TCW episodes with battles suck!

There seem to be a consensus here that a series called 'The Clone Wars' should consist mostly of so-called 'battle episodes' - meaning episodes where actual battles fought during the Clone Wars are shown. Examples of such episodes would be 'Landing at Point Rain' and the three episodes of the Ryloth trilogy. Maybe the Malevolence arc, too.

I for my part don't like this episodes particularly well. There is neither surprise nor suspense there. Either the Republic attacks a Separatist world, succeeding in conquering it (Geonosis), or a former Republic world conquered by the Separatist forces is retaken (Christophsis, Ryloth).

It is always certain that the good guys (Republic/Jedi/Clones) are going to win the battle. Also, there is the fact that battles between Clones and Droids lack any suspense at all. Both were bred/built to fight and die, and fight and die they do. The series also established the Clone commanders of ROTS (Cody, Gree, Bly) as companions of their respective Jedi generals which also takes away any suspense from us that these clones are going to die. This is particularly annoying as it shows us that the very cannon fodder of this war, the Clones, are being safe, too. At least the Clone Commanders of known Jedi. The one expendable Clone, Rex, apparently is liked by everyone too much to kill him before the very end of the series when he most likely is going to replaced by Appo (it would be actually really interesting character development if Anakin 'I don't want things to change' Skywalker would be forced to work with many different clone commanders, but, hey, everyone wants to stick with the cool bald guy).

This type of battle episodes I no longer want to see in this series. But even episodes only depicting battles won by the Separatists are not that interesting. At least, not if this is the only story told there. And I'm not referring to use the war as a way to teach Ahsoka how to become a Jedi. 'Droid Factory' really sucks for this very reason. Of course, she can learn something during a battle. But not if the whole episode is actually about her lesson, not the war.

The non-battle episodes on the other hand are surprising. Some of the Padmé episodes may suck as well, or portray her political opinions in a completely insane way ('Senate Murders' springs to mind: 'We get peace by undermining our military strength which will motivate the CIS to enter peace negotiations instead of just conquering Republic space and enslave us all'), but I really like episodes which deal only indirectly or remotely with the war. These episodes surprise me at least by showing us things we might have not expected. Whereas I really don't want to see Grievous/Ventress failing to accomplish their mission goal for the hundredth time, or seeing even more members of the later Separatist Council being captured.

Therefore I really like this series, and the fact that it lacks a long boring arc like the Geonosis arc from Season 2. The first episode established that the Republic would in the end have reconquered Geonosis. Watching them taking it back step by step was not that particularly interesting. And seeing Poggle getting captured was really bad. That guy really knows stuff about Sidious! He knows, for example, that he has the Death Star plans, and that the CIS is intending to build such a massive super weapon. Are we really supposed to believe that the Jedi would not question him thoroughly?

Anyway, I hope I have made my point clear. I really like non-battle episodes. What makes them pretty boring and uninteresting is the whole prequel thing. Who cares about the Twi'leks in 'Supply Lines'? We know that they are going to be saved in the end. But if such episodes would be aired in a chronological order they really could be fun and intersting.

 

It depends what kind of battles. Jedi and Clone Troopers mowing down fields of Battle Droids got boring fast.

What's needed in each episode is a balance of action, intrigue, and mystery with worthy opponents such as bounty hunters and separatists. There needs to be more dogfights involving Y-Wings and Gunships in the air and Walkers (AT-TE, AT-AP) on the ground. Perhaps even some trench warfare. Show us the armies we seen in the micro-series: Kit Fisto versus the Ktulu-Heads for example.

For some reason I would like to see other types of action like we seen in the tail end of Corruption: Police Speeder chases or even the return of the Fire Ships and from ROTS. Whatever your view it's quite clear the masses prefer 'pew pew' over political episodes.

 

To me it's like this. The battles are always like sports games - you've got the 2 sides, one of them has to win, one of them has to lose. The interest is kept by not knowing who wins. But in TCW battles, you know who wins. Every time. There is never any surprise. The bad guys will lose, the good guys will win. Which is surprising, since Star Wars usually pulls some twists (as far as the films/EU goes) in stories, but with these....they really don't have a lot that they can do. On one hand, I can't really blame them because they're working with really poopular characters like Kit Fisto and Mace, etc. where we already know that they can't die. But on the other hand, they really could try to either introduce new characters to kill, or suck it up and kill off some of the popular ones that haven't been killed in the EU yet. Or, let Grievous have a horrible victory in an episode. SOMETHING. Something just unexpected.

 

When you get five episodes in a row of political minded crap, that tends to do it in for some of us.

 

Hello Innocents of Ryloth. It dealt with war and the side effects. This was probably the best episode written overall that gave us a sense of how bad the clone wars are which this series is suppose to show. If we had more episodes like this then this show would be getting a lot more praise.

 

yeah Innocents was sympathetic episode- it was much like WW2 and droids really were bad when they were oppressing twi'leks like that- LAPR was also inspired by WW2- the D-day of Star Wars as Lucas described it- both episodes were great if you ask me- even though good guys won there was enough warfeel in them like Obi-Wan injured in LAPR and civilian prisoners in Innocents ... Supply Lines had too little battle scenes but those were well done and bad guys did win- they also won in Holocron Heist where Republic retreated from Felucia- but these victories of CIS are always minor part of the story... if they continue with WW2 inspiration- they should show "Pearl Harbor of Star Wars" with surprise attack to Republic shipyards I definitely disagree with the headline- battle episodes don't suck....

 

The show is called The Clone Wars. Not "Clone Soap Opera". Star Wars has always been about telling a story through action. The problem is the scripting in S03.

Some references that show how interesting this show could be:

The World Crisis 1911-1918
and
The Second World War
by Winston Churchill

The Seven Pillars of Wisdom
by T.E. Lawrence

The Civil War
by Shelby Foote
(Heck, the Separatists are basically like the Confederacy anyway.)

The Gallic War
by Julius Ceasar
(Palps is half based on JC anyway.)

And so on. "War" doesn't have to mean boring battles. It also doesn't have to mean weak 'political' stories about supply lines. Who can get excited about supply lines? When the solution turns out to be Jar Jar playing peek-a-boo, an intelligent viewer is going to get annoyed.

Robert Graves made political intrigue, well, intriguing with his "Claudius" novels, which were successfully serialized for television. Steven Spielberg made soldiers compelling with his "Band of Brothers" miniseries. Umberto Eco made religious intrigue absorbing with "The Name of the Rose". John Le Carre's "Smily" novels make realistic spy work exciting. Ian Fleming's "Bond" books make spy fantasy exciting. The Bible book of Samuel tells the saga of a flawed "chosen one" (King Saul). There's tons of great reference out there.

What do we get? Endless scenes of Ahsoka and her gal-pal of the weak.

Ahsoka: I don't feel good about myself. Sniffle-sniffle.
Gal pal: That's completely natural! I can really sympathize. Just hum a happy tune and be patient and everything will work out fine!

TCW was said, by GL, to be "PG-13". That implies high school students as the audience. Kids who are reading Shakespeare, Beowulf, studying history, advanced social studies etc. Kids who are choosing their own clothes, music, attitudes. Kids who are beginning to mature. S03 is feeling distinctly "G" rated. I personally feel that GL pulled the balance off well with TPM. That film isn't the success that ANH hope was and is. But it shows fine craftsmanship regardless of what doesn't work. This material is feels shoddy.

The cry here is for the show to shape up, after a spectacular, well balanced, entertaining 2nd season. It's not about turning TCW into a first-person shooter game.

 

^^ That is what the Clone Wars needs to be.

 

Well, the point is that the battle episodes we have seen until now do suck. I really would like to see an episode just with the reversed outcome. Not Grievous and Ventress are fleeing in the end, but Anakin and Obi-Wan. Such a thing must be possible. This is a war, not the Conquest of the Incompetent Confederacy of Independent Systems.

The whole point of this war is to make everyone believe that the Republic is in real danger. That is how Palpatine makes the public believe that a Dictatorship would be the better form of government. But as it seems now, the Separatists are no serious threat to the Republic outside some Newsreel lines. That is pathetic. The Empire back in the OT was really threatening. You really believed that they ruled the Galaxy. At least I did. The good guys were always on the run. They had to hide.
Of course, things in the Clone Wars are more in balance, but it does not seem to be so in this series.

Episodes which show us new and unexplored kinds of warfare. But they really did not try that before 'Landing at Point Rain'. And that was the good thing about that.

But still, they way they do battle episodes, everything about the outcome is clear in the beginning. Whereas this is not true in some of the political episodes, or in the other episodes. I could, for instance, not say from whom Ahsoka would get her lightsaber back in 'Lightsaber Lost'. She would get back it, of course, but we simply had no idea who had it, until the character was introduced.

Take the attack on Kamino. That was a completely boring and useless episode. Sure, we saw Ventress treating Grievous in the right fashion, but despite that, it was perfectly clear that

- the clone facilities would not be destroyed
- Kamino would not be conquered by Grievous
- Ventress would not succeed in getting the clone DNA (if Sidious would really want the Separatists to have it, he would just take it through the official channels and give it to them)

So why showing us such a pointless battle?

This was already somewhat boring in the Republic comics, although there was some tension there, as the Mon Calamari and Passel Argente were involved in an intrigue against Tyranus there, and he and Sidious only allowed them to attack to ensure their continued control over the Confederacy.

Make no mistakre, I liked to see Kamino again, and I really want to see more of it, but not in battle episodes.

 

Thing is, even if a battle episode offers nothing else, the explosions are entertaining. And sometimes all you want is a chance to turn off your brain and watch the pretty colors.

But a single plot hole can ruin a non-battle episode...and even without caring about the EU, TCW has a lot of plot holes, bad lines of dialogue and topics so oversimplified and unsubtle they become flat out boring. And this is coming from someone who has liked many of the recent episodes.

Execution matters more than the content itself. And TCW has been better at executing battle scenes than scenes than any other type of scene.

 

Not that it shouldn't feature the action, but there are different experiences in war besides battles and explosions. I'd rather have some variety in storytelling than all 'clone wars' all the time.

 

I think the best episodes are ones that focus on the strategy of war in the field. "Storm Over Ryloth", "Cat & Mouse" and "Shadow of Malevolence" are all great examples of the types of episodes I like. They leave room for a good balance of character development, story and action. I'm genuinely sick of Senator episodes. Their political points are elementary at best and usually pretty obvious. Besides that, they are rushed and underdeveloped because everything has to be wrapped up nice and neat in the 22 minute time slot. Imagine they spread these things out over a season with an ongoing storyline? Some of us might actually care about the political aspect of this show. As it is, something like "Supply Lines" is just something we don't need to see. I would rather watch a dialogue-free version of "Landing at Point Rain" than something like that any day of the week. I like the variety the show can offer but they've proven that the political intrigue is anything but intriguing.

 

You really have to keep in mind that the original Star WARS does not consist totally of battles, either. Actually, only ROTJ, AOTC and ROTS show outright full scale battles, and only the battle in ROTJ is of real importance.

Politics really is important in the whole thing, and the huge flaw of AOTC is, in my mind, that no one actually understands what this whole war in the end is about. There is talk about a Separatist movement, but we never see its members. There is talk about the Military Creation Act, but we don't ever get told why the Republic is threatened by these Separatists in the first place. What do they want? Why did they secede? Why is seceding in itself a bad thing?
This goes back even to TPM. We never got a clue at all why the Neimoidians are working with Darth Sidious. This would not be annoying or irritating if the dialogue would not repeatedly raise that question ('We should never have made this bargain', 'A Sith?! Here?!'). What do they expect to win by conquering Naboo? Why is Amidala supposed to sign this treaty? And why is Sidious himself interested in this whole thing. All he should be caring about is to become Supreme Chancellor, not about the Trade Federation taking over Naboo.

Compare this to the OT. We don't need to think about why Tarkin is destroying Alderaan. It is there. Plain and simple.

The political situation during the PT is much more blurred than during the OT. We quickly realize that the Empire is a repressive dictatorship because we see its representatives acting. But we actually never meet the members of the CIS. We actually never see its representatives. Besides of droids, of course.

None of these questions are touched upon during the movies. Of course, we know that there are huge corporations plotting together with Dooku, and Dooku himself is Darth Tyranus and works together with Sidious, but this does not explain how Dooku's movement got enough momentum and support to threaten an institution as large and powerful as the Galactic Republic.

So I really would like to see at least some answers to these questions during the series now. Although it would really be interesting to get some political intrigue episodes or novels placed between TPM and AOTC.

 

Well I disagree- actually OT never explains why Empire is evil- without EU-explanation of Empire oppressing it's citizens, enslaving species etc. i cannot see clear difference between rebels and Empire..... Tarkin blows up Alderaan- that's evil of course- but then rebels blow him up (that's evil too if you think it) but when you are kid and you watch the movie you know Tarkin is bad guy, Luke is good guy story is great and good guys win-

same with TPM- when i saw it as a kid i never had problems understanding that Neimoidians and their droids were bad guys and jedi and naboo good guys
but then if you start to think "Why" there is same answer EU tells pretty much about seppies- read Cloak of Deception if you haven't and you'll get some picture of political situation in TPM and later in AOTC- seppies have one reason to do bad things- Money- when you watch real history you may spot similar happenings in which money has been main motivation to be "bad" Trade Federation is very similar to East India Companies and other imperialistic trading powers in history

War in AOTC is really about free trade and taxation- trading powers want money- they'll get more of it if they control the trade- but senate has made laws and taxes to limit power of those commerce- companies- so they want to use violent action to make senate to give them more power (this is what Dooku talks about on Geonosis) they are creating droidarmy- powerful enough to be "ultimate power of the universe"
that's why republic fears them- they fear that republic will turn to be Trade empire in which power is used by dictators and their droidarmies- that would eventually lead to the situation in which rich people and rich planets rule the poor people and poor planets with an iron fist.... money is only law in that sort

 

I'd agree that battles without adaquate context or characterisation are boring, but IMO character driven action and adventure is what TCW does best. As others have pointed out, it's easy to hand wave a few plot holes and non-sequiturs in an action-packed adventure episode featuring entertaining characters. When the creators put out slower paced political intrigue/mystery episodes on the other hand, they're pretty much asking the viewer to take a slightly more cerebral approach and think through the nuances of the plot. As a result any plot holes, failures of logic, unnescessary convolution or over-simplicity will become glaringly obvious. If, coupled with this, the protagonists in said stories aren't the most interesting then the episodes will be disappointing to many older viewers. When I compare many of TCW's action adventure episodes to other action adventure series/films I'm familiar with the comparison is generally favourable. On the other hand when I compare TCW's political intrigue episodes to other series/books/films with a heavy intrigue component they fall flat. Really flat.

Now, for me, entertaining characters can often save an otherwise dull or plot hole ridden episode. Unfortunately, in TCW intrigue is usually synonymous with 'Padme episode' and as I don't care for the character (or at least her TCW incarnation) I don't tend to care much for the episodes. Having said this, if I heard that we were going to get some intrigue-heavy episodes that focussed more on Palpatine and his senatorial cronies I'd probably look forward to them.

 

These boards are all about opinions and respecting them. Right?

Well, here is my opinion: This topic sucks! Seriously, was this topic made to make people angry?

Action is action and many people thrive it on this planet. Not a smart thread at all.

As for a missing story, action has nothing to do with a missing story. Landing had a good story anyway and not any of this political crap that is going to kill this show.

If kids and action-thrivers watch this show all the time (which they do), then this show won't make it to 100 eps.

 

Huh?

ANH: Death Star attack -- it's about 15 minutes of screen time. There are also numerous skirmishes and dogfights not to mention a lightsaber battle. The movie opens with a battle!!

ESB: Hoth battle -- it's huge. It's most of the opening section of the whole movie.

TPM: Nonstop skirmishes and an epic, 3-tier, full scale battle!!

I don't know what movies you've been watching. Maybe you've mistaken some Ahsoka/Padme tea-time cozy-moment episodes of Clone Wars for the movies...?

 

I doubt anyone here wants nothing but battles in TCW. It's just the recent episodes being more political, with certain characters, still having action but not much the big, epic, explosive side of war.. I like variety personally, but yeah, they could balance these things out better.

 

Agree with XCell though I'll add that at the end of the day I'm entertained for 22 to 30 minutes, though there are bits I like and bits I don't like (Let us never see those British brats ever again. )

 

This.

This. This. THIS. THIS! THIS!!!!!!!

Couldn't agree more.

 

I'm impressed with the overall seriousness and DISCUSSION on this thread and there has been some very good points raised.

In short, we need action with character development, some serious drama/peril and a reasonably tight plot.

 

Also, someone whose writing the show needs to crack open a book on military history. Armies with automatic rifles, tanks, mobile artillery, and bombers do not march into battle Roman set-piece style! That's the quickest way to get slaughtered. It's obvious the commanders haven't been reading their Sun Tzu. Some scenes depicting flanking, encirclement, air superiority conflicts, and general all-purpose strategy would be a huge help. To be fair, some of that is happening, like with the Ryloth battle. Overall, battles seem to be two armies standing in the middle of a road, waiting to be featured in sequential expository scenes where they Zerg Rush each other and get slaughtered until Obi-Wan or Anakin manage to exploit some contrived plot element and SAVE THE DAY!

Also, they need to stop portraying the Republic as helpless lambs who need the help of Aliens of the Week to fight off the droids. It's very annoying. Good does not need to be weak for the audience to sympathize. What we need to see is a decisive victory obtained not through some Deus Ex Machina-driven contrivance, but rather the skill of a capable army and the sharp mind of an intelligent general. It seems like every battle has this Status Quo is God vibe to it.

 

Except that in TCW, the Clones almost never lose. And this is going while the Jedi are leading them with suicidal strategies. They'll still rack up enormous kill counts in spite of their leader's stupidity.

 

There should be a troupe for this: Writers Are Not Military Strategists Don't get me wrong, it be nice and everything but I don't think the tactics used in the movies exactly the most logical either. *shrugs*

 

In a real war, there would be far more casualties, and if our Jedi Generals wanted to live, they wouldn't participate in battle. Also, there is no such thing as the Force.

I agree it's not very realistic, but then it's Star Wars.

At any rate, I agree we don't need all battles all the time, but one more episode about yapping senators and I'm gonna hurl. SW is about adventure, emotions and discovery. Poisoned tea is more along the lines of the Hardy Boys or Scooby-Doo,

The irritating thing is that they could be doing so many different things with TCW, but if it's not action, it therefore must involve Senators solving mysteries and pointing out corruption.