The Clone Wars Season 3 discussion thread.

[Vympel]

Upon further reflection, this extract from a post on TFN (mostly) sums up my feelings about this amazingly stupid episode:-

That was so mind-numbingly terrible, all I could do was laugh. Season 3 has thus far been an absolute bust. Padme's moralistic self-righteousness couldn't get any more hamfisted. "Oh woe is me! Why am I the only one who cares?!" she laments near the end of her Great Vacuous Crusade. I don't know. Perhaps because your entire position is like your ever-changing hairstyles. One minute you're babbling about the fear of bankruptcy and the next minute you're supporting initiatives that will eventually...wait for it...bankrupt the Republic.

The premise of this episode, like so many of Season 3's heavy-handed lectures (Corruption anyone?), is beyond flawed. The notion that a massive Galactic Republic is going to go bankrupt from funding an additional 5 million troops (that's .0005% of Coruscant's population) makes me giggle.

And you gotta love the propaganda terms: Deregulation bad! Government providing for "basic needs" like Healthcare good! doh!

Let's think that one through. If spending money for 5 million additional troops equals bankruptcy, then what might spending money on education, health care, and housing for trillions of people equal? I mean...really? Padme makes it sound like it's either one or the other and the fiscal conservative in me thinks that if I had a choice between spending money on 5 million people or spending money on untold trillions, I'd probably spend the money on the 5 million and enjoy my financial solvency.

...

The better parts of this episode were unfortunately drowned out by some facepalmingly illogical context. For example, Padme's speech was quite stirring if you tuned out her words and simply watched the visuals and listened to the music. But if you really stopped to think about what she was saying, all you could do was laugh at both Padme's character and the writers themselves. Poor Tekla is apparently just a destitute, war-torn commoner living in the Flyover District of Coruscant who also happens to serve as the handmaiden of one of the most powerful Senators in the galaxy. Who writes this garbage? doh!

If that's the case then why doesn't Padme get off her stingy self-righteous credit stick and help a sister out? She's on her staff for crying out loud! And we're supposed to believe that Tekla has to take a sewage bath once every two weeks because of military spending on a few million troops? Wouldn't Padme have noticed a smell every morning or something? Apparently she's just that big of a whiny out-of-touch elitist. For Force's sake, with the amount of populist self-loathing in this episode, I half expected to see the camera cut to a 3-D model of Charlie Rangel simply nodding his head in agreement.

Secondly, the bounty hunters themselves were the worst. I don't mean bad. I mean the worst. Forget the continuity quibble on the Selkath's voice, the fact that Dooku had outsourced assassinating a Senator that had eluded two Sith Lords to a couple of drunken fish-heads makes me seriously question the mental efficacy of him as a villain.

And then there's the minor fact that opposition Senators were being ambushed and beaten up, which didn't even draw so much as a protest from the senators themselves. "Hi, my name is Onaconda Farr, and I got my ass beat for speaking my mind. Someone tried to kill Padme and Bail got in a slight fender bender. I think something's up."

Shouldn't these supposed "brave" self-righteous senators draw some attention to that fact if they wanted to expose that apparently someone wanted the bill to pass really badly? Wouldn't exposing that shore up opposition?

This show is nosediving fast.

You can dismiss most of this complete idiocy as the blathering of politicians appealing to the basest of dumbed-down rhetoric (i.e. "Social Security is going to bankrupt America!!!") in service of their dogma, but the fact that the writing is Just. So. Poor. can't be escaped.

[Srelex]

I haven't seen the episode yet, but is it possible that all the '5 million=bankruptcy' stuff was rhetoric being spewed by Padmé and co? Yeah, I know, but politicians have said stupider things IRL, and if published professional authors would buy those sorts of numbers...

[Vympel]

I haven't seen the episode yet, but is it possible that all the '5 million=bankruptcy' stuff was rhetoric being spewed by Padmé and co? Yeah, I know, but politicians have said stupider things IRL, and if published professional authors would buy those sorts of numbers...

Thinking back, they spout this inane nonsense in private amongst themselves too. It's still pretty much the only rational solution, but even if we take that path, it still makes the characters incredibly stupid - especially Padme.

[TC Pilot]

* Paying for 5 million additional clone troopers (which is a whole other kettle of fish) is somehow too costly? Unless the Republic is already stretched to the limit in terms of expenditures already and this is the straw that breaks the camel's back, this should barely be a blip;

*LOL @ the Banking Clan saying the Separatists have already put out a loan for 3 million additional battle droids and the Republic senator worrying they'll be wiped out. When the same show already tells us that the Separatists have them outnumbered "100 to one"? What, an extra 3 million is going to tip the balance?

Perhaps it's still early in the war, and the Republic has yet to really mobilize itself into a proper state for waging war?

The fact Padme mentions non-clone forces also gives a convenient out, if it really matters all that much.

[RogueIce]

I personally can't believe we're now eleven episodes in and there's just been a massive fuckload of these incredibly boring Senate episodes. Seriously, there hasn't been a battle episode since the beginning of the season.

Well, next week they're re-showing ARC Troopers, so at least you can watch that again.

I wonder if it'll still have that sloppy cut of the Commando getting impaled by Ventriss...

Perhaps it's still early in the war, and the Republic has yet to really mobilize itself into a proper state for waging war?

This is set after the costume change, where Anakin starts looking like Ep3 Anakain. So...hard to say, but I guess not. I guess we'll have to see if the Clone Troopers got a costume upgrade as well.

And we get to wait until January for new episodes according to Wookieepedia. Damn it!

[Srelex]

They had that Rodian senator, didn't they? He died earlier on, right? Or is that just a gaffe?

[TC Pilot]

No, it's not a gaffe. There's no chronological order to the episodes, particularly this season, and they're well aware of it. This took place before the episode where the Rodian Senator was assassinated (which had the Phase 2 armor schematics displayed in it).

[Vympel]

Yeah, I'm surprised that its 3 season in and people still haven't realised that the show is not intended to be in chronological order

[Thanas]

Awful, just awful. Hey, three million more droids = curbstomp? Really? The police force of coruscant should be that size alone. And hey, apparently paying for basic needs for the citizens is somehow approaching the same level as paying for five million clones?

I suspect the writer was high.

[Srelex]

It's funny that earlier in the show they mentioned 'thousands of droid armies'. Assuming just a million for each, that's billions of droids.

Yeah, I prefer it when they keep numbers ambigious. Everyone's happy.

[Darth Fanboy]

So is the third season subtitled "secrets" or whatever because every episode is intended to supplement others from season two and three (except apparently for the one with the Separatist Congress) or what?

[Vympel]

I think its called 'secrets' because they're keeping the scripts they have that aren't boring and stupid secret.

[Connor MacLeod]

I expect that the "5 million = bankrupt" will be leapt upon as proof that the Republic/empire are really alot smaller militaryily and whatnot than those "filthy warsies maximalists' claim, but the quote doesn't really bug me for various reasons:

1.) Politics. The Republic is a corrupt and fucked up morass of broken and convoluted politics (much like the United States, in fact.) How much does your average US Representative or SEnator ACTUALLY understand about issues (even ones they purportedly support?) Being a politicla official does not equate knowledge. And of course there is always issues like bias, propoganda, ideology, etc.

2.) Economy. Even if the above isn't true, the idea isn't wholly unreasonable. The Republic itself, not just its politics is incredibly broken and corrupt (in part due to Lucas's heavy handed political "commentary", which I suspect may be influencing CW episodes this time around. ITZ TEH DRAMA!) We don't really *know* much about the logistics or economics of the war effort, we just know tidbits like this. The ROTS:ICS mentioned that the Republic was spending its "waning wealth" on its military forces as well (although I suspect Curtis envisioned a far greater scale for that to be true.)

5 Million being small is quite true relative to the scale of the REpublic or Empire... but that assumes a war is being fought logically and somewhat honestly. Which I kinda doubt the Clone Wars is. Despite alot of the propoganda about it, I don't really think that it is truly a "total war" type scenario on a galactic scale, regardless of the actual numbers of troopers you are arguing, so I don't think there is any overriding reason for it to be fought efficiently or intelligently (point of fact, the vast majority of it seems to be fought inefficiently and even un-intelligently. The mere fact they are using clones rather than battle droids proves this.) Instead, I expect that the bulk of the Republic (That is the corporate and poltiical elements) view it as a massive profit-making opportunity and is doing its utmost to milk the entire system for what it's worth (think US Military-Industrial complex). I mean face it, the clone army from the get go was the result of an entirely commercial venture (a morally questionable one at that - why don't we get more episodes about that?) and I doubt the Kaminoans have changed their stance on that at all. And thus it is quite likely they would try to either maintain or jack up the price on the Republic (an dwhat will the Republic do? Until they get Spaarti stuff it seems like only the Kaminoans are the source of clones, even if other facilities than Kamino exist - which they probably do. I could see the Kaminoans having a patent for their clonetrooper models and forcing others to license it to produce them.)

So it is quite conceivable for the corrupt republic to be making a huge investment in military for very small returns (how many times has it happened with the US in real life, again to make a comparison). Hell, we can just see this as the origins of what is to become the Galactic Empire's military industrial complex, where you can hide the budgets for an entire cadre of assassin droids AND planet destroying battlestations in otherwise mundane budgets.

[Darksider]

Something i've been wondering about this episode. Are the 5 million Clones being raised as an entirely new army, or as replacements for those already lost in battle?

Because the Republic should go through 5 million clones in a month if they really are fighting on hundreds of worlds. I wonder if they wanted the loan to raise an additional army of five million troops because replacing casualties to the existing armies is sucking up the Republic budget.

As for the quality of this season, I agree with Vympel. There really hasn't been a genuinely "good" episode since the Kamino invasion, although the Mandalorian eps and the one with the blue guy's kidnapped daughter were serviceable. The more they focus on Senate Drama, the worse the season is overall. They can do battle and war episodes well, but political drama completely eludes them.

[Srelex]

I suppose in principle the idea of senate episodes is okay, to give us an alternative from constant fighting porn, but they would do well to improve the balance here.

[Vympel]

I expect that the "5 million = bankrupt" will be leapt upon as proof that the Republic/empire are really alot smaller militaryily and whatnot than those "filthy warsies maximalists' claim, but the quote doesn't really bug me for various reasons:

LOL. Yes, because of course the Republic = The Empire in all respects, and every source regarding the Empire's size and military strength is now invalidated!

I have no doubt some idiots would argue that, but they'd be so stupid they'd need mechanical assistance to breathe.

[The Romulan Republic]

I could see someone using it in a Federation vs. Republic debate. Or they could argue that while the Empire might be stronger, its probably not going to be able to afford orders of magnitude more troops.

Though one thing that makes it a little brighter is that five million need not be taken to mean "just the troops as they come out of Kamino." It might actually mean "five million troops and all of their armor, weapons, equipement, supplies, armored vehicles, artillery, fighters, bombers, gunships, and star cruisers." Still too low though.

[Galvatron]

So...

Does this episode vindicate Karen Traviss?

[Connor MacLeod]

So...

Does this episode vindicate Karen Traviss?

well clearly not. 5 million is much bigger than 3 million, so you can't call this a Talifan conspiracy, unless we are to believe that all twelve alleged Talifans are the sole creaters of TCW TV series (and Lucas is one of them.)

[Connor MacLeod]

Something i've been wondering about this episode. Are the 5 million Clones being raised as an entirely new army, or as replacements for those already lost in battle?

I'm not sure it makes a difference either way, except on purely semantics terms.

Because the Republic should go through 5 million clones in a month if they really are fighting on hundreds of worlds. I wonder if they wanted the loan to raise an additional army of five million troops because replacing casualties to the existing armies is sucking up the Republic budget.

As I said it depends on how you are going to look at things. For example, what is the current price tag on a Kaminoan clone soldier? Its quite possible that various factors plausible and true and contrived are used to drive up the prices (rarity of materials and shortages for exampel - there IS a war on after all and its hard to believe that shipping lines will remain consistent or constant as they do in peacetime) might 'force' the Kaminoans to request more per trooper, for example.

Things like logistics and the intensity of the conflicts may also matter too. Does the "5 million clones" bit factor in all the equipment they get, including transport ability? What about maintaining those troops (And the supply lines?)

There is literally so many variables we don't know in this war (and even those we know may not be 'the rule') that singular numbers don't neccesarily mean alot on a greater scale. Even the infamous "200 gigatons" bit doesn't neccesarily tell us EVERYTHING we need to know and can leave lots of wiggle room depending on other numbers and inteprretations.

It may be that after rewatching some other conclusions come to light, but thats my current thinking on it

As for the quality of this season, I agree with Vympel. There really hasn't been a genuinely "good" episode since the Kamino invasion, although the Mandalorian eps and the one with the blue guy's kidnapped daughter were serviceable. The more they focus on Senate Drama, the worse the season is overall. They can do battle and war episodes well, but political drama completely eludes them.

We're pretty much in the "middle" of the series now.. it doesn't surprise me that things start to slump a bit.. and that the bulk of this seems to be filler is unsurprising either. The first two seasons were basically "setting the stage" so would be different and have othre attractions.

The question remains how the last two seasons will be handled.. a weak start is expected but whether season 4 finsihes storng, and how the whole of season 5 goes, will ultimately decide how this series is regarded methinks, since the latter stuff will depend entirely on the setup from the earlier seasons (assuming they ARE setting up for anything that is.)

[Connor MacLeod]

I expect that the "5 million = bankrupt" will be leapt upon as proof that the Republic/empire are really alot smaller militaryily and whatnot than those "filthy warsies maximalists' claim, but the quote doesn't really bug me for various reasons:

LOL. Yes, because of course the Republic = The Empire in all respects, and every source regarding the Empire's size and military strength is now invalidated!

I have no doubt some idiots would argue that, but they'd be so stupid they'd need mechanical assistance to breathe.

Thats vs debating for oyu.

Of course, to be fair there are people who apply that same logic to other universes, even on here. Like trek. (STV PHOTORPS OMGOMG WEEEEEKKK!!!)

[Vympel]

ST:V is best used as a weapon to reply to unreasonable idiots employing similar logic on the other side.

In any event, whatever the price of a single clone soldier is, and no matter how inflated, the notion that the cost of those 5 million could ever seriously put the provision of basic services to the Republic's citizens (or even a fraction of them) in serious jeopardy is just ludicrous, as is this idiocy that 3 million additional battle droids are somehow worthy of comment. There are probably more protocol droids in a few Coruscant upper-class suburbs than that. Its just fundamnetally broken writing.

[Connor MacLeod]

ST:V is best used as a weapon to reply to unreasonable idiots employing similar logic on the other side.

Same with alot of the death star related arguments (firepower, industrial capacity, etc.) It would be nice though if your average vs debator realized that the point of alot of "sci fi" arguments made by certain people (like Mike) were reactions to rabid fanatics and not meant, in and of themselves, to be considered "normal" or "plausible" tactics (since they clearly don't take into account complexities.)

Oh well.

In any event, whatever the price of a single clone soldier is, and no matter how inflated, the notion that the cost of those 5 million could ever seriously put the provision of basic services to the Republic's citizens (or even a fraction of them) in serious jeopardy is just ludicrous, as is this idiocy that 3 million additional battle droids are somehow worthy of comment. There are probably more protocol droids in a few Coruscant upper-class suburbs than that. Its just fundamnetally broken writing.

The battle droid thing is admittedly harder to argue, although there are LOTS of kinds of battle droids by now, and the B1s are the lowest of the bunch (to which, we might recal, the Clone was argued to be equal to, outside of tactics and initiative and equipment.)

And the 5 million clone troopers... I'd like to argue with you, but I live in the Capitalist PAradise of the US, upon which the GE and Republic seem to be ham-fisted parodies of. So there you go.

Edit: Just so we're clear, my point is: You're making a logical argument about something which can and has been irrationally handled or can cause irrationality in others. (EG money). And where people can and are irrational, stupid, greedy or whatever, all bets can and usually are off.

[Srelex]

If only they had mentioned millions of 'units' of clones and droids...at least that'd be easier to handwave.

[Darksider]

Something i've been wondering about this episode. Are the 5 million Clones being raised as an entirely new army, or as replacements for those already lost in battle?

I'm not sure it makes a difference either way, except on purely semantics terms.

What I meant was that it might be funding to form another "army" of five million clone troops, and thus increase the number of "armies" the republic has in the field by one, with replacement clones for casualties being an entirely separate matter. If the republic and the Confederacy are committing most of their reserves to replace battlefield casualties, I can see how politicos on both sight might think that one more army of five million clones or three million droids would break the stalemate and give their side an advantage.