Lovers of Star Wars: The Clone Wars look forward to any new episode of their favorite show. But, when you add a certain mask and armor mix into any Star Wars story, the fans woof like wookies.

That collective hooting and hollering has never been any louder now that the Mandalorians are finally getting Star Wars canon screen time in tonight's kick-off of a three-story arc, "The Mandalore Plot." Dave Filoni, Clone Wars supervising director, hears those empassioned tones and knows the responsibility he's facing.

"Ever since the first time we saw Boba Fett in 1980, the fans have known he had Mandalorian armor," Filoni said during an interview at Lucasfilm's HQ in San Francisco's Presidio. "Fans have been waiting a long time to see the Mandalorians in action."

"This is George Lucas' universe and he's very active in the show. So, it was George who suggested we bring the Mandalorians into the series."

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The long-rumored Star Wars live action series is reportedly coming together quickly and will begin shooting before 2009 ends.

You can pick any one of many collected reports, but they all say the show is well past the planning stages and is only waiting on completed scripts before George Lucas begins casting the essential roles.

While news of Star Wars on TV might have generated a bored groan from viewers after the prequel movies came and went, the critical and ratings success of Cartoon Network's The Clone Wars shows that a galaxy far, far away can work on TV if the writers, directors and cast remember that this is all supposed to be fun -- not high drama of a deeply spiritual nature.

As an old-school Star Wars fan, I've been a little disenchanted with the many little ways George Lucas has slowly turned his rich tapestry into a children's fable. In the Star Wars I loved, there were moments of real terror, a sinister menace and true danger. The "Ooh, we can sell toys!" started with the ewoks and hit critical mass with Jar-Jar Binks.

But there were some moves in the right direction. Episodes II and III were improvements over The Phantom Menace, so I held out hope that new projects might keep what I felt was the proper maturity of Star Wars in perspective. And so, like a good little drone, I tuned into Cartoon Network's The Clone Wars animated series, and it was ... cute.

For years and years, this was the era we knew so little about. In the novels and comics, which took all of this pretty seriously, thank you very much, we covered from thousands of years before Darth Vader to spans after Han and Leia get married. But not the Clone Wars. That era was special. So we waited. And we got cute.