Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Clone Wars -- "Cat and Mouse" (Ep. 2.16)

-- A wise leader knows when to follow.

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"No ship that small has a cloaking device."
It's amazing the kinds of things that have come out of Star Wars from just a passing line or a brief glimpse. That's probably the real genius behind the movies, the flashes of the universe that Lucas imagined to hold his characters. Excuse me, galaxy. So, in this episode, we get our first look at what a cloaking device is and just how small a ship can be to have one.

The villain in this episode is a spider alien, Admiral Trench.
He's sort of considered a military legend and genius. And he happens to be someone who has developed an effective strategy against cloaked ships. All of which leads us to the title of the episode: "Cat and Mouse." It's rather like ships hunting a submarine.

The more interesting aspect of this episode is that we get to see Anakin working with Admiral Yularen for the first time. I mean working with him, not just operating off of the admiral's ship. Anakin and Yularen have had a... I'm going to say contentious relationship up to this point with Yularen saying things like "What did you break this time?" to Anakin with a greater frequency than he would probably like to. "Cat and Mouse" gives Yularen the chance to appreciate the way Anakin works in a whole new way.

It's a good, solid episode and one that can easily be watched without any other background.

2 comments:

  1. The battle stories, whether in space or on the surface, are usually less interesting to me. But I like submarine stories. "Cat and Mouse" might make an interesting pairing with "Balance of Terror," one of Star Trek TOS's finest, also based on submarine battle.

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    1. TAS: I liked Hunt for Red October (book and movie), but I can't say that I necessarily like submarine stories in and of themselves.

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