Star Trek: The Next Gen – Season 2, Ep 16
Q hurls the Enterprise across the galaxy.

“They’re called the Borg. Protect yourself Captain, or they’ll destroy you.” There are origin stories and then there are origin stories, and Q Who? is among the best in Trek. The powerful alien Q, played masterfully by John de Lancie, hurls the Enterprise and her smug band of heroes clear across the galaxy into scifi equivalent of the heart of darkness.

Picard and his crew come face to face with what many fans (this one included) consider to be the best villains in the entire franchise, the Borg. Part man, part machine they assimilate and digest whatever appeals to them, including 3 whole decks of the Enterprise E. The entire episode is creepy from start to finish, keeps you on the edge of your seat and sets up all of the Borg related mythos that follows in Next Gen, Voyager, First Contact and beyond. Q Who? also contains one of the best lines in all of Star Trek. When Picard pleads with Q to tell them their deadly encounter is just one of his elaborate illusions, Q counters with the ice cold “Oh no. This is as real as your so-called life gets.”

Hands down one of the best episodes of Next Generation. Eighteen crew members killed, baby borg drones, and the birth of über-baddies. Don’t miss it!

Deep Space 9 – Season 5, Ep 18
Quark wants to pay off his debts, but it may end up costing him his life.

When Quark realizes his finances are in the space toilet, he takes up an offer to broker weapons for his cousin Gaila. The latinum flows like wine, but so does the ill-will of the rest of the crew when they realize what Quark’s doing. Dax disowns him and Sisko puts him one stolen, self-sealing stembolt away from the nearest airlock.

All in all, the plot is solid but even the inclusion of a funny O’Brien b-story and the super-sexy companion of arms dealer Hagath can’t rescue this one from being more than what it is – a filler episode. As Ferengi stories go, this is one of the weaker ones, but the scene where Kira, Sisko and Odo give Quark the good cop / bad cop / blob cop treatment is priceless. That said, the lack of any meaningful character development earns it the rank of lieutenant. Worth a watching, but don’t divert the fleet to do so.

It’s difficult to believe that in just a few short weeks, the Sci-Fi Cast will celebrate its one year anniversary. When we look back, it seems like we’ve been watching and discussing Battlestar Galactica in our podcasts forever. In reality we only started with the launch of season 4, not bad when you consider just how frakking long seasons of BSG really are.

In episode 25 we discussed how disappointed some of us had been with the quality of BSG in the run-up to the finale. Now that the series is finished, I decided to go back and check our ratings for the last half of season 4. You can see in the chart above how each of us rated the last 10 episodes. Dave and I gave the last half of the season an average of 7 out of 10. Jen scored slightly higher with an average of 8 out of 10. All three of us had trends for season 4.5 that were heading downward. In other words, we all thought the episodes, in general, were getting worse instead of better.

What does this all mean? Not a heck of a lot, really. I think it’s safe to say we all enjoyed the finale and overall the entire season. We just wish Brother Cavil had returned to stir things up right after “The Oath” instead of waiting until the final minutes of season 4. Oh well, you can’t win them all. There’s always “The Plan” coming this fall. Guess we’re back to waiting again…

Warning: This post contains spoilers for the series finale of Battlestar Galactica, ‘Daybreak’. If you don’t want to know what happens, then you should stop reading now.

With the airing of last night’s series finale, Battlestar Galactica has passed from the realm of “what is” into “what was”. Even though the show ran for only 4 short seasons, its run lasted almost 6 full years. Watching the end of BSG last night among my friends, I was reminded that as with the end of many great TV series, it’s not always about the destination, but rather the journey.

Overall Daybreak was a very satisfying end to the grand experiment that was Ron Moore’s Battlestar Galactica. The finale was filled with much of the action that has been missing in recent weeks, a final confrontation with Brother Cavil, and answers to some important questions about Kara, Baltar and Six. The parts I enjoyed the most were the ones I knew were coming – the heart-pounding attack on the colony, learning the fate of Galactica itself and particularly the final moments between Bill Adama and Laura Roslin. I’ve really enjoyed the Laura/Bill subplot since the very beginning and their last flight together to find their “cabin on the hill” was moving and everything I had hoped it would be.

In contrast, Starbuck’s story line left me disappointed. From the series’ inception, Katee Sackhoff’s skillful turn as Starbuck made even the most stubborn old-school BSG fan a convert. Her performances as Kara Thrace proved to be a favorite of mine time and time again, until her fateful encounter with the Eye of Jupiter. Her “death” in Malestrom fundamentally changed Starbuck’s character and not in a good way. Call her what you will, angel, ghost or guardian, Kara Thrace died, was reborn and sent back to the Colonials a shell of her former self. It’s now clear that Moore’s intentions for the character were meandering at best, and deeply unsatisfying at worst. Starbuck started BSG with a bang but ended as only a whisper on the wind, and for that I’m sad.

On the good side, Tory finally got what was coming to her, Cavil ended up buying it even if he did take the coward’s way out (something very out of character for him), Sam was sacrificed at the altar of technology and the fleet finally found Earth. Not the ball of radiation soaked sand that Starbuck originally led them to, but the lush green Earth of eons past. With this discovery, humanity decides to make a clean break from the fleet that has sustained them since the genocide of the 12 colonies and fans out across the planet to start anew.

I honestly didn’t think coming into the finale the fleet would find a new home, but I’m glad I was wrong. These scenes on Earth were a welcome change from the dark, gray days on New Caprica or the nuked earth of Crossroads. How sad that even this crowning moment was scarred by the main characters deciding to take separate journeys from each other. It would be great to think of Bill, Lee, Galen, Baltar, Six, Sol and Ellen sitting around some campfire on a young Earth toasting marshmallows and finally getting a chance to relax, but that’s just a fantasy. Lee is left utterly alone. Tyrol decides to isolate himself and become the sole inhabitant of Ireland and Adama would rather spend his days grieving over the body of Laura than be with his surviving son. Bittersweet to the end.

Although I still believe the final season of Battlestar Galactica to be the weakest of the entire season (especially the run-up to the finale) in my heart, I can’t fault the series. On its worst days, BSG was head and shoulders above where 99% of other TV dramas reside. Those shows usually rack up undeserved awards and accolades for being nothing more than the cop or doctor show of the week. Battlestar Galactica gave viewers a fresh look at subjects like politics, terrorism, morality vs security and religion. I feel sorry for anyone who won’t take a chance on Galactica simply because they “don’t like sci-fi”. They will never know what they’re missing. Although I wasn’t blown away by the finale as some seem to have been, I did enjoy it. And although I didn’t find the final destination to be everything I had hoped for (probably a self-constructed impossibility), none-the-less I still had a hell of a fun time getting there. For that, I will always be grateful.

In order to understand what I mean, we must look at another sci-fi show – Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. DS9 lasted seven seasons and was often guided by the pen of writer, Ronald D. Moore. Today, we know him as the driving force behind BSG, but back in the late 90’s Ron was the lead writer in charge of Paramount’s dark sheep.

As a fan, I consider the final 2 seasons of Deep Space Nine to be near perfect in tone, drama, character development and ultimately, resolution. Like any series, there were occasionally weak episodes, but on a whole, the final two season of DS9 were simply wonderful. Heading into the final season, Ron Moore and company knew they had to pull out all of the stops to bring the varied plot threads of the Dominion War together in a satisfying way. The final half of season 7 is a non-stop roller coaster ride that stretches from the decadent “Changing Face of Evil” to the masterful conclusion of “What You Leave Behind“. One episode flowed seamlessly into the next until you arrived at the final 2 hour finale and wondered how it had all gone by so quickly.

Heading into the final half of season 4 of BSG, I had hoped Galactica would be like the end of Deep Space Nine. Each story building on the previous one, with heightened drama, increasing tension, and my fingernails worn down to nubs. But where DS9 gave us gradual and steady resolutions by delivering one clever, action packed episode after another, Galactica has turned into a depressing string of set-up stories that haven’t delivered emotionally or viscerally.

The last truly good episode of BSG this season was “The Oath” and to a lesser degree “Blood on the Scales”. These two episodes represent the best of Galactica. All pistons are firing – characters are motivated and in the thick of things, there is gritty action skillfully woven in between clever character development. After “The Oath” I was dying for the next episode.

What followed after “Blood” were 5 episodes of dialog heavy exposition that have left me, and others disappointed. Instead of building the action to a head, Moore has stalled it and attempted to save it (hopefully) for the final two hours. The problem is that no matter what happens in the last 90 minutes of BSG, it won’t make up for the previous 6 hours of wasted screen time. Deep Space Nine spent its final six hours in the trenches with the Klingons and Federation fighting for the very survival of the Alpha Quadrant. Battlestar Galactica has spent the last 5 episodes explaining the cylon origin story and keeping the bad guy as far away from the fleet as possible.

As we move into “Daybreak Part 2″ of Battlestar Galactica, we find Adama willing to risk his life, his ship and a sizable chunk of what’s left of humanity to save, not the fleet, but a little girl. This wouldn’t be so bad if we were emotionally invested in Hera, but we’re not. We only know her from passing shots as she plays in day care or running around the Great Opera House of Roslin’s visions. Why the final mission isn’t to rescue Kara or Laura is something I don’t understand.

My only hope is that in the series finale Moore returns to those themes and techniques that made Galactica great. The show has precisely 2 hours left to pull out all the stops and prove to us the last quarter of season 4 hasn’t been for nothing. I take solace in the thought that as with so many other television shows, it’s often not so much the destination, as it is the journey. I just wish Ron had remembered to take his trip with a bit of his former DS9 self instead of the plot-heavy, slow as molasses Moore of “No Exit” and “Daybreak Part 1″.

Many years ago, I went into a movie theater with my father to see 2001: A Space Odyssey, and left utterly baffled by what I had seen; baffled and amazed. To young Dave, 2001 didn’t make a bit of sense but also grabbed my attention like nothing else.

Today, love it. In a recent episode of The Sci-Fi Cast it received a beating, and friend-of-the-show Louie Mantia also gave it a poor review earlier this week. With that in mind, I want to share why I love my favorite movie.

First things first: By definition, it’s impossible for one’s opinion to be right or wrong. I know there are legions of people who dislike 2001. The point of this post is not to persuade. If you hate this movie, by all means, hate it! I’ll not condemn you for doing so.

When I first saw 2001, as I said, I left the theater baffled.

What the hell was that?

It didn’t make any sense.

I have no idea what just happened.

Even today, I lack a solid interpretation of what 2001 is about. Of course, that was by design. In a 1968 interview with Playboy magazine, Kubrick stated:

“You’re free to speculate as you wish about the philosophical and allegorical meaning of the film — and such speculation is one indication that it has succeeded in gripping the audience at a deep level — but I don’t want to spell out a verbal road map for 2001 that every viewer will feel obligated to pursue or else fear he’s missed the point.”

That was the tipping point for me. I didn’t understand the story, but was so enthralled by the rest of the movie that I felt compelled to try and understand it. Or, more to the point, discover if there even was a story.

After reading the book by Arthur C. Clarke and repeated viewings of the film, I’ve come to the following understanding of the story.

THE STORY

The film begins at dawn, somewhere in prehistoric Africa. However, the story begins before that. A race of aliens travel an incomprehensible distance to plant two monoliths: One on Earth, and one on the moon.

The first is planted next to a small tribe of pre-historic humanoids (we’ll call them “apes”) while they sleep. When they awake at dawn, they freak.

This is one of my favorite scenes. It’s easy to dismiss it as a bunch of monkeys going nuts over the sight of a black box. But think about it — this is the first time any of them have ever seen anything so “perfect.” It’s got 90˚ angles. It’s completely black and its surface is perfectly smooth. What’s ordinary to us was utterly foreign to the apes; something they’ve literally never seen before.

Why is it there? Many people think that the monolith itself somehow prompts the apes, or shows them what they need to make the next great leap in their evolution … the use of tools. But I think its function is different.

The monolith offers a challenge to their thinking. In trying to understand this completely alien object, the apes must dramatically alter their thinking and assumptions about everything in their environment. One of the apes, whom the book calls “Moonwatcher,” is idly fiddling with some bones as he has probably done countless times before. However, he’s doing it with a fresh perspective, and notices that one bone can have an effect on another. Specifically, one bone can break another. He’s made human kind’s first tool.

It doesn’t take long for Moonwatcher to try and use his new tool as a weapon. Typically, Moonwatcher and his tribe would go to the watering hole for a drink, and occasionally come across a neighboring tribe, there for the same purpose. This meetup would result in some shouting back and forth but that was about it.

However, Moonwatcher brings his bone with him and uses it to kill a member of the rival tribe. Two things happen: The members of the rival tribe are dumbfounded — nothing like this has ever happened before — and more importantly, Moonwatcher stands erect on his hind legs. Another first.

At this point, humankind has made a quantum leap in its development, thinking and understanding of the world. No longer hunter/gatherers, defenseless against the attacks of predators, they have reached the end of that point in their evolution.

Then, in the most dramatic jump cut in the history of film, Moonwatcher tosses humankind’s first weapon into the air, only to have it turn into his latest: An orbital gun platform hovering above the Earth. His tools have evolved with him, and in fact, are quite “human” in their own way.

Humankind has mastered its terrestrial life. In fact, he has begun to venture into space.

That’s where things are different.

In space, he must eat “baby food.” Without gravity, he must learn to walk again (remember the trouble the flight attendant has while walking across the ship; Kubrick lets us see her struggle intentionally) and become “potty trained” all over again, as Dr. Floyd struggles to figure out the Zero G toilet. Kubrick is telling us that, in a way, humankind is still in its infancy.

Additionally, humans lose control of their tools in space. A pen escapes Dr. Heywood R. Floyd’s pocket and floats aimlessly during flight.

While surveying the moon, a team uncovers the second monolith. Their reaction is much different than that of their ancestors. There’s none of the fear, the wonder. They stand around for a bit. Take pictures.

This one was programmed to send a signal to its creators when exposed to sunlight. Of course, that would only happen when human explorers reached the point of being able to excavate such a large object on the moon.

They discover that the signal traveled to Jupiter, and send a team of astronauts to investigate 18 months later. The team boards the Discovery and travels through space along with HAL 9000, the ultimate tool. In fact, HAL is the central nervous system of that ship, and the humans are merely the maintenance crew. They needn’t be there at all, in fact.

But remember, man loses control of his tools in space.

HAL makes a mistake, and the humans decide to turn him off. The battle of man vs. tool has begun, and the humans win. By deactivating HAL, man has evolved beyond the need for tools.

Again, they’ve reached an endpoint in their evolution. The next step, as before, will be unfathomable.

The alien forces that challenged prehistoric man to reach beyond himself, and invited contemporary man to a meetup beside Jupiter, are waiting for Dave.

This is where many people understandably throw their hands in the air and walk away from 2001. If you thought Act I and II were weird, than Act III is just plain ridiculous. But here’s how I understand it.

In the book, Dave travels an incomprehensible distance across unknown dimensions to where the aliens originate. Kubrick presents this journey with the crazy colors and tunnel. Suddenly, we see Dave in a Victorian hotel room.

WTF.

In the book, we learn that the aliens set up the “hotel room” (don’t take it literally) to make Dave feel at home. However, the information they used to construct the room (radio waves or whatever) took a very long time to travel from Earth to them. In fact, by the time Dave himself arrived, the aliens were using data from the Victorian period. Hence the look of the room.

Clarke also describes boxes of nondescript, tasteless, blue food that isn’t much to eat but keeps Dave alive.

So how long does Dave spend in the hotel room? That doesn’t really matter, nor can the question be answered. There’s really no time in space. That is to say, there’s no chronology that can be measured without a reference point. In New York City it might be 12:00 noon, but on the surface of Jupiter … or wherever ever Dave is … that doesn’t matter.

Still, Kubrick shows the passage of time. Dave looks up to see “Old Dave.” Are there really two Daves in the room? No. Kubrick is showing us that Dave has spent time in the room.

While eating, Dave knocks his glass into the floor and it breaks. The glass has shattered (the body) but the wine (the spirit) remains.

Humankind no longer needs its body, and makes the next quantum leap in evolution. The Starchild is born.

WHAT I LOVE

Many people complain, “This movie is slow.” They’re right. In 2001, spaceships don’t zoom across the stars at breakneck speeds, banking and roaring as they go. Instead, Kubrick’s spaceships do what spaceships actually do: They travel in a perfectly straight line in a laborious manner. It’s understandable why a generation of moviegoers bred on flashy films like “The Fast And The Furious” have trouble with sitting through a slow scene. But they’re slow for a reason.

As I said in the podcast, each shot is composed as if it were a gorgeous photograph. They’re just gorgeous.

There’s no CGI in this movie (almost … save Dave’s journey beyond the infinite). It’s all hand made. These are real sets and real human beings. All SFX Scenes from the Movie are cut together in full length and in chronological order. There are no green screen Clone Troopers here!

Plus, 2001 has tremendous science images. From HAL’s status panels to the guesses at tech that we have today (like webcams), it still holds up after more than 30 years.

More than anything, what I love about 2001 is the challenge. It sparks discussion and thought. What I’ve described above is my own interpretation. Yours might be completely different, and I’d love to hear it.

This is a movie I like to watch on a quiet day when I can sit on the couch, draw the curtains, focus my attention and travel beyond the infinite.

WARNING: This post contains spoilers for season 4 of Battlestar Galactica.

One of the things we love about Battlestar Galactica is the show’s attention to detail. From the cut corners, to the colonial swear words, Ron Moore’s Galactica is a geek’s paradise. One of the ways the series illustrates this is its unwavering quest for continuity. Most fans of Battlestar Galactica know that the number of survivors listed in the opening credits changes from week to week depending on how many people in the fleet kick the bucket or are added due to births or discovering long lost colonials.

Last night’s episode of season 4, A Disquiet Follows My Soul, featured a different, but still subtle change in the opening credits. Previously, the opening text that is the hallmark of each episode tells us that humanity is searching for a home… called Earth. However, with the discovery of the nuked, uninhabitable “Earth” in Revelations, the fleet has been in disarray. Adama & Roslin’s quest for Earth came to a bitter end and now humanity must wander space until a new home can be found. The new sequence reflects this change in the story and it’s just another reason why we love BSG so much.

Today we feel confused and depressed, which can only mean one thing … Battlestar Galactica is back!

What happens when you destroy the fondest, most desperate dream of thirteen thousand people? They spiral into an all-consuming despair. This episode, written by David Bradley, is fantastically dark. Consider a three act play: Act I, meet the characters. Act II, put them in the most desperate situation possible. Act III, get them out.

If the purpose of Act I was to get them to earth, then Act II — take away their hope on a radioactive wasteland — has begun.

Note: The rest of this post contains spoilers that will ruin this episode for anyone who hasn’t seen it, and possibly the season for anyone who isn’t caught up to this point. If you don’t want to know, stop reading right now! This means YOU!

The rest of you may click below to continue.

The title Sometimes A Great Notion comes from an American folk song, “Goodnight, Irene” in which the narrator contemplates suicide with the infamous line, “Sometimes I take a great notion to jump in the river and drown.” One only needs to recall Bill’s fox hunt story and Tigh’s (suicide attempt?) revelation in the ocean to see the reference.

The latter half of season 4 picks up right where the story left off. As an away team surveys the scorched earth, Baltar confirms the worst: The ground, water table and anything edible is radioactive and unfit for human consumption. Earth is uninhabitable and must be abandoned. Broken, Laura Roslin returns to the fleet with Bill and is greeted by an anxious, desperate throng. She tries, and in the episode’s first heartbreaking moment, fails to deliver the terrible news. She retreats to her quarters where she shuns Bill, burns the holy book she’s held so dear for her whole life and submits to a debilitating depression.

Meanwhile, Kara and Leobin are conducting a survey of their own. Using a navigation device, she discovers the signal of an old colonial communicator. Following it, they find a damaged chunk of a colonial nav system among the ruins, which sparks her curiosity. This leads to  a trail of debris, and eventually a viper cockpit which contains a charred corpse. A charred corpse with long hair. Nauseated and terrified, Kara reaches inside its flight suit and removes its dog tags. As you may have guessed, they read “K. Thrace.”

Here’s where it got interesting. Realizing what happened, Leobin becomes visibly afraid of Kara. He backs away, stumbling, not even looking at where he’s going. He’s wide-eyed, and breaks into a full run. Kara calls after him, recounting the hybrid’s dreadful prophecy, but he’s gone.

With Laura incapacitated, Lee delivers the news to the fleet. Everyone is devastated and the ships fall into chaos. People are fighting in the hallways. There’s graffiti on the walls. Sad and desperate people are lying everywhere like corpses.

Dee gives Lee a pep talk, which seems to reignite the old spark between them. They make a date and Dee gets all gussied up (it was nice to see her in a dress an out of that dull uniform!). Both of them seem rather happy, which is a sharp contrast to Dee’s state on earth. Searching through the scorched land, she found a set of jacks that a child might have played with and broke down, realizing the horror of the scene.

In fact, she was affected more significantly than I thought, for as she was undressing after her date with Lee, she pulled out her sidearm, put to her temple and shot herself dead. Felix, whom she had been talking to only minutes before, could only kneel at her side and watch her die.

Heartbreaking scene numer two.

Dee’s death was Bill’s breaking point. Drunk and desperate, he staggers into Tigh’s office with a loaded gun. He antagonizes Tigh, taunts him with rude comments about Ellen, his dead wife, causing Tigh to draw his gun and hold it to Bill’s head. Bill begs him to shoot, putting his own gun to his head and saying, “If you don’t, I will.”

Realizing he had been manipulated, Tigh sits down and drops his gun. Bill does the same, and that concludes heartbreaking scene number three.

Back on Earth, the “final four” cylons have revelations of their own. Chief recongizes the ghostly paintings on the wall of a ruin as a marketplace on earth. Memories flood back as he realizes that he once lived on earth, and bought fruit and produce in that very market. In fact, he recalls the day he was buying avacados at the very moment a nuclear bomb was detonated, destroying everything and everyone.

The others have similar revelations, but the most significant is Saul’s. At the episode’s end, he has wandered far out into the ocean. The water is nearly up to his shoulders. His hands happen upon a piece of rubble which triggers a memory for him — a memory of Ellen trapped beneath some rubble two thousand years ago on earth, and his desperate struggle to save her. “It’s OK,” she tells him. “We’ll all be born again, and again, and again.”

“Ellen,” Saul says in a moment of clarity. “You were the fifth.”

This episode answered questions and raised others. While examining the remains of a mass grave, Gaius and his team determine that all of the buried corpes … centurion and bone … are cylon. So, the thirteenth colony was cylon. So why do some people have memories of life on earth? How did Kara find her corpse? What the frak is going on?

To say this was one of the best episodes of the series is an understatement. The acting was phenomenal all around. I was blown away by Dee’s suicide. I was numb with Roslin has she lay curled up on the floor of her quarters. I was desperate and lost with Bill, and confounded with Kara. This is the Battlestar I remember, and I’m thrilled that it’s back.

In Dante’s Inferno, he states that the most execrable horror of hell is to live without hope. Indeed, the fleet is in hell.

As a child of the 70’s whose imagination was awakened by A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, only to have my heart stomped into the ground by The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith (and then shat upon by The Clone Wars), I was anticipating the premiere of George Lucas’ Star Wars: The Clone Wars television series with all the glee one might associate with a root canal or Christmas dinner with the in-laws.

Then I thought of a wise thing my father said to me years ago as we stood outside in teeming rain with no shelter in sight, “Once sponge is wet, can’t get any wetter.”

Or, from Ferris Bueller, “There’s a certain peace in being completely screwed. You know it can’t get any worse.”

With my expectations low, I tuned in. That’s when it got weird.

I liked it.

Warning: Spoilers follow. If you don’t want to know, stop reading now.

The Plot

The simplistic story is definitely for kids, but still fun. King Katuunko of the Toydarians (yes, like Watto) doesn’t know if he should align his people with the Jedi or the separatists. He meets with Asajj Ventress, a student of Sith Lord Dooku, on the planet Rugosa. Asajj suggests at Dooku’s prodding that Yoda should prove the Jedi’s worth to Katuunko by defending himself against their droids. Of course it’s a trap, and Yoda and the three clones he travelled with end up fighting for their lives.

In the end, Yoda and friends persevere, Katuunko chooses the protection of the Jedi and Asajj leaves in a huff.

High Points

Tom Kane’s portrayal of Yoda was dead on. If you had told me that Frank Oz was behind the little green Jedi, I’d have believed it.

This episode also portrayed the clones as individuals, with names, differing hair styles and personalities; a fun departure from the faceless Stormtroopers of episodes IV – VI.

Another high point was Asajj Ventress. I typically ignore the expanded universe characters, but Asajj is interesting. Partially trained as a Jedi, she’s now leaning towards the dark side. Having received some training from Dooku, she isn’t yet a Sith but still skilled with a lightsaber. She’s vicious and angry, but still young and ignorant. Yoda easily exploits her inexperience, which only fuels her rage.

Of course, the real star of Ambush is Yoda himself. He’s compassionate, contemplative and wise. In short – the Yoda we met in The Empire Strikes Back. There’s a great scene in which Yoda encourages his forlorn and wounded clones. Asking them to remove their helmets, he calls each one by name and shows them how to focus on their strengths. It’s a great scene, and reminds me of Luke and Yoda on Degobah.

Low Points

The Battle Droids make lots of silly puns, etc. that just drive me nuts. I know that their role is comic relief (and that the show is meant for 8-year-olds to begin with), but it’s still irksome.

Another problem is Yoda’s speech. He still talks “backwards” as it were, but the does it all the time. Every single sentence is backwards. I know this wasn’t so in the early movies.

Finally, and I know this is nit-picking, but CGI-Yoda’s ears don’t have the same jiggle as the puppet.

Conclusion

The Clone Wars is a fun exploration of the events that took place between Episodes III and IV. Go into it expecting a Saturday morning cartoon set in Lucas’ universe and you’ll enjoy it. If Ambush is representative of the whole series, Lucasfilm will have a hit on their hands.