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

The Force is strong with this ^^ one!

Yes, Dresden had no military importance in the war and is widely considered a revenge strike for the London blitz earlier in the war. If anyone's interested in this topic I suggest they look into Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, which is not only a post-modern masterpiece but also delves deeply into the Dresden Inferno.

Given the trailer (where this new general seems to have a bunch of SBDs pointing their blasters at the King being used as a human shield), I'm guessing the King is going to ultimately be unimportant. That he'll believe he's in control, as will the Rebels, then the CIS general will show up, there will be a little friction between him and the King, the rebels will continue to target the King but he will ultimately prove to be expendable and be killed by the new general.

Totally Tarados!

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Then this happens...

Hey Dan, I think that person in the picture with the gunships is actually King Rash and not the other guy. It looks like the pillar is actually his throne.

It is... it has always been in my mind that the evil ruler of Onderon is the one who gets up from the chair aka King Rash.

Oh, I never differentiated between the person at what I thought was a pillar and the grizzled general below.

At one point I thought the guy standing up would Clovis or something.

And then I figured that that made no sense and that the profile of Rash matches the more boxy head of Clovis. Dendup has that Santa beard that kinda makes him stand out more than other...

Not even a minute into this episode and I'm already lamenting the lost opportunities of last week. Wouldn't all that time spent watching people learn how to roll baseballs be better used actually showing us the rebels in action? Instead that gets pushed here, taking up time. Also, Narrator could only be more on the nose with declaring them the Rebel Alliance if they had the symbol of the Star Phoenix plastered on their shoulders.

The king's predecessor looks like one of the seven dwarfs. In fact, this whole scene is painful. We've seen this sort of thing play out dozens of times. Blah blah blah evil statement blah blah blah eat food to show how evil he is. Followed by blah blah blah freedom people blah blah blah we've heard all this before. And with much more subtlety. This is just pointless to show that he's evil, and the old dude is smart. We sorta knew that already. It comes with the CIS track record in this show.

Ahsoka points out the obvious by saying that the people were afraid of the rebels. We already knew this after Saw jumped around shooting things and people ran away screaming. Why reiterate that? The audience already knows, we don't need to be told it again for the sake of the characters. Show, don't tell. Show and tell is even worse because it wastes time and makes things redundant.

And what the hell is Steela going on about? They're afraid the Rebels aren't strong enough to win? Why? I thought it was pretty obvious they were afraid because you trigger happy morons were scaring the s*** outta them by blowing up public centers. Saw's response to win over more people? Blow more s*** up! Genius!

So Lux's plan is to blow up a power grid? Thereby making the droids unable to recharge. While at the same time wiping out power to entire city blocks. Making the people suffer through a blackout, while the Droids continue to be a threat until they need to recharge. During that time I can see riots and widespread panic happening in the blackout areas, causing civilian casualties that could have been avoided. This plan does more harm to the people than the droids.

Saw is able to rip the head off a droid. These same droids that a clone trooper punched with an armored gauntlet and broke his hand on in the TCW film. Consistency? What's that? And their plan for getting inside is stealing a tank. Instead of, I dunno, stealing a tank, they decide to attack a patrol on the chance that a tank will be deployed to support them. And we get some more golden dialogue. "They've sent in destroyers!" "We won't last long against those destroyers!" Yeah, I kinda got that. Also, another firefight on the streets. Really winning over the hearts and minds of the population there, with all that collateral damage.

OH MY GOD HOW MANY TIMES DO WE NEED TO BE TOLD ABOUT ROLLING A GRENADE SLOWLY. I get it, you spent half of last episode going over that. I'm ready for the exam, professor, I already did my review pages. SHUT UP. Also, Ahsoka, you have seen a destroyer taken out by sliding under its shield. Your master did it back in Season 2, Landing at Point Rain. Consistency!

You know your rebellion is doing badly when the DROIDS are more concerned about collateral damage than you are. Look at them. Infantry supported by armor that does not use its main gun, instead acting as mobile fire support and cover for the troops. Versus the amateur bowling club. How long is this rivalry between Saw and Lux going to last? Because between it and the Love quadrilateral, I'm not sure which is more shallow and pointless. But they're both just awful.

Goddammit I miss when Commando Droids were an actual threat, and not something that could be taken down by badly trained militiamen and Lux.Congratulations, you just blacked out an entire city. Hope you enjoy panic in the streets.

Ahsoka decides its time to try out her Splinter Cell Cosplay.

See you can tell he's evil because he's eating all the time.

I'd like to think that all those celebrating civilians were immediately gunned down by the droids. But this is a world where all revolutions are clean and clear, without any of that nasty rioting and mass executions of the nobility. Its a romanticized version of the French Revolution, without all the crap that came with it. Lux, if you didn't want to alienate the people, why the hell did you wipe out their electricity?

What has Steela done to be considered the leader? I guess being less of an idiot than the rest by merit of not being given anything stupid to do makes you a candidate.

Blegh, another load of boring crap. Except this one might be worse, because of how badly it mangles how revolutions actually work.

I like the new king but we did not need the old king to be a good king and the new one to be an evil king. It is just a simple repeat of the Dac arc of S4. We could have had just one king who just decided that the CIS is a better choice to allign to.

I hear you man! I HATE those droid poppers at this time. It wasn't enough they did it once, twice but it has been over a dozen times and it was not cool the first time they did. This is the main problem of this arc - the action is very repetative. Half of it is throwing of poppers and the other half is Steela sniping which was never cool cause sniping the B1s like she does is a coward's way of fighting.

The show has made it clear that if you are fat or eat a lot, you must be evil.

And yes, it was boring... without a resolve even in the episode.

You missed the deleted scene where a petitioner came to the King and said "Your Grace, the people are starving!"

And King Diaper Rash just keeps eating his delicious eggplants.


Edit: there's nothing I love more than being right, but these 4 episode arcs...

Are like Dragon Ball Z. Horrendous pacing, no resolution between episodes, and mind numbing action scenes.

Except TCW doesn't get awesome filler episodes.

I quite liked this episode and thought it was a step-up from the previous one; I think it was a good idea to remove Obi-Wan, Anakin and Rex from physically continuing being on the mission and help the rebels because it raises the stakes and forces the rebels to show what they are made of and use what they have learned (like the bit with the Destroyers). The episode had some good action sequences and was pretty suspenseful as well; I also kinda liked the king allied with the Separatists (and how he likes to sit on the throne and eat some fruit) and his Fu Manchu assistant.

The new Separatist droid general looks intriguing and has a nice design so it will be interesting to see him in the following episode, which couldn't come sooner; this arc feels promising so far.

How many times have we seen this before. The King treats his people poorly, the people want freedom and the never ending circle of cliche's and over used circumstances never end.

The last two episodes were terrible. But hey if a good story line fails, bring in some more guns, explosions (Gun ships). That should awe the audience.

Ok' that's the last You'll hear from me on this thread.

Droid gunships are cool.

One of the future aspects of this arc I'm looking forward to the most; it will be great to see them in action on the show.

Darth Zandalor i can sense your Bitterness through the Force.

I would say that maybe Umbara is the only arc that worked well with having 4 episodes, and even there, they probably could have done it in 3.

The funny thing is that they were literally boasting about how this season is almost entirely 4 episode arcs, and yet they don't have the writing ability to use that time as effectively as they could.

I'm really hoping what happens is that the rebels get beat down hard and the next 2 episodes deal with the rebels realizing this could take years of fighting to have a resolution. You know, like real life fighting. Too much to ask for in a cartoon, I know.

The Deception arc worked very well over four episodes. So too did S4's concluding Ventress/Maul arc.

The problem here is that new developments are slow to come. The 4-parters in S4 all consisted of unique episodes with unique situations that genuinely moved the themes and characters along. The only way in which the characters were developed in this episode was by revealing that Steela and Saw are siblings (!!!!), a fact that has practically no ramifications whatsoever. The mechanics of rebellion are the almost singular focus, and this is where the episode fell down.

First thing: Was the fact that Steela and Saw were siblings the big plot twist cliffhanger of the episode? They have the same surname, it was pretty obvious.

Second thing: All I could think throughout this episode was how good an Assassin's Creed Star Wars video game would be. Because that was basically what this episode was: Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood.

Better ideas in this thread than in the episode

My best guess is that Ahsoka was slightly heartened by seeing Saw twirl Steela around in a pseudo-romantic way, because that would keep the human's claws off of her precious Lux. Hearing that Saw is Steela's sister dampens her hope, since this means Steela won't be screwing around with her brother and could feasibly make a move on Lux. Or something.

Exceedingly petty and extraordinarily ridiculous, but there you go.

As was said earlier in the thread, there might be something more meaningful to this grand revelation. Perhaps they're the offspring of the old king or another prominent resistance figure, and their sibling relationship is dangerous information that they don't want to get out. Or something.