Star Wars The Clone Wars: ‘The Gathering’
Posted by dailypop on November 1, 2012
Official press release below:
“Build your own lightsaber, you shall. But first, harvest your crystal, each one of you must.”
Ahsoka escorts a group of younglings to Ilum, where they will learn from Yoda and undergo a crucial rite-of-passage: the construction of their lightsabers. They grapple with both physical and inner challenges as they face the dangerous task ahead of them in “The Gathering,” airing this Saturday, November 3rd at 9:30am ET/PT on Cartoon Network.
Episode Trivia:
· The opening prologue trailer to the episode features a rare flashback to before the Clone Wars, when Plo Koon discovered the baby Ahsoka Tano on an undisclosed planet, and brought her into the Jedi Order.· The notion of lightsabers being powered by mystical crystals find their roots in the “Kyber crystal” concept in the early draft scripts of Star Wars, a mystical gem said to amplify the power of the Force.
· The symbols denoting the balance of the light side and dark side first seen in the realm of Mortis are visible in the temple entrance on Ilum. The markings that lined the halls of the Father’s Monastery on Mortis are also found within the Ilum temple.
· This episode introduces a Jedi youngling symbol worn as a patch on the students’ cold weather gear.
· The crystals are colorless until the young Jedi holds it, upon which it becomes attuned to the Force-user. This appears to be what governs the colors of Jedi lightsabers.
Gavin Bollard said
They were pre-coloured in the old Clone Wars cartoon series. I wonder what it means that Mace Windu ended up with a purple one?
dailypop said
… he likes purple?
Hal said
Now this – THIS is what I find irritating about too many modern stories, EVERYTHING has to be explained even when the “explanations” are awful, dull or awful AND dull. Do we *need* to know why light sabres are the colour they are?! And is the concept of a magical mood crystal good, anyway? Instead of leaving gaps, creating mystery, and thrilling the imagination we now seem to see most things explained away for the hard-of-thinking. How unutterably dull. Ha. Had to get that of my chest. Phew!
I was going to make a crude joke about Mace wanting to show Aayla Secura his throbbing purple weapon but I won’t… (anyway that “joke” won’t work with Master Windu anyway for one obvious reason!)
Gavin Bollard said
It’s better than… Hmmm there’s a sith here somewhere. “Ok everybody Lightsaber check, let’s see what colour yours is”.
So, did Count Dooku lose his old one from his jedi days and have to make a new red one instead… or did the crystal sense his mood and start changing?
Does Mace’s purple one signify that he’s much closer to the dark side than his colleages?
Interesting…
sjv said
There does seem to be an oft lost skill of determining which things need to be explained and which things do not.
I see an odd mix in a lot of movies and TV shows of things that are way over explained and things that are far under explained.
Hal said
True enough. Quite apart from those films and series etc that *over-explain*, there are a special sub-species that bring up mysteries and ideas but are totally unable to pay them off. After introducing various concepts and then ladling more on top the writers are either too lazy or arrogant to actually answer pertinent questions, there’s a difference between maintaining some useful ambiguity or mystery (and not “explaining” things that require no explanation as well) and refusing to resolve major plot points which is, frankly, not telling a story *properly*. Such bad writing is often accompanied by the writers saying asinine things like “it was never about the destination” in their defense, a statement that deserves a hearty cry of “Bullshit!”. I bet you could name quite a few writers/showrunners who’ve made such petulant comments and who accept no criticism of their lazy writing while trying to traduce their critics (the implication being that the writer is far too great and sophisticated to be criticized and that the critics must have something “wrong” with them, which is almost amusing in its transparent conceit and childishness
).