Season 1, Episode 21 - Liberty on Ryloth

The final third of the Ryloth Trilogy, Liberty on Ryloth, features Mace Windu front and center for the first time in the first season. He leads a ground assault against the capital city of Lessu, on Ryloth. When he appears overmatched, he turns to the local rebels, led by Cham Syndulla, to lend him support.

This is the third episode directed by Rob Coleman in the series, and his experience and talent are as apparent here as they were in Duel of the Droids and Jedi Crash. He's got a sense of what's cinematic (he was, after all, the Animation Director for the prequel trilogy) and he's careful not only to fill up the frame with action, but make sure the "camera" swoops and dives. Liberty on Ryloth never looks less than amazing, and the action scenes are pumped up and creative. Windu's escape from the disappearing bridge is definitely one for the series' highlight reel.

Coleman also has a strong feel for how to animate emotion. Cham Syndulla is a soulful new character, an his scenes with Mace Windu had an honesty to them that is hard to pull off within the Thunderbirds design. As with the last episode, Innocents of Ryloth, Libery on Ryloth doesn't shy away from showing us the costs of war, and the citizens and their particular issues. The episode was mostly action (the politics are shallowly played here) but it doesn't forget there is more to war than laser pistols.

That, unfortunately, doesn't help Mace Windu become more interesting. On screen, Mace Windu has always been sort of character-less. He's stalwart, wise, careful, and has a glare. But those are qualities. Who is he? What does he care about? Where is he from? What drives him? Watching Mace Windu is always a thrill - much like Yoda, the showrunners love to leave most impressive displays of Force Power to him - but I've never much cared if the character is happy or sad. That trend continued here.

On the other side (isn't this always the way) the villains have a lot more fun. In a fun subplot, it's clear the Wat Tambor and is Tactical Droid are not seeing eye to eye. I'd love to see some more episodes from the Separatist side for this reason - there's a sense of fun and play with those characters that the writers rarely seem to have with the heroes.

Liberty on Ryloth, as a stand alone episode, is well-executed and well done. As the third part of a trilogy, it shows some flaws. Although there is a tacked on Episode I style parade at the end of the episode, the three individual episodes don't connect particularly well, and don't seem to all add up to this one. Sure, there's a logic to their order (Get on the Planet, Secure the Planet, Take the Planet) but it would have been almost better to simply see three episodes of Mace Windu, or Obi-Wan, or even Ahsoka. The diffuse nature of the episodes, and their differences in quality, didn't help make this episode a stirring triumph. Just another episode with really cool battles.

Rating (out of five): *** 3/4

Season 1, Episode 13 - Jedi Crash

At the beginning of Jedi Crash, the viewer is thrust into swirling action. Super Battle Droids dive through the atmosphere; gunships roar; war ships lurch to and fro. Jedi Master Aayla Secura desperately needs reinforcements. They come, almost too late, from Anakin Skywalker and his battalion of clone troopers.

It's a rousing start, and it leads quickly into daring escapes, and finally, the titular crash itself, on a grassy planet. (According to the episode guide it's called Maridun.) Anakin has been severely injured in the escape, and its up to Aayla Secura, Ahsoka, and the remaining clones to figure out where they are, and how to get home.

As with Duel of the Droids (also directed by Rob Coleman, Animation Director for the prequels) the color palette and the perspectives are all artfully combined. Where The Gungan General felt rushed; Jedi Crash feels carefully put together.

It may be that a little extra care was put into the episode: it was written by Katie Lucas, daughter of He Need Not Be Named. To her credit, the action here isn't the only thing to recommend the episode. As the episode goes into its second and third acts, the script takes over from the action, and has a few of the series strongest moments. (It also features at least one line that's a remarkable groaner, but heck, that's a pretty good batting average.)

The major theme here is, once again, attachment. Ahsoka doesn't want to leave Anakin's side, but Aayla rightly gets her to think about more than her own immediate needs and attachments. They leave Rex behind with Anakin and head out to find help.

(Here's the groaner: they find a piece of wood that shows, plainly, GIANT TREES and people living near them. Ahsoka looks at it and, like Encylopedia Brown, says "I think the people around here live near GIANT TREES." "Very perceptive," says Aayla. Ouch. Truly wonderful, the mind of a child is.)

What they do find, though, are the Lurmans. They look a whole lot, frankly, like Nelvaanian women and children from the original Clone Wars microseries. But they're more adorable, and they're pacificsts. And they live in giant seed pods. And they can roll like Droidekas.


The Lurman leader, Tee Wat Kaa, espouses his values to the Jedi, before agreeing to provide Anakin with medical supplies. There's a bit more non-descript action before the episode closes on a cliffhanger as well, and pacifism seems to rule the day. I don't have to tell you (I hope) that Anakin lives.

Jedi Crash is a largely exceptional episode. The action (as I stated) is fantastic. More than that, there are moments where the Jedi's role in the war is questioned, and there needs to be more of this in the series.

Think about telling a story about the war in Iraq without ever mentioning how the war was started. It doesn't make any sense. The Clone Wars are the reason for the fall of the Republic. They were started under false pretenses, built around trade routes and an arms race. In short: the war is a trick. The Jedi claim to fight for freedom, but have the Separatists claimed to fight for fascism? There is a very real difference between the World War II inspired battles of the original trilogy and the morally ambiguous Clone Wars. The Clone Wars are Vietnam or Iraq; the Galactic Civil War is a war against a clear evil.

So, I was incredibly happy to hear even a hint of that in the voice of the Lurmens. The series will only be more rich if the sourness of the war and its irony is allowed to breathe a bit in the emotional life of the characters.

It was also nice to hear Ahsoka learn something. I mean, seriously. Aalya Secura turns out to be yet another strong female Jedi character, this time with a french accent, and a tougher edge. (There must be some theory of the Lucasverse that we can better remember characters with simple traits like accents.)

For all that good stuff, then... why is there something I feel was missing from this episode? Maybe it's that I find it almost impossible to invest emotionally in Ahsoka Tano. At this point, I've watched a film where she was all but the star, and maybe 5 of the 12 episodes aired before this one featured her prominently. That's plenty of time to get to know the character, and still, she comes off as entirely unlikeable to me. I also don't find myself concerned with her "fate" and how it affects Anakin's fall to the dark side.

Here's why: we don't need it. Anakin's mother dies, he kills out of anger, he fears for the death of his secret wife. His mentor is, unbeknownst to him, the biggest bad guy of all bad guys. That's the mythology that matters. Ahsoka's fate isn't really a blip of that kind of drama's radar.

So, I fully admit that bias. If Ahsoka's in an episode, it has to work three times as hard to impress me. She's a product of someone's idea of how to appeal to a certain demographic, and I don't care of "she" learns about the Jedi Code.

Also, unfortunately, is the problem with the Duel of the Droids two-parters: Anakin lives. Putting Anakin or R2-D2 in danger are dramatically inert choices. If you know the outcome you can still mine dramatic tension (the prequels figured out how to do this because the questions were "how" and "when," not "if"); but if the question is who survives...the question is asked and answered.

Add Ahsoka's anti-charisma and Anakin's dilemma being sort of dramatically uninvolving, and I'm left with an episode I found impressive and satisfying intellectually; but that never really hooked me.

Rating (out of five): ***

Season 1, Episode 7 - Duel of the Droids

Duel of the Droids is the second of a two-parter, and a thoroughly entertaining one at that. It's also directed, notably, by Rob Coleman himself: the animation director for the prequel trilogy.

His experience shows in every frame of this episode. Lightsaber duels are performed with moody panache; the dive onto Skytop Station is bathed in autumn hues; the final "duel" of the episode's namesake is staged with racous tension, and wouldn't have looked out of place in one of the films.

Essentially, the story is of the rescue of Artoo from the clutches of the Separatists. Much like Destroy Malevolence, it involved infiltrating on Separatist ground, racing against the clock, and outthinking superior numbers. It's got all the best elements of a good Star Wars adventure, and it delivers.

While the action soars, Duel of the Droids doesn't overlook the details. Grievous's dispatching of Gha Nachkt comes as a violent shock (and a shoutout to a deleted scene in Revenge of the Sith), for example. We also see, for the first time, Artoo completely disassembled, in an amusing sequence.

It's also inventive. The quoting of other adventures is at a minimum here; as well. We see the first duel between Ahsoka and Grievous, and the battle is uniquely suited to these two relatively new characters. R2-D2s battle with his unlucky replacement shows Star Wars fans something they've never had the pleasure to see, as well. Even if (as stated in the previous episode's review) there is never any real question about Artoo's safety, it's a vibrant episode, one of the series best so far.

Rating (out of five) **** 1/2