Clone Wars series (SPOILERS)

[TC Pilot]

Or Dooku just did what Obi-Wan warned them he would do: come back and crush them.

[DesertFly]

Dooku's way of dealing with pirates was better compared to Obi Wan's.

I was rather surprised to see the high and mighty aristocrat wasn't above strangling someone with a pair of handcuffs.

you'd think he'd use the force to kill him.

I was honestly surprised that even a dozen (or however many there were) pirates were able to capture Dooku just by surrounding him with blasters. He's a Sith lord! He should have been able to do something like a radial blast or leap to one side or the other. We've seen him do the latter (at the beginning of RotS), and it's not outside the realm of possibility that a powerful Force user would be able to at least knock a few of the pirates down and ignite his lightsaber before they reacted.

[VT-16]

He seemed to be about to unleash some lightning when Hondo first turned against him, but then everyone else in the crowd turned their blasters on Dooku and he relented. The entire commentary for the episode was basically Filoni almost apologizing for depicting a Sith Lord being taken so seemingly easily. But he did say the point was to show no-one's totally invincible in this show. There are limits, even to scheming Sith Lords. I mean, Palpatine almost dies in ROTS, twice, because of his own risky plans.

[Raesene]

Numbers are important - evan a master could have problems deflecting blaster bolts while frying several pirates with lightning.
He might have also had problems leaving the planet - maybe the ship was secured less (due to the party, the power loss or Jar-Jar's actions) when he escaped than during his arrival.

[Vympel]

Latest episode was pretty good - somehow the Consular-class cruiser/ Republic frigate (the ship at the start of TPM, but with guns on) goes to hyperspace and it's nowhere close to 6 planetary diameters away from the planet - it's apparently in the upper atmosphere.

We also see two new kinds of Droid, a variant of the Super Battle Droid simply called "Super Droids" ("Jump Droids" by Wookiepedia), equipped with some kind of propulsion to allow them to fly, they're deployed to board her stricken Star Destroyer.

The other kind is the Tactical Droid, the commander of the Separatist force. It may be that the reason they try to board the warship at first rather than destroy it outright as later is that they're trying to recover the Tactical Droid brain Aayla Secura captured in "Head games", the online comic prequel to this episode (I trust everyone has been reading them, too?).

[VT-16]

And since they're on Maridun, I assume next week we'll get General George Takei and his neutron bombs.

[VT-16]

Ok, seen it now. This show continues to impress me. Being unrestrained from having to follow the movie structure, SW can actually remain interesting and relevant. My only criticism is that in a few days time, there'll probably be furry porn of the Lurmen. -_-

Their rolling movement is apparantly a reference to the native Amanin, which is a pretty cool way of acknowledging something from the EU.

[Vympel]

And since they're on Maridun, I assume next week we'll get General George Takei and his neutron bombs.

The preview confirms it, he's there. I don't know what kind of "super weapon" he's got, but we see an AAT modified with some sort of large-bore missile launcher - presumably the weapon talked about in the reports about Takei's involvement.

Apparently the Jump Droid moniker is a reference to a comic derived from the old Clone Wars cartoon- those had what looked to be jetpacks rather than dedicated built-in thrusters, though.

[VT-16]

Yeah, I noticed the difference in jet design. It's still nice with some cross-medium references.

I also noticed Takei seemed to have no real voice modulation, which is good. I'll enjoy hearing his voice playing a sinister villain. The neutron bomb thingy appears to be the weapon that tank was carrying. Probably a reference to the Nuclear artillery only more specialized.

[Darksider]

Am I the only one who found the battle at the beginning of the episode to be extremely awesome?

EDIT: Am I mistaken, or was Anakin's respirator making vader's breathing sounds?

[VT-16]

That battle is possibly the most frenetic depicted in SW so far. It's very linear in movements but everything just runs along at a higher than usual pace.

And the respirator is intentional.

[Knife]

Is there a reason given for the Malevalence being the main CIS ship instead of the Invisible Hand?

[Darksider]

oh, and guess what?

Looks like the trektards on spacebabies are already bitching about how the latest episode "completely disproves" high-end SW firepower levels.

I'm shocked

As if one instance of atmospheric blasts not causing nuke-like explosions somehow disproves every other instance of high-level firepower from SW ships.

I've never understood that. Why is it that, rather than try to rationalize it with the rest of the series, they see one instance of low level firepower and think "See? See? this disproves all the other evidence!"

[VT-16]

The Providence-class production was used to hide the production of the larger Subjugator-class, according to the new TCWCG.

[Raesene]

oh, and guess what?

Looks like the trektards on spacebabies are already bitching about how the latest episode "completely disproves" high-end SW firepower levels.

I'm shocked

As if one instance of atmospheric blasts not causing nuke-like explosions somehow disproves every other instance of high-level firepower from SW ships.

I've never understood that. Why is it that, rather than try to rationalize it with the rest of the series, they see one instance of low level firepower and think "See? See? this disproves all the other evidence!"

That fact that the CIS treid to board the republic ship and the republic ship might not want to kill itself seemed to have sailed past their brains...

The battle and the respirator sounds were awesome, I'm looking forward to the next episode.

Vympel, I didn't know about the comic tie-in, so thanks for the link

[VT-16]

I like how the commentary talks about both the recycled concept arts and the inspiration from the Amanin battle-centric Empire comic. Even the part where the Lurmen rolling into a ball is based on the Amanin way of travelling.

[Ender]

oh, and guess what?

Looks like the trektards on spacebabies are already bitching about how the latest episode "completely disproves" high-end SW firepower levels.

I'm shocked

As if one instance of atmospheric blasts not causing nuke-like explosions somehow disproves every other instance of high-level firepower from SW ships.

I've never understood that. Why is it that, rather than try to rationalize it with the rest of the series, they see one instance of low level firepower and think "See? See? this disproves all the other evidence!"

1) SPHA-Ts have show consistency with high power and lack of massive explosions for some time.

2) Without knowing the power of the bolts (vice the energy) you can only develop a lower limit for the energy of the bolts by explosion scaling. I posted a thread about this with a spreadsheet calculator this summer, I think it got moved to SLAM. Point is that power is a major factor in the size of fireballs, not just energy. It is entirely possible to input teratons worth of energy and have only ton or kiloton type fireballs so long as the time a low fraction of a second instead of on the order of nanoseconds.

[Serafina]

Why the heck do the droids even attemp a boarding action?

Ventress boarding action to rescue (or kill) the viceroy made sense (its hard to rescue someone if you blew him up), but in this case the CIS had numerical superiority and did not need to capture anyone...

So, why did they do it? Disable the rescue pods? Quicken the destruction of the ship? Attacking an target of opportunity (the gaoing hole in the armor)?

[Darksider]

Why the heck do the droids even attemp a boarding action?

Ventress boarding action to rescue (or kill) the viceroy made sense (its hard to rescue someone if you blew him up), but in this case the CIS had numerical superiority and did not need to capture anyone...

So, why did they do it? Disable the rescue pods? Quicken the destruction of the ship? Attacking an target of opportunity (the gaoing hole in the armor)?

Ayla secura is a jedi general. They may have been attempting to capture her since an opportunity had presented itself, but when it took too long the droid commander just went "fuck it" and blew up the ship

[Ender]

Why the heck do the droids even attemp a boarding action?

Ventress boarding action to rescue (or kill) the viceroy made sense (its hard to rescue someone if you blew him up), but in this case the CIS had numerical superiority and did not need to capture anyone...

So, why did they do it? Disable the rescue pods? Quicken the destruction of the ship? Attacking an target of opportunity (the gaoing hole in the armor)?

Gather intelligence I'd imagine

[Coalition]

Gather intelligence I'd imagine

That's be a nice usage of the droids. Combat droids to deal with the clones and distract the Jedi, while hacker droids get into the main computer, and upload critical data to the Sep fleet via their internal communicators. The droids have their own communications on-site, so they can easily share bandwidth to handle larger files, and avoid duplicating transmissions.

If you don't recover the droids, it is not a problem since you can build the replacements much faster. You can also copy the programs from the sent troops, modify as needed based on combat experience, then upload into the new droids, giving them a form of experience.

[Serafina]

Gather intelligence I'd imagine

That's be a nice usage of the droids. Combat droids to deal with the clones and distract the Jedi, while hacker droids get into the main computer, and upload critical data to the Sep fleet via their internal communicators. The droids have their own communications on-site, so they can easily share bandwidth to handle larger files, and avoid duplicating transmissions.

If you don't recover the droids, it is not a problem since you can build the replacements much faster. You can also copy the programs from the sent troops, modify as needed based on combat experience, then upload into the new droids, giving them a form of experience.

Thats a nice strategy, and it DOES make sense - seriously expecting to capture a Jedi General on board of his/her own ship...not so much.

[Cal Wright]

Latest episode was pretty good - somehow the Consular-class cruiser/ Republic frigate (the ship at the start of TPM, but with guns on) goes to hyperspace and it's nowhere close to 6 planetary diameters away from the planet - it's apparently in the upper atmosphere.

We also see two new kinds of Droid, a variant of the Super Battle Droid simply called "Super Droids" ("Jump Droids" by Wookiepedia), equipped with some kind of propulsion to allow them to fly, they're deployed to board her stricken Star Destroyer.

The other kind is the Tactical Droid, the commander of the Separatist force. It may be that the reason they try to board the warship at first rather than destroy it outright as later is that they're trying to recover the Tactical Droid brain Aayla Secura captured in "Head games", the online comic prequel to this episode (I trust everyone has been reading them, too?).

That's actually the first thing I thought of when the cruiser dropped from lightspeed. It was right on top of the planet. Then when they made the jump they were obviously in breathable atmosphere due to the landing ships.

My thought is that the usually explanation is that the hyperdrive's have safeties which have been mentioned in the EU numerous times. Which will shut the hyperdrive off, or prevent it from engaging when affected by a gravity shadow. Making Interdictors a bitch. Not to mention they were going to fly into the star along their path. There again Han warned in ANH that you could still fly through a star or by a super nova while traveling in hyperspace, so it's a bit confusing about the characteristics of hyperspace.

I've heard it's supposed to be entering another dimension for traveling, but then why would you have to worry about mass shadows and stellar objects?

[Serafina]

Well, they hurried to undock in this episode, implying that, would they not have done so, something BAD would have happened. Most likely. both ships would have taken devastating damage.

Hans statement "flying through a star" was more a figure of speech, i think. The ship would most likely crash into the star - given the insane speeds, it would perhaps fly through, but not survive this.
Oh, and he was talking about what happens if you do not do the right calculations - further implying that flying through a star is a bad accident.

[Redleader34]

The capture episode was nice if nothing else that it confirms what KOTOR 2 said, in the sense that it is possible for normal people to capture Jedi, it is just work and training that makes it possible. Pretty good cartoon, nice use of recycled assets, and a good series. This is the cure in a way to the generic star war novels being published.