The Clone Wars review round-up: ‘Mercy Mission’ and ‘Nomad Droids’

This week’s episode of Star Wars: The Clone Wars is a rerun of ‘Prisoners’, but next week, TCW is back with a new episode. My DVR has been rather slow all week – is the lack of first run episodes a lead up to the November sweeps or is it the World Series? Anyway, here’s what the interwebs has to say about the two most recent episodes, ‘Mercy Mission’ and ‘Nomad Droids’. How do R2-D2 and C-3PO do when holding down the show?

• Eric at TheForce.net found the trip to Aleen to be “very funny” but with an empty plot – but points out the clones’ condescension of both their humanitarian mission and their non-human assistees as harbingers of the future. But ‘Nomad Droids’ failed to impress Eric, who panned it as “simply unexciting, overly bizarre, and out of step with the rhythm of Star Wars” ripping off The Wizard of Oz too much, and wondering at the show’s message on Christianity in the form of Hay-Zu.
• Bryan at Big Shiny Robot was a fan of whimsical droid adventures, and called ‘Mercy Mission’ a “bizarre and delightful fantasy” and ‘Nomad Droids’ fun that works, but recognized that this isn’t the “sort of fare we’ve been used to on the show.”
• IGN gave the first outing an 8/10, calling it a “funny, likeable tangent” but felt the plot got “more than a bit murky”, then proclaimed that the second trip “the weirdest, most out there and just plain random episodes of The Clone Wars yet” and “hell of a lot of fun” and scored it 8.5/10.
• Sean at Fanboy Comics called ‘Mercy’ a fun little episode and enjoyed Artoo’s reactions.
• Peter at LightSaber Rattling gave ‘Mercy’ a 6.0 for this episode aimed at the kids, and found Wolffe and his men to be the voice of the adults. ‘Nomad’ satisfied more, earning a 7.0, with Artoo liked but Threepio compared to a robotic Jar Jar Binks.
• Den of Geek viewed the mission to Aleen’s underworld as a “delightful oddity” that was more Lord of the Rings than Star Wars, while the second episode was a character piece.
• Knights Archive enjoyed Orphne’s introduction, found Threepio a little annoying, but loved ‘Mercy Mission’ for being different. But ‘Nomad’ felt short, with each segment too rushed and the droids just too lucky.
• A diehard Droids fan, Jason at FindYourGeek liked ‘Mercy’ for its awesome lighting effects but too many classic trilogy references, and gives it 7.5/10. ‘Nomad’ was appreciated more, picking up 8.0 as the “the last laugh before things get serious.”

And if you missed them, here’s the Club Jade reviews of the two episodes – Stooge wrote without mercy for ‘Mercy Mission’, and I found ‘Nomad’ no-bad.