Artoo in Wonderland
Recuperating from Geek Girl Con. Good news – my Yoda puppet made it back intact. The Saturday and Sunday Roundups are up already, and I will be doing more detailed discussions on several of the panels.
Because I was traveling I caught last week’s episode of The Clone Wars only once in the hotel room, and I haven’t been able to go back through and take a good look at the intricacies. On my initial watch, my gut instinct was that I liked the little side-trip with our two favorite droids, C-3PO and R2-D2. I don’t know why – perhaps it’s because I watched RotJ in a theater as a teenager – but I enjoy little cute tribal creatures who aren’t easy to communicate with. Some people are up in arms about the additional “NOOOOO!” in this year’s Blu-ray release, but I remember the days when folks were devastated by the removal of the Yub Nub song.
I’m still catching up and don’t have time to do a full review, but there were some things I wanted to point out, especially since I hadn’t seen a lot of talk about it online yet.
- This is the first episode to air this season written by a woman – Bonnie Mark. Yay! She also wrote the final episodes of Season Three, “Padawan Lost” and “Wookiee Hunt,” which, among others, included a storyline homage to the classic “The Most Dangerous Game” and some visual allusions to The Nightmare Before Christmas.
- There was a small bit of set-up in this story for future clone storylines with Clone Commander Wolffe tasked to lead a mercy mission. What I really liked, though, was the subtext about following orders. Sometimes, just getting the assignment done means patching a hole, but not really fixing the problem. The clones, like many of our own troops in real life, are not trained to rebuild areas hit by disaster, yet often that’s where they’re called to duty.
Was it just me or did we go down the rabbit hole and over the rainbow in this episode? I need to sit back down and watch it tonight in more detail, but I haven’t seen much talk about the multiple homages my sister and I picked out last Friday night. Ones we caught were The Wizard of Oz, Peter Pan, Lord of the Rings, and Alice in Wonderland. If I recall correctly, Alice is one of Ashley Eckstein’s favorite characters.- Online I’ve found some comments on Orphne, the riddle-telling nymph, and how her name relates to mythology. I wonder if looking deeper at Alice in Wonderland (originally titled Alice’s Adventures Under Ground) and the Mad Hatter might reveal some of the inspiration for that character, as well?
- Personally, I think it was quite clever to use the droids (who in some ways are a mash-up of the Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Cowardly Lion) to play out a mystical storyline. This episode was cute, but I think there’s more than meets the eye.
Sort of a busy catch-up week here at home, so I have to cut this blog short. Thoughts on the episode? You’re always welcome to share them here or in the Cantina’s The Clone Wars discussion thread.
One more episode this week, “Nomad Droids,” where the adventures of our favorite droids continue. Then it looks like we’ll have a week’s break, where I hope to take a first quarter look back at Season Four so far.
Tricia Barr's novel, Wynde, won the 2014 Independent Publisher Book Award Gold Medal for Best Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror Ebook. She was also part of Silence in the Library's successful all-female creator science fiction and fantasy anthology Athena's Daughters, which is available now. For excerpts and tales of her adventures in creating a fictional universe, hop over to TriciaBarr.com.
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