The Clone Wars - S7E2: A Distant Echo
THE CLONE WARS
The second episode of the seventh season of Star Wars: The Clone Wars starts off with a supremely weird, slightly off-kilter and a touch amusing comedic situation involving an illicit call from Anakin to Padme and a knowing Obi-Wan. Other than this, the rest of the episode flows without a hitch, diving right into the Bad Batch’s mission to find out if former clone trooper Echo is being used by the Separatists for nefarious purposes.
A new planet, Skako Minor, is introduced. This one is a bit different from other planets and is something like Pandora from Avatar, only yellowish instead of blueish and barren instead of lush. There are creatures on this planet that are similar to the flying creatures in Avatar and like that film, the plot touches on the theme of a military invading a peaceful planet. Oh – and the creatures also make for some inventive action sequences.
Keven Kiner’s superb score again propels the action forward and the Bad Batch’s powers come more into play, resulting in some very creative moves that make the episode slightly more than droids and clones exchanging blaster fire. Admittedly, the narrative where a peaceful planet doesn’t want this war disturbing them and the clones prove to be the good guys instead of both sides being equally bad has been seen in the series before and is not original.
The rest of the plot involves Wat Tambor and a spider-like Admiral, both of whom seem to traffic in stock Star Wars dialogue reminiscent of the prequels, like “The Republic would not dare attack us. The techno union has corporate neutrality”, “Then we shall be ready for them”, and “You clones are so predictable.”
Captain Rex really drives this episode forward and makes it worth investing in. His unbreakable faith in Echo’s aliveness creates believable friction between Rex and the Bad Batch and is a welcome departure from the usually indefatigable Rex. Kiner again helps underscore and sell the more dramatic moments while Dee Bradley Baker’s voice acting as Rex and the rest of the clones does the heavy lifting. The air of mystery and tenseness is palpable enough in A Distant Echo, but there isn’t much else to distinguish this from the previous episode besides a bit more action.
The animation is once again excellent: there are some new-looking droids and it’s ridiculously fun to watch clones demolish those new droids with some new moves. One can only help that this arc goes somewhere more compelling in a dramatic and narrative sense than in these first two episodes.
