Broken Frontier

Despite his inability to speak a word of English and his complete lack of facial expression, R2-D2 has always been a favorite character in the minds of Star Wars fans. He’s courageous, he’s quirky and he saves his friends’ skin more often than they’d probably admit.

The latest episode of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, titled “Downfall of a Droid,” further emphasizes Artoo’s importance in the overall Star Wars saga. At the beginning of the episode, Anakin Skywalker loses Artoo in a hard-fought space battle against the evil Separatists. Anakin takes the loss of his mechanical friend pretty hard and, since he’s never erased Artoo’s memory, the droid houses some of the Republic’s most prized information. You can probably guess that the villainous General Grievous would love to get his claws on him. Spurred by his attachment to the droid—a sentiment frowned upon by the Jedi Council—Anakin and his Padawan Ahsoka Tano set off to find Artoo before the bad guys do.

Their search leads them to a Trandoshan junk collector named Gha Nachkt, voiced by Hellboy star Ron Perlman. The scaly scavenger introduces himself to our heroes with a well-placed fart—because family programming just has to feature bodily functions of some kind whether we ask for them or not—and leads them into the bowels of his ship. There, Anakin and Ahsoka find themselves face-to-face with a group of deadly assassin droids. As Admiral Ackbar might say, “It’s a trap!”

In a stylish action sequence—one of the best in the series thus far—Anakin and Ahsoka lay waste to the droids, which Star Wars fans will recognize as being a model similar to that of the bounty hunter IG-88 in The Empire Strikes Back. Those same observant viewers will also note that Gha Nachkt is of the same species as Bossk, yet another bounty hunter from that film. It’s pure fan service, but a welcome nod to those of us who pay attention to that kind of thing.

Alas, Anakin and Ahsoka’s search for Artoo is an unsuccessful one.The Trandoshan, having hidden the droid in a secret compartment on his ship, is last seen en route to General Grievous, who hopes to use the droid to gain an upper hand in the war. Meanwhile, Anakin’s replacement droid R3-S6 proves himself to be inept in battle, reminding Anakin—and the audience—just how necessary Artoo really is.

“Downfall of a Droid” is not perfect by any means—some of the dialogue is distracting, as is the oddly-placed techno soundtrack during fight sequences—but it tells a well-paced, small-scale Star Wars story that most fans should appreciate.