Full Series Discuss/Regrade the Episode: S03E19: Counterattack

Episode 3.19 - Counterattack
The Rescued Prisoners Strike Back!


"Anything that can go wrong will."

With freed prisoners in their possession and the brutal warden attempting desperately to thwart them, Obi-Wan and Anakin search for a way out of the Citadel and back to Coruscant. The prison, however, has more traps, perils and pitfalls in store for them than they had imagined and they must work past their differences if they are to escape. Their bid to board their shuttle fails when heavy weapons fire destroys the escape craft. Trooper Echo dies in the blast. The escapees then flee to the caves and call for rescue from the Jedi Temple on Coruscant.

http://starwars.com/explore/the-clone-wars/ep319/#!/about
Now let's regrade and discuss this episode!

 

I voted 9/10. I loved The Citadel arc - an action-packed clones vs droids arc.
Echo's death was a little for nothing in my opinion, the shuttle was destroyed. He saved no one like Hevy or Hardcase's death where they actually saved the day. That's the only negative point of this episode for me. It would have been better to kill Echo in another way as he is great clone. For example, Even Piell could have been hurt and Echo goes to save him, he saves him but dies. it would have been more dramatic even if it was already dramatic to see Echo dies.

 

Voted a 6 on impulse, probably voted it higher last time.

In a trilogy without enough diversity or a big enough plot to fill the number of episodes it took up, this episode is the least diverse and has the least plot movement.

To see my minute-by-minute, second-by-second Citadel Trilogy edit that cuts about 1/3 so it's only about 40 minutes long, check out my detailed post here:

http://boards.theforce.net/threads/...ween-ii-and-iii.50009876/page-2#post-50642008

I think anyone who was as frustrated as I was by the things in this arc that were so right being pulled back by its flaws will appreciate what I chose to take out and what I chose to leave in and how that impacts the presentation of (and in some cases alters some of the plot points in) the story.

It's not actually edited yet so for now you can't actually watch it, but this Citadel Trilogy edit will go between and bridge the S2 Zillo arc and S4 Hardeen arc so that all three arcs edited together make up the second film in my Clone Wars Trilogy, which you can read more about by looking at more of the thread after checking out my Citadel Trilogy edit post in the link above.

 

10/10 loved this episode

 

Anakin and Tarkin's interactions are some of the best parts of the trilogy, they completely nailed that. As well as the reactions of Obi-Wan and Ahsoka to those interactions.

 

Counterattack was a pretty intense follow-up to The Citadel, and the stakes were certainly increased here. You could see it coming with the episode's opening fortune cookie, basically Murphy's Law. The Jedi's initial plans of escape keep floundering as Osi Sobeck and his forces do their darndest to thwart their every move.

Obi-Wan and Even Piell's group attempt to escape through the interior tunnels, but are caught by a security probe droid, and the resulting self-sealing security doors manage to cut one clone in half, so right away we have one of a multitude of clone casualties in the episode. The violence was rampant throughout, and I liked how dark and hopeless it often seemed for our heroes. Meanwhile, Anakin decides to cover his group's flank and assigns Ahsoka to lead. When they encounter a dead end wall that they were supposed to blast through, the group is quickly cornered by commando droids armed with energy shields. Naturally, Ahsoka, being rather Sue-ish in this arc, improvises and tosses a couple of charges underneath the droids' shields, destroying them. And cue a haughty head-tilt toward Anakin.

When R2's B1 droids land the shuttle, they are forced to improvise upon encountering the tactical droid K2-B2, and Obi-Wan's group walks into a trap. They are captured, and then Sobeck orders Piell to surrender the information he holds. Sobeck was for the most part portrayed well as a devious villain, but his talk with Dooku still served to take away from his intimidation. Thankfully, he gets his mojo back by his cold-blooded point-blank execution of one of the captured clones. But R2 saves the day by having his reprogrammed B1s take charge of the prisoners and divert them away from the prison complex. Some good light-hearted humor in an otherwise dark episode.

The interaction between Tarkin and Anakin was definitely a high point of the episode. We start seeing the seeds of respect being planted between the two men, as Anakin concedes that Tarkin does have a point about the Jedi's unwillingness to go all the way---to do what it takes to win. As the group traverses the fuel pipeline system, I noticed that Ahsoka was the only non-helmeted member of the group who didn't have to hold their nose, and of course she traverses an upper pipe parkour-style. Shades of her Togruta physiology perhaps? But then again, she never was shown to explicitly use echolocation or anything, so probably not... The group is forced to fight their way to the rendezvous point at the airfield, where Obi-Wan's group is engaged in a real firefight.

Here we are treated to a fantastic battle on both ground and air, with Anakin and Piell taking out B1s on air-bikes (or whatever they are called). I must say that the team's desperate assault of the turrets and defense of the shuttle was ultimately doomed to failure, given their rather poor tactics. Especially poor Echo, who tries to be a hero, grabbing a fallen commando droid's shield and trying to protect the shuttle, only to have the droid manning a turret blast him and the shuttle to bits. A rather senseless sacrifice, my man Echo! So with the shuttle gone, Obi-Wan is forced to contact the Temple for reinforcements, and off they go to a cave system to hide while waiting for the fleet to pick them up.

Overall, I felt this episode was pretty good, with very intense action and a somewhat hopeless atmosphere, but certain things took away from it, including Ahsoka being a bit of a Mary Sue and the good guys not being overly bright in their plan of attack. That said, the brief Tarkin-Anakin interaction was great and Sobeck was suitably threatening in this episode. I gave this one an 8/10, rounded up.

Indeed. While this still (stolen borrowed from CT-867-5309) technically is from Citadel Rescue, I thought it summed up Ahsoka's opinion of Tarkin rather nicely:

 

A great continuation and second part of the Citadel arc. The animation is still great, the tone is solid and there's some really good action scenes (the landing platform skirmish was great) and bits (like Anakin using the big pipeline as a giant bomb & Echo's last stand which results in an useless sacrifice; at least he went out with a bang). The continuing interactions between Tarkin and Anakin are great and I like how Ahsoka is skeptical of the captain (Tarkin is pretty great in general in this story; I have to applaud the voice actor Stephen Stanton for sounding so similar to Peter Cushing as Tarkin in ANH).

I forgot to mention the villain Osi Sobeck in the previous Discuss/Regrade thread but better late than never: he's essentially a classic hammy and cackling bad guy & I like how his voice echoes actor Christopher Walken; he's an entertaining villain. I also like how he turns into a grovelling lackey when confronting Dooku via holotransmission and the meta bit with Obi-Wan complimenting Sobeck's voice was fun (seeing as how they are both voiced by James Arnold Taylor). This is an solid and enjoyable episode all around; only one episode of the arc left now.

8/10

 

Since no one else is seemingly interested in posting the next one, may I go ahead and do it?

 

Well, we already have only one regrade thread a week, but yeah, we'll wait until Sunday.

 

10/10...


A perfect episode from season 3.

I actually can not think of something I did not like about this episode. Even Ahsoka was good in this.

Stephen Stanton was genius as Tarkin in this. Seeing as the Death Star and the Republic base on Coruscant have the same design as the Citadel, maybe Tarkin was so inspired by this Separatist Prison that he took it upon himself to match the quality of detention centers the CIS produced. (I know the Death Star came first)

Speaking of designs, the more I spent time on Lola Sayu... the more I want somebody to make a strategy game or 3rd person adventure game (that is good) that are set in this series's universe and have the same planets and designs. I would love to revisit Lola Sayu - the TCW team did a marvelous work on this CIS world.


Now, the favorite part - Osi Sobeck shined in this like in the last episode. This is one of the Separatist characters that TCW did right.

I wish there were more Separatist Commanders like him in the season. Season 3 compared to Season 4 really lacked Separatist Villains... An aspect I hate on this show.



Overall, great second episode of one of the most StarWars-y arc that the show has ever produced.

 

It was a brilliant episode, just a shame that a Tactical Droid was used instead of a flesh CIS commander, but that was just a flaw of the show. Osi Sobeck is my favorite CIS commander. The Separatists were pretty well done in this arc, Dooku's appearance didn't feel unnecessary like on the Dac arc, Sobeck was a good villain and the battle droids were quite a threat. Even though the Separatists failed to get the information they did actually win the fight since the good guys ended up retreating (which was a rare way for an arc to end on the show - heroes retreating from the CIS).

 

I really like the tactical droids so I had no problem with this one (by the way, did you guys know it was voiced by Ashley Eckstein?)

 

I have come to hate these frikking droid commanders. It is a really lazy/cheap way for a CG creator to get away with not getting creative on a new character for the CIS.
Instead of using K2-B4 that was indeed voiced by Ahsoka, the show could have put a new Separatist commander from a Separatist species like a Koorivar... or better yet have Passel Argente of that species be there to oversee the situation. The physical struggle between the two and Passel's attempts at undermining his fellow CIS leaders and commanders like Dooku...well... it would have been one hell of a sub-plot.
Plus, the grabbing on the throat would mean so much more with a living creature and not a droid.

The show has always tried to corners at the expense of the CIS. OHHHHH, Filoni is so frikking proud of making a billion variants of those clones, but when it comes to making a second Quarren for the Dac arc - CUT HIM OUT TO SAVE TIME AND MONEY! Yeah, the show can be lazy when it comes to the CIS...
That is why I liked it when Okalin was shown opposite Sanjay Rash - I like two Separatist Commanders talking. It makes the ranks of the CIS more interesting.

BUT THAT IS ANOTHER QUESTION...





Dooku is another lazy method of not giving other Separatist Leaders screen time, but I have talked about him a lot before and yes, he was used in the right way here.
Still, Tikkes could have given Sobeck orders for all I care.

YES, the arc would have made more sense if the codes were taken from both Piell and Tarkin and the CIS now had the way to attack Coruscant via the Nexus Route. A failure would have made more sense and would have been more interesting overall than a stupid tap on the back from the Jedi with the words like "We won, but look who we won with". Meh...

I love the episodes on Lola Sayu, but for a CIS fan a CIS victory would have made a lot more sense given what begins after the crawl of ROTS.

 

I have come to hate these frikking droid commanders. It is a really lazy/cheap way for a CG creator to get away with not getting creative on a new character for the CIS.
Instead of using K2-B4 that was indeed voiced by Ahsoka, the show could have put a new Separatist commander from a Separatist species like a Koorivar... or better yet have Passel Argente of that species be there to oversee the situation. The physical struggle between the two and Passel's attempts at undermining his fellow CIS leaders and commanders like Dooku...well... it would have been one hell of a sub-plot.
Plus, the grabbing on the throat would mean so much more with a living creature and not a droid.

The show has always tried to corners at the expense of the CIS. OHHHHH, Filoni is so frikking proud of making a billion variants of those clones, but when it comes to making a second Quarren for the Dac arc - CUT HIM OUT TO SAVE TIME AND MONEY! Yeah, the show can be lazy when it comes to the CIS...
That is why I liked it when Okalin was shown opposite Sanjay Rash - I like two Separatist Commanders talking. It makes the ranks of the CIS more interesting.

BUT THAT IS ANOTHER QUESTION...





Dooku is another lazy method of not giving other Separatist Leaders screen time, but I have talked about him a lot before and yes, he was used in the right way here.
Still, Tikkes could have given Sobeck orders for all I care.

YES, the arc would have made more sense if the codes were taken from both Piell and Tarkin and the CIS now had the way to attack Coruscant via the Nexus Route. A failure would have made more sense and would have been more interesting overall than a stupid tap on the back from the Jedi with the words like "We won, but look who we won with". Meh...

I love the episodes on Lola Sayu, but for a CIS fan a CIS victory would have made a lot more sense given what begins after the crawl of ROTS.[/quote]

I agree a CIS victory would have tied in better with ROTS. On the Geonosis arc it would have been much better if it was a flesh CIS commander with Poggle or even a CIS leader like San Hill. On Grievous Intrigue it should have been Mar Tuuk or Lushros Dofine with Grievous not TV-94. There was a lot of missed potential for CIS villain meet ups.

 

Don't get me started on the failure to have older TCW CIS villains appear with the new ones and have villain team-ups!

AAAAAAAAAAahhhh...