Last night's double-length premiere, "Holocron Heist/Cargo of Doom," brought Cad Bane further to the forefront of the series after his appearance at the end of last season, but what made the episodes work weren't so much that character - He's still pretty much a cypher who's just a little bit less inept and more successful than last season's villains; given that he's working for Darth Sidious, he's essentially just another Seperatist flunkie, as opposed to part of a theoretical third Bounty Hunter faction as was teased previously - as much as the show finally finding balance between comedic side characters, action and character development. We got to see Anakin's emotions overpowering his mission (Hi, Revenge of The Sith foreshadowing!) when he gave in to Bane to save the life of Ahsoka, as well as Ahsoka learning the wrong lessons from Anakin's tutelage at the opening of the episode (Winning isn't everything, unless your name is Skywalker, it seems), but this was nicely balanced with some of the best action sequences the series has come up with - and so many of them! Battles in space, zero-gravity battles aboard spacecraft (with some wonderful choreography from the animators), lightsaber duels, and large-scale ground battles were all on offer, bringing a sense of large scale... well, war, to the series that we hadn't really seen since the show's earliest days.

In addition to all of this, the start of what looks to be a subplot running all through the season - Darth Sidious looking for all the future Jedi by stealing a database of all known "force sensitive" children in the universe. After a first season that seemed fragmented and scattered a lot of the time, bringing a throughline to this second season (and one that makes sense in the larger Star Wars context) is very welcome, giving the show a necessary continuity and unique story to tell that it's missed up until this point. Not to mention, Bane's supposed death (Because, sure, there's no way he's that clone trooper who's wandering around with the sore arm at the end of the episode, nooooooo) being a fun, if obvious, swerve so early on, if one betrayed by publicity for the season featuring him so prominently.

All in all, the return of Clone Wars was a surprise joy: It was more confident than before, and deservedly so - everyone involved had raised their game, and gave us the most "Star Wars-y" Star Wars we've seen in years... even moreso than the movies this series is based on. Let's see if they can keep it up all season.

As much as the introduction of new character Cad Bane was trailed as being the selling point for "Hostage Crisis," he was nowhere near the best thing about it... In fact, he was worryingly generic, all machismo and mystery without much to make you that interested in him (He even lacked the visual impact of other Star Wars badasses like Boba Fett or Darth Maul; he was just a guy without a nose in a trenchcoat). Although the action of the episode was well-done and engaging - in part because, for once, the Jedi didn't obviously have the upper hand from the start - and the animation was (for the most part) as strong as ever, what satisfied so much was a surprising new-found maturity in the writing.

Yes, I said maturity. For Clone Wars. Get used to it.
It wasn't just the opening scenes of Anakin and Padme discussing their relationship displaying a subtlety in foreshadowing Anakin's dark side (Or the series coming close to admitting just how ridiculous their "secret relationship" is, in what had to have been a wink to the audience), and in the same episode that introduces Senator Organa to the series, knowing that he'll take one of Padme and Anakin's children in the future, for that matter; there was something oddly pleasing about closing the season with the bad guys just outright winning, and doing so by freeing Ziro The Hutt, everyone's favorite giant lizard Truman Capote from the Clone Wars movie. It brought a sense of closure (as well as a sense of continuity) to the season that it possibly didn't deserve, but was nonetheless very welcome. I'd love it if the show continued down this more... morally ambiguous if probably too generous a term, but almost fits, route, showing more of a darker side to its heroes and less of a constant stalemate between both sides in the war. If we need to bring in bounty hunters to do it, then I'm perfectly happy with that, as long as we don't see more Baby Boba along the way.

It wasn't a perfect season finale - the ending itself was very anti-climactic, perhaps a "to be continued" that failed to go off - but it was more than enough to make me look forward to what happens when the show returns next fall. Here's hoping that it'll include things going wrong a lot more often.

Maybe I'm just getting soft in my old age, but I've really enjoyed the construction of the last three episodes, each presenting a different front in the same battle, each complete in and of themselves, but adding to a greater story. It helps that the three episodes in question have been some of the series' strongest, downplaying the (unfunny) comedy and tendency to go for cheap cuteness in favor of straight-ahead adventure with just enough sentiment to make it appropriately Star Wars.

Last night's episode, "Liberty on Ryloth," closed out the three-parter in style, mixing a plot about the little-seen-on-the-show Mace Windu's attempts to achieve a union with Ryloth's rebels with some impressive action set pieces that showed off just what the animators can do when given the opportunity. Oh, and some fun "new" technology that recalled familiar tricks and treats from the original movies (Like you didn't dig the Tauntaun-esque miniature walkers used by the clones), as well. The good guys won the day, of course, but you wouldn't want anything else on a show like this.

With the first season closing out next week, it feels as if Clone Wars has finally found its equilibrium, and what it's good at. When it stop trying so hard to impress (whether it's in plot trickery undercut by the knowledge of which characters are going to stick around, or trying to make some deeper point that it never quite manages), this show manages to offer up a stylish, enjoyable half-hour of thrills, spills and dumb robots who say "Roger Roger" a lot. Here's hoping that they can build on that next year.

"Innocents of Ryloth" may have only been the middle section of a three-part season finale (Following last week's "Storm Over Ryloth" and ahead of next week's "Liberty of Ryloth" - way to give away the end, title guys), but it was nonetheless one of the more satisfying episodes of the series to date, giving a complete story even within its relatively-filler framework. Part of that came from a decent mix of "big name" characters - Obi Wan got to be boss and perform some appropriately dazzling Jedi tricks - and original characters (Clone troopers Waxer and Boil) that gave the episode some feeling of newness, and another part was the result of just telling a simple story well.
We've all seen the story behind this episode before - Innocent alien helps our heroes defeat their enemies through basic, simple knowledge - but the plot wasn't what made "Innocents" a fun half-hour; that was seeing the other side of the clones (including the fact that some of them are softies at heart), or the enjoyably flat delivery of the evil robot commander (especially his "Ha. Ha. Ha." when he thought he had the upper hand on the Jedi). For once, the script lived up to the potential of the show, and when combined with some - as usual - wonderful animation (It never fails; there's always at least one moment each episode where I have a small moment of "Damn, this show looks amazing"), offered up a solid episode that'll make me miss the show when it finishes its run. Of course, there's all manner of droid carnage to create between now and then.

This week's double-bill of Star Wars: The Clone Wars was another wonderful example of everything that's good and bad about the series so far. The basic plot - Separatists come up with a virus that kills anyone it comes into contact with, and even once the scientist who created it is captured, an antidote needs to be found... which involves a trip to a haunted planet - is great, full of tension and dramatic potential, especially once Padme and Ahsoka become infected with the virus. The animation is fast-paced and attractive, and there are times where the script (especially in the second episode, "Mystery of A Thousand Moons") was as funny and smart as you could have hoped for. And then, the stupidity begins.
Admittedly, the problems were mostly in the first episode of the night, "Blue Shadow Virus," which was full of WTF moments: Jar-Jar destroying the droid that could've given the good guys some information by falling over is almost expected at this point, but bringing in a brand new female Jar-Jar? Or introducing a comedically-over the top evil scientist with a German accent that exclaimed "Ja! Ja!" while giggling at the thought of exploding bombs? Almost jaw-droppingly broad and off-key. Similarly, the immediate discovery of an antidote for a virus that had, only moments earlier, been played up as something impossibly destructive, stuck out as a moment where the writer's hand was too obvious, and too fast to want to move the characters onto their next mission.

The ultimate problem with the show is its schizophrenia; for all that it tries to deal with war (and the danger and destructiveness thereof), it keeps pulling back into unfunny, obvious comedy as if to reassure younger viewers that things aren't that bad, really. In doing so, though, it makes its characters - and the series itself - into something that's approaching stupid... and makes the audience feel more than a little stupid for watching, as well.

Perhaps it's because my own personal politics resonated more with "Trespass"' story of a soldier who's so used to war that he sees everything as an enemy and battle to be fought, but this week's episode seemed much more successful than many recent episodes. For one thing, the smaller scale - in terms of the dramatic core of the story, at least - gave us a story about characters, as opposed to finding excuses for fight scenes, and the writing managed to use sleight of hand well to push Obi-Wan and Anakin off to the side without it being obvious, allowing us to have an episode that included a genuine character arc for a change.

It wasn't perfect, of course; for all of its success, we've seen this story many, many times before, and this episode in particular felt like an old Star Trek episode more than usual, even down to the excuse of having the old soldier be from an alien race outside of the regular conflict. The story also moved in broad strokes that occasionally brought you out of the story (Especially when things moved to fullscale war essentially because one character said "So it's war, then!"), but that kind of thing has almost become expected on this show.

Overall, it was one of the better episodes of the series so far. The problem is that, at this point, that's beginning to look more like that's damning with faint praise. With little over a month of new episodes left, I'm sadly still waiting for this series to live up to its potential.

There's some weird sense of humor at play in titling this episode "Defenders of Peace," considering the moral of the episode seemed to be "Being a pacifist will get you killed." Even the bright blue words of wisdom that start each episode had a particularly machismo quality to them, this week: "When surrounded by war, one must eventually choose a side." Oh, really?

The plot of the episode was pretty much exactly what you'd expect if you've seen Return Of The Jedi: Bad guys (Count Dooku's Separatists) invade planet of peaceful non-combatants (the Raccoon-like Lurmen, who seem to have switched from Irish last week to Scottish this week. Although, admittedly, the same Scotland that James Doohan came from) with big weapon of doom. Good guys (the Jedi and clone troopers) fight back. Peaceful non-combatants eventually fight back - including tying the legs of the bad guys and then knocking them over; Jedi homage or unlikely coincidence? - and the day is won. For a series that normally shines when showing fighting, the battle was disappointing, rushed and repetitive, with even the Lurmen's last-minute change of heart downplayed so much as to seem negligible.
The disappointment of what should've been the heart of the episode sunk whatever potential the episode had (Although I still have serious doubts about whether the episode had that much potential at all, considering its moral; there were moments where the script seemed to have been mixed up with a military recruitment film, with the peaceful Lurmen being described as cowards and without pride for not fighting, and no opposing view given at all. The show's closing "Yes, we have joined the fight... but at what cost?" was, if anything, a patronizing nod in the direction of the flipside, considering we'll never see the cost, and by the way, here's a trailer for next week's show with more awesome-looking fighting). What was left was an episode with voice acting that distracted too much (George Takei's lead villain Lok Durd was especially comedic, although perhaps not intentionally so), and a story that continually moved between the depressingly familiar and familiarly depressing. Definitely not one of the better episodes.

While "Jedi Crash" - written by George Lucas' daughter, Katie - was definitely an episode that should've been renamed "battle of the accents" (French Jedi! Irish chipmunk monkey aliens! Kiwi Clone Troopers!), there was more than just the accent that drew me towards sexy blue-skinned Jedi Aayla Secura - Her inner poise, her wise words to back-to-being-whiny Ahsoka (who seems to have regressed to the hero-worship inappropriate feelings towards Anakin - And, really, am I the only one who gets kind of skeeved out about the whole "I love my master" thing that this seemingly-teenage Padawan has got going on? I don't know if it's the age difference thing, the whole "my master" thing, but I had a mild attack of the "Our children are watching what?" during the scene where Ahsoka seemed to be saying that she was in love with a man she's endlessly devoted to. I know, I know; I'm reading too much into it. But still), her blue skin... Nah, I'm lying; it really was just the accent. I'm a sucker like that.

As for the episode itself, it again showed why the series should stick to its strengths: The opening sequences of space battle were everything you could've hoped for - exciting, well-paced, wonderfully animated and completely engrossing. But as soon as they were over, and the Jedi had crashlanded on a strange alien planet, everything started to fall apart; we've seen this plot many times before, right down to the dangerous animals and helpful if distant aliens. The larger themes touched upon (Are the Jedi perpetuating war by being warriors? Is friendship more important than responsibility?) had promise, but the resolution was lacking, to say the least, especially when the trailer for the next episode seemed to answer one of the bigger questions with the answer "Pacifists are pussies who need to be rescued, fighting is awesome." Obviously, a kid-friendly show like Clone Wars isn't going to be the place to find nuanced investigations into the self-perpetuating nature of violence, so why even raise the subject...?

The series continues, in its own way, to respectfully translate the Star Wars prequels to television, but in doing so, it amplifies its flaws as much as its strengths; yes, the show is technically impressive, and there are things about the technology/effects to marvel at each time you look at it... but it continually disappoints as the writing fails to come up to anywhere near the same quality as the animation. In order for the series to really click, they need to take a look at what works, storywise, and build on that. And, if all else fails, add some more French Jedi.

The most frustrating thing about "The Gungan General" was that you could, if you squinted a bit and filled in a lot of gaps for yourself, see what they were trying to do with the episode - A lighter, more broad version of the traditional Star Wars rogue-and-rescue formula played for laughs. Looking at it from that perspective, you can see why the bad guys (In this case, the pirates who'd managed to take Anakin, Obi Wan and Count Dooku prisoner) weren't so scary, and the forced buddy movie dynamic between the Jedi and Sith makes more sense. There's no excuse for the unfunny comedy with Jar-Jar Binks, mind you, but I find that I often default to a zero tolerance policy where he's concerned.
The real problem with the episode was that it went too broad, and as a result, didn't hold together well; especially problematic was the way in which the over-the-top slapstick of the Jar-Jar thread (which included him defeating the bad guys by literally falling all over them) tied in with the moderately more-straight Anakin/Obi-Wan plot, leaving you with the idea that the Jedi would've been better served to collapse and say "meesa sorry" a lot instead of their various unsuccessful attempts to escape captivity. It's a shame, because their section of the show worked, for the most part; seeing the strained, yet respectful, interaction between Dooku and the Jedi, and their escape plans, was the highlight of the show, and the kind of thing that I'd like to see more of in the show, a step outside of the binary Good Guy/Bad Guy thinking that the series often falls into.
Instead, what we were given was a wasted opportunity - even moreso, given how good the first part of the story was, last week - and a reminder that, for all its potential, Clone Wars has yet to figure out what kind of a show it really wants to be just yet. In case they're reading this, here's a clue: Keep Jar-Jar out the way, and things'll be a lot better.

Let's ignore, for a moment, a plot filled with Star Wars traditions (The hero is captured by the bad guys and needs to be rescued! Then dealings must be done with untrustworthy space ruffians for the greater good!) to focus on the important part of last night's episode, "Dooku Captured": The appearance of Salacious Crumb's ancestor.
For many, Crumb was the highlight of Return Of The Jedi, a little whiny beast that hung around with Jabba the Hutt like a parrot with legs, offering barely understandable commentary and proving once and for all how evil Jabba actually was; the appearance of another Crumb - albeit a bright red one - in this episode was both a nice shout-out to Jedi and also shorthand to prove the untrustworthiness of the space pirates that captured Sith Lord Count Dooku.

Oh, did I forget to mention that it was space pirates that captured Dooku?

Star Wars, at its heart, is a story of opposites coming together, whether it's the farmboy and the Princess being revealed to be family (or earlier, a different farmboy and Princess becoming lovers), or the cynic and the spiritual teaming with Han and Luke, or even just the grander theme of balance in the Force. No wonder, then, that bringing the scum and villainy of space pirates into what had previously been a strangely noblely-fought war brought a little bit of extra life to the series; I'm a sucker for the arrival of chaotic third parties that force enemies to work together, so this was an easy sell for me, and a welcome one (Especially watching Obi Wan and Anakin outwit an attempt to poison them at the end of the episode, played for laughs in an enjoyably understated way). While the episode started suddenly (I know that Star Wars movies tend to start in media res, but opening with "Anakin has been captured and Obi Wan is going to save him" made me think I'd missed an episode somewhere) and offered a fairly dull first half, the arrival of the space pirates - who, admittedly, captured Dooku a little too easily - redeemed it quickly.

Of course, talking of opposites, an episode this fun has to be balanced by the potential of crap next week... and with a teaser at the end of the episode that seemed to suggest that we're in for more Jar-Jar Binks "comedy," it looks as if balance in the quality Force is about to be achieved again. Sadly.

I was cautiously excited about "Cloak of Darkness," last night's episode of the uneven animated series, as soon as I found out that Paul Dini was writing it. It's not that Dini's involvement in something is always a sign of quality, as anyone who read DC's Countdown can attest to, but that didn't stop his Batman past from raising expectations, which he then easily met, and then some.

Besides giving us the first episode where Ahsoka became more than a collection of nicknames and plot devices (and yet, stayed recognizable as the same character; just less annoying), this was also the first time we've seen the show's new characters seem strong enough to carry the series without help from the movie series' stars; whether it was Luminara (Another of the show's noble yet troubled Jedis) or - easily the saving grace of the Clone Wars movie -Ventress, or the somewhat tragic Captain Argyus (voiced with lazy arrogance by James Marsters, who managed to make phoning it in still sound pretty cool, damn him), each one of them had the classic Star Wars mix of iconic/retro quality, charm and flaws. Mixed with a prison break story that reversed the original movie - Nate Gunray, the character captured in the appalling last episode gets to play Princess Leia to Ventress' Luke Skywalker - and some kinetic animation directed by Dave Filoni, the result was something that both felt "Star Wars"y, without being a slavish imitation or taking chunks of the movies and dropping them in with a couple of names changed to protect the innocent.
Everytime that the show is this good, I get optimistic -overly so, perhaps - that this is the sign of a new era where every episode moving forward will be this good, and everytime, I get disappointed. I should just be thankful for what I get, of course, but still; if every episode of Clone Wars managed to get the mix of influence and originality as right as this one did, then it'd be must-see TV. As it is, I'll just recommend that you all go download this when it appears on iTunes.

What was most interesting about "Bombad Jedi," last night's episode of the animated series, was how true Threepio and Jar-Jar seemed to their movie versions. Unlike Obi-Wan, Yoda and, especially, Anakin, there was no sense that the characters had been simplified or changed in any way for the Cartoon Network audience - but that's almost the only plus about the otherwise disappointing episode. Again we had a Princess being captured - although she did free herself, which was a nice change - and again we had a neutral party siding with the bad guys before realizing that they'd make a terrible, terrible mistake.

Given all the slapstick humor and "Oh, Jar-Jar" eye-rolling from the other characters - "He was always such a misfit," as C3-P0 said during one of the times that they thought Jar-Jar was dead -it's clear that this episode was meant as a comedic breather between the kid version of sturm-und-drang from the other episodes, and on that level, it was probably a success; certainly, fans of the peculiar, unfunny Star Wars comedy wouldn't have been disappointed by Jar-Jar accidentally destroying his space ship, or the dumb evil droids falling for the old "hiding in a corner" escape trick. For everyone else, though, this was a half hour of throwaway television that didn't particularly excite or entertain. Better luck next time, I guess.

Even more than last week's episode, this week's Clone Wars, "Duel Of The Droids," felt like it was a quiet reboot of the series - The animation seemed smoother (with the painterly touches and textures even more pronounced, and the characters less blocky and awkward), the incidental music more overwhelming - but at least it wasn't more of last week's ill-chosen techno - and the writing... well, much less annoying than last week, at least.

It's not that I'm suddenly sold on the whole "R2 is kidnapped and Anakin will do anything to save him" plot, but I have to admit, it was almost worth it to see the stocky little droid take on his replacement in a ridiculous duel that more or less involved the two robots running into each other a lot and trying to make the beeps and bloops into some kind of tension-building dialogue. It was helped by the other droid turning out not to be comedically inept, but actually an evil spy droid out to kill Anakin and the clones all along, and even moreso by a space station battle between Anakin, Ahsoka and General Grevious' droid army that - again, as with almost all of the most engaging moments of the series - recalled the Star Wars movies.

In the end, of course, everything ended up exactly as it had begun - R2 was back with his friends, General Grevous had, yet again, run away from an explosion so that he can pop up and be threatening yet ultimately ineffectual next week, and the good guys had won a small but apparently important victory in the ongoing Clone War. If the show is to keep improving - and it is improving, slowly - then that sense of plot apathy is going to have to be overcome in future episodes; with the backdrop of galaxy-wide warfare, why does the show always feel so weightless and meaningless... and short of killing off characters, how can that be overcome?

There's no way around it; "Downfall Of A Droid" was pretty much a failure in nearly every way. We know that R2-D2 is in no danger thanks to his appearance in all of the movies that take place after the series, so it's hard to buy into any of the faux drama surrounding his disappearance, and Anakin's reaction - pitched somewhere between grief and guilt, I'd guess - is just as unconvincing; he just comes across as more of a dick than usual (The underperforming replacement droid, meant to show how wonderful R2 really is, also stretches credulity; he doesn't know how to switch engines on? Really?). No wonder the show's creators added their version of Star Wars Techno to the dramatic sequences; how else would we know when we're supposed to care?
And yet, it wasn't a full thirty minutes of fail this week - Although, by letting the story continue into next week's episode, we're headed into another asteroid field of fail next Friday; couldn't they have just found R2 at the end of this week's ep? -the unexpected appearance of two IG-88, jumping around and spinning heads and body parts all over to try and kill Anakin and Ahsoka (Ah, if only they'd been successful at the latter...) was a short burst of a lot of fun, and almost made up for the twenty-odd minutes of dull surrounding it. Here's hoping that next week's episode ramps up the action and down the fake droid danger.

"Rookies," the show's fifth episode, was the first to show the hidden potential of the Clone Wars to be something different - and potentially more - than the movies it was spun out from. Ignoring the bigger names for a story about clones who had to go through a story we've seen hundreds of times before (They have to learn to be soldiers - which includes sacrifice, of course; the slacker ends up dying to save the universe), what worked about the episode wasn't the plot, but the details, whether it was the clones listening to intergalactic radio because they were bored, the new (and much less annoying) commando droids - you can tell that they're more bad-ass because their voices were deeper when they said "roger roger" - or the fact that, for once, we saw war actually being hell... or at least, approaching it, with a death of a character that wasn't a droid.
As with every episode of the show to date, it was flawed, but it was also different, and that counted for a lot. While we didn't see enough of the individual clones for them to be anything other than a collection of stereotypes (and, thanks to the voice acting of Dee Bradley Baker, a collection of stereotypes all with the same quasi-New Zealand flat voice, which didn't really help matters), there was enough potential to earn the goodwill to see the episode through relatively unscathed. If the show can build upon episodes like this, that show a smaller, more mundane and, yes, more realistic side to the war mixed in amongst the high adventure of last week's shenanigans, then the series as a whole may end up building up into the most satisfying of all of the Star Wars to date.

(On the other hand, the trailer for next week doesn't look promising, especially to hear Obi Wan call R2 droids "a dime a dozen." They have dimes in the Star Wars universe all of a sudden?)

I can't tell if Destroy Malevolence's "Greatest Hits Of George Lucas" - I'm not the only one who thought that the train sequence was reminiscent of Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom, right? - was what made it the most satisfying episode of the series so far, but I have to admit: there's just something perfectly Star Wars-ish about watching the heroes trying to rescue the kidnapped Princess - who fights back herself, of course - from the bad guys' new destructo space weapon.

Bringing Padme into the show helped humanize the characters by giving them something other than How Terrible And Serious The War Is to talk about - and also bringing in a welcome, if still somewhat awkward, romance to the show. Maybe I'm slow - and anyone who's read me writing about Watchmen is nodding furiously at this point - but I didn't realize until this week how important romance actually is to Star Wars feeling like Star Wars to me; it's the (normally missing) part of the holy trinity of the whole thing, next to humor and action... and, ideally, all of them being done in the slightly inept, uncomfortable way that only Star Wars can manage (By which I mean: the humor in SW has never really been actually funny, nor the action flawless; it's always slightly... off, in its own way). More Padme would definitely be a welcome thing, here.

The animation also seemed better this week - Part of that is because it focused on the set pieces and didn't have to show characters "acting" as much, and so accentuated its strong points - and, given the comic relief being kept to a minimum (as was the attempts to make us care about the clones, interestingly enough) and definitive victory for the good guys, this was easily the best episode of the series so far - and the one episode to date that makes the show seem like a success in total. Here's hoping that next week won't ruin it all with an all-Ahsoka half-hour.

If there's one thing that Star Wars has always had trouble with, it's plot exposition; characters just stand around and explain whatever they have to, often in some kind of mission briefing, before everyone can get back to what they're really there for (Namely, the fun business of blowing things up in space). In the movies, this wasn't as big a problem as it was in last night's Clone Wars episode, "Shadow of Malevolence," because it took up so much less of the whole - but the entire first half of last night's episode felt bogged down by scenes that relied on the show's weaknesses: Dialogue, animated "acting" and the audience buying that Ahsoka is in anyway a likable character.

And then, thankfully, we met the space whales.

They weren't exactly space whales, per se - they were, in fact, "giant neebray mantas" if you want to be pedantic about it - but their appearance signaled two important shifts for the episode: Firstly, that we were headed into the "less talking, more doing" portion of the show, and secondly, that that meant that we could sit back and watch what the show does best. Visually, the mantas were impressive, and that followed through to a space battle that was pretty much saved by how good it looked, because otherwise you'd have spent too much time noticing the similarities to the Death Star battle at the end of the first movie (Complete with variations on "stay on target!") or wondering why no-one else had ever tried to just fly over the wave of destruction before.
Compared with last week's double-bill, it was a disappointing episode overall saved by the animation and the slow-to-show space battles... But if the show is to live up to its potential, the creators are going to have to work out how to make us care about the characters when they're not in danger of being blown up, shot down or any other form of being killed.

(Creator commentary about the episode can be found here, and for those who missed last week's episodes, they're available in their entirity on the Star Wars website.)