Hello everyone and welcome to another double dose of Clone Wars catchup with the fifth and sixth episodes of season 3. Starting with episode 5, we returned to Mandalore to catch up with the Duchess Satine. I like how the show has now got far enough in to have introduced all of these new characters and worlds and can now return to them and pick up stories whenever they choose to.

We also continued to explore the theme of neutrality and visit those who had tried to stay out of the conflict between the Republic and the Seperatists. It is interesting to see how neutrality does not keep all of the problems and away and it is interesting to see how they end up getting drawn to either the war or other problems (such as Mandalore having to deal with smugglers) as a result.

The whole school/drink/tea thing was slightly strange and didn’t really feel very Star Wars to me. I didn’t mind the story and it was simple enough to follow, but it was just a little bit of an odd choice. I was also surprised by Satine’s demand to just burn the warehouse down. Was there not any use for at least the building if not what was stored there? It just seemed unnecessarily drastic. Keeping it as evidence would have been better too, especially as the Prime Minister was reluctant to acknowledge that any of the corruption had actually gone on.

We stayed on Mandalore for episode six and I preferred this one to its predecessor. Ashoka is much more interesting than Padme so we were already off to a good start. I do question however how it looked to the Duchess when Ashoka was all they sent. I know they gave the youth was needed excuse but it just looked like none of the masters were able to come.

The storyline was solid and although I saw the president reveal coming, the episode still managed to hold my interest. Ashoka showed both ingenuity by succeeding without her lightsaber, as well as inexperience by over-relying on jedi mind-tricks which actually turned out to be useless and inaffective. They found the right balance there.

My one gripe was how the Duchess really just ignored the kids despite her moaning about people not dealing with things in the last episode. At least Ashoka still followed them to make up sure, but she too being dismissive was slightly odd considering how many times other Jedi have done that to her. Apart from that though a very solid episode that I enjoyed watching.

DD Rating: (5) 5.9/10 (6) 7.5/10