The Clone Wars Season 4 Episode 6 Review

Welcome back to the Star Wars Report’s look at the latest installments of Star Wars: The Clone Wars! This week we’ll be looking at the episode Nomad Droids. Taking place after last week’s Mercy Mission, R2D2 and C3PO are swept to a couple different planets, with many different problems, after the cruiser they were aboard was attacked and forced them to escape to the nearby planets.

Last week in my review of Mercy Mission, I mentioned that a C3PO/R2D2 centered episode was a perfect setting for episodes that didn’t relate so much to the Clone Wars, in my opinion, this still stands. Nomad Droids wasn’t a great episode of the Clone Wars, but you certainly have to appreciate it for what it is. And what is that? It is something different. Nomad Droids is in a completely separate league than the rest of the series, which I find to be very bold on the part of the Clone Wars crew to work on a Clone Wars episode that isn’t exactly Clone Wars. Even the structure itself is rather strange. In twenty minutes, the droids travel to, and solve conflicts in, four unique and diverse situations. This gave the episode a fast pace, and from the space battle, to the planets, to the pirate ship etc., this episode seemed like a Clone Wars version of Star Tours, which I kind of enjoyed. Though I can certainly see where people can feel differently about the episode. It was catered more towards kids, and structured more like a kids TV show, rather than to the die hard fanboys who are looking for a 4 part arc about the return of Darth Maul.

In this episode, 3PO and R2 travel to two planets and eventually aboard a pirate ship and separatist cruiser. All four are immensely different in terms of design and characters. The first two (the planets) are about corrupt leaders and 3PO and R2, somewhat accidentally, destroying them. The messages in the episode of creating democracy and trusting your leaders are quite apparent throughout, but I think its how 3PO and R2 go about it that make it so awesome. I think this could be 3PO’s finest and funniest episode. The highlight of the episode for me was on the first planet, after the dictator there was crushed by R2, 3PO helps them select a leader, declares the people a democracy, and then leaves as they are all arguing among themselves. I couldn’t help but think, classic 3PO, and classic democracy. On the second planet, we were shown a different story of a people that were being controlled by a giant alien who rules with an iron fist…that was really a pit droid. I think the end to that section is the best, where the pit droids deception has been exposed, and you see a huge explosion behind 3PO and R2 a few miles away (which they pay no attention to).

After they venture to the planets and are taken aboard the pirate ship, the episode takes yet another turn, in which we are not overthrowing evil warlords or deceptive pit droids anymore, but a gladiator ring of droids. I think my biggest complaint is that they didn’t try to work in the theme they had for the previous environments into the pirate ship. But I did enjoy seeing the design they had for the gladiator robot, if you notice, the design they used for his hands are very similar to a gladiator droid’s hands that was in the Ghendy series. So I got to give a thumbs up on the designs for this episode. And just as soon as we get on the pirate ship, we get swung out into space and onto a separatist ship, then back into the republic’s hands, all in the blink of an eye (metaphorically speaking, of course).

Nomad Droids certainly was a different type of episode, but still very enjoyable. Like I said with my review of Mercy Mission, these episodes are great every once in a while, but not all the time. Now, what did you think of this episode? Leave your comments below! Thanks for reading and may the Force be with you…always!

–Ryan

 

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