Hello and welcome back once again to The Star Wars Report’s The Clone Wars reviews! Today we’ll be looking at C3PO and R2D2’s latest adventure when they stumble upon a mystical land beneath the surface of an alien planet, after earthquakes ravage the surface in Mercy Mission.
The episode starts with Republic cruisers arriving on the planet Aleen after massive earthquakes have killed thousands of the Aleena and destroyed much of the buildings. Naturally, our favorite droid translator C-3PO has been brought along to assist in communicating with the natives while R2D2 downloads a program that will detect the earthquakes. Soon enough, 3PO and R2 get themselves into some trouble (as they always do) and look to solve the mystery behind the earthquakes from where they originate underground. It was kind of strange to see an episode without any real villain. There were no Separatists, no Sith, and no bounty hunters to be found. I thought was a nice change; it really was a step away from the war entirely. Even the creatures underground causing the quakes weren’t really trying to hurt the surface dwelling creatures, they even helped 3PO and R2 solve the problem. Now, I would not like for this to be a consistent theme in season four at all, but every once in a while its good to see what else is going on in the galaxy, and a 3PO episode is the perfect setting for that.
This episodes biggest strength is that it was a very visual episode. There were lots of sequences with cool lighting, character models, and environments. Above ground everything was scaled to the height of the Aleena, so it was pretty cool to see the clones having to crawl through the hallways instead of everything being their size. The underground setting was very “Mortis” like in that the plants glowed beautifully and lit up the rest of the dark surroundings. But this time, the plants talk! 3PO and R2 confront a gang of mystical trees that lead them to an alien named Orphne, who was also a very strange and mystical creature. This episode was very fantastical, due to the visuals, the soundtrack, and even the basis of the episode. I think that Star Wars could always use more mysticism, and while I wasn’t a huge fan of Mortis because of the conflicts it created, I certainly appreciated the tone, the setting, and the symbolism we got to see in that arc, and Mercy Mission seemed very similar, just without as much impact on the galaxy and our characters, unfortunately.
This brings me to a few complaints I had about Mercy Mission. What was the point? I think we’ve surpassed the time in Clone Wars where standalone episodes mean nothing and the characters were basically the same at the end of the episode as they were in the beginning. I know I said before that getting away from the war was good, but that doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t still affect something. I mean its great that 3Po and R2 saved the Aleena on the surface from the earthquakes, but how is that going to impact the future of the galaxy, what did 3PO learn from his experience?
Mercy Mission had great visuals and neat ideas, but at the same time felt like a filler episode. I still liked it, but not as much as the other episodes we’ve seen in Season 4 so far. What did you think of 3PO and R2’s latest adventure? Did you like it? Hate it? Leave a comment below and let us know! Thanks for reading and may the force be with you…always.
–Ryan
Author: admin
The Star Wars Report: A Star Wars Podcasting Network and Website.
This episode got my hopes up because it gave us clones right at the beginning. But the rest of it was like you said Ryan, pointless.