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Regarding the TIE. This is a change to how they operate. Prior to this, all TIE/ln fighters either docked to hanging scaffolds or they landed on their wings and had ladders wheeled up to them. That said, they could say this is simply an improved version of the TIE/ln(TIE/ln mk2?) which incorporates a landing mechanism that requires less specialized facilities. The old way the TIEs landed basically made using them at any facility not designed with them in mind impossible. The Empire/remnant might have realized that was a bad idea and fixed them. A good idea for a group which lacks their old support infrastructure.

Thanks to the miracles of giant TVs, I no longer have to watch Disney+ on my computer.

Beyold, Baby Yoda in near life size:

Should have sprung for the Sony XBR100Z9D. Then the whole show could be life size.

I got a stupid question.

Do you think baby Yoda will become a Mandalorian foundling? While Mandalorians are technically humans, I don't think they are opposed to adopting non-human. Plus, I find the idea of a minuscule Mandalorian armor hilarious.

Jedilorian.

epronovost wrote:
I got a stupid question.

Do you think baby Yoda will become a Mandalorian foundling? While Mandalorians are technically humans, I don't think they are opposed to adopting non-human. Plus, I find the idea of a minuscule Mandalorian armor hilarious.

Depending on the source material, they've got zero problem adopting non-humans. If they're worthy. And maybe have proven themselves first. And if they're not stinking Jedi.
But what version of 'Mandalorians' the Mandalorian the Show is using still seems not 100% clear.

 d-usa wrote:
Jedilorian.

Technically there were at least one in their history. He built the darsaber and his statue is standing in their capital as seen in the Clone Wars series.

Voss wrote:

epronovost wrote:
I got a stupid question.

Do you think baby Yoda will become a Mandalorian foundling? While Mandalorians are technically humans, I don't think they are opposed to adopting non-human. Plus, I find the idea of a minuscule Mandalorian armor hilarious.

Depending on the source material, they've got zero problem adopting non-humans. If they're worthy. And maybe have proven themselves first. And if they're not stinking Jedi.
But what version of 'Mandalorians' the Mandalorian the Show is using still seems not 100% clear.

the "Mando's hate jedi" is mostly a result of Karen Travis being unable to let her own bias's go. In canon well.. given the weapon of the first Mandalorian Jedi became a symbol of leadership for the Mandalorian people.......

Yeah. Outside of Karen Travis the Mandalorians of the Clone Wars and Rebels seemed less "we hate Jedi" and more "we are a proud people and we don't like any of you" XD

Equal opportunity disdain, really.

I was thinking of the various Knights of the Old Republic games, actually. Even within them it was inconsistent, let alone with the CW series and whoever Karen Travis is.

Voss wrote:
I was thinking of the various Knights of the Old Republic games, actually. Even within them it was inconsistent, let alone with the CW series and whoever Karen Travis is.

Travis was an EU writer with a real thing for Mandos. She built up her own canon around the Mandos' warrior culture, turned Boba Fett into a tragic anti-hero who took over as Mandalore and then contracted a virus that meant he could never set foot on their home planet, and then tossed her toys out of the pram in a very public fashion and quit writing Star Wars when Lucas went in a very different direction with the Mandalorians in the Clone Wars cartoon.

Then she decided to go and gak all over Halo lore by turning the Spartans into “not Mandalorians.”

 LordofHats wrote:
Then she decided to go and gak all over Halo lore by turning the Spartans into “not Mandalorians.”

pretty much, to the point where it was clear that the lady had issues with the "geneticly engineered super solder" trope. which is fine but you'd think she'd wanna avoid writing in said settings then.

If she wrote a 40k novel it'd be a tragic story of a space marine who "cruely had his humanity stolen from him, and the the woman whom he loves"

Voss wrote:

epronovost wrote:
I got a stupid question.

Do you think baby Yoda will become a Mandalorian foundling? While Mandalorians are technically humans, I don't think they are opposed to adopting non-human. Plus, I find the idea of a minuscule Mandalorian armor hilarious.

Depending on the source material, they've got zero problem adopting non-humans. If they're worthy. And maybe have proven themselves first. And if they're not stinking Jedi.
But what version of 'Mandalorians' the Mandalorian the Show is using still seems not 100% clear.

Amusingly enough, there are explicit examples of Jedi becoming Mandalorians (even Neo-Crusaders). But you're spot on about them being historically a cultural construct more than anything else, which has been *very* strongly hinted at so far in this series.

BrianDavion wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:
Then she decided to go and gak all over Halo lore by turning the Spartans into “not Mandalorians.”

pretty much, to the point where it was clear that the lady had issues with the "geneticly engineered super solder" trope. which is fine but you'd think she'd wanna avoid writing in said settings then.

If she wrote a 40k novel it'd be a tragic story of a space marine who "cruely had his humanity stolen from him, and the the woman whom he loves"

I wouldn't say she has an issue with engineered super soldiers per se.

Rather she seems to have a massive hate boner for *in order* Scientists, Politicians, Women who aren't badass super soldiers of some kind/don't worship badass super soldiers as gods, and everyone else.

If anything Karen Travis has a disturbing bordering on fetish like obsession with militarism. When she depicts the clone troopers and Spartans as tragic victims, it's because they're being "abused" by one of the above groups who are nearly always portrayed as borderline sociopaths in her work. It's really obvious in her Clone Commando series, where all the people around the clones are explicitly evil, irredeemable, and get what they deserve because they're using the clones as slaves. Meanwhile the Mandalorian characters (who are completely complicity in this act) are idealized because "they're awesome warrior race guys who have a code and standards and morals and stuff."

Just look at what she did to the character of Cathrine Halsey in Glasslands. Prior to Travis showing up, Halsey was a mad scientist whose only redeeming feature was that she really did care about the well being of the Spartan IIs she kidnapped, tortured, and created into inhuman super soldiers. She wasn't treated as a redeemable character, but she was a character with depth who regretted what she did and found her only solace for the act in the way the Spartans were giving humanity a chance to survive. She was notable for never referring to the Spartans as "Recruits, trainees, or candidates." She continually insisted that everyone recognize that they were children, because what they were doing was wrong and she knew it. The real villains, if any, were ONI and the UNSC government who were operating a shadowy military junta that was completely okay with kidnapping and inhuman experimentation and showed zero remorse for this fact.

When Travis showed up to write the lore, Halsey's character does a complete 180 into a sociopathic Dr. Mengle who feels no remorse, the ends justify the means, and who broke all the rules to torture children in her mad science to 'evolve a new humanity.' That ONI and the UNSC government are effectively a military dictatorship vanishes entirely, because Travis has a fetish obsession with militarism and doesn't see a shadow government run by an insane military with no accountability as a problem relative to that evil scientist Dr. Halsey.

She would certainly depict a Space Marine as tragic, but she'd do it by showing how evil everyone else in the Imperium is. Inhuman acts are completely evil when paper pushes, scientists, and not-soldiers are doing them, but when a soldier does them its because they're "awesome warrior race guys with morals and stuff" so she'd really just end up writing a book about renegade space marines who rant and whine about how abused they are while purging the galaxy of everyone who isn't them.

 LordofHats wrote:

Rather she seems to have a massive hate boner for *in order* Scientists, Politicians, Women who aren't badass super soldiers of some kind/don't worship badass super soldiers as gods, and everyone else.

If anything Karen Travis has a disturbing bordering on fetish like obsession with militarism.

Pretty much this. She's had stints in both the Territorial Army and the Navy Auxiliary in the UK, and apparently pretty much only dates soldiers in her personal life. Also her twitter feed is...well, as the kids say these days, Yikes. She's one racial epithet away from joining the BNP.

Honestly it was surprising when I actually looked her up, I genuinely didn't believe the person who told me the above initially, I've never seen an author so transparently insert their IRL beliefs into a fiction before without that being the whole point of said fiction.

 Yodhrin wrote:
Honestly it was surprising when I actually looked her up, I genuinely didn't believe the person who told me the above initially, I've never seen an author so transparently insert their IRL beliefs into a fiction before without that being the whole point of said fiction.

Fantasy and science-fiction have a very rich history of "insert their IRL beliefs" in their work. Just look at the fascist fantasy of Starship Trooper, the transparant biblical references of the Chronical of Narnia, the anti-authoritarian and anti-religious stance of the early day 40K (back when it was pure parody), the anti-imperalist and anti-corporation stance of Star Wars, etc. Most science fiction writers include a large portion of their own political beliefs in their work.

The issue with Travis is that she generally takes the works of others and twists them around to support her IRL beliefs. If she were to ever bother writing anything original I’d just call her a crypto-fascist, but no. She seems to have a very limited interest in producing anything herself and much prefers writing thinnly veiled and disturbing commentary on other media while giving her commentary something that might be called a plot.

Which is such a damn waste. She has rather capable prose.

epronovost wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:
Honestly it was surprising when I actually looked her up, I genuinely didn't believe the person who told me the above initially, I've never seen an author so transparently insert their IRL beliefs into a fiction before without that being the whole point of said fiction.

Fantasy and science-fiction have a very rich history of "insert their IRL beliefs" in their work. Just look at the fascist fantasy of Starship Trooper, the transparant biblical references of the Chronical of Narnia, the anti-authoritarian and anti-religious stance of the early day 40K (back when it was pure parody), the anti-imperalist and anti-corporation stance of Star Wars, etc. Most science fiction writers include a large portion of their own political beliefs in their work.

The key bit missing there is "so transparently". There's zero attempt to craft a convincing narrative that can be read as supporting a particular PoV, like LordofHats says she just comes in, starts writing for an IP, and suddenly all scientists are evil, all politicians irredeemably corrupt and venal, and all military dudes are cool and honourable and good and pure.

Most science fiction writers aren't hacks.

Like, compare anything she's written to the Culture novels. Iain Banks was definitely being political with those books, without question, but they were A; original works and so he had free reign in constructing characters and places that made the political aspects seem like an organic part of the story, and B; good. When I read a book by Traviss, by contrast, I don't see the story being told, I see her, sitting at her desk, seething about Jeremy Corbyn or a Daily Mail article about how a man was insufficiently deferential to the Queen or whatever, because the stories being told always are her, more than they're anything else.

Maybe Rise of Skywalker is trying to drop a hint...

...Baby Sidious? Complete with his own adorable little Deathstar MKII Chair and spooky window to stare out of, cursing Yoda's return to foil his plans once more!

and yeah, Travis;' jedi char in her republic commando books? you wanna talk about a Mary Sue? THAT is a Mary sue, a blatent author self-insert

Me a few minutes ago:



Totally blown away. And yes, I really did shout "WHAT THE FETH?" out loud, twice, when that happened (only not the word 'feth').

And the magic hands... it makes him wave! So cute!!!

Watching the start of the episode I swore maybe it was some kind of fake decoy episode to troll people with. That opening was stupid and hilarious and I loved it.

 AduroT wrote:

Spoiler:

What is the Dark Sabre? That’s not a thing I know.

 AduroT wrote:

Spoiler:

What is the Dark Sabre? That’s not a thing I know.

And then somehow it fell into Moff Gideon's hands. We'll have to see how that came about.

Wowzer. That was something else.



Also, an update on the TIE - it's not a retcon, regular TIE/ln still land on their panels/in cradles, this is specifically the "Outland TIE". Whether it's intended to be a custom job for the Moff or a post-Endor rework by one of the leftover Imperial factions that the nucanon supplementary material has been until now trying to insist don't exist, who knows. It's apparently based on some early Force Awakens concept art.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 AduroT wrote:

Spoiler:

What is the Dark Sabre? That’s not a thing I know.

Spoiler:

The Darksabre is a unique and ancient black-bladed lightsabre crafted by the first Mandalorian to join the Jedi Order.

It was eventually stolen back by the Mandos, and has popped up a few times in their history, often as the weapon of whomever ruled Mandalore.

In more recent Star Wars-related properties, Pre Vizsla (voiced by Jon Favreau), a descendant of the original Mandalore who was a Jedi, had the weapon and used it in an attempted coup of Mandalor during the Clone Wars. After the coup, Darth Maul killed Pre and took the sabre for himself. He used it to fight against Darth Sidious when the Sith Lord came looking for (and defeated) his old apprentice. Maul eventually escaped and reclaimed the Darksabre, using it quite a bit after that.

Somehow the blade ended back up on Dathomir, and fell into the hands of Sabine Wren, a Mandalorian who was part of a cell of the Rebellion. After various events, Sabine gave the sabre to Bo-Katan Kryze, who would then go on to lead Mandalore, like many who wielded the Darksabre before her.

And then somehow it fell into Moff Gideon's hands. We'll have to see how that came about.

basicly to give a clumsy comparison

Fantastic end to a really very good series! Just a shame that we have to wait for ages for the next season.

Wasn't too keen on the DS stuff but that was only a minor niggle, nice to see that they fleshed out the backstory more (okay, to be honest I enjoyed watching Mando's blowing stuff up...). The only thing the series really lacked for me was spaceships, a retooled G1-A, some X-Wings, a modified TIE/ln and a few other ships just were not enough.

The last episode was pretty damn good and the entire first season of the Mandalorian makes it one of the best thing produced in the Star Wars franchise.