Summary:
YES! This series really can deliver 23 min of short good fun. Animation is expectedly similar to the movies
Pros:
Yoda - the green guy can still kick arse, but the OT Yoda is back (for good or bad). At least for continuity’s sake, Yoda still has his giggle in the PT. Perhaps even a touch of his PT arrogance is there, but its not so blatantly annoying as it was in Episode III. Even the Yoda fight scenes were fun. Ventress PWNED.
Thire - Wow. I was not expecting this. Its great that they’re paying attention to clone-Jedi relationships and building on them. The Shocktroopers got some nice battle on.
Environment. Kudos for coming up with a creative and original world.
Seperatist Ambush - Such an attack is actually a nice tactic for an entity such as the Seperatists. Even better is the idea of a challenge, which efficiently showed that while the Republic is outnumbered, they are not outskilled.
Cons:
Clones get promoted? Lieutenant Thire becomes a Commander? I guess it makes sense if the old commanders get killed, but still...its sketchy. Even worse...DROIDS? What is a promotion? Installing new command software? Seriously, you’re either programmed to be a soldier or you’re not. I doubt all battle droids have dormant command programming.
Toydarians - This is a minor one, but they didn’t exactly look like Watto. Their faces seemed awkward.
What I want to see next:
Yoda was present, but he contributed very little to the story. I assume they’re just starting with known characters that have a fanbase. His relatiosnhip was Thire was nice, as it was Thire who was later tasked with hunting Yoda down. More clones though. We need more clones.
Summary:
NO! Omg this series is going to be disastrous!
Pros:
Plo Kool - Awesome voice. Solid Character. Avoided racist “Master Koon.” Its also nice to see that he has some importance in the saga discovering Ahsoka.
Space Sequence - Plo had some nice moves with the clones. There was some great art direction here. Seing the clones dead in space was a nice touch too.
SFX: The ion ray was pretty sweet. Great animation.
Cons:
Continuity - This episode was a major breech of every level of Star wars canon. I’ll let them have Plo in Space...but clones? They show clones being vacced out and dying, yet, they can hang out outside for a few minutes when they’re hunting droids? That makes no sense. Also, hod did they get out of the pod without freezedrying the naval officer inside? This was just a horrible way to achieve a cool scene. Plor could have hurled space debris at the droids all day and won. Come on guys, you cant even be continuous with your own saga.
Clone love: Do any Jedi not LOVE the clones? If they are so loved, why are they so abused? The series is trying to really hit this one ever the head.
Ion what?: Regardless of its secrecy, why does the ion cannon not look like the one when know and love from ESB? Shouldn’t a different weapon that fires differently have a different name? I don’t confuse “pistol” with “machine gun.” How about Ion Pulse Array...
Help me Ashoka Tano...You’re my only hope: Why can Ahsoka hear Plo and not her very force attuned master?
What I want to see next:
This is a three part series? God help us. Why cant we have three GOOD episodes in a row.
You mean, it gets worse over time? The Rebles woudl have taken out the whole fleet over Hoth with the Malevolence weapon. There were also ion cannons in KOTOR, that were...ya know...ion cannons lol.
Registered: Sep 2000
Location: Chelmsford, Essex, UK
Co-Admin
Well, finally seen these things. I feel some of your complaints are exceptionally picky, Ordo. Talking of 'freezedrying the officer inside' a. implies that Star Wars should have anything to do with real science and b. isn't actually scientific in of itself, as he wouldn't freeze unless exposed for quite a while. What you would actually want to compllain about is the problems of rapid depressurisation making him ill... but at this point I have lost all interest in the criticism.
Meanwhile, the important thing about the term 'ion cannon' is its effect (it disables ships), NOT the special effects used by the animators. It was a one-off experimental weapon which presumably is very difficultt to build again; not something the Rebels could have got hold of. Frankly, big-scale experimental suoer weapons are exactly the sort of thing I want to see from a Trade Federation/Techno Union coalition. It is not any osrt of continuity breach at all.
I found both episodes rather fun.
__________________
"We've got maybe seconds before Darth Rosenberg grinds everybody into Jawa burgers and not one of you buds has the midi-chlorians to stop her!"
"You've never had any TINY bit of sex, have you?"
BtVS
Last edited by Ushgarak on Dec 12th, 2008 at 01:18 PM
Well, I care a lot about this series, I'm going to be picky. Just because I criticize something doesn't mean I think the episode was horrible...its just more something I felt detracted.
My problem with the freezedrying was inter-series canon. We see clones being killed as they are vac'ed into space, but you can magically open a pod door and live? There is an inconsistancy there. If they had shown that the door was shileded or whatever, it would be fine.
They didn't.
As to the canon, it is called an ION canon, a noun, not an ionizing canon, an adjective that would describe a type of effect. They're both called "ion canons"...the difference was never explained. I agree with you that the Rebels wouldn't have been able to duplicate the separatist version, but since the mechanics, appearance, firing mechanism, and everything else is so different, I think there needs to be another adjective in there.
Registered: Sep 2000
Location: Chelmsford, Essex, UK
Co-Admin
Regardless of continuity, your freezedrying comment still had nothing to do with either a. Star Wars science or b. REAL science. Nor do I see it as a continuity issue in any way; I am sure the suits can be sealed if given prep time.
Your other paragraph is simple nonsense. Like I say, it's the final effect the name is needed for, not the special effects the design team use. If it was given a different name but still had the same final effect, THAT would be the stupid thing. As it is, Ion Cannon is 100% exactly the right name for it. So it uses a different effect- so what? Weapons sometimes have different effects in Star Wars. The rebel one was narrow, this one was broad. The mistake would have been to use a different name.
Incidentally, used as a noun or an adjective, it make absolutely no difference; the term 'ion' tells us more about the cannon and is therefore acting as an adjective, and the established effect is that ion guns disable things, NOT that ion guns look like a certain thing.
Quite why you bring up adjectives is beyond me- we use nouns as adjectives all the time, and that's the way we talk about weapons (and many, many other things) in English. We say 'tranquiliser gun' not 'tranquilising gun', and we don't expect all tranquiliser guns to look and act the same, only to have the same final effect- to knock someone out.
Such things are not excused by a love for the series. Dwelling on them decreases the value of your reviews.
__________________
"We've got maybe seconds before Darth Rosenberg grinds everybody into Jawa burgers and not one of you buds has the midi-chlorians to stop her!"
"You've never had any TINY bit of sex, have you?"
BtVS
Last edited by Ushgarak on Dec 12th, 2008 at 04:17 PM
There were apparently sealable suits in ANH, but other than that, it has been canon in every other medium that I have experienced that clone suits are not sealable. This goes even for the ARC 170 pilots in ROTS. So, you can make endless excuses and bend over backwards trying to find a way to bend the ends of consistency together, but the simple fact remains that if this episode had been written better, none of us would have to.
Regardless of whether series canon matches actual canon, which is an issue to itself, when it doesn't match its own canon, I feel its proper to point out the inconsistency. I don't even know why this has become an issue on suits. The clone I'm referring too was a Naval Officer inside the pod. No helmet, no armor.
As to the cannon canon, the effect does matter. If I have a tranquilizer gun, and another tranquilizer gun, both shoot some kind of dart with a toxin. If a "tranquilzer gun" released the same toxin in a gaseous spray, calling it a tranquilizer gun would just be asinine. Guns are classified and name by how and what they fire. The bullet from a pistol and a machine gun have the SAME effect, but they are very different guns with very different names for that reason. Hence the difference between ion and ionizing, tranqulizer and tranquilizing. I think this distinction should have been appreciated in this episode.A differnet name would make the seperatist weapon singular and more meanacing, a new class of ion canon. It also would make more sence.
As to my reviews, I'm not dwelling on anything (except for why Rex is not Alpha or vice versa). I write these reviews because its fun for me to write down my thoughts and express them. I thought since I was taking the time to do this, I'd share my opinions with others who also watch the series. If you find my reviews personally unvaluable, I don't care. You have long chastized and seemingly disliked me, and personally, I don't really enjoy your presence or find your thoughts that insightful. As long as my reviews are not breaking any sort of rules that warrants your administrative criticism, their value is to me and me alone. If others find them enjoyable, I think that's great. If not, I'm not going to belabor it.
Registered: Nov 2004
Location: With Cinderella and the 9 Dwarves
Do we know whether the Pilots in ROTS actually did not have sealed suits? I mean there's quite a few other explanations why being catapulted out of an exploding spaceship during a huge space battle might be lethal, regardless of whether you had a sealed suit to begin with.
Yes we do. It would be impossible to discern as you pointed out, but the suits had partially open faceplates.
Which conveniently supports neither my nor Ush's point.
But, it does beg the question, if pilots did not have sealable suits, why would any type of trooper? That answer leans my way.
There have never been clones in space in any other medium without some kind of additional protection. There is the moment in the Gendy series where Tinn jumps ships with a croup of clones. I'd need to actually look at the episode again to note any differences, but i do remebnr the helmets were different, containing breathing apparati and I recall some kind of backpack too.
Regardless, this would be one instance in all of SW, and regardless I'm more concerned about the breach of inter-series canon than extra-series, though all should be taken into consideration.
Oct 9th, 2008 01:10 AM
