Clone Wars Now Written By Imbeciles

I've just seen the first two episodes of season four of the Clone Wars cartoon, and a few glaring points in it made me wonder if George Lucas had outsourced the writing to imbeciles. George is not a great writer at the best of times, but he is better than this. I like the Clone Wars cartoons after they grew on me, but this is just sloppy.

Episodes one and two are set on Mon Cal, an aquatic planet inhabited by two aquatic species, the Mon Calamari and the Quarren. This episode features Captain Ackbar (presumably another neat tie in to the original trilogy where he turns up as Admiral Ackbar leading the Rebel forces) and a civil war stoked by the Separatists and Republic.

The concept is great, the whole underwater battle idea is fine. Jedi lightsabers working underwater is a bit of a stretch, as is the idea that Jedi have training to fight underwater. Like all fiction, specially science fiction you have to be willing to leave your science analysis at the door and go with the flow. I can accept this concept.

Did I mention this is an aquatic world, with two aquatic species? I'm sure I did, but in case I forgot, I'll point it out again. It's key to understanding the next point.

On this planet, there are lots of buildings under the surface, their entire civilization is underwater. There are also lots of tubes between buildings and areas, for the Mon Calamari and Quarren to travel between those locations. Those tubes are filled with the same water as the water outside the tubes. The only reason for the tubes to exist at all, is to avoid getting lost. If there is a start and end point like a train line, they don't have to worry about losing their way. Being aquatic species, born and raised in that environment, you'd imagine they'd be genetically and culturally adapted to NOT get lost underwater. The deeper you go, the further from the sun, the darker it is. Both species must be able to function perfectly in VERY dark waters.

Before I drop this bombshell, let me set the scene. There is a war going on outside and inside these tubes. At one point a party of Mon Calamari try to get to a "shortcut" which involves going through a tube that bends and twists it's way to it's end point. To me, a shortcut would be a straight line, if they are capable, but that's not the bombshell.

The Mon Calamari party are attacked from the end point of their tube, they manage to destroy those droids and block the end point. They can't go on. They can always turn back right? At this point some large part of debris comes crashing down behind them smashing the end of the tube behind them wide open to the sea.

The response? Abandon the tube leading directly to the destination and go by the open waters in the middle of the battle? No, apparently they're now trapped. They now have to wait for help. Yes, you got it, an aquatic species who are born to live underwater, happily swimming around in the open waters, suddenly find themselves trapped when their tube is smashed, leaving one end open to the sea.

They've treated it like a bridge being blocked at one end, then collapsing at the other, where none of the trapped characters have the ability to fly, and it's far too far to jump and survive, so they can't move until aid comes to lift them to safety.

Are the writers idiots? Do they think the audience are idiots? It gets better (or worse).

Convenient events always take the audience out of the story. At one point we have Anakin Skywalker asking a Mon Calamari "where are the communications towers, we need to bring them down to hide the arrival of our reinforcements". Guess what, they're within visual distance of it, so the Mon Calamari only has to point and say "there". How perfect is that? It gets better.

They don't even know if there ARE reinforcements coming, let alone when or from where. Not to fear, the writer monkeys have provided yet more convienient scenes to round that circle very neatly. There isn't time to outfit more Clone troopers to fight underwater, so they need another underwater army, nearby and able to deploy very quickly. Yep, the Gungans to the rescue. The Gungans haven't been seen as an army or any part of the Clone Wars so far, there's no clue that they threw their resources in with the Republic after the events leading up to the Clone Wars.

A quick call from Master Yoda, get's "I need time to think" from the Gungan leader. I'm guessing Boss Nass is either dead or no longer in charge. Of course Jar Jar comes to the rescue here in his eloquent way. A quick sentence about "Padme would help you, what's to think about?" and boom, decision made, the Gungans go to war.

So the Gungans are able to go from being totally unaware of what's happening on Mon Calamari, to having their already tooled up but unnoticed (to both Republic and Separatist) army on standby, to deploying on Mon Calamari just at the point and time Anakin Skyalker and the Mon Calamari need them.

Remember where Darth Sidious's roots are; Naboo. He has spies everywhere, he knows everything, yet a tooled up army on his homeworld ready to deploy with a few words escapes him? It's not as if the Gungans are particularly sneaky. Any army would be used as pawns and / or resources by Sidious and Tyrannus, so the idea of an unused army ready and waiting is far too convenient. A large part of Sidious's plan involves pushing the troops to over stretch to thin them out.

Yes it is fiction, yes it is aimed at kids, and yes it's not as well conceived as it could be. All of that aside, it's important not to treat your audience as chumps with glaring flaws like that. You can be light hearted, you can do the broad brush strokes on stuff to make it easier to understand for a younger audience, or even an audience who want action not political dialogue. You can minimize the dialogue or set it in such a way that it keeps the action flowing, but you have to respect the intelligence of your audience in the process.

George Lucas was never a good writer, nor a good director. I love the Star Wars universe, I always have but many people live in that world much more naturally than George Lucas. Most of the novels are fantastic because they're written by proper authors who respect their audience and don't do glaring flaws like I've pointed out above. Perhaps it'd be a good idea if the Clone Wars was handed over to their capable hands as far as the writing is concerned. If this is the quality of season four, I fear it may be the last. I foresee a drop in audience ratings, bad reviews leading to a cancellation of the show.