Since Disney/Lucasfilm has finally solidified what’s canon and what’s not, I decided to watch The Clone Wars CG-animated series. I didn’t watch this when it was on TV, but it’s on Netflix streaming and I was curious to see what’s officially in the Star Wars universe. (I had heard that there are a lot of old EU nods in it as well as some pretty weird junk.) Part of the reason why I never watched it when it first aired was because I actually spent money to watch The Clone Wars in the theater and got so pissed by Truman Capote the Hutt that I couldn’t bring myself to watch the show.
Spurred by the canon news I steeled myself and started watching. A few episodes in, I thought “Gee, it’s kind of disjointed.” Imagine my rolleyes when I looked it up and found out that the series was produced and aired completely out of chronological order! It’s not just out of order within seasons either. The time-jumping spans the breadth of the seasons! I read a few fan comments and it’s so bad that characters that get killed will show up in later episodes. WTF? WHY?
“A few episodes in”? With the exception of 116, the entire first season is in chronological order, so I’m not sure how that can detract from your experience. And your link doesn’t support the characterization of the episodes being “aired completely out of…order”. A few episodes are but given the number of characters, locations, events and stories covered there of course will be concurrent independent story arcs that cannot be shown simultaneously given the linear nature of time and serial television. It is a big universe with a lot of shit going on and you don’t want to keep jumping in and out of different story arcs within a 22 minute episode just because that is how it happened chronologically.
Yeah, calling the chronology “completely” out of order is stupidly over-exaggerated. Looks like the series is 99% chronological, with a smattering of flashback episodes here and there.
Are you trying to watch them chronologically rather than production order? That is a terrible fucking idea. Even if certain episodes jump around in time, the best way to watch ANY series is in production order, because it’s how the writers approached it. Themes and characters will develop in production order, and if the chronology changes it’s usually for a reason (to show how much has changed, usually).
That said, I do not understand what the season 1 finale is doing in the middle of season 3 chronologically. Generally a disjoint that large involves dropping the audience into a catastrophic situation, and then backtracking a good ways to explain how things got to that point. But that doesn’t seem to fit the plot synopsis for that episode at all.
Actually, I’ve been reading up on it. The Clone Wars being out of chronological order wasn’t the intent at first. They were (for the most part) produced in order, but a few things upset the schedule.
Lucas chose to make a movie out of a couple of episodes while screening them on his big-screen facility at the ranch. He chose the episodes to turn into a movie based on the ones with the most complete arc that contained the principle movie characters.
Other episodes are out of order because the production schedule warranted it. Difficult setpieces in some episodes meant they were finished after episodes that were supposed to come before.
Finally, Lucas moved some episodes after they were produced because… Well, no one knows why.
Fans of the show have complained about this repeatedly.
Pity, it gets a lot better as it goes along. Apparently the quality has an inverse correlation to how much of an active interest George is taking in it.
If you started watching with episode 101, then proceeded to watch them as released, how would they be disjointed and jarring if you were only a few episodes in? The 4 episodes you alluded to are 216, 116, 301 & 303.
Frankly, this seems to be manufactured outrage as I have watched the entire series and never had the timeline impact my enjoyment of the show.
I’ve watched up until 2/3rds of the way through Season 3 and the only miss-ordering I remember is with the Clone Cadets. My impression there was that people liked the characters in the Season 1 “Rookies” episode (which was definitely a great episode), so they decided to further explore the origin of those characters in a Season 3 Episode. I thought it was a reasonable decision and it let us get a closer view of the Clone Troopers.
At least as far as I’ve gotten, I agree with strummer. Timeline issues have not been a problem. There are a lot of terrific episodes, definitely worth a watch if you’re a Star Wars fan.
Chat in this thread has got me started on Season 2 of the Clone Wars, the pixar like animated one, not the older style cartoon looking one. I watched season 1 when it was on tv, and thought it was ok, but never followed up when it came on the next year. So I have 4 seasons to watch now.
