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krpalmerThe chance came up to watch another episode out of the first Clone Wars collection, so I started into the "big ship with a gun--blow it up" plot arc with "Rising Malevolence." I might not have been focusing most of all on the episode itself, though. After some certain ambiguities when it came to the little documentary about the first episode in the collection and whether it had the show's creators trying too hard to establish links to the old Star Wars movies at the expense of the new movies, I suppose I was wondering if this would be the point where I would have to let the episodes alone speak for themselves...
It was perhaps fortunate, then, that the first part of the little documentary focused on Plo Koon. Dave Filoni's interest in him still seems a more or less harmless example of "dwelling on the 'blank slate' background characters"; after all, the episode did manage to have some good character development for the "main" characters as well. (In some ways, this episode now almost feels to me as if it's still "early days" for Anakin and Ahsoka as mentor and apprentice.) To some extent, perhaps, I did start wondering a little if developing this favourite background character and filling in his slate somehow just means I find him shifted him to a different "unexceptional pantheon," that of "entirely competent Jedi," but that might just say as much about me as anything. I did also remember an amused thought I'd had the first time I saw this episode, that it's always tempting to give "new" characters special connections to the established ones which can leave others wondering just why they weren't mentioned before... except that it helped that with Ahsoka still nearly a "new" character herself, Plo Koon managed to get connected to her. Towards the end of the documentary, though, there did seem a certain emphasis on how "outrunning the big gun" at the end of the episode was modelled on both the asteroid field and the final escape from The Empire Strikes Back, but again perhaps that's just a case of me parsing things with too much care right now.
After all of that, I suppose I did have some more thoughts about the episode itself. I was wondering a little what the first "extended director's cut" episode of the collection would be like, but it seemed a matter of folding in small extra moments throughout, not including a noticeable "deleted scene" or two. A few moments, such as saying the numbers "one, nine, seven, seven," did stand out (that in particular does seem to draw more attention to itself than "twenty-one eighty-seven"), but in most other ways it did seem easy enough to get used to this new version. (Of course, nobody's been watching the previously broadcast version regularly for the past twenty years...) Another small but somehow interesting thing for me about the extended episode was that it gave more space for its end credits; the broadcast ones (when they aren't just showing promos) seem to cram as many names into as short a time and as small a typeface as possible.
It was perhaps fortunate, then, that the first part of the little documentary focused on Plo Koon. Dave Filoni's interest in him still seems a more or less harmless example of "dwelling on the 'blank slate' background characters"; after all, the episode did manage to have some good character development for the "main" characters as well. (In some ways, this episode now almost feels to me as if it's still "early days" for Anakin and Ahsoka as mentor and apprentice.) To some extent, perhaps, I did start wondering a little if developing this favourite background character and filling in his slate somehow just means I find him shifted him to a different "unexceptional pantheon," that of "entirely competent Jedi," but that might just say as much about me as anything. I did also remember an amused thought I'd had the first time I saw this episode, that it's always tempting to give "new" characters special connections to the established ones which can leave others wondering just why they weren't mentioned before... except that it helped that with Ahsoka still nearly a "new" character herself, Plo Koon managed to get connected to her. Towards the end of the documentary, though, there did seem a certain emphasis on how "outrunning the big gun" at the end of the episode was modelled on both the asteroid field and the final escape from The Empire Strikes Back, but again perhaps that's just a case of me parsing things with too much care right now.
After all of that, I suppose I did have some more thoughts about the episode itself. I was wondering a little what the first "extended director's cut" episode of the collection would be like, but it seemed a matter of folding in small extra moments throughout, not including a noticeable "deleted scene" or two. A few moments, such as saying the numbers "one, nine, seven, seven," did stand out (that in particular does seem to draw more attention to itself than "twenty-one eighty-seven"), but in most other ways it did seem easy enough to get used to this new version. (Of course, nobody's been watching the previously broadcast version regularly for the past twenty years...) Another small but somehow interesting thing for me about the extended episode was that it gave more space for its end credits; the broadcast ones (when they aren't just showing promos) seem to cram as many names into as short a time and as small a typeface as possible.