Full Series The Clone Wars: Episode 411: Kidnapped -- Discussion Thread

Anakin was handled better in the comic than his raging that came out of nowhere in this episode. Really, his Dark Knight moment and his initial "That Zygerrian scum" really lacked build up. Sure they are slavers and he was once a slave, but would you be that instantly furious at someone like that? I would've liked it better if Anakin saw what the retconned Zygerrians were doing and those moments hit him personally then.

 

Actually he did better against the Besalisk in the original comic then he did against the Zygerian in this episode. Not to mention he killed the Besalisk by tossing him out a window with his bare hands, instead of the Zygerian escaping and getting his ass handed to him by Ahsoka, but of course not dying. The entire ending was another lame excuse to show how "Uber" Anakin and Ahsoka are. It should have just ended the way it did in the comics, the bombs all disabled, and the Separatist Commander pancaked against the ground of Kiros.

I'm sorry I just can't seem stop harping and ranting about this all.

 

No, I agree. I would've liked it better if a Besalisk was attacking Obi-Wan. The retconned Zygerrian can still be there, but the Besalisk is the brute now. They have a Besalisk model because of Krell, and even if we just seen a Besalisk, we haven't seen Obi-Wan tackle one in the series yet. And yeah, Obi-Wan could've put up a good fight against the series version of Commander Xerius Ugg (the Besalisk from the comic), instead of getting his butt handled by some humanoid. Regardless if he was "acting" and pretending to be hurt, he should've just fought. I hated seeing Obi-Wan getting bashed by that guy, and him not using the Force until the very end.

 

I am getting sick of Dark Anakin scenes because of how bloody ham fisted they can get. The absolute worst contender is still Brain Invaders however. LOOK HE'S FORCE CHOKING POGGLE JUST LIKE DARTH VADER DOES, AND THE IMPERIAL MARCH IS PLAYING IN THE BACKGROUND GET IT BECAUSE HE'S DARTH VADER!

 

Well that was quite underwhelming.

There was no tension to the bombs; the city was empty, countdown took aaaaaaaages.
Obi-Wan got beat up for like ten minutes straight.
Hey look, it's Wolverine...
The speederbike chase wasn't very exciting. I couldn't make it out, were they just reversing their speeders in mid-flight, or were the gunners sitting on a separate part of the bike that could rotate? (Does that make sense?)

Okay, so we're on microseries levels of Force power now? Obi-Wan can just crush several droids to dust with one movement of his hand? That Force jump was way over the top.

Maybe it's because of Umbara, but there was no tension at all in this episode.

 

You guys know Obi-Wan was stalling, right? I'm the last person to want Obi-Wan to lose another fight but it's pretty clear he was taking a dive. Pretty badass how he disposes of the commando droids at the end.

I was actually pleasantly surprised by this episode. I liked the sniper droids and the Zygarrian. The animation just keeps getting better and better.

I'm going to dock it a point or two for having bombs that were supposed to blow up buildings in the middle of the plaza and bombs that could be "disarmed" by hitting them with a light saber, which was ludicrous, but otherwise it was great. This is the kind of stuff that drives me crazy with this show - why not have Anakin's mechanical skill come into play and have him devise a way to disarm them?

Little surprised Ahsoka didn't express any emotion about the Togrutas being taken but Anakin's bad mood worked I guess.

Those poor hippies. If they only had jobs none of this would have happened.

Also kudos to the art design team on the architecture.

 

Yeah Garth, but Obi-Wan getting beaten up for nearly most of the episode was just

I thought the execution was pretty poor. A Jedi Master shouldn't allow himself to be humiliated like that, at least not Obi-Wan.

 

But it's not humiliation. Obi-Wan's dignity is intact.

 

Obi-Wan was getting his ass handled by that humanoid man.

 

I couldn't disagree more. Almost every species we've seen on TCW so far has had a model that pretty much every member of that species looked almost exactly like except for some variations in facial features and skin tone. The fact that the Togrutas in this episode looked different and they all had unique head-tails or Togruta-lekku or whatever they're called was an awesome step in the right direction as far as I'm concerned. More realistic variation instead of stale copies! If the species we've seen a ton of on TCW had this much diversity it wouldn't have been nearly as bad. I'm sure not every Ithorian looks just like the one from the Cantina.

Also, I'm the only one that noticed that the battle droids were actually intimidating for once in the beginning of this episode??

Back to the Obi-Wan thing, I get what you're saying Garth, they just WAY overkilled it. It was seriously like Rocky. He should've been knocked unconscious or dead. They should have showed fewer fight scenes and had Obi-Wan fight back at least somewhat convincingly.

 

While my initial complaint was not the diversity of their appearances, but rather how they actually appear.

 

I realize he was stalling, I just don't see how it served any point. He could have just won the fight, restrained the slaver while Anakin disabled all the bombs. There was no reason to stall.

 

Which is what, specifically? They look too weird? How is that not a good thing?

 

I like how they played "How many clichés can we fit into 20 minutes?", that was certainly an entertaining minigame while watching. Did you find them all?

My favourites were:
- Countdown timers on bombs
- Russian/Eastern European accents for villains
- Scary monster boss fight
- Heavily muscled villain that destroys the protagonist in a fist fight
- Bond villain stroking pet
- Situational Force retardation and exaggeration
- Character's past makes him flip out for no sensible reason

...

Proud return to delicious droid humour. I guess the Tac droid going "Sir, how could you?" in its typical monotone voice was amusing.

The Togrutas looked incredibly fruity. Still not a fan of the design of the males. And yes, I would love to find out how a predatory species ends up establishing a colony with no warriors or defences whatsoever.

I guess they haven't told Boil yet what happened to his buddy. Watch him not give a single **** about Waxer for the rest of the show now.

On the plus side though, liked how the officers have their hats now. And I absolutely love the design of the slaver ship. I'm still a massive sucker for starships. Damn you LEGO, I'm trying to move on in my life!*shakes fist*

 

I regard the original comic as one of the worst ones ever and definitely THE worst of the 2000s decade, so this episode is a definite improvement to me. I don't even mind the continuity issues, which are actually pretty small: the original was so horribly illustrated, almost everything in there can be regarded as "artistic license" anyway.

P.S. The only good thing in the original comic was the appearance of Waxer, so for continuity reasons we should still put this before Umbara arc.

 

Hey - Fezes are cool!

 

Any followup to Carnage of Krell was bound to be disappointing in comparison.

But.... this one wasn't bad.

I mean, it's not going on anybody's top ten list, but I wasn't groaning in pain and there wasn't any immense stupidity. Yeah, it was a little cliche, but this is Star Wars afterall! An average, decent but fun episode.

 

I'm just glad I got what I wanted: Dark Side Anakin. That's something we need more of in the show. Placing the mouth of the lightsaber on the Zygerrian's was pretty intense.

Obi-Wan being beaten by the Zygerrian was painful to sit through. That's it, I'm putting out a bounty on Henry Gilroy for making Obi-Wan look like a wimp. I kid, I kid.

Overall a good episode, though not as good as Umbara, obviously.

 

This was a good episode. I'm glad they've shown Anakin's reaction about slavery. My only complaint is that they've completely ignored the events of the last episode. But since TCW is known to do that when they change arcs, I guess I should have been expecting it.

I guess the next episode is the one where Dooku's Solar Sailer makes a return (with the sail, finally).

 

Wow, a great episode. I enjoyed this more than 'Carnage of Krell'.

'Carnage' was a great episode, but not nearly as great as the 3 build-up episodes due to how they failed to tie everything up at the end, with seemingly little ramifications shown.

It helps that I love the trio though. Obi-Wan crushing 2 droids is over-powered? H-how? Presumably, he'd been channeling the Force throughout the fight, but not using it due to the rules of the fight and the need to stall him.

The Force jump? It was...*gulp*...cool. I know we've seen the Force become much more powerful in the last few years, most notably upon the release of 'The Force Unleashed'. The Force is a magical entity that has a will of its own. The Force wanted Anakin and Ahsoka to catch that slaver. What's the problem? I don't want to see micro-series levels of destroying entire armies with your fists, but Yoda always said that the Force surrounds us. Why can't that speed up the air molecules around Anakin and Ahsoka?

We have a good plot developing here so far. Dark Anakin is trickling out. Hopefully Ahsoka will become emotionally attached. Obi-Wan needs to get some more good quips at Anakin.

Haven't read the comic so can only judge by the actual episode, a blessing perhaps?

8.5/10

 

Not bad, not bad.

My absolute biggest complaint is that no mention of Umbara was made. I'm sure these arcs were developed separately and probably not in airing order, but a mention - even in the intro - would have been really nice.

That said, I think it's too early to say that Rex, Kix or Boil are "back to normal" - we simply didn't see them in any situations where any differences could be seen. There's still two more parts to this story - hopefully we'll get a glimpse. I don't want them to force allusions to the Umbara campaign into this story, but there are ways to make it slip in naturally.

Most of my observations have already been made, but I will say that I am very happy to see Ahsoka and Anakin's relationship begin to show signs of strain. It's interesting to note how agitated Anakin becomes when the topic of slavery comes up, while Ahsoka shows no such anger at the fact that it's "[her] people" that are being enslaved (she mentions that fact at the end, so she clearly does feel for her fellow Togruta). A good contrast between the two.

Another note on 'soka: I didn't think she would be Knighted before, but now I could see that happening - her stunts were more impressive than ever (and she doesn't brag about them like she used to),and in general she seems to be more mature and independent than ever before. I do think that Anakin is essentially letting her 'run ahead' to see what she can do, resulting in the seeming mismatch of action between her and the Knights. She'd be surprisingly young, but she was noted for strength in the Force as a youngling.

If Ahsoka is Knighted, then that's a reasonably seamless way extricate her story (and possibly that of Rex and a few named 501st memebers) from Anakin's, even though I still feel that Anakin would have talked up his accomplishment in Knighting a Padawan in ROTS.

On that note, I have no idea what this means, but I noticed a couple times in the biker battle how Ahsoka and Rex keep 'one upping' the other, first with the biker droids, then the tanks. If that's intentional (and it may not be), then I could see that as a subtle move to keep the connection between those two alive, without going through with extra dialogue and what not.

There's still a lot of potential in this arc, but it definitely suffers for following on the heels of a masterpiece like the Umbara arc. I'd give this a 7.

 

You guys were seriously expecting connections to Umbara in this episode? When has TCW ever referenced anything from a different arc?

This episode wasn't terrible... it was just 'meh'. I didn't mind Ahsoka, I didn't mind the Bond villain thing, but it's just the general lack of tension. You know something's wrong when you're sitting through the episode wondering what can possibly go wrong with our heroes.

And yeah, Obi-Wan was clearly stalling, but there was just no point. It was dragged out and boring... no tension at all.

And god, timers on bombs.

 

And why isn't Eeth Koth on the Council?

 

While there were not direct references to Umbara there was a direct reference to the Ryloth Trilogy or maybe more precisely "Innocents of Ryloth". in this episode I thought when Rex said - "I don't like it, the Seppies have never shied away from using civilians as living shields.". - Which comically was the right call since it sounded like he suspected there weren't any colonists along with Ahsoka. Is that some of his tactical brilliance still shining? The C.I.S using captives as living shields actually did happen on screen. Would have meant more from Obi-wan, Cody, or Boil but Rex probably knew what happened down there as well. I think its a start that Kix had a cameo, atleast more of the familiar clones may start to be used a reoccurringly. I've got a small bit of hope for something to reference Umbara other than the connection Boil and particularly Kix's cameo lend just by them being there.