Get ready to spend an entire hour with not Mandalorians! Which is good for the show, really, but I’ve got so many questions.
Recap
Din wakes from his time in the living waters and Bo-Katan asks him if he saw anything while he was down there, any living creature. Din doesn’t seem to remember the mythosaur, so she doesn’t bring it up. Din grabs a sample of the living waters before they go, and they take Bo-Katan’s ship back to Kalevala, but they’re beset by TIE interceptors as they arrive—Bo assumes it’s another Imperial warlord she’s angered. She air drops Din to his ship and they fight the group off, but TIE bombers destroy her home and an entire fleet of ships suddenly shows up. It can’t be the result of a warlord, but they’ve got no time to figure out what’s happening as Din gives Bo-Katan hyperspace coordinates to a place where they’ll be safe.
Meanwhile, we check in on Doctor Pershing (Omid Abtahi), who is giving a speech on Coruscant about how grateful he is to have made it into the New Republic’s Amnesty Program, and how deeply he regrets the ways that his work was twisted for the Empire’s use. The listeners all congratulate him after the speech, making quips about how they can barely keep he regimes straight, and how lucky Pershing is to have found a government that appreciates him. Pershing heads back to Amnesty housing, where he meets a group of former officers who invite him to have a drink—everyone is designated by their role and a letter-number assignation. One person in particular startles Pershing, communications officer Elia Kane (Katy O’Brian) who used to work on Moff Gideon’s ship. The group ask Pershing what innocuous thing he misses from the old days, and he admits that he misses the yellow travel biscuits. Later that night there’s a knock at his door—someone’s left him a box of the biscuits.
At his job at the Amnesty Program, Pershing does archiving for the New Republic. He’s expected to give testimony to a droid frequently over the state of his mental health, and whether or not he’s feeling anger and resentment toward coworkers or the New Republic at large. He begins to spend more time with Elia, and they both talk about how similar and yet different Coruscant seems under new management. The doctor mentions that he’s frustrated with his inability to continue his cloning research, as he believes it would be beneficial to the new government. Elia suggests that they could help him restart said research by getting him the equipment he needs, but that they’d have to go outside their designated area. When Pershing proves hesitant, she tells him to sleep on it.
Buy the Book
Dead Country
Back at his job, Pershing notices that he’s archiving material that has been set for destruction—the New Republic doesn’t want to use any equipment that once belonged to the Empire. He insists that he could salvage appropriate resources for their use, but his supervisor advises against it, stating that they’re behind in their work and that he’s not even sure someone from the Amnesty Program could submit the proper forms to make that request as it’s never been done before. Later, he asks his probation droid whether he could be allowed to continue his research, and is informed that his areas of science are prohibited by the Coruscant Accords. Pershing tells Elia that he wants to go get the equipment she mentioned. They put on civilian clothes that don’t mark them as members of the Amnesty Program and jump onto public transit without paying. Eventually droids come through to check tickets, so they hop cars and eventually jump off the train as it reaches the decommissioning yards.
The duo board a Star Destroyer easily because nothing is guarded in the yards, and they begin searching for the equipment, When they come upon a lab, Pershing tells Elia that being in an environment like this was something he always dreamed of, ever since he was a boy watching his mother work as a doctor. When he joined the Empire he thought he’d made it, having access to resources like this. Elia thinks it’s impressive that Pershing always knew what he wanted to be—she didn’t have a life like that. They hear sounds on the ship and have to make a break for it, but they’re caught anyway… and Elia turns Pershing in. The doctor is brought back to the integration center and subjected to mind flare therapies that will “ease” his upset, though he begs them not to do it and asks why Elia set him up. Elia asks to stay while Pershing receives this therapy because “he’s a friend” and when the room is empty, she cranks the mind flare machine to torturous levels.
Bo-Katan and Din arrive at the home of the Watch, and he gives his living waters sample to the Armorer to prove that he has been redeemed. She accepts this redemption and announces that it extends to Bo-Katan as well because she accompanied him into the waters and has not removed her helmet since; she is free to live among them for the time being.
Commentary
Interesting how we get a co-writer on an episode and suddenly there’s a ton of plot. And by interesting, I mean don’t really mean interesting.
But also… what the ever-loving sithspawn (to borrow a term from the Legends canon) is going on here.
I’ve had this problem before with The Mandalorian, in how it seems determined to portray the New Republic as no better than the Empire in any way, shape, or function. (And I should be clear that I’m not expecting the New Republic to be a pristine body, but there’s a chasm between noting the myriad ways governments fail their people, and suggesting that basically all forms of government are inherently evil.) This episode doubles down on that conceit by way of the Amnesty Program, and it’s frankly baffling from a logistical standpoint. The purpose of reintegrating and deprogramming scientists who worked within fascist regimes in the real world has always been with an eye toward tapping them as resources—Operation Paperclip is the oft-cited example in the U.S., and we’ve struggled culturally with the ethical implications and fallout ever since.
But here we have a program that effectively brainwashes former Imperial officers into an equally overwrought loyalty to the New Republic, erases their identities via codenames, and prevents them from being effective in their usefulness to the new government by assigning them meaningless grunt work? This is approaching Clockwork Orange levels of indoctrination, and we get no sense of the oversight being applied here, or what exactly the New Republic hopes to accomplish beyond a sense of smug moral superiority at deigning to give former Imperial troops a second chance.
Who created this program? What are its goals? Because while it makes sense to require former Imperials to do rehabilitative work if they expect to be part of the larger galactic community again, that’s not what we’re observing here. Moreover, if you knew that getting a spot in the Amnesty Program would result in complete stripping of most personal freedoms, why would anyone join up? (Do they not have a choice? Because if that’s the case, we’re down a much deeper well here, and they need to make that clear.)
Apparently members of the program don’t have their own money either? Otherwise I can’t quite understand jumping the turnstiles, unless credits are attached to your ID somehow. Maybe Elia just thought it would be fun….
Also, we’re supposed to believe that all of the resources leftover from the Empire are simply getting scrapped, rather than being reappropriated into something the New Republic can use. Which is wildly wasteful just to start, but also should be impossible from a purely functional perspective—the galaxy’s infrastructure doesn’t just bounce back from decades of constant warring, and the Rebel Alliance was particularly good at using the scraps that other people left behind when building their own fleet. If the point is that Imperial technology is too difficult to dismantle (which I could buy), at the very least we should see them stripping the ships for base materials that can be broken down and reconfigured. Conversely, if it’s a quality issue, that should get talked about too.
All of these issues detract from the mystery here, being what Elia’s purpose is in selling out Pershing and then full-on torturing (mind-wiping?) him. Presumably it has something to do with Gideon, but there’s also her own carefully omitted past to consider, so who knows where we’re headed.
Having said all that, I do appreciate the fact that one of the tensest pieces within the episode centered entirely around public transit fare evasion? That is not a joke, by the by: I wish that more action sequences in pop entertainment centered around mundane things that people do every day. Plus getting to see a Coruscant air train, more of that. More robot jugglers. And glow popsicles. (Although I’m sure those are next in the line for development at Disney theme parks, which takes a little of the joy out of it, really.)
As for what this has to do with Din, the kid, and Bo-Katan’s trouble, that’s a problem for next week. It’s possible this was a fledgling First Order situation that they were dealing with on Kalevala, but I’m kind of hoping there’s another angle at work here—making everything a set up for the sequel trilogy would be a shame. Also, if Bo-Katan ends up feeling renewed in the presence of her former cult colleagues, I’ll be disappointed. I get that she needs support, but these are not the folks to renew your community with. Not until they make some major structural changes. (Nevermind the fact that it’s highly hand-of-the-writer circumspect that she hadn’t removed her helmet since the incident in the mines because she typically has that thing off all the time.)
Bits and Beskar
- I do appreciate the reference to Imperial warlords that Bo-Katan might have pissed off because in the Legends canon that was 90% of the trouble the New Republic had to contend with. Just Imperial warlords. Warlords everywhere.
- I also appreciate that the title of the episode could apply to more than one person within said episode.
- Big fan of the mountain peak (that you obviously cannot touch) as the only visible piece of land on the Coruscant.
- Elia Kane did appear in previous episodes (often found giving Gideon communications intel aboard his ship), so I’m curious how much this was planned out versus the impetus to make sure they used the great actor they had playing a bit part. O’Brian was most recently seen in the latest Ant-Man and the Wasp installment of the MCU, but has also popped up on Black Lightning, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and The Walking Dead, among other projects.
- It’s a little weird to suggest that they’re dismantling the Rebel Alliance fleet when 1) we know that plenty of pilots are still using their ships in the New Republic Starfighter Corps, and 2) a sizable portion of the fleet was actually gifted to various Rebel pilots as a form of severance following the Battle of Endor. (Poe Dameron’s mom got to keep her A-Wing, for example.)
Next week! This is the way. Or maybe not the way, but certainly a way…
I noticed that Bo-Katan was keeping her helmet on, and I wondered right off the bat if maybe the title “The Convert” applied to her. I think the sight of the living mythosaur made her think maybe there’s something to the old ways after all, and that’s why she kept her helmet on thereafter. So I don’t think it was just a hand-of-the-writer plot convenience, I think it was an intentional character beat. Although it’s hard to read character nuance when you can’t see the actress’s face.
Then again, maybe Katee Sackhoff just wasn’t available for more than two episodes so they did the whole thing with a suit double?
The interlude with Pershing and Kane on Coruscant was interesting, though it does have a lot of mysteries. This show’s storytelling is often weak, but it’s great at creating and exploring an open-world setting, and it was nice to see everyday life on Coruscant. I’d read about that exposed mountain peak in the novels, so I had a bit of a thrill of recognition when I saw it in the background, before they called attention to it. (Although they could stand to tighten up the editing and not do so much exposition for the sake of exposition. While it was nice to hear the word “ecumenopolis” actually spoken onscreen, we didn’t really need to hear that lecture.)
It is weird that the supposedly more benevolent New Republic does something so dystopian as denying former Imperials the use of their own names, and is just trying to dispose of everything connected to the Empire instead of salvaging what it can. It’s not unbelievable, I guess, since new regimes are often little better than the ones they displaced, or at least they can be prone to overreaction and decisions based more on hatred for the prior regime than on good judgment and practicality. But it does seem to fit into the idea that the NR was fatally flawed and unable to prevent its own downfall, which is why Leia went rogue and organized the Resistance.
Still, it seems clear enough that Kane has an ulterior motive beyond her work for the NR. She’s probably still working for Gideon.
Well it was an episode…. The first part and the last part were great. I agree with you I love the imperial warlord being pissed at Bo-Katan as a plot point because it does go to the overall condition of the galaxy. And 180 degrees away I hated everything that happened on Coruscant. You’ve turned the Rebel Alliance fighting for freedom into basically indistinguishable from the Empire with no explanation in less than a decade. Actually less competent than the empire because they’re taking what appear to be functional ships that could be used and just disposing of everything. At least the empire made use of Republic era equipment.
There’s probably a show where we get to see how the New Republic goes wrong leading up to Episode 7 but this isn’t the show. I’m sure the torture/brainwashing is going to come into play later this season but I could also have imagined it could’ve been done in a 10 minute montage of scenes next week instead of 30 minutes of dystopianisn
The part I had a hard time accepting was the concept of “Amnesty Housing.” It seems like a really bad idea to take a bunch of fascist officers and house them together if your goal is to break up that organization. However, I guess the New Republic has to be portrayed as not particularly good, since the films have established that it almost immediately falls to another fascist movement. I suppose the incompetence and moral flaws are a plot point. At any rate, I didn’t really care much about Pershing, and apparently I won’t have to, since he just had his mind flayed in what I guess is an attempt to keep whatever knowledge he has about imperial cloning projects secret, not that the New Republic was doing anything with that knowledge to begin with. I was more interested in Bo-Katan and her apparent warming to Mando’s cult. I was hoping she’d be a good influence on Din, but I guess, after her witnessing the mythosaur, she’s re-evaluating her life choices.
I forgot to mention one of the most significant things that happened — Grogu almost spoke! After Din and Bo traded “This is the way”s, Grogu made a four-syllable noise that certainly sounded like he was trying to say it too. It makes sense those would be his first words, given how often he hears them.
I was so happy to see the grand and glorious upper city of Coruscant, which we haven’t seen in live-action since 2005. (The grim, gray redressed London of Andor doesn’t count.) – – – But I didn’t like how they used Coruscant in this episode. The single most depressing thing about modern Star Wars and Star Trek is that the writers don’t have the imagination to believe that things can get better, progress can happen, the future can be brighter than the present. Star Trek has the bright future of TOS and TNG, but then Picard and Discovery plunge things back into a grim dystopia in the near-post TNG and far-future time frames. In Star Wars, the Rebel Alliance defeats the fascist, oppressive Galactic Empire … and then their New Republic is so bad in so many petty, banal ways that it deserves to be wiped off the map just twenty years later just as thoroughly as the Empire did, and all the sacrifices and heroics of the Original Trilogy are in vain. I could mostly forgive that for the sake of the whiz-bang spectacle of the Sequel Trilogy, and I really enjoyed the Rey/Luke/Kylo parts of The Last Jedi, but on the whole it’s really, really depressing. I mean, I get that constant wars are baked into the premise of Star Wars. I know that in the messy old pre-Disney EU, the New Republic was also weak and petty, and Our Heroes didn’t get to experience a happy retirement either because of constant warfare. But the New Republic of the old EU was weak/petty/lawful good, and its officials were genuinely good, sincere people who believed in a better future and didn’t do this Clockwork Orange-dystopian sh**. This New Republic is weak/petty/lawful bad.
TLDR: This episode doesn’t get to join my headcanon.
The Star Wars shows have been accused of too much fan service. Perhaps this episode is intended to counter that perception, as I don’t think anyone was clamoring to see The Further Adventures of Doc Pershing and the Previously Unnamed Comms Officer.
I suspect that the two segments of the episode are actually related, and both the TIE attack and the comms officer’s plotting are signs that Moff Gideon is not done with either Manolore or Grogu.
At least that aerial dogfight gave me something to enjoy, because the rest of the episode was kind of meh.
This bit actually seemed kind of plausible to me. It reminded me of the U.S. having nothing better to do with the captured vessels of the Imperial Japanese Navy (Nagato et al.), plus some of its own older ships (Saratoga et al.), than to use them for target practice at places like Bikini Atoll. This was a combination of not needing so many surface warships in the future, the difficulty of retrofitting combat vessels for civilian use, and the assumption that by the time the next naval war happened the ships would be hopelessly obsolete anyway. I can see the New Republic making a similar decision, also being prompted by the fact that an Imperial Star Destroyer has a much more visually distinctive profile than a Japanese vs. a U.S. aircraft carrier. The New Republic using old Imperial Star Destroyers seems like the kind of thing which would promote an intensely negative emotional response from a lot of people who lived under the Empire. At least the fleet seems like it’s being stripped for parts, as evidenced by the various crates and pallets Pershing and Kane pass on their stroll through the one Star Destroyer whose darkened interior we get to see.
I do see that the Star Wars universe maintains its poor record on occupational safety going forward. Even assuming that something called a “mind flayer” (excuse me, a “602 Mitigator”) can be therapeutic at lower power (a not unreasonable leap given that a lot of legitimate medical treatments are harmful at higher intensities/concentrations) something like that should be reconfigured so that it can’t operate at higher power, or failing that it should not be operable at a dangerous power level without overcoming multiple locked overrides. A single dial that adjusts the power levels from “calming” to “brain melting” is an incredibly (and obviously) dangerous feature, as is having no trained observers on hand to monitor a process where brain melting is a potential outcome of using the apparatus as designed.
@5/Iwytor: Neither Picard nor Discovery portrays a “dystopia.” That’s a ludicrous overstatement. Picard season 1 shows a Federation that fell short of perfection in two major respects, that backed away from helping the Romulans evacuate and passed a ban on synth research after suffering a massive blow. A couple of bad policy decisions do not make a dystopia. And all of it was resolved by the end of season 1, and the Federation in seasons 2 & 3 has been its normal upbeat self.
As for Discovery, it certainly doesn’t portray the Federation as a dystopia. On the contrary, though the Federation is badly crippled by the Burn and loses some of its core worlds, what remains of it is still striving to rebuild and do good, and by season 4 it’s regained a lot of its strength and size and is helping the galaxy recover. Far from being a dystopian tale, DSC from season 3 onward is a story of rebuilding and healing.
Look — stories are about people coping with problems and crises. If everything’s hunky-dory, there’s no story to tell. That’s why “And they lived happily ever after” only comes at the end of the story. If you want to tell another story later, then the happiness has to take a major hit. That’s not about pessimism, it’s just how stories work.
And this franchise is called Star Wars, after all. Much more so than Trek, it’s built into the core premise that it’s about times of strife and conflict. Even the Star Wars: The High Republic novels and comics, set at a time when the Republic was at its most utopian, are about a time of crisis that endangers that utopia like never before.
@6/AlanBrown: “The Star Wars shows have been accused of too much fan service. Perhaps this episode is intended to counter that perception, as I don’t think anyone was clamoring to see The Further Adventures of Doc Pershing and the Previously Unnamed Comms Officer.”
Whereas I was thinking that the extensive focus on life on Coruscant was extremely fanservicey. Especially bits like working the word “ecumenopolis” into the episode and actually showing us the exposed mountain peak that’s been mentioned in the tie-ins. The Mandalorian (inclusive of Book of Boba Fett) often feels like an open-world MMORPG where the player characters are just wandering around exploring the environment and getting into random side quests. This was very much in that vein.
@6: I understand that fact about storytelling. It takes a lot of imagination to come up with a compelling story arc set in the time period after the happily-ever-after of the previous story arc. It’s a lot easier to let the new state of things be just as bad as the old state of things, but that’s frustrating because it retroactively cuts off the previous story arc at the knees. The old EU didn’t have a good solution to that ever-present storytelling problem ever: after the Empire was largely defeated in the movies, the New Republic in the EU was just fighting endless Imperial warlords until the Yuuzhan Vong invaded, but the Vong were an awful solution to the problem of finding new enemies for the good guys to fight. What I’m missing in the new canon versus the old canon is the sense that the New Republic is at least a “good government”: that it’s at least trying to actively clean up the messes of the past, atone for the evils of the Empire, and avoid making the same mistakes. The new canon just lurches from crapsack world to crapsack world: here’s the new bad government, same as the old bad government, there can never be such a thing as good government. It doesn’t even try to suggest that the New Republic can possibly be good, or stable, or have a chance at lasting longer than the Empire or maintaining the peace. I admit that I don’t have a solution to that storytelling problem either. I don’t write fan fiction. But I just wish the current Star Wars brain trust had tried to imagine a post-Imperial galaxy with a decent measure of good government, instead of destroying the New Republic from halfway across the galaxy before we even got the chance to see it in The Force Awakens, and then showing us nothing of the New Republic but grim prisons, labor yards, and dystopian brain zappers in The Mandalorian (besides a couple X-wing pilots that seem alright). We wait over thirty years for sequels to the Original Trilogy, and then there’s no payoff. Things are just as bad as they ever were.
/keyboard warrior
I know, I know, these are just the same complaints many people have had since 2015. I just get triggered by torture scenes, especially when the ostensibly good faction is doing the torturing.
As for the rest of the episode, I appreciated the fact that the Mandalorians led by the Armorer were very matter-of-fact about accepting Din Djarin back into their covert, and accepting Bo-Katan as well. There was no need to draw out that plotline any further, so I’m glad they wrapped it up without further ado. I was bothered by how the Imperial fighters and bombers over Kalevala seemingly came out of nowhere, but I can partially handwave that away by saying they might have been patrolling Mandalore proper to keep any Mandalorians from coming back and reclaiming their planet. (Where were they when Din and then Bo-Katan landed in the ruins of Sundari before?) I liked the aerial dogfighting a lot. Disney-era Star Wars has always had really good dogfights.
Sorry, that should have been @8.
The New Republic we saw in this episode rings true for me, especially with it being set on Coruscant. I think they mention in the episode that there are over a trillion inhabitants. I expect the day to day life experience of those citizens hasn’t changed much at all in the last 20 years (or 1000 for that matter). It’s far too vast of a population for a relatively small governing party to shift radically. The civil service that runs the infrastructure won’t have changed, and any inefficiencies we see likely haven’t changed since the Old Republic. That’s probably a good thing, because if the Empire was deeply involved in the logistics of supporting a world population of that size the whole planet would have collapsed into starvation and chaos moments after the Empire did.
I think what we see in this week’s episode are the default settings, at least for the core worlds, regardless of who is in charge.
Things are likely much better for the mid worlds (the suburbs) who were being more aggressively exploited by the Empire but which are also close enough to the core to be actively managed by the New Republic. And on the outer rim you get best effort law enforcement and the occasional fly by.
I really enjoyed this week’s episode. It felt very Andor and I loved Andor. If Disney ever wants to do a Tales of the New Republic live action anthology show I’m very much down for that. I think there’s a lot of space in the formula to tell really engaging stories about regular people.
I think Bo Katan is working through finding a middle way for herself. She’s starting in a very cynical, bitter, and likely depressed state about her cultural identity. I don’t see her throwing in with the Watch but I can see her getting an opportunity to reconnect and rediscover what being a Mandalorian means to her specifically. It would be interesting to see if she and the Watch could meet in the middle.
#5. I don’t think you’re too far off the mark. In the case of modern Star Trek, while I wouldn’t call it a “dystopia” per se, it can certainly come across that way many times, mainly due to, I think, the modern obsession with grief and trauma in dramatic television. They can’t simply show people dealing with problems in a realistic manner; they hit you over the head with agony and torment to such an extent that a five-minute inspirational speech brought to you by Hallmark just isn’t going to do the trick anymore. Frankly, now it comes across as pretty shallow stuff to me.
With Star Wars, I’ve always preferred the scum and villainy side of things, but I understand the need to explore more than just cantinas and dirty streets. If they’re going to show us more of the New Republic, though, I don’t see why they couldn’t continue the X-Wing space cop theme — stuffy and bureaucratic but not to the point of being Orwellian.
Modern TV, yeah, it’s all a bit much.
@9/iwytor: “What I’m missing in the new canon versus the old canon is the sense that the New Republic is at least a “good government””
Fair enough, but in real life, it’s all too common for the rebel government that overthrows the old tyranny to be just as bad as what it replaced. Most of the worst dictatorships of the 20th century, like Mao’s China, Castro’s Cuba, and the Ayatollahs’ Iran, were founded by people who overthrew oppressive, corrupt tyrants with the intention of replacing their tyranny with more ethical, populist rule, but ended up becoming just as bad or worse.
But I wouldn’t say the canonical New Republic is anywhere near that bad. It’s trying to do better, but its efforts are flawed at best.
@12/Dingo: “In the case of modern Star Trek, while I wouldn’t call it a “dystopia” per se, it can certainly come across that way many times, mainly due to, I think, the modern obsession with grief and trauma in dramatic television.”
It’s a misuse of the word “dystopia” to use it for any dark or depressing story situation. The word refers specifically to a society or government that’s oppressive, corrupt, badly broken, or otherwise bad for its people. Dystopian fiction is fiction that critiques the society it portrays, e.g. 1984 or Brazil or Max Headroom or “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.”
@@.-@ The way, this is.
—
Much as you don’t dismantle Imperial infrastructure quickly, you don’t easily dismantle the bureaucracy either. The politicians are making laws and policies, but it’s former imperial clerks implementing them, and this is how it’s always been done.
@1, yes, I suspect Pedro Pascal being distracted by TLOU means his stand in did a lot of the body work, and it wouldn’t surprise me if it was the same for Katee. And if they do an in-depth episode on the Watch, we all get excited and they don’t need much in the way of physicalacting from the leads.
I just really wish they’d amend “Never take off your helmet/armor” to include “in the presence of others.” I mean, they must shower and shave.
@16
Din bathed in the Living Waters. In full armor and helmet. Not sure that should count as bathing.
Maybe it should be “Don’t take off your helmet/armor. The smell will kill anyone nearby.”
CLB also hit on a few of the things I was thinking – that Bo actually purposefully has not removed her helmet in part because she was moved by the encounter with the Mythosaur and is rethinking her beliefs. I know I’ve been a bit hard on Bo-Katan in previous comments in terms of feeling like she changes allegience without really thinking about the principles behind it, but I can also kind of relate to her in this as I’ve tried to find my own place within my own culture/faith circle (including, back in the day, drifting into more traditional mindsets, and then also bouncing to a much more cynical/disillusioned mindset, and trying to balance the two). Sooo….I kind of can see why for the time being she’s mulling things over, and I can imagine that being accepted into the covert might feel a little like being love bombed (not that I think they are intentionally or maliciously trying to manipulate her, they are just accepting her as is decreed by their own traditions)….especially given that she just lost her home, her people, was just in her old destroyed homeland reminiscing about her family/home…I can see how the old traditions might feel comforting. I do hope we get a chance to see a more ‘balanced’ way though. Also – there were a lot of moments I was really impressed with Sackhoff’s acting; even in full armor/helmet, there were a lot of times I could really sense the emotion in the moment. For instance, when those bombers show up, and you realize where they are, you just see her tense up.
Of course, it’s also possible Bo is just biding her time…she was quiet about the Mythosaur and if it’s simply because she’s ‘pondering it in her heart’ for now, or because she has plans to try and use it to her advantage, remains to be seen.
Before I get to the main thing about this episode, I wanted to point out a few other fun things:
-I freaking LOVED all the ‘kicking around Coruscant’ scenes, similar to how I love kicking around Tatooine in Book of Boba Fett. I also did get a bit of a squee at seeing the opera house again :)
-Loved seeing a N-1 dog fight again, and hearing those screaming TIEs. Battles are hit or miss with me but I felt this one was really well choreographed and fun to watch
-I definitely thought Grogu was about to speak!
-Music nerdery! Somebody else had to point this out, but the background carnival music was familiar to me and it turns out it’s a rendition of March of the Resistance. The thing I DID notice was that the ‘mind flayer’ music was Jabba’s Baroque Recital which was just such a bizarre, surreal and awesome take. There was also some background throat singing when Pershing decides to go for the lab station – perhaps connecting both Palpatine and Snoke to this moment.
-The public transit moment actually reminded me a little of the scene in Jedi Fallen Order
-As somebody who used to actually work in a microbio/molecular genetics lab, I am SO skeptical of that lab being in pristine condition like that (I am also totally unsure what research he actually thinks he is going to do with a few test tubes and some plates and no…autoclave, microscope, electrophoresis apparatus, PCR, freezers to store enzymes, etc. Maybe research tech has WAY advanced, haha.) I was actually wondering if the plot twist was going to be that Imperials had set it up for his benefit and were basically going to hold him hostage there.
-“It was a trap” was such a low key funny moment in the midst of a dark scene.
Okay, as for the rest, this episode was DARK (I think it actually gave me some nightmares) and my heart broke for Pershing in about a million ways. Throughout the episode I realized some of his story was reminding a little of Bashir in DS9 – I think it’s basically the theme of forbidden genetic/cloning research and wanting to use that for betterment.
But I got the impression Pershing never had many friends; he’s a bit awkward and shy (I don’t think that’s just because of the ‘re-integration’ as he was a bit like that in the previous episodes) and it just made him so ripe for being manipulated and betrayed by more savvy people (which I am personally familiar with). But more to that, I can relate a lot to his constant anguish/back and forth over wanting to do the right thing, over wanting to serve, but not quite knowing what the ‘right’ thing is or if the entity in charge is one that is worthy of that service, or figuring out if you can do good within a flawed system (and at which point you can’t). I like the idea of exploring what the ‘average’ Imperial citizen/officer who was perhaps trying to make the best of a bad system, would then do in the NR and how they would find their place, and how you would re-integrate those people into the new system. But this took it to a really dark place. In a way, I see a parallel with him and Syril (although Syril is obviously a less savory character and totally drinks the fascism koolaid). I mean, we even see that in his working conditions and how both of them are characters confined to beuracratic drudgery, and whose decision to break the rules would, in another story, be part of a hero arc.
I don’t know what Kane’s deal is – I am not sure if she betrayed him just so she could earn some trust and continue to undermine the New Republic, OR if all of it is part of a plan to get Pershing extracted (I actually thought when the cops showed up it might have been Imperials). But that last scene with the mind flayer – I’m not sure if she was wiping his mind completely, or indoctrinating him/brainwashing him so she can re-recruit him to Gideon’s side and continue the work with Grogu (I’m assuming the attack on Bo was connected).
As for the rest of the worldbuilding, I definitely share Emmet and some of the other comenter’s distaste for it, but I also throw this at Abram’s feet as they had to work up to this. I know what ‘real life’ is like, but part of the reason I watch Star Wars is to show me something that is BETTER than real life and points to the possibility of something better. I don’t need real life’s shittiness mirrored back at me. Watching the bizarre, dystopian “Amnesty” reintegration program (and the smug sense of superiority around it) was one of the most chilling and subtly dark things I’ve seen and that was BEFORE we got to the ‘brainwashing’ scene.
The scene at the opera house was kind of dark in its own way. There will always be the elites who don’t really care who is in charge as long as the money keeps flowing, but it also seemed to reveal a bleak cynicism about the Star Wars galaxy that I don’t love. What’s the difference? What does any of it matter? I fit was JUST the rich people saying that, it would be one thing, but we see it throughout the episode. After the episode was over, Disney+ suggested I watch Andor, which a screencap of Bix, which made me think of her own torture scene, and it just felt like…what’s the difference? And what were they all fighting for? Especially given that Luthen’s aim is specifically to make the Emperor resort to crueler and crueler methods to inspire resistance and you might be able to argue that the ends justify the means, but what is all that upheaval and death and destruction even for? So a different government can come in and brainwash/torture people? Ok.
I also want to see what the possibility of a ‘good’ (flawed, but at least still good) government looks like. There are still going to be conflicts and threats and stories. (Also: related – my grief at never getting to see what a healthy Jedi Order looks like…)
(I will say that the Bad Batch is currently a great palate cleanser, and I love the whole theme of them currently just being a group of people going around doing good and helping out. It has its dark moments but it’s also wholesome.)
One more thought, as my comment is already bloated – wondering how this might cross over/intersect with the other shows. Bad Batch has had quite a few episodes focusing on the Kaminoans and the cloning facility at Tantiss (which includes, among other things, scientists with the same uniform as Pershing’s) and their work (including creating hybrid organisms) which of course may all be related to Snoke, Palptaine or perhaps the early generations of Dark Troopers (introduced in Mando). They are airing at the same time…it would be interesting if we either saw live action/older Omega in this, or some reference to young(er) Grogu in BB as this would be about the time he was rescued and we don’t really know what happened to him in between then and his ending up on Arvala.
There’s also the possibility that Thrawn could be the master mind behind some of this (or maybe even the attack on Bo) given that we know Ahsoka is trying to find him.
@18/Lisamarie: “Also – there were a lot of moments I was really impressed with Sackhoff’s acting; even in full armor/helmet, there were a lot of times I could really sense the emotion in the moment. For instance, when those bombers show up, and you realize where they are, you just see her tense up.”
That’s assuming it’s even Sackhoff in the armor, which seems unlikely. Generally in TV and film, if you don’t actually see the actor’s face on camera, they’re being doubled by someone else, since actors are generally too busy to be on set if their faces don’t need to be seen.
Also, suit acting is a specialized skill. An actor accustomed to using her face or voice might not be as good at communicating emotion through body language as an experienced suit actor or stunt performer. So if you were impressed by the performer’s body language through the armor, that suggests it might not have been Sackhoff. It might have been Caitlin Dechelle, who’s Bo-Katan’s stunt double (and also Ahsoka’s in season 2).
As for the raid on the lab, I also found it implausible that Pershing only took a few small items in a single case instead of any of the pieces of equipment.
Also, did anyone else notice that Kane apparently pocketed a small vial from the lab? She was holding it when she directed Pershing’s attention elsewhere, and I didn’t see her put it down before she left the room, so I think she must have taken it with her. And at the end when she was turning up the neural neutralizer (sorry, wrong franchise), I thought I saw her finger the rim of her pocket as if thinking of what she was hiding there. Maybe I’m imagining it, or maybe whatever’s in that vial is her real objective.
“I also throw this at Abram’s feet as they had to work up to this.”
I don’t know why people insist on giving Abrams sole credit or blame for a script he co-wrote with Lawrence Kasdan (and an uncredited Jonathan Kasdan), incorporating plot elements worked out by a think tank including Michael Arndt, Lawrence Kasdan, Kathleen Kennedy, Simon Kinberg, and Kiri Hart, and under the oversight of Kennedy, the person in overall charge of the whole franchise.
When it comes to future iterations of the SW universe, I remain quite fond of the comics run of Star Wars Legacy. The Republic and Empire are at odds, but neither is particularly evil or incompetent.
@20 – I was actually wondering of it was Sackhoff or not. I know that Pedro has two body doubles they’ve been crediting (especially as he is busy with another show), but I wasn’t sure how much Sackhoff did her own stuff. But whoever it was did a great job.
I did not catch that with the vial!! She did take the box from Pershing at the end, and I’ve seen other theories that maybe she just needed Pershing to figure out what was actually important. Or maybe she was just killing him (if turning up the volume does in fact kill as opposed to some other effect) since he betrayed Gideon. But if she is pocketing vials there’s definitely more at play there.
I was admittedly being a bit sarcastic regarding Abrams…but, yes, in general I mean the sequel trilogy as a whole and figure that’s implied. Perhaps, more accurately, the term is Abrams/Kasdan/Arndt, et al ;)
Somebody else pointed out that the scene with Kane convincing Pershing to touch the mountain even though she knows he’ll get caught is foreshadowing, as well as an example of her own manipulating him/gauging his reaction/getting him accustomed to doing what she says.
I respect the desire to see a post RotJ Republic that is more clearly distinguishable from the Empire. I think initially setting the show on the periphery of the Republic was a wise way to sidestep some challenges in actually showing the New Republic.
RotJ ends with, essentially, ‘and they all lived happily ever after.’ I don’t recall any indications in the original trilogy that there was any focus beyond defeating the Empire. I don’t think that’s super critical in the context of those films as they’re far more about the heroes than they are about the Rebellion. But the original films only provide glimpses of the larger world the story is set in. We don’t know anything really about what things were like before the Empire so it’s easy to assume the New Republic is ‘good’ the way the Empire was ‘evil’.
The prequel canon, in my opinion, makes it really hard to tell a story that both tracks with the additional worldbuilding and stays true to the vague but unambiguously positive resolution at the end of RotJ.
Full disclosure: stories told in a flawed New Republic are appealing to my personal tastes. From my point of view what we are seeing is pretty close to a best case scenario. It’s not a perfect utopia but it’s not awful.
Pershing got a raw deal, no doubt, and it’s his story we follow. But “the system” seems relatively benign. I think the comparison to Operation Paperclip may not be the best—I infer from the show that amnesty means amnesty if someone follows the set process. It’s not conditional on someone being useful to the agenda of the new government. I struggle to come up with a better alternative of what to do with reintegrating a vast number of Imperial military personnel where the degree of indoctrination or belief in the values of the Empire are difficult to assess.
Pershing has what seems to be a relatively high degree of personal freedom, a job that is underwhelming but serves a need the new government sees as important, and rather nice private quarters. He’s not under constant surveillance. His case officer seems open to answering any questions he might have and the answers Pershing gives seem to be taken at face value.
Pershing feels that he could be more useful to the Republic, but he’s very focused on his very narrow area of interest (cloning) not his more general skill set. I’m not sure what level of authority the person has who delivers paperwork to him has, and he’s no fount of encouragement, but when Pershing raises a concern he gets referred to a process to raise his concern officially.
He is definitely manipulated by Elia who has put a suspiciously high level of effort into getting him busted, and given the way his character is presented it seems reasonable that he’d be vulnerable to the tactics used. I’d be very surprised if this happened at the bidding of the New Republic in any official capacity. Like others I expected the way the story would play out would be for Pershing to get picked up by Imperial forces once he had his equipment and was away from the authorities.
None of that seems to show the New Republic as being anything like an oppressive totalitarian regime. I’m feeling some dissonance—Pershing’s story seems to be set up like he’s a character facing a government out of dystopian fiction but the facts in the episode don’t exactly justify it. To me it seems to be a mix of a well intentioned but realistically imperfect system, malicious manipulation on the part of Elia, and a lot of bad judgment on Pershing’s part.
The mind flayer/happytime dispenser is problematic and clearly Pershing’s both knowledgeable and terrified. But I’d be freaked out if someone tried to put me in a Bacta tank so I don’t trust my judgment on Star Wars medical technology. And it’s only when Elia turns the setting from 5% to 110% that it becomes clearly damaging. But it’s probably the part of the episode that’s the most dissonant to me. It’s clearly set up to make the audience think of scenes like the end of Brazil.
I’ll be honest, taken as a whole I don’t know if the real intention of the creators was to show the New Republic as a benign government where Pershing dug a hole after Elia handed him the shovel. And I think because we are following Pershing it’s his point of view that defines our perception of the New Republic, and he certainly thinks he’s in the clutches of an Empire-equivalent when they put him in the machine. I think it’s a question of how creative/nuanced the creators wanted to be in deciding if Pershing’s POV is meant to be biased or not.
At this point I’m inclined to give the Republic the benefit of the doubt. Considering their resources and the hot mess of the Old Republic I think they’re doing a pretty exceptional job.
@16–
It’s been explicit since at least Chapter 4 (the Seven Samurai pastiche) that he can and does remove his helmet every day when no one is observing him.
I imagine that when scouting for these coverts a prime requirement is a TON of space for individual grooming areas (and strict discipline regulating any common area where one would be unclad). Also, maybe some of those mysterious circuit boards in the armor somehow aid with personal cleanliness, in the typical Star Wars “transistors can do anything” aesthetic!
Having been an OH&S (Occupational Health & Safety) monitor in my tragic past, this made me weep. I was screaming “Lockout! Tagout!” the whole time. At the very least, there should have been a big red SAFETY OVERRIDE switch under a clear switch guard.
@24/Patrick: “It’s been explicit since at least Chapter 4 (the Seven Samurai pastiche) that he can and does remove his helmet every day when no one is observing him.”
Yes, which is precisely why I’m annoyed by the writers’ choice of phrasing when the Armorer asks “Have you removed your helmet” without specifying “in the presence of others?” Because obviously the answer to the question when phrased that way is yes, of course he has. So it’s a ridiculous way of phrasing it.
@25/StLOrca: “Having been an OH&S (Occupational Health & Safety) monitor in my tragic past, this made me weep. I was screaming “Lockout! Tagout!” the whole time. At the very least, there should have been a big red SAFETY OVERRIDE switch under a clear switch guard.”
I’m afraid to tell you how easy it was to disable the holodeck safeties in this week’s Picard episode…
@23 – I’m not sure that I buy that RotJ implied a straightforward, literal happily ever after. There are scads of EU books on the Legends canon that show that there were certainly issues the fledgling New Republic (or new Jedi order) had to face, and that included corrupt or petty NW officials.
And to be clear, my uncomfyness with the NR isn’t so much the Amnesty program in general…in fact, I think that could be a fascinating thing to explore and it does make sense that Pershing isn’t automatically going to be able to start doing genetic research again or that there might be some restrictions on them at first (it is shown that they are, theoretically at least, restricted to the amnesty district). But even from the start, there were tons of little hints that things were a little shady. The insistence of referring to them by numbers, the fact that “counselling” is just through a sterile droid, the smarminess of the whole thing.
And some of that could be written off, especially given the attitudes of the super rich on Coruscant, but I think the mind flayer (and the fact that Pershing isn’t even allowed to testify on his own behalf) is a feature, not a bug.
Maybe instead of a fascist/authoritative dystopia they are going more for a ‘drugged into passive happiness’ kind of dystopia especially as they frequently make a point of mentioning that they have demilitarize, so perhaps they just want the appearance of a ‘peaceful’ society. But how many people could also say that things in the Empire were ‘okay’ because there probably were places they brought order, industry, etc.
To be clear, I don’t think Elia’s manipulations were on behalf of/sanctioned by the New Republic as some type of attempt to silence him/destroy the forbidden knowledge he has (although we know from Rogue One they’re not above killing Imperial weapons developers ;) )…I am guessing she’s working either on behalf of Gideon/Thrawn/The remnant to make sure nobody else has his knowledge, OR, potentially making his mind more malleable so he’ll continue the work (it depends on what the end result of the flayer is – they say it will ‘wipe’ his mind, but I’m not sure if it’s like a ‘bor gullet’ situation or what…).
I don’t know, it’s all kind of subjective, and on its own, I could see this episode as just an example of what the fledgling NR has to overcome as it evolves, but since we know they basically get overrun/destroyed…it all feels a bit nihilistic. Oh well, maybe the Resistance/Rey’s Jedi will do better ;)
To be clear, I don’t envy them (or Luke) in trying to not repeat the sins of the Empire, but also have to deal with the fractures/corruption in the Old Republic (and ossifying of the Old Jedi) that led to that scenario to start with…
Then again, in the words of Tolkien, it’s all part of the long defeat ;)
@28/Lisamarie: “I’m not sure that I buy that RotJ implied a straightforward, literal happily ever after. There are scads of EU books on the Legends canon that show that there were certainly issues the fledgling New Republic (or new Jedi order) had to face, and that included corrupt or petty NW officials.”
Well, of course the movie taken by itself implied a straightforward happy ending, in the same way that the original movie taken by itself implied that Luke blowing up the Death Star was an uncomplicated heroic act rather than the murder of thousands of innocent technicians, maintenance workers, and undoubtedly Rebel prisoners (since the detention center was implicitly so crowded that the guards were not surprised by an unfamiliar Wookiee prisoner). These movies were made for children and families, simple adventure stories in the vein of the old adventure serials that Lucas grew up watching in theaters. Their situations do raise all sorts of nuanced questions if you’re disposed to think about them, but the movies were not made to encourage us to think, only to be thrill rides for the young at heart.
Naturally anything that continued the story after the happy ending would have to complicate it, because stories are about complications. There’s plenty of room to explore the realistic difficulties of what comes after “happily ever after” in sequel works. But ROTJ by itself wasn’t trying to imply any of that, just to create the impression that everything would be hunky-dory and we could go home from the theater cheerfully humming the theme music.
It’s as Orson Welles said — “If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.”
As for the portrayal of the New Republic here, I’m with kurtzwald — it’s not a dystopia, it’s just a well-meaning government making some mistakes out of the banality of bureaucratic evil. They’re afraid of cloning research after what happened in the Clone Wars, so they’ve passed an irrational law banning it even for benevolent reasons (a mistake the Federation in Star Trek has been shown to make with genetic engineering). They have a similar fear of former Imperials, so they’re being overzealous in trying to “cure” them of their past evils, paranoid of any hint of relapse. There’s no evidence that the NR treats civilians in general this way; it’s just the rehabilitated Imperials who are getting the treatment, and because it’s shaped by fear, it’s not a very healthy way of managing the situation. It’s normal for a government to overreact out of irrational fear — like all the TSA security theater around airports since 2001, which has very little to do with reducing the risk of terrorist attacks and everything to do with reacting to the fear of terrorist attacks (which basically played right into the terrorists’ hands, because the goal of terrorists by definition is to make their enemies afraid).
Got halfway through posting this last night so I’m sure there are a million more comments now, but funny reviews like Emmett’s and comments like @6
and @7
are what keep this show watchable, for me. Fan in-jokes, at the expense of the material when “cannon” lets us down. I agree that “the New Republic isn’t even trying to be better than the Empire” is just… not what most of us grew up on or hoped for, for our beloved characters. Especially if they’re not going to dive into that narratively, which I doubt they will.
So um. Here’s hoping that Ahsoka’s show has better writing and directing
I disagree with that the Coruscant story is Clockwork Orange-like. The distopyan society and what happens to Pershing is clearly Orwell’s 1984.
Pershing (Winston) lives at Amnesty Housing (Victory Mansions) works destroying (or modifying) old records that have to be forgotten. He is lured into a trap by Elia Kane (Julia) and ‘healed’ by Akbar’s cousin (O’Brien).
@30/Yonni: “I agree that “the New Republic isn’t even trying to be better than the Empire” is just… not what most of us grew up on or hoped for, for our beloved characters.”
I still don’t think that’s what’s going on here. After all, the only people we’re seeing treated this way are ex-cons going through rehabilitation, essentially. It’s natural enough for a society to impose more restrictions on criminals carrying out their sentences than on ordinary law-abiding citizens. We shouldn’t jump to the conclusion that the NR is dystopian until we see them treating everyone this way. As it is, all we can really say is that the NR’s approach toward reforming ex-Imperials is badly flawed.
I’m reminded of a comment I saw on social media a while back — approximately, “Dystopian fiction is fiction where white people are treated the same way minorities are treated in real life.” The same society can look benevolent or oppressive depending on whose perspective you’re looking at it from.
The facts that there’s a) an amnesty program (and summary executions or prison terms) and b) that they generally let folks from it run around a Core World unfettered does mean the New Republic is trying to do better.
It’s actually a hell of a lot better than American society and our ex-convicts, particularly if they’re people of color.
@32 – that’s a good comment!
Qualitatively, the NR is certainly better than the Empire. They have better motivations as well, as they are not ruled by a Sith Lord.
But the mind flayer still creeps me out (along with referring to them as serial numbers). Of course the ex-Imperials are going to be re-integrated (and likely monitored) in some way…it’s actually a cool concept. But it was disturbing to me how…willing they were to use that technology, along with the happy clappy music, the fact that there was no trial, no testimony (just the testimony of the person who set him up in the first place). Yes, ex-Imperials are not, as a rule, a group that requires much sympathy…but what other political dissidents/others/”unhappy citizens” might we decide need the modulator or need to be “refreshed”. The whole scene was just so creepy to me.
Wait, I think I realized why, it’s because that machine (at lower levels) is weaponized toxic positivity, and I hate that, haha :D
But on the other hand, the NR is so aggressively non-aggressive* – I get they are really trying to differentiate from the Empire, so they kind of put a happy face on everything, have demilitarized completely (leaving them vulnerable), have kinda lackluster security around most things…it’s an interesting combination of flaws, but I can also see where it all comes from and how hard it must be to try and right the ship after all the inertia of the Old Republic/Empire. Even some aspects of the Amnesty program have elements of naivete (although I do overall think the program is a good thing) but also this vaguely condescending attitude (not that this is a crime against humanity in and of itself).
I also was reminded of the Federation genetics ban!
*Some of it actually gives me Superiority vibes from Sanderson’s Cytoverse.
@34/Lisamarie: Well-said. This is a society that’s trying to be better than the Empire, but that’s doing it more on a superficial level, acting friendly and solicitous rather than cruel and tyrannical, without recognizing that it’s perpetuating some of the old bad habits on a more fundamental level. It’s a much subtler story than a straight dystopia.
I don’t read Star Wars novels, but the Star Wars Explained YouTube channel put out a video today basically saying that the amnesty program might be as strict as it is because it was looser early on and backfired, so this is overcompensation. I agree with people who say this isn’t the Republic being as bad as the Empire. Even the ex-imperials admit that. It’s just not being as good as it could be.
Ending one episode with MONSTER! and starting the next with “What monster? Did you see a monster?” was a real turnoff. If they were paying homage or sending up the cliffhangers in old film serials, they could have done much better, in my opinion.
@37/BeeGee: The mythosaur isn’t a monster, it’s a sacred animal that was thought to be extinct. The point was not to foreshadow a monster fight, but to give Bo-Katan a revelation that made her rethink her assumptions. That was clear enough last week, after the episode made a point of establishing Bo’s skepticism about the mythosaur legend minutes before she discovered there was one still living. The fact that it just lay there placidly and didn’t make anything resembling an aggressive move also made it clear enough that it wasn’t a setup for a fight scene.
@@.-@. ChristopherLBennett: “Grogu almost spoke!”
Yep!
I’m largely with MikeKelm @2, unfortunately.
Look, I’m always happy to see Katy O’Brien pop up, but the whiplash to Coruscant was severe. My impression the entire time was that it was like a weirdly compartmentalized backdoor pilot — even more specifically that it was like the Mandalorian stuff that got shoehorned into The Book of Boba Fett, except Bizarro-style because The Further Adventures of Doc Pershing and the Previously Unnamed Comms Officer, as it was put so perfectly by AlanBrown @6, wasn’t a proper thing yet — despite my recognizing the characters from Moff Gideon’s orbit and realizing that it would all be somehow relevant to the show’s main plot later. I was just utterly disinterested in what transpired and disappointed in how these elements of the New Republic were portrayed.
@16. ChristopherLBennett: “they must shower and shave”
How do Mandalorians even procreate? They can’t always have grown their ranks exclusively through foundlings; granted, I’m not up on the extensive lore from the animated series, but I get the impression from this show that Bo-Katan is referring to her biological family. Do romantic assignations get carried out helmet-on, armor-off, like in that infamous early draft of Batman Forever?
@39/Arben: Well, at least we can be sure that Mandalorians always use protection when they have sex.
I remember last season people were wondering if Elia had gotten out of the ship before Luke’s arrival, or if she was the com officer shot by Mando & c.
Maybe one day we will know how she survived.
I now think she always worked for Thrawn, keeping an eye on Gideon, and that she will be a major link between this show and Ashoka.
“Is that a blaster pistol, flash charge, grenade, mini-rocket, flamethrower, pack of whistling birds, and/or the Darksaber in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?”
I was confused and wondering “why” the whole Doc Pershing episode. Then, at the end, she mind wipes him. So, the very idea of a mind wipe makes me think he is no longer useful as a scientist. It seems his whole purpose was to give us a new “big bad” hidden in the NR. I guess this leaves the Doc alive but useless?
I had thought briefly that Mando was jumping to Coruscant and they would somehow have the Doc trying to capture Grogu for more experiments.
I agree with others that Bo-Katan left her helmet on as a sign of being uncertain about her previous beliefs. I also think she has nowhere else to go and took Din’s advice to leave it on and play “when in Rome” so she won’t be kicked out.
As a side note: I find the entire “never remove your helmet” a somewhat stupid tennant to place so much importance on. Isn’t this particular group just one of several cult subsets of Mandalore culture that were part of the break up of their society?
@43 We don’t know exactly what happened to Doctor Pershing until we see him again. Maybe the machine takes short term memories but leaves intellect intact. Or maybe he is dead. Probably something in between those two extremes. Right now, all we have is a mystery. Not only what the Comms Officer was doing and why she was doing it, but how it ties in with Mando and his adventures.
@43/goddessimho: “As a side note: I find the entire “never remove your helmet” a somewhat stupid tennant to place so much importance on.”
A religious tenet against taking your helmet off in public seems no different to me from Muslim modesty rules about not exposing one’s hair or body in public — or nudity taboos in general, which vary from culture to culture. There are also Sikh rules against shaving one’s beard or cutting one’s hair. And many religions have dietary restrictions that make little sense to the unbeliever. It’s not about what the specific rule is so much as it’s about the piety demonstrated by following it.
And this is hardly the first science fiction culture that’s been depicted as having a taboo against exposing the face in public. The Thanagarians in the DC Animated Universe’s Justice League had such a taboo — Hawkgirl went through two seasons without revealing her face until her people ostracized her for betraying them, and being stripped of her helmet was a form of ritual humiliation. Before that, there was a 1989 Star Trek: The Next Generation tie-in novel, Masks by John Vornholt, about a culture with a taboo against baring the face in public. The Doctor Who episode “Cold War” established that the Ice Warriors considered it dishonorable to shed their armor except in extreme circumstances.
#43. I agree that the importance placed on removing the helmet is a hard thing to care about. The through line of the first two seasons, getting a child back to his people, was much more sympathetic and universal. Anyone from any culture would care about a baby in danger. That’s a given.
Hopefully, this season will work towards something relatable along those lines, and soon, because I am struggling to find interest in all this cult stuff. Mythosaur? Uh huh… still don’t care.
It would be like watching the Original Trilogy without Luke’s farm boy yearning and his later daddy issues. Not much to grab onto without it. The Jedi stuff ain’t enough by itself.
I can’t imagine that Katee Sackhoff is in demand enough to be too busy to act under the helmet.
@45 – in a fantasy setting, in Erickson’s Malazan books, the elite Segulah warriors never appear without masks.
@47/Austin: “I can’t imagine that Katee Sackhoff is in demand enough to be too busy to act under the helmet.”
Actors are always busy, even if they only have the one job. They have to spend hours getting their hair, makeup, and wardrobe done in the morning and touched up between scenes. They have to learn their lines and their staging. They have to do publicity shots and interviews. They have to spend time on the phone with their agents trying to line up more work. They have to try to get some desperately needed sleep between all that, and to go home and spend what little time they can with their families.
As a general rule in filmmaking, actors are rarely on camera unless you need to see their faces. If you see a shot of an actor from behind or from a distance, it’s probably their photo double. And by the same token, actors who play characters in face-concealing armor, creature transformations, or the like rarely perform inside the costumes. For instance, in Doom Patrol, Robotman and Negative Man are nominally played by Brendan Fraser and Matt Bomer, but as a rule, Riley Shanahan and Matthew Zuk do the respective characters’ physical acting and the marquee actors just do the voices. Fraser and Bomer only do onscreen work in flashbacks or fantasy sequences.
In this case, I might buy that it was Sackhoff under the helmet in an episode where we did see her face unmasked for at least part of it, like last week. But we didn’t see her face even once in this entire episode, which suggests that the episode was deliberately written so that they didn’t need to schedule Sackhoff for on-set work in this one. Better to let her spend the time with her family or whatever and just schedule her for an hour or two in a recording studio in post.
There were hints of two Imperial factions right from S1E1, where Mando accepted a dead or alive bounty and IG-11 was adamant that the terms of the bounty were clear – the asset was to be killed.
Pellaeon and Thrawn were separated at the end of Rebels. My money is on Pellaeon leading a rival faction to Gideon’s, and ultimately embarking on his own journey to find Thrawn.
If they’re looking to bring in more Legends material, this is the way
@49 – That’s all well and true. Well, except for maybe the makeup and hair stuff if you are just going to be wearing a helmet anyway. I imagine there’s no prep time necessary for that (other than costume fitting). But maybe some actors care whether that is their body on the screen or not. Maybe Sackhoff cares about the little subtle stuff like acting with just your body. In any case, I don’t believe a body double was credited (not that they have to be). At least, not that I saw.
It kind of bugs me that Pascal is able to skip out on actually being on screen, so I’m hoping that at least Sackhoff is at least the one acting out her part.
@51/Austin: “It kind of bugs me that Pascal is able to skip out on actually being on screen, so I’m hoping that at least Sackhoff is at least the one acting out her part.”
And I object emphatically to the notion that voice acting counts any less than onstage acting. It’s not like James Earl Jones ever wore the Darth Vader costume. And hell, Matt Lanter was a far better Anakin Skywalker than Hayden Christensen was. If anything, voice acting is harder to do well if you’re not trained for it.
As I mentioned before, suit acting is also a specialized skill that not everyone is trained for, which is why there’s nothing wrong with bringing in a suit performer good at conveying character and emotion through body language and mime. The goal is to create the best character performance possible, and there’s nothing wrong with that process involving more than one performer. It’s not like any actor is working alone — they rely on a whole team of makeup and costume and camera and lighting people, as well as the writers’ lines, the director’s guidance, and the editors’ choice of their best takes. It’s erroneous to think that the person whose face we see is the only one who counts.