Corvus

If we're going by that logic, then Grievous ought to have been killed off in the first season.

Not at all, not at all. Let's put the size of the army in perspective. The U.S. military is estimated to spend roughly $692 billion for 2010. And this is all spent on 1.5 million troops. This is all coming from a country with about 307 million people in it, plus or minus some non-taxpayers. Our current military budget is about 10% or so of our national GNP. It rose to about 40% during WWII. I'm going to use some very vague numbers here, so bear with me- this is going to be an incredibly rough(and bad?) example of what the Republic might be capable of. Let's use the amount of money the U.S. is presumed to have spent by the end of 2010- $692 billion. This is coming from a country of 307 million people. Let's roughly scale that up to the population of Coruscant- that's like multiplying the U.S. population by 3,300(rounded). If we scale the military budget up, too, we get: $2,300,000,000,000,000. That's right: 2.3 quadrillion. According to Wookiepedia, a Venator costs 59 million credits. That makes 389 million Venators. There aren't enough clones in the GAR to operate on this many Venators! So, let's see how many Venators we can reasonably use with the size of the GAR, 1.5 million troops. The crew is 7,400, with enough room for 2,000 extra troops. We'll make an assumption that a number of crew is civilian- let's say, oh, 5,000. So, we'll make room for 4,400 clones on each Venator. That makes for enough clones to operate 341 Venators. The cost of 341 Venators drops us $20 billion, which leaves, oh, $2.9997 quadrillion left for military purposes. There's no need to calculate the cost of starfighters (300+), tanks(24), and gunships(40)- because it's nothing compared to the sheer amount of money that could be there. Now, there is going to be a massive difference between our military and the Republic's- the costs of transportation, for one, are going to be astronomical (pun intended...). Look what happened to the British- it was incredibly difficult for them to maintain a war overseas. The same with the U.S. Obviously, the same for the Republic fighting on many, many fronts the Galaxy over. However, this is still nothing, compared to the taxpayer money available. And don't forget, we still have 500 or so other planets in the Republic- not nearly as huge as Coruscant, of course, but I wouldn't be surprised if we could double the $2.3 quadrillion we already have. Of course, this doesn't quite fit perfectly. How much can the Republic afford to put to it's military? We don't know. It must be expensive to run a Republic of that size. Neither do Credit or Dollar fit together perfectly- I've just put them equal to each other for now, but I've heard all sorts of currency conversions- from a credit being equal to a dollar, to five dollars, up to 10 dollars. Tell me if my math is wrong. I don't work in mathematics or economics, nor do I use such big numbers so often. This is very fuzzy. We don't know much about Mina. However, it seems to me that Dooku is portrayed as a saint in the CIS. It seems to me that citizens on both sides are being told lies about their own leaders, but the CIS has the short end of the stick. Sorry for my nerdage, as well.

Got around to seeing the new episode... -The opening debate is amusing. A massive Republic, spanning thousands of worlds and systems, is unable to fund a relatively small war. The war has only been running a few years now, and with 1.2 million clones? The Grand Army must be expensive, in that case. I know growing and training clones for ten years must be expensive, as well as providing them with the most advanced vehicles and starships in the galaxy. However, compared to the sheer size of the Republic, this must be a drop in the bucket. Coruscant alone has roughly a trillion inhabitants. Coruscant alone might be able to pay for the war. The Republic must have insanely low taxes or an incredibly terrible budget. -Ahsoka's comment about Padme 'getting along well' with Anakin was hilarious. -I'm not sure why Grievous has to give a briefing/pep talk to a bunch of droids. -I love the ship that brought Ahsoka and Padme to Raxus. -It's interesting just how ignorant of her own side Mina Bonteri is. This is probably similar to the majority of the Seperatist population. While there may be some good politicians who wanted to get away from the Republic (which is clearly corrupt), most are in there for their own interests. It's amazing how Mina hasn't noticed this. Perhaps she's too angry at the Republic for her husband's death (it was a neat detail specifically mentioning clones as the killers). -Poor Commander Fox. Stuck checking identities for maintenance droids. What a good use of all that training...yup. -The demolition droids were awesome. He was definitely ogling her.

She did. Sort of. She sings in Jabba's Palace and says "Uh oh." Hardly substantive evidence, I know, as good singers can sound quite different if they want to. However, her voice doesn't quite 'fit', IMO. Hmmm. (Alright, I cheated- I looked without guessing.) I'm not sure I like this new model. I think his old outfit was fairly accurate, except for the vambraces. Most of it is fine- the red undershirt and Republic emblem on his chest kind of ruin it for me, though. I can only hope they redesign the models for the clones, too. Their design is atrocious and isn't accurate at all. It will be much harder to explain, however, since the entire army has to change their outfit. The Jedi only change their individual styles.

Wow. I really wasn't expecting to see a set review this early. Is this because of your job? Anyway, wow. While I'm not terribly fond of the adventurers, I'm sure people will snap them up to use in world war/historic/apoc MOCs. The real jewel of this set are all the new molds and prints. Anubis is by far my favorite. That headpiece is simply . That pyramid sure looks like a gold mine (or tomb?) of great parts, too.

Finally got around to seeing Hunt for Ziro. Overall, I thought it was a great episode. A little strange, but Quinlan Vos and the dance number made it great. The dialogue was pretty good, too. However, I do have some nitpicks: -Sy Snootle's voice was annoying. She didn't sound anything like she did in RTOJ. -They tried too hard to make the Hutts look like real world gangsters. -Ziro died too easily. I remember from somewhere that Hutts are very resistant to injury. All that blubber, you see. -Cad Bane is now an exact copy of Jango Fett. The only things we were missing were saberdarts and flamethrowers, and we just got both. He's also a bit overpowered now. His blaster bolts can blow up cliffsides. I thought he was bad at close-range combat, after Ahsoka whupped him in the beginning of season 2, but apparently not.

The new looks are great. It's neat that we're finally moving towards Ep. III styles, and also we'll be able to tell which episodes are prequels. The only 'negative' bit I see is Obi-wan's funny Open Circle symbol on his armor. Plus his legs and arms seem awfully skinny now with that armor gone. I think my favorite costume change is Anakin's. Now he actually looks more like Anakin, in my opinion.

Very nice- good to see that the Arealight helmet is going to good use. The decal work is superb, especially on the helmet. Personal nitpick- I've always thought the official lego rangefinder is too tall, and in my opinion it looks better when about a centimeter of it is trimmed. Also, the top of the rangefinder would look great in white.

Prehistoric? We prefer alternate timeline, thank you very much. I'm surprised only the clone BP has leg printing. It would have been amazing to get Mandos with leg printing- they seem to have a combined armor/holster thing on their thigh. That would make for a great print.

It's nice to see some finalized pictures. The light bley suits are certainly a surprise, although I don't think they match very well with the dark bley minifigs. I really want that temple. All those round column bricks.

You are a wonderful person. You should know by now, Lego names things whatever they want. Still, that name is easier to kids who recognize the clone, but don't really remember the name. (Kind of like me...) More leg printing is amazing. A shame the ARF doesn't have any, but he never had any to begin with, did he? So it is a black clone pilot helmet. Awesome! The black head is a bonus- I'd prefer that over a generic pilot head any day. The silver astromech is absolutely beautiful. The wings rotate, too? I really wasn't expecting that. Indeed. I'm hoping for a dark bley body, with silver prints and silver helmet/jetpack/pistol parts, similar to the lightsabers. Think how shiny that would be. As for the OT debate- TCW is what's popular right now, and we'll just have to tolerate it. In the meanwhile, we can snap up the goodies that TCW is offering- new molds, prints, and generic-enough ships that don't necessarily have to be TCW. Personally, I hope the designers use this time to come up with some really fantastic OT sets for the future.

Now we're getting somewhere. Here's hoping that this is going to be a trilogy, if not more. In fact, I wouldn't mind if the rest of the season focused on this- actually get around to the character development in a bad guy. One of Dooku's lines seems like it was spliced. It goes "You must connect with your hatred," except that the "hatred" part is in Opress's voice.

I agree. The scenery in this episode was my absolute favorite out of season 2. Well..there was Felucia... hrm. Anyway, I'm a sucker for this kind of semi-apocalyptic setup. The barely recognizable and twisted remnants of vehicles were great. Some spectacular visual effects. An interesting point. We don't know when the Death Watch story takes place. However, it makes sense to assume that the Mando episodes take place before the Babby trilogy. All the prequels have been clearly labeled as such, but, I could be wrong. Also, Mace thinks about Jango a lot, as shown by some of the EU books, such as Shatterpoint. However, we don't know whether or not TCW team is paying any attention to this backstory. It bugs me how the Death Watch looks exactly like Jango. In one of Filoni's interviews, he states that he didn't want to make Boba Fett overshadowed by other Mandalorians. This doesn't make any sense to me, seeing as the show labeled Jango "a common bounty hunter" and make a bunch of clones of him for the Death Watch (not the clones, but copies of his armor and blasters.)I wonder what the kids think of him now. You're right, they do try to portray the Jedi as mortal, from time to time. Once in a while, the Jedi are helpless. The rest, they're destructive powerhouses.

Yes. The color is slightly off, the molds can be a little funky, and the plastic just doesn't have the same look or feel as regular lego. A real let-down, to me. I would have liked to boost the numbers of the few Dragon Knights that I have.

All right. Greedo and Bossk are minor characters. I can shrug off them being thrown in TCW. But Han and Chewie? I really, really hope that the CW team threw that in there as a joke in the Hutt's language. Because it really didn't seem to have anything to do with the situation at hand. The Twi'lek headdresses are funny, though.

I'm confused about what people are saying about kid clones. Are you saying that there shouldn't be any young clones? Of course clones aren't just grown to adults. This is obvious in AOTC- their growth is doubled. They do have a childhood, it's just half as long as a normal person's. If that's not what you meant, though, never mind. And yes, Babby Fett (I'm going to start using this now) was very annoying. The young clones were also annoying. They were nothing but suck-ups to the Jedi. All in all, the Fett trilogy was a mixed bag to me. Some cool stuff, but Babby very nearly ruined it. RIP Ponds.

Wow. Lego blasting of into space, and now a new space station? As an owner of the first space station, it's going to be great getting a new version. It really was in need of an update. This new space theme is promising- hopefully it will get kids interested again in space exploration, and it's greatly needed, with all the trouble that NASA is looking at. Still, the only other set I'd like to see is another moon lander. I missed out on the Discovery version. It would be great to have a new one sitting on the shelf next to the shuttle and the space station.

Yay! Thank you. Seems to me that C-3P0 would have information. After all, he's been at Padme's side since the end of episode II. He would have memories of the senate building, which would be somewhat useful, although not quite as good as R2's schematics. That white droid seems familiar. Wasn't it in Jabba's palace? Commander Obvious quote: "Ship entering from the west, sir." The music during Vos's entrance fit perfectly.

Personally, I feel that while the quality of the animation has gone up, the storytelling has stayed roughly equal to what it was in season one. That is, the episodes have massive plot holes, characters have terrible dialogue, and episodes are written with a specific end goal in mind, so are not character-driven at all. I feel that if the CW team can get over these stumbling blocks, they will start to have a great show. Unfortunately, there are things that can never be truly fixed with the show. Accuracy in design as well as following EU continuity are very important to me, but not to others, as has already been talked to death. Discrepancies between the movie clone armor and CW clone armor has always distracted me. Likewise, discrepancies in ARC troopers over the details of clone training left me liking the episode less than I could have. Unfortunately, I think their role will be reduced to a cameo, only reporting to Obi and the group.

I couldn't imagine a reasonable explanation. It's the middle of a war- your clothing is supposed to get more practical, not less so. This is why clones everywhere are astounded by the fact that Jedi wear no armor in the middle of a battlefield. A few years into a war is a strange time to get nostalgic for your traditional garb. Still, I would like to see some of the Jedi in their more traditional clothing. This also means that we get to ditch Anakin's weird outfit.

Really, really bad decision to put your hope on him.

Interesting. I wonder who tattoo lady is.

Interesting. I missed that on my first check. I wouldn't. Maybe that's because I stopped using it a few years ago- it's not a very great way to share pics, IMO. [flickradvertisement]Flickr is so much nicer. People can comment on pics, and you can upload multiples at a time. [/flickradvertisement]

Speaking of names, what dick changed my title? It had to be you, Shadows. You started it, and you're not just going to let it die, are you?

Thanks, guys! It's nice getting a birthday topic 6 hours in advance. No cake, but my family did send scones and banana bread (Better than cake, since now I can have a real breakfast!)