This episode begins with a Republic base on the frozen planet of Orto Plutonia losing contact with the Jedi and Obi-wan and Anakin being sent with some diplomats from a nearby system to investigate.

They find that everyone at the base has been killed, their helmets set up on pikes and things aren’t much different for the outpost of Separatists on the other side of the planet.

Realizing the Separatists aren’t involved and, in fact, suffered the same fate as their outpost, Obi-wan and Anakin investigate the southern canyon to find a society of Talz. (You’ve seen Talz in the Star Wars universe before. A fellow named Muftak was in the Cantina in A New Hope and another was a Jedi in the closing chapters of Genndy Tartakovsky’s version of Clone Wars.) But the Talz are a race of people (at least on the planet of Orto Plutonia) who want to be left alone and if they can’t be left alone… well… they’ll kill you and put your head on a pike.

Unfortunately, one of the dignitaries brought to Orto Plutonia is the chairmen of the only inhabited planet in that system, Pantora. The Chairman of Pantora, Cho, pretty much wants to kill all of the Talz because they’re savages and on a planet he’s staked out for the Pantoran empire.

War ensues until the Senator from Pantora, Chuchi, can have Chairman Cho deemed out of order and is able to negotiate the peace herself.

The action in this episode was really cool. The Talz letting loose against the clones on their mounts with spears was certainly a highlight. The visuals in the episode were fantastic, the animation top notch, and the environment was a useful character.

My only real problem with this episode?

Well, it was that I had an idea of what it was going to be built up in my head based on the clip and the preview and I thought it was going to be more of a horror episode. I think one of the coolest episodes so far was Episode 2, “Rising Malevolence“. Remember? The one with Plo Koon and his clone troopers in that unpowered escape pod watching droids go from escape pod to escape pod in the debris field, cutting it open and killing all of the survivors? It had that really cool Twilight Zone/Outer Limits kind of tone that I expected to see more of in this episode.

Having said that, I really did enjoy this episode.

I do have a question about it, though… Will we be getting some type of timeline on the series? Why is Ahsoka not here? Is it because she’s simultaneously delivering Nute Gunray with Luminara Unduli?

I hope we get some guide about this. I know next week’s episode (which looks great by the preview) has been billed as a prequel to the theatrical Clone Wars movie, which would obviously exclude Ahsoka, but what about this episode? I suppose what I’m getting to is this: Why is Snips not with her master?

So, until next week.