Star Wars: the Animated Series… The Force Personified Part 2?

You can read Part 1 here.

So the very first episode in this three-part arch is called “Overlords” and it begins with this quote:

Balance is found in the one who faces his guilt.

Okay, well, now I guess we know the theme of the episode. For those of you who do follow the series, you’ll be well acquainted with the narrator’s voice—I think the narrator might actually be one of the captains on board the triangle-shaped ships—but for those of you who don’t follow the series, just know that the narrator starts off by giving the background for every episode. It would be like, if the original movies had someone reading the long excerpt at the beginning instead of making you read it yourself.

You know, I actually really hate this setup. For the movies, I can kind of understand it, but for a TV series that’s practically a documentation of a war, using the narrator every episode to state what’s going on seems kind of cheap. He’s giving us background information so we can understand what’s going on without the show showing us what’s going on. There’s nothing to recap yet, because this is the first episode in the arc.

So the episode begins with the narrator telling us that a Jedi distress signal over two thousand years old has been found. And Anakin, Obi-Wan, and Ahsoka are sent to investigate.

Um… okay?

Yeah, good thing the show skipped over talking about that. I totally don’t want to see how the Jedi council reacts to such a find, nor do I want an explanation as to why they’re sending three of their most prominent Jedi to investigate this while they’re fighting a war. Seriously, it’s two thousand years old. Like, that’s a great find and all, and had I been a Jedi, I’d have viewed it as a way to learn more about my history, but during a war, some things take priority over others.

Also, after two thousand years, I’m pretty sure whoever sent it may possibly be dead. Just maybe.

But, no, they send Anakin and friends anyway. And they don’t just send them; they send a whole battleship to meet them. Yes, this is clearly the best use of their resources. Anyway, something weird is going on. Both Anakin’s shuttle and the battleship are at the same coordinates, and they can communicate with one another, but they can’t seem to find each other.

Then out of nowhere a planet that looks remarkably like En II from Star Ocean appears. I do not get this affinity creators have for making fake planets look like this:

This is actually En II, not Force World, but they do look pretty similar.

I also don’t get how characters who have never seen something like that before can tell it’s a planet. But I digress.

The not-planet starts pulling Anakin’s shuttle in, and our three main characters pass out, only to wake up on—or they may be inside, but I didn’t see any openings in the diamond—the planet. It’s weird, because someone landed the shuttle, but they were all passed out, so it couldn’t have been one of them. The shuttle itself, though being completely fine, doesn’t work anymore. Now, my guess would be that either the Son or the Daughter landed it and disabled it, but this is never going to be explained, so don’t get your hopes up.

This is seriously what the planet-thing’s interior looks like.

Upon the planet, the characters marvel at the floating rocks of Pandora, so I can only imagine that Jake and Neytiri are frolicking around and having hair sex somewhere. And the planet is also doubly mysterious because the seasons change during the different times of day.

Okay, before I go on about how the episode seems to revel in throwing a bunch of weird at us and that nothing has been explained thus far, I need to ask a question. How do the characters know what the seasons are? They exist in a universe where every planet has only one climate all the time. Are there the occasional planets that have seasons?

Call me picky, but I feel the same way about this as I did in The Phantom Menace when they’re running the blockade and the one guy says something like “Without the shield generator, we’ll be sitting ducks.” Okay, how does he know what a duck is? Furthermore, how does he even know that idiom? I get that in actuality they’re probably not even speaking English, but that just makes saying the idiom worse.

I’ll move on now.

So while they’re staring at the floating rocks—I’m still thinking Pandora—the Daughter appears and asks if Anakin is the one. And she’s all mysterious about it and glowy. Gee, I wonder if she means the Chosen One…

Following that, she explains nothing, and at least Anakin, Obi-Wan, and Ahsoka are just as confused as I am at this point, so I can give the episode credit for that. Then, the Daughter takes the three of them to meet the Father. On the way there, a giant rockslide occurs that separates Anakin and the Daughter from Obi-Wan and Ahsoka. The Daughter claims her brother, the Son, caused it. She then leaves to investigate, or something.

So because they were separated, Obi-Wan and Ahsoka decide to head back to the shuttle while Anakin moves on ahead. Yeah, too bad none of them are Jedi or anything, because then they would just be able to Force jump their way over the rocks and regroup.

But no, they split up, and Ahsoka and Obi-Wan head back and discover that the shuttle is missing. Yet another mystery the episode feels the need to throw at us. The Son chooses this time to appear—no, I don’t remember it ever saying that he hid the shuttle—and he has the ability to disable lightsabers with his mind. Nifty trick. He warns them to find shelter from an upcoming storm. Then, turns into a demon thing and flies off.

Is anyone else as confused as I am?

I’m not sure what’s going on. I remember the first time watching this, I was with my boyfriend, and it was around this point that he looked at me and said, “Is this really happening right now?’

I responded, “I don’t know, because I don’t know what is happening.”

“I think they’ve personified the Force.”

“Well, I hope not, because that’s fucking stupid.”

The point that I’m getting at is that around this time a great mystery has been presented to the audience, yet there hasn’t been any payoff. In fact, it doesn’t even look as though there’s going to be any payoff. I can just see the writers for this episode not being sure what’s going on, or to what extent the Son’s and the Daughter’s powers should be, so they just kept adding in mysteriousness. Like, okay, the Son and the Daughter should obviously be very strong with the Force, and they should both have the abilities of Sith and Jedi, and I guess they can also turn into large, winged beasts. But why do the seasons change? Why do the rocks float? Is that the Force causing this? So the Father is mentally controlling everything on Pandora/En II/Wherever-The-Hell-They-Are?

I guess I can go with that, but how did their shuttle land?

In fact, where is the shuttle?

Did the Son hide it somewhere, or does it just no longer exist because the script demands it not to?

You know, being Force-sensitive should be a little different than pulling convenient magic tricks out a character’s ass whenever needed.

Anyway, Anakin runs off the meet the Father, who wants to learn the truth about Anakin. I feel as though these episodes forgot that we already know Anakin’s the Chosen One. Presenting a giant mystery like this doesn’t make the story better. If Anakin is truly destined to bring balance to the Force, that’s going to happen regardless of whether or not he knows what he is. And I’m glad he doesn’t know, because then we’d have to put up with the stupid episodes where he fights against his destiny—oh, wait, that’s what these episodes are about: Anakin fighting his destiny. Everything I’ve ever wanted in a Star Wars episode.

Naturally, Anakin wants to know what’s going on, and he pulls a lightsaber out on the Father, which has no effect on the man. The Father actually just grabs the blade. It’s kind of cool that their lightsabers don’t work against the Force family. The Father, however, follows up on this assault on his person by offering to let Anakin stay the night.

And with that, I’m going to break this review here. So until next time, everyone, and keep an eye out for Part 3.

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