Downfall of a Droid

R2-D2 is lost during a fierce space battle - and Anakin, along with Ahsoka and a replacement droid, R3-S6, must find him before the Separatists discover the Jedi military secrets locked in his memory banks.

Because General Grievous has been ambushing Republic fleets, Obi-Wan Kenobi advises that Anakin Skywalker take his fleet out of the Bothawui system and regroup, but Skywalker has a plan to defeat Grievous. At that moment, Grievous' fleet is advancing on his. Anakin leads Gold Squadron in a frontal assault, informing his forces to wait for the right moment as Grievous' fleet advances through the asteroid belt. This gives Rex and his brigade of AT-TEs hiding on the asteroids a chance to ambush the Separatist frigates from behind.

Finding his droid commander too incompetent to figure out where to retreat to, Grievous flees the ship on his personal starfighter. Anakin and R2-D2 pursue him until a piece of shrapnel embedded in the fighter causes it to careen off course. Anakin later wakes up aboard the Resolute, learning that while he was salvaged from his fighter; R2 was not. However, he informs Obi-Wan that he didn't erase Artoo's memory, which would be a severe liability should the astromech fall into Separatist hands. Anakin heads a salvage operation to recover Artoo, but Ahsoka Tano shows him the new R3-S6, who has better skills than an R2-unit, calling him Goldie, though Anakin insists his faithful astromech is irreplaceable . As they search the debris field, they spot a freighter and dock with it. The Trandoshan captain, Gha Nachkt, claims there is no R2 unit on board but allows them to search anyway. Anakin hears R2's beep and begins to slice through the door that he thinks he heard it in. But Goldie accidentally activates two IG-86 units instead of opening the door. The two Jedi manage to slice the droids in pieces as Anakin gets through the door, only to find Gha, who is angry that his droids were destroyed. Ahsoka concludes that R2 is not on board and they leave. But unfortunately, Gha had the little droid locked in a crate with a restraining bolt on and contacts Grievous, informing him that the droid is of great strategic value. R2 later escapes while Gha is sleeping, flushing one of his IG units out of the airlock, only to be discovered by the Trandoshan.

Figuring that Grievous has a listening post somewhere, Anakin decides to go scouting, but Ahsoka sends along R3, saying they could bond. R3 instead accidentally turns on the tracking device, alerting Grievous to his position. R3 only makes things go from bad to worse, detaching Anakin's fighter from its hyperspace transport ring, not cutting the engines when he is told to, and disabling the blaster cannons. He is luckily saved by Ahsoka and Rex in the Twilight. Grievous, frustrated with Skywalker's escape, beheads a battle droid in rage. Anakin chastises the incompetent droid over nearly getting him killed and hopes that R2 is still out there.

The opening scene of this episode, described and even illustrated in the accompanying Episode Guide, was cut probably because of the strict time limit of the TV format. Additionally, there were other scenes that appeared in The Untold Stories DVD featurette of The Clone Wars film that were apparently cut from the episode due to similar reasons. Also, one of the Clone pilots in the V-19 Torrent says "watch your stabilizer Gold Six!" when the fighters come in heavy fire by Grievous' fleet. The line was also mentioned in the film during the Lucasfilm logo.

The episode's original moral was "Friends are hard to find, difficult to leave, impossible to forget."

Rex's kama disappears twice in this episode: first when he and Ahsoka are looking at a hologram of an AT-TE that Anakin pulled up, and then later when he orders the AT-TEs on the asteroids to fire.

In the first shot when the Twilight is flying through the debris field over Bothawui, the wreckage of an Acclamator-class assault ship can be seen in the background, even though no ship of that model participated in the battle.

The IG-86 droid Ahsoka fights in the cargo hold of the Vulture's Claw has one of its arms cut off by Anakin, but during the fight sequence, the droid has its arm back for a moment.

When Anakin is scolding R3-S6, the droid's dome appears reversed for a moment.

Anakin's hair appears reversed near the end of the episode.

During a scene late in the episode on the Twilight, the black overtunic that is part of Anakin's clothing disappears below his belt in one shot, leaving only the red tunic beneath it.

There was a short line removed from the finished episode which had Ahsoka say "did somebody call for help, again?" after she destroyed vulture droids that were about to destroy Anakin's fighter, although it was still present in the dataclip of the episode.

There was another line that was cut from the episode where Anakin said, "and I'm going to find him" just after he declared that R2 was not destroyed and "still out there." It was also still present in the dataclip.

This was the second episode of the Clone Wars produced. This episode has the earliest animation that will ever be seen in the series.

In the United Kingdom, HMV released this episode on DVD, as an 'exclusive preview episode', priced at £1.99 in a slimline DVD case.

The Decoded version of the episode aired on June 6, 2009. The annotating character for the episode was supposedly Obi-Wan, yet some annotations still referred to the character as "Obi-wan" rather than "myself" or "I." The annotations included many facts about various ships and some characters featured in the episode. Unique information provided by the annotations included the fact that the chest plates worn by Anakin and Obi-Wan were based on designs of ancient Jedi armor. Stim plugs were named for the first time. Also, it was revealed that Gha Nachkt damaged his eye in a cantina fight.