Doctor Decimate
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It's time to play the most dangerous game on episode 65 of Star Wars: The Clone Wars. The setup here will prove to be largely irrelevant to the rest of the episode, so here it is, as vaguely as possible: Anakin, Ahsoka, and Plo Koon are on at place with some clones attacking some droids. It’s a pretty-looking place, though. As Ahsoka prepares to climb a wall, an Argonian blasts her with a laser net that electrocutes her until she passes out. He remarks with an obnoxious voice that it must be his lucky day, because apparently this moron actually hunts for stuff in the middle of a battlefield. Ahsoka awakens in a cage to see the Argonian smash her transmitter. She does not use the Force to attack him, in what will become a common theme. A fellow prisoner tells her that the Argonian, who travels with a larger group, is going to release them and indulge in the most oddly specific cliché ever created: hunting them for sport.
The Argonians drop the prisoners on an island on a distant planet and open fire to thin the herd a bit. Within the jungle, Ahsoka soon encounters the Lost Persons of Nonspecific Gender: three Jedi kids who were taken on a training mission. There are two boys, one who’s part of that race of tentacle-headed strippers and one with a really big head, and a human-looking girl who sounds like she’s in her mid-twenties. They take her to their hideout and explain that they were taken on a training mission, as well as the fact that the Argonians take Jedi children because full-fledged adults are too much for them to handle. Meanwhile, Anakin angsts over the fact that Ahsoka is gone.
Morning comes and the Lost Persons of Nonspecific Gender tell Ahsoka that they have to clear out so that the Argonians don’t find their hiding place. We cut to the Argonians on their ship and in a trophy room full of various pelts and mounted heads. They put on their best hunting vests (seriously, all of them wear some kind of vest) and head down to the island on what appear to be flying Jeeps. After the Lost Persons of Nonspecific Gender stop her from preventing some other survivors from being gunned down, Ahsoka takes this opportunity to do what Ahsoka does best: complain. Yes, she has a point that they should fight back, but it seems that in the latter half of this season she hasn’t done more than alternate between whininess and cockiness. Anyway, she leaves the Lost Persons behind to go look for an Argonian. She finds one almost immediately and deflects his shot by moving his gun with the Force, and then she uses the Force to knock him against a tree. Then, instead of using the Force again because apparently there’s some kind of video game cooldown timer on it, Ahsoka leaps on his back. She’s thrown to the ground some distance away and about to be shot when the Lost Persons of Nonspecific Gender show up to save her; the Lost Girl uses Force Choke and is about to kill the Argonian before Ahsoka stops her. The Argonian lets out a bizarre cry for help before the Lost Boys leap on him instead of using the Force. He manages to throw them off, but they finally come to their sense and use the Force to hurl him against a tree and knock him out.
Ahsoka takes the Argonian’s gun, but is informed back at the hideout that it’s DNA-locked or something and thus useless. But that incredibly frustrating battle was not completely pointless, as the Lost Persons now have faith in Ahsoka and the will to fight. They devise a plan to search for the Argonian base. We cut to the Argonians in their trophy room, where some bizarre, silly ritual is taking place involving a lot of posing and chest-bumping (no, seriously.) Apparently this is some random Force Dream, as Ahsoka wakes up, startled at just how stupid the ritual was. In the morning, Ahsoka and the Lost Persons of Nonspecific Gender search for the Argonian base and soon find it when it appears overhead: a flying fortress. Two Jeeps float down to the planet and the kids split up, Ahsoka and the Lost Girl in one group and the Lost Boys in another. The Lost Boys manage to escape, but the Lost Girl has a branch shot out from under her and falls to the ground. The Argonian chief sends his son to finish her off. Ahsoka rescues the Lost Girl and once again makes the maddening choice of using the Force and then abandoning it in favor of largely ineffective hand-to-hand combat, but she manages to throw Argonian Chief Jr. from a tree and impale him on some spiky plants on the jungle floor. Ahsoka returns to the Lost Girl, who is immediately shot by the enraged Argonian chief. In a very surprising move, the Lost Girl dies as she tells Ahsoka to take care of the others and the chief screams in the distance.
I was legitimately shocked that Clone Wars, a show aimed at children on Cartoon Network, decided to outright kill a child character. But that element of surprise is really the only positive I can find here, outside of the planet providing some nice visuals. The Argonians have obnoxious voices and make for exceptionally nonthreatening villains because of that and the visual of a bunch of lizardmen in vests. The fights feel like one big experiment to see how many times viewers can scream, "USE THE FORCE YOU IDIOTS."
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Next time on Star Wars: The Clone Wars, a new prisoner arrives to even the odds...
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