Full Series The Clone Wars: Episode 220: Death Trap Discussion Thread (Spoilers Allowed)

I'm with Gry on the escape pod issue. Why wouldn't Aurra expect the clone cadets to be found since it's not like they are in the middle of nowhere. They are above the planet and the escape pod malfunctioned on the course it was heading and I don't even think veered off at all. In fact, it didn't take the Jedi long to find the clone kids (even without using their Jedi powers), so if Aurra thought that was condeming them to death then she is pretty stupid.

And if the point was simply to get Boba to abandon them, then why? What is she, some kind of Bounty Hunter instructor now? Maybe if she was just being sadistic, but that didn't come across enough for me to read into it that way.

I still liked the episode. And for the record "Senate Spy" is waaaay underrated. There, I said it.

 

Forgot to mention this previously:

I love Mace's line "*sigh* No rest for the weary..."
Great delivery!

 

About Aurra abandoning the clones in the pod instead of killing them, perhaps she just isn't that ruthless, or wasn't on that day at least. She may have suspected that the clones would be rescued if she just left them but perhaps she did not mind that. She may not have been bothered about the Republic knowing about her involvement.

I think though that she did not want to upset Boba too much. He wasn't too happy about the idea of leaving them behind, so if she had killed them, he might get angrier later on and have cause for revenge - even if he did not have any loyalty to the clones. He did not have any real reason to continue being loyal to Aurra either, so I think she just did the easiest thing which was to leave them where they were and get on with what they had to do, and Boba would be more focused and more well disposed to her if she didn't make him participate in killing the clones.

 

Well, I'm guessing that there was a mixture of flash training, which all troopers got a little bit of, and the holographic simulation fields that emulated actual battlefields.

Also, specific clones were bred with leadership traits, like the commanders. They most likely served as training officers.

Apart from that, who knows?

 

So what you're saying is that the point of that scene was actually the exact opposite of what it tried to portray? Instead of it being Boba's loss of innocence under the ruthless tutelage of Aurra, it is Aurra's softening up due to concerns over Boba's feelings.

 

The point of that moment was that Aurra wanted Boba to be the one to take the action that stranded his fellow cadets. Maybe part of it too was that she wanted to make sure he would listen to her, even in questionable actions. Apparently, the fact that he did abandon them was enough for her. Maybe she didn't care as much whether the cadets were rescued or not, just that Boba was willing to do what she said.

 

Why would Aurra care about Boba's feelings? Or more importantly if he was going to take revenge on her? She has no idea of the man he will grow into? At this point, he's just some really hurt little kid paying her to help him kill a Jedi Master.

 

I think that Aurra simply reacts differently in different situations. She does not necessarily need to kill the clones so she just abandons them, expecting that they will die eventually. She is only bothered about Boba's reaction to the situation because it may affect him and his effectiveness, which then also affects her if they are working together. If she really wasn't bothered about what Boba thought then she should have just dragged him on board and then shut the door herself.

You can see that she gets annoyed at Boba for not wanting to abandon the clones and she tells him to grow up. So she sees that at his age he has the potential to go the other way and stay as a psychologically damaged child. So she did not want to push him too far and have that heavy event hanging over them both.

You can also see that Aurra has some psychopathic tendencies that mean she does not, or is unable to, treat people as proper living individuals. When she has power over others, especially those who cannot fight back, she treats them as less worthy of consideration. You can see this in the way she speaks to the kids - ie toying with them. So in such instances she is lead by whims, and the kids were not threatening her so she decided that it was her pleasure to just abandon them into the unknown rather than murdering them. If she was confronted by dangerous enemies then it would have given her more satisfaction to kill them outright because that would be her dominating her foes. With the kids though, it was her whim to simply discard them.

 

Wow, this was pure Star Wars! Terrific homages to the films, great writing, sweeping immersive camera moves, extremely solid characterization, and powerful storytelling. It's giving Point Rain a run for its money in terms of single best episode IMO. Definitely worthy to sit alongside the films and surpassed my expectations by a country mile. Looking forward to the follow-ups!

 

Just to play Sith's advocate a little here, I've been thinking of something.

If I were a clone cadet stuck in a malfunctioning escape pod who was just betrayed by one of my own, seeing a bunch of deadly bounty hunters and believing that I'd assuredly die one way or another without much knowledge of what was out there...
Being left adrift in the infinite vastness of space to die a slow, dark, claustraphobic death certainly sounds a lot more frightening than the other quick yet painful alternatives.

Setting aside the whole 'but the rescue crew was just nearby' bit, I do think that "Well, they'll be picked up by someone" wasn't exactly running through their heads at the time. True, it's shoddy storytelling when you put it together with what happens next, but for that moment on its own, I thought it would have been pretty downright scary.

 

Yes, if there was no chance of someone rescuing them, then it would have been suitably heartless and effective. If there weren't rescue ships looking for them nearby that very instant, then the scene would have worked. That's not the case, however, so it's hard to really feel any potential horror for the cadets' predicament with that knowledge in mind (and as hard as the situation was, the cadets themselves would know that rescue was a real possibility).

 

Exactly, I just thought now that's stupid and just wasted two minutes of dialogue between Aurra and Boba because someone is just going to find those clone cadets... sooner rather than later with Jedi out there.

 

Sorry to be so late to the party... This was a decent introductory episode to the Boba Fett-arc.

Well, that doesn't bother me very much. They were called Jedi Cruisers during the production of ROTS and it's most likely a colloquial description. What does bother me about the Venators is that they seem to be completely empty of troops and crew and it was even more obvious during this episode. And do they have two decks or what?

 

It was on last night, September 10th, 2010, with R2 Come Home and Lethal Trackdown.

I really liked Death Trap and that one clone gunner who fired the skeets.