The Citadel

"Adaptation is the key to survival."

- Moral

"The Citadel" is the eighteenth episode of the Star Wars: The Clone Wars television series' third season. It aired on February 18, 2011.

Official description
"With help from R2-D2 and a squad of captured battle droids, an elite team of Jedi and clone troopers led by Obi-Wan and Anakin attempt to free a captive Jedi general, Even Piell, from an impenetrable prison. Despite orders to the contrary, Ahsoka Tano tags along, though she proves indispensable when the infiltration mission begins to evolve. Piell and his fleet officer, Captain Tarkin, as liberated from their cells, but now the fugitives must escape the Citadel itself."

Plot summary
At the Jedi Temple on Coruscant, Master Plo Koon briefs Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin Skywalker and their team - which includes Commander Cody, Captain Rex, and recently promoted ARC troopers Echo and Fives - on their newest mission: to infiltrate the "impenetrable" Citadel on the Separatist planet Lola Sayu to free Master Even Piell before the droids force him to give up the coordinates of the Nexus Route. Unfortunately, the information on the Citadel they have retrieved from the Jedi Archives is long since outdated, and no new intelligence could be gathered since the Citadel is specifically designed to hold high-level prisoners, especially Jedi.

The plan incorporates a plot devised by Anakin using reprogrammed battle droids led by R2-D2 to pilot a Class Type B escort shuttle through the orbital defense lines, and the human and clone crew being frozen in carbonite to fool life form detectors. However, Anakin's Padawan Ahsoka Tano chafes at being left behind, since her master has insisted that this mission would be too dangerous for her, and even her complaint to her old friend Master Koon yields little comfort.

After the strike team is carbon-frozen, they are loaded onto the shuttle and transported to the Citadel. When the droid's ship reaches orbit above Lola Sayu, they are interrogated about their cargo by the Citadel's warden, Osi Sobeck, and his tactical droid, K2-B4. The ship and its cargo pass the scans, and land in a cavern near the Citadel, where the droids unload and thaw out the strike team. To their consternation, Anakin and Obi-Wan discover that Ahsoka has also had herself frozen and smuggled into the group, claiming that she is acting under orders of Master Koon. Now unable to turn her away, they decide to let her join in.

The first hazard comes in form of a cliff wall blasted by a strong gale and littered with electro-mines, which prevent the use of jetpacks and grappling cables. The cliff is the only way to a small side door, which is, however, patrolled regularly and otherwise secured by a ray shield. Ahsoka proves her usefulness to the team when she manages to slip inside through a ventilation port and deactivates the shield from within, but as the rest of the team ascends, clone trooper Charger looses his balance, falls down the cliff and sets off a mine, alerting Sobeck that the Jedi have infiltrated the Citadel, and the alert is sounded.

As the team makes its way through the hall, it encounters many booby traps, such as wall laser guns and an moving electrified wall which leads to the death of another trooper. They find and save Master Piell before he can be tortured by a droid interrogator. However, the Jedi learn that while Master Piell has managed to erase the Nexus coordinates from his ship's databanks, he has decided to memorize them by half, with the other part having been entrusted to his captain. While the officers are being kept in a cell further inside the Citadel, Piell was forced to surrender his part of the code, therefore necessitating the liberation of the fleet captain to keep the Nexus Route safe.

Anakin, Ahsoka, Obi-Wan, Piell and the rest of the team then head down to the other cells, just before they are ambushed by commando droids. Sobeck activates a magnetic ceiling which takes the team's weapons and Anakin by his bionic hand. Obi-Wan, Piell and Ahsoka try using the Force to subdue the commando droids, but the commando droids have magnetized feet plates and are merely kept off-balance. Despite Sobeck electrocuting him, Anakin manages to reach his lightsaber and disable the magnets, enabling the others to retrieve their weapons.

The Jedi and their team then find Piell's officer, Captain Wilhuff Tarkin, and the other officers. Obi-Wan and Anakin decide to split up the team, with Obi-Wan, Cody and Piell creating a diversion while Anakin, Ahsoka, Rex, Echo and Fives take Tarkin to safety. Tarkin argues to continue as one team for the advantage in numbers, but Master Piell agrees with Kenobi, and so Obi-Wan's team sets off. Anakin cuts a hole into a wall which opens into a cavern system which were included in the scant information from the Jedi archives. Although Tarkin remains highly skeptical of this plan and openly voices his criticism, Anakin is determined to carry on.

Cast

 * Matt Lanter as Anakin Skywalker
 * James Arnold Taylor as Obi-Wan Kenobi, Plo Koon, and Osi Sobeck
 * Ashley Eckstein as Ahsoka Tano and K2-B4
 * Dee Bradley Baker as the clone troopers and torture droid
 * Blair Bess as Even Piell
 * Matthew Wood as the battle droids and commando droids
 * Stephen Stanton as Captain Tarkin
 * Anthony Daniels as C-3PO
 * Tom Kane as narrator

Behind the scenes
The carbon freezing plot was previously employed in the Clone Wars graphic novella title Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Shipyards of Doom. However, since Skywalker remarks that this is "the first time" this tactic was applied in the episode, this introduces a continuity error, as the events of Shipyards took place sometime before the episode.