Clone Wars Debriefing: "Duchess of Mandalore"

[lazypadawan]

Today's Olympic Highlight: Freestyle Political Assassination



Satine finally makes it to Coruscant and quickly finds out nobody is going to listen to her demands Mandalore stays out of the war. Death Watch, with Count Dooku and Sidious pulling the strings, is amassing an army and planning to invade Mandalore. Supreme Chancellor Palpatine and Mas Amedda make it clear that Mandalore is about to be invaded by Death Watch and needs Republic intervention. This is a Catch 22, because if the Republic tries to preemptively protect Mandalore, the invading Death Watch will be seen as heroes for showing the bums the door. Palpie quickly produces a holo from a deputy minister who says Republic and Jedi intervention are needed to stop Death Watch. The deputy minister just so happened to have been killed off that day. What a coincidence. Palpatine moves to vote on sending the Republic troops to Mandalore at the next session.

A peeved Satine yells at everyone and hops into an air taxi with her entourage. It just so happens the vehicle was rigged by the Death Watch to explode. Satine and her guards manage to leap to safety but the driver ends up in a fiery cloud on the side of a building. Then she gets the news that nobody is going to press charges for the assassination attempt. And then Padmé (FINALLY) delivers one more bombshell...the Senate has already voted to approve Republic military intervention.

Something tells me Satine is the second person after ex-Supreme Chancellor Valorum to realize Palpatine is one dirty dog.

Satine meets with a Mandalorian contact at Republic Intel and reveals the dead deputy minister's holo was a forgery. You don't say! Unfortunately, a Death Watch assassin caps the intel guy and almost hits Satine. When the robocops arrive, the Death Watch sniper is long gone and Satine is standing around holding her deactivator-that-looks-like-a-gun. It's a scene right out of film noir. Satine takes off with the authorities in pursuit.

Obi-Wan catches up with her and Satine hands him the full holo of the deputy minister, given to her by the intel guy before his untimely demise. She urges Obi-Wan to give it to Padmé, the only Star Wars character she trusts. Before she can turn herself in to let Obi-Wan sneak off unnoticed, the Death Watch assassin returns and tosses a thermal detonator. Then Obi-Wan and the assassin fight for a while, then the latter takes off a la Jango Fett in his rocket pack. I think this guy is too young to be Boba Fett, who would be at most 15-16 years old at this point, though it is interesting that Dee Bradley Baker (voice of the clones) also voiced the assassin and when he speaks, he does sound a little like Jango. We'll have to see, since I'm 99.99% sure we'll see him and his Mandalorian buddies in the future.

Satine is cuffed outside of the Senate building, but Obi-Wan slips Padmé the holo. She interrupts the Senate's session--and boy does Palpie look P.O.-ed when she does it--and shows the entire uncensored holo that basically says, "Stay the eff away." Senate support for the Republic invasion evaporates.

Pre Vizsla back on Concordia is unhappy when he hears this and tells Dooku he wants to go forward with his plans to invade Mandalore. Dooku tells him that invasion without support from the Sith will fail and advises him to wait for a future episode to make another move.

The final scene is in Palpatine's office, where Obi-Wan, Satine, Padmé, and Anakin are gathered with Palps and Mas Amedda. Palpatine apologizes for the crappy time Satine had on Coruscant. Unfortunately, Obi-Wan, Satine, Padmé, and Anakin don't go off on a double date. Instead Padmé and Anakin go off with the boring pols to do God knows what. This leaves Obi-Wan and Satine alone to chat about how things have changed.

This is one of those episodes where you kind of wish it were longer because a lot was going on. It was one of the more cinematic episodes produced thus far, with fantastic visuals. Dang if Coruscant and the Senate chamber didn't look like they were lifted right out of the movies. Nice work on the ringing after the thermal detonation explosion.

It was awesome to not only see Padmé again but also inside favorites like Chuchi and the Clone Wars debut of MON MOTHMA!!! Woo hooz! I can see Satine and Padmé being somewhat sympathetic with each other, what with leading a planet, having a thing for Jedi, and wearing big headdresses.

I loved the funny scene where the clonetroopers try to ask an Ithorian if he's seen Satine. According to starwars.com, he was actually telling them, "Yeah I've seen her and she's over there" but they don't understand them.

Satine finally learns to quit being such a bitch and trust in Obi-Wan's friendship. While one can understand Satine's anger, this episode exposes a flaw in her, whether its intentional or not, and in her philosophy. If I wasn't so exhausted from spending the past two days entertaining out-of-town guests, I'd go into it now. Instead, I will post about it separately. After everyone has left.

My only other quibble is nitpicky stuff like why the assassin didn't try to shoot Satine first or why the authorities would believe a loudmouth pacifist-at-all-costs would murder someone.

I was really pleased with the Mandalorian arc overall and will suffer miserably over the two week hiatus. You are cruel, Cartoon Network!

Comments

[ansketil-rose.livejournal.com]

Did anyone else find the fact that Palpatine referred to Satine as a "servant" interesting?

[lazypadawan.livejournal.com]

That is interesting...

[darth-pipes.livejournal.com]

I loved this episode. It was the most cinematical I thought of all The Clone Wars episodes and Coruscant at night looked amazing. I thought it was cool to learn that some of the design came from the old Ralph McQuarrie concept art. The Mandolorian army looked quite impressive too.

-This was a Satine episode and she faired well in the second half. The first half though, when she starts railing against Obi-Wan, I wanted Obi-Wan to push her off the landing platform. Annoying pacifist!

-Loved the scene too where the clones are questions the Ithorian and the transslation makes the scene even funnier.

-Mas Amedda and Mon Mothma too!

-Yeah, Palpatine looked royally pissed when Padme showed up. It's nice to see him plans getting occassionally thrawted.

-Very glad to see Padme show up here and not get kidnapped. I've seen some people complain about Padme being "super-senator" here but her involvement totally makes sense. Obi-Wan trusts her and she was in a very similiar situation as Satine a decade earlier.

-That great 180 degree turn where we see Padme walking up to Obi-Wan and Satine in the Senate hall, I was expecting Padme to say "Geez, Anakin was right about you two. Get a room, will ya!"

-I was happy with the portrayel of the Mandos in this series. They have a pacifist leadership but the people are willingly to fight for themselves. Then you have Death Watch, which represents the whole ways. I would only be disappointed if we never saw the Mandolorians again but I suspect they'll be back...and in greater numbers. ;)

-Anakin was supposed to have a subplot in this episode where he was preparing the Mandalore invasion force. Would have been interesting to see but it would have definitely been filler.

-I agree with your criticism as to why the sniper shot the spy first and not Satine. The only thing I can think of is he decided to kill the most physically dangerous of the two first and didn't expect Satine to put up much of a fight. Stupid droid police should have realized where the shots were coming from too.

-I also wish they episode could have been another thirty minutes as well. Would have made an epic even more epic.