Tuesday, September 26, 2017

Clone Wars -- "A Death on Utapau" (Ep. ?.1)

-- One crime has to be concealed by another.


A couple of notes before I get into the episode:

  • All of the voice acting for season six had already been completed when they found out that the license for Clone Wars had not been renewed on Cartoon Network, which means the stories and scripts were complete.
  • Only about half of the season, "The Lost Missions" episodes, had had the animation completed, and not even those episodes had all of the animation completed. But the guys in charge -- at Disney, I presume -- decided those 13 episodes were close enough for them to be completed for release on disc.
  • These episodes, the "Unknown" episodes, have been presented on the Star Wars website with the voice acting set to the storyboards. The animated storyboards which are actually kind of cool.
  • These unfinished episodes, despite not being finished, are still considered canon material.
"A Death on Utapau" finds Anakin and Obi-Wan on Utapau investigating a death, not surprising considering the title. heh But it's the death of a Jedi, Jedi Master Tu-Anh. Obi-Wan describes her as being unconventional, like Qui-Gon, and, as such, she frequently was off doing her own thing without the Council's knowledge. Such was the case on Utapau; no one even knew she was there until she was found dead... with no obvious signs as to the cause of that death.

This episode is a bit like a detective story, and they do a pretty good job with it for a 22-minute show. The banter between Obi-Wan and Anakin is at its best. I found myself chuckling more than once. If this arc plays out to be as good as this episode, it may be one of the most enjoyable arcs of the Clone Wars run, which is sad since it didn't get completed.

The added wrinkle is that it's Utapau where Obi-Wan has his confrontation with Grievous in Revenge of the Sith. The war has not reached Utapau in this episode, so it will be interesting to see if this arc is what brings Utapau into it. Much of season six felt like it was happening just before the events of Revenge, and this episode is no different.


"Whatever it is, don't touch it."
"Uh, too late. I touched it."

2 comments:

  1. I like the stories in which we get to meet new Jedi characters.

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    Replies
    1. TAS: Unfortunately, we only get to meet her corpse.

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