"The Gungan General" is the twelfth episode in Season One of the Star Wars: The Clone Wars television series. It is the twelfth episode of the series overall and concluded a two-part storyline started with the previous episode, "Dooku Captured."
While negotiating Count Dooku's ransom, Anakin and Obi-Wan are taken prisoner. The Jedi and Sith form an unlikely alliance in a bid to escape, with Jar Jar Binks as their only hope.
Anakin and Obi-Wan wake up in the pirates' prison cell, having been drugged the night before despite their precautions in the previous episode. They also discover that not only is their cellmate Count Dooku, but the three of them are chained together, making escape far more difficult due to mutual and unpleasant antipathy.
Meanwhile, Jar Jar Binks and Senator Kharrus fly to the Weequay pirates' lair with a bounty of spice on board as a ransom for Dooku. They are accompanied by Commander Stone and five additional clones.
Turk Falso questions Hondo's decision to offer Dooku to the Republic, since he thinks dealing with the Separatists would have been more profitable. Hondo responds by saying that he sometimes wonders why he [Hondo] even bother to keep him [Turk] around; if they tried ransoming Dooku of to the Separatist, they would simply have sent a droid army there to wipe them out instead of sending the desired ransom. Unfortunately, Turk disagrees, and chooses to go behind Hondo's back and have his men shoot down the shuttle to sack the ransom for himself. The two pilots and Kharrus die in the resulting crash, and Jar Jar subsequently gets unintentional command of the surviving clone crew.
With no choice but to work together, the two Jedi and the Sith try to escape to the hangar, but are caught and re-incarcerated after being spotted by Pilf. Obi-Wan then uses a mind trick to compel the guard to let them out for a second escape attempt. Unfortunately, while trying to pole-vault over the base's outer wall, Dooku's chain is shot; Obi-Wan grabs him, and Anakin is forced to lift up all three men much to his frustration; they are re-captured by Hondo while still hanging from the wall.
Turk leads his band to hunt the survivors of the Republic delegation near the acid geysers. After a brief skirmish, Jar Jar has the clones jump into a geyser, making the Weequays decide to let the acid kill them. Jar Jar is extremely confident, as the local fauna's behavior determines when a geyser is about to erupt, which ultimately saves the group's lives. Returning to the wreckage of the shuttle, they find that the spice ransom is gone. Though the clones recommend waiting for reinforcements, an impatient Jar Jar plans to go after the pirates, riding the skalders to catch up. They intercept and defeat the pirates, and with the spice back in hand, they follow a series of power supply lines straight to the pirate base.
Upon his return to the base, Turk lies to Hondo, saying that the Republic brought an army to free the Jedi, and suggests dispatches tanks to counterattack. Hondo reluctantly agrees, saying that he will deal with the Jedi himself. The tanks depart and are quickly spotted by Jar Jar, who allerts the clones. Commander Stone sends Jar Jar to "negotiate," knowing that the Gungan's ineptitude will be useful.
Hondo becomes increasingly annoyed with the Jedi, particularly Anakin's brash comments. Believing that negotiation has already failed, he and tortures Anakin and Obi-Wan with electrical currents, while Dooku remains locked in his cell.
As the pirates take him hostage, Jar Jar accidentally rams one tank into another, causing both tanks to collide with the power supply lines and subsequently shutting down the power grid. The Weequays attempt to kill him, only for the clones to hold them at gunpoint.
When the power outage hits the base, the Jedi and Dooku separately take the opportunity to escape: Dooku kills Turk and takes off in a ship; Anakin and Obi-Wan retrieve their lightsabers and take Hondo hostage before meeting Jar Jar outside. Obi-Wan tells Anakin to let Hondo go, as they don't have any quarrel with him since Dooku had escaped. Hondo commends the Jedi on their honor, but Obi-Wan reminds him that Dooku is likely to seek revenge on him, before the Twilight takes off.
Senator Kharrus's staff was designed off of the Staff of Ra from Raiders of the Lost Ark.
One of the swoop bikes has nose art depicting the mudflap girl.
At the beginning of the episode, Obi-Wan and Anakin wake up after being drugged with their drinks. However, at the end of the previous episode, they had switched out the spiked drinks. The show originally had webcomics posted on the official Star Wars website which tied in to the various episodes. This was the story that required you to read the comic to understand how Anakin and Obi-Wan were captured by the pirates: Pilf Mukmuk gassed the entire room.
In one shot, when Jar Jar is burying Kharrus, a skalder is walking by him. However, when it switches shots, the skalder is nowhere in sight.
In one shot where Jar Jar and the Clones run back to the shuttle, only two Coruscant Guard troopers are seen, despite there being three Guards that survived the crash. The third Guard reappears a few seconds later.
Obi-Wan and Anakin arrived without their lightsabers, while the pirates had the lightsabers they took from Dooku—his own and Anakin's. When Obi-Wan and Anakin recover the lightsabers, both are distinctive blue Jedi lightsabers, and Dooku's curved-hilt lightsaber is nowhere to be seen.
In a shot, when the shuttle is flying over Florrum, the clone troopers accompanying Jar Jar and Kharrus are shown as troopers with blank armor. When the shuttle crashes, they are shown as Coruscant Guard.