TCW6 on Netflix

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TCW6 on Netflix

Post by 2046 » Sat Mar 08, 2014 8:08 pm

13 episodes are now available on Netflix, constituting the sixth and final season of Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

I just burned through the first three at speed and figured I'd post some details.

The arc regards a clone who malfunctions, or more accurately his biochip malfunctions. The biochip is claimed to be the means by which they altered the clones to make them more docile. This malfunction causes the clone to go nuts and want to Order 66 every Jedi he sees.

Interesting other details include a visit to Kamino, a ring station encircling a planet, and the return of Admiral Trench (the cloak guy, though he looks a little worse for wear).

Other points:

1. The Kaminoans knew about Order 66, and Lama Su calls up Lord Tyrannus to consult on the topic. Of course their knowledge was suspected, but was never really 100% clear. I was under the impression that this was a relatively benign-looking detail in a mess of orders that could be passed off as being a last resort against a rogue Jedi (where otherwise the clones couldn't kill them), but it seems pretty clear that the Kaminoans are aware of it as a secret from the Jedi generally speaking. I don't have the sense they recognized it as an order that would be used on all the Jedi at once, but further re-watching will make this more clear.

2. The ring station seen from afar and assuming a normal sized planet would absolutely dwarf the Death Star many, many times over. This would of course run counter to Han's notion that the Death Star is too big to be a space station.

However, further looks at different scenes suggest that the planet below is not a 'real' planet. Republic Attack Cruisers near the station . . . bearing in mind I never hit "pause" to look closely . . . would seem to preclude the ring being thicker than a couple of kilometers. And yet, we can see the ring all around the planet-thing, scarcely shrinking in the distance as it passes the limb of the world. The whole assembly of planet-thing and ring is thus probably not more than 100 kilometers in size, maybe 50 kilometers.

3. For operations in a ship with a hull breach and thus loss of cabin pressure, the clones pulled out backpacks with hoses that attached to their helmets. This corresponds well with the idea that the clone suits can provide some protection but are not actually vacuum-worthy. Another clone is seen with a nose and mouth mask operating in the same environment, and he is still capable of seeing, hearing, and otherwise operating, suggesting it was not a full vacuum. (Temperature would not have been much of an issue excepting for the loss of cabin pressure . . . the ship walls were still the same temperature, after all.)

During the above encounter, a fighter pilot in a craft that suffers a cockpit breach dies when his helmet pops off with no apparent force applied to make it do so (unless I just missed it in the first viewing). The pilot himself also flies out moments later.

Later, similar hosed breathing gear is seen in use by other clones who were fully prepared for operations in what is said to be vacuum. It is not clear if there was any additional sealing involved.

4. In-depth scanning of the afflicted clone is very difficult. A large machine like an MRI is used for the purpose. The biochip, when finally discovered, is initially thought to be a tumor of some kind (which, a medical droid notes, has never been seen in the clones) until it is extracted in a very quick and impressive bit of droid-performed neurosurgery. This process is later repeated on another clone, albeit in less of a rush.

Similar MRI-like devices are used to scan infant clones for the biochips. They all have them.

5. We see young clones being educated. Unless these are supposed to be the five million clones ordered in another episode, it seems most likely that the Kaminoans must be raising clones of this type on a speculative basis . . . after all, ordering five million new soldiers in a war is relatively easy if you're talking about a draft, but makes less sense if you're supposed to wait ten years.

6. The medical droid (with protocol droid eyes, nice) is capable of spot-welding metal and cutting a hole in a surprisingly thick window that features an electronic privacy screen technology, similar to "smart glass". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_glass

The cut window edges glow as if from a lightsaber cut, but are apparently cool to the touch . . . Fives has his boot and I believe a hand or two on the glowing "glass".

7. A floating stretcher is used . . . it's only a couple of inches thick, and seems to be used for a long while. So, just ballparking off the top of my head, either the whole thing's a fusion reactor and fuel, or else the levitation technology can't be extremely power intensive. I'm guessing the latter, but will refrain from firm assertions until I can do a little math.

That's all I recall right off the top of my head right now.

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Re: TCW6 on Netflix

Post by 2046 » Sat Mar 08, 2014 8:28 pm

Oh yeah, I remembered a couple of things.

8. Helmeted clones get punched out by another unarmored clone pretty easily. He basically directly punches the helmet and it's lights-out.

9. The clone that malfunctions believes he dies free after having the biochip removed. He speaks of the nightmares they all have about their "mission", contrasting strongly against the earlier commentary by the clones that they are programmed to deal with their battle stress and not break down.

In other words, they are configured to deal with PTSD-grade trauma but the biochip messes with them.

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Re: TCW6 on Netflix

Post by 2046 » Sat Mar 08, 2014 11:27 pm

10. Reading on another forum about comedic droids reminded me . . . Anakin and two clones board a Seppie shuttle by using magnetic grappling hooks and getting yanked along. The battle droid pilot looks at his board which signals an alarm. I was thinking "ooh, hey, a hull contact sensor?", but no, continuity was surprisingly preserved . . . instead, the droid noted that he had experienced some drag on the shuttle, which was their only clue something was wrong until lightsaber slashy stuff started inside. Later, as Anakin and the clones fight in the back and take over the shuttle, slamming droids around, the pilot droid says something like "and now I'm experiencing turbulence!".

I'm pretty sure that precludes an ultra-massive neutronium-hulled vessel, to say the least.

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Re: TCW6 on Netflix

Post by 2046 » Wed Mar 12, 2014 4:21 am

I watched the rest of the season while ostensibly doing other things . . . and I have to say that maybe it's just that I'd been away from TCW for too long, but the plotlines were mostly a bit odd. It might be interesting to have watched this without having seen RotS just to see if it works better . . . certainly RotS would have a much greater feeling of payoff. But Anakin's fall still seems weirdly disjointed to me.

Oh, one detail springs to mind . . . a ray shield visibly identical to that found on the Invisible Hand (and which the novel identified as being lethal) is used on Coruscant, but Anakin touches it. I didn't notice which hand he used, but still.

In any case, there's an arc regarding Clovis and the Banking Clan which was terribly confusing, simply because, like the Trade Federation, they are presented as being officially neutral. Both sides employ massive deficit financing for their war efforts and deal with the Banking Clan as their debtors, and indeed both the Seppies and the Republic have to approve the new Banking Clan leader. This is terribly weird to me. It'd be like if Lloyd's of London was the banker for a war between the US and Europe, all while Lloyd's warships fought for Europe. The hell?

Machinations appear to put the banks under Separatist control briefly, but then they suddenly wind up under Palpatine as a further bit of power that reminds me of our own banking crisis. But what of the Banking Clan frigates and whatnot? I have no idea . . . it made no sense to me.

The only interesting tech that I recall are a sniper rifle that sucks at life most of the time, plus an interesting shot of a ship pointing straight up and appearing to pour on the thrust. It doesn't match the ICS acceleration claims at all, not that anything does.

Also, Anakin goes bucknuts insane and nearly kills a guy who seemed to be about to force himself on Padme. And, this was the last arc voiced by the original Palpatine, which is why the voice work is good . . . Tim Curry just can't do Palps nearly as well, sorry. He sounds like Palpatine doing a southern accent.

The last two arcs deal with weird Force stuff. Y'know, I could give them the Mortis arc, because that was kinda neat-weird as a sort of "Far Beyond the Stars" one-off, but for the most part the magic stuff puts me off. The Mother Talzin nonsense, for instance, does nothing for me. But, we do see her return in the first Force arc, along with her dealings with yet another group of non-aligned Forcey people (who rejected the Jedi as kidnappers for wanting to take their midichlorian kids) and their funky underground tribal foes. The foes are able to render people invisible using SFX similar in appearance to the disguise holograms, which is fun insofar as they snatch people out of a room and Mace Windu's all like "that's impossible!" Transporters would freak him out something fierce.

However, I don't like the fact that they basically just made a man-sized cloaking device. Sure, it's a group of weirdos and they probably used some sort of Force magic whatzits to do it, but still.

Anyway, the foes have a machine that can rip the Living Force out of someone and collect it in a ball. Everyone has Living Force, even Jar-Jar.

In the next arc, Qui-Gon starts talking to Yoda and Yoda goes on a spiritual quest in a very TIE-esque fighter which attaches to the hyperdrive rings in a way that TIEs wouldn't seem to be able to do. We get a look at Dagobah and some strange planet that emits Living Force, or Cosmic Force, or something. We get a lot of detail that there's Living Force and Cosmic Force, and the two regenerate each other somehow or other.

The Jedi were under the impression that the Living Force exits the body at death and that identity could not be retained . . . they were very firm in this viewpoint, not quite to the point that the idea of Qui-Gon living on was blasphemy, but it was a shock to which some of them reacted rather poorly.

Yoda's spiritual quest took him to the aforementioned Force Planet thingy as well as Moraband, which is something akin to a Sith homeworld or former center of their power, long abandoned. There is the grave of Darth Bane. Then weird things happen and Palps and Dooku try to do some sort of Force mumbo-jumbo to mess with Yoda's mind, which would have been neat in and of itself except Yoda had already met crazy masked Force-bitches on Living Force world who had supposedly been training Qui-Gon or some such other weirdness that he never bothered to mention. I don't know, the scenery was beautiful there, but I really lost track of what the hell was supposed to be going on.

Palps and Dooku's Force mind-weirdness involves them . . . I don't know. But basically there's a head-trip wherein Yoda battles Darth Sidious right around his secret meeting place on Coruscant with Dooku, and Palps is clearly visible but Yoda does not recognize the lower half of his face and the light magically never illuminates him further despite the fact that they fought with light-swords. That made no real sense to me . . . I don't see how Yoda could not know that Palpatine is Sidious.

Meanwhile, they found the crash site of Sifo-Dyas (the guy who supposedly ordered the clones from the Kaminoans) and through a series of events come to realize that Dooku was Tyrannus and involved in ordering the clone army. The Jedi choose to keep this knowledge a secret for no apparent reason, and never quite put any pieces together.

Frankly, TCW ended at around the perfect moment . . . a sendoff episode or two would've been nice just to really lead in to RotS (like "hey, what's this big fleet doing here pointed toward Coruscant" or similar), but they really couldn't have gone much further with their own plots. And Yoda's last scene wherein he basically intimates that the Clone War itself may not matter in a cosmic sense insofar as the war against evil is concerned really clinched it.

But, really, any more stories beyond that would almost be annoying. Literally, they got all the pieces of the puzzle put together for them in that final arc right down to Yoda actually seeing Sidious and his Palpy face, knowing the area of the secret meeting place of Palps and Dooku, the fact that the Clone Army was not Sifo-Dyas's foresight but part of a larger plot involving Dooku who, naturally, really ought not have been helping that sort of thing along, and so on. Oh, and in the first arc we also learned that these clones commissioned by Dooku and his buddy have a biochip in their heads which can make them kill Jedi, and indeed a trooper straight up tells Anakin that it's part of a plot against the Jedi and that Palps is involved.

Literally, it makes the Jedi look about as incapable of putting pieces together as the US government. I mean, it was virtually handed to them on a platter with a neon sign atop it. All in all, I feel like they lead in pretty well to RotS, if for no other reason than the fact that it feels like they had to do the kidnapping ruse right then or else Palp's whole plan would've unravelled. Even so, though, Anakin's fall is still weird.

Anakin himself knew about the clones being commissioned by Dooku or with his support, he knew that Dooku had a master, Darth Sidious, and he had been told (but had rejected) that the clones were a plot against the Jedi and that Palpatine knew about it. I can certainly understand why he might not be able to imagine that whole Order 66 bit, but the reveal of Palpatine as Sidious really should've given him pause.

On a technical level, I only recall a few bits . . . for one, Sifo-Dyas's shuttle was suffering wear on a sandblasting planet a la Ceti Alpha V, but his lightsaber, sitting off for ten years, turned on just fine. During Yoda's Palps-inspired vision thingy Anakin says something about a ship slipping through the sensor network or something, but this was a head-trip so I don't know how much to make of it (though Yoda didn't get all "the hell you say?", so it seems plausible).

Also, we have two instances of Force powers used at interstellar ranges, including Palps choking Dooku from Coruscant to what IIRC is his lair on Sorrento, as well as the weird head-trippy mess against Yoda that required a drop of Dooku's blood and a chant thing.

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Re: TCW6 on Netflix

Post by 2046 » Thu Mar 13, 2014 2:12 am

The powerful final scene that I mentioned, rendered in impotent text:

MACE: The Council has assembled. They are eager to hear your report.
YODA: Afraid, not much there is to say of my journey.
OBI: So, nothing significant happened to you out there.
YODA: Yes, and no. To the end, we are coming now.
MACE: Did your journey give you insight on how to win the war?
YODA: No longer certain that one ever does win a war, I am. For inviting the battles -- the bloodshed -- already lost, we have. Yet, open to us a path remains that unknown to the Sith is. Through this path, victory we may yet find . . . not victory in the Clone Wars, but victory for all time.

This is basically the revelation he had in the RotS novelization, albeit there he had a little more detail. In the novel it was like a super-epiphany as everything came together in one big moment . . . this reduces the level of the epiphany, as do the other revelations from the season, but doesn't negate it entirely. It just turns it into more of a finally-everything-makes-sense "click", at long last, but too late.

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