Showing this episode from Chopper’s point of view offers the show two opportunities, one, to build the episode around the droid’s unique view of the world, and the other to comment on the questionable status of droids in the Star Wars universe as a whole. (Rest in peace, droid captain of that commercial starliner in “Blood Sisters.”) The second opportunity was embraced more fully. “Droid rights” are never really an issue in Star Wars, with the movies treating the droids as characters and avoiding some of the thornier questions about their status as property brought up, intentionally or accidentally, in Rebels or The Clone Wars. One of my favorite things in The Clone Wars is when, in the odd episode “A Sunny Day in the Void,” droids are shown as generally superior to organic beings due to their imperviousness to weather and hunger. In Rebels, though, droids (and stormtroopers) seem pretty disposable. What does seem to happen in the Star Wars universe, though, is that droids gain more personality as they get older. R2-D2’s personality can in part be attributed to his lack of mind wipes. This isn’t necessarily canon any more, but it fits with what we see happen to the Imperial droid here. He’s an old model – he fought on the Republic side at the siege of Ryloth the same as Chopper did – and he seems to make a conscious decision to disobey his Imperial master. Gaining free will is a matter of “fortitude,” while a shopkeeper considers an independently operating droid “broken.” Chopper encouraged the Imperial droid, but the moment in which he did was presented with a gravitas that suggested this wasn’t the first time the Imperial droid had felt the flickering of self-motivation, even if he loudly proclaimed himself loyal to the Empire. His search for the leg and the connection between Hera rescuing Chopper and Chopper rescuing the Imperial droid never quite came together, though. What significance did the leg actually have to him? His current, replacement leg seems to be working fine. He was obviously passionate about it, and that might just be because he is a covetous creature. With the hints at Chopper’s backstory I was expecting it to be revealed that the leg used to belong to him, but it seems that the leg is simply a replacement part. And maybe there’s something to that – an episode focused around Chopper would have an essentially spontaneous act of greed at its core. Meanwhile, the Imperial captain has a distinct voice but is a basic cartoon villain through and through. Does his cruelty to his droid indicate Imperials’ attitude toward droids in general? I don’t know, and it doesn’t really matter – the captain is a plot point in place to give the Imperial droid’s story some pathos and to provide an obstacle to success, and he serves that purpose well enough. This episode does a few more interesting things: Imperial antipathy is shown when stormtroopers agree to help a shopkeeper only because there was recently a Rebel heist in the area, and there’s a suggestion that someone in the Rebel crew – which this week includes Sabine’s old friend Ketsu – might have sold them out to the Empire. Finding fuel doesn’t come across as critical as it could be, though. “The Forgotten Droid” certainly wasn’t filler – Ketsu’s involvement and the Imperial blockade around a planet the Rebels had thought might finally be a good base of operations provide a little tension needed in the lead-up to the season finale. This doesn’t feel like season two’s “Fighter Flight,” the stand-alone episode that turned out to be a key to the finale. Instead, it’s a decent episode with weight that Chopper’s charm (such as it is) can’t quite carry, even with a new leg.
