Last week on Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Duchess Satine unraveled a plot to trick the Republic into occupying her planet while she and now-just-friends Obi-wan try to clear her for being framed for murder. Here’s the buzz around the galaxy about ‘Duchess of Mandalore’ -making political intrigue fans happy:
- TheForce.Net called it “really good”, and liked the political intrigue of Palpatine but saw the murder implication and Obi-Wan’s fight as implausible.
- IGN goes 7.8 / 10, also liking the intrigue, but wished for more near the end, especially after the intensity of the first two episodes in the Satine arc.
- Big Shiny Robot goes the other way, thinking the beginning to be boring, but enjoying the Hitchcockian suspense through the middle and end.
- MTV Movies Blog is mostly neutral, but points out that the murder charge plotline simply poofs at the end.
- Dauntless Media gives it an “A”, calling it the “most mature, allegorical story” so far as a cautionary tale about the abuse of power, but found the ineffective assassin to be the weak element.
- Pop Goes the Culture likes the visuals of Coruscant and the political lessons, but hits a little snag of the plot – in the middle of a giant war where troops are stretched to the thinnest, is the stability of one neutral planet really of key interest to the Senate?
- Prequel Appreciation Society snarks up a summary, and wishes the visually impressive episode was longer, because there was so much going on in the plot.
- Pendragon’s Post likes the reversal of the The Phantom Menace storyline to show a different philosophy but wishes that the Satine arc was a smoother in overall plot.
And don’t forget our own review on the episode!
I found the episode pretty boring. If I’ve learned anything from the prequels it’s that “C-SPAN… IN SPACE!” is just as tedious as regular C-SPAN. Obi-Wan’s street fight was pretty great but it’s a bad sign when you’re checking your watch during a 20 minute show.
I’m just not held captive by discovering the minutiae of the overly complicated plot to take control of a pacifist world. Call me crazy but I would guess that overthrowing a politically-neutral, pacifist, world would be pretty easy for the Death Watch, especially while the universe’s superpower was busy with an intergalactic war. It doesn’t even make sense for Palpatine to bother with neutral Mandalore. They’re NEUTRAL and PACIFIST! He could just wait until the war is over and then show up with a legion of stormtroopers take control of the place and call it a day. Am I missing something here?