Droids versus Zombies

It's called "Massacre" but I'd forgotten how nuts this fourth season episode of Clone Wars was. Featuring absolutely no "good" characters, it's the story of a single battle and rout, of the droid army laying seige to a whole civilisation. And not just your average goofy Star Wars alien civilisation, this is the Nightsisters of Dathomir who employ witches and zombies in their defence. Like so many episodes of Clone Wars, it keeps you captivated with the sensation that anything can happen.

It's very cinematic, too, I can imagine it looking great on a movie screen. Directed by Steward Kee and written by Katie Lucas, it returns us to the ongoing troubles of Asajj Ventress (Nika Futterman), former apprentice of Count Dooku (Corey Burton). After failing in her attempts to get revenge on him, Ventress returns to her home world Dathomir to join the fold of the Nightsisters.

She's baptised in a special ceremony before feasting begins. Meanwhile, General Grievous (Matthew Wood) is marshalling his forces for an onslaught. It seems like a one-sided battle until an ancient member of the Nightsisters (Kathleen Gati), hidden safely in a secret chamber, raises an army of zombies.

The Nightsisters are so impressive in this episode it strengthens the impact when they start to lose. You come away from the episode with a new sense of the strength of Grevious and his droids as well as a surprising sadness for the Nightsisters, even if they are a whole population of murderers. Even before the Disney acquisition, making both sides villains was likely the only way the show could get away with something like this. It's a liberating concept, as Quentin Tarantino showed with several of his films.

Clone Wars is available on Disney+.

Twitter Sonnet #1436

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Fall of the Clones

The final episode of Clone Wars is a great visual treat with pacing that appropriately lingers on its painterly images. From the destruction of the ship's reactor to Ahsoka jumping across falling debris to that lovely snow-swept epilogue. Director Nathaniel Villanueva delivered the goods in spades, it almost didn't matter how empty Dave Filoni's teleplay was.

Beginning immediately after the previous episode, we find Ahsoka (Ashley Eckstein) and Rex (Dee Bradley Baker) fighting their way out of the medbay against their former comrades. Surprisingly, Ahsoka spares a moment to tell Rex to put his blaster on stun because, after all, they don't want to kill any of their friends if they don't have to. When Ahsoka tells Rex that she let Maul (Sam Witwer) free to cause a distraction, Rex's reaction is astonishment. He clearly can't understand why Ahsoka thought this was a remotely good idea.

I think we can all agree with Rex in this reaction. Later, the nonsensical nature of Ahsoka's decision is referred to again in the form of Maul's taunt, reminding her she wanted "chaos". Along with a mention of the fact that Ahsoka is no longer a Jedi, so why should Order 66 even apply to her, a lot of the episode felt strangely like replies to fan criticism. Obviously the whole episode couldn't have been written and produced in one week so it seems to me someone screened the previous episode and then handed Filoni a bunch of notes long before the final season aired. The trouble is, he doesn't seem to have realised that acknowledging the problems isn't enough, especially with a mistake as big as Ahsoka setting Maul free.

There could have been a good scene of Ahsoka realising, in horror, what she'd done. Wondering to herself what she could have expected in sicing one of the galaxy's deadliest, most ruthless Force users on her friends. As it is, her motives are totally ambiguous and her strangely muted emotions make her come across as kind of dumb. We sympathise more with Rex, just as Anakin and Obi-wan seemed more sensible a couple episodes earlier when Ahsoka made that weird argument about how trying to prevent the Separatists from attacking Coruscant and kidnapping the Chancellor was just "playing politics". Again, the basic impression I have is that Dave Filoni has no idea how to write Ahsoka. Which is hardly surprising--before this final season of Clone Wars, he was a credited writer on only one episode, the finale of season two, which was co-written by Drew Z. Greenberg. Why is it, exactly, Dave Filoni has come to be seen as the great talent on Clone Wars and the potential saviour of the franchise?

My suspicion is that, before Disney bought Lucasfilm, Lucas promoted Filoni in order to downplay his own creative involvement. A heavily edited interview between George Lucas and Dave Filoni was released on YouTube last week and it makes clear what a hands-on approach Lucas took to the series.

A key point is when Filoni recollects advice Lucas apparently gave him multiple times:

FILONI: . . . you [Lucas] would watch stuff we did all the time and go, "What are you trying to say? What does that mean?" And I would explain it you and you would say, "That's great. Everything you said, do it there [pointing at the screen] because you're not going to be in people's homes to explain it to them."

Lucas constantly pushed Filoni to do better. Maybe without Lucas around, he doesn't see any reason to go that distance.

Filoni directly mocks Lucas' desire for a story arc about banking regulations, possibly referring to the season three episodes "Heroes on Both Sides" and "Pursuit of Peace". Filoni suggests this is something children can't relate to. I would argue that great children's fiction is often filled with things children have absolutely no frame of reference for. Think about the bank scene in Mary Poppins or the stuff about college and mortgages and taxes in the original Ghostbusters. If kids don't understand it, there's still stuff going on that they can understand--and then, the great part is, as they get older and find themselves confronting these problems, they can think back and maybe the stories they loved as a kid gave them a model they can still look to as adults. And by the way, those are two great episodes--with some terrific action sequences.

Whatever problems the final season may have, it is visually splendid and it will always have years of incredible television behind it.

Not Your Clone Anymore

If nothing else, last night's new Clone Wars sure put me in the mood to watch Revenge of the Sith. Dave Filoni's wrap-up to the series continues to concentrate mainly on establishing where certain characters were at the time of the film's events. A deliberately slow sequence of opening scenes strikes a tone of dread even if the writing continues to be sub-par, leading to characters making really weird decisions for plot convenience.

After capturing Maul (Sam Witwer), Ahsoka (Ashley Eckstein) takes a transmission from the Jedi Council. Except we see the council's transmission before she or anyone enters the room and it ends up being a scene from Revenge of the Sith of the Jedi big-wigs discussing the Chancellor.

The kind of conference where you'd think the participants would want to avoid needless security risks like, say, broadcasting the meeting to an empty room across the galaxy. The scene does nicely require Aayla Secura to wear her clothes from Revenge of the Sith, a rare instance of a woman dressing sexy in a recent Disney production. Enjoy the cleavage and midriff while they last.

Ahsoka makes her report, again having little to contribute to the established story. Rex (Dee Bradley Baker) remarks Ahsoka didn't tell the council about Maul's warning regarding Anakin, in the process revealing that Ahsoka had told Rex about it. Not surprising considering how close the two are, confirmed in a scene where the two discuss the war and the existence of the clones. Ahsoka remarks on how she'd been taught Jedi were peacekeepers but she'd been essentially a soldier all her life. The animators do a good job but there's still a strange numbness about Ahsoka, as though the people working on the show are afraid of having her show as much emotion as she used to. It seems like they're trying to make her seem older despite the fact that she's only sixteen. At least her face hasn't elongated to the weird shape it has in Rebels yet.

Still, when the clones turn on her, she takes it stride really easily, her face already going to battle-scowl. Ki-Adi-Mundi looked shocked when it happened to him in the movie, most of the Jedi were caught completely off guard. But somehow Ahsoka was ready?

Having one precious clue from Rex, she decides to free Maul so he can create a distraction by murdering a bunch of her friends even though she has no idea at this point how permanent Order 66 is. Maybe she's just psycho? Anyway, just as he did in the Rebels finale, Filoni apes the Darth Vader corridor sequence from Rogue One, this time for Maul calmly slaughtering Clone Troopers with a metal door. At least we've got some real violence this time instead of Ezra and his Mononoke wolves.

Ahsoka then enlists the aid of a bunch of astromech droids, which is really cute. All of the astromechs are adorable and it's one of those moments that really feel like Ahsoka is a bona-fide Disney princess now, gathering the forest animals about her to aid her cause.

I always liked the idea that Order 66 triggers some kind of chemical response, reverting the clones personalities to something that was there all along. I guess the idea that it's a chip accomplishes the same thing. It's one of the things I loved about Clone Wars and the propaganda-style intro narrations. These good, clean-cut men fighting for clear justice are really founded on no real principles or philosophy, and therefore their zeal can be turned as easily on any target, even their friends. If the Empire is like Nazi Germany, the Clone era Republic is like the Soviet Union, though, thankfully for those of us who dislike allegory, neither comparison perfectly fits.

Twitter Sonnet #1350

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An extra song began with quicker beats.

Fencing with Flashlights

Rarely has so very little been animated so very well. We already knew the outcome of the conflict on Friday's new Clone Wars. Rebels has already established who lives and dies. That doesn't mean the story can't be interesting--Better Call Saul and, indeed, the Star Wars prequels and earlier episodes of Clone Wars have shown just how great prequels can be. Unfortunately, Dave Filoni sticks mainly to connecting dots in an episode with a distinctly fan-fiction-ish vibe.

The episode begins without narration for once and the opening music sounds very little like Star Wars and quite a lot like the work of the recently deceased Krzysztof Penderecki, best known for his music's inclusion in the scores to The Shining, Twin Peaks, and other films. This gives the episode an eerie tone right off the bat and adds to the ominous quality of Maul (Sam Witwer) hinting at the impending Order 66. Something, again, which would be more effective if Rebels hadn't established Ahsoka's clones as having resisted the order. I hope at least some of the clones she relied on turn.

The question to ask is, what does this story add to what's already in Revenge of the Sith? Obi-Wan (James Arnold Taylor) tells Ahsoka (Ashley Eckstein) about Anakin being asked to spy on the Chancellor and she's angry on Anakin's behalf. She's still loyal to him, which is certainly tragic, but we know she won't have a real confrontation with him until the very unsatisfying episode of Rebels where she meets Darth Vader. She and Maul make an interesting pairing because they're both disillusioned apprentices who have turned their backs on their respective orders. Maul reaching out a hand to Ahsoka seems as though it was meant to evoke Kylo Ren and Rey in Last Jedi--it would have been interesting to see Ahsoka work with Maul for a while. Certainly a lot more interesting than seeing them engage in a fight that goes nowhere and proves nothing. But it sure was well animated.

Even better than Ahsoka and Maul teaming up would be Vader and Ahsoka teaming up. In fact, that would be a great premise for the live action series. Why should Ahsoka be so sure the Empire is the wrong way to go? She doesn't like the Jedi Order. Vader slaughtered the Jedi Order and that's much farther than Ahsoka would go. But what if Vader and Ahsoka were stranded on a planet together or had to work together for some other reason? Maybe Ahsoka would start thinking the Empire makes life more safe and secure for people than the constant volatility of the Clone Wars. She can't redeem Vader, that's Luke's job. She and Vader need another kind of conflict to chew on.

But spare us Maul's undergrad thesis on how "justice is a construct." Oof. Star Wars dialogue is infamously bad but that's pathetic.

Clones Unforgotten

There was certainly tragedy afoot in last night's new Clone Wars. I wish I could say it was all in the story but, sadly, it was primarily in the writing. Deliberately adopting a slow and grand pace and tone, it may at least be a fitting part 1 of a story to cap the series as a whole but for those looking for a satisfying episode for Ahsoka Tano it was more than disappointing.

I don't believe men can't write women. I don't believe people shouldn't try to write characters who come from different backgrounds and experiences. But Dave Filoni sure can't write women. "Old Friends Not Forgotten", despite featuring Ahsoka at the centre, is all about how the men react to her. First Anakin being adorably flustered at seeing her again then the clones lining up to salute her.

Ahsoka's role in the episode is to graciously acknowledge and observe everything, to gently remind Anakin that there's no time to catch up. The one time she expresses an individual opinion it makes no sense, as though Filoni felt sure there needed to be some kind of conflict but had no idea how to do it. When Anakin and Obi-Wan learn General Grievous has captured Chancellor Palpatine and is attacking Coruscant, leading up to the opening moments of Revenge of the Sith, Ahsoka accuses her comrades of "playing politics" by going off to Coruscant instead of going with her to join Mandalore's resistance against Maul.

This is after she's just indirectly referenced the Martez sisters when talking about how she's learned what the Jedi were meant to be for people. The Martez sisters are on Coruscant, the place being attacked by General Grievous. Her argument doesn't begin to make sense. When Obi-Wan seems surprised at her reaction, it's easy to see why. The room is filled with reasonable, charming men and a beautiful woman whose motives are idiotic or unknowable. Thanks, Filoni.

The tragedy is that Disney has bought the line that Filoni is the one who made Clone Wars great. This is despite the fact that Filoni directed the original Clone Wars movie, the one everyone says sucks but you just need to get past it to get to the good episodes. With Rebels and Resistance he's demonstrated again and again he wasn't the real talent on Clone Wars. I only hope Disney realises this before the live action Ahsoka series goes into production, assuming they've also learned that The Mandalorian needed to be less of a toddler show. It's a good sign Henry Gilroy is at least working on the Cassian Andor series. The Ahsoka series needs to be in the hands of Gilroy or Drew Z. Greenberg or Katie Lucas.

But last night's Clone Wars certainly had its good points. The opening scene with Anakin faking out the droids was funny and the action sequences were good, courtesy of director Saul Ruiz.

Clone Wars is available on Disney+. And for gods' sakes, get a subscription before Disney goes under.

Resolution Sisters

I sure hope we haven't seen the last of Rafa on Clone Wars but last night concluded the entertaining arc about Ahsoka's adventures with the Martez sisters. The four episodes, following Ahsoka just after she left the Jedi Order, were clearly designed to show the young Tagruta confronting how the Jedi are regarded in the lower depths of Coruscant. On this score, the episodes didn't really succeed since we find out the Martez sisters' grievances all stem from a run in with a renegade Jedi Ahsoka knew was bad anyway. The three of them present a nice puzzle after Trace Martez dumps the illegal spice shipment that Rafa wanted to profit from, setting up a conflict about morality versus pragmatism. This followed from a conclusion in the first episode where Rafa goes ahead and sells a dangerous weapon because she and her sister need the money to live. But by the end of the four episode arc, the best things about the story turn out to be the engaging chase sequences and Rafa's animation and voice work.

Dave Filoni is credited as co-writer of the four episodes and he has spoken in interviews about how he feels protective of Ahsoka creatively. For all that, Ahsoka doesn't have much to challenge her emotionally in this arc and it's worth remembering that the episodes that truly formed the character everyone knows and loves were not written by Filoni. They were episodes like "Cloak of Darkness" by Paul Dini or "Lightsaber Lost" by Drew Z Greenberg, or "Jedi Crash" written by Katie Lucas, George's daughter. George Lucas spoke in interviews about how he was influenced by his relationship with his daughters in creating Ahsoka:

"I wanted to develop a character who would help Anakin settle down . . . I wanted to force Anakin into that role of responsibility, into that juxtaposition. I have a couple of daughters so I have experience with that situation. I said instead of a guy let’s make her a girl. Teenage girls are just as hard to deal with as teenage boys are."

But Ahsoka is a long way from the girl testing the waters of responsibility in the first few seasons. She now has a stoicism almost like Luke in Return of the Jedi, a fully matured warrior, which is naturally what makes the Martez sisters more interesting, especially Rafa.

I loved Rafa's fight with the foreman of the spice refiners. You can always sense her pride's at stake as much as her physical well being when she's dodging and, a couple times, taking punches. There's always a sense of stakes in these fight scenes that was sorely lacking from Rebels.

Now it looks like Ahsoka's going to be adventuring with Katee Sackoff's Mandalorian character. I find myself wishing the narrative had stayed with the Martez girls, which probably would have been a good lead in for the Coruscant underworld live action series.

Twitter Sonnet #1343

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Sometimes It's Better to Run than Talk

Despite some extraordinarily clunky and tedious dialogue, Friday's new Clone Wars was great to watch. Directors Saul Ruiz and Bosco Ng created a series of suspenseful running and gunning sequences that captured a distinctly Star Wars spirit.

Now locked in a cell by the Pike crime syndicate, Ahsoka (Ashley Eckstein), Rafa (Elizabeth Rodriguez), and Trace (Brigitte Kali Canales) fall to talking about the Jedi. The intriguing resentment the two Martez sisters harbour for the Jedi is deflated by a backstory involving the death of their mother due to some collatoral damage caused by Barriss Offee, a Jedi revealed to be a criminal at the end of season five. Rafa conveys this with spectacular awkwardness:

"I'll never forget her. She was beautiful. Dark robes contrasting against her light green skin. Penetrating eyes." Sounds like Rafa might be working on a Harlequin romance novel about the experience. The script might have been better off just having Rafa say, "The Jedi said her name was Barriss Offee."

In addition to bad dialogue, it makes the grievance the Martez sisters have with the Jedi not genuinely be about the Jedi as an institution but about one bad apple, kind of a disappointing simplification of the issue.

Even so, I continue to love Rafa. Her character animation and the voice acting from Rodriguez are a cut above average for Clone Wars. Once the girls escape from their cell, the episode thankfully becomes light on dialogue and heavy on narrow escapes as Ahsoka has to rely on her Force powers more and more and has increasing trouble concealing them. I love the moment at the end where the Martez sisters think she's fallen down a pit, not seeing that she in fact jumped over them. "I'm more athletic than I look," she explains lamely. That's one line that did get a laugh out of me.

I also like that the show isn't shying away from torture sequences. Hopefully this departure from the preschool skewing of Rebels and Resistance isn't just a remnant of the George Lucas era and will be a part of Star Wars media going forward.

Clone Wars is available on Disney+.

From the Depths of Coruscant to the Clouds of Kessel

I missed Ahsoka Tano's return on Clone Wars while travelling to Japan so I had two episodes to catch up on. "Gone with a Trace" and "Deal No Deal" find the famous padawan on her own after leaving the Jedi order, teaming up with two sisters from 1313, one of the low levels on Coruscant, in more ways than one. These two episodes have been delightful and I've enjoyed the dynamic of the three characters.

Obviously, this was meant to tie in to the projects George Lucas had planned just before he sold Star Wars to Disney--a video game and a live action series, both of which involved Coruscant's underworld. We get a sense of the place in "Gone with a Trace" in which Ahsoka (Ashley Eckstein) falls in with a mechanic named Trace (Brigette Kali Canales). Trace is a bit of a hot head while her sister, Rafa (Elizabeth Rodriguez), is more of a laid back scoundrel.

I love Rafa. Whoever's in charge of animating her is doing a great job and Rodriguez's slightly raspy voice pairs perfectly with the look and gestures. I love that the first episode ends with Rafa selling the dangerous droids Ahsoka warned her against selling--as Rafa points out, she and Trace need that money to survive. The second episode digs further into the moral argument triangle between the three girls when they end up running spice in Trace's new ship.

Rafa, Ahsoka, and Trace are like Ego, Superego, and Id, respectively. Rafa wants to trade the spice to make money and honour her agreement with gangsters, Ahsoka wants to find some way of using it as medicine, and Trace just doesn't want anyone touching her ship so she dumps the spice without considering the consequences. Despite the irritating presence of Lothcats indicating a greater creative role for Dave Filoni, these two episodes are a lot better than Rebels and I find myself genuinely caught up in the dialogue. Also, it's bloody gorgeous.

In somewhat related news, Ahsoka's voice actress, Ashley Eckstein, has responded to the casting of Rosario Dawson as the live action Ahsoka:

“It has been my dream for 14 years to continue to play Ahsoka Tano in all forms. I will continue to be grateful for opportunities to help create stories for Ahsoka Tano and I am always happy to see her legacy continue. I am only one member of a tremendously talented team of people that it takes to bring Ahsoka Tano to life. The final decisions for Ahsoka are not mine to make and I cannot comment on something that I truly know nothing about.”

Clearly, she's not happy about it. I guess I feel bad for her, but, while I think she does a good job as Ahsoka's voice, Rosario Dawson is a much better actress and she looks a lot more like Ahsoka than Eckstein does. Sometimes artists and casting directors have to make tough decisions and I think this was the right one.

The Clone Droid

Last night's new Clone Wars ended the Bad Batch arc satisfyingly enough with Echo making himself useful and Anakin starting to look a bit more like Vader.

The two stories are an interesting juxtaposition with Echo (Dee Bradley Baker) using his partly mechanised body to assist our heroes while Anakin's (Matt Lanter) decent into the Dark Side will be symbolised partly by the exchange of flesh for machine, becoming "more machine now than man".

Interestingly, last night's episode, "Unfinished Business", featured a moment where Mace (Terrence C. Carson) randomly decides to offer a legion of battle droids the opportunity to surrender. A reply from one of them of the familiar line, "Blast them!" suggests the machines have no such capacity for free will. However frequently we see the battle droids comically bemoan their obvious fates, they're apparently hard wired to take the punishment. It's no wonder Echo has to struggle to prove himself.

Anakin, showing more anger in the kind of ruthless interrogation tactics we've already been seeing him employ, interestingly chooses to cut off the spider alien admiral's mechanical arms--this character, Trench (Dee Bradley Baker), had appeared in a previous episode where he evidently lost half his body in a battle with Anakin. Considering what happens to the clone troopers, as far as free will goes, the series more and more seems to be blurring the lines between the two factions.

Clone Wars is available on Disney+.

From Galactic Senates to Tripod Droids

The continuing story of the Bad Batch clone troopers on Friday's new Clone Wars also traded director Steward Lee for Bosco Ng for noticeably better results in the action sequences. This was primarily an episode of running and gunning and sometimes flying. It worked pretty well, thanks to a real sense of the characters' mortality and some fantastic droid designs.

I loved these War of the Worlds-ish tripods, blasting away at the native aliens. Unlike Rebels and Resistance, Clone Wars doesn't shy away so much from visible casualties. The layers of story inherent in every episode and sequence are great, too. I love how Anakin (Matt Lanter) and the clones (Dee Bradley Baker) win over the natives by telling them how it's the Separatists, not the Republic, who are trying to colonise them when, of course, the Republic, renamed the Empire, will be getting up to exactly that kind of thing and is likely already doing so.

I've also been going back and watching older episodes. On Friday I watched the season two episode "Senate Murders" in which Padme (Catherine Taber) finds herself investigating the murder of one of her colleagues. Written by Drew Z. Greenberg, the plot has to do with a bill introduced to the senate that will reduce the production of clone troopers. Supporters of the bill include Padme as well as Mon Mothma and Bail Organa. What I love about this is that this coalition's belief that reduction of troops will result in increased diplomatic efforts is based on shaky, idealistic rationale and, if they're successful, it works against the main protagonists of the show--Anakin, Obi-Wan, and the clones, who are all off-screen for the episode.

There's genuine ambiguity about who's right, particularly as some members of Padme's faction turn out to be dangerous zealots. Padme has to deal with the investigation and arguments about the bill and every moment demands strict attention from the viewer because we're compelled to figure it all out, too. Disney obviously wanted to make Rebels and The Mandalorian more kid friendly but I'd say episodes like "Senate Murders" are much better suited for equipping children to deal with the real world.

Clone Wars is available on Disney+.

The Clone Echo

The second episode of the new Clone Wars season aired last night and was a puzzlingly severe drop in quality. "Distant Echo" feels unfinished, featuring a suspiciously similar opening shot to the previous episode and weakly choreographed action scenes. The subtextual conflict, though, between independent thought and mindless following remains interesting.

Poor Anakin (Matt Lanter) never learned how to spot early pregnancy.

A clandestine transmission between Anakin and Padme (Catherine Taber) gives the episode a strong feeling of connexion to Revenge of the Sith, something that has generally not been present in previous seasons. It makes sense given how much closer the show is drawing to the final prequel film. The very brief dialogue between Obi-Wan (James Arnold Taylor) is amusing as it suggests again how well aware Obi-Wan is of Anakin's secret romance.

My favourite scene in the episode, though, was the argument on a hilltop between the Bad Batch (Dee Bradley Baker) and Rex (Dee Bradley Baker). There was no clear good or bad side in the argument even though Rex's anger is overplayed to make him seem like he's making a mistake. The Bad Batch clearly look down on the "regs", the regular troopers, an interesting turn after how much the clone stories on the show have emphasised the value of teamwork. We know just how right the Bad Batch will prove to be in the events of Revenge of the Sith, something I suppose they won't live to see.

The attack on the droid base was so badly directed it was confusing. One scene had Anakin standing in a thin corridor while two droids gently took turns firing at him from each side. The episode's credited director is Steward Lee but Dave Filoni is supervising director. I'm wondering if the sloppiness of this episode is the first real sign of George Lucas' absence as executive producer.

The episode's conclusion, when Rex finds the mangled Echo with his mind being plundered by machines, was pretty effective, though. The always slightly offputting effect of clones interacting is always even better when a healthy one is talking to a sick or dying one. These guys must think about death a lot.

Rex thought he'd left Echo behind to die, it turns out Echo's fate was even worse than death.

Clone Wars is available on Disney+.

The Gift of Fresh Clones

Last night, after six years, Clone Wars returned. Breathe the free air again, my friends. It's so little but so much. Sure, the episode is less than thirty minutes and sure, many of us have basically seen it already as it was one of the unfinished episode released in a rough form years ago. But now it's finished and it's the herald of a full, finished, albeit short, season. Sorry to invoke Lord of the Rings in a Star Wars context but it does feel a little like Theoden, throwing off the influence of Wormtongue, letting the weight of premature, imposed decrepitude fall away.

No heavy handed morals. No annoying insistence that every character fit neatly and always obviously into slots of good and evil. It's just pure, sweet, story.

One of the things I always loved about the cgi Clone Wars series is that it presented the tragedy of Anakin and the Republic along with a subtle, melancholy satire of propaganda. Those openings with the strident announcer and the trite title card messages are so like 1940s war reels. And the more the characters of the clone troops are developed, the more we see stories of them presented as hard struggling heroes, the more horrific is the idea that, one day, their loyalties are going to turn with a flick of a switch. Their significance as representatives of the viewer's feelings onscreen are going to be turned instantly and so easily. It's perfect because that's the nature of propaganda. It gradually forces everyone into simpler, infantile perspectives of good guys and bad guys, to the point where even contemplating the perspective of the other side feels frightening. So when the Emperor or Stalin says we're all going to change directions, no matter how completely or abruptly or senselessly, people do it, automatically--not just because they fear prison or death but because they've been conditioned not to think deeper than on the simplest, loudest rhetorical level.

That's why I was so disappointed when, on Rebels, it was shown that Rex and his team had somehow resisted Order 66. After that, their characters were of no interest to me. It's like if Othello ended with everyone surviving and Othello going off looking for buried treasure with a wisecracking sidekick.

Anyway, last night's new episode, "The Bad Batch", features two of the more prominent Clone Troopers, Rex (Dee Bradley Baker) and Cody (Dee Bradley Baker), teaming up with a squad of troopers who call themselves the "Bad Batch", a group of aberrant clones who've been deployed because of their "favourable" mutations. The implication that there are some mutant clones who can't cut it, along with an oblique sex joke from one member of the Bad Batch (about some hostile animals who'd tried to mate with the squad), signal we are blessedly outside of Disney moral territory. The Bad Batch includes a big fellow who lives for the thrill of killing droids, a sinister sniper, and a leader who seems to have been modelled on Rambo.

They're on a mission to go behind enemy lines and the old battle droids are back. It's true, the Phantom Menace era droids are silly though I've always liked how they never come off as sadistic. Even in Revenge of the Sith, they seem more like bored office workers chatting around the water cooler until it's their turn to be decapitated by rampaging Jedi.

Like many Clone Wars episodes, the resolution, where Rex finds a clue that one of his comrades, previously presumed dead, may still be alive and working for the enemy, feels strangely small given the scope established in the story. But this is perfect, it's one of the things that gives Clone Wars a genuine feel of a classic serial. This is only one piece of a larger puzzle.

Clone Wars is available on Disney+.

Stray Togruta

Seven Samurai and The Hidden Fortress aren't the only Kurosawa films that have been translated to Star Wars. I recently watched "Lightsaber Lost" again, a second season Clone Wars episode written by Drew Z. Greenberg based on a film noir directed by Kurosawa in 1949 called Stray Dog. I was also afforded an opportunity to marvel at and ponder over why Clone Wars succeeded so well where Rebels did not (Resistance isn't even worth mentioning).

Unlike Hidden Fortress and Seven Samurai, Stray Dog has a contemporary setting--that's one of the quite remarkable things about it because it features extensive location footage of Tokyo's massive black market amid ruins in the aftermath of World War II. Against this backdrop we have the story of a young cop, Murakami (Toshiro Mifune), whose pistol is stolen by a pick-pocket. His frantic search for the item shows his sense of duty and honour in how urgently he desires to get it back. His youth and inexperience compels him to play rough with suspects or plead with them pathetically. An older cop, Sato (Takashi Shimura), takes him under his wing to show him the value in being friendly with potential informants and in taking a slower and subtler approach.

In "Lightsaber Lost", Ahsoka (Ashley Eckstein) loses her lightsaber to a pickpocket. She partners up with an elder Jedi who shows her the value in slow and careful detective work even when Ahsoka's anxiety compels her to rush pell-mell after her target. The episode features some wonderful chase sequences on Coruscant, including a bit where Ahsoka gets stuck on a massive video screen showing a pontificating Palpatine.

Greenberg, like many of the writers of Clone Wars' best episodes, hasn't written for Star Wars since Disney purchased the franchise. But, while it may be my imagination, I maintain there's a fundamentally different feeling to the stories for more reasons than that. One way I might put it is that Clone Wars has a greater sense of freedom, the feeling that at any moment the story could go in almost any direction. There were clear boundaries on Rebels and so far on The Mandalorian. I don't think Disney would allow a young protagonist make a mistake that she feels so much anxiety about--or be as willing and eager to torture suspects like Ahsoka, Anakin's padawan. The movies are a different matter--one of the reasons Rogue One is the best of Disney Star Wars so far is for how morally grey its protagonists were allowed to be, particularly Cassian Andor. Which raises an interesting question about the upcoming series centred on Cassian. A neutered Cassian Andor would be a particular egregious case of missing the point. The Mandalorian could stand some shadows, too.

The tragedy is that, if Disney institutes this policy under the theory that it's better for children, they're very wrong. I can see kids getting a very valuable lesson in personal responsibility by empathising with Ahsoka in "Lost Lightsaber" along with some potential respect for their elders.