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Another new episode aired tonight. The character animation is really terrible, but I'll admit the space battles are pretty cool to watch. One thing which is getting really old, really fast though: self referential dialog. They keep lifting lines of dialog out of the Star Wars movies. In some cases, they're swiping entire scenes. After a while its stops being a "tribute" and just becomes annoying. Can't they just leave the classics alone? Sheesh.

I neglected to mention that last week's episode was titled: Shadow of Malevolence.

 

This week's episode was titled (surprise!!): Destroy Malevolence. I fully expect episodes entitled: A New Malevolence, Return of Malevolence, Malevolence Strikes Back, and Revenge of Malevolence.

 

Anyway, this week had the first appearance of Padme Anorexia - the skinniest senator in the galaxy. Even her face looks a bit like Posh Spice - all gaunt and bony. And her eyes are just weirdly huge. Some things just don't work well in CG.

 

As with previous episodes, it looks like all of the effort was put into the space battles and set design. The acting and animation was some of the worst to date. Very stiff, as if even the voice actors were just sleepwalking through their parts. And seeing the CG Anakin and Padme making out was just... creepy. In a "someone playing with their GI Joe and Barbie dolls in an inappropriate way" sort-of-way. C3PO is becoming an irritant. He's been diminished to nothing more than useless comedy relief. And although the script is not Anthony Daniels' fault, I'm to the point where I can hardly stand it when the character is on screen now. (He was never this irritating in the original trilogy.) Also, even though this is a cartoon, they're bouncing him around like a rag doll, without even a hint of damage. No dents, no limbs falling off, nothing.

 

Still, the space battles are worth watching. Hopefully the scripts and character animation will improve.

Huh... I completely forgot to mention the last episode - Rookies. Guess that was a pretty good indication of how memorable it was. Anyway, it involved some clone troopers who were (wait for it...) rookies, and had to face enemy droids all on their own. Some died, some didn't, and General Grievous got his metallic butt handed to him yet again. Yay team, or whatever.

 

This week's episode was Downfall of a Droid. Anakin loses R2-D2, and ends up getting a replacement that doesn't work too well (I'm betting he's actually an evil double-agent droid, rather than a hapless misunderstood one). But Anakin still has to find R2, because he stupidly left all of the Republic's top-secret military info stored in him.

 

Not the brightest lightsaber in the arsenal, is he?

 

Each episode starts off with some sort of moral (more like a fortune cookie) that's shown as text at the beginning. This week's was "Trust in your friends, and they'll have reason to trust in you." This actually never happens in the episode though, because Anakin never actually learns to trust the new droid. Maybe a better one for this episode would have been, "Don't leave military secrets lying around where the bad guys can find them, stupid!"

 

So anyway, R2 has been captured. Will he be rescued next week? Well... duh. Otherwise he wouldn't be in any of the other movies. The episode is titled "Duel of the Droids". So somebody is fighting somebody. I think it'd be funny to see R2-D2 battling (and beating up) General Grievous. But they won't do that. So it's probably Anakin's new droid sacrificing himself nobly to save the day. Yawn.

Okay, so this week brought us... Duel of the Droids. I was right about the replacement droid being an evil double-agent. The "battle" was between him and R2-D2. Guess who won?

 

Actually, this was a pretty good episode. It was also the first one that I can recall that started out with a warning about it being rated PG-V for "moderate" violence. Cool! The violence in question was General Wheezyous sticking a lightsaber right through a guy's back - although since it was an alien guy, I guess it only counts as "moderate". Still, he chopped up a couple of clones, too, but you didn't really see that on screen.

 

Overall it was one of the better episodes, although General Greasyous got beat up by a 12-year-old girl and ran away. So why exactly did he get hired to run this droid army in the first place? I guess it doesn't matter, since the whole Clone War was a sham designed to put the Emperor in power anyway.

 

Next episode... "Bombad Jedi".

 

Yes, it features Jar Jar.

 

Yes, it's going to be awful.

 

I can't stress that enough.

 

"Awful."

Remember what I told you last week?

 

Okay. So if you watched it - you have nobody to blame but yourself.

 

I watched it anyway. Yes... it was pretty awful. In all fairness though, we found out that the entire Star Wars universe also hates Jar Jar. Everyone knows he's an annoying, idiotic klutz. They don't want him around anymore than we do. But in the typical "let's all learn something" idiom of the series, in the end, he ends up being the "hero". Of course, everyone was doing fine without him, and it was only when they went to go look for him did they get into the trouble that he eventually saved them from.

 

He was presumed dead twice in this episode (sadly - neither time was he really dead), and although the other characters briefly mourned him, they weren't exactly jumping for joy when they found out he was still alive, either.

 

Ironically, being the worst character, Jar Jar actually had some of the best (or at least most fluid) character animation of the bunch. Padme Amidala had some of the worst animation in the series to date. Besides her expressiveless face, stiff acting and awful lip sync, was a simple run across a bridge that looked so bad it would have been right at home in Pitfall (with apologies to David Crane).

 

And fer cryin' out loud woman... eat a Happy Meal or somethin'...

 

So, after a week of reruns, we're back with The Cloak of Darkness, which could also be titled, "Girl Fight!!"

 

Ahsoka (isn't that a town in Wisconsin?) and some woman Jedi named Lemonatari Umathurman or something, have to guard the bad guy caught in the last episode. So Count Doocoocachoo sends off his female Sith apprentice Airconditioning Ventilationductress (who comes up with these names anyway?) to either rescue or kill the captured bad guy, before he can squeal like a stuck Gamorrean Guard.

 

Anyway, the rest of the episode consists mostly of an all-girl lightsaber fight, which would be a good thing, if only the participants weren't a skinny bald Sith who looks like Yzma from The Emperor's New Groove, a fourteen-year-old Paddawannabe who's setting a bad body-image for impressionable teens, and a female Jedi who seems intent on growing a Duff Goldman-esque soul-patch. Always fresh, never frozen!

 

That aside, it's not a bad episode, although it's pretty obvious early on what's going to happen. Who's going to betray whom. Who's going to save whom. Who's going to escape and live long enough only to die cruelly in (or shortly before) Episode III. The animation is either getting better though, or I'm just scarring over from having watched nine episodes. The lightsaber fights look really good in this episode, and yet they still seem to have problems just getting characters to walk without it looking like they have dislocated hips. There's also a reference to the Clone Wars movie compilation that came out this summer, but since I didn't see it, I have no idea what they were talking about. I'll just have to wait for that one to show up on TV.

 

This was one of the more violent episodes (two of my favorite words in the English language: Cartoon Violence), with a clone trooper getting his head lopped off (must run in the family), piles of other dead clone troopers, and even a non-clone human getting run through the chest with a lightsaber from behind. Pretty grisly. (And to think they censored Looney Tunes whenever Daffy got his bill blown off.)

 

Next week, some other Jedi I've never heard of is going to go beat up General Grievwuss in the episode: "Lair of Grievous". Because that's what he's there for. To get beat up. He's a little like Gilligan in that regard...

 

Count Dooku: "Grievous! Drop those coconuts!!"

*bonk!* *bonk!*

Count Dooku: "Ouch!! Ow!!... Grieeeeevous!!" (hits Grievous with his hat)

And another episode - Lair of Grievous - has come and gone.

 

Actually, this was one of the better episodes to date. It didn't feature any of the main cast, but focused on yet again some other third-rate Jedi also-ran and his former Padawan/current Jedi Knight/soon-to-be-one-with-The-Force Calamari-on-a-stick.

 

This time, they're lured someplace. Guess where! That's right... the Lair of Grievous!

 

Funny thing, is that even though I knew that going into the episode, I still didn't know that's where they were when they first got there, because it really didn't look like what I might have expected. So bonus points to Lucasfilm for that one. There were some interesting hints here and there about who General Grievous used to be, too, which was pretty cool. Although what it doesn't explain, is that if he used to be so bad, why is he now just a big, robotic, galactic wuss?

 

Oh, and he kills Jedi not because he's got mad fighting skills. It's because he cheats. Just thought you should know.

 

A lot of clones bite the dust in this episode. Some get chopped up, one gets smacked around like a bean-bag by a giant monster, and one falls into a vat of molten metal (now that's the way to go out - PFFFT!!! - and you're vapor! Much better than a lightsaber upside the head).

 

The animation was better in this episode than most, and only a minimal amount of painfully stupid dialog from droids and whatnot.

 

So if you haven't seen an episode yet, this is a pretty good one to check out. It'll be January before any new ones air.

Annnnnd we're back.

 

Last week's episode was titled, Dooku Captured.

 

And in it, Dooku was captured.

 

And that was about it, really. He was captured. And some rocks fell on Obi-Wan and Anakin who were both having lightsaber troubles.

 

And some other guys did some stuff.

 

But it wasn't a bad episode. Just not that interesting. And what's up with the walks? Why can't they animate people walking without it looking like they've got wedgies?

 

Well anyway, next week Jar Jar is back. And he probably saves the day again. He sure doesn't die though, because we saw him at the end of Episode III at Padme's funeral. I think he was saying something like, "Meesa so sad!!" really loudly and obnoxiously, 'cuz people were giving him dirty looks. At least, that's how I prefer to remember it.

 

Wouldn't it be great to see Jar Jar in the gallery at a golf tournament, and then have him say something really loud and stupid right during Tiger Woods' backswing? And then have Tiger Woods beat him to death with a 9 iron?

 

That would make a pretty awesome video game for the Wii, I think.

So this week was The Gungan General.

 

In it, Count Dooku, Anakin and Obi-Wan are all being held hostage. They have to try and work together to escape from a bunch of rather stupid pirates who managed to not only capture them once, but three times. (They must be on a planet where some special energy field saps their Jedi powers and brains, because it would seem to me that if Dooku can throw around giant pieces of equipment at the end of Episode II, he shouldn't have so much trouble picking a lock.)

 

Jar Jar goes to pay their ransom as a representative from the Republic, and ends up saving the day through comic shenanigans. Of course, Count Dooku gets away, because otherwise it would interrupt the continuity of the movies. Or something.

 

Does this episode have anything to do with anything? Does anyone care about Jar Jar? Even Ahmed Best didn't even bother coming back to do the voice for this episode, and he played Jar Jar on Robot Chicken. Nothing really happens, there's no important plot elements, no character development, nothing. Just treading water. Maybe it was supposed to be a "funny" episode, as the two Jedi and Dooku traded insults with each other, and Jar Jar caused comedic mayhem, resulting in the death of several pirates, a couple of clones, and a senator he was supposed to be escorting.

 

Whatever.

 

Next week, other stuff happens. Anakin gets hurt, and someone else has to do something. Yawn. I'm losing interest here, George. Let's get back to something that actually moves the overreaching story arc ahead, 'kay?

 

Also on TV tonight was the final episode of Stargate Atlantis. I've been watching it semi-regularly for the last couple of seasons, but it's never been as good as Stargate SG-1 was (and that went downhill after Richard Dean Anderson left). It was an okay episode I guess, but not what I'd call a great conclusion to the series. It seemed more like, "Okay, we've been cancelled, let's throw together a quick wrap-up to the series that will still leave us some room to make direct-to-DVD movies." No two-parter. No two-hour finale. Just a rather unceremonious "let's get this series off the air" one-hour shove out the door. I think the series deserved a little better than that.

 

I was saddened to find out that Don S. Davis had passed away last summer. He played General Hammond in Stargate SG-1 and was really missed when he left that series. In the Atlantis finale, they renamed one of Earth's spaceships in his character's honor, mentioning that he'd died of a heart attack (as did Davis himself).

 

Next week, the final episodes of Battlestar Galactica will finally air. They've dragged this out quite a bit, so I'm not as interested in what happens as I once was, but I'm still curious to see how they wrap this all up. If I had to guess, I'd say that

it will turn out that everyone is a Cylon. The phrase, "This has all happened before, and it will all happen again" has been used numerous times, so I think what happened, is that the original humans created Cylons generations before, who then evolved into human form, and wiped out all of the original humans. But that was forgotten, so nobody really knows now they're all Cylons, and have started the cycle all over again by creating new ones. The only humans that survived managed to escape to Earth, but ended up being killed off either by Cylons, or by each other in some nuclear holocaust, because as pretty-much any sci-fi story will tell you, that's what we do: we kill ourselves in nuclear holocausts.

 

 

Anyway, in another 10 episodes or so, we'll see if I'm right.

interesting theory on BSG. I'm looking forward to the final episodes as having switched to DirecTV I'll get to see them in HD

 

I know they show them in HD on Universal, but as I recall that was months after the original broadcasts and I didn't want to wait that long as friends were also watching it and we'd talk about the episodes on occasion. I did wait for the HD showings of Torchwood on HD Net as they were only 1 1/2 weeks after the BBC broadcast.

When the remade BSG first aired, a friend of mine at work and I were pretty-much rabid fans of it. We'd usually sit down over pizza on Saturday afternoons and discuss the latest episode (among other geeky topics). Somewhere during the second season (I think... it's hard to really know what defined a "season") we got a little burned out on the increasing soap-opera-ness of the whole thing. That, and the infrequency of new episodes caused us both to lose interest for awhile. I think there are still a number of episodes I haven't seen, but I've caught all the recaps, so I know what happened.

 

However they end it, I hope it's a good ending. Not just something made intentionally obscure just to keep the fans from guessing.

It's Friday night in front of the TV again. Tonight's episode of Clone Wars was Jedi Crash. Now, that may sound like a noun ("A Jedi Crash"), but in fact, it's a verb. Because that's what Jedi do - they crash.

 

In this episode, they crash several times. Each time they were moving fast enough that the sudden deceleration should have turned them into Jell-O™. But they survived with nary a scratch. Anakin got hurt though, but not by one of the crashes. Nope - he got hit by a door. But since the door technically "crashed" into him, it still fits thematically with the episode.

 

Anyway, Anakin spent most of the episode on life support (get used to it, kid), while the clones and other Jedi he was with ended up on a planet with house-sized coconuts (don't let one of those fall on you), met up with some pacifist raccoons that roll around like Sonic the Hedgehog, and got attacked by four-legged turkey-things. And most of the clones died. But that's okay, since they were genetically engineered to be disposable cannon-fodder anyway, so from their point-of-view, it's all in a day's work. Nobody ever seems to get all upset about it anyway.

 

So now they're stuck on this planet in the middle-of-nowhere, with no communications, and a bunch of rolling raccoons that like to lecture them about how they're actually part of the problem, and not the peacekeepers they think they are. Next week, the droid army (are they the separatists or the Republic - I can never keep that straight...) follow them to this idyllic, boring, nut-ridden, raccoon-hole of a planet, and start busting stuff up. This doesn't sit well with the raccoons, who moved to this planet to get away from the whole war thing in the first place.

 

Surely, comedy will ensue. Or is that tragedy? Whatever. I'm sure we'll learn some sort of lesson from it. This week, the lesson was, "Greed and fear of loss are the roots that lead to the tree of evil" which had absolutely nothing to do with anything. Except there was a tree in there. The one with the giant coconuts.

 

Unfortunately, it still seems that nobody can animate a decent-looking walk.

 

At least the new episode of Battlestar Galactica (Sometimes A Great Notion) was cool. Man... that series is going to mess with your mind.

In hindsight, the final fifth Cylon was a character that I'd suspected of being a Cylon a long time ago, but I figured they were kind of done with that particular story line. Guess not.

Anyway, I really have no idea what's going on, but it looks like we're in for a fun ride. Nine more to go!

BSG was pretty good. Totally wasn't expecting that bit with Dee.

 

Also looks like my theory was wrong - I was expecting it to be that they colonize Earth way in our past. I figured since the # of survivors was so small they would be unable to maintain their technology and over time their descendants would forget they ever had that knowledge. It would explain how Apollo, Athena and so forth are part of our mythology. I also thought there was a possibility that where they initially settled would end up being Atlantis, the destruction of which(due to something involving the Cylons) would also be a factor in the loss of technology/knowledge.

I'd wondered something similar myself about it being in the distant past. I'm not entirely convinced that isn't the case, either. Certainly, there's something weird going on with time - the thing with Starbuck seems to indicate that.

 

Another possibility - maybe this isn't really Earth. We haven't seen a wide shot of it, with continents and so forth. They say it is, but they've been wrong before. Remember - Rosalyn was supposed to die before reaching it.

 

Here's another theory for you...

what if the original Cylons are the "real" people, and the humans were their creations.

I was thinking it might not be Earth as well, for the same reasons. Last season ended with long-distance-zoom-in to Earth, though that doesn't prove anything as to where they are now.

 

Hmm, that's an interesting theory...

'Battlestar Galactica's' Ron Moore addresses the shocking developments of 'Sometimes a Great Notion'

 

Some interesting stuff, answers the "is it really Earth?" question.

Good article.

 

 

And sure... it's "the" Earth. But is it "our" Earth?

This week's episode was Defenders of Peace, in which the Jedi coerce a neutral group of pacifist alien raccoons to give up their backwards peace-loving ways, and embrace the joys of warfare. Yay, death! Of course, they really aren't killing anyone, since they're just fighting droids. So it's okay that in one scene they tie up a bunch of droids' feet, and knock them over, so a Jedi can run around beheading them all, execution-style.

 

The moral for this week's story was, "When surrounded by war, one must eventually choose a side", which in Jedi-speak roughly translates to, "Peace is for wimps". Granted, the droids were going to wipe out the peace-loving little pests by testing a new weapon on them, so the Jedi did save them. But the whole episode was a little weird. I guess it's either supposed to show that the Jedi's violence is justified by the droid army's actions; or that the Jedi are actually hypocritical about their stance on peace, but hey it's war - so what are you gonna do?*

 

It was a pretty good episode overall, although the raccoons (who are apparently from Ireland, based on their accents) got to be a little annoying. Also, the "plastic" look of the 3D models doesn't work so well with their fur. They need to find a happy medium between visual style, and making something look "correct". (Maybe they're spending too much of their time working on the blue cleavage. )

 

 

Oh, and George Takei guest-starred as the main bad guy. I was a little disappointed though that he never said, "Oh my!" once during the episode.

 

*I could just watch the episode commentary before writing these. But what fun would that be?

On the other channel, another new episode of Battlestar Galactica (A Disquiet Follows My Soul) aired. Eight more to go.

That's not a whole lot of time, there's a lot left unresolved, and there's a lot of fallout (ba-dum!) from the discovery of a scorched Earth. The crew seems to be going more than a little loopy, and shenanigans are afoot. Personally, I hope they delve more into the history and mythos they set up before the series ends, and don't focus exclusively on the characters' current actions.

 

 

One of the more interesting casting choices of the series has turned out to be Richard Hatch (the original BSG's Apollo) as Tom Zarek. Originally he seemed to be just tacked on to an episode as a one-shot guest star for old time's sake, but his character has turned out to be pretty critical to the show, and kudos to him for transcending the role, and really breaking with his old character. I have to think pretty hard to imagine him in the old show now.

 

Speaking of the old show, I'm hoping somehow they manage to sneak a Galactica 1980 reference in there somewhere. Just some offhanded comment about how "finding a nuked planet is still better than flying around on motorcycles" would be fine.

Agreed on Richard Hatch - I thought he was only going to be in a couple episodes at most.

 

Somehow I totally missed, or forgot about, Six and Saul Tigh expecting. The discussion on how the Cyclon's hadn't been able to reproduce, and not for lack of trying, was enlightening - it suggests that any future for the Cylons will require hybrids - either with humans and/or Earth Cylons (who must be different somehow from the non-Earth Cyclons)...

 

I noticed this while checking on the spelling for Saul

I wonder if the Cylon's lack of ability to reproduce was intentional design, by the five?

 

I didn't know of the BSG TV movie. But I know they're working on the prequel series Caprica.

Okay... so first off this week - the new episode of Battlestar Galactica (The Oath) was intense!

Best line: Starbuck saying, "I could do this all day!"

All of the principle characters were in high gear by the episode's end, and I can't wait to see where all this goes. How are they ever going to wrap all this up in only seven more episodes?

 

Anyway, back to The Clone Wars.

 

Actually, it just occurred to me - I suppose I could just be putting these reviews in as weekly blog entries, rather than as comments. Oh well, six of one, half a dozen of the other.

 

This week's episode was Trespass, and was one of the better episodes in the series. Anakin and Obi-Wan have to go to an uninhabited frozen planet (which is not Hoth) and check out why a clone troop outpost has stopped responding (hint: they're all dead). They discover that the planet actually is inhabited, but some other planet has issues with that. Or more to the point, the chief-jerk-in-charge of that planet has issues. The fortune cookie for the week is "Arrogance diminishes wisdom", or in his case, "Arrogance diminishes life span". He gets his comeuppance, both at the hands of the natives, and another one of these 13-year-old-senator-girls who seem to be popular in the Star Wars universe.

 

"War is like... such a bummer!"

 

It's a pretty-well written episode, and the snow planet looks really good. According to the commentary, they made the intensity of the snow storm reflect what was happening in the story. Nice work.

 

Next week, the evil bald chick is back, so there'll be lightsabers-a-plenty!

This week... The Hidden Enemy! (exclamation point added for emphasis)

 

In this episode we discover that one of the Jedi's trusted clones is a traitor!

 

Wait a minute... they're all traitors. That's the whole point of them existing in the first place. Being mindless pawns to be used as tools of the Emperor to betray and kill the Jedi and whatnot. Right? So should this come as some sort of surprise? Maybe he's just a go-getter and wanted to get a head start on everybody else. Seems to me that's the sort of attitude that should be commended. Just a clone, doin' his job. Makin' his way in the galaxy, tryin' to get ahead.

 

Anyway, this was just a middlin' episode. The lightsaber fight didn't amount to much. The story was mostly about a bunch of clones who still walk funny. Must be that cheap Imperial toilet paper. Or is it the Republic? Whichever. Next week, we get a full hour of fresh cloney goodness.

 

 

This week's Battlestar Galactica (Blood On The Scales) was pretty intense again.

People changing allegiances, lots of soul-searching, subterfuge, treachery, treason, yelling, and some rockin' action scenes. (And based on the survivors number they show each episode, it looks like a lot of people bought the farm last week in the coup.) I was actually a little disappointed that they (for now) wrapped up the whole mutiny plotline - I could have had that go on for another week or two.

But I understand why they did it - only six episodes left, and there's a lot of ground to cover.

Yeah, I thought the mutiny wrapped up too quickly as well.

I did like how they wrapped it up, but it really needed another episode for everything that happened. It just felt too rushed, which made everything seem a bit too convenient. I kept expecting them to end on a cliffhanger.

By the way, they're updating that Battlestar interview blog every week. This week, they mention that "you could assemble another episode from all the stuff we had to lose" from this week's episode due to time constraints. But some of it might show up on the DVD.

 

Interesting reading!