RECAP: Clone Wars 1.3

Tonight’s episode, Shadow of Malevolence, was the second episode of a three epsiode cycle and involved a daring attack against General Grievous’ flagship, The Malevolence.

The Malevolence is such an important target because they’ve rigged a full-sized Ion Cannon to one side of the ship and are able to disable and destroy entire ships.   Led by Anakin Skywalker and Plo Koon, a group of Y-Wing bombers have to race against the clock to destroy the weapon, since Grievous has plotted a course for one of the Republics main medical facilities.

I have to say, the more I see this show, the better suited for television it is.  The commercial breaks always hit at exactly the right beats and the endings always leave me wanting more.  You can also tell that the writers watch as much Star Wars as I do, since it’s actually noticeable that they lift even the most innocuous dialogue from random parts of the movies, in this case, quite a bit of dialogue from the pilots echoed dialogue spoken by Red squadron in the battle of the first Death Star.

This episode was very much a classic World War II film story with the squadron of malcontents (in this case Shadow Squadron under Skywalkers command) sign up for what is essentially a suicide mission behind enemy lines and carry it out and it works well.  It’s also great to see General Grievous in action (even though he spent this entire episode on the bridge of The Malevolence barking orders at obnoxious battle droids) since we saw very little of him in Revenge of the Sith.

The scene that’s pictured above is really cool, too.  I won’t detail what it’s about too much, but it was a great moment and Anakin needs to look before he leaps.

This episode ends with Skywalker and what’s left of his squadron disabling Grievous’ weapon, but he’s on the run.  The next episode involves what appears to be the final destruction of The Malevolence.

All in all, this is another solid entry into this series.

For those of you who missed last week’s episodes, you can watch them in their entirety on the official Star Wars website.  Here’s Ambush, and Rising Malevolence.  It’s free, so you really don’t have an excuse not to.