Star Wars: The Clone Wars – 3x13 - 14
Apr. 5th, 2021 08:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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tori_reviewsStar Wars: The Clone Wars – 3x13: “Monster”
Where last episode was thought provoking enough that I probably still forgot things I meant to bring up, this episode is really bland. There's very little dialog and it's mostly fighting; aside from introducing Savage (they really shouldn't spell it that way) and then immediately changing his character, there's no meat on the scant bones of this episode either. There are a couple things worth giving some attention, but this one's pretty empty.
Some of the things I brought up last time still very much apply. Ventriss is putting a lot of faith in the Order that sold her off as a kid, and I wonder how much that's connected with her clear inability to understand dramatic irony. She'll teach Savage to harness the power of hate, while making herself the thing he hates most; yes, that's a wise move.
By the same token, the trials in this story make no sense. Maybe if they had done more work to establish that the choosing was considered a great honor in this society so the best and strongest wanted to be part of it; and even the lesser specimens still wanted it but were bad candidates. But everyone is ordered into the fight, some might be eager but I can't tell that any of them think this is a prize worth dying for. And it seems like a bad move for the tribe who probably need their best to do things within the culture, especially since it seemed at one point these were considered the tribe leaders being forced to fight. There were some times when I'd start thinking that maybe Ventriss wasn't using lethal force and just breaking them pretty bad, which would still be bad for the survival of the tribe, but at least they had a chance to recover and maybe even improve for the next person who comes for a choosing; but then she would plainly try and kill someone and even that theory would go out the window. Also, it really doesn't seem too logical to see how these guys fare up against Ventriss. Since she is almost by definition going to be better than them, she's going to end up rewarding the one who manages not to get killed the longest, and that promotes someone who makes themselves scarce instead of charging into a fight. Yes, you can tell a lot from how a person survives in the face of such a fight, but this is not the best choice. Also, wouldn't it make sense to test them on different things instead of strength, reflexes, and strength and reflexes?
And considering the end, they really didn't need to test these guys on intelligence or strategy since those aren't really factors in the mission; but I would have thought they should look at stealth since the winner would be going in as an assassin. And what's the sense in even going through all this since the witches were just going to magic him into the mark 2 version of himself? This plot is dumb and while it tries to be flashy enough to distract from that, since I find fights boring it makes it worse instead.
Then I got to thinking that the thing about Sith is that they are usually the heroes of their own story; not always (maybe not even often) in a noble sense, but they perceive that they are the center of whatever the story of their life is. Maybe that's why Ventriss seems really oddly dumb in her behavior. She's been reduced to a pawn in someone else's game so is trying to recast herself as someone out for righteous vengeance, but is doing it sloppily,
I've heard this trilogy praised by fans of the show, and I'm really not feeling it; if it ended here I'd say it was bordering on putting me off the show. It had better get better in the last part,
Star Wars: The Clone Wars – 3x14: “Witches of the Mist”
So was the point of this whole three-parter to set up Maul being back? Because it definitely wasn't worth it. This episode was a little better than last episode, in that we at least got some banter in the fights; and a little side-shifting fun; I suppose that was decent. But on the whole it still wasn't great.
Really the only thing that seemed worth having thoughts about has to do with Savage's training; and from there I kind of go in a couple different directions. The fact that one of those directions is not about this universe is sort of telling that even this was only doing a moderate job holding my attention.
What I found myself thinking about with the (I don't believe coincidentally) similarly named Mord-Sith of Legend of the Seeker. The use of torturous training techniques reminded me of how the Mord-Sith have to learn to carry weapons that cause severe pain to the wielder to be able to do harm to whoever it's used against. And one of the early parts of their training (as children) is learning is to be able to endure that. So that's basically what I assume the end result of the electro-shock training; one does not learn to defeat that attack, only to endure it and be able to use the rage it causes to your advantage.
But I also definitely assumed that the repeated knocks across the room would knock something loose in Savage and he'd remember that he hated Ventriss just as much as Dooku. I have to doubt that was even supposed to be a surprise twist, it's that easy to call.
The other thought is that this was definitely done at a different point in Star Wars writing history compared to where we are in 2021. Because here, anyone can have Force abilities and learn to use them, but one also has to *learn* to use them. Somewhere along the line the writing split and there were people who assumed the former entries in canon were saying you had to be someone special and so they needed to fix that back to being 'anyone can be special. But when they went to do that, they opted to do it by making the people who do have Force powers able to use them innately. Maybe Savage always had some talent in the Force that had gone unknown until Ventriss picked him up, he did have more senses and intuition than the others in the fights, or maybe it's a side effect of what the witches did to him, or maybe the Force remains something anyone can tap into if they try; but whether he was 'born with it' or not, he would need to be trained and molded.
Well, they've got the back third or so of the season before I seriously reevaluate my feelings on this show. It's a shame I feel this way right now, since right before this there were quite a few episodes this season that I really liked; but a lot of them were either stand-alone or very loose continuations, whereas this arc was just a big wad of nothing for me. And that's discouraging.
Where last episode was thought provoking enough that I probably still forgot things I meant to bring up, this episode is really bland. There's very little dialog and it's mostly fighting; aside from introducing Savage (they really shouldn't spell it that way) and then immediately changing his character, there's no meat on the scant bones of this episode either. There are a couple things worth giving some attention, but this one's pretty empty.
Some of the things I brought up last time still very much apply. Ventriss is putting a lot of faith in the Order that sold her off as a kid, and I wonder how much that's connected with her clear inability to understand dramatic irony. She'll teach Savage to harness the power of hate, while making herself the thing he hates most; yes, that's a wise move.
By the same token, the trials in this story make no sense. Maybe if they had done more work to establish that the choosing was considered a great honor in this society so the best and strongest wanted to be part of it; and even the lesser specimens still wanted it but were bad candidates. But everyone is ordered into the fight, some might be eager but I can't tell that any of them think this is a prize worth dying for. And it seems like a bad move for the tribe who probably need their best to do things within the culture, especially since it seemed at one point these were considered the tribe leaders being forced to fight. There were some times when I'd start thinking that maybe Ventriss wasn't using lethal force and just breaking them pretty bad, which would still be bad for the survival of the tribe, but at least they had a chance to recover and maybe even improve for the next person who comes for a choosing; but then she would plainly try and kill someone and even that theory would go out the window. Also, it really doesn't seem too logical to see how these guys fare up against Ventriss. Since she is almost by definition going to be better than them, she's going to end up rewarding the one who manages not to get killed the longest, and that promotes someone who makes themselves scarce instead of charging into a fight. Yes, you can tell a lot from how a person survives in the face of such a fight, but this is not the best choice. Also, wouldn't it make sense to test them on different things instead of strength, reflexes, and strength and reflexes?
And considering the end, they really didn't need to test these guys on intelligence or strategy since those aren't really factors in the mission; but I would have thought they should look at stealth since the winner would be going in as an assassin. And what's the sense in even going through all this since the witches were just going to magic him into the mark 2 version of himself? This plot is dumb and while it tries to be flashy enough to distract from that, since I find fights boring it makes it worse instead.
Then I got to thinking that the thing about Sith is that they are usually the heroes of their own story; not always (maybe not even often) in a noble sense, but they perceive that they are the center of whatever the story of their life is. Maybe that's why Ventriss seems really oddly dumb in her behavior. She's been reduced to a pawn in someone else's game so is trying to recast herself as someone out for righteous vengeance, but is doing it sloppily,
I've heard this trilogy praised by fans of the show, and I'm really not feeling it; if it ended here I'd say it was bordering on putting me off the show. It had better get better in the last part,
Star Wars: The Clone Wars – 3x14: “Witches of the Mist”
So was the point of this whole three-parter to set up Maul being back? Because it definitely wasn't worth it. This episode was a little better than last episode, in that we at least got some banter in the fights; and a little side-shifting fun; I suppose that was decent. But on the whole it still wasn't great.
Really the only thing that seemed worth having thoughts about has to do with Savage's training; and from there I kind of go in a couple different directions. The fact that one of those directions is not about this universe is sort of telling that even this was only doing a moderate job holding my attention.
What I found myself thinking about with the (I don't believe coincidentally) similarly named Mord-Sith of Legend of the Seeker. The use of torturous training techniques reminded me of how the Mord-Sith have to learn to carry weapons that cause severe pain to the wielder to be able to do harm to whoever it's used against. And one of the early parts of their training (as children) is learning is to be able to endure that. So that's basically what I assume the end result of the electro-shock training; one does not learn to defeat that attack, only to endure it and be able to use the rage it causes to your advantage.
But I also definitely assumed that the repeated knocks across the room would knock something loose in Savage and he'd remember that he hated Ventriss just as much as Dooku. I have to doubt that was even supposed to be a surprise twist, it's that easy to call.
The other thought is that this was definitely done at a different point in Star Wars writing history compared to where we are in 2021. Because here, anyone can have Force abilities and learn to use them, but one also has to *learn* to use them. Somewhere along the line the writing split and there were people who assumed the former entries in canon were saying you had to be someone special and so they needed to fix that back to being 'anyone can be special. But when they went to do that, they opted to do it by making the people who do have Force powers able to use them innately. Maybe Savage always had some talent in the Force that had gone unknown until Ventriss picked him up, he did have more senses and intuition than the others in the fights, or maybe it's a side effect of what the witches did to him, or maybe the Force remains something anyone can tap into if they try; but whether he was 'born with it' or not, he would need to be trained and molded.
Well, they've got the back third or so of the season before I seriously reevaluate my feelings on this show. It's a shame I feel this way right now, since right before this there were quite a few episodes this season that I really liked; but a lot of them were either stand-alone or very loose continuations, whereas this arc was just a big wad of nothing for me. And that's discouraging.
