Not a lot to say about this one…except maybe…THEY FLY NOW!

On the Wings of Keeradacks

This episode begins where the previous one left off, with our heroes having rescued Echo and now setting their sights on escape. I suppose now the inclusion of the “Poltics”, the native alien race they encountered the last episode, wasn’t so far out-of-left-field as I thought. They play a greater role in this one, but that’s not saying much. It’s mostly the main characters just moving from one obstacle to the next, like most of the episodes so far.

They get out of a particularly nasty jam by summoning the indigenous flying reptiles to make an aerial escape. These creatures then take them back to the Poltic village, where their chief is rightly upset that they’ve now implicated his people in their aggression and brought the Techno-Union’s wrath on them all. Rex appeals to their sympathies and somehow expects them to care that the Techno Union kidnapped Echo and turned him into a cyborg. I mean, the Poltics might have a taboo against technology, especially such an abomination as Echo’s now become, but as far as they are concerned, the Techno Union hasn’t done the same to any of his own people. They buy it nonetheless, but it has me wondering whether they didn’t come away with the raw end of the deal.

They agree to band together with the clones and repel the Techno-Union’s reprisal, at the cost of many lives and much collateral damage. When the battle’s won, the clones say farewell and return home like its all one big happy ending. Yet, I’m sitting here thinking…the Techno-Union has many more droids where that came from and they know where the Poltic’s live…Eh, I’m sure they’ll be fine…

On the Techno-Union’s side of the story, it seems Watt Tambor is furious that the clones alighted with Echo and derailed the years of research he represented. So, from this, I think we can take it that his suspiciously breezy escape was just that and not a premeditated ploy. Otherwise, why would Tambor have reacted this way if he was planning to use Echo as a mole all along? At the end of the episode, Echo’s reunion with his brothers is framed somewhat ominously, hinting that this could still be the case, though likely due to Tambor arriving at this plan after the fact. Why is this significant?

Well, for one, if the Techno Union only valued Echo for his intrinsic strategic/scientific value, why did they go through the trouble of cryogenically preserving his body and augmenting it with cybernetics if they could have just transplanted his brain into a jar and used it as a co-processor? It would have saved on resources, made it more difficult for him to escape, and fit in perfectly with their mad-science aesthetics. Now they just look like your average incompetent villains-of-the-week.

On a related note, I’m still not buying the idea that they’re trying to pass themselves off as a neutral faction when it’s fairly well established in canon that they are firmly and publicly backing the Separatists. In Attack of the Clones, when we see Obi-Wan infiltrating Geonosis to spy on Count Dooku, he clearly bears witness to Watt Tambor throwing his lot in with the other Separatist factions to form the Confederacy of Independent Systems. I see no reason he’d keep this revelation to himself, so there shouldn’t be any for the Republic to believe the Techno-Union is neutral.

This may have just been an oversight by the writers, but I’m sure there’s already an elaborate justification for this story thread in the supplemental material and tie-in media. My personal stance prioritizes the movies and shows as authorities on the lore, but the Techno-Union is largely obscure outside the peripheral sources, so I suppose I’ve got no right to complain that they’re being fleshed out more. It still strikes me as a bizarre interpretation nonetheless.

All that said, this episode has been the weakest thus far, mostly just action for its own sake. Though this arc has yet to fully play out, I get the feeling they could’ve condensed it into fewer episodes. Not that I haven’t enjoyed our outings with The Bad Batch, but there are some other characters I’m more impatient to spend time with this season…

Overall: 6/10