In watching this episode on TV, I think the commercial breaks hurt the pacing of the story a little. I’m glad my first viewing was uninterrupted (and on a big screen).
Here is a brief interview with Katie Lucas from
CNN.com:
[spoil][align=left]Katie Lucas talks 'Star Wars: The Clone Wars'
The new episodes of Cartoon Network’s “Star Wars: The Clone Wars" will introduce some intensely dark characters who deal with some grim themes, some of which sprang from the imagination of one of George Lucas’s own: His daughter, Katie.
The 22-year-old opened up to one of the "The Clone Wars" fans, 10-year-old Kira Simons, about why she decided to go into the family business.
It turns out that Katie began writing when she was in second grade, “just little silly poems,” she told her young interviewer.
“I really decided to become a screenwriter in college when my Dad was putting together the show,” she went on. “He mentioned that it might be a fun job for me and he knew that I loved writing and so he gave me an outline for the episode ‘Jedi Crash,’ and he really liked it...I’ve been working on the show for seven years now writing and I love it.”
To get their creativity flowing, Katie said the writers have something akin to “a big writing party,” where they all hang out in a room for eight days, talking about what they and the fans would like to see happen in upcoming episodes.
“It’s really sort of a collaborative effort to get these ideas up on the screen,” Katie said. For example, “In terms of the Nightsisters, they existed in the universe, but we kind of manipulated them and made them our own. I wanted them to be really like punk rockers and strong females because I grew up watching 'Buffy.'”
Katie, who was bitten by "Buffy" fandom when she was the same age as Kira, said she “loved being able to see, like, a really cool girl who is kicking butt….it was just fun and empowering and so that was just kind of my idea for the Nightsisters.”
In fact, Katie was such a "Buffy" fan that there was a point she preferred the slayer to “Star Wars.”
“I didn’t really like Star Wars when I was younger because it was always in my face and I kind of rebelled against it, I didn’t really understand it, I was a huge ‘Buffy’ nerd and I kind of took my nerdiness and put it there.”
But, she went on, “I’ve grown to really love Star Wars and to understand what a complex and interesting universe it is - it’s changed so many people’s lives that you can’t not be affected by it.”
Of course, Kira had to dig for dirt on the upcoming season, but Katie opted not to spoil many details. Will any Jedi turn to the dark side? Fans will have to wait and see.
"I don’t want to give anything away, but there are moments where the Jedi have doubts and I think that’s an important theme in the series now because it gives a little more of a world life view," Katie said. "Both sides are fighting for what they believe in and the separatists think they’re right and the Jedi think what they’re doing is right and I think it has a lot to do with our politics and our political climate right now...[S]ometimes the Jedi will have doubts about whether or not the war is justified, let’s put it that way."[/align][/spoil]
