Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Unfinished Episode 8: Unfinished Business
What is it ? : Rex, Anakin and The Bad Bunch have returned with Echo to Anaxes, and although they have stopped the flow of data from the Algorithm to Trench, the Republic is still losing due to all of their previous defeats. Mace Windu intends to lead an attack on the most defended Separatist location, dropping his forces into the centre of the site, and fighting his way out. But Echo suggests that he and the Bad Batch, sneak onto Trench's ship, and feed him bad tactics before he notices that Echo is gone, gambling that Watt Tambor won't have informed him because he will not have wanted to admit failure.
Rex, Anakin, Echo and the Bad Batch head to Trench's ship aboard the Havoc Marauder, and manage to board it as Echo cloaks their signal with one from a Separatist transport. They get aboard and head to the data centre where Echo is connected to the computer systems.
Meanwhile Mace Windu and Obi-Wan lead the attack on the Separatists, and get a massive surprise on their forces. Trench decides to call on the algorithm and get advice on the Republic Tactics, and Echo feeds him information to make him move his entire planetary forces to the one site, to overwhelm and destroy the Republic in one quick strike. However, Echo's real plan is to get the battle droids all together where he can feed them a electromagnetic pulse to shut them all down.
Trench follows the tactics, and Mace and Obi-Wan are nearly overwhelmed, when the signal goes out and the entire Separatist forces are deactivated. Trench figures out they have been misled, and they find that the tactics aren't coming from Echo's prison, so they begin tracking it. He also has a final tactic of his own, which was to plant a massive bomb at the site of the Battle, which will not only destroy the site and kill all the Republic forces, but also take out a considerable portion of the planet too.
Finding out about this plan, Echo attempts to get the deactivation code, while Mace heads to the bomb to enter the code. The bomb is shielded, but Mace uses the force through the shield to press the buttons to enter the code, as Echo cracks it and feed him the numbers.
Trench locates the source of the deception, and feeds an energy pulse into the system to knock Echo unconscious, so Anakin heads to get the last digit of the code directly from Trench, defeating him, and getting the code before finally killing him. Mace deactivates the bomb, and Anakin grabs a destruct control for Trenchs command ship, as the Bad Batch fight their way back through the Battle Droids which are swarming them with the unconscious Echo.
As Wrecker and Crosshair attempt to better each others kill counts, they manage to get back to the Havoc Marauder, and as they escape, Anakin gives Wrecker the remote control for the destruct system, allowing him to blow something up, and the explosion and debris take out almost the entire Separatist fleet.
Rex, Echo and the Bad Batch are awarded medals for their actions, and the Clone Army cheers the Bad Batch.
High Points : This is a decent episode, and the action is well done, but my absolute favourite moment, is Mace's speech when they attack the Separatists.
"My name is General Mace Windu of the Jedi Order
At this point in the Clone War I have dismantled or destroyed over 100,000 of you type 1 battle droids.
I am giving you an opportunity to peacefully lay down your weapons.
So that you may be reprogrammed to serve a better purpose than spreading the mindless violence and chaos you have inflicted on the galaxy."
It doesn't work of course, but he didn't have anything to lose by giving the speech, and I love the boastfulness and confidence required to give it in the face of thousands of Battle Droids.
Apart from that, the battle both aboard the Command Ship, as Echo and the Bad Batch fight to feed data to Trench and then locate the codes, is brilliantly tied into the struggle on the surface. Brilliant.
Low Points : Difficult to criticise too much about an unfinished episode, but I did have a couple of faults I wanted to point out.
When Mace's forces are attacking the Separatists on the surface, he sends Clone Headhunters, and LAAT/i's along, accompanied by a Venator Class Star Destroyer. When they come under fire from defensive positions, he orders them to launch Y-Wing bombers from the Star Destroyer, who take out the defences. Since the defences take down numerous LAAT/i's before they're eliminated, wouldn't it have been a better tactic to have the Y-Wings in the air and ready to attack, and the LAAT/i's containing your vulnerable ground forces safely aboard the Star Destroyer?
The Wrecker/Crosshair rivalry is reminiscent of the Gimli/Legolas rivalry from Lord of the Rings, but doesn't play out as well, and throughout Wrecker comes across as childish, upset he doesn't get to blow stuff up and has to sneak aboard the Separatist command ship, and declaring it the happiest day of his life when he gets to blow it up at the end. I know that Clone Wars was targeted towards kids, but this was just annoying.
So what do you really think ? : This was an excellent end to this storyline, and not a terrible last episode to Clone Wars. If this had been the series finale, it would have been fairly poor, but sitting somewhere in the middle of a season it would have been perfectly acceptable.
From my understanding, the Bad Batch were planned to have come back a couple of times, once showing Yoda's "Good relations with the Wookiee's", and they were to become semi-regular characters. Which I think they would have been an interesting addition to the series.
Final Words : Well, that's it, every episode of Clone Wars watched and reviewed. I'll write either an editorial or review of the series as a whole, and then I'm onto something else for a week, and then Rebels.
Score : 8/10
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