Star Wars: The Clone Wars season 2 episode 7 review

7. Legacy Of Terror

Nearing the end of the Geonosis saga with the droid factory destroyed and the planet annexed, you would think that would be the end of the siege on the bug-filled planet and the Jedi could move on to the next campaign. This, fortunately, is not the case as, in this penultimate episode we have another cracking action-packed 20 minutes that’s a bit of homage to numerous dark, shadowy corridor horror movies, and is a chance for Jedi Luminara to shine.

A mix of The Descent, Aliens and Dawn Of The Dead, the main thrust of this week’s episode is to track down the fleeing Poggle, who, along with a handful of droids, has done a runner with a pile of treasure, fleeing through a sandstorm to sanctuary and trying as quickly as possible to get away from the Jedi.

Hot on his heals is Luminara who, on a tweaked speeder-bike, follows the cowardly Poggle to an ancient temple which, at first, seems empty. But within its dark catacombs holds horrors and some of the creepiest monsters yet to be seen on the show.

With communications cut off with Luminara, Obi-Wan and Anakin are called into action and, as the sandstorm diminishes, they follow Luminara to the temple, accompanied with a handful of cannon fodder clone troops.

While the eerie temple seems empty, with only the grotesque statues and decaying remnants left behind, the team find that Luminara has been kidnapped and taken underground, where deep in the dark corridors there is a race of zombie like Geonosis bugs whose shambling creepy nature and hive mind-like motives can be put up there with any of Romero’s classic shambling monstrosities.

Difficult to kill and appearing from every crevice and dark corridor, the rescue team are plucked away one by one. And with the ever-diminishing number of troops left, Obi-Wan has to try and change tactics, thinking that these bug-zombies cannot be as mindless as first thought and that deep within the labyrinth there must be something controlling them.

Making their way down to the very lower levels of the cave, the Jedi do, indeed, find there is a controlling power behind the zombie drones and that deep underground is a huge bloated ancient Geonosis ‘queen’ bug (who, of course, bears a striking resemblance to a certain queen from another Alien-based film).

Intelligent enough to talk and to negotiate, the queen has Luminara, a bargaining chip to be ransomed, to stop the invasion of her planet. With Obi-Wan and Anakin now in her lair, she now has three Jedi to bargain with, and to make matters worse, has spawned a putrid brain bug which she intends to implant in the Jedi to take control of them, much in the same way she has with the zombies she controls within the temple. It’s cracking stuff, and leaves us eagerly awaiting the next episode…

Read our review of episode 6 here.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars is showing every Saturday on Sky Movies Premiere and Sky Movies Premiere HD.