TCW Episode The Clone Wars - Episode 5.3 - Front Runners - discussion thread

It seems that the Onderonians are supportive of Seperatist ideals, but they do not seem to like the Seperatist Occupation. In that context, its easy to see why a few of them are supportive of the Rebels and what they are doing. With that said, this was a great episode. The conflict is escalating, and I'm waiting to see how the King is going to use the Rebel's crusade against them.

7/10. Good stuff.

I second this. I enjoyed the episode as well.

I third the this, i loved it

I liked it overall, the three qualms were the quickness of the citizens' reactions, the quick meeting with the predecessor, and the kings' names.

Rash is a rather unfortunate name. Now that you mention it, the citizens reactions were a little off from what I would have thought they should have been.

Pretty cool episode. Better than the last one, with less "Ahsoka gazes at Lux" moments. Actually, Ahsoka seemed to take pretty big backseat on this one, with several scenes where she just tags along quietly.

I thought it was really forced for the narrator to talk about a "rebel alliance". Ok, it's a rebel group, but is it really an "alliance" when it's formed solely by Onderonians? It just seemed like a very heavy-handed way of highlighting some parallel between this group and the future Rebel Alliance.

The overabundance of "droid-poppers" bugged me a bit as well. It seems the makers of the show are trying to go out of their way to disassociate the image of these rebels to real-world so-called terrorists. These rebels are conveniently never at any risk of inflicting collateral damage, since they never engage in a firefight or use explosives. A car bomb doesn't really register as a car bomb if it doesn't go "boom". I think it would actually have been some very cool and insightful drama if the actions of these rebels accidentally brought some harm to an innocent bystander.

Yeah it seemed way too quick for them to go "Free Onderon! Yeah!!!!!!" that quickly, this episode is one that needs a director's cut IMHO.
@Gry Sarth: The commentary on this episode is pretty neat. It deals with how Onderon relates to the future Rebel Alliance. And agreed on the accidental damage.

Didn't care for this episode much. Not glad it's going to be a 4 episode arc.

She's got some big ones.

Those silly TCW people won't get anything past you, will they?

Well they were talking somewhat subtlety and didn't exactly say, "Ahsoka, keep your focus on the mission, not that Lux Bonteri guy over there hitting on that Steela chick!"

I think "How did they know it was a female sniper?" is a valid question.

As far as Anakin and Ahsoka talking in front of everyone, I agree with you to a point--they were taking a risk that they could have easily been overheard, but it's not as if the room were quiet and all ears were focused on them either.

Now that I think about it Anakin talking about Ahsoka's issues in front of everyone is reminiscent of that scene in AOTC where Obi-Wan scolds Anakin in front of Padmé and Typho.

No. Saw and Steela are both 18. They are twins who were separated at birth to protect them from an evil person. They just found out that they are brother and sister...of course, after they had a few awkward kisses...

I completely agree. It shows the attention to detail that some of the viewers have vs. the attention to detail of the producers. Which shows they may be rushing production and not focusing on editing.

How do you know?

THIS! So much this! It was a stupid ending. And I half expected Steela and Ahsoka to pull a Leia and Han in ROTJ because it was just too blatant OT pandering. Making it the end of the episode just left a bad taste in my mouth.

Good question, normally on planet earth, when the gender/sex is not know, we use he or him instead of say "it" (which is degrading) when referring to 1 unknown person, not "she" or "her". It makes sense (though some may see it as sexist) especially in warfare because most unknown hostiles in combat are men. I thought the same was true for the GFFA.

Perhaps the TCW writers had the droids refer to the unknown sniper as "her" because they want to shy away from using male nouns to generalize. Though even before this, the GFFA has always seemed to use less male words for generalizing someone/group of people, regardless of actual sex/gender in then RL (for example, humanity as a whole, is never referred to as "Man" at all in the GFFA, nor "Mankind", of course technically the word "huMAN" is related to a male name/word).

Still, i would have preferred if the droids referred to Steela as a "him", would have been more realistic. It sure is better imo then saying, "her" or "him or her" or just "it". Now if the droids were being attacked by 2+ snipers, then they can just call the snipers, "them".

I read it on the internets!

It almost seemed like the writer just got done watching RotJ and thought now there's a scene I should put in my episode! It is an odd homage (if it can be called that) to the OT, but doesn't make any sense within the context of the episode nor to any viewer unfamiliar with the OT.

I'm deeply sorry for my poor editing skills, I was in a bit of a rush, but I hope my point comes across fairly easily. I apologize for my poor choice of colors, but whatever.

I fifth it. So far, this arc has gone by smoothly. Though I still can't wait for the Clovis arc.

I will say for its issues, so far the first three episodes of Season 5 have made me forget about the Mon Cala arc to quite an extent, except for Riff Tamson - that guy was awesome!

Good ole' old school TCW humor.

No, seriously, I'm not being sarcastic. I like the droid humor.

Does anyone have a clue what the episode's title refers to? Front Runners...
All I can think of is the audience's desire to run in front of a bullet as opposed to watching the episode again.

Yeah, takes me back for the silly titles for the Mon Calamari arc. When I think of "Front Runners" I think of...well I don't think of or associate it with anything actually; just now stupid of a title it is.

Lux and Saw?!

I'm pretty sure this is referring to the fact that the rebels are the being used as forward unit for the presumably upcoming republic invasion. But I like your idea too.

I believe droid poppers are either a fairly new technology or are a scare technology at the start of the war and it has taken a while to retool production away from standard explosive munitions. In the novel; "Dark lord the rise of Darth Vader" which starts during order 66, they have just retrofitted droid busters (scaled up droid poppers) on all of their gunships and are massacring the droid forces. The protagonist whose name I forget also comments on how (suspiciously) one sided the war has become all of a sudden (post battle of Coruscant), from the reader point of view I believe it is meant to be understood that Palpatine has been restricting access to such weapons to prolong the war.

Also don't forget that biologicals have many easily exploitable weaknesses; gas, poison (food/water), disease and fire; which are even more effective weapons than EMP.