The Clone Wars Episodes with Space Battles

This thread is for listing and discussing all TCW episodes with space battles. Obviously there are only two or three that are mainly focused on space battles, but there are a number of others that have them in varying lengths. I'd like to put together a list with all TCW episodes that have space battles and get them in order with the most time spent on them at the top and episodes with the least time spent on them on bottom. The top two are both S1 episodes, Storm Over Ryloth and Shadow of Malevolence. The borderline episode which is why I said "two or three" is S2's Cat & Mouse because it spends a lot of time in space but a lot of it is stealth so it's not all-battle. After that are episodes that have space battles but aren't focused entirely on them.

Storm Over Ryloth
Shadow of Malevolence
Cat & Mouse
Plan of Dissent
Escape From Kadavo
Citadel Rescue
Rising Malevolence
Bound For Rescue
Sabotage
Jedi Crash
Nightsisters
Innocents of Ryloth

I'm sure there are more we can add as we discuss. It's not in perfect order yet, that's another thing we can fix as we discuss the topic. Discussion isn't limited to making the list though, feel free to discuss likes and dislikes of space battles in TCW, personal favorites and hates, the frequency (or lack thereof) of space battles on the show, and anything else that comes to mind that relates to space battles in TCW.

 

The list was far too small, space battles are awesome; one of my favourite parts of the saga.

 

TCW has too few battles in general.

 

Arc Troopers had a space battle for a while.

 

JackG the list isn't complete yet, but when it is it will probably still be too small.

Thanks Grievousdude, ARC Troopers should be on the list too. Shame on me for missing that since I just watched it the other night.

How about The Clone Wars film? Anybody recall if that had any space battles? I can't remember.

 

Only if you count Anakin and Ahsoka's little skirmish with some Magnaguard starfighters above Tatooine.

 

Depends how long it is, but I'd probably count it. Since space battles are pretty rare in TCW, I already included a number of episode that only have them in minor capacities. As long it's not literally 10 seconds.

What about Downfall of a Droid and/or Duel of the Droids? Been awhile since I watched them, but last time I remember thinking there was a lot more battle-action than I previously remembered. There could be some space battle sequences there.

 

I'm pretty sure Downfall did. There was some sort of brief fight at the very least; I definitely recall a sequence where several AT-TE's deployed on asteroids ambushed a Separatist fleet.

 

The space landing sequence in Cargo of Doom?

 

You know what AkashKedavra_93 that came to my mind and I dismissed it, but I can't think of a good reason why. It's not in one-man fighters like we're used to in Star Wars space battles, but it's still definitely a space battle.

And what about Landing at Point Rain? Pretty sure Obi-Wan winds up crash-landing, so there's some spaceship stuff in there, but not sure if it's enough to constitute a space battle.

 

I must say that after Season 2, the space/air battles died down and that was a shame. I loved the way some of the sequences were done.

But I understand including episodes like Plan of Dissent that had something in the air even if shamefully little... given the...hmmm... interesting setting of the episode.


For me the top space/air battle episodes are:

Cat and Mouse
Rising Malevolence (pretty much that entire arc was one amazing space venture, the likes of which we have not seen since)
Storm over Ryloth
Jedi Crash


All these episodes are great episodes. Simply amazing points in TCW short streak of space/air episodes. These one stand out for me as being THE most "spacy" episodes of the series. Sure, the battle over Umbara or Cato Neimoidia are cool to look at, but they are too short to really be considered a crucial part of the episode.

Cat and Mouse and Storm over Ryloth were amazing space episodes and were stunning in what they showed to us regarding space combat. What they really had going for them were the enemies in charge. Both have a very awesome CIS presence in the form of Mar Tuuk and Trench respectively. While in other episodes in space that have the main heroes basically breeeezzeeee through everything aka the Umbara and Citadel sequences both... these two episodes I am talking about have enemies that actually make the being space a hell in space. We actually have and see struggle that the heroes face during the space battle.

When I saw Rising Malelovelence and the rest of the arc, I was blown away and I could not wait to see more and more of the series. If the Citadel arc felt the most Starwars-y in terms of locals and plot then Shadow of Malevolence has been the most Starwars-y episode in terms of the space sequences.

Jedi Crash was interesting and unique since it was the first air battle on screen and it had interesting enemies for the Jedi and clones. Not traditional Vulture droids, but flying B2 battle droids. That was very memorable for me.


There are many other examples of awesome flying sequences, not so much battles, that really deserve attention as stated above.

One such: The tanks in space part of Downfall of a Droid was a clever idea.

 

Great post Dan_Grievous_Tikkes_Fan.

I think Landing at Point Rain counts. It's not actually in space, but there's a significant landing sequence with lots of spaceships fighting and exploding. Escape From Kadavo also doesn't actually happen in space. I think they definitely still count though. It reminds me of the original Rogue Squadron video game. Everything was in one-man ships like X-Wings and Y-Wings, but there wasn't a single level that was actually in outer space, they were all flying above one planet or another. It was an entire video game dedicated to spaceship battles that had nothing in outer space.

 

That was one of the best fights ever. Especially with the zero-gravity one later in that episode.
Cat & Mouse and the Malevolence arc were also amazing.

 

I think Jedi Crash has one of my favorite space battles although its more in the upper atmosphere. It looks really cool when the ship jumps to hyperspace within the atmosphere.

In "Plan of Dissent" I love the scene where the Umbaran fighter breaks from the exosphere and Fives exclaimes - "Whoa! What the -" and then this immense battle with almost to much going on to take in is shown from his point of view. He sums it up perfectly. Its beautiful. That's one of the moments when I realize TCW kicked up a notch.

Season 4 has another great in atmosphere battle in "Escape From Kadavo" with tons of cool dog fighting. I like Plo's move when he gets behind the Zygerrian fighter tailing Warthog.

Then one of the highlights of the Young Jedi arc is in "Bound for Rescue" when Grievous boards Obi-wan's ship. That's got some great dog fighting and almost the immensity of the battle mentioned in Dissent.

 

Yeah, it's short but the space battle in Bound for Rescue is so in-your-face it really makes me feel like I'm there. It's probably my favorite thing about the whole arc after The Gathering.

 

Thank you!
I think that anything that includes ships that fly in the air and engage each other counts in a way. I mean I have not see the geonosian starfighters in better scenes since the old Clone Wars. And the main stars of the beginning of LAPR were the clone pilots vs the CIS bugs.
The way it was shot and edited could have been moved a couple of 1000 feet in the air and we would have had a glorious space battle with geo starfighters.

The thing over Kadavo IMO is honorable mention, but really fails on the scale part. The enemy (my people - the CIS) actually deploy 2 fighters to fight off the invasion... That was really underwhelming.

That is true about Jedi Crash. It did bring a lot of new things to the table.
The space battle over Umbara was visually glorious and impressive... I really wanted to see a lot more of the new CIS ships that looked really scary and monstrous. And that is kinda the issue I had with the Umbaran air battle - it was seen for very little time for us to get really immersed in it. There could have been several panning shots to Master Tiin and Barriss flying and fighting in space. And given what we saw in the S5 finale, we could have had a moment, in which Barriss saves Ahsoka's life from a bunch of Umbarans. Even if for 20 seconds, but furthering the notion later that they are best of friends to the end. But that is in the past.

The Bound for Rescue battle actually, like several battles in recent memory, was used to further the idea that the CIS are not as useless as TCW made them out to be in S1 or S3. Bound for Rescue was for Grievous in space what Massacre was for him on the ground - a major win against an enemy that he usually lost to, but now one way or another won against.

And the Kadavo thing had the issue of size, but I have talked with visual artists from that arc and I have learned the budget was the reason for the lacking number of enemy fighters.

 

Don't forget Plan of Dissent. We got to see some of the space battle above Umbara in that episode.

 

I did have Plan of Dissent on my list, but I just realized that it's absurd to have no pictures in this thread since presumably the reason we all love space battles so much is the visuals. So here's a few shots of the space battle from Plan of Dissent.

 

Awesome screenies Tarkas. The first one is the exact scene I was talking about where Fives says "What the..." and we see the huge battle from his point of view.' ... that is so awesome.

 

Beautiful scenes, but those were all that we see in the "battle". I wish there was more like these.

 

I watched Cloak of Darkness for the first time in awhile, and it's gotta be added to the list! It's not long, but there is a space battle and it provides the distraction for Ventress to get on the ship with Gunray, Luminara, and Ahsoka. This shot is from the episode:



It's such a great episode for so many other reasons, but even though it's short the space battle is really well done and engaging.

 

The best TCW Space battle is the one from Storm over Ryloth. They used a Thrawn tactic, and also broke with the SW tradition of depicting space combat as two-dimensional ocean combat transplanted into space.

They're so in love with apeing naval combat, that in ROTS they even had a battle in which all the ships were in repulsor-supported pseudo-orbits. (LEO altitude, but without the delta-v to maintain a true orbit... the ships are sitting on their repulsors) So the ships literally sank when they got damaged.

The Marg Sabl in SoR was a refreshing deviation from that.

If I directed a TCW episode it would have a big space battle with ships oriented every which way from eachother once things got hot... Star Destroyers would pair up into twos, and fly forward inverted to eachother, each covering the other's less-protected ventral hull... and the episode would feature orbital gunfire support for ground forces. Maybe even a BDZ, just for the evulz. Actually, since it's known that Grievous did BDZ multiple worlds, he could do it.

I guess they wouldn't want to show a BDZ though, if for no other reason than it might lessen the impact of the Death Star in the original trilogy.

 

And I'm ever reminded of how TCW should use more perspective shots as though we are looking out of the character's eyes.

 

I totally agree. That makes us feel more like we are part of what is happening and not just viewers of the spectacle.

 

One of the coolest things about Star Wars are the Star Wars, as in the Space Battles.