Thoughts and Musings on STAR WARS: The Clone Wars: The Lost Missions

Like most people, err. . . most nerds, well. . . that subgenre, venn diagram crossover of STARWARS and Disney fanatics, on the day that Disney announced that they were bringing Lucasfilm (and all its subsidiaries RIP LucasArts) under the Mouse Eared umbrella, I freaked out. When they then announced Episode VII, I freaked out more.

Not just a little bit.

A. Lot.

One of my best buddies, Bald Solo of the Bald Solo Podcast, called me and we gushed on the phone like teenage girls in the early 90s talking about boys. I was on my bed kicking my feet in the air.

I could not contain my excitement.

kinda like this. . .

It was a rare moment, when the internet matches your personal feelings. The web, like my heart and head, exploded with speculation. Would Ep VII be Heir to the Empire? Would it be new? Would Disney respect the franchise? Would the original cast come back? Ect.

My take was that Disney would keep Star Wars as they keep Marvel, which is kind of the case.

One tragic casualties of this merger was The Clone Wars.  Since the series aired on Cartoon Network, the major competitor to Disney XD, it was going to be a loss. Season five was the best season of The Clone Wars yet, it also ended with several cliffhangers. What would Asoka do now that she is out of the Jedi Order? What will Darth Sidious do with Darth Maul? Will this lead directly into Revenge of the Sith like the hand drawn Genndy Tartakovsky series from 2003?

Would this all be left to our "head cannon"? Luckily we live in a marvelous time.

Turner Broadcasting Systems which owns Cartoon Network and Disney came to an agreement which allowed the episodes of The Clone Wars Season 6 to be released on Netflix.

Amazing.

In the past, fans were left in the dark, left disappointed, and lost episodes/canceled shows would become legends and discussions around gaming tables and in con lines. Once upon a time even the prequel trilogy was discussed in hushed tones, the smallest of details cobbled together from old fan magazines and random VHS interviews.

 

for all you trues out there

 

While those discussions are a lot of fun, we'll all still morn Firefly and hope for the lost Doctor Who episodes pinging off of one of Saturn's moons and making contact with a communications satellite that can possibly transmit the back to Earth. Firefly continues in comic book form, the lost Doctor episodes did not hit a satellite, but some did pop up in Africa, which is cool. We of the nerdy persuasion love talking about this stuff. We love exploring and celebrating our fandom.

But this time, we have less of something to morn. I don't say we don't morn it all together, but you'll understand that later.

The Clone Wars Season 6 or its alternative title "The Lost Missions" has arrived on Netflix. I had forgotten. Sometimes life gets in the way of media consumption, luckily for me we have social media. The aforementioned Bald Solo reposted from the 501st that The Lost Missions were out today, and as I responded "welp, I know what I'm doing today."

The nice thing about many animated series is that they are made for 30 minute time slots, meaning 22 minutes of programming. 22 minutes is an easy piece to chew. 13 episodes of 22 minutes boils down to almost 5 hours, which is much easier than powering through a season of House of Cards.

Darth Underwood at your service.

So here we go Season 6, The Lost Missions, or my made up title: Does R2 play with Apps while Yoda does Jedi things?

The season starts out with a bang, high action, awesome STARWARS-iness. Lots of lasers, light sabers, and explosions. It is good to be back.

Arc Trooper Fives

The first story arc is four episodes dealing with Clone Trooper CT-5385 aka Tup, who we saw as a major player in the Pong Krell story arc of the 4th season. Unfortunately, something is wrong with Tup, and he proceeds to murder a Jedi Master during the height of a battle with the Separatists. Tup is taken into custody, then escorted by his friend CT-5555 or Fives.

Fives learns of the infamous Order 66 and the conspiracy behind it. The arc basically becomes Star Wars' version of The Fugitive.  It is an excellent story, furthering the love for the Clone Troopers, and continuing to challenge the audience as to the ethics of cloning, individual rights, and the casualties of war.  This was easily my favorite arc from the season, also the best developed over four episodes.

Bow Casters are Badass

The next story arc is over three episodes dealing with Rush Clovis, who was also have seen before in the second season of the series. The story follows Padme encountering Clovis with mixed feelings. 

There are some romantic tensions, of which Anikan is none too pleased, along with conflicted feelings of friendship due to Clovis' treachery to the Republic when he was initially introduced.  This arc suffers from one of the major complaints of the Prequels, it focuses on intergalactic politics and policy. While that is interesting enough for world building and flavor, it doesn't make the most engaging pulp television. Easily the best part of the story arc was the bounty hunter Embo, who we have seen before, but never fully unleashed. I don't remember ever hearing his name actually...  Thanks Wiki.

Anyways, Embo has this badass conical Asian hat that is made of metal and appears to have some electronic devices integrated. . . which doesn't matter. What does matter is that he can also use it as an awesome sled to chase our heroes down an icy slope, and he has a dog-like pet that hunts with him. While writing this, it seems like I'm knocking it... I'm not, I seriously enjoyed that sequence. I definitely want an Embo figure to sit next to my Cad Bane fig. Very cool and very fun. Who doesn't like the Bounty Hunters in the Star Wars Universe?

The arc ends with the sly political maneuverings of Darth Sidious manipulating both sides in his favor, further tightening his grip on the galaxy. The standard theme for the prequels. It's fine and it deals with the Intergalactic Banking Clan and the Muuns a bit more in detail, so for those EU fans who read the Darth Plagueis book, you'll appreciate this arc. The casual SW fan, maybe not so much.

look at the disdain on Master Windu's face. . .

The next arc is a two parter with the easy titles of The Disappeared Parts 1 & 2. It is easily the weakest arc of the season.  Some force sensitive leaders of a planet, who happen to be anti-Jedi, are being kidnapped. Turns out, for reasons unknown, their Queen is good friends with everyone's favorite Jar Jar Binks. Yes, the real Menace of The Phantom Menace and beyond has returned to plague us again in Season 6.  There hasn't been a ton of Jar Jar in The Clone Wars, nor in Star Wars in general post Ep 1 fallout, so why these episodes were even produced, yet alone served to us is unknown. Supposedly there is a large enough Jar Jar fanbase of children, but kids have no taste, they don't know what is good, if we just leave Jar Jar out of things, they won't miss him. There are a few other characters I would have liked to see instead, but we'll get to that later.

Jar Jar and Mace Windu, yes Sam Jackson Mace Windu, team up to investigate the situation and deal with the problem. As you might expect, Jar Jar bumbles up everything, even preventing Mace from being a complete badass. Jar Jar does punch someone in the face accidentally, so that was at least something. A Dathomir Witch was somehow involved, which was never explained, but Jar Jar breaks a powerful orb filled with Living Force energy and saves the day. Yup, he broke a jar and that was that. The first episode of the arc had a fun Temple of Doom vibe going for it, but everything good was nullified by the Binks factor. Purple Lightsabers are still badass. Oh and Jar Jar makes out with the Queen, weird.

Master Plo with Sipho-Dyas' Lightsaber

The final arc is an excellent four episode Force fest. Well, it is really a single episode that sets up a three part arc, but we'll just call it a four parter. Master Plo Koon finds Syfo-dyas' lightsaber in some wreckage prompting Yoda to send Anikan and Obiwan to investigate further. Count Dooku is punished by Darth Sidious for his failure in covering up this detail of their plan. Ani & Obi discover the truth about the initial formation of the Clone Army and Dooku is revealed to be Darth Tyranus. 

Things we, the audience already knew.

First of all Darth Tyranus is an awesome name, it was not used enough in the movies and that makes me sad, but a lot of things about the prequels make me sad... it is a complicated relationship.

Secondly this episode basically straightens out the complex plot of the clones discussed in Attack of the Clones and fills in the plot holes that Lucas decided were fine for everyone to fall in and get confused by. So that was good. . .but I never understood the name Sifo-Dyas. It is remarkably close to "Sidious" which seems to be the obvious choice for not so subtle subterfuge in the Star Wars Universe. But instead of just ignoring or canning it for something different, they decided to keep going with it, and explain that Sifo-dyas was a radical Jedi Master who wanted the Republic to have an army, then was manipulated by Darth Sidious to order the army from the cloners on Kamino, or was killed by Tyranus beforehand and was impersonated by Tyranus to make the order. Anyway, the poor bastard was used and discarded for the sake of plot and also waters down how much respect we had for the Jedi from the Original Trilogy. After learning the truth of the Clone Army the Jedi Council decides to conceal this information because it could become their undoing if the public learned the truth. Which is consistent with the "lies of the Jedi" that Sidious uses to manipulate Anikan to the Dark Side.

Yoda is like a Honey Badger in this shot

Onward and upward the remaining three episodes jumps off from the Sifo-Dyas investigation because Yoda is troubled when he starts to hear the voice of Qui-gon Jinn. The problem with Yoda hearing dead people is that we, the audience, don't know that this is rare to impossible. We saw this happen to Yoda in Ep 3 in meditation and when he told Obi-wan about it, old Ben was surprised, but we only got some passing exposition to explain it.

Jedi turn to ghosts and talk to people after their death. We've seen this. We've known this since 1977. Obi, Yoda, and even Anikan, come back as "Force Ghosts" in the original trilogy, but for unknown reasons no Jedi does this in the prequels. This particular Clone Wars arc attempts to explain this, often by having the characters say over and over again that talking with the dead and keeping one's identity once becoming "one with the Force" is impossible. They kind of browbeat you with it, but Yoda is awesome so I forgave it.

Yoda goes on a quest. First to Dagobah where he communes with Qui-Gon. It was pretty sweet to hear Liam Neeson again, but I was a little let down by the whole exchange. It just didn't seem to have the gravitas that I would have expected from such an encounter. Old Qui tells Yoda to go to the magical heart of the Universe and so he does. Yoda encounters some very abstract individuals who represent various sides of a person. . . it's complicated. Lots of tests for the Jedi Master that are very artfully presented and inspired by Eastern ideolgy. Even Yoda, the almost 900 year old Jedi Master has demons to confront and lessons to learn. It was abstract and interesting. Shadow Yoda was terrifying. Yeah, Shadow Yoda. You want to see this.

All of these tests eventually lead Yoda to Moraband...

Yeah, you know, Moraband. . .

It is definitely Korriban. The ancient Sith homeworld has been Korriban for a long time. There are multiple platforms where this has been repeated. Darth Bane is buried there for Sith's sake! It's Korriban not Moraband! Why make this change? Is this part of Disney's restructuring, where they are going to make an official SW Canon? Seems like a silly and unnecessary change for one episode of the cartoon.

I'll get those turtles... err. . . I mean Jedi!

Oh did you see what I wrote? Darth Bane. Yeah. Yoda deals with a specter of the ancient Sith Lord, and it was totally awesome. I mean, Bane kind of looked like a lava monster version of TMNT's The Shredder, but still Darth Bane! Great voice work and excellent reverence to SW mythos. Which makes it all the more strange to change the name of the planet. . .

Oh and R2 is flying Yoda everywhere, but mainly just hangs out while the old Master does Jedi things. He's probably playing Tiny Death Star or the Yoda Chronicles or something. . .

The Sith homeworld confrontation leads to Yoda battling spiritual style with Darth Sidious, seeing vague images of near future events, and some subltle references to Yoda needing to survive in order to mentor Luke.

After all this Yoda returns to the Jedi Temple, knowing how to preserve his spirit after death, which he keeps to himself so that he can tell Obi-Wan later in Ep 3. Is it fan service? Yes. Is some minor character development for Yoda good? Yes. It may not be the strongest arc in the season, but it is beautifully animated and interestingly conceived. Star Wars engaging its audience in philosophy is very OT.

Aaaaaaand that's it. That was Season 6. Strange I know. What about Ahsoka? What about Darth Maul?

Well, maybe Ahsoka will be an early leader in Rebels? I highly doubt it. There are plenty of fan theories that had Darth Vader murdering Ahsoka while hunting down the remaining Jedi, which would be horrible and pretty damn dark (but also an excellent indicator of how evil Vader truly is). But we'll never really know.

Son of Dathomir

As for Darth Maul, his story arc was written and the scripts are going to be adapted into the comic "Darth Maul: Son of Dathomir" that is supposedly out in May. I'm pretty excited for this. Some people thought bringing Maul back was cheesy and cheep, but I loved it. He's a fan favorite and we never got to see his full potential. Plus Sam Witwer voices him, and he is great.  Maul in The Clone Wars was a cool and interesting rogue element to help keep the narrative interesting. We got to see some background that didn't necessarily gel with EU continuity, but that's fine, and we got Savage Opress, Maul's mutated brother, along with the deal, which was also extremely entertaining. I always thought that bringing Maul back with droid legs was going to be a thing in Ep 2, an indicator toward the "More Machine Now Than Man" Vader.  Instead we got General Greivous in Ep 3, which was way out of left field if you didn't watch the Clone Wars 2003 cartoon.

All in all, this season was cool. It was a lot of fun, and if Star Wars is not fun, then it is not Star Wars. This season, however, did not quite feel like a season of The Clone Wars, continuing the story of the Clone War, but like a bandage over the pitfalls and plot holes of the Prequel trilogy. Almost saying, look we know you were disappointed in the films, but check this out, this helps it make sense.  I enjoyed it, and it is nice to be able to say goodbye to the series properly.  

Goodbye The Clone Wars. I never understood why you sort of erased the 2003 Clone Wars from existence. . . there was some excellent Star Wars in that. . . but still you were fun. You started out really slow and I didn't expect much, but your dialogue was better than Episode 3, so that had me. Then you really picked up your stride and felt like Star Wars, that's why I stuck by you. Your serialized nature was perfectly connected to Lucas' original inspiration of "Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe". Even when you did silly story arcs about tiny aliens riding around inside of hollowed out R2 droids and frustrating the hell out of everyone, I still preached your qualities. Gregor Lives, Clones are People, and May the Force be with You.