Clone Wars S01 E17 (SPOILERS)

Clone Wars episodes featuring Padme!Amidala as the principal character tend to be…well, bad, if I’m honest. I think it’s the ’spy gal’ angle the EU keeps trying to reinforce, as if Amidala couldn’t be intelligent without slipping into a cat suit and doing forward rolls down every Separatist fortress corridor from here to the Outer Rim.

Perhaps it’s a little harsh to blame the EU for this as the flawed storyline of Episode II also seems to substitute the Amidala of the first film for this Bond girl-lite caricature.

All of this makes it sound like I’m against the idea of Amidala being an action character – I’m not, I’m just against stories that solely seem to focus on this aspect of her personality. Episode #17 is one of them.

At first I was really excited about seeing Theed on the small screen. Even with Binks as one of the main characters, I was hoping that this episode might be something like an Episode I.5 story…but it wasn’t, it was just a biohazard in another fortress with a stock Nazi character type of story; Escape from Castle Naboo and all that.

Not the worst episode thus far but certainly an episode that could be considered a wasted oportunity.

Considering the setting and Naboo’s ties to the Prequel Trilogy, a lot more could have been done with this. It’s a real shame that it wasn’t.