The Clone Wars Season 4.

[The Romulan Republic]

The new season is on tonight, with Mon Calimari.

Some comments:

-The shark-faced separatist ambassador looks strange.

-I was slightly shocked that the shark-headed guy actually mauled the enemy with his jaws. Pretty savage, albeit a rather stupid tactic vs people with ranged weapons.

-Without knowing whatever backstory the EU has on this in detail, I have to say that if the monarchy is hereditary, its really not fair to expect the Quarren to always be ruled by a Mon Calimari. So its hard not to have some sympathy for the Quarren, even though siding with Dooku is as bad as it is stupid.

[The Romulan Republic]

The second episode just finished.

Comments:

-It was nice to see the Gungans getting a chance to kick ass. Hearing Jar Jar shout "Nosa thinking" was just funny though.

-Did Anakin just Spoiler

take out a tower, basically an underwater skyscraper, using the Force?

That's still possibly the most impressive show of telekinetic power on this show thus far.

Edit: forgot to add a spoiler warning to the title. Would a moderator kindly fix that?

[Darksider]

I liked it. Lots of action, and for once a two-parter doesn't end with the good guys winning. With Anakin, Padme, and Kit Fisto prisoners of the separatists, it looks like next week will be interesting.

[Knife]

Hmm, have to go check out starwars.com and see if it's up for viewing yet. Last season kind of took the wind out of the sails for me, but I'm willing to see where they go before abandoning it completely.

[JME2]

Good season premiere. Seeing a young Ackbar was also great.

[Ryag Han]

it was a good start. the underwater battles were a bit lam. for the most part, the animation and story was very good.

water war was a bit confusing. why did they went into civil war again? the Quarren defending their rights of not always having a Mon Calamari leader?? and the republic said nothing on their rights being screwed with, their separatists after all...

Gungan Attack was awesome. Anakins little trick, the gungans, hell, even jar jar.

can't wait for the next episode. three words: Spoiler

GIANT ELECTRIC ELLS

[The Romulan Republic]

I actually quite liked the battle scenes in these episodes. There was something quite spooky about the initial appearance of the cyborg jellyfish, Anakin pulling down the tower was cool, and fighting a battle in the middle of an underwater tornado was good too.

I'm definitely looking forward to the Giant Eels.

[AndroAsc]

The minimalism in CW is getting ridiculous. We are fighting for a planet and we see less than 1000 combatants on screen. Why are 80% of the combatants just footsoldiers? Where are the mechanized vehicles? Apart from the Jellyfish and the cyclone-making machine, there was none... and the Mon Cals lost because they lost the city? So does Mon Calamari has only one fucking city on the entire planet!?!?!?!

Not to mention that the Republic and Separatist deployed ONE fucking cruiser for the initial battle to capture the entire planet. I had problems with CW showing 10-ish cruisers per battle, and now just ONE is driving me nuts!!! Isn't Mon Calamari supposed to be one of the more important planets (on the scale of Kuat and Corellia kind of importance) in the SW universe? How is it justifiable to invade Mon Cal with just ONE fucking cruiser?

CW writers are fucktards...

[The Romulan Republic]

The minimalism in CW is getting ridiculous. We are fighting for a planet and we see less than 1000 combatants on screen. Why are 80% of the combatants just footsoldiers? Where are the mechanized vehicles? Apart from the Jellyfish and the cyclone-making machine, there was none... and the Mon Cals lost because they lost the city? So does Mon Calamari has only one fucking city on the entire planet!?!?!?!

Is it possible their were other forces fighting off-screen that we didn't see?

As for mechanized vehicles:

"Apart from the Jellyfish and the cyclone-making machine..." so in other words they did have mechanized support.

Not to mention that the Republic and Separatist deployed ONE fucking cruiser for the initial battle to capture the entire planet. I had problems with CW showing 10-ish cruisers per battle, and now just ONE is driving me nuts!!! Isn't Mon Calamari supposed to be one of the more important planets (on the scale of Kuat and Corellia kind of importance) in the SW universe? How is it justifiable to invade Mon Cal with just ONE fucking cruiser?

Perhaps because it was a civil war, and they were relying mostly on their local allies/proxies?

As for finding ten cruisers insufficient, that's just silly. Star Wars has huge fleets, but you rarely see a lot of those ships in one place. The reason should be obvious- they have to spread those ships out across an entire galaxy.

[Darksider]

The fighting on Mon Calamari did have the feel of a civil war that both sides were getting involved in to "protect their interests."

[Knife]

Meh, standard crappy TV/movie tactics of one bad guy blog rushing a good guy blob. Totally unimaginative and silly.

[The Romulan Republic]

There was more to it than that. We did see at least an attempt at more inventive tactics, what with the cyborg jellyfish, Anakin taking out the tower, the Jedi and company using the wreckage of the ship to evade detection, and the Confederate tornado makers.

But yes, a lot of it seems to be charging towards the other guys in a mob. But that is, sadly, nothing unique to these episodes.

[AndroAsc]

Is it possible their were other forces fighting off-screen that we didn't see?

As for mechanized vehicles:

"Apart from the Jellyfish and the cyclone-making machine..." so in other words they did have mechanized support.

Mon-Cals had no mechanized support, and the battle was still primarily infantry focused. If there is off-screen fighting it should be clearly mentioned somewhere in the storyline.

Perhaps because it was a civil war, and they were relying mostly on their local allies/proxies?

As for finding ten cruisers insufficient, that's just silly. Star Wars has huge fleets, but you rarely see a lot of those ships in one place. The reason should be obvious- they have to spread those ships out across an entire galaxy.

A sector fleet comprises of about 20 star destroyers at the time of ANH and beyond. That was after the war. I would expect that during the Clone Wars things would be more militarized, to the order of at least one magnitude higher. So your excuse of spreading ships across the entire galaxy is lame. It's as lame as saying that during the Cold War the US sent a cruiser to invade Soviet Union cause their other naval assets were "spreaded out".

[The Romulan Republic]

Mon-Cals had no mechanized support, and the battle was still primarily infantry focused. If there is off-screen fighting it should be clearly mentioned somewhere in the storyline.

I'm not saying it wouldn't have been nice to see some Calimari armor. At least the Confederates were mechanized though. Which is very clearly why they won.

A sector fleet comprises of about 20 star destroyers at the time of ANH and beyond. That was after the war. I would expect that during the Clone Wars things would be more militarized, to the order of at least one magnitude higher. So your excuse of spreading ships across the entire galaxy is lame. It's as lame as saying that during the Cold War the US sent a cruiser to invade Soviet Union cause their other naval assets were "spreaded out".

I am well aware of the size of a sector fleet, thank you. Perhaps you are not aware that a sector in Star Wars can include thousands of worlds. So even going by your completely unsourced, unsupported, guess as to appropriate Clone Wars numbers (when the EU implies if not outright states that the Empire was more militarized), a sector fleet might be 200 ships spread across a thousand systems.

[Ryag Han]

A sector fleet comprises of about 20 star destroyers at the time of ANH and beyond. That was after the war. I would expect that during the Clone Wars things would be more militarized, to the order of at least one magnitude higher. So your excuse of spreading ships across the entire galaxy is lame. It's as lame as saying that during the Cold War the US sent a cruiser to invade Soviet Union cause their other naval assets were "spreaded out".

what are your expectations based on? the empire made militarization its primary focus, while the republic had not. as for the Cold War analogy, its a matter of numbers. they had hundreds of thousands of planets. do the math.
sure, its unrealistic that they send one ship to capture a planet. i assume that was a very important city, the capital maybe. if Washington DC is captured in a war, together with most of the leadership, wouldn't that pretty much win a war? course there should still be hundreds of thousands of mon cal warriors defending the dam city. just get over it.

[Bellosh101]

The minimalism in CW is getting ridiculous. We are fighting for a planet and we see less than 1000 combatants on screen. Why are 80% of the combatants just footsoldiers? Where are the mechanized vehicles? Apart from the Jellyfish and the cyclone-making machine, there was none... and the Mon Cals lost because they lost the city? So does Mon Calamari has only one fucking city on the entire planet!?!?!?!

Keep in mind that this is a 22-minute 3D cartoon for kids we're dealing with, here. Given budget and time constraints, TV will naturally show a more minimalistic SW universe than the movies, comics and novels.

[The Romulan Republic]

Not sure how well that excuse holds up. The original Clone Wars shorts were animated as well, and had even greater time constraints, but they were a lot less minimalist (probably the least of any EU work I've seen). Then again, they lacked the level of detail the animation does in this one.

[Srelex]

Not sure how well that excuse holds up. The original Clone Wars shorts were animated as well, and had even greater time constraints, but they were a lot less minimalist (probably the least of any EU work I've seen). Then again, they lacked the level of detail the animation does in this one.

Then again they probably went too far the other way by having Acclamators deploy more gunships than could possible fit inside, and stuff like that.

[The Romulan Republic]

True, but that doesn't mean it didn't look awesome.

[darthscott]

The minimalism in CW is getting ridiculous. We are fighting for a planet and we see less than 1000 combatants on screen. Why are 80% of the combatants just footsoldiers? Where are the mechanized vehicles? Apart from the Jellyfish and the cyclone-making machine, there was none... and the Mon Cals lost because they lost the city? So does Mon Calamari has only one fucking city on the entire planet!?!?!?!

Not to mention that the Republic and Separatist deployed ONE fucking cruiser for the initial battle to capture the entire planet. I had problems with CW showing 10-ish cruisers per battle, and now just ONE is driving me nuts!!! Isn't Mon Calamari supposed to be one of the more important planets (on the scale of Kuat and Corellia kind of importance) in the SW universe? How is it justifiable to invade Mon Cal with just ONE fucking cruiser?

CW writers are fucktards...

Yeah I concur it really gets hard to watch when they are just so super minimalistic, unlike the first batch of Clone Wars cartoons. I understand the constraints and target audience they have, but man I think they could try much harder to increase the numbers and fire power of the parties involved. Though I must admit the series does have some great visuals and I am grateful for new episodes for any space based series these days.

[The Romulan Republic]

I must admit, I would like to see a really large space battle. As in, at least sector fleet strength on either side. And the battle is the focus on the episode (unlike Kamino in early season three). I'd also like to see a Republic dreadnought, perhaps a Mandator.

[Ritterin Sophia]

Holy shit. This new season is pretty brutal. I just saw that shark dude get blown up and they showed his head profusely bleeding and floating to the bottom of the sea.

[The Romulan Republic]

Holy shit. This new season is pretty brutal. I just saw that shark dude get blown up and they showed his head profusely bleeding and floating to the bottom of the sea.

Yeah. I did not expect that. But then, I've always liked that this show wasn't afraid to include darker and more graphic scenes.

Also, it turns out Ackbar is a pretty good fighter, going hand to hand with a droid like that. Guess he's good at more than just commanding a starship.

[Darksider]

Holy shit. This new season is pretty brutal. I just saw that shark dude get blown up and they showed his head profusely bleeding and floating to the bottom of the sea.

Yeah. I did not expect that. But then, I've always liked that this show wasn't afraid to include darker and more graphic scenes.

Also, it turns out Ackbar is a pretty good fighter, going hand to hand with a droid like that. Guess he's good at more than just commanding a starship.

I know it's not a source most people would care to remember, but Darksaber shows that Ackbar is also a competent pilot.

Also, he hijacks an MT-AT and engages in what is quite possibly the SW franchise's only mech duel ever.

[JME2]

Also, he hijacks an MT-AT and engages in what is quite possibly the SW franchise's only mech duel ever.

One of the Jedi Academy Trilogy's better moments.