Hello everyone and welcome to another double dose of clone wars catchup with episodes three and four of season 3. Starting with episode three, the show again confused me with it’s time placement as I only found out after watching that this was in fact a prequal to 1×1 Ambush. Why does the show not make this cleared? It is just irritating more than anything else. With that mini moan out of the way, the episode was fine although unspectacular. We didn’t really know the jedi master who was there: he remained rather under-developed and was then killed at the end so it didn’t really matter. The show has done a great job so far of giving purpose and back story to characters who were nothing more than background extras in the movies so I think they let themselves down her a little.

Having Bail Organa and Jar Jar Binks head up the other half of the episodes didn’t set fireworks off either. The concept was an interesting one with the planet having to decide whether helping those in need was worth risking their own neutrality, but you needed someone a bit more charismatic their to lift some of the more dialogue-heavy portions (and no not the way that Jar Jar is charismatic). I actually liked the neimanoid presence for once as although they were still heartless and selfish, they referred to Nute Gunray as an extremist who’s not so secret alliance with the Seperatists is not (or at least claimed not) to be shared by the rest of the Trade Federation. It helped add a little bit of depth to the organisation that you often associate with Gunray and his ideals.

Episode 4 also followed on from the events of a season 1 episode and this one had the decency to remind you a little at the start which was nice. The new Pantora chairman’s daughters were kidnapped in a very hollow and obvious plan by the Separatists to get Pantora to join them. They even said themselves that their plan was not a subtle one. It was a simple enough story to follow though and we got a very cool moment with Ashoka using the force to move her and another around a room to stay out of sight.

Their were some familiar faces showing up to as we got both Jabba the Hutt and the bounty hunter Greedo. It was cool to see a bounty hunter known from the original films as in them he only gets one (infamous) scene so it was great to flesh out the character a bit more. And of course he worked was hanging about around Jabba’s palace as it seems every bounty hunter at some point has to do business with Jabba the Hutt. Overall a fun episode, even if the focus was a tad heavy on characters we didn’t know and probably wont see much of again.

DD Rating: (3) 5.5/10 (4) 6.9/10