Star Wars: The Clone Wars CGI Season 2

[2046]

An interesting display of SW materials in "Lightsaber Lost", when a vertical pipe on the side of a Coruscant building less than a foot wide and around 35m long (assuming a ~5ft Tano) is caused to bend over and hang by the bend plus (I presume given its sudden stop when it was falling over) some support from the building very near the bend.

Now hanging laterally, it's able to support not only its own weight but also that of Tano halfway along it and some crazy lesbian ninja bitch at the far end. However, the crazy ninja bitch was able to use it as a springboard, achieving significant deflection after a handful of jumps, until she launched herself with perfect timing and angle into the passenger seat of an oncoming speeder at higher altitude.

Digressing, though, the deflection when just hanging is so small as to be beyond my capacity to measure. I thought it was bent at first, but this is just its hang angle being just off of level. In any case, the lack of bend, I thought, implied a really kickass pipe, but as I kept looking I found that the pipe walls are stupid thick. When a joined section is sheared off, even accounting for the external join covering, the inner diameter is 2/3rds the outer diameter. Meaning that if the pipe is 8 inches wide (which may be roughly accurate), the inner diameter is 5.5 inches, and the walls are thus 1.25 inches thick. So this is like the equivalent of Schedule 240 pipe, or something ridiculous like that.

So it's not as much a water pipe, as I was initially thinking, but built more like a freaking support column, 115 feet tall.

Alternately, we can say the building is like a thousand years old, and that's just sediment . . . but there's no obvious difference between the pipe material and the sediment, so unless we want to assume a micrometer-wall pipe wall I don't see any way to do anything with that thought.

For kicks, I started looking at pipeline info to see if there was a quick way to get a sense of the strength of the material the pipe's made of, but curiously enough pipeline equations are based on the ever so silly assumption that your pipe doesn't stop in midair. Guess they don't worry about GNDN pipes.

Having no experience with sagging pipes (insert joke as needed), I'll leave it to others to estimate the material strength. As for me, my guess is that the pipe walls being so damned thick brings this material strength example to somewhere within the range of not-crazy. My concern, though, is that the bouncing ninja lesbian producing significant bending of the pipe might override the utility of such a calculation, since the pipe weight ought to (in my guess) be more than the force of her hopping . . . e.g. if the pipe was sticking straight out to begin with, it probably shouldn't have bent just because a lesbian jumped on it. (Again, your joke here.)

[2046]

Ep. 213 ("Voyage of Temptation")

Duchess Satine's pacifistic Mandalorian guards were armed with staff weapons capable of resisting (and on one occasion, apparently reflecting) blaster bolts. The method of combat was to stand exposed in the hallway twirling the staffs around, absorbing blaster fire from multiple oncoming super battle droids, with no obvious effect on the staffs themselves and no obvious momentum transfer.

The two guards finished off two SBDs with the staff weapons, which apparently featured droid-popper/deactivator technology at the tips. Skywalker dispatched the rest. The battle had been a firefiight between 10-12 SBDs and a joint defense force of several clones and the two guards. At least three clones were killed in the engagement, and they'd taken out two of the SBDs at range before Skywalker's arrival and the SBD's arrival at the feet of the Mandalore guards.

[Mith]

Ugh, this last episode was just horrible.

Let's start at the top.

First, why if you're going to put a bomb or otherwise rig a hover car to kill someone, why is it so half-ass? Any decent modern day bomb would have sent that thing plunging to its death, not flying around like a wounded bird. I would have expected a more advanced civlization to have more effective means of dealing with this.

Second, how can they just have an emergency vote without full representation and why wasn't the Duchess informed at all? Holotechnology should have made this simple. I mean, I can understand wanting to get those boring political parts out of the way, but this was just bad writing. With a three part story arch, I'd expect something less messy than this.

Third, why in God's name did the assassin shoot the informant first? We saw later in the episode that his helmet allowed him to identify the targets. And furthermore, even if you want to argue that he wouldn't have known her identity, that makes it even more important that he shoot her first; because she might be able to blend back into the crowd if she changes her outfit, where as the other guy he knows. And why wasn't there a back up shooter? What, the highly militant society can't get two snipers? Would have ended the whole thing then and there.

Fourth; why the fuck did the Duchess run away? She has a defensive weapon only useful against droids. We've seen that. Even if we assume it can act as a sort of taser, it wouldn't match the weapon that killed him. And finally, she's a known pacifist. After the body was examined and found not to be done by the weapon she was using, then she would have at worst thought to be defending herself against a possible attacker and more probably seen as someone who was startled when someone she was talking to was shot and pulled a weapon. But by fleeing from the scene she not only gives the impression of conscious guilt, but she also puts time and distance away from the crime scene and the weapon she had, which means that anyone with half a brain would suspect she simply ditched the weapon. Even worse, she SHOT the probe droid that had been chasing her, meaning that any footage it might have had would have been damaged. This was incredibly stupid.

Fifth: Why the fuck didn't the Death Watch member just shoot her? It's not like Kenobi or any Jedi has the ability to stop stuff like that; we saw that in Episode II when Jango took out his assistant. And if he did use the grenade to stun them, why bother using a sniper rifle at such close range and carefully aim? A B1 couldn't miss at that range most of the time.

Sixth: The whole plan about sneaking Kenobi in was retarded. At first I thought her 'distraction' was simply a way of aleaving any sort of suspicion that the guards might treat Kenobi with because the Duchess is still on the loose--but she meant actual distraction! How fucking stupid does one really have to be to NOT keep an eye on the door. Or to hear it open. Or to see her looking at Kenobi! I mean, hell, what's wrong with them?

Seventh: This is throughout the episode, ever since she was shot at; why does she think someone tried to frame her? What is she, fucking stupid? In order for someone to frame her, they would have assumed that a) she had a weapon b) she had a weapon that was lethal, which she didn't c) why would they have shot and kill her afterwards? It'd just tip off the authorities that it wasn't just a normal murder.


The whole ending is a complete and utter dissapointment. Not only does it rely upon people carrying the idiot ball throughout most of the episode, but it's not even all that interesting. I mean really, we don't give a fuck about Padme. She's come off as a self-centered bitch with no sort of character development. She has the personality and the sexual attractiveness of a wooden block.

Which is shockingly, still better than the live action actress.

[2046]

We saw later in the episode that his helmet allowed him to identify the targets.

Not the helmet, but the binoculars he was using. So far as we can tell thus far given his use of a scope and binoculars, he can't see out of the helmet any better than stormtroopers.

What's impressive is that on a major city-planet, homeboy managed to keep track of her. He couldn't shoot worth a crap without a lot of setup time, but he's a freaking bloodhound.

The whole plan about sneaking Kenobi in was retarded.

We've seen before that Senate security is a misnomer.

I mean, hell, what's wrong with them?

It's starting to look less like Palpatine is a strategic genius, and more like the adage "in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king".

In any case, I was rather fond of the first episode, wherein right after Obi-Wan comments that she's not safe after Death Watch's bombing that's targeting her government and her, he later gets captured by Death Watch and what does he do? He calls for the Duchess to come help and rescue him, alone.

It's the equivalent of a Secret Service agent being captured by terrorists and calling the President to come get him out . . . I'm pretty sure there's a fundamental rule against that somewhere.

[2046]

TCW tech spoilers:

http:/ /www.rebelscum.com/TF2010/Hasbro_PR_TCW/image21.asp

Picture of upcoming Republic tank, presumably . . . interesting design. Looks light it could be smaller than the AT-TE, and maybe repulsor-based. Treads are possible, though not visible. In any case, check out the lack of lateral turret traverse . . . you have to point the whole tank at the badguy. For a repulsor-based tank with hovercraft maneuvering this might not be a tremendous problem, but still.

This site is spoilerrific:

http:/ /programme.tvb.com/kids/starwarstheclonewars2/more/vehicle#

There's something called a "stun tank" for Episode 218 (probably airing circa April/May) there that looks to be huge, and is repulsor-based, and has a large laser turret. Looks like the Republic's branching out on tank propulsion in a big way.

The main reason I posted this, though, is the STEALTH SHIP. That's right, our first glimpse of a cloaking device in the Star Wars canon! It's supposed to let the ship become "completely invisible".

The ship's explicitly said to be as small as a ship can be to have one, and a prototype no less. There aren't any real scaling cues that I can get from that image . . . the ship is clearly long and slender. I'd wager it's at least as long as a Tantive-type (~150m), and perhaps more if those are similar drive components in the back.

In any case, though, now that the mold is broken on Star Wars cloaks, one must wonder how often they'll be shown from now on without breaking the existing stories. After all, nobody's used a cloak before, so presumably these ought to be super-rare. Time will tell.

[Mith]

Not the helmet, but the binoculars he was using. So far as we can tell thus far given his use of a scope and binoculars, he can't see out of the helmet any better than stormtroopers.

Oh, I forgot about that. Still...you should still kill the person you don't know.

What's impressive is that on a major city-planet, homeboy managed to keep track of her. He couldn't shoot worth a crap without a lot of setup time, but he's a freaking bloodhound.

Possible that he was recieving intel from others? No doubt the "police" had cut off at and ruled out several nearby areas, although that's still impressive given the railways and such.

We've seen before that Senate security is a misnomer.

True...but still. I mean...she was looking right at him! And it was so obvious that I could hear Admiral Ackabar screaming "It's a trap!"

It's starting to look less like Palpatine is a strategic genius, and more like the adage "in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king".

Truer words have never been spoken.

In any case, I was rather fond of the first episode, wherein right after Obi-Wan comments that she's not safe after Death Watch's bombing that's targeting her government and her, he later gets captured by Death Watch and what does he do? He calls for the Duchess to come help and rescue him, alone.

It's the equivalent of a Secret Service agent being captured by terrorists and calling the President to come get him out . . . I'm pretty sure there's a fundamental rule against that somewhere.

Well remember, Kenobi was thinking about the greater good. I mean, without him, who would be left to settle the tax disputes?

Which reminds me, who the hell sends a knight and his apprentice to settle something like tax disputes? Wouldn't you send someone whose qualified? Or is accounting part of the course for Jedi training?

But back on subject of the Death Watch Arch, I also have to wonder just what Dooku and his cronies are thinking. I mean, why kill the Duchess? It'd just turn her into a martyer and make the cause stronger for peace. What they need to do is make her look ineffective, not kill her.

[2046]

Strategic ineptitude regarding which enemies should live and which should die is also common in Star Wars, as we saw with the Trade Federation trying to kill an anti-Republic-army Senator in AotC.

I suppose they wanted the Republic to think she was in league both themselves and with Separatists, then have Death Watch be the excuse for Republic intervention, and with her death they could paint her as having brought in the Republic for assorted intrigue purposes, personal riches, whatever. Death Watch would look like defenders, and the Separatists would be the logical choice because the Republic had invaded first.

The next guy would thus have an impossible situation, and Death Watch would be in the clear.

Maybe . . . it's a little vague given some of the earlier rumors and hiding behavior. It's better when the badguys don't have plans quite so fluid and malleable and ever-changing when they only have like 15 minutes for the entire plotting throughout the episode trilogy.

"Okay, we're Death Watch and we wanna take over, but right now we're in hiding, which is funny 'cause everyone knows we exist."

"Okay, we're Death Watch and we wanna take over with Separatist support, so we're gonna claim that the Duchess we clearly oppose with bombs is actually in league with us and the Separatists."

"Okay, we're Death Watch and we're gonna send a guy to attack a Republic ship, since nobody knows Death Watch exis . . . er . . . but anyway, everybody thinks the Duchess is in league with the Seppies, so a party that publicly opposes her attacking the Republic, and thus looking like we're in league with the Seppies, we'll . . . er . . . "

"Okay, we're in hiding, but we're gonna kill this Republic guy at our secret lair and make it look like an accident, implying that we're about to leave."

"Okay, we're Death Watch, and so now the cat's finally out of the bag that Satine has nothing to do with us. Which is funny, 'cause that would imply someone's still involved with the Seppies. So now let's have Seppies send assassin droids to attack the Duchess, just to make it perfectly clear to all that Death Watch and the Separatists share similar goals."

"Okay, we're Death Watch, and we're gonna be terrorists in league with the Separatists and finally everyone will know that. So when the Republic intervenes, people will think "hmm, terrorist fraksacks and their puppetmasters, or more Republic?" Obviously everyone will then rally to Death Watch, because everybody loves terrorist fraksacks."

And so on.

[Mith]

Strategic ineptitude regarding which enemies should live and which should die is also common in Star Wars, as we saw with the Trade Federation trying to kill an anti-Republic-army Senator in AotC.

It almost made sense at first, because at that point it looked like some of the pro-war people were trying to kill her, perhaps pushing towards more anti-war, but then they kept trying to kill her, instead of alternating targets.

I mean, you can't seriously tell me that Padme was their most insperational speaker.

Then again, that explains why the Senate decided to instead of approving the army, give the guy who supported making an army the power to do so and pretty much put them on the path to be irrelevant.

I suppose they wanted the Republic to think she was in league both themselves and with Separatists, then have Death Watch be the excuse for Republic intervention, and with her death they could paint her as having brought in the Republic for assorted intrigue purposes, personal riches, whatever. Death Watch would look like defenders, and the Separatists would be the logical choice because the Republic had invaded first.

The next guy would thus have an impossible situation, and Death Watch would be in the clear.

Maybe . . . it's a little vague given some of the earlier rumors and hiding behavior. It's better when the badguys don't have plans quite so fluid and malleable and ever-changing when they only have like 15 minutes for the entire plotting throughout the episode trilogy.

I think what they were trying to do first was somewhat fragmented. I think there's what Death Watch wanted to do and what Dooku wanted to do. Dooku wanted a political statement that would lead to Mandaloria turning against the Republic and cracking the Neutral Allied Planets.

And then there's Death Watch, that generally wanted to speak out against a peaceful government to become the warriors they had been in the past. I think the whole political thing was Dooku's idea, with the random acts of terrorisim just being Death Watch acting like terrorists.

Then Obi-Wan came in and blew the lid off the plan, but Dooku just switched gears from making the Duchess look like she was conspiring against the Republic to someone who was incapable of controlling Death Watch and needed Republic assistance--whether she wanted it or not. One was to have her assassinated (which would cause the Republic to occupy the planet to put them down). That failed pretty well--I must say their Assassin Droids are pieces of shit. I mean, the mini-spiders are cool and all and they're rather stealthy in a large dark cargo hold, but on a ship like that? Mostly just too many limbs when anti-grav tech would be much better and allow for more weapons. I personally think the B3 Commando Droids are more capable in that aspect given that they could disguise themselves, get close, and kill someone important.

Anyways, when killing her didn't work, they just went with a smear campaign, which was good at first, but then it just got stupid. The contact was killed, but suddenly they decided to kill off the Duchess again rather than just retrieve the evidence. Then the Duchess would have been in rather dire straights for resisting arrest and fleeing a crime scene at the very least, probably murder if they had a decent lawyer and made sure the cop probe was out of the picture, as well as ensuring that no witnesses were around to speak on the behalf of the weapon she used and the angle of the shot. And then she became even stupider.

In general, for the most part I sort of saw Death Watch as Dooku's puppet and that sort of explained the whole messy operations bit; Death Watch being unfocused and rather stupid, but still a puppet that had its uses. Now...now they're just sort of stupid.

I must say that I'm just generally dissapointed. I mean, most of the writing hasn't been really clever nor have the bad guy's schemes been anything special or even smart at times, but they were at the very least sub-borderline save for the B1s. Here...here they're just fucking dumb as hell. Like when Jar-Jar enters the plot.

I don't know, it's just really disapointing because this season had gotten off to a really good start with the first few story archs. The last two-three episodes were so-so in my opinion, but this last one was bad and Senate Spy I felt was a waste; it should have really been about Padme starting to fall for another guy--it would explain Anakin's mistrusting nature in Episode III and it would actually make Padme seem more like a three dimensional character--instead, we get her only agreeing to the mission to piss Anakin off because he had to go to a meeting because he's a fucking general and he couldn't tell them that he was spending the night with his secret wife.

I hope they turn it around--I think they can. I honestly think they just dropped the ball on this last episode and maybe it'll get better. I also find their more politically aligned shows to be rather bad, as well as ones with strong morals (the one with the rogue Clone was mixed with good and bad--good action and bad boring kids/clone family). Similarily Ashoka's Lightsaber was also I found to be a bad episode because although I like the idea of the message or responsibility, it was told in such a boring and predictable way that it was mostly as boring as shit.

So boring that I wanted to hear more of what Palpatine was saying rather than see the rest of the story.

And that's a shame. Because Season 2 was just so much better than Season 1 at first, because they spent most of that season getting their footing and working on a lower budget (which is kinda crappy given its LucasFuckingArts in charge). Season 1, characters were stiff and most of the jokes fell flat--ignoring the boring shit with Jar-Jar--. They had some good action sequences, such as the Commando Droids, but that was because they were the first battle droids beside the rollies that were any sort of a credible threat--and even that's only because of the shielding. They weren't dangerous, intelligent, or threatning. That's what was always the problem with Lucas's B1s; that they were silly humerous droids that posed no threat at all. While you could almost get away with that when they're security droids, it's become absolute BS when it comes to all out war that such pitiful droids are still fielded as opposed to others.

That said, I sorta want to see Grievous again. I know he had become a sort of weekly villian that got shafted every week, but during Season 1 it felt as though we were dealing with the Seperatists; ie, that they were fighting a war. Season 2 is...is well, less focused. Random plots and evil schemes are occuring, but no actual battles or important villians. Even Bane, for the greater screen presence he gives us, is ultimately a stand-in character and we haven't seen him for some time. I would like Season 2 to start gaining a bit of focus back on the war. The other two archs were fun--and the Second Invasion of Geonosis was great, but I want a bit more focus that Season 1 had there.

[2046]

"Cat and Mouse"[TCW2] is excellent. We get both cloaking devices and ship-to-ship torpedoes.

1. Starship-grade torpedoes appear to normally track via IR, given that flares were used effectively as countermeasures. However, we see Separatist torpedoes tracking via the magnetic field of a ship also.

2. The cloak-capable Republic prototype ship is a long skinny beast. A rough estimate based on folks standing under it when it is first seen suggests that it is about 17 meters long from the point of the nose to the widest part of the forwardmost hull beside the cockpit . . . that implies a total ship length on the order of 120 meters from the same shot, or 135 meters given a later shot showing that the engine area is actually longer than I initially allowed.

Assuming "no ship that small has a cloaking device" in reference to the Falcon, and given the long skinny design, it may be that Star Wars cloaks require a ship of at least that length in order to function.

But she's a very skinny ship . . . I would *very roughly* estimate her volume as *no less than* 2000 cubic meters, and quite probably north of the 4000 neighborhood. (All I did there was do the volume of a cylinder 120m long and 5m wide . . . the true value will not be that.)

That's within the range of the Falcon or Twilight, so cloaking apparently isn't simply a volume issue.

3. The prototype cloaked within line of sight of the Separatist fleet but its existence and cloaking wasn't detected.

Regarding the capabilities of the cloak:

a. No visual distortion, even when touched on the hull by a Jedi hand.
b. No detection by Separatist ships (including Munificents, a Providence, and Trade Federation battleships) using standard scanning despite a hull-grazing pass of a Munificent. Even when the presence of the cloaked ship was known and the vessel had recloaked, scanning was ineffective until Admiral Trench's magnetic trick was employed.
c. The ship cannot fire any weapons while cloaked, including "torpedoes and anti-aircraft cannons". When preparing to decloak and fire torpedoes, mixed within the torpedo firing prep lines was a note about diverting power. This may imply that Star Wars cloaks can't fire due to cloaking device power drain.
d. When detection was feared due to a close pass by fighters and bombers, Anakin ordered all systems and engines powered down save for the cloak, implying the possibility of some sort of signal leakage when these systems were functioning.
e. Cloak activation/deactivation requires only a couple of seconds, involving a luminous blue sparkly-bolt effect like electric arcs over the hull. However, after cloak deactivation, 15-35 seconds is apparently required to reactivate the cloak, at least after firing a full four-tube torpedo volley (it was 35 the first time, 15 the second).
f. Per Admiral Trench, any stealth ship could pass the Separatist blockade easily. This strongly suggests that cloaking devices are both rare (otherwise no one would bother to try to blockade) and rather effective (otherwise they'd be able to detect them readily).

4. The so-called Providence Class (aka the Invisible Hand type ship) makes its appearance, which I'm thinking is its first appearance in the show. This one has what appear to be extra gun emplacements and a different paintjob (they made an animal face on its beak-like front end). It may also have a larger bridge, given the massive floorspace of this one compared to the RotS film bridge.

The customization apparently includes "thermo-shields" or perhaps "thermal shields", which form a Trek-like energy bubble canopy some distance from the hull. These shields resisted Republic torpedo impact, but had a long recharge cycle after being dropped (meaning dropping shields meant a long time before reactivation was possible).

Dropping said shields was a requirement of firing torpedoes.

5. Separatist droid bombers (similar to the Vulture fighters from TPM and RotS) are referred to as "Hyena" bombers here.

6. The clone pilot calls out decreasing ranges when fighters are approaching, starting at 15,000 and down to 500 before the fighters pass immediately overhead. Given the speed of their passage, the range unit might've been a small version of the aforementioned klick, seen previously to represent no more than about ten meters.

7. Hyena bomber munitions are seen as sub-kiloton against a road on Christophsis.

8. The Republic prototype has four forward torpedo tubes. Loading and prep is similar to normal Clancy-movie-submarine style. Arming and even range setting is apparently required, and there was an explicit command to release torpedo safeties.

9. Trench had used "tracking torpedoes" to destroy cloaked cruisers (larger in size than the prototype) in prior engagements, but all signs point to cloaking being sufficiently rare that these battles were few and far between. His use of tracking torpedoes to destroy cloaked ships seemed confusing to the Republic, which apparently never determined how he did it until now (magnetic signature).

10. A Providence with her bridge torpedoed suffered numerous secondary explosions all along the dorsal hull all the way back to the funny spire thing . . . several hundred meters.

11. Incidentally, several TWOK musical cues were used here as homages.

[2046]

The first Zillo beast episode has arrived. A few notes:

1. A large Separatist army is shown, perhaps rivaling the Geonosis forces of AotC.

2. The new Republic "superweapon" "doomsday device", the electro-proton bomb, is deployed. It creates a nuclear-like initial fireball and some weird slow shockwave-esque thing that warps the ground, bending and breaking it and throwing droids around, then a second flash occurs and the fireball is sucked into a small blue area from which emerges an omnidirectional (and slow) blue electric-arcy doodad thingy, radiating from a central blue electric-arcy blue doodad thingy sphere, looking basically like one of those lightning-ball things but all in blue. Alternately, it resembles a spherical and blue version of the Malevolence ion cannon effect.

In any case, it's a huge-mongous droid popper that is smoking a lot of crack.

In addition to disabling droids and their equipment, it also disables Republic equipment, and seemingly made a few clones unhappy . . . some clones were seen gripping their helmets and seemingly about to fall down. It also affects Anakin's hand (a nice nod to continuity). The spherical effect completely fizzles out at a range of perhaps as much as three kilometers from the center.

To its credit, the initial blast has significant apparent tonnage, perhaps even low-digit kilotons. But there was a lot of technobabble-physics afoot . . . the shockwave, though impressive, was too slow to be the real deal, as well as too weird given the lack of blasting wind effect (just a funky up-and-down seismic shock action on the elastic ground), and came to a dead stop about 180 meters or so out from the center. And the fireball extended out about 100 meters from the center until it did the weird implosion-into-a-droid-popper thingy. There was also no crater apparent (at least until an underground monster's habitat collapsed a few seconds later, at which point there was a massive crater).

3. Malastare is the area of combat, and the Sep army is just outside the Dug leader's "Imperial palace", implying that the Republic was really screwed.

What's weird is that the Dugs are on Malastare, since I thought the Malastare guys were the three-eyed guys, but apparently some EU author/editor got confused or something. In the TPM script, Sebulba the Dug was from a place called Pixelito, but the EU was working off of some early script versions and supposedly Lucas was swapping Malastare's name around for different things at different times. So instead of fixing it they just assumed both were true, with Pixelito as a city on Malastare, and somehow or other (whether via osmosis by his reading of the comics or by the hand of Filoni) this has now been retconned into the show.

As a result, we have three eye-stalk guys who are invariably associated with Malastare and represent it in the Senate, but somehow the planet is ruled by and apparently populated entirely by Dugs. In other words, they've made things unnecessarily confusing . . . thanks, EU!

4. Malastare's strategic import is in regards to fuel that they "harvest" from the "planet's core". The fuel as observed later is some sort of green glowing liquid, and either due to radiation or inhalation it is said to be "deadly to the {Zillo} beast".

Republic armies could use said fuel, and without it the offensive would grind to a halt. The Republic's mission was to aid in the defense of Malastare and gain access to the fuel resources.

5. Mace Windu gets a little silly in this episode, and will probably do so again in the sequel portions.

During wartime, a big monster that is part of a species that used to roam the planet freely playing Godzilla is found underground. Despite having no evidence that it is the last of its kind (it was, after all, living underground, which suggests there could be more), Windu declares it to be the last, and picks a fight with the very folks with whom he is trying to secure a wartime fuel usage treaty, folks who wish to destroy it per their cultural and historical precedent. And by "pick a fight", I don't mean figuratively . . . he actually puts his lightsaber in the face of the planet's leader and tries to act all Samuel L. on him. Sure, the Dugs had already said they didn't want to be slaves to the Separatists, but something like that would make me reconsider my position real fast.Good

Seriously. It was Mace Windu: Eco-Terrorist. Next stop: Whale Wars: Return of the Jedi.

This is the equivalent of showing up in Godzilla sequel movie #23 and telling the Japanese who've found Godzilla hanging out near Tokyo to 'leave the monster be you ignorant 'tards or I'll shoot you', and 'oh-by-the-way we still want your sushi'.

Good luck with that.

[Mr. Oragahn]

It's much more enjoyable reading your posts than going through such episodes. I still don't get what motivates you to sit your bum in front of the screen and digest that kind of tripe. Is this an excuse to eat... or something?

[Estrecca]

3. Malastare is the area of combat, and the Sep army is just outside the Dug leader's "Imperial palace", implying that the Republic was really screwed.

What's weird is that the Dugs are on Malastare, since I thought the Malastare guys were the three-eyed guys, but apparently some EU author/editor got confused or something. In the TPM script, Sebulba the Dug was from a place called Pixelito, but the EU was working off of some early script versions and supposedly Lucas was swapping Malastare's name around for different things at different times. So instead of fixing it they just assumed both were true, with Pixelito as a city on Malastare, and somehow or other (whether via osmosis by his reading of the comics or by the hand of Filoni) this has now been retconned into the show.

As a result, we have three eye-stalk guys who are invariably associated with Malastare and represent it in the Senate, but somehow the planet is ruled by and apparently populated entirely by Dugs. In other words, they've made things unnecessarily confusing . . . thanks, EU!

EU-wise, the planet has long been presented as the Dug homeworld with the three eyed species (Gran, IIRC) being descendant of settlers hailing from a Republic world that colonized the planet and turned the Dug into a servant class in their own planet.

[2046]

It's much more enjoyable reading your posts than going through such episodes. I still don't get what motivates you to sit your bum in front of the screen and digest that kind of tripe. Is this an excuse to eat... or something?

It's research of the Star Wars canon.

And it's not really that bad at all . . . I'd say I'm a fan of it. The show has many good points, even compressed into 22 minute stories.

But it's not like it's even all Star Wars, either.

The episode with the cloaked ship, for instance, was a replay of Star Trek III with a few plot mods. They even used Horner's musical cues (their composer, Kevin Kiner, is getting quite a reputation online as a no-talent hack who liberally steals from other composers, BTW).

Earlier this season we saw Aliens. Last week we saw Seven Samurai. This last one was Clovergodzillafield with the usual Godzilla nuclear weapons origin story and super-advanced Japanese laser tanks firing on the beast. Next week is, I'm presuming, going to be a remake of King Kong with the Cloverfieldish monster in its place.

So it's always different and fun. Or something.

But seriously, it's mostly research, and it is an enjoyable show in its own right. It's better than most TV, and although I dislike the whole Mace Windu as Pamelyn Ferdin thing, that's fairly tame compared to much of the nonsense coming out of the TV.

[2046]

EU-wise, the planet has long been presented as the Dug homeworld with the three eyed species (Gran, IIRC) being descendant of settlers hailing from a Republic world that colonized the planet and turned the Dug into a servant class in their own planet.

Except now they're the sole planetary leaders, which makes it weird that they'd hire out Senatorial duties.

Unless, of course, we go with the idea that the low Senate pod counts indicate multi-planet (or sector-based) representation systems, and that Malastare is the capital planet of the area, but the three-eyestalk dudes are popular in the Senate, and . . . I dunno.

Of course, given that the Imperial Palace is surrounded by dirt and field (suggesting a planet no more impressive than Ryloth), the idea of it as the capital world isn't saying much.

[Estrecca]

Except now they're the sole planetary leaders, which makes it weird that they'd hire out Senatorial duties.

Unless, of course, we go with the idea that the low Senate pod counts indicate multi-planet (or sector-based) representation systems, and that Malastare is the capital planet of the area, but the three-eyestalk dudes are popular in the Senate, and . . . I dunno.

Of course, given that the Imperial Palace is surrounded by dirt and field (suggesting a planet no more impressive than Ryloth), the idea of it as the capital world isn't saying much.

*shrugs*

Not the first time it has happened in the series. Prior to this, the Twi'lek homeworld had consistently been portrayed as a tide-locked hellhole of a desert world with underground cities.

And that's without even touching the Mandalorians.