Star Wars hasn’t been in a single Galaxy since Attack of the Clones.

Kamino is in wild space, outside of the Rishi Maze. The Rishi Maze, canonically, being a dwarf Galaxy outside the main one.

And in terms of “where the blinking flip are we”? The end of Empire Strikes Back shows the Rebel Fleet well outside the main Galaxy.



Whether that’s in deep space or looking on from the Rishi Maze or simply proper intergalactic space you’d need to look into with a Google.

Bran Dawri wrote:
Am I the only one who didn't particularly care for Andor?

I hate Andor. And I love Andor. And I'm excited for more Andor. And I don't care about more Andor.

Andor is inherently contradictory because it's highs are so high, but it's lows are so low. There so much good, but so mad bad. So much excitement, but episodes where nothing fething happens for 40 minutes.

It's a frustrating show.

 LunarSol wrote:
That's enough for a 90 minute action film It just doesn't work for 6ish hours of television.

You missed the 2nd act, which is just all about the Mandalorian and Baby Yoda for some reason.

Andor had zero reason to be more than 5-6 episodes.

Disney has a nasty habit of overcomplicating the plots of its series with pointless sideplots/adventures and characters who distract from the actual plot.

Like the whole Imperial CIA drama side of Andor was completely unnecessary.

Or the corporate security guy thing was completely unnecessary.

Only one of those plot points needed to be in the series.

And don't get me started on the heist or the prison saga, both of which should have been 1 episode affairs and could have been if the plot didn't have so many unnecessary characters taking up screen time to contribute an incremental +1 inch advancement in the obscure investigation into the literally least important man in the universe that ultimately goes nowhere.

But the first 3 episodes are pretty great. Shame the rest of the season just becomes a by the numbers checklist of dull.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
So much excitement, but episodes where nothing fething happens for 40 minutes.

IMO this is why Andor works so well. The show actually takes the time to build up characters, set the context for the action, and give the audience a chance to catch their breath between action scenes. It's the exact opposite of one of the main reasons the sequel trilogy is so terrible: the relentless jumping from plot checkpoint to plot checkpoint as fast as possible, as if it's the worst possible failure if the movie goes a whole 60 seconds without something exploding. Cram all the action into a series half the length and you have nothing but another forgettable D+ CGI spectacle, forgotten as soon as the last episode finishes.

(This is also part of why Mandalorian S1 was so great and why the quality has declined as the series progresses.)


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 LordofHats wrote:
Only one of those plot points needed to be in the series.

No, they both needed to be there because we needed to see both sides of the coin: the banality of the corrupt local cops the average citizen of the Empire suffers, and the high-level secret police that are why people feared and hated the Empire enough to risk everything to overthrow it.

And don't get me started on the heist or the prison saga, both of which should have been 1 episode affairs and could have been if the plot didn't have so many unnecessary characters taking up screen time to contribute an incremental +1 inch advancement in the obscure investigation into the literally least important man in the universe that ultimately goes nowhere.

Those parts would've sucked if they'd been single episodes. Just another context-free action scene, rushing as fast as possible to the next thing to blow up, with characters you don't care about because they're just "blink and you miss it" background scenery for the next action scene with the main character.

And Andor himself may not be the most important person but he's symbolic of a key element of the setting we've never seen before now: the average rebel. Not a hero, not a jedi, just an average person finally pushed too far by the Empire and dealing with all the dirty and ruthless stuff a terrorist uprising against an authoritarian state involves. Skip quickly through his story and you just have to replace him with someone else, or fail to tell the story the series is trying to tell.

 ThePaintingOwl wrote:
First impression: it's ok. The "puzzles" straight out of a video game were kind of lame and could have been brute forced in a few minutes, making the characters all look like idiots. But I guess if you had something genuinely difficult to open the map it wouldn't be possible to show it on-screen, so meh. Overall it seems to be doing a decent enough job of bridging the gap between the end of the OT and the dumpster fire of the sequels, so far as such a thing is possible at all. So far I guess I'll rate it not as good as Andor or Mandalorian S1, better than the mess of Boba Fett and Obi-wan?


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 tauist wrote:
But hey, at least its made for the female audience, inclusivity and all that..

Lolwut? Do you think that having female characters is "made for the female audience" or was there something else you're referring to here?

They werent being very subtle about it. Man, the whole show coulda been screenwritten by the makers of Killing Eve, and nobody would have noticed the diff

Anyway, I have spoken. Not a fan, next SW spinoff pls

 tauist wrote:
They werent being very subtle about it.

Subtle about what? The fact that women exist on-screen? That previously established characters from a popular show did in fact return? You haven't really "spoken" about anything so I'm starting to suspect your real complaint here is something you know people here aren't going to tolerate.

Look man, it’s a very well established fact that you’re only supposed to have one, Maybe two token female characters per group. Your Black Widow, your Wonder Woman, your Pink/Yellow Ranger, your Princess Allura. This show so far is giving us three main heroes, three main villains, and of them all only one is a dude! That’s just a completely unrealistic gender disparity… And of course they compound this absolute injustice by making two of the three heroes colored (orange/green)!

Absolutely agreed. I don't see why green people should be represented on screen. Just look at them and their green ways! Green people are my least favorite minority and they should be yours, too.

Remember when Disney thought they had a boy problem, as in their demographics were too heavily skewed towards girls, so they went and started acquiring properties so they could also appeal more to boys.

Funny how things turn out.

 ThePaintingOwl wrote:


No, they both needed to be there because we needed to see both sides of the coin: the banality of the corrupt local cops the average citizen of the Empire suffers, and the high-level secret police that are why people feared and hated the Empire enough to risk everything to overthrow it.

The people on Random Rimworld #3456 (indistinguishable from all the others really) didn't even know much about the high-level secret police. Nevermind that there's nothing one of those parties couldn't have done the other could have done to streamline the narrative into something less meandering. One side of the story was a pointless hanger on after 3 episodes and the other half mostly just showed up to give briefings on incremental process. The whole thing didn't need to be as long as it is and built up to very little.

Those parts would've sucked if they'd been single episodes.

They sucked in general. One spends time introducing a whole bunch of characters who go on to not have any plot relevance, and then the other does exactly the same thing. But in classic Disney Wars fashion, Cassian is a melancholic layabout until the obviously evil Empire makes it personal because that's the only kind of hero Disney seems to be able to write.

Just another context-free action scene, rushing as fast as possible to the next thing to blow up, with characters you don't care about because they're just "blink and you miss it" background scenery for the next action scene with the main character.

I don't understand.

You just described those episodes. The only difference is they dragged so long your eyes glazed over waiting for the plot to get on with it. A 'nod off and you never even noticed' background scenery for the next action scene.

Much like Kenobi and Boba Fett, Andor reeks of a well-conceived movie script that someone meddled with to turn into a needlessly long TV series, inserting unnecessary plot elements that dragged and dragged simply to pad out time.

just an average person

The only thing even remotely average about Cassian is his averagely generic tragic background story that could have been cut from the film entirely and you probably wouldn't miss it.

 LordofHats wrote:
They sucked in general. One spends time introducing a whole bunch of characters who go on to not have any plot relevance, and then the other does exactly the same thing. But in classic Disney Wars fashion, Cassian is a melancholic layabout until the obviously evil Empire makes it personal because that's the only kind of hero Disney seems to be able to write.

That's an accurate portrayal of someone living under an authoritarian regime though. The Empire wasn't Cassian's problem until the Empire started to inconvenience him, at which point his eyes are opened to the wider cause of the Rebellion. The prison arc is Cassian's blunt awakening to the realities of the Empire.

As for all the characters, not every single character that is introduced needs to have a sprawling arc that lasts every single episode of a show. The heist crew serves as Cassian's introduction to the Rebellion, with some who are committed to the cause and others who are in it for the money or revenge. The prisoners are all people that Cassian can identify with and realise that his situation is not unique, the Empire is enslaving thousands of people for made-up crimes.

As for the Simp Cop, he's tragic. He sees the cold callous hand of the Empire take away his livelihood and purpose, and then when he thinks he's helping the Empire uses and discards him. But still, he keeps coming back because he's been indoctrinated into loving a system that doesn't care about him.

 Gert wrote:


As for all the characters, not every single character that is introduced needs to have a sprawling arc that lasts every single episode of a show.

Tell that to Andor?

We spend 2 whole (count them 2) episodes on getting to know the heist crew. And we didn't really need to know any of them for that long, least of all because all but 2 are dead by the end of the 3rd episode. And those two keep coming back mostly just to take up time and be broody, and not do much of anything. They don't really contribute anything to the plot except to have a facade of an arc that isn't really there.

You could have cut all the personal time spent with these characters. We didn't need 2 episodes spent on it.

Same with the prison. We spent 2 whole episodes on a sprawling arc about the prison that didn't need to exist, least of all because none of these characters end up mattering. On top of that, why did Cassian need his eyes opened? He was already stealing stuff from the Empire and was given a blandly tragic backstory for hating them (twice in fact, once on Lord of the Flies planet and again when Daddy Figure was killed for nothing) so why does this show need to spend 3 whole episodes further justifying Cassian not liking the Empire when he already didn't like them? What did the prison contribute to the plot or the character that wasn't achieved in the riot finale and his mom's whole bit? You could literally skip all of those episodes, cut them completely out of the series, and I'm not sure anyone would even notice.

Don't tell me every single character doesn't need a sprawling arc. I'm past that. That's 10 miles behind my point.

Every character does not need a sprawling arc, and every character who contributes nothing to the broader plot but to take up time and pad out the series to 12 episodes should probably have a hard eye cast on them and a series question of 'does this character need to be here?'

Andor has a cast where the answer to that question is mostly no.

And I liked the corporate tryhard guy. The corporate tryhard guy was a refreshing sort of villain for Star Wars.

Sadly, he's a zombie character who ceases to be plot-relevant at all after Ep 3 but keeps coming back to remind us he exists so he can save generically evil bland evil woman from death at the end. You can almost see the editing lines though, where Andor was first written as Les Miserabes in SPACE with Cassian as Val Jean and corporate tryhard guy as Javier but with twists on the archetype that make them interesting. And them someone kicked the door down and started inserting all this other crap into it which is sadly how most of the Disney+ series have played out.

I was gonna write a big post but I can't be bothered.
You seem to really hate Andor and I don't nearly care enough about this discussion to have it with someone this angry about a TV show.

 Gert wrote:
I was gonna write a big post but I can't be bothered.

Doors right over there. You could just, idk, take it?

I'm angerd by this puerile 'I would talk to you but it's not worth my time' attitude a lot more than any TV show so do us both a favor I guess.

You seem to really hate Andor

I would say disappointed, but that wouldn't be you telling me what my opinion should be and then being angry and indignant about it.

Andor is different enough from “real” Star Wars that I’m afraid this is how discussion will always go. Personally, I agree that Andor needed every episode, and furthermore think it is the best Star Wars thing since The Empire Strikes Back, although Mando season 1 comes close.

I’d much rather Disney took more risks that might result in another Andor than keep pumping out unambitious, uninteresting shows and movies, even if they fail. I’d rather see another SW Holiday Special than another Book of Boba Fett or Kenobi.

@Mad Doc: I didn't have a problem with any particular plot point in Andor. It's just that the way it was put together the show meanders around without going anywhere.
Worse, (or maybe consequently) it was just boring.

The "average downtrodden bloke gets pushed into the Rebellion" is literally Star Wars' (ANH) first main story - both Luke and Han - and was done better, or at least more interestingly both there, in Rebels, and in Rogue One. It's pretty much a SW trope at this point.

Bran Dawri wrote:
The "average downtrodden bloke gets pushed into the Rebellion" is literally Star Wars' (ANH) first main story - both Luke and Han - and was done better, or at least more interestingly both there, in Rebels, and in Rogue One. It's pretty much a SW trope at this point.

I don't think that's ANH. ANH is the classic "hero's journey" where yeah, technically the character may start as an average guy but very quickly ascends to hero status. And in the case of Luke it's even made very clear that he only thought he was an average guy, he was the hero with a heroic destiny from a family of Main Characters. Andor breaks away from that, he's an average guy who joins the rebellion and becomes an average soldier. We've very much been missing that kind of story.


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 LordofHats wrote:
The people on Random Rimworld #3456 (indistinguishable from all the others really) didn't even know much about the high-level secret police.

But people in other places do. A senator isn't living in terror of being caught by some fumbling local cops, the ISB scenes establish why everyone, top to bottom, has reason to fear and hate the Empire. And the ISB plot serves a vital role in showing the audience that the Empire is not a joke. It's not all fumbling local idiots and memes about stormtrooper accuracy, there's the cold-blooded and efficient bureaucracy of the secret police that will disappear your whole planet without a moment of hesitation. And when they show up on Random Rimworld #3456 at the end of the season you know things are serious.

They sucked in general. One spends time introducing a whole bunch of characters who go on to not have any plot relevance, and then the other does exactly the same thing.

I think you're in the minority with the opinion that they sucked, but I suppose taste is subjective.

And who cares if the characters don't have any greater plot relevance? They have relevance within their particular arc and they add to building the world. The idea that every character must have major galaxy-scale plot relevance is how we get sequel nonsense like Rey being Palpatine's daughter.

I don't understand.

Then I don't really know what else to say, besides taste is subjective. If you think none of the stuff between action scenes had any value then either you weren't paying much attention or you have vastly different expectations.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Andor is different enough from “real” Star Wars

I have no idea what "real Star Wars" is or isn't, but it has nothing to do with me.

I don't even think this is a Star Wars problem. This is just the continuing moral Aesop about what happens when people make assumptions playing out. It's a very toxic thing. Fosters a lingering air of ill feelings and latent hostility. Have we tried not doing that and seeing if it works better?

’d much rather Disney took more risks that might result in another Andor

Yeah there's the disconnect. I don't see the 'risk' here. Andor starts strong, falls back onto unambitious and uninteresting halfway through, and tries to claw its way out a bit toward the end, but I don't see anything about as particularly risky. If Andor is better than Boba, it's just that it's less of a mess. I wouldn't compare it favorably to Mando S1 at all. If we were to make comparisons, I'd recall that Mando S1 told a heist story and didn't need a feature-length movie's timeslot to do it in.

If anything, I worry that chasing fish like Andor is exactly what produced Obiwan and Bad Batch S2. I don't really see these things as remarkably better or worse than each other. They're really just better than Boba but anything worse than Boba probably falls into so bad it's good territory.

I’d rather see another SW Holiday Special

I noticed they had that old Ewoks cartoon on D+. I'd totally forgotten that even existed. I don't think I ever knew it had 2 seasons. That stuff is trippy. Like someone boiled a bunch of stuff from the 70s and 80s into one cartoon and had a... Well, it's definitely a cartoon.

I think you're in the minority with the opinion that they sucked

I'm also apparently in the minority of knowing what a non sequitor is.

The idea that every character must have major galaxy-scale plot relevance is how we get sequel nonsense like Rey being Palpatine's daughter.

Seriously.

This was the first thing I posted on this page;

 LordofHats wrote:
Andor had zero reason to be more than 5-6 episodes.

Disney has a nasty habit of overcomplicating the plots of its series with pointless sideplots/adventures and characters who distract from the actual plot.

Is there someone behind me making some other post I don't know about? Cause this is ridiculous. Taste is subjective yeah, but taste really isn't even what is being debated in here anymore. There's a crisis of comprehension going on.

Considering how popular Andor has been with viewers and with critics, it’s fair to say it was successful, if not universally so. As for the risks—seriously? You’re the one who found the show boring and pointless. That was the risk: that a slower plotted, more of a “historical drama” take on Star Wars rather than a WW2/samurai/western Star Wars might bore Star Wars fans. And yes, by “real Star Wars” I do mean the faster paced adventure films with pew-pews and sword fights. Andor was not that, which can only be seen as a risk compared to another Baby Yoda Boba Armored Lightsaber Space Battle show.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Andor was not that, which can only be seen as a risk compared to another Baby Yoda Boba Armored Lightsaber Space Battle show.

So you think Mando S1 was trash? Well the critics and the viewers disagree with you. The idea that every character must have major galaxy-scale plot relevance is how we get sequel nonsense like Rey being Palpatine's daughter. Anything that isn't bodies hitting the floor is just wasted time and if you think it wasn't a success you're just wrong.

See the issue?

I do.

It helps to know what you mean by 'real Star Wars' but pacing isn't the issue I'd take with Andor and it's not the one I made. Even if someone did cut all the bits I saw as a drag on Andor's plot, it would still be a slow-paced show. I have no issue with a slow-paced Star Wars show. I don't like yet another Star Wars show that has a solid core idea, but then piles onto it a lot of really unnecessary bloat that makes the show boring to watch at times.

You’re the one who found the show boring and pointless.

Because reading comprehension is a minority skill (or maybe it's just subjective, idk); I didn't call the show boring. I didn't call it pointless. I called parts of it boring and pointless and I specified what those parts are.

That's my opinion.

It be nice if I could say it without... Whatever the hell the rest of you are ranting about and ascribing to me. Cause I said none of this stuff you guys are getting worked up about.

Scroll up. I said Mando S1 was the only thing that came close to Andor. It was also a risk when it started, with no Skywalkers or Jedi.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Scroll up. I said Mando S1 was the only thing that came close to Andor. It was also a risk when it started, with no Skywalkers or Jedi.

Don't even know why anyone bothers posting if they're just not going to read anything past the first line. That would certainly explain the failure to comprehend, though.

Nah, I read it. It’s just more of the same crap you gave Gert. You go on about how you found PARTS of Andor boring but take umbrage at me summing up your complaints as “you found it boring”. You also had a lot of
Problems with characters that I summed up as “pointless”. Fine. Andor wasn’t a show that tickled your pickle. It was absolutely regarded as the best Star Wars since Mando S1 or even the OT by a significant portion, if not a majority, of the fanbase, which is more than Mando S2, Mando S3, Kenobi, Boba Fett, Clone Wars, Rebels, Bad Batch, the prequels, the sequels, Solo and Rogue One can say. Your complaints about Andor all boil down to your particular tastes. They are not objective criticisms, nor do most fans even agree that your dislikes are flaws.


It wasn’t for you. But it did manage to connect with many. Star Wars needs more hits that connect with fans.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Remember when Disney thought they had a boy problem, as in their demographics were too heavily skewed towards girls, so they went and started acquiring properties so they could also appeal more to boys.

Funny how things turn out.

I still don't see the relevance. Unless by "boys" you mean "5-10 year olds who think girls are gross" there's nothing in Ahsoka that goes outside the standard male-skewed traditional scifi market.


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 LordofHats wrote:
There's a crisis of comprehension going on.

Then maybe you could clarify? You said "one spends time introducing a whole bunch of characters who go on to not have any plot relevance" about characters who have plenty of relevance in their 2-3 episode arc within the series and in the series as a whole. The only plot relevance they don't have is the grand-scale Skywalker Saga stuff, and excessive focus on that specific kind of plot relevance is what produced the sequel nonsense.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Nah, I read it.

Read it again. See if you can catch the sarcasm.

It’s just more of the same crap you gave Gert.

I really don't think the problem is Andor not being 'real Star Wars.'

Your complaints about Andor all boil down to your particular tastes. They are not objective criticisms, nor do most fans even agree that your dislikes are flaws.

I'm not sure how I feel about your radical theories, or your bizarre desire to express them aloud and in public.

It wasn’t for you.

Should I run all opinions by you in the future? You know. Make sure they're right and approved by the fanbase before I express them? Is there a form to fill out? What critics should I call to confer with and what's the wait time on approval from the High Council? Not that I don't have the time but I like to schedule any hearings ahead of time. Make sure there's not a scheduling conflict.

I'm not trying to be crappy, but the condescending attitudes in here are way worse than they were the last time I was in this thread and my opinion is that some people might be best served just walking away from Star Wars for a little bit. Take a break from the whole sphere. I'm well accustomed to defensiveness in fandoms, but this has been surreal.

 ThePaintingOwl wrote:
Then maybe you could clarify?

I'll use an example from this very thread;

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Remember when Disney thought they had a boy problem, as in their demographics were too heavily skewed towards girls, so they went and started acquiring properties so they could also appeal more to boys.

Funny how things turn out.

I still don't see the relevance. Unless by "boys" you mean "5-10 year olds who think girls are gross" there's nothing in Ahsoka that goes outside the standard male-skewed traditional scifi market.

Do you think that maybe, H.B.M.C. is referring to the idea that Disney acquired Star Wars explicitly because they wanted to increase their brand appeal toward boys and men and Star Wars has great appeal for boys?

As for Disney, acquiring Star Wars (and Lucasfilm's other productions) represents an opportunity to further extend its demographic reach to target male consumers of all ages. Over the past 15 years, Disney has been enormously successful at producing material for girls, through its Princess and Fairies brands. It has been less successful at targeting boys – although Pixars' Cars was a cash cow for the company. Recently, Disney's acquisition of Marvel Productions seems to have been driven by a desire to expand its reach to older boys. Now, when you walk into a Disney store, you turn left for princesses and right for superheroes. Acquiring Lucasfilm continues this process, of developing brands with a broad sweep of demographic appeal (and I'm not for a minute suggesting that boys exclusively like cars, space and superheroes, or girls prefer princesses – rather that this kind of thinking motivates Disney's decision). ~ Forbes

And maybe your reply to H.B.M.C.'s post grossly fails to understand what H.B.M.C. is saying? Not even grossly. Like, the failure here is so bad I don't know why I have to explain it. I'm not actually sure why H.B.M.C. brought it up, so I'm not going to assume, but yeah. You made a complete leap from what was said to something else that wasn't said.

EDIT: Admittedly, this is very old news (the Forbes article is from 2012), but yeah. You don't need a history lesson to pick up the implication that Disney acquired Star Wars to solve the so-called 'boy problem.' That's basic reading comprehension. I'm not even following that thread of talk at all, and I saw it.

The only plot relevance they don't have is the grand-scale Skywalker Saga stuff, and excessive focus on that specific kind of plot relevance is what produced the sequel nonsense.

Consider 'this' or 'that' are not the only options.

And seriously. I think more than a few people here just need to take a Star Wars break or something.

 LordofHats wrote:
I'll use an example from this very thread;

It's an excellent example because you've missed the final sentence of HBMC's post:

Funny how things turn out.

I'm well aware of Disney's motives in buying the IP, the question was about why he thinks that is relevant and why any of it is "funny". And the answer sure seems to do with the context of the preceding posts and tauist's thinly-veiled sexist complaints about Ahsoka pandering to the "female audience".

I'm not actually sure why H.B.M.C. brought it up

Then maybe before making condescending accusations about reading ability you should go back and read the posts preceding HBMC's and see why my response is not a leap at all. HBMC's follows the exchange with tauist, and my response is in that same context.

Consider 'this' or 'that' are not the only options.

No, of course there are multiple options. But the only one where I can see the complaint about plot relevance being true is about relevance to the grand Skywalker narrative. Could you clarify what plot relevance the characters are lacking in your opinion?

I think more than a few people here just need to take a Star Wars break or something.

I'm not sure why you think "Andor is a good show and I liked it" would lead you to that conclusion?

 LordofHats wrote:
I think more than a few people here just need to take a Star Wars break or something.

Disney being chief among them...

 ThePaintingOwl wrote:
It's an excellent example

Question is, will anyone learn from it?

Then maybe before making condescending accusations about reading ability

I prefer to never attribute to malice until given ample reason.

Most stupid internet arguments are just people getting hung up on stuff and talking past each other.

But the only one where I can see

I'd prefer you, and everyone else, keep your eyes out of my mouth. It's unsanitary.

I'm not sure why you think "Andor is a good show and I liked it" would lead you to that conclusion?

But there you go doing it again.

Like what you like. I've at no point, anywhere in here, told anyone what their opinion should be or what they should like.

And In my opinion some people here should get out for a bit. Andor isn't going anywhere. It'll still be there. Aren't they making a season 2? I think it'll still be there.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Disney being chief among them...

I got a laugh when those rumors about Lucas looking to buy Star Wars back circulated through social media last month.

I still think Lucas was worse (at the end). Not that it matters. I'm pretty sure Lucas couldn't buy Star Wars back even if he wanted to, and Disney sure isn't selling.

Ahsoka chapter 3

The red forest makes me want to play more No Man’s Sky, and it Did recently drop another big content update…

It could be!


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Also?

I’m really enjoying the deliberate lack of emotion coming from Shin Hati, the Maybe-Not-Sith Apprentice.

Because it’s not wooden acting. There is emotion there, but you can tell it’s being tightly controlled.

Also I wouldn’t be surprised if Baylan Skoll flips, and comes back to the light. There’s something about the performance where I feel he’s having doubts about his path.

I definitely want to know more about most of our new villains, which is a great thing for sure. Really enjoyed the episode overall. Shields were probably a little more effective than we've ever seen but probably close to some videogames. Mostly felt like they dragged out the taking fire scene a little long than anything.

The opening training sequence was wonderful. Hera being very very bad at playing politics was kind of infuriating. Bad guys stole a Star Destroyer class hyperdrive, focus on that.

I'm curious if Sabine is going to be our new Corran Horn. He couldn't really use the Force to affect physical objects but was able to redirect energy.


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 AduroT wrote:
The red forest makes me want to play more No Man’s Sky, and it Did recently drop another big content update…

Spoiler:

We’re definitely Supposed to think the other evil force dude is Ezra, right? It that a red herring? It kind of feels too obvious or cliche.

I think so, but it doesn't make a whole lot of sense for that to be the case. It's not IMPOSSIBLE, but seems very at odds with the character. If there's a "bad things for good reasons" angle to it they're going to have to work very hard to explain why he doesn't just reveal himself and explain to his friends and if its a mind control angle its just kind of dumb.

The other speculative options:

I also liked the Villain Starfighters.

Not exactly stock fighters I’d say, but importantly not the awful Uglies. Rather they seem to be adapted from…something? Definite shades of Grievous’ personal fighter, and close to the gunship destroyed in Mando S1.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:


Also I wouldn’t be surprised if Baylan Skoll flips, and comes back to the light. There’s something about the performance where I feel he’s having doubts about his path.

That, or is also the possibility he never truly went full "Dark" but is instead playing a long game working with Morgan towards different ends already, based on some of what we have seen. Personally I would love to see that approach, as it would be a great way to show an example of the sort of Sentinel deep cover shenanigans we know exist within the lore but have not really seen too much of on screen. The orange lightsaber also potentially supports this, as Sentinels often would have a yellow blade, so the blood orange could be a hint towards a Sentinel that dipped a bit into the Dark (Yellow + Red) as part of his overall goal.

 Lance845 wrote:
The interesting bit here to me (someone more Starwarsy than me can correct me if I am wrong) is that this is showing that Ezra jumped to another Galaxy.

If I remember correctly, with the exception of the Yuuzhan Vong, SW is entirely bound to a single galaxy. No extra galactic travel has ever been done.

So what else are they maybe introducing here?

Its been long established that the galaxy far far away is orbited by a number (iirc, 5) of satellite companion dwarf galaxies. As someone else pointed out, the Rishi Maze (technically "Companion Aurek) where Kamino is located (technically Kamino isn't in the Rishi Maze, just near it, but its location is considered extragalactic.

The Vong weren't the only extragalactic entity in the old EU either, just the most prominent. George Lucas and Dave Filonis planned to include the Vong in The Clone Wars, but they would have retconned away some of the more problematic issues with their depiction (i.e. their force blindness/immunity).

In canon, there was reference in one novel to a smuggler that was wanted in "eighteen galaxies" - assuming that wasn't an author being dumb and not knowing what a galaxy is or the character making an exaggerated boast, that might imply that canonically there are at least 17 companion galaxies.

In this case though, its likely that Thrawn and Ezra are just in the Unknown Regions of the star wars galaxy, rather than a different galaxy.

So I've gotten around to watching the first three episodes and what can I say?

I like it so far. Quite a lot in fact.

I've not been the biggest fan of rebels, but this has me hooked. I enjoy the quiet and contemplative demeanour of Ahsoka and Rosario Dawson just works. Sabine is also pretty well cast and thankfully not portrayed as hyper-competent, but as flawed to the point where she might be entirely unsuited as a padawan. It's going to be interesting to see, how she grows into becoming a not-jedi.

The antagonists seem believable enough and, with the possibility of Thrawn returning, the stakes are high. The prospect of seeing them reach the other galaxy holds so much potential that will hopefully be realized in some ways. New races, maybe a new enemy altogether? Can't wait to find out. I'm also looking forward to the reveal of Marrok and if those not-sith have any goal beyond greed and power.

All in all good stuff that has me wanting more, and leagues above Kenobi and Boba Fett, both in terms of scope and execution.

Only downside?

Well actually, there’s two.

1. It’s an entire week until more wonderful.

2. Baylan either doesn’t survive this season, or will have to be recast following the sad passing of the actor.

Which means if I’m right, and he does flip (having to no longer betray his true self with the demise of The Empire) then we may miss out on a longer redemptive arc/follow up.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

2. Baylan either doesn’t survive this season, or will have to be recast following the sad passing of the actor.

Which means if I’m right, and he does flip (having to no longer betray his true self with the demise of The Empire) then we may miss out on a longer redemptive arc/follow up.

He hasn't received much characterization so far, so my guess is that he's an "in" for his two apprentices and will die to further their arc.

Also another nice touch?

Ahsoka and Baylan both use pre-Imperil shuttles to get about. Like they’re both clinging on to what was.

Given their relevant positions, I believe it is through choice, as Ahsoka could surely requisition a more modern one, and Baylan, being a mercenary (or so we’re told at least) could probably do the same to some degree.

Fun episode.

 Gert wrote:

Spoiler:

And wayhay we get to see how inept the New Republic is from a new POV. Great. Awesome. Thank you sequels for forcing that narrative.

Also, as Hera hinted at?

well, as episode 2 shows, gutting the entire republic of former imperials would be basically impossible anyway. They are 100% reliant on them at all levels as part of the New Republic, as they are literally the only people with experience in running a galactic nation. Basically every single major political figure we see in the New Republic was either a active member of the imperial governing structure, or a the very least, a willing accomplice in it. Add to that the large number of rebels who were imperial defectors themselves, and it becomes absolutly impossible to barr former imperials form the republic.

I;d imagine the imperial amnesty program we see in mado only has a comparatively small number of the former imperials in it, mostly former military. certainly, all the members of it we see talk about military service or civilians working as part of the military R&D complex.

You wonder how many people in the government bureaucracy worked in the old republic, through the empire, and into the new republic. The management might change, but the job remains the same.

The Empire only lasted for twenty four years. That's half the time to retirement and thus plenty of time to work for both Republics. Like a bureaucrat cares what logo is on that stamp that goes on form E34-509, as long as it's stamp C17 and gets the signature of two supervisors within two workdays of filing.

Also remember the rot of the Old Republic was something Palpatine exploited, and strategically encouraged. But he didn’t create it.

Which leaves plenty of room for corrupt politicians that wanted nothing in particular to do with Mr Prune.

I just want to know why the Republic costumes in the opening scene were so awful. All the other costumes have been fine, but those specifically looked like cheap Halloween costumes from a fly-by-night store.

the new republic military uniforms? yeah, im also not a fan of them. The security guards seem to have a uniform that's pretty cut the same as the imperial one, but this time in blue, not grey. they seem much too....Imperial....for my tastes. I'm also not a fan of the huge rank badge (particular on the officers who also have collar tabs which could be rank badges), but thats more that it'd be awkward to wear the whole time. I accept its meant to be a TV friendly system, but the Imperial rank bars were also that, and much better looking, frankly.

The officer uniforms with the blue and brown look OK to me, though. I'm 90% sure that blue/bown look is a reference to the Old Republic uniforms of KOTOR, which were like that, so I'm guessing its a deliberate choice in-universe to use uniforms that harken back to the Old republic and the nostalgia for that "better" time.

It DOES seem to be rather light-weight material, but given they are all working in a shipborne environment, thats not a huge issue. Its not much worse than real life navy uniforms for duty wear (google royal navy or RAF duty uniforms, its pretty much a collared shirt and trousers.).

notably, general Sulla doesn't bother with anything resembling the official uniform, sticking to her rebels era orange jumpsuit with a leather jacket instead, and just straps the rank badge on that. Main Character Custom Uniform syndrome strikes agian.


i'm guessing the poor fit was just a issue of creating a lot of "one sizes fits all" uniforms for extras to wear that result in some poor fits on screen.

Mrs. GG and I are loving the show so far. Other than a few very minor details, like the quality of those brown and blue uniforms.

It was not the color of the New Republic ship's officers uniforms that bothered me, it was the material and tailoring (or lack thereof) as well as a lack of distressing to make them look “lived in” that made them look more like costumes than uniforms. High resolution TV is a lot less forgiving than decades old film. Or since so many of the costumes have been brilliant it made have been a conscious choice by the costume designer to try to say the New Republic Navy is very inexperienced and has a low budget.

General Madine in Return of the Jedi…

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
And in terms of “where the blinking flip are we”? The end of Empire Strikes Back shows the Rebel Fleet well outside the main Galaxy.

Spoiler:

Whether that’s in deep space or looking on from the Rishi Maze or simply proper intergalactic space you’d need to look into with a Google.

What they're looking at here is a protostar, not the galaxy.

MarkNorfolk wrote:
I'd have been down for Fett's show being a Dances with Wolves type thing, to help transition him to being a 'good guy'. I'd also would've been happy for Fett to be a 'Bad guy with a code of honour'. What ruined it for me was slow speeder bikes, Fett trying to run a crime syndicate with two people and the splicing of another TV show..

Yeah, I would have loved a whole series of Fett's time with the sand people. They could have gone places with that, and it was a great opportunity to flesh out a group that have largely just been window dressing until now. The crime syndicate with no employees was silly even by my incredibly low standards.

It’s not. The non-film media I read specifically had them hiding out outside the Galaxy, specifically so the Empire had as little chance of finding them as possible.

But to be completely fair? I couldn’t tell you the exact book, or whether it’s new or old expanded universe.

I just had that galaxy view pegged in the same category as sublight travel between star systems and parsecs being used as time rather than distance.

It’s also worth keeping in mind how hyperspace works.

It’s not Warp Speed ala Star Trek, where you set your heading and off you go, bending the laws of physics.

Hyperspace depends on charted routes, taking into account known gravity wells, space anomalies etc. You can make a blind jump, but you’ve no way of knowing where you’ll end up, and may not be able to find your way back.

Other than that? Your only limitation seems to be fuel and your engine not burning out.

So jumps between galaxies (as seen in Attack of the Clones, Kamino being in a dwarf Galaxy) are possible - but you’re gonna want a chart or lane to follow.

And that’s what Elsbeth has now.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
It’s not. The non-film media I read specifically had them hiding out outside the Galaxy, specifically so the Empire had as little chance of finding them as possible.

But to be completely fair? I couldn’t tell you the exact book, or whether it’s new or old expanded universe.

Yup, the old canon had them lurking just outside the galaxy in some material. Other material referred to it as a star. At least one version of the novelization, based on the screenplay, said it was a red Dwarf.

In the new canon, it's a protostar, at least according to Wookiepedia.

 Nevelon wrote:
You wonder how many people in the government bureaucracy worked in the old republic, through the empire, and into the new republic. The management might change, but the job remains the same.

All those guys in Andor's hall of bureaucracy are still there in Ashoka. Probably complaining now the empire has gone outer planets don't file reports as regularly. Though the lack of terrorist bombings is probably a plus.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
It’s also worth keeping in mind how hyperspace works.

It’s not Warp Speed ala Star Trek, where you set your heading and off you go, bending the laws of physics.

Hyperspace depends on charted routes, taking into account known gravity wells, space anomalies etc. You can make a blind jump, but you’ve no way of knowing where you’ll end up, and may not be able to find your way back.

But fighters and similar do seem to jump to hyperspace whenever they fancy.

(We will leave aside the new films use or not of hyperspace.)

Astromechs can hold multiple hyperspace calculations, my guess is you do at least two before jumping in.

One to get you there, one to get you out. Possibly multiple escape routes, as running away is inherently less costly overall than losing a ship and its pilot.

Yeah, the 'charted routes' are just known safe paths. They can go into hyperspace more or less anywhere outside of a gravity well, but need an astromech or a nav computer to chart a safe path from wherever they are to wherever they are going, or they run the risk of running into something on the way. Something that has featured as a plot point mid-escape sequence in any number of Star Wars stories.

 insaniak wrote:
Yeah, the 'charted routes' are just known safe paths. They can go into hyperspace more or less anywhere outside of a gravity well, but need an astromech or a nav computer to chart a safe path from wherever they are to wherever they are going, or they run the risk of running into something on the way. Something that has featured as a plot point mid-escape sequence in any number of Star Wars stories.

This article from Wookiepedia pretty much covers it:

Large objects in realspace cast "mass shadows" in hyperspace, so hyperspace jumps necessitated very precise calculations. Without those, a vessel could fly right through a star or another celestial body. Because of the danger, there existed predetermined hyperspace routes which interstellar travelers could take. The discovery of a new, safe hyperspace route could play a pivotal role in war, as it would allow naval forces to move faster unbeknownst to their adversaries. The Galactic Empire employed Interdictor vessels which utilized gravity well projectors that created artificial mass shadows, both to pull them from hyperspace and to prevent them from making the jump to it.

Try to fly through a planet or a star and it's mass shdow would pull you out of hyperspace and then it's 'Game Over Man, GAME OVER!'

I’d always wondered how blockades were supposed to work with so much open space.

MarkNorfolk wrote:
I just had that galaxy view pegged in the same category as sublight travel between star systems and parsecs being used as time rather than distance.

Yeah, just a pretty end scene visual in ESB.
Of course the EU just had to expand on/over-explain/ruin it....

 AduroT wrote:
I’d always wondered how blockades were supposed to work with so much open space.

To be fair, same as real world naval blockades; you don’t blockade the massive, empty, ocean. You blockade the ports where people are trying to go, or the channels and straits they have to go through.

 AduroT wrote:
I’d always wondered how blockades were supposed to work with so much open space.

In the movies and shows it works through the unspoken gentleman's agreement to go straight through the enemy fleet presence. That approach has yet to fail.

Because geometry is hard I'm going to make the unsubstantiated claim that if you have at least four monitors in orbit with line of sight to each other, your sensors can cover the entire surface of the planet and you can pick up launching ships the moment they take off. From there you have to dispatch some of your forces to intercept. That should work about as well as it ever will, and should work both for incoming and outgoing traffic.

I looked into this kamino thing. Apparently the planet/it's star are on the very edge of the galaxy so people "consider" it extra galactic. Which is just nonsense to say it's far away from everything. Being on the edge of the galactic disk is still being a part of the galactic disk.

What a bunch of total nonsense wording that confuses people.

Yeah, I'm not sure why they bother to try and differentiate it from the Outer Rim.

yeah, that sounds like a way to mass hand wave any extra-galactic comments as the speaker meaning figurative when they describe kamino as "extra-galactic", rather than literally.

Yeah, I'm not sure why they bother to try and differentiate it from the Outer Rim.

most likely? the outer rim is explicitly a well known but backwater area, full of settled, established, but unimportant worlds like Tatooine, Geonosis and Utapau. to use an earth analogy, they are the African countries: important to those that live there, well known enough in the core, but far form the centres of power and only important on the wider setting when the great powers fight over them and their resources.

Kamino is closer to a secret Antarctic base, or maybe one of the remote pacific islands: its not near anything, and if it wasn't for the scientists their, no one would care about it.

 LunarSol wrote:
Yeah, I'm not sure why they bother to try and differentiate it from the Outer Rim.

Like so many weird explanations in Star Wars canon, it will be because someone wrote something somewhere that conflicts with something someone else wrote somewhere else, and so an additional someone has to write something that makes both of those things technically correct.

xerxeskingofking wrote:
yeah, that sounds like a way to mass hand wave any extra-galactic comments as the speaker meaning figurative when they describe kamino as "extra-galactic", rather than literally.

Yeah, I'm not sure why they bother to try and differentiate it from the Outer Rim.

most likely? the outer rim is explicitly a well known but backwater area, full of settled, established, but unimportant worlds like Tatooine, Geonosis and Utapau. to use an earth analogy, they are the African countries: important to those that live there, well known enough in the core, but far form the centres of power and only important on the wider setting when the great powers fight over them and their resources.

Kamino is closer to a secret Antarctic base, or maybe one of the remote pacific islands: its not near anything, and if it wasn't for the scientists their, no one would care about it.

Sure. That still makes it part of the galaxy.

hey, i aggree its silly, im just saying langauge is also silly, and people make hyperbolic statements all the damm time. Kamino is clearly part of the Galaxy Far Far Away, but in the common opinion of the inhabitants there, its so far away form everything that its "extra-galactic"

episode four spoilers

Well now!



Really solid episode for me.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Another thought….

 Lance845 wrote:
I looked into this kamino thing. Apparently the planet/it's star are on the very edge of the galaxy so people "consider" it extra galactic. Which is just nonsense to say it's far away from everything. Being on the edge of the galactic disk is still being a part of the galactic disk.

What a bunch of total nonsense wording that confuses people.

Its also irrelevant. AFAIK, it doesn't come up in the films or even the cartoons (or prior D+ shows), so no one outside EU grognards and wookiepedia 'experts' are going to know or care.
Its the ultimate 'Well, actually...' moment that just provokes an eyeroll.

Voss wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
I looked into this kamino thing. Apparently the planet/it's star are on the very edge of the galaxy so people "consider" it extra galactic. Which is just nonsense to say it's far away from everything. Being on the edge of the galactic disk is still being a part of the galactic disk.

What a bunch of total nonsense wording that confuses people.

Its also irrelevant. AFAIK, it doesn't come up in the films or even the cartoons (or prior D+ shows), so no one outside EU grognards and wookiepedia 'experts' are going to know or care.
Its the ultimate 'Well, actually...' moment that just provokes an eyeroll.

It matters in the point that the Starwars galaxy has been an isolated single galaxy.

If THIS show is going to have actual extra galactic travel that is a big thing for Starwars in general. The only ACTUAL extra galactic contact from the EU is the Vong. And I am not saying that they are going to bring them into the SW universe here and now. But I am pointing out that Thrawn/Ezra ending up in a different galaxy is actually a major thing.

 Lance845 wrote:

Voss wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
I looked into this kamino thing. Apparently the planet/it's star are on the very edge of the galaxy so people "consider" it extra galactic. Which is just nonsense to say it's far away from everything. Being on the edge of the galactic disk is still being a part of the galactic disk.

What a bunch of total nonsense wording that confuses people.

Its also irrelevant. AFAIK, it doesn't come up in the films or even the cartoons (or prior D+ shows), so no one outside EU grognards and wookiepedia 'experts' are going to know or care.
Its the ultimate 'Well, actually...' moment that just provokes an eyeroll.

It matters in the point that the Starwars galaxy has been an isolated single galaxy.

If THIS show is going to have actual extra galactic travel that is a big thing for Starwars in general. The only ACTUAL extra galactic contact from the EU is the Vong. And I am not saying that they are going to bring them into the SW universe here and now. But I am pointing out that Thrawn/Ezra ending up in a different galaxy is actually a major thing.

Oh sure. Its a big deal if its true and there are future consequences. Otherwise its almost exactly like going to an unknown sector of the same galaxy, just really far away so you need to hang a naquadah generator on your stargate or whatever.
But a lot of the responses to 'extragalactic' have been 'well, technically...' Which both undercuts it and relies basically on the worst sort of 'secret nerd knowledge,' not anything actively presented in most SW media.

Honestly, though... I think I'd rather have the Vong rather than have them do this whole song and dance about extra-galactic travel and have it amount to basically nothing or a dropped plot point. (Which is what I expect from SW and D+ at this point). On the other hand, the Vong were really silly edgelord nonsense that the setting didn't need.

Zero desire for the Vong. I was a huge EU reader and that whole era really killed it for me.

That episode was an absolute delight though. There's so much great Star Wars here and they've done so much right with Sabine and Baylen in particular both in terms of characterization and how it makes their fights worthwhile.

Some specifics:

ok, so, spoilerific speculation, in regards to where this series sits in the overall timeline:

Our baddies really are shining in this series. They’re not just smart, but sensible.

Sure the Goon Squad exists only to get ded. But we’re not seeing unnecessary risks taken.

Also, Chinny Reckons?

I think Thrawn IS coming back to the Galaxy Far Far Away.

I think they have decided all of these shows are building up to a cross over in which Thrawn is the big bad.

We get the Mandolorians, the New Republic, Rebels Rag Tag Survivors, and Bobba Fett's kids on scooters uniting together to fight against Thrawn and whatever he brings with him from this other galaxy.

Another good episode. Yay!

xerxeskingofking wrote:
ok, so, spoilerific speculation, in regards to where this series sits in the overall timeline:

Spoiler:

according to the opening scroll of ashoka, this is happening pretty soon after the capture of morgen, specifically when shes being taken to the New Republic to stand trail, which would put it shortly after the events of the Book of Boda Fett (ie the last time we've seen ashoka in canon before this series). Unless she spent several months in captivity in the Outer Rim before being shipped to the New Republic proper (which is possible), this would also put it before or at the same time as the events of Mando S3, and specifically before the scenes in mando where the imperial remenants are arguing about the fortold return of Thrawn. unless I am mistaken, that scene would kinda have to be later in the timeline than we are with the ashoka series unless we spent and inordinate amount of time in the other galaxy (like several months).

I am of the opinion that Thrawn will not manage to return to the Galaxy Far Far Away. He will be defeated this other galaxy he is currently in, and the shots of him we've seen are in this other galaxy. By the point in the timeline of the scene of the imperials bickering about when thrawn will return, he's already been defeated, but they just dont know it (call it an ironic bonus for people re-watching it).

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

Spoiler:

Maybe she’s off to this other Galaxy not to retrieve Thrawn (I mean, where the flip would he be? How do you find him?), but to bring back Night Sisters, to fill the power vacuum left by the Sith and Jedi being all but gone?

Though?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Though?

Spoiler:

Wouldn’t it be great if Thrawn refused to return? Just “no. Sod off. I like it here. Get off my Juniper Bushes!

I believe Ahsoka is supposedly set 5 years after Endor, so 9 ABY? Rebels ended 1 BBY, so he's been out there about a decade.

Just an idea, but:

 Nicky J wrote:
Just an idea, but:

Spoiler:

I absolutely considered this

 Geifer wrote:

Spoiler:

I realize there's a certain cynicism these days regarding which character a show is named after and who the show actually focuses on, but I doubt that it will actually marginalize Ahsoka going forward. I expect her role will be to help Hera convince the New Republic to put a fleet over the planet and give Thrawn a warm welcome when he returns, and then participate in the big fight at the end.

Spoiler:

Provided Thrawn isn't conveniently close the end point of the purrgil migration route they're following, he still shouldn't be hard to find. Remember that Obi-Wan found Anakin through his transponder signal in Attack of the Clones, not just pinging into the void in hopes of a response but presumably by automated response so he knew exactly that Anakin was on Tatooine. There's no reason to believe Thrawn doesn't want to be found, so even if he's a bit away, knowing his ship's transponder codes (how hard can it be for a high ranking ex-Imperial to get them?) makes him dead easy to locate unless he spent the last ten years zipping around that galaxy and ending up on the other ass end of it.

 LunarSol wrote:
Zero desire for the Vong. I was a huge EU reader and that whole era really killed it for me.

I loved the Vong as a concept - pitting the Jedi up against an enemy that didn't exist in the Force was a cool idea. It was let down by some really inconsistent writing, though, and the fact that different writers had very different takes on some characters, particularly Luke.

 insaniak wrote:

I loved the Vong as a concept - pitting the Jedi up against an enemy that didn't exist in the Force was a cool idea.

When I FIRST saw the concepts for Episode 1, I kind of assumed that was going to be the point of the Droids.

My take on the Droid Legions? A safe foe that Jedi could wreck with impunity in their role as Generals, all part of Palpatine’s plan to corrupt the order. Same as the Clone Army.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
My take on the Droid Legions? A safe foe that Jedi could wreck with impunity in their role as Generals, all part of Palpatine’s plan to corrupt the order. Same as the Clone Army.

Also a safe foe that can be destroyed with impunity in a children's show.

The version of the Clone Wars hinted at in Timothy Zahn's books (where the Clones were the aggressors, having gone insane and turned on the Republic) would have potentially been much darker.

Question for the people who have watched the show. As someone who's detested nearly everything Disney has done with Star Wars, is Ahsoka worth giving a shot? I really like Rosario Dawson which makes me kinda curious to try this one. I know absolutely nothing about the character, am I gonna be instantly lost without doing the 'homework' first?

If you have disliked everything else Disney has done so far, you're unlikely to like this any more than the previous offerings. It's very much in the same sort of vein as the Mandalorian and Book of Boba Fett in tone and pacing.

 creeping-deth87 wrote:
Question for the people who have watched the show. As someone who's detested nearly everything Disney has done with Star Wars, is Ahsoka worth giving a shot? I really like Rosario Dawson which makes me kinda curious to try this one. I know absolutely nothing about the character, am I gonna be instantly lost without doing the 'homework' first?

From someone who is in a similar position regarding Disney Star Wars: it's definitely worth a shot. You don't need to do much homework, she is Anakin's former apprentice who at some point decided to leave the jedi order to go on a trip to Australia. She has since clashed with Vader and does feel somewhat guilty for leaving her master and potentially having contributed to his fall to the dark side.

You might want to do some reading on who Sabine and Ezra are, but that's not super important, as the show does a good job of explaining most of the dynamics.

 Lance845 wrote:
The only ACTUAL extra galactic contact from the EU is the Vong.

That's incorrect. Kwa, Chazrach, Nagar, Tofs, Silentium, Abominor are all extra galactic or believed extra galactic. The name of the "InterGalactic Banking Clan" also implies the existence of other Galaxies with which they engage in banking services.

 BertBert wrote:

 creeping-deth87 wrote:
Question for the people who have watched the show. As someone who's detested nearly everything Disney has done with Star Wars, is Ahsoka worth giving a shot? I really like Rosario Dawson which makes me kinda curious to try this one. I know absolutely nothing about the character, am I gonna be instantly lost without doing the 'homework' first?

From someone who is in a similar position regarding Disney Star Wars: it's definitely worth a shot. You don't need to do much homework, she is Anakin's former apprentice who at some point decided to leave the jedi order to go on a trip to Australia. She has since clashed with Vader and does feel somewhat guilty for leaving her master and potentially having contributed to his fall to the dark side.

You might want to do some reading on who Sabine and Ezra are, but that's not super important, as the show does a good job of explaining most of the dynamics.

Also, she abandoned the Jedi Order when she was framed and convicted of a crime. This revealed to her the corruption, hence even when cleared, she walked away.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I’m also very intrigued regarding Star Wars - Skeleton Crew.

Cursory YouTube search has only thrown up my least favourite things - fan made trailers masquerading as the Real McCoy. So…I know next to nothing about it.

Jude Law leads as a force user, and it seems there’s kiddos involved as the titular crew. And apparently it slots in with Mando and Ahsoka in terms of the plot.

We don’t even have a firm release date/

xerxeskingofking wrote:

 Geifer wrote:

Spoiler:

I realize there's a certain cynicism these days regarding which character a show is named after and who the show actually focuses on, but I doubt that it will actually marginalize Ahsoka going forward. I expect her role will be to help Hera convince the New Republic to put a fleet over the planet and give Thrawn a warm welcome when he returns, and then participate in the big fight at the end.

Spoiler:

Provided Thrawn isn't conveniently close the end point of the purrgil migration route they're following, he still shouldn't be hard to find. Remember that Obi-Wan found Anakin through his transponder signal in Attack of the Clones, not just pinging into the void in hopes of a response but presumably by automated response so he knew exactly that Anakin was on Tatooine. There's no reason to believe Thrawn doesn't want to be found, so even if he's a bit away, knowing his ship's transponder codes (how hard can it be for a high ranking ex-Imperial to get them?) makes him dead easy to locate unless he spent the last ten years zipping around that galaxy and ending up on the other ass end of it.

Spoiler:

sorry, i must have been unclear. I do not think that Ahsoka is going to be sidelined, though maybe hera is. I expect Ahsoka to use this force-space or whatever it is to travel to the far end of the long jump and catch up with Morgen (and sabine).

what i meant was that whatever is going to happen, its going to be contained to, at most, the gateway system in the Galaxy Far, Far, Away.

that said, the timeline of these D+ shows is a little....vague. Mando S1 and S2 are both fully set in 9ABY. Book of boba fett, Mando S3 and this show are all somewhere in eitehr late 9ABY or early 10ABY, but thiers no hard answers as to when. As far as canon is concerned, less than a year has past between Djinn getting tasked with finding grogu, and the return to Madalore.

it could be these events are happening more or less alongside those in Mando S3, or slightly before or after, we just dont know.

Right, thanks for clarifying. In that case...

Or…

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Or…

Spoiler:

Thrawn just isn’t wanting to work with them, seeing in them the flaws of The Empire. Folks promoted due to politics rather than competence. Ego before efficiency.

From the new novels, I just don’t see Thrawn as enough of a True Believer to worry about resorting The Empire as such. Carving out his own kingdom, sure. But not necessarily resurrecting a flawed organisation?

This series won’t end with the defeat of Thrawn. If I were to wager I’d say his return will be a season capping cliffhanger. We’ve got that whole Heir to the Empire movie coming and all.

 insaniak wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
My take on the Droid Legions? A safe foe that Jedi could wreck with impunity in their role as Generals, all part of Palpatine’s plan to corrupt the order. Same as the Clone Army.

Also a safe foe that can be destroyed with impunity in a children's show.

Very much this. Droids exist for the same reason the Foot Clan ninja all became robots.

 LunarSol wrote:

 insaniak wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
My take on the Droid Legions? A safe foe that Jedi could wreck with impunity in their role as Generals, all part of Palpatine’s plan to corrupt the order. Same as the Clone Army.

Also a safe foe that can be destroyed with impunity in a children's show.

Very much this. Droids exist for the same reason the Foot Clan ninja all became robots.

And like, every villain Samurai Jack went against.

And that still holds true for inciting Jedi to mass violence.

With no life being destroyed, they have fewer qualms.

Using Clones gives Jedi lives to protect, but lives the Republic see as inherently disposable.

 AduroT wrote:
This series won’t end with the defeat of Thrawn. If I were to wager I’d say his return will be a season capping cliffhanger. We’ve got that whole Heir to the Empire movie coming and all.

Is that actually happening? I thought the big D+ crossover movie was bunk?

Hm. I thought we’d seen a trailer for it, but going and looking I guess that was just Ahsoka trailers, so I may need to retract my prediction. Still wanna think Thrawn’s too big to appear and go in only half a season or less, so if he Is defeated, it’ll just be a setback sort of defeat he can come back from.

The movie to end the 'mandoverse' is real, we just haven't seen anything of it yet;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mandalorian#Untitled_Dave_Filoni_film

Thrawn will return, and because Disney can't think of anything original to do we will find out he's been hosting the 'Real' Emperor Palpatine all this time. All the previous ones we've seen die have been clones/body doubles or special effects

I'm actually wondering if we'll somehow get our first mention of the nascent First Order soon. We've already seen Hux's father but IIRC they didn't name drop the First Order itself yet. I wonder if Thrawn will somehow be part of getting that all set up before something stupid happens to him because Disney feths up the story.

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
Thrawn will return, and because Disney can't think of anything original to do we will find out he's been hosting the 'Real' Emperor Palpatine all this time. All the previous ones we've seen die have been clones/body doubles or special effects

Unlikely since Thrawn has been stranded, not hiding away by choice. Getting dragged to Palp would be a little convenient even for Star Wars.

 ZergSmasher wrote:
I'm actually wondering if we'll somehow get our first mention of the nascent First Order soon. We've already seen Hux's father but IIRC they didn't name drop the First Order itself yet. I wonder if Thrawn will somehow be part of getting that all set up before something stupid happens to him because Disney feths up the story.

In the Aftermath novels, Hux was away getting all that setup. So what would become the First Order will already be at least nascent.

 Nicky J wrote:
The movie to end the 'mandoverse' is real, we just haven't seen anything of it yet;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mandalorian#Untitled_Dave_Filoni_film

Maybe. There's a lot of stuff flying about at the moment between the strikes, the Hulu deal, some cable snafu and whatever else is going on. And the string of mediocre-to-poorly received shows.
Disney might be reshuffling the deck, but getting real news is hard at the moment.

 LunarSol wrote:

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
Thrawn will return, and because Disney can't think of anything original to do we will find out he's been hosting the 'Real' Emperor Palpatine all this time. All the previous ones we've seen die have been clones/body doubles or special effects

Unlikely since Thrawn has been stranded, not hiding away by choice. Getting dragged to Palp would be a little convenient even for Star Wars.

Nono, that's where Palps was hiding out, because he foresaw that Thrawn would wind up there. They've been chillin', catching up on their Netflix backlog and building a new, solar-system-sized Death Star.

I would like to throw my crazed fan-theory into the ring here. The endgame of the "Heir to the Empire" plot is to strand the Rebels/Mandoverse cast in the distant galaxy. This will give Filoni et al the option to write stories that are not constrained by the timeline of the sequels, while still allowing the sequels to fart around and do their own thing, not admitting that they were massive duds for Disney.

As evidence, I suggest that Sabine destroying the ring ship and trapping them would be a narratively fulfilling redemption moment for her letting the map go.

If we assume that the exogalaxy was relatively peaceful before Thrawn turned up, perhaps all the military tech would be derived from stuff the various characters bring with them. So we would be seeing TIE fighter, Imperial Star Destroyer and X-wing derivatives, which, combined with Jedi on both sides, gives us all of the trappings for a good Star Wars story.

Like I said, my crackpot fan theory. But if Mando turns up in the next episode or two, I'm probably right.

We just watched the first episode, and….Sabine is *supposed* to be unlikeable, right?

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
We just watched the first episode, and….Sabine is *supposed* to be unlikeable, right?

more rebellious and anti-establishment. Your not supposed to think her actions are morally correct, if thats what your asking. They've just applied a "teenage rebel with a heart of gold" motif to her.

i've not watched really any of the Rebels stuff, so i dont know if that fits her character their (when shes actually a Teenage Rebel) or if this is a new direction for her.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
We just watched the first episode, and….Sabine is *supposed* to be unlikeable, right?

She has quite the background.

Raised in a noble Mandalorian family, she joined the Imperial Academy. Where she designed a weapon which exploits Beskar, to vaporise anyone wearing Beskar armour.

Realising what she’d done, she sabotaged the project and ran off, eventually joining up with Hera’s crew. In trying to unite the Mandalorians (having come into possession of the Darksaber on Dathomir), her actions kind of trigger the purge. And we saw her project completed and used to kill Mandalorians, before she managed to properly sabotage it.

She then loses Ezra.

Is it any wonder she doesn’t want praise and plaudits, and would much rather be left alone?

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
We just watched the first episode, and….Sabine is *supposed* to be unlikeable, right?

She lost Ezra at the moment of what should have been her greatest triumph, and then her home planet was genocided in retaliation for a rebellion that SHE basicly started.

so she's got a fair bit of emotional baggage

It's not really "turns out". They've always been that way, though I feel like Hera is a little denser than she's been in the past.

I dont know about Heras past in this regard, but i do feel Sabine's decision was both basically necessary for the story they wanted to tell, and narratively foreshadowed enough that it didn't feel like a deus ex.

Thats not a defence of the decision she chose to make, mind, it WAS stupid, but people make stupid decisions all the time, especially around relationships, platonic or otherwise. The arc they wanted to tell basically requires that Morgen's plan succeed, so Ahsoka and Sabine couldn't successful stop the. So, Sabine's bad decision is the way to square the circle of having the good guys be competent, but still allowing the evil plan to proceed. Several characters talked about how she might make this exact decision, her reasons to do so, etc.

Its a flaw, yes, but one she can work on. I'm like 90% sure she will be faced with a similar decision this season and choose the "big picture" choice as a way to show character growth.

BrianDavion wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
We just watched the first episode, and….Sabine is *supposed* to be unlikeable, right?

She lost Ezra at the moment of what should have been her greatest triumph, and then her home planet was genocided in retaliation for a rebellion that SHE basicly started.

so she's got a fair bit of emotional baggage

None of that comes across in the show. She just feels like a poor attempt at the rebellious cool loner trope. For such a storied character I’m surprised she didn’t read between the lines and expect an attack at her residence. Makes her come across as inexperienced or stupid.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
We just watched the first episode, and….Sabine is *supposed* to be unlikeable, right?

She lost Ezra at the moment of what should have been her greatest triumph, and then her home planet was genocided in retaliation for a rebellion that SHE basicly started.

so she's got a fair bit of emotional baggage

None of that comes across in the show. She just feels like a poor attempt at the rebellious cool loner trope. For such a storied character I’m surprised she didn’t read between the lines and expect an attack at her residence. Makes her come across as inexperienced or stupid.

What confuses me about Sabine is... they did her rebellious teenager phase during Rebels. She was already coming out of that at the beginning of that show. Its now X years later, and now she's the pre/early season teen again, except even more 'edgy' (instead of pushing mid twenties to 30 years old, which is where my vague math pings the character (no idea on the actress)) It didn't seem like emotional baggage from her failed rebellion, just a sulky teenager not wanting to attend social functions like an adult.

I haven't pushed past episode one because the characters seem off. Sabine's a dumb kid, Hera just looks far too young, and Ashoka is... a young, energetic character turned socially clueless pseudo-mom. I remember her as the one character during the Clone Wars series that was actually somewhat socially aware (in explicit contrast to Anakin), pushing the limits of Jedi training. Now she just seems boring Jedi schoolmarm.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
We just watched the first episode, and….Sabine is *supposed* to be unlikeable, right?

She lost Ezra at the moment of what should have been her greatest triumph, and then her home planet was genocided in retaliation for a rebellion that SHE basicly started.

so she's got a fair bit of emotional baggage

None of that comes across in the show.

Have you watched the first four seasons, or just leapt straight into season 5?

I think it stands on its own, but the first episode is probably the least accessible. After that I think the story stands on its own just fine.

I think if you've seen Filoni's animated shows it's not really possible to say how well it stands on its own, you already possess the knowledge of events that lead us to where the show starts, and you'd need to watch it very carefully to sift out one from the other.

It is, with all the good and bad it brings, essentially season 5 of Rebels transitioned to live action. As a fan who's watched all of the previous material on the characters I'm thoroughly enjoying the show, but I can see how it could feel a little like starting the OT by watching Return Of The Jedi if you came to it cold.

Equally, given how widely available all that previous material is, and for how long, my sympathy for 'fans" (as opposed to casual observers) bitching about stuff which can be readily explained with a little broader knowledge would be limited.

 Azreal13 wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
We just watched the first episode, and….Sabine is *supposed* to be unlikeable, right?

She lost Ezra at the moment of what should have been her greatest triumph, and then her home planet was genocided in retaliation for a rebellion that SHE basicly started.

so she's got a fair bit of emotional baggage

None of that comes across in the show.

Have you watched the first four seasons, or just leapt straight into season 5?

Ahsoka is still in its first season, no? Have I watched animated Star Wars? No. We started Clone Wars and lost interest. We have no plans to watch Rebels or Bad Batch or anything else animated Star Wars. If that is considered required viewing for this live action Star Wars, the mouse has miscalculated.

Or….get this….

There’s no basis to claim a character doesn’t make sense when their backstory very much exists, is freely accessible, it’s just your choice not to see it.

This is like picking up a late entry book in a long running series, and complaining you’re not following the character motivations, therefore the writing is bad.

Bit disappointed Zeb wasn’t one of the pilots who went with Hera.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
We just watched the first episode, and….Sabine is *supposed* to be unlikeable, right?

She lost Ezra at the moment of what should have been her greatest triumph, and then her home planet was genocided in retaliation for a rebellion that SHE basicly started.

so she's got a fair bit of emotional baggage

None of that comes across in the show.

Have you watched the first four seasons, or just leapt straight into season 5?

Ahsoka is still in its first season, no? Have I watched animated Star Wars? No. We started Clone Wars and lost interest. We have no plans to watch Rebels or Bad Batch or anything else animated Star Wars. If that is considered required viewing for this live action Star Wars, the mouse has miscalculated.

So you didn't enjoy/ don't intend to watch what is, by and large, considered to be some of the best Star Wars content outside of the OT? What made you think that you'd enjoy something based on the same characters by the same writer?

Episode 3.5 was better than episode 3.0.

Do wish they'd use something other than ChatGTP to write all the dialogue though...

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Or….get this….

There’s no basis to claim a character doesn’t make sense when their backstory very much exists, is freely accessible, it’s just your choice not to see it.

This is like picking up a late entry book in a long running series, and complaining you’re not following the character motivations, therefore the writing is bad.

m


But this is the first episode of the Ahsoka series…

Should every show and movie require homework now?

I don’t want to watch a cartoon as homework any more than I want to read a graphic novel as homework. It also sounds like the character in question doesn’t make sense even with the backstory. It’s possible, just possible, that Disney Star Wars whiffed on the execution.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Azreal13 wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
We just watched the first episode, and….Sabine is *supposed* to be unlikeable, right?

She lost Ezra at the moment of what should have been her greatest triumph, and then her home planet was genocided in retaliation for a rebellion that SHE basicly started.

so she's got a fair bit of emotional baggage

None of that comes across in the show.

Have you watched the first four seasons, or just leapt straight into season 5?

Ahsoka is still in its first season, no? Have I watched animated Star Wars? No. We started Clone Wars and lost interest. We have no plans to watch Rebels or Bad Batch or anything else animated Star Wars. If that is considered required viewing for this live action Star Wars, the mouse has miscalculated.

So you didn't enjoy/ don't intend to watch what is, by and large, considered to be some of the best Star Wars content outside of the OT? What made you think that you'd enjoy something based on the same characters by the same writer?

I’m going to watch more episodes and give it more of a chance. I didn’t even say I hated it or disliked it. I just asked if the unlikeable character was supposed to be unlikeable. Lots of shows have unlikeable characters on purpose, so it’s nice to know if I should be giving the character more leeway or lean into the dislike.

You're only really viewing Sabine as unlikeable because you're viewing her actions out of context, I'd say most people who are across her history are seeing, and understanding, where she's coming from.

You're going to have to be prepared to miss a lot of nuance by effectively starting in season 5, which was my original point.

Just because the medium and title have changed, this is just a straight continuation of the Rebels storyline, to the point where the scene where Sabine places her hand on the mural, before walking along the walkway and departing with Ahsoka in her ship is a literal shot-for-shot remake of one of the final scenes in Rebels (and also shows the more informed viewer where the two shows line up with each other chronologically.)

Watch what you want, ignore what you want, but understand that nobody likes the guy who sits down half way through the movie then starts asking questions about everything. Which isn't a perfect analogy, but hopefully you see what I'm getting at.

I’m not asking for plot details or summaries. I can go to wookieepedia for that. Just confirming or not a character impression.


Anyway, we made it to episode 4. Sabine gets better written after that, barring plot necessity. But the two characters I find most compelling are villains.

Do you like Star Wars? Do you live in or reasonably close to London? Fancy paying £20 for a self guided tour of an exhibition of Star Wars related stuff, called “The Fans Strike Back”?

Well don’t. Save your money. A friend and I went round it this morning, and it’s cack.

It’s billed as fan made prop replicas. But that’s a big old naughty fib. The majority are (crappy, poorly made) dioramas using off-the-peg toys.

There’s no insight into making replica props whatsoever. We basically paid £20 each to see someone else’s toy collection. I could’ve stayed at home and looked at my own, for free.

Utter utter tripe. Avoid it like Anakin would avoid sand.

 Azreal13 wrote:
You're only really viewing Sabine as unlikeable because you're viewing her actions out of context, I'd say most people who are across her history are seeing, and understanding, where she's coming from.

You're going to have to be prepared to miss a lot of nuance by effectively starting in season 5, which was my original point.

Just because the medium and title have changed, this is just a straight continuation of the Rebels storyline, to the point where the scene where Sabine places her hand on the mural, before walking along the walkway and departing with Ahsoka in her ship is a literal shot-for-shot remake of one of the final scenes in Rebels (and also shows the more informed viewer where the two shows line up with each other chronologically.)

Watch what you want, ignore what you want, but understand that nobody likes the guy who sits down half way through the movie then starts asking questions about everything. Which isn't a perfect analogy, but hopefully you see what I'm getting at.

So: if you're unfamiliar with the animated Clone Wars & Rebels, don't know this Filononi (sp?) Guy wrote both & is just continuing his previous work, and find you've got questions..... You're not allowed to ask them because fans like you look down your nose at the uninformed.
Congratulations Azreal, YOU are part of what's wrong with the SW fan base here in 2023.

No, what I'm saying is, if you're struggling to understand what's happening on screen when jumping into the middle of the story, then that's not the fault of the storyteller.

Don't be the guy who sits down half way through, says "what's her problem?" and then when it's explained to you that the reason she's acting that way is down to a series of events that happened earlier in that characters narrative, and to understand that you would need to see the part of the story that's already been told, declare "well that's not obvious from this bit I'm watching now."

It's not a Star Wars problem, it's a "started the story (more than) half way through" problem. It's a starting with Prisoner of Azkhaban and asking what's the big deal about the kid with glasses problem.

I'm not saying people can't ask questions, I'm saying that criticising a show that's part of an ongoing story for not spoonfeeding new viewers who may not have seen previous installments all the information they've missed, when it's all there and readily available in the shows where it happened, isn't valid.

I think in Ahsoka's case specifically there's an argument for criticising the PR around the show for not making it more obvious that it wasn't just picking up threads from Rebels but basically using them as the whole narrative structure, but that's different from essentially calling out Season 5 for continuing the storylines from Season 4 as a flaw because it doesn't retread the old ground it's already covered.

Alright, so I gave Ahsoka a shot despite never having watched Clone Wars or Rebels and I actually really dug it. I read the Heir to the Empire trilogy years ago so I have a pretty good idea of who Thrawn is, even though his story is now clearly different from Zhan's books. Little odds and ends I've picked up reading this thread have also given me some context so I don't feel all that lost.

That being said, I do have some questions you guys can hopefully answer for me without spoiling too much.

1. How did Thrawn get to this other galaxy if they're only now building the ship capable of making the jump? Was this covered in one of the earlier shows? How did he get there?

2. Who is Ezra to Ahsoka and Sabine? Friend? Family? A fellow Jedi? Why do they think he's still alive if they haven't seen him in so long?

3. What exactly happened between Ahsoka and Sabine that split them up?

4. Where is Ahsoka right now? I got some very 'Thanos after he snaps the gauntlet' vibes from whatever alternate reality she's in at the end of that last episode.

Thanks in advance for the answers everyone.

1. Thrawn’s defeat involved Pergill, summoned to the aid of the Rebels by Ezra Bridger




2. Former Padawan to Kannun Jarrus, former Jedi, Hera’s bloke and Jacen’s father

3. That occurred off-screen. Seems she was Ahsoka’s Padawan, but Jedi-Mandalorian mixing like oil and water.

4. World between Worlds. I won’t say more for fear of spoiling future episodes.

To add a little more detail

1. Purrgil (I had to Google that spelling) are the space whales we've seen in the space fight between Ahsoka and the junior Siths, they migrate through hyperspace and, apparently, intergalactically.

2. The dynamic between Ezra and Sabine specifically seems uncertain. I'd say the most logical take from Rebels was that they were close friends and maybe Ezra had a bit of a crush. What we've seen so far in Ahsoka suggests that maybe it's reciprocated, but it's all a bit open to interpretation.

3. Retrospectively, we now know there was a pretty significant time jump in the final Rebels episode. It appeared that Ahsoka and Sabine went looking for Ezra almost immediately. We now know that whatever went down between them happened in that gap, but, yeah, not what exactly.

4. It's some Filoni-verse specific Force lore, used badly it could be eye rolling, used wisely we could see some awesome stuff.

Also we saw the Purgil in the last season of Mando, in a Hyperspace cameo.

Hey….Grogu noticed them. Maybe that’ll come into it?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also worth remembering/learning that it was Sabine who originally gave the Darksaber to Bo Katan, to unite Mandalore.

I don’t think we’ve heard much of Clan Wren since we last saw them in Rebels, but there may be survivors out there.

Certainly if Thrawn is returning, Sabine is a natural “in” with the Mandalorians. If not, Ahsoka and Grogu’s acquaintance may play well in helping find Sabine.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also?

Shin. Clearly used to a Lightsaber. And Baylan’s apprentice.

But…..have we seen her actually make use of the Force so far?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

Also?

Shin. Clearly used to a Lightsaber. And Baylan’s apprentice.

But…..have we seen her actually make use of the Force so far?

Yes. At the end of Ep4.

Will need to give it another watch.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:


Shin. Clearly used to a Lightsaber. And Baylan’s apprentice.

But…..have we seen her actually make use of the Force so far?

yeah, she force choked sabine after the end of the fight, until called off by her master in a "i keep my promises" speech.

It also gives the game away. Since we now know she loves choking people she's either a long lost Skywalker or gets adopted by the end of the show.

"My name is Shin. Shin Skywalker!"

I really hope we don't get yet another bad guy turning good in this...

Ya know, if Thrawn did return, and bring back the Empire and take over the galaxy again, I wonder what that would look like. Palps was all about corruption and terror and pitting his own people against each other and it was never Supposed to be a good system, it was supposed to suck. Thrawn seems a more logical dude, get stuff functioning. Gotta think it wouldn’t be as bad living under that, not that it would be great.

 AduroT wrote:
Ya know, if Thrawn did return, and bring back the Empire and take over the galaxy again, I wonder what that would look like. Palps was all about corruption and terror and pitting his own people against each other and it was never Supposed to be a good system, it was supposed to suck. Thrawn seems a more logical dude, get stuff functioning. Gotta think it wouldn’t be as bad living under that, not that it would be great.

Without some timey-whimey handwaving, a Thrawn-brings-back-the-Empire seems impossible, does it not? This is year... 9 and the sequel trilogy is year 20-something.
Presumably a rational Thrawn Empire of studying art and instantly defeating foes is foiled by the First Order. Or the heroes, who are also villains and whatever (given sequel-era 'both sides' themes)

I mean yeah, it’s not going to happen in the show, I’m just talking a hypothetical what if sort of deal. Would stopping Thrawn even be that good given what we know of the Republic?

Isn't the next movie with Rey about her waking up, going to work and telling her coworker that she had the weirdest dream last night? If not, I don't know, I might have had the weirdest dream last night.

I could see Thrawn striving for an Empire that would be more adequately described as a repressive meritocracy. Still a military dictatorship and a strong focus on order, but with a fairer legal system and protected civil rights. Just going off his character in Rebels. I haven't read the books. That would likely be as good as the Empire can get.

ok, so Im refining my previous statement about Hera getting fired for disobedience, to her quitting in protest of political meddling getting in the way of her doing The Right Thing, and her becoming a founding member of the Resistance.

maybe not the anti First Order organization we see in the sequels, but something oriented towards helping fight the imperial remnants still causing trouble that the New Republic cant or wont deal with, and at some future point realises the imperial remmants are coalescing under the banner of the First Order. might be a sub plot of this or one of the other shows.

xerxeskingofking wrote:
ok, so Im refining my previous statement about Hera getting fired for disobedience, to her quitting in protest of political meddling getting in the way of her doing The Right Thing, and her becoming a founding member of the Resistance.

maybe not the anti First Order organization we see in the sequels, but something oriented towards helping fight the imperial remnants still causing trouble that the New Republic cant or wont deal with, and at some future point realises the imperial remmants are coalescing under the banner of the First Order. might be a sub plot of this or one of the other shows.

That sounds very plausible. My reaction on first seeing TFA was "why is the Resistance even a thing? Surely that's what the New Republic fleet is for?!", but showing the New Republic having a bit of an appeasement / fingers in ears reaction to the Imperial remenants would make that whole thread in the sequels make more sense.

 Jadenim wrote:

xerxeskingofking wrote:
ok, so Im refining my previous statement about Hera getting fired for disobedience, to her quitting in protest of political meddling getting in the way of her doing The Right Thing, and her becoming a founding member of the Resistance.

maybe not the anti First Order organization we see in the sequels, but something oriented towards helping fight the imperial remnants still causing trouble that the New Republic cant or wont deal with, and at some future point realises the imperial remmants are coalescing under the banner of the First Order. might be a sub plot of this or one of the other shows.

That sounds very plausible. My reaction on first seeing TFA was "why is the Resistance even a thing? Surely that's what the New Republic fleet is for?!", but showing the New Republic having a bit of an appeasement / fingers in ears reaction to the Imperial remenants would make that whole thread in the sequels make more sense.

Sadly this has always been the explanation. I remember leaving Episode 7 wondering the same things and finding out there was a bunch of background material explaining that the Republic didn't consider the FO a real threat but Leia did so she basically made a PMC to keep them in check. As much as I enjoy Episode 7, this is probably the most significant of Abrams's sins as far as passing the buck when it comes to world building.

I for one prefer to the old EU’s “this time, it’s war. But with a super weapon. But not like a Death Star, this time it’s a super super star destroyer but instead of guns, it’s got four arses”, each time getting dafter and dafter. Like the indestructible dustbin that can blow up stars. Or the really big gun which can blow up stars.

Yes those are kind of an internal trope, and we see two instances, arguably three I suppose, in the sequels.

And at least we didn’t have starships made from coral with a Jedi squished in as a power unit.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I for one prefer to the old EU’s “this time, it’s war. But with a super weapon. But not like a Death Star, this time it’s a super super star destroyer but instead of guns, it’s got four arses”, each time getting dafter and dafter. Like the indestructible dustbin that can blow up stars. Or the really big gun which can blow up stars.

Yes those are kind of an internal trope, and we see two instances, arguably three I suppose, in the sequels.

And at least we didn’t have starships made from coral with a Jedi squished in as a power unit.

Or starfighters made from bugs to which the jedi is permanently psychically and emotionally bonded, but which they'll immediately stop using as soon as the series is over...



But yeah, as much as the planet-sized Death Star was a bit of a lazy do-over, it was certainly in keeping with the EU's 'Villain with a superweapon of the week' approach to expanding the universe.

Or Lando making Terminators.

Or just the Vong in general.

As ever, to each their own, my opinion is persuasive only to myself.

Those didn’t enter the SWEU until much later, after several “episodes” with interesting plots. Heir to the Empire, X-Wing, the Han Solo and Lando Calrission series, etc.. Yeah, Kevin J Anderson brought in the Suncrusher and Kyp Durron early on, but in science fiction Kevin’s a bit of a JJ Abrams himself.

The Star Wars Sequel Trilogy started with the bed fully Ambered.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I for one prefer to the old EU’s “this time, it’s war. But with a super weapon. But not like a Death Star, this time it’s a super super star destroyer but instead of guns, it’s got four arses”, each time getting dafter and dafter. Like the indestructible dustbin that can blow up stars. Or the really big gun which can blow up stars.

Yes those are kind of an internal trope, and we see two instances, arguably three I suppose, in the sequels.

And at least we didn’t have starships made from coral with a Jedi squished in as a power unit.

I like this video that explains why super weapons never work in the Star Wars universe...

TBH even if the worst of the old EU is worse than the sequel movies the sequels are still inexcusable. It's understandable when a low-budget licensed novel given to a lowest-bidder hack like KJA, it's far less so when you're talking about a movie with a budget larger than the GDP of some countries. Disney had every resource possible for doing it right, they just decided to keep shooting themselves in the foot and spent obscene amounts of money on making movies that are borderline unwatchable.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Those didn’t enter the SWEU until much later, after several “episodes” with interesting plots. Heir to the Empire, X-Wing, the Han Solo and Lando Calrission series, etc.. Yeah, Kevin J Anderson brought in the Suncrusher and Kyp Durron early on, but in science fiction Kevin’s a bit of a JJ Abrams himself..

For all that it was a good read, the Han Solo trilogy introduced an ancient space station massively bigger than the Death Star in the home system of the guy who thought the Death Star was too big to be a space station...

And Heir to the Empire still leaned into the superweapon trope, with the Katana Fleet. Still an awesome series, though.

I don’t remember that, but I just remembered there were two Han Solo trilogies. And they both had some cheese.

I would argue the katana fleet fits more as a weapon than a superweapon, something to turn the fleet battles rather than obliterate all opposition.

 insaniak wrote:
For all that it was a good read, the Han Solo trilogy introduced an ancient space station massively bigger than the Death Star in the home system of the guy who thought the Death Star was too big to be a space station...

Took me a minute to figure out what you were referring to since the original Han Solo trilogy had no such thing, but the blame goes with some of the post-ROTJ books that introduced the superweapon station and its associated nonsense. It's unfortunately one of those lose/lose things, either give up the idea of having a single consistent canon or accept some other author's awkward and poorly thought out story elements.


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 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
I would argue the katana fleet fits more as a weapon than a superweapon, something to turn the fleet battles rather than obliterate all opposition.

Exactly. It was something of value to a rebuilding Empire but wouldn't have any purpose at all if they weren't short on crew and ships. In the pre-ROTJ era it would have been a bunch of old relics suitable only for scrapping.


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 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
I don’t remember that, but I just remembered there were two Han Solo trilogies.

TL,DR of it is that one of the sequel novels came up with the bizarre idea that Corellia was an artificial system created around a massive superweapon station by some forgotten ancient civilization with god-level technology, so presumably Han would have known that stations that size could exist. The Han Solo trilogy didn't directly involve it but presumably it was mentioned somewhere in the background.

Whoever designed the K-Wing and thought “yeah, that’s a Star Wars ship for sure” needs to put in a hole until they’ve reflected on their actions.

Because much as I’d have preferred the sequels to have more interesting ships, I’d prefer Newer Models of Classics than that abomination.

Weird cross between an A and X wing maybe. I think it’s just the underslung missiles that make it look weird to me.

It’s just a fugly, out-of-place design.

It looks heinous and ungainly. Compare to anything else we’re immediately used to and it sticks out like a sore thumb.

I do wish we’d had more novel designs from the sequels, but there is something to be said for sticking with a successful overall design, and tweaking it into newer models.

The prequels and Clone Wars did however do an excellent job of precursor craft. Nothing exactly analogous to what was to follow (barring Y-Wings of course), but enough cues introduced to show the development as pretty organic,

It's probably the blobby cockpit area.
Most of the other ships have fighter-type cockpits in the main body, excepting some Y-Wing designs (as said).

I think if you got rid of all the missiles and stuff under the wings and the turret that sticks out from under the chin it would look fine. Maybe even the two sets of wings out a bit more so they’re more similar in shape/length for a greater X Wing nod.

Also that top engine, which adds to the “the original model fell in a bucket of bits” look.

The overall profile of it is fine and even being more of a gunship than a fighter works, but its definitely overdesigned in the details. The extra top engine that has a distracting fin in front of it is a big part of that, as is the whole.... cockpit thing. Two cockpits and gunner pod gives it a very.... Fantastic Four mobile vibe and then there's the bottom gun. I get someone was inspired by WW2 but the way it dangles out in front like that does the whole thing no favors.


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On a separate note, I will never stop being mad that the E-Wing wings aren't mounted on the top of the craft so that it actually loooks like an E.

 LunarSol wrote:
I remember leaving Episode 7 wondering the same things and finding out there was a bunch of background material explaining that the Republic didn't consider the FO a real threat but Leia did so she basically made a PMC to keep them in check. As much as I enjoy Episode 7, this is probably the most significant of Abrams's sins as far as passing the buck when it comes to world building.

Wonder how they fund it.


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 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
I don’t remember that, but I just remembered there were two Han Solo trilogies. And they both had some cheese.

I reads the Thrawn stuff by Zahn, assumed that would be the next three films, and stopped. Wow, I was wrong...

The_Real_Chris wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
I remember leaving Episode 7 wondering the same things and finding out there was a bunch of background material explaining that the Republic didn't consider the FO a real threat but Leia did so she basically made a PMC to keep them in check. As much as I enjoy Episode 7, this is probably the most significant of Abrams's sins as far as passing the buck when it comes to world building.

Wonder how they fund it.

Judging by the size of their fleet and the position of the needle on the fuel gauge, they don't.

I'd guess donations and skimming money off public funds if they have functionaries in the right places. Maybe they have some businesses whose profits can be tapped into, but again considering their equipment, those would hardly be successful or sizable corporations.

Same way the Rebellion did it but with less stealing.
And considering Ackbar was a high ranking leader it stands to reason that the Mon Cala were probably involved quite a bit.

Well. It depends.

The Resistance was sort of paramilitary. As suggested above, a PCM trying to check and expose the threat of the First Order.

I suspect the plan was that once they had enough clear evidence of atrocities? Get the full Republic Fleet out and give them a kicking.

Hux however did what Palpatine didn’t, and successfully used his super weapon to cow resistance, by not only blasting the single most cohesive government, but its attendant military assets.

Immediately after Snoke’s main cruiser came out to play, and the sheer scale of the First Order was writ large, continuing the “well….guess I’ll just be looking the other way”.

Until the circle is complete over Kijimi, with Palps waggling his arthritic grasp once more. Except this time, there’s some chance of keeping his withered fingers bottled up, hence Lando rallies…well….everyone to come and give it all a good shoeing there and then, once and for all.

Leia funded the Resistance through private wealthy donors. Between being an Imperial Senator, Princess of a well respected and martyred planet and General of the Rebellion she has a lot of friends in high places that owe her favors or just trust her when she says the threat is real.

This is actually the main arc of the sequel trilogy; but each part kind of fails it in some way, though TLJ probably hits it best:

Episode 7 gives us our conflict. The Imperial inspired First Order is building power in the Outer Rim but isn't considered a viable threat by the New Republic. A private Resistance is looking to stop them, but fails to do so before they use their super weapon to decapitate the New Republic leadership. Unfortunately, a lot of this is left to supplemental material and not really explain in the film at all.

Episode 8 sees the First Order attack what little Resistance remains in their way. While our heroes attempt their own plans, Leia seeks to unite her benefactors who ultimately betray her; proving that they only cared to back the winning horse and will happily surrender their people to tyranny to maintain their privileged status. This is done fairly well, but has to try to explain it all due to the lack of world building in the prior film and is already long in the tooth trying to subvert all the subplots along the way.

Episode 9 is... in theory, about the galaxy recognizing that it cannot rely on those in power and uniting to stand against their oppressors. It eventually pays a bit of lip service to this, which is more the soul of the rejected scripts and instead... IDK.... this one is kind of a mess.

Yeah the 3 films together clearly have SOME elements of sanity to the story writing; but so much is left off-screen that what we get on screen is disjointed. Heck even Luke failing for many decades and going into hiding makes sense, but again that whole story arc is handled offscreen so we only get the aftermath.


7 was several decades in story telling too late. It should have been much sooner after the fall of the Empire and the rise of the new Republic. Then we'd have learned just who Snoke is, why he's important and given him more than 5 mins screen time to die in; we'd have been on Luke's journey with him to try and recreate the Jedi and seen the faltering issues in that; we'd have seen Han and Leia lose their son to the Dark Side; seen them lose the Falcon.

We'd also yeah had an idea of why the Republic isn't mounting itts own fleet and why the First Order was battling "Rebels". Films 7 and 8 setting all that up could have made for an epic 9 against a planetsized superweapon and then on the strength of that we could have seen 3 films cover the rest of the story they outlined.

Did any outside material ever explain who Snoke was? I don’t think he’s shown up in the comics at all yet.

TLJ kind of sets him up as a sort of puppet for the Emperor reborn. A way to keep things going to plan without revealing himself or something.
You know, rubbish stuff.

If anything, Leia setting up the Resistance was a perverse admission that Palpatine had at least half a point. That the Republic had become irrevocably corrupt, with Senators solely interested in lining their own pockets, and those of their Donors.

Indeed, Leia was acting as Anakin might. Doing The Right Thing, Not Necessarily The Legal Thing. Bending the rules as far as they’d go, but not quite breaking them.

And yes Dakka, I’m aware you may be reading this and thinking this is Sequels apologism/revisionism. And….fair enough. Every has their opinion.

All I ask is you engage in good faith

The Senate became corrupt because of the Sith though so she was only right because Sidious and Plaguis made the Senate that way.

From the films I at least get the feeling that the Republic had issues before the Sith arrived, they just capitalised and amplified those issues.

The Trade Federation and other powerful bodies were already throwing their weight around. Sideus just encouraged them to be even more overt and even more antagonistic.


Another thing to consider is that the Republic had strict laws and rules, but was basically leaving many fringe worlds and systems to their own devices. It had grown large enough that it wasn't really concerned with the plight of those outside of itself. Tatooine is a prime example since its a world where slavery and other crime was rampant just outside of the Republic's control. The Empire clearly expanded its boarders and took in more and more worlds under its influence.

That’s not my reading of it at all.

Did Palps and his Space Dad nudge things along a bit? Yes.

But they only exploited the corruption, and found ways to speed it along. They didn’t themselves instigate it. It was a weakness they found and exploited.

The difference between the Senate after the defeat of the Sith Empire and the rise of Sidious is pretty stark though.
Yes, corruption and bribery would have had a place but the political ascendancy of the Jedi kept things smooth.
An era of peace and the relegation of the Jedi to peacekeepers rather than sort of questing warrior monks meant that the Sith were able to influence events more easily and could insert themselves into positions of secret power.
By the time Sidious killed his master, he was already a popular young senator as Palpatine and had connections to various groups as the mysterious Sidious.
Plagueis and Sidious were able to successfully mess up the final years of the Republic because of the groundwork laid by their forebears.
Through his position and the ability to secretly manipulate a now massively corrupt Senate, Sidious gets a weak Chancellor elected and causes scandals to further weaken his already precarious position.
By the time the Trade Federation blockades Naboo, Sidious already has many Senators in his pocket and has stoked fear and division for years, which in turn allows him to form the Separatist Alliance.

 Overread wrote:
The Empire clearly expanded its boarders and took in more and more worlds under its influence.

Did it though? Vader was certainly able to pull a "might makes right", show up with a squadron of star destroyers, and land troops to retrieve his missing property but that seems like the same kind of control in name only that the Republic had. We see in ROTJ that Tatooine is openly controlled by the space mafia and the government doesn't seem to exist once Vader's squadron leaves orbit.

I think the picture the shows are starting to fill in is that not a whole lot changed for most of the galaxy when its rulers changed. The Empire was a bit more blatant about its tyranny but the people at the top collectively shrugged and switched loyalties to whoever was winning while the people at the bottom were either anonymous cogs in the machine or forgotten entirely. It's a rather pessimistic take on the whole thing but I guess it at least does a decent job of bridging the gap between the end of ROTJ and the incoherent mess of the sequels.

Indeed the Empire didn't so much expand its borders but control the ones it had.
Thrawn had a good (if brutal) idea in actually developing the Outer Rim worlds into useful planets. Lothal was the test bed for taking what was a largely agrarian planet and turning it into an industrial powerhouse to build resources for the Empire.
Sinar Fleet Systems did have a presence in the capital but Thrawn sold mining rights to the Mining Guild and heavily increased the industrialisation of Lothal to suit his plans.

 AduroT wrote:
Did any outside material ever explain who Snoke was? I don’t think he’s shown up in the comics at all yet.

They haven't completely filled in the "somehow" of Palpatine's return, but its effectively a long line of failed cloning experiments. Rey is the daughter of one of the failed clones and Snoke is effectively a kind of puppet body or something along those lines.

Personally I was pretty happy with Snoke's uncerimonious bisection, but mostly because I was hyped to see Kylo end up as the main villain.

Not clones. Strand casts. Might be strandcaste, I’ve not seen it written down.

But where the Clones were, well….Clones? Strandcast (or however it’s spelled) as unique lifeforms assembled via cloning tech. Basically taking a Mummy cell and a Daddy cell that love each other very much, then introducing some heavy slap bass and a bunch of genetic material from *whatevs* and thus creating a unique, if strictly speaking unnatural, life form, no more a clone of its donors than we are clones of our parents.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Not clones. Strand casts. Might be strandcaste, I’ve not seen it written down.

Strand-Cast or Strandcast according to Wookiepedia. The same article also has background on the creation of Snoke.

ok, so episode 5:

Solid, but not great episode, with no shocking plot twists. In some senses, it doesn't move the plot along, it mostly just focuses on "doing what needs to be done" to get the characters where they "need" to be for events in the next episode.

but thats a comment, not a criticism. They spent that time doing other stuff thats intresting but not really advancing the greater plot, IMO

That was brilliant.

Some nice high concept stuff, solid plot. And?

We briefly get to see Ashoka’s “hairline” and ears! No sooner was I thinking to myself about how we got to see all the different versions of headgear she’s worn to hide her “hairline” over the years then we suddenly see her without one for I think the first time ever? But then she’s immediately wearing another.

Huh! I noticed that, without noticing I noticed it!

 insaniak wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Those didn’t enter the SWEU until much later, after several “episodes” with interesting plots. Heir to the Empire, X-Wing, the Han Solo and Lando Calrission series, etc.. Yeah, Kevin J Anderson brought in the Suncrusher and Kyp Durron early on, but in science fiction Kevin’s a bit of a JJ Abrams himself..

For all that it was a good read, the Han Solo trilogy introduced an ancient space station massively bigger than the Death Star in the home system of the guy who thought the Death Star was too big to be a space station...

.... How did I never realize that before...?


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 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Whoever designed the K-Wing and thought “yeah, that’s a Star Wars ship for sure” needs to put in a hole until they’ve reflected on their actions.

Because much as I’d have preferred the sequels to have more interesting ships, I’d prefer Newer Models of Classics than that abomination.

You hush your mouth. The K-Wing is a thing of beauty.

If the K-Wing was a car, it’d be a Homer.

Probably a little disappointed just because they aired it in theaters for some reason and it was alright; just not quite what I was anticipating.

This was definitely my least favorite episode so far, but it definitely wasn't outright terrible.

 BertBert wrote:

I've grown to like Jacen quite a bit. It's till a bit contrived for Hera to bring her small child into a potential war zone, but the little fella has some charm.[\spoiler]

I think the kid's a terrible actor even as far as kid actors go, but I wanted to quote this because I made this exact observation too. Why the hell is he there? It's not like Hera didn't know she was jumping into a dangerous situation. Having been denied the support she wanted made it even more perilous, not less. I suspect this was overlooked because the writers thought it too important for him to 'hear' Ahsoka and Anakin fighting in the water and thought to hell with how nonsensical it is.

Oh, I Do remember hearing about that episode being in theaters.

Yeah, that was a good episode.

 creeping-deth87 wrote:
This was definitely my least favorite episode so far, but it definitely wasn't outright terrible.

Spoiler:

I enjoyed seeing the flashbacks with Anakin, even though Hayden is as terrible an actor as ever. I expect little of that was new to people who'd watched CW, but for me it provided some nice context for their relationship. This felt very much like a filler episode, which really makes me scratch my head given how short these Disney + shows are. Surely there's a better way to make use of their limited run time. I was really worried toward the end that Ahsoka was going to just hang onto the space whales when they jumped and was pleasantly surprised at the novel solution of moving the ship into the mouth of one instead.

I'm a little miffed we didn't get to see Sabine's side of the story this episode, as I'm more curious about seeing this other galaxy than anything Ahsoka was up to. Hopefully next week we get to catch up with her.

 Geifer wrote:
It's something far easier to appreciate if you've seen the cartoon shows, though.

TBH this is my biggest problem with the show, the thing keeping it merely good and not great: the need to have watched multiple other shows to really understand what's going on and why things matter. It does a better job of giving at least a decent idea of the essential stuff than the sequel mess but it still struggles a bit to stand on its own merits.

 ThePaintingOwl wrote:


TBH this is my biggest problem with the show, the thing keeping it merely good and not great: the need to have watched multiple other shows to really understand what's going on and why things matter. It does a better job of giving at least a decent idea of the essential stuff than the sequel mess but it still struggles a bit to stand on its own merits.

So, i haven't watched most of the clone wars, and none of Rebels, but i'm able to follow the story of ahoska well enough. I think the relevant story beats, and the relationships of the characters are established well enough in this series it's not a major problem. It helps that all the existing bad guys are basically new ones with no connection back to the older series, with the exception of Thrawn, who so far is just a Macguffin for the plot.

Off the top of my head, the only parts that really needed "out of series" explanations were the Pergil space whales, as their ability to make natural hyper jumps, and their role in the fate of Ezra and Thrawn, isn't really talked about clearly enough in this series. Fans of the clone wars and rebels will obviously spot some details that aren't obvious otherwise, or maybe spot them, sooner but really its just easter eggs or geek bonus stuff.

xerxeskingofking wrote:
So, i haven't watched most of the clone wars, and none of Rebels, but i'm able to follow the story of ahoska well enough. I think the relevant story beats, and the relationships of the characters are established well enough in this series it's not a major problem.

That's what I meant. It's better than the sequel movies since you can follow the necessary story elements without watching the other shows but "well enough" still isn't the same as standing fully on its own. The whole thing with Anakin is a good example. It's clear enough what the intent was but it feels like something that is supposed to have far more emotional weight than it has for me. I understand it but I don't fully appreciate it because a prequel cartoon isn't really appealing to me.

Why has Rosario Dawson decided that "Lean back with my arms folded and speak really slowly" is the angle she's going with for Ahsoka? The AI-written dialogue only makes it worse.

Anyway, kid Ahsoka was great and we got to see live action Rex for the first time ever. That bit of the Siege of Mandalore had Ahsoka kill more people than she did in the last two seasons of Clone Wars combined.

 ThePaintingOwl wrote:

xerxeskingofking wrote:
So, i haven't watched most of the clone wars, and none of Rebels, but i'm able to follow the story of ahoska well enough. I think the relevant story beats, and the relationships of the characters are established well enough in this series it's not a major problem.

That's what I meant. It's better than the sequel movies since you can follow the necessary story elements without watching the other shows but "well enough" still isn't the same as standing fully on its own. The whole thing with Anakin is a good example. It's clear enough what the intent was but it feels like something that is supposed to have far more emotional weight than it has for me. I understand it but I don't fully appreciate it because a prequel cartoon isn't really appealing to me.

I don't think that can be helped. Ahsoka is at this point a character with a long history. I'm not sure how you would even accomplish making a standalone adventure of such a character. Or why you would want to if the alternative is to keep developing Ahsoka within the existing context (which, as noted, needs some background for the viewer to fully appreciate it).

I do see the problem for people who haven't watched the animated shows for one reason or another, but I'd argue that there is a need to choose your audience with an established character. If you make a standalone show that is at it's most basic a story about blank of a character with a familiar togruta skin, with no connection to anything else but the visual and narrative conventions of the setting, that's how you get The Force Awakens. Flashy stuff happening with all the right looks and music, but not much in the way of substance. Or you aim to please fans of the character, in which case you don't get around referencing her past and providing more context and some development.

The goal has to be to reconcile those things, of course. Give fans what they want but to try write the story in such a way that first time viewers can follow it reasonably well. I don't think you can cater equally to both groups, and I for one think that they did pick the right part of the audience to focus on. That being said, since I have watched all the other shows, I couldn't possibly say how easy Ahsoka is to follow without that knowledge. So I try not to comment on that.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Why has Rosario Dawson decided that "Lean back with my arms folded and speak really slowly" is the angle she's going with for Ahsoka?

How else would the younglings know that you're older and wiser than them?

Was gonna say, pretty sure fold her arms and lean back has been Ashoka’s thing since day one.

Also worth keeping in mind Ahsoka’s pretty unique experience within the Jedi Order.

She was Anakin’s sole Padawan. She herself felt the sharp end of the Order’s corruption when she was tried (and I think convicted?) of a crime she didn’t commit, leading her to walk away from the Order. That the person who framed her had a solid point? Here’s the relevant quote.

Barriss Offee wrote: I did it. Because I've come to realize what many people in the Republic have come to realize. That the Jedi are the ones responsible for this war. That we've so lost our way that we have become villains in this conflict. That we are the ones that should be put on trial. All of us! And my attack on the Temple was an attack on what the Jedi have become. An army fighting for the dark side. Fallen from the light that we once held so dear. This Republic is failing! It's only a matter of time.

Clearly, Ahsoka is concerned that if she hadn’t walked away, perhaps Anakin wouldn’t have become Vader, and Palpatine could’ve been stopped at the 11th Hour.

Sure the mess was such that wouldnt just put everything back as it was, but it would’ve prevented untold suffering across the Galaxy at the hands of the Empire.

She also spent time with Asajj Ventress. Former Jedi, former Sith Assassin turned bounty hunter. Someone chewed up and spat out by both sides of the same coin, determined to find her own way (who was later killed off for mangst, mangst of a singularly uninteresting character at that).

That’s what her time in the World between Worlds was about. Was it hallucination in an oxygen starved brain? Who knows!

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
That’s what her time in the World between Worlds was about. Was it hallucination in an oxygen starved brain? Who knows!

I'd go with genuine Force vision. Yoda did something similar in Clone Wars season 6.

 Geifer wrote:
I don't think that can be helped. Ahsoka is at this point a character with a long history. I'm not sure how you would even accomplish making a standalone adventure of such a character. Or why you would want to if the alternative is to keep developing Ahsoka within the existing context (which, as noted, needs some background for the viewer to fully appreciate it).

While Ahsoka is obviously more obscure, no one was really upset about the parts of Kenobi that relied on you knowing why a senator would call an old man on a desert planet light years away or why the guy with the full body inhaler was so mad at him.

I do wish Chopper got more screen time.

Pound for pound, he’s by far the ‘ardest droid we’ve ever seen. Proper little pitbull of a tosspot.

 LunarSol wrote:

 Geifer wrote:
I don't think that can be helped. Ahsoka is at this point a character with a long history. I'm not sure how you would even accomplish making a standalone adventure of such a character. Or why you would want to if the alternative is to keep developing Ahsoka within the existing context (which, as noted, needs some background for the viewer to fully appreciate it).

While Ahsoka is obviously more obscure, no one was really upset about the parts of Kenobi that relied on you knowing why a senator would call an old man on a desert planet light years away or why the guy with the full body inhaler was so mad at him.

Is it because those background bits came from blockbuster movies that were a cultural phenomenon and not from obscure, nearly-unwatchable cartoons that only recently became broadly available?

I would argue that every single Star Wars show has the exact same "issues" with "obscurity".
Who are the Mandolorians? Why do they matter? Why does everyone regard them with the fear and awe that they do?
These are things viewers would only know if they have watched Clone Wars and Rebels or read EU stuff. At best, they can go "Oh hey that guy looks like Boba/Jango Fett".
The same goes for Andor. If you've only seen the main line of films, why does this guy matter?

Personally, I don't see the problem with shows either not explaining every single thing possible or having stuff connected to other shows/films.
They have to come from somewhere and building on a previous story is an excellent way to do that.
Both the Prequels and Sequels had characters from the Original Trilogy. If your first Star Wars film was Force Awakens, you're going to have no clue who this Han Solo guy is or why his death is such a big deal.
But what do you do if you want to learn more? Watch the other films. The exact same thing applies to shows like Ahsoka.

If you don't want to watch these shows, that's your choice as a viewer but a show shouldn't cater to you specifically because you don't want to do a thing.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I do wish Chopper got more screen time.

Pound for pound, he’s by far the ‘ardest droid we’ve ever seen. Proper little pitbull of a tosspot.

I think that's my one big disappointment with this series so far... Chopper is criminally underutilised, largely just relegated to sitting in the background.

Huyang has been fun, though.

Hyuang, despite being a dedicated Jedi training droid?

As a lump of soggy wet tissue compared to Chop.

Chop is *hatstand* mental. Not even “do or die” crazy, just “do, and if all else fails cause a glorious mess” bonkers.

CHOPPER FOR POPE! CHOPPER FOR POPE!

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I do wish Chopper got more screen time.

Pound for pound, he’s by far the ‘ardest droid we’ve ever seen. Proper little pitbull of a tosspot.

That reminds me of Dave Filoni's comparison of R2 and Chopper that always makes me laugh:

"The easiest way to sum up Chopper that we took to on the writing team is that if R2's your favorite dog, Chopper's a cat."

I’d say more if R2 was a lovely Labrador, Chop is a Terrier.

But, Dave is the creator!

Nah, cats fit Chopper better because cats are psychopaths.

Chopper is R2 as seen by an edgelord teen.

Not just sassy and rude, but angry and constantly demanding people 'fight them'

Pffffrtttttt…

Chopper am grate!

No.

Chopper is bad, it's just that star wars has been run harder into the ground as a whole that chopper looks like an okay charachter in comparison to the rest of disney Star wars....

Get. Rekt.

Chopper is amazing and well hard.

While I agree Star Wars has been run into the ground, Chopper is the best. We need more of that sort of thing.

"Observation: I am a droid, master, with programming. Even if I did not enjoy killing, I would have no choice. Thankfully, I enjoy it very much."
-The best droid ever

Chopper is to Star Wars as Ace is to Dr. Who!

Darn tooting!

 Easy E wrote:
Chopper is to Star Wars as Ace is to Dr. Who!

Disposable character to be trotted out for a future cheesy reunion episode?

How very dare you!

 Easy E wrote:
Chopper is to Star Wars as Ace is to Dr. Who!

So you don’t like Chopper?

Voss wrote:

 Easy E wrote:
Chopper is to Star Wars as Ace is to Dr. Who!

Disposable character to be trotted out for a future cheesy reunion episode?

Your canister of Nitro-9 is in the post.

Please ignore the ticking, it’s of no consequence.

Ahsoka Part 6

my take: very good episode

Feels a bit like Star Wars is going a bit of esoteric and 40k-like with

Feels like they basically stole the look from Ben 10's Enoch (also the same name) and threw it onto a random stormtrooper lieutenant.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

Spoiler:

And I’m wondering what exactly that cargo is. Night sisters, i reckons.

That episode was so, so, so good.

Welcome to Planet Volume where everything is obviously the volume to the point of absurdity.

Hopefully the second half of this episode next week will be better.

First impression: Sabine is really, really stupid. My wife was even snarking at the screen.




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chaos0xomega wrote:
Feels a bit like Star Wars is going a bit of esoteric and 40k-like with

Spoiler:

Enoch's sweet sweet masked stormtrooper helmet. Also the whole name "Enoch" is downright biblical

m

My thought, too. It’s a weird design choice and naming convention for Star Wars. But for 40k….

To be fair if his name was more star wars inspired it'd be something like "Captain Flunkus Jetstream"

I'll take Enoch

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Sabine is really, really stupid.

Yep.

"Why did you bring her?"
"The script said so."
"That's not a good enough reason."
"Grand Admiral..."
"What is it Elspeth?"
"There has been too much dialogue in this scene. And no one has folded their arms and leant back yet."
"I am unsure what you are talking about."
"Can you just be stoic? Like everyone else."
"I'm being wistful."
"Be quiet Balon, I'm talking to the Grand Admiral."
"Can I have a line?"
"You just did, Shin."
"I've been stranded on this world for nearly 10 years and I only just realised the lead Mother is Claudia Black..."
"Please, Grand Admiral, focus!"
"Very well."
*Thrawn folds his arms and leans back*
"Is that better, Elspeth?"
"Much better, Grand Admiral. Now we should cut to a bland rocky wasteland that's clearly just an Unreal Engine extension by way of giant LCD screens for a no-tension fight scene with a bunch of random mooks."
"Isn't this show called 'Ahsoka'?"
"Shin! You already had your line this scene!"

There is far more bad Star Wars now than good Star Wars.

I just guessed Sabine made a stupid decision, which people do from time to time. That's finr as long as they don't try to Michael Burnham it and tell us that the stupid, irrational decision was the right one and they were morally good for doing it.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
Feels a bit like Star Wars is going a bit of esoteric and 40k-like with

Spoiler:

Enoch's sweet sweet masked stormtrooper helmet. Also the whole name "Enoch" is downright biblical

m

My thought, too. It’s a weird design choice and naming convention for Star Wars. But for 40k….

It's a theme in keeping with the naming they decided on for the Specters when they made Rebels. It's ancient Mediterranean flavored. Hera, Kanan, Sabine, Orrelius, Ezra, Chopper. Doesn't surprise me that now it's established, they'd add more like it here and there.

 Ahtman wrote:
I just guessed Sabine made a stupid decision, which people do from time to time. That's finr as long as they don't try to Michael Burnham it and tell us that the stupid, irrational decision was the right one and they were morally good for doing it.

Sabine isn't justifying her decisions like that in Ahsoka, but that is pretty much how she's always been.

Throughout Rebels she was never really in a position of responsibility. The one exception was leading her clan during the uprising on Mandalore. Of course that position was earned by martial prowess (as is the Mandalorian way and the one thing Sabine is unequivocally good at) rather than a sudden ability to make good decisions, become a good leader and accept the responsibility that goes with it. She never wanted that for herself and was quick to to put it in the hands of Bo-Katan when the opportunity arose. At any other time Sabine was just a rebel soldier relying on her friends to keep her out of trouble while she did things her way. She did recognize that she isn't great at making decisions occasionally, and lamented the consequences, but time and again she couldn't help herself.

Ten years later she has lost everything. Ezra is still gone, her friends are dispersed, the rebellion ended successfully but left her without a cause, and her clan and home got nuked. Sabine has no more reason to live except for the quest for Ezra. As bad as her decisions are, I wouldn't call them stupid but rooted in single-minded and self-destructive emotional need.

So for myself I can say I am quite happy to see Sabine taken in this direction. It feels like a natural progression of her character to me.

Jeebs.

Rey can do many things = ReY aM a MaRy SuE

Sabine is…pretty human. Fallible. Imperfect. Flawed. SaBiNe ArE pOoRlY wRiTtEn.

Go and watch Rebels. Seriously. Do us all a favour and go watch it. Observe Sabine’s journey.

She and Ezra messed things up fairly regularly, leaving them to think on their feet, and sometimes have someone else pull their feet from the fire.

She succeeded as a Rebel. She failed as a Mandalorian, twice. She failed as a Jedi. She’s listless, rudderless. A warrior born with….no war to fight, pining for her best friend, and the times she had with him.

Agreed, did Sabine make a stupid mistake? Yes.
But frankly in her position I'm not sure what I'd do, chances are good it'd be the same thing

I never wondered what the belligerent version of my post might look like, but found out the answer anyway.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
SaBiNe ArE pOoRlY wRiTtEn.

Everyone is poorly written.

Except Balon.

They’re really not dude.

If you’re not feeling it, you’re not feeling it. But the show isn’t poorly written

It does seem to be one of the better ones, and I'm certainly enjoying it. You don't need to see Rebels (thankfully) to get a hook on the characters.

There have been plenty of other stories where a hero has been willing to risk the world/galaxy/'all that is good and bright' for chance to get a loved one back so Sabine isn't especially rare.*

Looking forward to the latest episode tonight!


* She's still a bloody moron though.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
But the show isn’t poorly written

The dialogue is awful. The direction is slow and plodding. The story takes too long to get anywhere or do anything. The entire Anakin episode made zero sense.

It is very poorly written.

This episode was another that was just fine for me. Not exactly blowing my socks off, and I find the pacing has taken a turn for the worse over the last couple of episodes. I get that they're wanting to do some character-focused episodes, but I find with the typical season length Disney is working with that often leads to frustrations over taking time out from the main story arc. I'm not sure the writing for the characters quite merits an entire world-between-worlds character study as we got last week, for example.

I think the fact that the very first episode has the idiot ball being passed onto the New Republic officers guarding a VIP prisoner via Morgan by letting Balon and Shin board their ship when they're already suspicious about them does not scream "good writing" to me. That's like letting a masked guy into your house during a horror movie when you know there's a serial killer about because you have a feeling it might be them, and then do a surprised pikachu face when he starts stabbing people.

I did find it funny that they've introduced the term Bokken as a way to try and keep Yoda "technically correct".

 Grimskul wrote:
I think the fact that the very first episode has the idiot ball being passed onto the New Republic officers guarding a VIP prisoner via Morgan by letting Balon and Shin board their ship when they're already suspicious about them does not scream "good writing" to me. That's like letting a masked guy into your house during a horror movie when you know there's a serial killer about because you have a feeling it might be them, and then do a surprised pikachu face when he starts stabbing people.

There are two confirmed Jedi left abroad in the Galaxy. Luke, and Ahsoka.

As far as the Captain was concerned? He and his security detail were off to go and nab some former Imperials. Nobody expects the not-quite-Jedi-but-also-not-exactly-Sith-Inquisition.

@MDG. I’m not calling her stupid for her poor choice or a single heartfelt mistake. I’m calling her stupid because she shooed away her mount in the desert. She scoffed that the local dog might better know than she did what was just a rock and what was hiding a creature. She interrupted Ezra and refused to discuss critical, need-to-know information in favor of just living the moment…stranded on a hostile planet while everything her fixation risked his life to achieve was undone. That’s not one bad decision or the heart overriding the brain—that’s simple, everyday stupidity. And if you want, I can find examples in every previous episode.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
SaBiNe ArE pOoRlY wRiTtEn.

Everyone is poorly written.

Except Balon.

This reminds me of the discussion before the strike on why streaming “mini rooms” produced crap series. First, they had fewer than half the writers. Second, the writers had a much smaller window of time. Third, all the writing was done before the series started, so bad takes or dodgy casting became much more impactful. The writers never meet the actors, visit the set, or get to fine tune the scripts depending on what works and what falls flat.

Watching Stargate SG1 behind the scenes, the actors and directors were always talking to the writers. “I don’t think this works.” “My character wouldn’t say/do this.” This actor has more comedic chops, so we started giving him more to work with. That actor’s delivery lead us to this change in dialogue.

Remember in B5 where fan feedback let Boxleitner know that Sheridan smiled too much and it was annoying? Dawson won’t hear about her character leaning back with arms crossed until it’s too late to course correct.

I know Star Wars names are never what you expect, but maybe we should stop butchering Baylan's name (I had to look it up, too) or go all in and add that second o to Balon already. Just saying.

 Grimskul wrote:
I think the fact that the very first episode has the idiot ball being passed onto the New Republic officers guarding a VIP prisoner via Morgan by letting Balon and Shin board their ship when they're already suspicious about them does not scream "good writing" to me. That's like letting a masked guy into your house during a horror movie when you know there's a serial killer about because you have a feeling it might be them, and then do a surprised pikachu face when he starts stabbing people.

Not sure that qualifies as idiot ball. I seem to remember that they transmitted valid Jedi identification codes and it was just the captain not believing that he was dealing with real Jedi. Which would put him in a bind. If they're Jedi and he turns them away, he risks a diplomatic incident. If they're not, he lets potential criminals get away that try to con people by posing as Jedi, when his duty is to uphold the law.

We as the audience know for a fact that something dodgy is going on, because we know the setting and we saw the trailer. The captain wouldn't suspect that you can't walk two steps without falling over a Force user, and more likely than not a darksider at that. He doesn't have all that many options in that situation.

 LunarSol wrote:
I did find it funny that they've introduced the term Bokken as a way to try and keep Yoda "technically correct".

Obi-Wan was turned into a filthy liar with ulterior motives person with a different perspective in the original trilogy, and the more stories he got since, the more senility got added to his rap sheet. I get the sense that they are making every effort to preserve the dignity of the other wise Jedi master from the original trilogy, lest they run out. They only have the two.

 LunarSol wrote:
I did find it funny that they've introduced the term Bokken as a way to try and keep Yoda "technically correct".

im sorry, what? im not sure what your reffering to here

 Geifer wrote:


Not sure that qualifies as idiot ball. I seem to remember that they transmitted valid Jedi identification codes and it was just the captain not believing that he was dealing with real Jedi. Which would put him in a bind. If they're Jedi and he turns them away, he risks a diplomatic incident. If they're not, he lets potential criminals get away that try to con people by posing as Jedi, when his duty is to uphold the law.
.

Given the time frame, there are no 'jedi' for him to turn away.
There's Luke, who's self taught (and they obviously aren't him) and Ashoka refuses to call herself one (or used to, given how she left the order after being set up as a scapegoat).

He doesn't believe them because there's no such animal. Why he decided to let them land and personally meet with them anyway is complete nonsense- the only explanation is idiot ball.

xerxeskingofking wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
I did find it funny that they've introduced the term Bokken as a way to try and keep Yoda "technically correct".

im sorry, what? im not sure what your reffering to here

Baylan calls Ezra a Bokken Jedi. Literally it means "wooden sword". Something that resembles the real thing but no where near as effective.


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 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
I’m calling her stupid because she shooed away her mount in the desert.

This is clearly meant to endear the audience with the creature, but if you're going to send it off you should probably at least take your stuff out of the saddle bags