Clone Wars Debriefing: "Nightsisters"

[lazypadawan]

Clone Wars returns in 2011 not with a bang but with a "KABOOM!!!"

The first part of the Savage Opress arc focuses on Asajj Ventress. The new and improved animation models for Anakin and Obi-Wan appear at the beginning. They look great and Obi-Wan in particular resembles his cinematic counterpart even more than before. It was also nice seeing them together again after all of this time.

A space battle reminiscent of ROTS's spectacular opener results in Ventress literally having to fight for her life. When a Sith wannabe has a bad day, she really has a bad day. Sidious orders Dooku to "fire" Ventress. Only you don't get a pink slip and severance pay from the Sith. You are sentenced to death. Ventress's ship is damaged and she narrowly escapes in her crippled ship after some lightsaber fun and games with Obi-Wan and Anakin. When she is picked up by salvagers after the battle, she commandeers the ship to her homeworld, Dathomir.

Now, for you trivia buffs, Dathomir was first introduced in the novel that makes Han and Leia fans break out into convulsions, 1994's The Courtship of Princess Leia. In that book, there were good "witches," of which Tenel Ka (Jacen's baby mama) is descended, and baaad witches, the Nightsisters. In Clone Wars, all of Dathomir looks like Satan World with its black and red coloring, which wasn't the case in the book. We'll have to see if the "good" witches ever make an appearance on the show.

Also, the Nightsisters seen on the show were based on Iain McCaig's designs for a possible female Sith in either TPM or AOTC. The designs were never used for the movies but were retconned to represent the Nightsisters.

Anyway, an ailing Ventress arrives on Dathomir and at first the Nightsisters want to attack her, but Mother Talzin shows up and assures her coven that Ventress is one of them. They take her off for some hocus pocus medicine and in the process, we learn Ventress's full back story.

Amazingly, they managed to keep much of what was already her back story in the Clone Wars comic books from 2003-2004. I don't think she was originally from Dathomir, but in the show, she was quickly given away to someone else at infancy and taken to another planet. By the way, Baby!Ventress was adorable! Her caretaker is killed in some kind of war when she's a little girl and she is discovered by a Jedi. He recognizes her talent and trains her, then eventually he is killed. All of those events originally occurred in the comic. Left on her own, Ventress becomes a bitter little punk rock girl who grows into a bitter Sith wanna be.

Now that she was hosed by Dooku, Ventress wants revenge. Talzin doesn't like Dooku either, so they plot to kill him. Ventress and two other Nightsisters are made invisible. They head over to Dooku's hideout and try to whack him in his sleep. But you have to get up pretty early in the morning to get the best of Dooku. He battles the invisible assassins without so much as wrinkling his Hugh Hefner-esque pajamas, despite being given a sedative or a poison. You have to admit, it's a pretty cool scene.

Discouraged, Ventress and the Nightsisters return to Dathomir. Talzin cooks up a plan to manipulate Dooku into picking a new apprentice of her choosing. Gee, I wonder who that's going to be?

A very interesting episode through and through. This is the most we've learned about Ventress in years and the most we've seen of the Nightsisters outside of Courtship. It's interesting that Dooku was reluctant to dump Ventress and he seemed relieved that she seemed to have been conveniently killed off in battle. Was he hoping she would help him eliminate Sidious? Did he have the hots for her?

It's almost unnecessary to point out how terrific the animation is on this show, but well, it is. I especially enjoyed the score this time around. It really played up the mystery and exoticism of the Nightsisters.

Katie Lucas hit it out of the park with the script. She neatly brought together so many sources in a way that made sense. I can hardly wait to see more!

Next time: Here comes Savage Opress!

Comments

[ayajedi.livejournal.com]

should be interesting

[frostbit-sky.livejournal.com]

I still hate that they made her a Nightsister. I don't approve of that backstory. At all.

The fight with Anakin & Obi-Wan was awesome.

[ladyaeryn.livejournal.com]

I think EU fans need to give up any hope that GL is going to rigidly follow all established EU continuity. Frankly, I'm amazed he's incorporated as much of it as he has.

[frostbit-sky.livejournal.com]

Frak GL. I follow my own EU canon and in it Ventress is Rattataki, not Dathomiri or whatever. :P

Frankly, I'm amazed he's incorporated as much of it as he has.
I am too, but still. He is so...callous. Like people worked hard on those comic book stories, fans enjoyed them and he made $ off of them, and then goes and bulldozes over it. That is why I don't buy TCW series on DVD.

[krpalmer.livejournal.com]

This was a pretty impressive way to pick up from hiatus with; I watched the episode with my brother (who keeps admitting he's not quite keeping up with the series) and he seemed to like it too.

Now, perhaps one thing about having become "detached from the EU" is that, instead of thinking "ah, Ventress's backstory has been kept from the comics," I thought "yes, there's no blank slate to play with any more, but perhaps having a framework can allow for a different kind of speculation just as good in its own way." As well, it didn't seem rubbed in to me that "Dathomir equals a fifteen-year-old novel, and if you haven't read it you're missing out on something..." (Well, I have read it, but I basically can't remember anything from it any more.)

In any case, I wouldn't say this episode seemed so much a matter of "obscure bits of continuity tied together" to me as a more character-based story, with Sidious reminding the Count of the "Rule of Two" (a good way to bring it up in combination with the assorted acolytes that crop up in the secondary stories) and Ventress taking that badly. I suppose I also thought it a "Battlestar Galactica" reference when the droid general said "By your command"; of course, after all the old accusations that the original Battlestar Galactica was a ripoff of Star Wars, I kind of enjoyed it but could sort of imagine someone, somewhere, finding a reason or another to be offended.

[may-child.livejournal.com]

Ugh...Dathomir. Why are they bringing that travesty of a book, COPL, into the Clone Wars cartoons, in ANY capacity?!

[quidawn.livejournal.com]

Well, I certainly don't know from COPL or really anything much else in the previously-published EU about Dathomir or the Nightsisters - I'd pretty much heard of them, had at least an inkling of what they were about, but no more than that and I just don't know as it's something which ever really interested me, or drew me in, all that much....but I've gotta say, my own personal take on it at any rate, *now* the Nightsisters seem cool as all heck to me and I'm *loving* how they're portrayed....personally I couldn't care less what's been mentioned of them in the EU up to this point, because in CW they're already lookin' bloody well awesome, seems like! :D I like it that the show's picking and choosing from what EU elements might work as a jumping-off point, then running elsewhere with it and making it really that much cooler in the end - and, my take on it anyway, also waaaaaaaay the hell more interesting, enjoyable and really quite impactful than the previous EU....hey, works for me, definitely! :D

[ladyaeryn.livejournal.com]

Neither the planet nor the witches particularly resemble what I remember from the book at all. GL seems to be just taking the name and attaching it to his own concept.

[darth-pipes.livejournal.com]

Don't worry, may_child. They're not Force-users and it was really GL's own take on the characters. Which were designed like his discared AOTC character design.

Very good episode and and excellent start to the Brother of Maul storyline. All the action was impressive, from the dark-looking space battle to the awesome lightsaber duels. Interesting development for Dooku, who looked upset at having to kill Asajj and Ventress herself, who also seemed to hesitate. Although I have to wonder, if she could manage to hit Dooku with a poison dark, why not just hit him with a deadly one? Or that was another one.

Katie Lucas is turing into quite a good writer.

Loved Anakin's "She always looks awful" in regards to Asajj. I'm surprised Obi-Wan didn't take offense to Anakin bad-mouthing her. You know why. ;)

The Nightsisters did get one more use in the EU...Quinlon Vos spent four issues on the planet in the old SW on-going comic. I think Sidious might have appeared at the end of that one too.

Save for the Dathomir thing, Ventress backstory is pretty much intact from the SW Republic comic.

Katie Lucas is turning into quite a good writer.

[lazypadawan.livejournal.com]

"Don't talk smack about her, Anakin!"