including THE FILMS, we've never seen a single example of these guys playing both sides of the war. To suddenly come out now and say that it's been like that all along is really underestimating our intelligence.

 

Gry's right. The only one(s) playing both sides of this war are Sidious and Dooku...

 

The episode itself would be the source for it. It doesn't matter what happened in AOTC if off screen somewhere the tensions were "eased." Obviously they are still in the Republic at this point. Dave is a SW geek. To say that somehow he, Lucas, and all the writers somehow forgot the creation of the CIS is absurd, since nearly everyone has pointed out the oddity of the situation. And obviously he didn't forget since he feels the need to explain the odd situation in the commentary. When Lucas is prodded for information he can get into all kinds of weird explanations. Dave said that he felt Mustafar's appearance should be reserved for ROTS and Lucas told him it was a mining world and would have an export business, and so it's not like it's some huge secret world in the SW universe. None of this is really touched upon in the movies or TCW though. Again, nothing happened to Nute Gunray by the time of AOTC despite illegally seizing Naboo. It's not like Lucas forgot. It was due to the corruption in the government which Sio Bibble is frustrated with.

We have no idea what discussion Lucas had with Filoni regarding Senate Spy, but I don't find it at all odd that he could give some back story as to what the situation of these guilds is, even if it isn't shown on screen. Obviously they are under scrutiny for their past behavior during Senate Spy. So it's not like their relationship with the CIS never happened. For all we know the guilds have a huge amount of leverage given their economic importance and were pardoned. We don't know. But obviously they are still in the Republic, whatever the reason.

 

The Techno Union is not counted amongst the "neutral" corporations by Dave. Also, much of the hardware you listed was not constructed by the Banking Clan, used by them, yes. Made by them, no.

And if they pulled a "Lott Dod" and said that it happened without the sanction of the Banking Clan, several subsidiaries could side with the CIS while the Banking Clan itself pleas ignorance or withdraws from the CIS and is allowed to stay in the Republic. The Jedi KNOW the guilds are criminals, but they can't prove it as Dave puts it. And Dave also implies that they will eventually leave the Republic. It's still early in the war yet. Nobody's saying that they won't declare their allegiance to the CIS later, or be exposed as traitors (that was the point of Senate Spy). Just because the idea was never touched upon in the films (which hardly covered the Clone Wars), or C-canon doesn't mean much. A T-canon source is now covering it and outranks the comics, etc. Hence they're able to shove Ahsoka in there, and say Anakin had an apprentice the whole time.

 

I think we all know that Dave and George didn't forget about the fact that, as far as everyone knows and all the evidence shows, the Trade Federation and Banking Clan were Separatist members, and therefore enemies of the Republic. Dave coming out in the video to justify the changes is evidence of that. However that doesn't change the fact that they are clearly changing what had been established ina pretty radical way. And that's a tough pill to swallow. I'm pretty sure that Dave himself wouldn't have painted the political situation in such a way, just as he wouldn't have gone to Mustafar or given Anakin a padawan. All the major "twists in the tale" come from George Lucas. That doesn't make the pill any easier to swallow either.

Sure, we can bend over backwards retconning the whole thing so that it fits into this "new vision", and in the end it might look decent enough. Doesn't change the fact that we had never ever been given any fraction of a hint of those organizations selling hardware to the Republic before now.

 

There is also the fact that, in the 2d Clone Wars series (if that's even still canon), the Republic attacked the headquarters of the Banking Clan and captured it's leader. I doubt they would have done that to a 'neutral' party.

 

Who depicted Ryloth incorrectly, made Abregado a gas giant, etc.

Funny stuff.

 

That's hardly the same.

Padme's evidence exposes the Trade Federation and Banking Clans as traitors. Now what the consequences are, we'll have to wait and see. This might be the catalyst for what forces them out of the Republic completely. Dave implies that they won't be in the Republic forever. The attack on the Banking Clan could happen after this.

If Lucas intended on covering TCW himself, he probably would have never signed off on the idea of letting the EU cover it, just as he didn't want the EU to cover the prequel era initially. He signed off on the idea before he decided to do it himself, and I think he said he first considered doing a show while working on ROTS. The EU usually works better because it fills in gaps, whereas in this case he allowed a gap to be filled and then decided to go back and fill it himself. It was a pretty radical change in giving Anakin a padawan. And it's a radical deviation from the EU that the commerce guilds (Commerce Guild, Banking Clan, and Trade Federation) remained in the Republic following AOTC. I think such huge deviations are to be expected, given that Lucas has talked about the EU as though it's an alternate universe to his own, and won't let it stand in the way of the stories he wants to tell.

 

Guess Dave never studied geography in Star Wars school. So sad he failed you.

 

I'm really surprised by all the backlash this episode has gotten. When I finished watching it I felt pretty satisfied. It wasn't the best the show's ever done, but it was far from the worst. The Anakin and Padme interaction alone made it worthwhile. And, as someone who gave up on the EU due to most of it, well... sucking... (Thrackan Sal-Solo? REALLY!?!? This is what we're doing with Star Wars now?) and only read the occasional book set during The Clone Wars, the politics didn't bother me at all.

Nute Gunray is the one with ties to the Separatists, not Lott Dodd. And somebody mentioned them attacking the Banking Clan on Muunilinst in the Tartakovsky Clone Wars. As much as I love that series, we don't know if it's canon or not anymore. If it IS, well, they arrested San Hill and others, but I'm sure somebody else would step in to take over the Banking Clan, and it'd probably be fairly easy to sever ties to the CIS (or at least give the appearance of doing so) now that Hill was gone, and be in good standings with the Republic again. Of course, the Jedi still don't trust them, but they have no proof. They suspect that the Clan's still dealing with the CIS, so they ask Padme to spy on Clovis. It makes sense to me.

That's not to say that the episode was without flaw. There were a few wonky moments in the story, and the animation didn't seem up to par with the rest of season two thus far. Not to mention the lack of variation in the background characters. But I'm willing to forgive that since the rest of the episode was very enjoyable.

 

Can you imagine how terrible History would be in Star Wars school? You'd have about three different teachers each telling you that the other ones were wrong...

 

And that's even before you get to Dark Side class.

(Of course, one could cut that class with impunity, by using the excuse that the class itself did not in fact exist.)

 

Damn you guys, I don't want to come across as offensive, but lets get our attention span in check here. Not every episode HAS to be ZOMGZ there's a huge lightsaber battle, ZOMGZ there's an enormous space battle. You have to take a step back every now and again to get reacquainted with the characters.

Almost every episode up til now has been resolved by lightsaber, frankly it's boring. This episode actually got us to see more of a relationship that was absolutely failed by the movies. Padme's childish you say? Anakin is a jelous jerk you say? Welcome to relationships. Every relationship has moments like that. And because of these flaws in their relationship, for the first time in the entire Star Wars saga, I believed them as a couple.

Also, I have to say I'm loving TCW Anakin. This was also my favorite episode so far. It reminded me of the Cloud City scenes from Empire.

The Clone Wars does NOT have to be constant action, we get half an hour of this every week, it's the perfect platform for us to get to know the characters we love better, to build upon relationships established in the movies. If all we get is huge battles it diminishes the important battles from the movies, and simply becomes boring.

I do understand the gripes about the politics of this episode though.

 

I think we can establish that Muunilist was one of the earliest campaigns in the war. Not saying this because of the fact it was a banking clan world, but because of Ventress's appearance.

It seemed to me like that was the first time Ventress had faced off against Anakin, and judging by the language they use in the 3D series, it should seem like they are well aquainted by this point.

This would place Muunilist very early in the war, meaning that the Banking Clan is not neutral.

 

The Banking Clan conspired with the CIS but was still in the Republic by the time of Senate Spy. That means the attack on Muunilist will probably be retconned as happening later, or not at all.

 

NO, the Banking Clan isn't within the Republic and has never been within the Republic. Dave mentions this as a "neutral" delegation. In this episode we see the Trade Federation as part of the Republic, not the banking clan or whatever.

 

Obi-Wan refers to Clovis as representative of the Banking Delegation. He refers to having the leverage of the Banking Clan. There couldn't be a conspiracy if the Banking Clan wasn't in the Republic. Filoni says "for now, they (Commerce Guild, Banking Clan, and Trade Federation), sit within the Republic."

 

I was afraid this kind of thing would happen once Dave told us that Lucas was now coming up with ALL of the ideas for most of Season 2 onwards.

Sure, they can hire people like Paul Dini to write the scripts, but it doesn't matter if the plot is fundamentally flawed.


I would be shocked if the Geonosis arc wasn't Lucas' idea; I can easily see him thinking "hmm...I really like what they're doing with the action in TCW, and I never got to really show Geonosis the way I wanted to."

That's not saying it's not going to be enjoyable to watch, but I'm wondering if Lucas is basically saying "I can do whatever I want, you guys make it work."

I'm not the hugest canon/EU/continuity stickler, but when they ignore what seems to be established precedent in this way, it mostly looks like retcon to explain away sloppy writing.

 

To what Djangonero said:
I know very well that Star Wars does not have to have a lightsaber at every second, and it does get boring. That isn't the reason people hated this episode. It just sucked. Plot was terrible and each of the chracters were desperate for everything. It does show chracter but there needs to be more than just that. Innocents of Ryloth did perhaps the best job of showing emotion.

 

"Filoni says "for now, they (Commerce Guild, Banking Clan, and Trade Federation), sit within the Republic.""

What? That completely contradicts what we saw in AOTC. That coming from Filoni is just sad; he should know better.

 

i believe so how ever pass this on anakin was a jedi knight when he kills durge so it is very possible to see him come up soon however ashoka dosent show up in the movie so maybe durge kills her and thats why anakin kills him for more info on that look up the comic obsesion part 3