Star Wars Megathread

[Syt]

Actually, I guess you can add Echo to the list, too.

Not sure how to place "Rothgar Deng", a background character from Rise of Skywalker:

Rothgar Deng, possibly operating under an alias, was a Corellian bounty hunter who, by the time of the war between the First Order and the Resistance, was old and experienced. In an attempt to live and work forever, Deng subjected himself to cybernetic replacements, and turned to black market surgical clinics to replace damaged body parts.

[...]

While no explicit connection was made, Deng's name, background, and armor resemble that of the bounty hunter Dengar, who similarly hailed from Corellia. The 2020 reference text The Star Wars Book provided further similarities, stating that Dengar became almost unrecognizable after undergoing extreme surgeries following the Galactic Civil War.

[celedhring]

Well, Vader is the OG of miraculous cybernetic survivals.

I found Shand's roboguts rather silly, tbf.

[Syt]

Oh, there's also the cyborg bounty hunter Valance who debuted in the 80s and was brought back recently:





In the old comics he was a former Imperial who was nearly killed in a Rebel attack. He "died" fighting Vader when he fell into a corrosive/toxic lake (nice Terminator parallel that predates Terminator by 3 years). For an anniversary he was recently "reactivated" for a Legends event; apparently he was only in stasis when he fell into the lake thanks to his cybernetics.

But he's made the transition to canon comics by now with a similar backstory (though he gets to meet Solo when they were in the Imperial military together).

[Syt]

Re: Fennec Shand, I wonder if she had her cybernetic parts before she was shot in season 1, based on all the sparks flying when she's shot which is something you usually see with droids:

[Syt]

Bit of a breather after the last few episodes, but an enjoyable action bit. Once more the Bad Batch realize that the political realities have quite changed for them and Omega's prodigy skills are presented again.

celed will enjoy Alexander Siddig being in this one, considering he's going through DS9 at the moment.

[Syt]

Looking up Raxus, since I had forgotten about it (it's been quite some time since I watched Season 3 of Clone Wars), this is what the separatist senate looked like. Looks slightly familiar. 

[celedhring]

I found the episode enjoyable, the walker scene was a very fun action sequence with the Bad Batch looking like the lean and mean fighting machine they are supposed to be. And having them help [spoiler]a separatist was a nice wrinkle[/spoiler].

I also caught Bashir's voice for the Senator. I wonder if that character will be back at some point.

[Syt]

Btw, after long hiatus I finally finished the first High Republic novel, set ca. 200 years before Phantom Menace. I enjoyed it. It's not exactly a deep story, and mostly and action romp, and I like the bad guys they've set up.

If I have any complaints it's that the pacing can be a bit weird, with a long action scene interspliced with other scenes, caused by the rather large amount of characters introduced. You have easily a dozen Jedi, plus four main villains, plus a bunch of secondary characters.

The second book of the trilogy is out, and it reviews well. There's other releases around it, too - there's comics (obvs), as well as kids and young adult novels. For some reason, the latter aren't available in English for me on Kindle, only paperback or Audible.

I've read one of the tie in comics, and does the annoying thing where it takes a character from the book and deals with the aftermath of what they experience in the story. If you read it stand alone it's still a decent Jedi/dark side/mild horror story, but you get thrown in with little backstory (what's Starlight Beacon, why is this character hurt and who is the other dead person they refer to, who are all these people?) would seem quite confusing. I guess I will check out the other material that's out before moving on to book two (you win this round, Disney!  )

On the whole it's nice to get into a setting that's in Star Wars, but not directly connected to the rest of the saga by characters and plots (Yoda is technically in there but so far there's been no focus on him). Kind of like The Old Republic setting, though much closer to "present day". (The planned show The Acolyte is going to take place at the tail end of this era and I guess kind of bridge the period between THR and Phantom Menace?)

[Syt]

Star Wars Visions, an anthology series (I guess something like Love, Death, and Robots, but [non-canon] Star Wars?), will debut September 22nd.

Some of the art previews makes me look forward to the fans melting down, with one side unhealthily obsessing over the below, and the other side going into a violent hate-fueled frenzy.

[celedhring]

What's your take on Disney apparently retiring "Slave I" as the name of Boba's ship? More than anything, this tells me they definitely want to turn Fett into a "good" character, which would kinda suck if you ask me.

Is the ship's name ever uttered in any of the cartoons/movies, btw? I'd say no.

[Syt]

It's a big shrug from me. I understand LEGO wouldn't want the name on their family friendly toy line, even though I guess most purchasers are adult collectors. I don't see them renaming it, though, as the name has been around for way too long at this point, though I guess Boba could rename the ship in story. Maybe it will be the Omega in the future.

As long as they don't bring back Slave 2, 3, and 4. Slave 2 and 4 below, I think 3 didn't show up in e.g. comics or so.

Slave 2:



Slave 4:

[Syt]

I'm reading From A Certain Point of View, a collection of short stories about background and secondary characters in A New Hope. Some of it is good, some funny, some meh, as these anthologies tend to be. It's canon status is ... questionable, I guess? The conceit is that every story is told by unreliable narrators.

The formal complaint by Motti about how, while he is a very tolerant person, it was completely inappropriate by Vader to proselytize for his religion during a professional meeting, e.g. was hilarious. As was the "Incident Report" filled out by a disillusioned Stormtrooper who ends up snapping and taking a Dewback and riding into the desert. Or how the officer who ordered not to shoot the escape pod got away with it.

What I did NOT expect, however, was a story about a fling between Stormtrooper TK-421 and an Imperial officer heavily implied to be Tarkin, told from the viewpoint of the mouse droid that Chewie screamed at.

[celedhring]

Bad Batch - [spoiler]Hera & Chopper[/spoiler] 

Interesting episode, given that Bad Batch & Omega play a very secondary role in it, with the twi'leks as the protagonists. I wonder if we'll get more of those as the show goes on. It was a nice change of pace.

They seem to have dialed up the twi'lek French accent too. I don't remember it being so strong in CW/Rebels.

[Syt]

I thought the episode was fine, but I've never been a big fan of the Ryloth stuff. Twi'lek accent are always all over the place. You have some with heavy accents, and others who speak generic American.

I did when [spoiler]Chopper's scope popped up[/spoiler], though.

Interesting tidbit that I forgot but that Star Wars Explained pointed out. [spoiler]In the novel Sith Lords which is set later and has Vader and Palps go to Ryloth, Orn Free Taa is alive and well. I thought it was weird that Cham Syndulla was arrested for attempted assassination, but I guess it makes sense if the senator lives.[/spoiler]

I look forward to the continuation of the story next week, though. I feel [spoiler]Cpt Howzer (the clone captain on Ryloth) will join the Bad Batch, because unlike other clones he seems to have retained his humanity.[/spoiler]

[Syt]

Btw, kinda looking forward to this (it's non-canon, like Visions):