Thursday, March 31, 2016

Clone Wars -- Season Two

Season two of The Clone Wars does a great job of expanding the stories from season one. Although the series does bounce around a bit, since it's giving us glimpses of so many characters, we get a good sense of the progression of the war. All is not well with the Republic.

One of the things season two does is to give us a glimpse of the universe beyond the Republic and beyond the Separatists. There are a lot of bounty hunters in season two. And some pirates. Fun stuff. Oh, and one raging monster.

My favorite story of the season is the Mandalore arc. I think that trilogy of episodes is a must watch for any Star Wars fan. There's just too much important background for Obi-Wan. Definitely the first two, at least. You can find my reviews of those episodes here, here, and here.

This season also deals a lot with the philosophical issues around cloning. Or around the clones themselves. What makes an individual? What is just a copy?
Definitely check out this episode.

I did, also, have an episode I wasn't all that fond of, but I don't now remember which one it was, and I'm not going to read back through all of my reviews to figure it out. If it doesn't stand out enough for me to remember which one it was, it couldn't have been that bad, right?

Season two really doesn't require that you've seen season one to watch it. Neither do most of the story arcs. With that in mind, I would suggest picking out an arc that sounds interesting and just sit down and watch it.

4 comments:

  1. Now I'm curious about which one you didn't like...

    You have highlighted a couple of my strongest contenders for favorite episode. I love the Life of the Clones stories and The Deserter is top-notch. More of the same right off the bat in Season Three. The Mandalore arc is also excellent.

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    1. TAS: Me, too, actually, but I don't have time to figure it out, right now.

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  2. Interesting: the ethical issues of cloning. Without knowing really how Star Wars does it, I think the main ethical issue is is it wise to clone a being when the genetic splicing/mixing that sexual reproduction does can help evolve and create differences in people so that some might survive in the event of a species-wide problem.

    People treat cloning as though it would be creating an exact duplicate of the person (again, IRL, not Star Wars). But it's only an exact genetic duplicate, and the new person not only wouldn't necessarily think and feel the way the old person did in certain situations -- think about if you created a new clone of a 90-year-old person: that new person would grow up in a world of technology the 90-year-old wouldn't have imagined in 1936 (when she was 10) and social differences would be vast: 1936 was segregated, extremely poor social safety net, no acceptance of gays, etc. So the new clone would be unlikely to harbor the same beliefs and behaviors (although it would be fascinating to see what's genetic and what's mostly nature). But more importantly the new clone might not all that much physically resemble the old: differences in prenatal care, nutritional supplements and the like might make the new clone fatter, or taller, or healthier in general (or sicker, in general.) In that type of situation there might only be the scantest resemblance between the two.

    Since the US Supreme Court declared that we don't own our genes, it may not even be illegal for someone to take some DNA and start growing another you -- although most people (me included) would find that out of line. But thinking about it logically, why SHOULD it be? Two people could decide to have a baby and I'd be fine with it. But if they stole some of my DNA and then had it implanted, test-tube baby style and gave birth, I would find that far more disturbing, even though the only difference is that the second example has my same genes -- and how often do I think about my genes?

    Now I'm going to be mulling this over all night.

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    1. Briane: Mull away, mull away.

      There's a set of identical twins at my daughter's school (who I have known most of their lives). When they were around 2 or 3, they got sick (I want to say pneumonia). One of them recovered more quickly and has been generally more healthy than his brother their whole lives. The one who stayed sick longer is now a couple of inches shorter than his brother, too. It's an interesting thing to see.

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