Easily my favourite episode of the series to date. Some very nice direction -somewhat moderately shaky cam near shoulder viewpoint to give a sense of the ratcheting tension, and, hey, it's basically
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (as Filoni name-drops in his commentary) and by god I love the original and first remake.
It also felt a little like Body Snatchers meets Alien - a confined starship where things start to go wrong and the number of allies dwindle. It's considerably more tense and darker than the show's been to date (that image of an emotionally exhausted Ahsoka sitting in the cold is one of the best so far), and while I don't want to seem like one of those petty adult fanboys demanding stuff is darker and edgier, hey, it worked here.
A very good central story for Ahsoka, as well, and honestly the scene with the force choke was just icing on an otherwise fine cake. I don't want to seem too positive - this is still the Clone Wars and I'll chow down a typical mediocre episode with a smile - but this is definitely the sort of half-hour I'd like to see more of. Not in darkness... just in being
engaging, feeling tense and logical in the ratcheting up of tension, and also having some fairly effective character drama.
Something about Kit Fisto felt a little off, though, he didn't seem terribly perturbed by the problem. I guess someone had to be smiling.
I mean, Barriss represented a much greater threat to her than any of the clones do on their own, and Ahsoka would never even have considered killing her. It just goes against the previous attempts to show that the Jedi don't consider the clones as only expendable cannon fodder.
It made sense in context - to me, anyway. The position of Barris's worm was clearly weakening when she was asking to be killed.
But hey, nobody's perfect.