Now then Star Wars fans it's been at the very least three months since I last talked about anything to do with Star Wars. As such I thought that i'd rectify this by spending the next few days talking about two of the earliest animated adventures to take place in a galaxy , far , far away simply due to the fact that I don't see anyone talking about the two shows that I have in mind as such here is my review of the very first episode of "Star Wars; Droids" aka "Star Wars: Droids: The Adventures Of R2-D2 And C-3PO" called "The White Witch" enjoy.
The plot of the episode is C-3PO and R2-D2 find themselves in the service of two new masters called Jord Dusat and Thall Joben but when Jord is kidnapped by a local crime boss looking to over throw all the over gangs Thall , C-3PO and R2-D2 must team up with rebel spy Kea Moll in order to rescue Jord. In terms of what I thought about the plot it was honestly pretty good the story did a good a job of setting up these new characters while at the same time telling a fresh and new story and it helped that unlike the Disney films this plot was actually good and didn't disrespect the old characters or fans of the franchise.
Reprising his role from the films is the always great Anthony Daniels as C-3PO and joining him for the episode is Rob Cowan as Thall Joben. Also starring in this episode is Peter MacNeill as Jord Dusat , Winston Rekert as Tigg Fromm , John Stocker as Vlix Oncard and Lesleh Donaldson as Kea Moll , now i've not listed anyone as playing R2-D2 because well firstly he's just beeps and whistles and secondly in the opening credits to the show he's listed as playing himself which I just find to be cute and adorable at the same time.
In terms of what I thought about the acting in the episode well Anthony Daniels as to be expected kills it as C-3PO the man can do no wrong as this character in my opinion. Where the quality of the acting dips a little in my opinion is the new cast who simply have no idea if they should take the material that there given seriously or not and so give rather odd performances which in my opinion hurt the episode but R2 is amazing the guy deserves an OSCAR in my opinion.
Now I cannot find out who did the actual animation for the either show or the episode but I know that Nelvana and so i'm going to assume that it was them. The animation in this episode is exactly what you think it would be like for a Star Wars animated show released in the eighties and yeah it's exactly as bad as you think it is don't get me wrong when the episode wants to have good animation it can but for alot of the time the animation just looks off putting and cheap which for something based in the Star Wars universe shouldn't be the case at all.
They did kind of simplify the design of C-3PO which I honestly think works rather well altho why they made the part between his torso and chest blue when in the film's black is beyond me. I do honestly like the designs for both C-3PO and R2-D2 like I said they have more simplified designs here and those designs are things that I can really get behind it helps tho that R2 looks very close to his live action counterpart or as close as you can get in the realm of eighties animation and the fact that they gave C-3PO weird looking eyes is just off putting to me.
Now after doing some research I found out that this series is meant to bet set inbetween Revenge Of The Sith and A New Hope. However as far as I can tell after just watching this one episode this series isn't essential viewing which I guess makes sense since the prequels were most likely not even planned out that much when this series was being made but at the same time it's still something that I feel alot of Star Wars fans should know about.
Now in terms of if this show is canon I honestly cannot give an answer because I can't find anything that either says it is canon or says that it isn't canon. Which honestly i'd be fine if it wasn't canon just because like I said before this series isn't essential viewing and so nothing of importance would be lost but at the same time I do feel that it would be fun if this show was considered canon just due to seeing people trying to work out where certain things fit in terms of the franchises canon.
Now even tho she didn't get alot to do in this episode I liked the character of Kea Moll who as I mentioned is played by Lesleh Donaldson. If i'm right at this time we hadn't seen a female rebel spy and so to see one appear in the first episode was honestly rather interesting and it helped that the character had alot of potential it's just that they didn't give her alot to do in terms of the story as such she's just kind of there but I believe we get to find out more about her in either episode two or three so yeah there's that at least.
The episode aired on ABC on September 7th 1985 and forms part of the first arc which lasted until episode four which aired on September 28th 1985.For some reason the makers of the show chose to split it up into arc each arc lasting four episodes with C-3PO and R2-D2 meeting there new master or masters at the start of the arc and then being forced to leave them at the end of it , to me this kind of storytelling doesn't work with these characters simply because C-3PO and R2-D2 are two characters that don't really demand arcs if anything this series should have been episodic and been more of a comedy which since this is a kids show would have made alot of sense.
As mentioned before this started on September 7th 1985 and aired on ABC for thirteen episodes ending on November 30th 1985. However there was an hour long special that aired on ABC on June 7th 1986 which serves as a prequel to episode ten , I do believe that out of al the animated Star Wars shows ever made so far this one is the shortest since it technically lasted less then a few months where as others last a few years.
This is an action cartoon and so that means that I have to talk about the action that's in the episode itself. Which is honestly pretty decent at least for the time that it was released and the fact that it has a twenty three minuet running time but with that being said this is Star Wars and with that I do expect the action scenes to be freaking amazing and so so to see something with the Star Wars name have action that's just OK to me is a huge let down.
Overall this honestly wasn't that bad of an episode it did a good job of telling it's story as well as giving us some pretty decent action. That being said tho I can't say that this is that good of an episode since it has alot of things that are wrong all of which i've mentioned in this review but for what was the very first Star Wars animated series it honestly wasn't that bad and this episode at least does show some promise as such this episode gets a 6.5 out of 10 from me.
All the images that I used in this review were gathered from with the official Star Wars fandom wiki page or Google Images. I honestly wasn't expecting to find any high definition images for either this episode or the show as a whole as such I shocked to see that while there aren't that many there are some high definition images to be found on both websites as such I have to say use either website if you want any high definition images from either the show , this episode or of course the movies live action or animated.