Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Clone Wars -- "Cloak of Darkness" (Ep. 1.9)

-- Ignore your instincts at your peril.

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I'm going to lead on this one with the fact that James Marsters does a voice for this episode. That should have caught the eye of some of you pop culture/Joss Whedon people out there. If you don't know what I'm talking about, just move along. Move along.

Betrayal is one of the themes Star Wars returns to over and over again. Even from A New Hope, we have, "He betrayed and murdered your father," not to mention the betrayal by the clones against the Jedi in Revenge of the Sith and Vader's betrayal against the Emperor at the end of Return of the Jedi. We encounter betrayal frequently, too, during the Clone Wars, this not even being the first episode dealing with betrayal just nine episodes into the first season.

I don't know what to say about all the betrayal. It's just part of the fabric. Against the background of the Clone Wars, you can't trust anyone. Well, okay, you can trust R2-D2 and you can trust Obi-Wan and you can trust Yoda. You don't really want to go putting money down on anyone else, though. I think that's why we encounter it so frequently, though, so that we understand that you can't trust anyone. And it doesn't matter how innocuous the "person" seems.

Another thing the Clone Wars series does well is to let us get to know Jedi we've only previously had glimpses of. This episode is a closer look at Luminara Unduli. Again (as with Plo Koon in the Malevolence episodes), we get our look at the Jedi through the eyes of Ahsoka. Luminara is less good at listening to Ahsoka than I think Ahsoka is used to and gives Ahsoka some orders that Ahsoka doesn't really agree with. There's not an inconsiderable amount of angst while Ahsoka tries to figure out whether to follow them.

And there's a great good cop/bad cop bit when Luminara and Ahsoka are interrogating a prisoner. Luminara, being the good cop, is trying to logic the prisoner into talking when Ahsoka goes all, "I'm gonna gut you like a fish" on the guy. Luminara, though, thinks Ahsoka is being serious and goes all teach-y on Ahsoka about proper Jedi ways. It's an interesting exchange.

All of that and Ventress makes an appearance. Things always get interesting when she's around.

It's a good, solid episode that fits well into the story flow and can probably even be watched without having seen other episodes. Probably.

12 comments:

  1. I like both Luminara and Ventress. Great swordplay in this one, too.

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    1. TAS: Ahsoka is a great "window" character. I can't remember if she stays that, but it's a good use of her, here, in the first season.

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    2. There's a character in the next episode who provides an interesting contrast with Ahsoka. I seem to remember you hinting at that a few weeks back.

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    3. TAS: Yeah, he does. It's... unfortunate.

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  2. I always liked Jedi Master Luminara Undulee and her padawan Barriss Offee (did I spell those right)? Female Jedi are rare, and I was in love with those two ever since the early two minute shorts aired on Cartoon Network that had them assembling a lightsaber when an attack resulted in a cave-in and they had to use the force to save themselves until help could arrive.

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    1. Michael: Oh, so you don't know what happened with Barriss, I take it?

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  3. I'm still behind but I'm going to go watch the next one now. Here's my Anti-R2D2 thought of the day: Why would they make a droid that only beeps? They have all these droids that can talk, why can't R2?

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    1. Briane: I can't answer your R2 question. I'm sure there's someone out there who has an answer, but I don't. It is better, however, than just saying "gonk gonk."

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  4. I think I remember this one. Was there a lot of flipping in this episode? You know, backflips and front flips and all that. That's my memory of it.

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    1. Rusty: I don't remember flipping, but there may have been during the big duel. It's not a thing I pay attention to, I suppose.

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