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Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Season 2 Episode 16: Cat and Mouse



What is it ? : Bail Organa has been leading a relief mission to Christophsis, but a blockade has led to him being cut off and Anakin is dispatched to break the blockade. His fleet is outmatched and victim to superior tactics, when Obi-Wan arrives and allows the fleet to pull back behind the local moon.
Obi-Wan reveals that he has brought a Prototype Stealth Ship and orders Anakin to take it, filled with supplies down to the planet to help Organa and the forces trapped their.
Trying to force the Republic fleet back into battle so he can defeat it, Separatist Admiral Trench, a giant spider guy, orders the bombing of the Republic forces on the surface.
To create a distraction and save lives on the surface Anakin ambushes the Admirals ship, but fails to damage it while revealing his own existence. Trench lures the stealth ship back out of cloak so he can lock missiles onto it's magnetic signature, however Anakin and Admiral Yularen who has faced Trench before have already worked out this tactic Trench has used against Stealth vessels before, and trick the Separatist missiles to lock onto and destroy Trench's vessel, letting the Republic fleet mop up the remaining parts of the separatist fleet while they take the supplies down to the surface.

High Points : The Stealth ship is an interesting addition, and it's nice to see a cloaking device (a very different one to those used in the Thrawn novels of Heir to the Empire, Dark Force Rising and The Last Command) for the first time since they were first mentioned way back in The Empire Strikes Back.

The episode tries hard, and very nearly captures the atmosphere of World War 2 submarine warfare, the Stealth ship hiding under cloak, revealing itself to open fire, but making itself vulnerable to attack at the same time. However this doesn't really work, as there are no other tactics going on, and the war of minds between the hunter and his prey comes down to, Trench has a trick he's used before against Stealth ships, and they take advantage of that trick, it just seems too easy.

Low Points : The whole idea of this episode seems to be that they've got the first prototype stealth ship, but they're up against an Admiral who has fought stealth ships before and beaten them. This makes stealth ships actually seem quite common. The only effort the episode makes to work around this contradiction, is by mentioning their stealth ship is the smallest, which makes it less useful for carrying in the supplies for the relief mission, and a larger vessel would perhaps have carried more weapons, which would have made Anakins initial attack successful.

The whole battle of wits between Anakin and Trench is close to being good, but unfortunately it never quite gets there. For example, before Anakin ambushes his ship, Trench knows something is going on, he realises the Republic Fleet should have attacked because not only are their forces on the surface close to defeat without supplies, but also he's started a bombing of those forces, but the Republic are still holding back.
He knows they're up to something.
However, instead of him realising that they're holding back because they're sending supplies some other way, and that way must be a stealth ship, he never works it out. He's so close to being brilliant, but fails at the last stage, a missed opportunity to make an okay villain, brilliant.
Likewise, the knowledge that Trench can track stealth ships by their magnetic signature just lands in Anakins lap, before Trench even uses the tactic on them. So Anakin has been told about Trench's tactic ahead of time, and his victory is easy, and feels unearned.
However, I will give them that in a short episode like this, the time necessary to build the story like this, might not be available, but still another missed opportunity in an episode which so nearly could have been brilliant.

So what do you really think ? : While often the A plot of an episode can fail, while the B plot is really interesting, this episode doesn't have a B plot, there's nothing really going on here except the above, and makes the episode quite boring really.

Final Words : The second season of Clone Wars has been of a much higher standard than the first, but sadly this episode is a return to the poorly thought out and executed episodes which plagued the first season, hopefully this is only a blip and we'll get some good ones again soon.

Score : 7/10






Comments made about this Article!



02/Nov/2017 15:03:01 Posted by Shadowkhan81

I liked this episode too!!, as for stealth ships, maybe they decided to try out a smaller ship design, so it would have a weaker magnetic signature, than a bigger ship? Trench did defeated larger ships with cloaks. Also remember they had no intel on who was in command of the blockade, as for they knew Trench was dead, they had no idea he defeated cloaks before. So its was bad luck for them, testing the stealth ship on this battle!!!

The novel Tarkin does mention cloaking devices, Stygium crystals are used for this ship and Tarkin's own ship Carrion Spike, the Spike is based on the stealth ship in the this episode, but its far more advanced ship, with can fire its weapon when cloaked!!!!!!!!!

P.S can you some stat on the Carrion Spike??


05/Nov/2017 19:05:28 Posted by Freddy

I'm working my way through the Animated series and new movies at the moment, but have plans to move onto the newer books (especially interesting ones like Tarkin), so will get around to it, but it might not be for a year or so.


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