The Clone Wars Blog - S01E01 AMBUSH

The Clone Wars Blog

Season 1 / Episode 1

AMBUSH

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Following Episode: Rising Malevolence

Location in STAR WARS Timeline: UNKNOWN (22BBY)

Moral: "Great leaders inspire greatness in others."

News Reel

A galaxy divided by war! Peaceful
worlds must choose sides or face
the threat of invasion. Republic
and Separatist armies vie for the
allegiance of neutral planets.

Desperate to build
a Republic supply base on the
system of Toydaria, Jedi Master Yoda
travels to secret negotiations on a
remote neutral moon....

Official Description

Jedi Master Yoda is on a secret mission to forge a treaty with the King of the strategic system of Toydaria when his ship is ambushed by Count Dooku. Yoda and three clone troopers must face off against Count Dooku's dreaded assassin Ventress and her massive droid army to prove the Jedi are strong enough to protect the king and his people from the forces of the war.

My Explanation

The first episode of The Clone Wars Series kicks off with an exciting adventure with Master Yoda. The episode is about Yoda meeting the monarch of Toydaria on a neutral moon to recruit his planet to the Republic war effort, and of course, the Sith have sent their agent, Asajj Ventress to the meeting as well. Representing the Confederacy of Independent systems (the separatists), Ventress claims her droid army can protect the king and his world better than the Republic's clone army. Yoda’s ship is attacked by Ventress' forces before he reaches the planet and he is force to evacuate to an escape pod. Some pods are destroyed while trying to escape, while Yoda’s pod is somehow missed. I have a theory about this, but it is not backed up officially. I speculate that during this scene, Yoda could be using the force, or a force power called “Battle Meditation” to avoid being hit by the lasers being shot at his escape pod.

Once they crash land on the planet, Yoda and three Clone Troops set out of foot to meet The Toydarian King. Throughout the episode they are attacked by waves of enemies and Yoda dispatches them effortlessly. One clone is injured, and eventually they rest in a cave. During this scene, Yoda’s theme music from Empire Strikes Back (Episode V) plays, as Yoda reinforces the idea in The Clone wars series that although the clones are all the same man, they are different in the force and their lives do matter to the Jedi. He passes on words of wisdom to each of their clones and goes over their strengths to build their confidence. One clone in particular, Commander Thire, gets some meaningful advice. Yoda tells him that the War is long, and the only way to be successful is to survive it. This has extra meaning because Clone Commander Thire does in fact survive the Clone Wars (maybe because of Yoda’s wise words), and goes onto be an Imperial Stormtrooper. Thire also appears in Episode III as a Shock Trooper and can be seen searching for Yoda in the senate building as well as helping the self apponted, Emperor Palpatine retrieve Darth Vader’s body from the lava fields of Mustafar.

After the heroes rest, they set out once more and encounter more enemies. Yoda is eventually outnumbered by Destroyer Droids, and the clones use Yoda's advise to “out think” the droids. They save Yoda by shooting a rocket into a rock face and burying the droid force. They then go on to the meeting where they save the King of Toydaria from being assassinated by Ventress. Yoda easily overpowers the Sith Assassin and uses the force to disarm her. She uses an explosion as a distraction to flee. The episode ends with Toydaria joining the Republics cause because of the Honor and Valor displayed by the Jedi master.

What’s New

The unnamed moon that the episode takes place on is a new world to the Star Wars universe. It is covered in giant coral. It looks as if this world was once covered in water and has since dried up.

This is also the first appearance of a Toydarian aside from Watto in Episodes I and II. They also show these Toydarians to be much more respectable and honor driven than the slave owning junk dealer.
This is the first and only time to date that we see Yoda use his lightsaber in this series. Yoda fighting is still a novel thing to see since, we only got a taste of his warrior skills in the films. It is also the first time that you see Yoda fight droids. He was never seen in the films fighting battle droids. So you can really see him let loose on these non-sentient beings.

What’s Old

In this episode we see a Corrillian Blockade runner like the one in the opening scene of Episode IV (the tantive IV) as Yoda’s ship to the meeting. We also the escape pods like those in the Classic films in this episode although they appear more frequently in future clone wars episodes.

The music playing during the cave scene, is yodas theme from episode V. This shows a parallel between him giving words of wisdom to the clones, as he does to Luke on Dagobah about the force.

Behind the Scenes

The episode's original name was "Ambush in the Outer Rim."

The original moral of this episode was supposed to be, "Great leadership comes in all sizes."

"Ambush" was originally not supposed to be aired as the first episode of Season One, but the episodes' order was changed very close to the series' premiere.