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Delving into THE MANDALORIAN Chapters 15 and 16 with Jessika | 018
19 Plays9 days ago
Join Branwen and Seah as they deep dive into all things Star Wars. Follow along as we fly off exploring all the wonders and geekery of a Galaxy Far, Far Away, chatting nostalgia, worlds, lore, sound, music, story, behind the scenes, and much more with each other and some very special guests.
It's Season 2! This season, we're on a rewatch of The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett in the run-up to the release of The "Mandalorian and Grogu" in cinemas in May.
In our eighteenth episode we're very excited to welcome back the fabulous Jessika, who joins us as we jump into the final two episodes of season 2 of The Mandalorian, Chapter 15 "The Believer" and Chapter 16 "The Rescue". We talk about themes, performances, story details, lore drops, miniatures, the drama of Mayfeld vs Hess, the ISB, retro Imperial tech, Grogu's theme, of course the hero cameos, and much more. Watch out for our brand new segment "West End Geek Girls", which now has a little theme tune!
Sisters of the Force is a weekly, UK-based, Star Wars podcast, produced with joy and love by Seah and Branwen.
Follow us on Instagram @sistersoftheforcepod, Bluesky @sistersoftheforce.bsky.social, https://www.youtube.com/@SistersoftheForce, and www.facebook.com/sistersoftheforcepod.
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Transcript
Favorite Lines from The Mandalorian
00:00:15
Speaker
Hi, Branwen. Hi. What is your favourite line from The Mandalorian Season 2 Episode 7 and or 8? It's from Episode 7 and Boba.
00:00:26
Speaker
Oh yeah? Who doesn't have many lines, but he says, let's just say they might recognise my face. Which is such a beautiful line. It's like, it takes two seconds to work out and then it's like, oh, that's so good. Sia, what's your favorite line from Mandalorian Season 2, Episode 7 8?
00:00:49
Speaker
It's from episode eight and it's also Boba. And it took me a couple of times. I also had to pause it to write it down. ah oh Well, if that isn't the quactor calling the stiffling slimy. Guess what I was Googling this morning.
00:01:07
Speaker
I'm wiggling this morning. Quactor and stifflings. What they are. about Yeah, we'll get to them. We'll get to them. Let's get to them.
Introduction to Sisters of the Force
00:01:16
Speaker
You're listening to Sisters of the Force. And today we're here to break down Mandalorian chapters 15 and 16. Had to do some quick mental arithmetic there. Just trying to work out which one was it. Season two, episode seven and eight. Yeah. Yeah. Chapter 15, The Believer, and chapter 16, The Rescue. And we are very excited. are we excited, Sia? Because we have our first ever returning guest.
00:01:46
Speaker
Oh my God. It's Jessica. She's back. I may not have been able to claim first guest, but I got first returning guest. Thanks for having me back. yeah We're so happy to have you back. We so enjoyed talking Revenge of the Sith with you all those months ago. And it's awesome that you're back for these two episodes. Yeah.
00:02:09
Speaker
Very exciting.
Significance of Mando's Line 'I Yield, It's Yours'
00:02:10
Speaker
Are you not going to ask? We're going to ask, what is your favourite line? Sorry, it was so rude of me. was like, come on, you've got to be your lines. Come on, please. We do this every single time. Sometimes we forget. I'm like...
00:02:26
Speaker
we just forgot go on then what's your favorite line from season wait i gotta do the whole thing jessica what is your favorite line from the mandalorian season two episode seven and or eight it's from episode eight and it's by mando himself i yield it's yours That's such a deep line. just love it. He just doesn't care about the Darksaber. You have to win it in combat. I yield, it's yours. Just take it. I got my kid. Why do I care? Everybody else in the room is like, you can't say that. I did have, well, if that isn't the quactor calling the stiffling slimy written down for my favourite. was going to say, but
Humor and Dynamics Among Hosts
00:03:15
Speaker
luckily I had back up. She also flipped me off when I said it, but it's an accordion medium, so you can't tell. Yeah, but don't have to beat me this time. It was visual. I've just realized I've already done a bleep, so... Yeah, you did. We're in already. Right at the beginning. the influence I have, you know, the dark folk spreading. You just bring out all of the worst qualities that I have. All the swear words. Oh dear,
Rick Famuyiwa's Impact on The Mandalorian
00:03:39
Speaker
here we go. Right, so chapter 15, Believer, we've got Rick Famuyiwa back. He is amazing. He is such an awesome director and he directs quite a lot in season three, believe, as I remember. I'll look forward to that. No spoilers, I'm not there yet. Our lips are sealed.
00:03:57
Speaker
Yeah, it's an amazing episode.
Themes and Confrontations in Episode 15
00:03:59
Speaker
This is very serious compared to the rest of The Mandalorian, I thought. It is quite serious. Episode seven, yeah, it's very, very serious. It's got some real like heavy moments that yeah a lot of it's inferred, like Mayfield's conversation with the Imperial officer. You get the big details, thousands of people burned, but the tone...
00:04:22
Speaker
The callousness of the officer, Mayfield's regret on his face. it's Yeah, it's really, really... All of it. Really punchy. The acting between the three of them in that scene is just phenomenal. like it It's got those Andal vibes of like deeper Star Wars. Yeah, very like you say, loads of themes. It's intense. I love it.
Jessica's Background and The Art of Miniatures
00:04:43
Speaker
It opens on our favourite crane. Oh yeah, this is the crane that we had before on Trask, I believe. Was it in episode three of this season? Yes. I actually want to talk about that crane.
00:04:56
Speaker
Oh, you want talk about crane? Well, this is under my best bit you both missed.
Miniatures in The Mandalorian
00:05:00
Speaker
But I have to give you some background first because... something that i've noticed in the podcasts that have come since my first appearance is um you've been asking people what it is they do oh yeah and although i briefly mentioned having done some performance in the past and i don't know if i mentioned this when we were recording but i did say i felt qualified to talk about film theory because i did a fortnight of film studies once My main thing but I do is I make things with my hands. I sculpt sculptures, scale models, custom miniatures for games, some of which have sound and light features, entire sets for performance that have interactive elements. So I'm a miniature maker.
00:05:42
Speaker
And amazing miniatures as part of film is a dying art. Yeah. Like Star Wars, really that era, Star Wars, Alien, 2001. There's so much incredible detail in the space, in the vehicles, in the way that they move.
00:05:59
Speaker
I watched a wonderful documentary on the early Star Wars miniatures and and some of the more recent ones. And they had to film like Vader and his two TIE fighters are three separate films against blue screen. yeah And then the Death Star Trench is filmed separately. And then the layering is done.
00:06:15
Speaker
And in this documentary that I was watching, because I watched it partly to see if I could get information on more info on Grogu, but I had to look up more about Grogu because I'm fascinated by Grogu's animatronic and I'll gladly talk about him in episode eight when he's actually here. Yeah, he's not in this one. But this miniature documentary had um some stuff from Mando. I didn't realise that the Razorcrest was a miniature. Now, obviously, RIP, I've come in too late to talk about the Razor Crest because it's a pale mess. It's gone. But one of the other miniatures, and this is the, I bet you two didn't know this, is those cranes. Wow. They built miniature crane. Those cranes to sit in the background of, because it's one of their 360 degree screen filming shots, the scrapyard that Mayfield's in. But the crane itself in the background was a mini.
00:07:02
Speaker
And that's why it carries that bit of weight and has that bit of depth to it. Yeah. So yeah, that was my, the construction walkers and miniatures was the thing you didn't know. Bringing my own traditions to the podcast. i love it. I wonder if that one is the same one that they used in episode three of this season. I would assume so The clip they showed in the episode, in the documentary was specifically from episode seven.
00:07:25
Speaker
But now that you're mentioning it's been in earlier, I would assume they made it because they have to make all the animatronics and stuff before they begin filming. Yeah. Right. Of course, yeah, to make all the 3D stuff for the yeah volume and stuff. yeah Yeah. That's cool. It could have been like an adapted one. They might have just done a few little tweaks to make it look a bit different, you know, change it up a bit. Yeah. That's so interesting. You just wouldn't think that. You just like assume CGI always nowadays. And it's not the case. No. And it was annoying as hell because in the miniatures documentary, they called it a crane at-at. And was like, that's not... It's fine. It's fine. It's fine. We'll send some complaints along to the documentary makers. Oh, no, it was a behind-the-scenes chat. was someone involved with Mando that said, oh, yeah, we made a crane out that. And it's like, no, you didn't. No, you didn't. Yeah, but Jon Favreau's still saying Baby Yoda to this day, so.
00:08:23
Speaker
Yeah, not apparently.
Imperial Settings and Design
00:08:24
Speaker
Marvel Jon. Marvel Jon. Not helpful. We're not doing it. So we're the Carthon Chop Fields, which I'd never heard of had to look that up.
Origins of the Imperial Security Bureau
00:08:33
Speaker
But there's just gorgeous looking Imperial scrap everywhere. yes It's all beautifully aged and rusty looking. There's like bits of rusty TIE fighters and yeah all sorts around. It looks grim. We've got an Sentry which...
00:08:48
Speaker
The sound design of its legs is a little bit K2-ish. I've got this written down. My obsession with the visual language, the prison droid very much K2 with a different helmet going on. Yeah. yeah The way it's shot, like a really low angle. Yeah. Yeah. When we first see it, it could be like i was waiting thinking, I can't remember it being a k two it also reminded me a bit of you remember in are you clone wars watcher jessica i've seen bits i wanted to watch a few key arcs but i've not seen much of it i'm going to watch along while you're doing all the episodes later this year when we cover it because there's ah a kind of a a separatist droid called the t-series tactical droid which like oversee what the the b1s and the b2s and stuff are all doing and there's a few of them mentioned i
00:09:33
Speaker
I'm not sure if there might be one in Rebels at some point even. Anyway, they've got that same sort of thing. They're a bit top-heavy looking and they've got these kind of rectangular heads kind of thing. It wasn't. I went and looked up a picture of the Separatist droids and doesn't look exactly the same. But yeah, it's kind of a combination of... It's that visual language evolution, isn't it? it's like Yeah, we talked about that in our Avenger of the Sith. Yeah, it's something I'm obsessed with is that because Star Wars is such a dear property to fans and has been so well looked after by whoever's stewarding it yeah as a franchise, be it George or Kathleen or now Dave, like yeah the things that maintain fascinate me and the the things that evolve fascinate me and I love that there's that attention to detail going on.
00:10:18
Speaker
way outside of, you know, like, i assume obviously if it's someone who's heavily involved, like Dave Filoni, like, that he probably says, oh, I want this thing, or can we age up that thing? But like yeah when I watch Andor, it's still present in Andor, and I know Tony Gilroy was very much about the story he was trying to tell, not necessarily about like the mythos, the Star Wars details. So that's got to be someone in the production crew who's going, oh, do this, or make this look like that. And I just love that it's cared about that much, and that it makes logical sense. And yeah, that droid is a great example.
00:10:49
Speaker
I think we've got like Doug Chang, he's been there for so long, you know, and like he, well, from from before the prequels,
Imperial Uniforms and Design
00:10:57
Speaker
I think he might have joined Lucasfilm when making the prequels, but he's been leading the design stuff for so long and obviously understands George's original vision because it all still looks like a new hope, you know. so amazing how they've managed to do this for so long, 50 years of it. Yeah. Yeah.
00:11:15
Speaker
So, we're busting Mayfield out. Yeah, inmate 34667. I want a prison uniform with Arabesh numbers on to tell me what prison number I'm at. There's probably a BuzzFeed quiz somewhere like, what prison number would you be with? On the Carth and Chop Fields. If there's not, you can write it. If there's not, make one. You write it. The droid gives us a lovely little Robocop reference where he says, you have three seconds to comply.
00:11:43
Speaker
It's great, that. It's great. Nice. Mayfield does get an excellent line when they round the corner and he sees Bobber of, yeah you know, for a second, I thought you were this other guy. Brilliant. And then Bobber steps sideways and we get the flute and there we go. Yeah. Brilliant. He says something about the little green guy as well this kind of bit.
00:12:04
Speaker
Yeah. They've taken his kid, Fennec says, they've taken his kid. Oh, the little green guy.
Mayfeld's Humor and Redemption
00:12:10
Speaker
little green guy. Such a Mayfield line. This is where we first get to see a really good view of the the like rotating Slave I mechanics. The way yeah the inside shifts. From inside. Yeah. yeah While they're in the in the sort of hold bit, I guess it's in the hold because I don't think we've ever seen in the hold. We've seen in the cockpit before. Yeah.
00:12:32
Speaker
But it's so cool. i I presume they must have done this in the volume somehow because the camera's obviously locked with the actors but everything outside is floating around, which is amazing. I still think it's amazing that an iron can be made to fly so well. yeah It does look like an iron.
00:12:47
Speaker
An iron with little tiny wings. Tiny wings on it. Yeah. Well, that's like jetting out the steam or whatever. Right. I really love the background scrapyard noises before they get in. There's so much. Yeah. Like I've worked in like mechanic in places and and been around a lot of builds of stuff before. And it's very, it's very real. They've obviously not just tried to make it sci-fi. It sounds like what tearing ships apart would be. Again, i reminded me of Andor, how real Ferrix sounds. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, there's definitely a bit of a parallel with Ferex, I feel. Well, I wondered if they were filming or making this just after, because like you say, there's there's the feel of the episode, but there's also, there's at least like half a dozen mentions of the ISB in this episode. And I'm like, yeah yeah yeah they're so untalked about prior to Andor, like in know in supplementary we material, yeah like books and stuff. And I'm sure in the RPG, then they must have been a thing, but they're not in a lot of live live action. Okay.
00:13:44
Speaker
i think at this point. It's happening! You preempted the West End Geek Girls segment for this episode. Well done. You win the prize. one-way trip to ISB. We don't know what the prize is yet. So, famously, the ISB was originally a kind of product of the role-playing game. It's in the very first rulebook. I love that. I figured that out. There we go. There we In the original rule book in 1989 whatever it was, there's sort of example adventure at the end, just a little short thing to run with your players, you know, as you're learning the game. And within that, there's a character that's from the ISP, the bad guy. So the first mention of it is in that adventure.
00:14:33
Speaker
And there's a little chapter where it says, for the first time in decades, ancient speakers throughout the tunnels crackle to life. A grim, heartless voice announces, attention rebels, this is ISB officer Mar Barres, and so on. And that little tiny thing. That's where the ISB. Like spawned a massive plot line in Andor. It's wild. The guy who wrote part of that first book, you know, who wrote that adventure, he just can't get his head around the fact that he just came up with that little detail. Obviously, they expanded on it. And in the second edition of the role-playing game book, you get like a much more detailed breakdown. They brought out an Imperial source book with all just like details about all the different parts of the the Imperials. and There's a great bit about the ISP where it says...
00:15:17
Speaker
It was created to increase the emperor's knowledge of political events and as an intentional rival to the imperial intelligence, which is obviously another body, which I don't know that that's... I don't know that that's been touched They mention accessing military, requisitioning military forces in Andor when the ISB gets more over control, oversight, I should say. But they...
00:15:42
Speaker
I don't know if they've ever talked about military intelligence. No, I feel like in somewhere, whether it might be in one of the animated series or something, there was reference to like the ISB having a kind of competitor within the Imperial umbrella. A bit like the CIA and the FBI, I guess, that they both have their kind of jurisdictions and sometimes they cross over and you know there's a little bit of competition. I feel like maybe without spoiling stuff, the CX is not since season two, but I think there might be a mention of... something some other intelligence bureau in season two
00:16:15
Speaker
I think so. I feel like that. I mean, that's a very Palpatine move, like set two things up. um The whole Clone Wars is basically that. It's like, well, it worked once, keep don't fix it if they're broken. Don't fix it, just do it.
00:16:28
Speaker
And they do talk about that in in the rulebook, about like that this competition is what causes them to like be constantly trying to outdo each other. The ISB apparently has more public presence than the Imperial Intelligence, and the operatives...
00:16:41
Speaker
especially in surveillance, often identify themselves as members of the ISB because there's intimidation value in that. Like if they tell somebody they're from the ISB, it scares like Imperial officers or stormtroopers or whatever because they're just constantly being scrutinised. And yeah, nasty. woty I love that me i saying that might have the role play game got the the West End girls. I'm so happy right now. I'm fucking shocked. I was going to bring it up when it actually appears, when Mayfield starts talking about but we're nearly there anyway. We're nearly there. We're nearly there. when yeah there
00:17:13
Speaker
Because we're off on a side quest before we can do the main quest. I mean, a side quest isn't necessary. They don't know where Gideon's ship this is. This quest adjacent to the main quest. This very much Yeah, feels like it. They're off. We're going to Morak, which is very, I don't know how you feel about this or whether it's even appropriate to talk about it, but it felt a bit Vietnam-ish to me. Yeah. Like the fact that it's jungle-like and... Yeah, and you've got guerrillas fighting an imperial force. Yeah, exactly. And when they're passing by, we're jumping ahead a little bit, but when they're on the joggernaut and they're passing by like the shanty towns and it just looks like... the local population have been absolutely hammered by. It's a very similar shot looking out of their, their cabin to like this out of the helicopter shots in like a full metal jacket or now or whatever, like we're passing people who are just living their lives. yeah And even with tiny features like them carrying stuff on their heads, like people do in places where, you know, access to roads to push stuff along isn't so common. I agree with you. It made me think of, yeah, that sort of thing.
00:18:21
Speaker
I'm i sure that's intentional. Like George has said before, A New Hope was like it was written about wartime in general, but like obviously the the Vietnam War was just finished at that point. so yeah, it stands to reason.
00:18:34
Speaker
yeah So they get in this juggernaut and Mayfeld almost instantly starts kind of... irritating Mando into taking his helmet off. took The kind of banter... the Mayfeld is a bit of a banter machine in a way. Yes.
Action-Packed Juggernaut Hijack
00:18:50
Speaker
And yeah, he's very good at aggravating everybody.
00:18:55
Speaker
Yes. When they're stealing the juggernaut, there's an amazing bit where Kara takes out the two drivers on her own with her bare hands. yeah And the drivers have got their like heavy armour on. Why they need armour to drive juggernaut, I don't know. I mean, heavy. It gets broken by a stick. This is true.
00:19:14
Speaker
He tries to protect with it like it's Beskar and then looks at his arm like, oh oh yeah, I'm not wearing Beskar. This is true. It broke. Yeah, like, I know what you mean, Sia. He's talking to Mando a lot about his helmet. Yeah. yeah And taunting him, which he was doing. him, to get him to take it off. Which he was doing before as well. We've seen him do this before. But he's yeah he's doubling down in a way that's quite unpleasant. And going back to Kara again, just before they...
00:19:40
Speaker
Yes. Get going. Mando entrusts her with his armour, which I thought was pretty big. Yeah. Like, that's his life, you know. That's his whole kind existence. Yeah. yeah She has proved herself several times to him by this point. They've really connected, yeah. They've really made like a strong a strong bond. It shows how much he cares about Grogu. Yeah, yeah, this is it. Which this whole episode is. Yeah, yeah yeah exactly. Yeah, definitely. Some good foreshadowing. Mando's definitely giving Mayfield the silent treatment, though. Yes. He's not biting. I would too. Yeah. And this is where we really see that that desolation we were talking about. There's like trash along the side of the roads, which I don't know if that comes from the Empire, probably. And yeah, we go past like there's some kids that there's a sort of like mirror of Mando looking at himself as a child almost. We don't know much about where he came from.
00:20:32
Speaker
But it didn't look like a particularly technologically advanced place in those flashbacks that we've had. now So he may have a similar sort of background, which again is another parallel with Andor, seeing Cassian grow up on the planet where he grew up. Canari.
00:20:48
Speaker
Canari. Canari, that's it. Which again is like a low-tech sort planet. Yeah, well, they've been abandoned there after a mining thing, haven't they? Did you notice that the Juggernaut, it's an adapted version of the prison transport that Jyn is in Rogue One, and that is the same 10-wheeled vehicle that's then been updated from the clone vehicle from the beach in Kashyyyk in Revenge of the Sith? It's another one of me going visual language. It's a yeah wonderful. This 10 wheel off-roader that's been um an assault transport and then been used in various other transport roles and is still going as now a Rhydonium transport.
00:21:28
Speaker
yeah yeah Love Rhydonium mentioning as well. Love that stuff. It's a little bit of a coaxium in Solo, like the time pressure thing. Well, not the time pressure, but the like temperature thing. Yeah, not rocking it too much. Yeah.
Pirate Attack and Chaotic Settings
00:21:42
Speaker
It's a bit like Speed as well, the movie Speed with Keanu. Yeah.
00:21:47
Speaker
Similar vibes. But that's all going to get messed up because we've got some pirates turned up. Yes. As you do. Yuck. So we've got pirates, but then like that we've had this kind of little thing from Mayfeld about, like well, Empire, Mandalorian's all the same. Yeah. you're all And then he's kind of almost instantly proved right because other pirates, rebels trying to get rid of the Empire and they're now helping the Empire. like what Yeah, I was wondering about the pirates' motivation because they're trying to blow it up. like
00:22:19
Speaker
yeah If they'd been trying to steal it, That would have made sense. But you put a thermal detonator on top of one of these juggernauts and... I they were trying to keep it out of the hands of the Empire is what I thought they were up to. I figured they were natives and they were trying to dissuade the Empire from staying by making it too costly potentially yeah to bother getting the Rhydonium there. They clearly had a successful day because every other juggernaut was blown up. yeah yeah yeah Yeah. I mean, they did refer to them as pirates, but that might have just been...
00:22:47
Speaker
the assumption, you know, that they're Shidop, the race, which we haven't seen many Shidops. There's a Jedi that is a species that looks similar, and I can't remember what the name of that species is, that's got kind of like horns that come down, whereas these seem like soft things down either the side of their face, like these kind of tentacly things, yeah like miniature Leku sort of thing. yeah There's one in Gorin Shard's crew in the next season, the pirate that like camps out outside of the bar. And they turn up in Skeleton Crew as well. It's probably the same Pirates because there's a lot of crossover with Skeleton Crew and the Pirates from Mando. Okay.
00:23:26
Speaker
But yeah, they're not successful this They're successful, no. no Because they're facing Djarin. Is this the first time that we've had a blaster run out of ammo? No.
00:23:39
Speaker
well I can't remember another time. He clicks it and then throws it. And it stops. Yeah, yeah. And I was like, wow. We had a question about this in an earlier episode about, I think you asked, how do they work? And there was a thing about the role-playing game about Charge. Recycling energy charge. charge and the yeah I think we've had jammed blasters. Yeah, definitely. Definitely are jammed. Well, Karras does in the next episode, but yeah, running out of... Maybe not. I think he did better anyway without yeah without... Yeah, definitely. He's not really a blaster guy, is he? But it all leads to this rather hilarious thing of like cheering TIE fighters. Like Mayfeld does the whoop. The classic Star Wars whoop. And the TIE fighters even get a heroic rise of music. Yeah. There's quite a frantic tapping while Mando's fighting on top of the juggernaut with the flute behind it. It's quite like intense. And the TIE fighters get this like...
00:24:36
Speaker
Ta-da, the heroes of the fanfare. Yeah. Yeah. So weird. It's all very on its head. Yeah, yeah. It really makes you think, and it just does, again, feed that thing that Mayfeld was talking about. It's all you're all saying. But I like Mando's response to that because Mayfeld tries to use that to then tie he moves on to like, oh, you're breaking your rules when you're in a situation when you have to. Mm-hmm.
00:24:58
Speaker
Like whether the group in control has similarities, no matter its allegiance, when he tries to show that him and Mando have similarities, Mando's responsive. Let's get one thing straight. You and I are nothing alike. Yeah. and I guess what he's meaning is the motivation behind it. It may fail to break his rules for himself, yeah but Mando's breaking rules for Grogu. Yeah. And that's very different. Yeah.
00:25:19
Speaker
Mando's going through a massive character change since he met Grogu. Across the last two seasons, he's experienced a lot feelings he's probably never had before and he's made decisions that he would never make. He found out he was a Yeah, yeah. He didn't know.
00:25:35
Speaker
He's figuring all kinds of stuff out. And so somebody like Mayfeld is is questioning him and is making him question himself, which is yeah a great like technique of writing to to make a character question themselves by putting a really annoying antagonist in every sense of the word. It's just antagonising Lando.
00:25:55
Speaker
But then, so yeah, they've essentially completed an Empire mission for them. Yeah. And they're being like heralded as heroes. Yeah. And it's good to see that even in the post like Palpatine's first life um phase, that where they positioned their facility, the bridge going in, there is a ridiculous, massive, dangerous drop with very little guardrail. So let's do it here into the Imperial safety standards as mandated by Palpatine.
00:26:22
Speaker
I was very happy to see that it was upheld despite his his missingness. His not being there, yeah. Yeah, side the good, sticking to his principles. is a particular design feature.
00:26:32
Speaker
Yes, it is a design feature. Yeah. yeah like If you're not good enough to hold on without a rail, you better not work for the Empire, yeah. You're off.
00:26:43
Speaker
There's all kinds of cheering of like glory of the empire and yeah is all different types of Imperial officers and shore troopers. i was going to say, we've got the beachy style beige troopers, yeah like from Scarif. They have an individual helmet design. It's somewhere between a scout trooper and a storm trooper.
00:27:04
Speaker
I did wonder because I couldn't see a shore. I was like, is it less that they're for beach operations and more that they're a base trooper, whereas stormtroopers are units that can be assigned wherever you need more reinforcement? I wasn't sure. They were name checked as shore troopers in the captions, like I was watching my subtitles on. and he did name them as that and I think they were called that when Rogue One came out yeah i knew that for Rogue One but then I was like are they now because this is so many years later I was like are they just beige but yeah I did wonder where all the shore you know the beige uniforms had come from I don't know if you noticed as well, some of the worker guys in the Imperial base have the dome.
00:27:41
Speaker
like it's almost like a yeah hard hat, but with a flat brim. And it's the same worker hat that some of the guys on Ferrix wear. Yeah. Is that the one, there's a couple of guys on the roof, like operating one of the big heavy guns. And they're also on the Death Star. Yeah, the Death Star Gunner helmets. Yeah. Not those ones. No, it's more workery guys who are unloading the Rhydonium. They're just like background. They're not in Trooper armor, but they've got like a metalwork helmet.
00:28:07
Speaker
Oh, yeah. I know who you mean. Yeah. I know the ones. But yeah, I've got written down the Death Star Gunner helmets on the cannon crew, which is great. Yeah. Yeah, managed it. It was quite hard to find what they are actually called, but I think technically they're called Imperial Navy Troopers, which is a very generic sounding name. It's quite generic. They're manning big guns, naval guns, yeah. Kind of makes sense. There's quite a diverse range of Imperials here, which is quite interesting see all of these, like, I don't suppose we get to see them in context when they're not fighting rebels or whatever. You know, we're seeing them in quite a unique situation here. Yeah, yeah.
Mando's Helmet Dilemma
00:28:40
Speaker
Then they're off to the mess hall to go and see. Oh, gosh. This is where the stress begins. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This whole thing of, like, Mando having to decide to go in. Like, you can see him thinking, okay, I've got to do this. Yeah, yeah. And Mayfeld is not... He's not having it. feel like Mayfeld started to show his, like...
00:28:57
Speaker
I don't know. Cowardice. Well, partly that, but also like he is on Mando's side for some reason. like I mean, he's only doing this because he's been told to do it. He doesn't seem to have... He doesn't tend to have allegiances, does he? Yeah, but he does stand by Mando and he he rescues him multiple times in the next few minutes. Yeah. yeah Starting off with Mando. So Mando's going in. He's taking his helmet off. Yeah.
00:29:20
Speaker
Why is it that the Imperial scanner, like it's scanning his face? Yeah. Is he not flagged up somewhere? I wondered this, but i then I also had another thought about it. Because I wondered if you're scanning the face, surely that's an ID check. And yeah they'd notice that he wasn't Imperial and it would flag. But then I thought maybe it's not that. Maybe it is that they're just scanning the face to keep a record of who's asking for that information. Well, then Boba and Boba's great line that you said, bram win which I've written down as well. They're discussing who can go in. And he says that there's a scanner.
00:29:59
Speaker
The scanner goes with an ISB database. So if you're wanted by the ISB. So yeah you have to think there must be billions of Imperials. Yeah. So the scanner isn't going, are you an Imperial? Because it would take so long. The scanner is just going, are you wanted by the ASB? Yeah. right And no one's seen Mando's face for decades. so Yeah, that's true. And he probably wasn't on any records anywhere because he made... Yeah, he was so young when he put his helmet on. Yeah. yeah Yeah.
00:30:29
Speaker
Either way, he gets away with it and he gets the info, but then we hear Trooper. Yeah. And he doesn't know he doesn't know his TK number. Come on. Yeah. First first rule of infiltrating a base, give yourself a TK number. Yeah, yeah They've got all the like disguise yourself thing, which is the classic Star Wars thing. Put on Stormtrooper armor and get in there. Mayfell immediately saves the day.
00:30:53
Speaker
ah love that he mentions the Tanabe, which I presume is the famous Battle of Tanabe, which is where Lando Calrissian did some kind of manoeuvre, which is why he was recommended to lead the attack on the second Death Star. A little tiny. That's such a geeky little Easter egg. Such a nugget. I like that he refers to them as tank troopers. Stormtroopers get a slightly different designation, like scout trooper or tank trooper.
00:31:20
Speaker
yeah So he also says he's trying to talk their way out of this very tense situation. And he says they need to go and file TPS reports. yeah Which, have either of you seen Office Space? Yes. yeah Hello, Peter.
00:31:36
Speaker
What's happening? ah We have sort of a problem here. Yeah, you apparently didn't put one of the new cover sheets on your TPS reports. Oh, yeah. I'm sorry about that.
00:31:48
Speaker
I forgot. Yeah. I just love that film so much. I've seen it way too many times. And as soon as he said that, it really, it kind of jolted me a little bit. not going to lie. Wait.
00:32:02
Speaker
ah Partly also because the character Samir in Office Space is a good friend of mine, the guy who plays him, Ajay, who I've been trying to get him on the pod because he's also a Star Wars fiend. Come on, Ajay. Come and be part of our podcast. We need you on here. We need your TPS reports and your Star Wars knowledge.
00:32:23
Speaker
But yeah, i can't look at that guy without seeing Bill Lundberg now that Even though he's not the one that says about DPS reports, but yeah, dead funny. I mean, that could have been a Bill Burr ad-lib as far as we know. But however it got in there, I'm all for it. It's a non-Star Wars Easter egg and I love it. The guy who plays Hess, I meant to look up his name. So, question.
00:32:46
Speaker
Do we know anything about Hess or is he just a new character for this? new character i think he's just just a new character. okay His actor is very good at playing antagonising, annoying, grating.
00:32:59
Speaker
yeah he's I've seen him in a few films he's watching Mando from the minute they appear at the door to the mess like even before they've come in he's watching and you're just feeling so edgy it's like yeah when you're having to go somewhere that you're not sure whether you're supposed to be like all those feelings are like is that person watching me you know should I be here yeah Yeah, he's so good at that. And the way he talks, he's so like his Southern accent and he's very slow and like intentional, as all the best villains are. but Just awful. There's like these nasty rumble drones. I didn't notice loads of music in this episode, but this was one bit where I did.
00:33:38
Speaker
I need
Mayfeld's Confrontation with Past Actions
00:33:40
Speaker
to rewatch it to hear those TIE Fighter fanfares because like I feel that probably like did what music should really do in a film, which is it told me what to feel in a weird way, but I didn't notice it consciously. Whereas these rumbly drone things going on here. Oh yeah, this is that's yeah unsettling. Give me the heebie-jeebies.
00:33:58
Speaker
just Let's get a drink, brown eyes. yeah And Mando just looks so uncomfortable the entire time. just can't speak. He's me in any social situation. that's like Every time I've been somewhere where there's anybody I don't know, I'm basically Pedro in this moment. Well, clearly the solution is to shoot everyone in the room. Yeah, yeah. And then help me back on.
00:34:20
Speaker
Clearly. The Operation Cinder is kind of the mic drop, I think. Oh, gosh. It's Mayfeld. this point, he's kind of starting to antagonize Hesse on purpose. And I think we begin to realize that even though he is ah an he does not like the Empire. No. He kind of gets a bit of redemption here, doesn't he? Big redemption. Especially by the end of the episode. Yeah, by the end of it, yeah. But he's starting it here because he's definitely like, well... There's a couple of lines before Hesse says to the Empire and he shoots him.
00:34:51
Speaker
And there's this sort of look of like, it's him agonising over like, can I actually let him live? yeah Like he's bragging about Cinder. Like maybe Cinder was when Mayfield walked away from the Empire. Yeah. I mean, I feel like a lot of ex-Imperials at this point, even those in prison, there's a trilogy of books called The Alphabet Squadron. I think we've we've talked about them before on the pod, but they're about, well, one of the main characters is an ex-Imperial who was at Operation Cinder and she, it it turned her, you know, it just made her realise. And I get the feeling that Mayfeldt
00:35:26
Speaker
despite all his big talk and everything, I feel like he possibly experienced that too. The fact that they actually brought up the Operation Cinder, as a note, it's an awful atrocity that happened across the galaxy on multiple planets. And if you're on the front line in those situations, it's going to do something to you. Yeah. But yeah, it all kicks off. Yeah. Yeah. yeah So it kicks off and here is my favourite music cue of the episode.
00:35:55
Speaker
So as it kicks off, they're shooting their way out. Yeah. And we get this like amazing synthy stuff happening in the background. Yeah. And I wrote down that it's it's really similar. It reminded me, it's not similar, but it reminded me of that track Confusion that's in Blade.
00:36:14
Speaker
Yeah. It happens to be my shower song. yeah It's a great one. Exactly. It's my shower song. If I can get in and out of the shower and brush my teeth and get ready. It's about eight minutes long. Yeah, exactly.
00:36:31
Speaker
can I just ask what liquid you use to shower in? The inner workings of sea spraying. You do not want to know. i mean, I'm pretty goth, love. Like, I'm keen. I'm all sunshine and roses, man. Apparently not in the shower. Just keep her the bathroom and you'll be fine.
00:36:51
Speaker
but ah Jessica's just experienced my yeah meeting of Kylo Ren outside the bathroom again this time. forgot he was there. i was washing my hands when I turned around and he thought, oh God.
00:37:05
Speaker
If you haven't seen Sears' life-size Kylo Ren, go back in our real Sun Insta and you'll find him. There's a reel of him. At some point along this way, we get Mayfeld saying, you did what you had to do. I never saw your face. Yeah, which is brilliant. Again, like a nice, like, oh okay, Mayfeld's not as bad as we thought he was necessarily. He's actually, is on side. The moment just before he shoots Hess, I don't know, I'm going to assume you've both seen Django Unchained. Yes. yeah It reminds me so much of the moment that... um
00:37:37
Speaker
ah Christoph Waltz's character, the dentist, yeah is like, I have to shoot Leonardo DiCaprio at this point. like There's just this look of apology to Django and it's the same face that Mayfeld pulls
Escape from Imperial Base
00:37:50
Speaker
to Gin for like half a second before he sees the trooper behind and then he does this lovely little lean back in the chair, shoot across the chest. It's great. Yeah.
00:37:59
Speaker
yeah Love it. Then we're off. Escaping. The waterfall thing gave me terrible vertigo. I'm not a good vertigo person. And it was not too bad when they first went out then, but then a couple of troopers fall off and you get that classic overhead shot of them falling down. It's like, There's a moment just before they get onto the waterfall where the troopers who are investigating all the shooting, one of them says, and it's through the stormtrooper vocalizer. Oh, yeah.
00:38:26
Speaker
and the the line is delivered in the same like pacing he says hold it right there yeah just like it's a line from a new home it's literally like there's one of them hold it right there yeah i love that they use that same uh what what would it be called where you put someone's voice through the same filter yeah yeah so save and filter filters yeah yeah yeah And I just love that it's it'll obviously a different actor delivering the line, but it's just like, oh, I know that line. I know that voice. There's a few of them in the next episode as well. Yes, I've got them written down. And we were talking about it in the episode where they take out the base on the Varro as well. It's like yeah if you play the Star Wars first person sort of shooting games like Jedi or Fallen Order and so on, they're all in there. and yeah they just keep reusing them the same ones even when stormtroopers are having just casual conversations not in combat they've still got some of the same lines like it's a very typical thing that stormtroopers they've obviously been conditioned to like only use to only talk in a very specific in these particular phrases yeah yeah We get a genius rescue
Boba Fett's Seismic Charge
00:39:30
Speaker
by Boba, which was kind of set at the beginning. He swoops in.
00:39:35
Speaker
Mayfeld has that amazing retributional moment of blowing with the sniper rifle. It was sort of a spontaneous decision, I think. He just sort of like grabs the rifle. You're not having it. Well, it's in response to Hess saying yeah the amount of Rhydonium we've got, we can cause so much more havoc. So he's like, yeah absolutely not. having it. Yeah. Yeah. And then when it's flying off, yeah we get the seismic charge. The return of the seismic charge. all love it. Honestly, when I signed up for these two episodes to come and do the podcast, I completely forgot what see episode seven was. I was like, oh yeah, episode eight, I need to be there. then I started watching the episode and the last week and I was like... Yeah. This is a real prequel. And then I completely forgot till I saw Fett press the button and then you see it loading and I was like, oh, you we go ah it's going to make that noise. yeah
00:40:30
Speaker
So cool. so One of the best weapons in all of Star Wars. 100%. It's undeniably the best sound design as well. It's super cool. They've got a long way to go to the top. sounds Just as good in atmosphere it does in outer atmosphere. out yeah Cara and Mando talking to him. I loved that.
00:40:51
Speaker
I just loved it. Mando immediately picks up on it. He's like, what? yeah Is this what's happening? The line is just delivered perfectly. yeah You know, it's too bad Mayfield didn't make it out alive back then. Whilst not looking at him like, I'm gritting my teeth, but you did the right thing. Awkward.
00:41:10
Speaker
And yeah, like you say, Mando is straight on it. Like, yeah, shame. Yeah, shame. Off you go. Slave One takes off and we get a circle wipe, which is a kind of classic. Yes, classic-y. Star Wars thing. And this little epilogue with Alia Kane again. love that character. She's amazing. is that Katie O'Brien?
00:41:28
Speaker
Yes. The the actress. the yellow Like the communications officer. She's incredible. One of my favourite actresses in so many good things. Absolutely phenomenal. I was so glad to see her have more of a part. like Because she only had a very tiny part the first time we see her. And each time we see her, it gets a bit more and a bit more. And then we get that whole episode in season three, which I'm so looking forward to. It's all right. We're not there
Mando's Message to Moff Gideon
00:41:50
Speaker
enough. And we get Mando's holocall, which is like, it reminds, it's so almost like Mando's just watched the Taken movie series. He's like, he means more to me than he will be back with me soon. It's like you're channeling some Liam there. Yeah, but it's a direct quote from what Moff Gideon said to him in the last episode of season one. It's word for word, pretty much. Yeah. Of course. But obviously that the meaning is now completely. Yeah. Completely opposite.
00:42:16
Speaker
Did you to notice, I know you've mentioned before the beautiful concept art in the credits. yeah Yeah. Did you notice how different the plot must have been when they did that concept art for this episode? No, I wasn't paying attention this time around. Mando is in his armour when they hijack the Juggernaut.
00:42:33
Speaker
There's a shot Bilbo in the Imperial armour helping him in. And there's another shot that's amazing that's inside the base. It's Fennec and Kara back to back firing their rifles with Imperials all around. And it's like they must have decided this was going to go different. Yeah. Yeah. It's really interesting. yeah They might have been saving that knowing that they're going to have that in episode the next episode. Yeah. Yeah. yeah oh that i know i didn't notice that i need to pay more attention to those i think i sort of like the first time around i soak them up so much because i love them but then on rewatches i've not paid so much attention which very bad i also don't pay enough attention to those i go right come on next episode you also skip the recaps though i
Concept Art and Alternative Plots
00:43:20
Speaker
do skip the recaps i know i get told off which is very naughty of you
00:43:25
Speaker
Yeah, but the first time I watched this was two weeks ago. you know. No, you don't have The only reason I don't is because sometimes they show something from ages ago that I've forgotten. Yeah, it's like, oh, right, that's what we're going be doing. It sort sets you up for what the episode is going to be and helps you to kind of pay attention.
00:43:42
Speaker
Like when things happen, it's... I don't know, you feel like you're more in the zone already kind of thing. I don't know. yeah I think the further a series, a show goes on the more those recaps are useful. yeah Yeah. Like by season three of Mando and they're mentioning brief moments from season one in the recap. It's like, oh. Yeah, then you're like, oh yeah, I need that. Yeah.
00:43:58
Speaker
Well, when I get there...
Intensity and Music in Chapter 16
00:44:00
Speaker
ok We will be seeing. I'll stop skipping the recap. for Four more episodes of this to go. Four more weeks and we'll be there. We'll be there. Chapter 16, The Rescue. Oh my God, it's on. Directed by Peyton Reed. Did he direct one earlier in this season? I can't remember. I feel like he did. Name sounds familiar. Name does sound familiar. Yeah.
00:44:22
Speaker
He's not somebody I'm super familiar with, but he does a pretty awesome job of directing this, I feel. This one, yeah. Especially all the like the action stuff, the combat and stuff is amazing. There is a lot going on in this episode. Yeah, yeah. It kind of doesn't stop. It's pretty much non-stop. It's all one thing.
00:44:39
Speaker
Yeah. ah Well, apart from the bit at beginning where they have to go and do their last bit of recruiting. Yeah. Yes. Which I kind of love. Yeah, I do. Like there's a whole element to that, like the ion cannon and how surprised they are when they get shot with it, even though that's a weapon we've seen used a lot. Yeah. Like, but normally a much bigger, like boob gun form on hot. Yeah. They look like very big boobs with a cannon coming out.
00:45:09
Speaker
And I love that the pilot, the guy who executes the co-pilot and holds Dr. Pershing hosted, he's a true believer. He is really into the Empire. I do wonder how he got off the Death Star between Alderaan and Yarvin. Yeah, quite. Was there just like shore leave arranged on the way that he went and got? Maybe. like I
Dr. Pershing and Clone Engineering
00:45:30
Speaker
mean, they often had like little TIE fighters, squadrons flying around. Flying off. I mean, when the Falcon first arrives, there's that like fighter that appears that they follow to the Death Star. Yeah. so
00:45:41
Speaker
So every chance could have been sent out on a mission as a pilot, you can be caught up at any moment. Yeah, He might have been like yeah flying around trying to fight rebels and then be like, oh, the base is gone. um Maybe he was in the Death Star Trench. He might have been in the Trench Run, like one of Vader's. think everybody died in the Trench Run who wasn't Luke and Vader's TIEX one.
00:46:00
Speaker
yeah I think so. He learns very quickly not to bait Kara, though. Yes. I mean, he says some awful stuff, like destroying your planet was a small price to pay to rid the galaxy of terrorism. like Yeah, wild. That's awful.
00:46:15
Speaker
He confirms, I think we already knew this, he says this is a clone engineer when he's talking about Pershing. Yeah, yes. Which I think we already kind of knew. But again, it's like every time we get a little... confirmation about this whole cloning backstory, which is obviously really important to the whole of Star Wars.
00:46:32
Speaker
I meant to mention Slave 1's blasters at the beginning yeah when they're chasing the shuttle. Such sound. I mean, we've heard them before, but I think there's something about the proximity of this. I don't know. And his targeting computer as well. The sound design of that is all very edgy and like slightly distorted, very top-end-y. Yeah. Which is kind of suits Boba, I feel. I don't know.
00:46:58
Speaker
Great. We love it. I love how increasingly through this first sequence we find out how Pershing is not a believer. Like he's doing his job. I mean, he's one of those classic, like, he's a scientist, but we never really find out where his loyalties truly lie. And what he's up to. Yeah. He's a very interesting character in that way. Yeah.
00:47:20
Speaker
There's a big orchestral version of the Mando theme in the credits at the beginning. It's like the biggest version yet with yeah everything is playing in octaves, playing the main tune. It's just massive sounding. Massive, massive music. Which sort of cues us into like, this is a big episode. And little did we know how big of an episode this was the first time round.
00:47:40
Speaker
No idea whatsoever. The best kept secret in Star Wars. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. So Slave One lands on La Fette, I think you pronounce it, which I've never heard of. It's a little planet with a bit of industrial stuff going on. And we head into yet another cantina. Yeah.
00:47:56
Speaker
He just lives in bars in Star Wars. They do, don't they? Only on the rewatch did I notice Bo's Starfighter parked outside the gauntlet Starfighter, which is the big, with the kind of swivel up wings, which you see a lot of yeah in Clone Wars and Rebels, but I didn't notice it. I have admit, until this watch, and I was like, There it is. I like when they leave and the Lambda shuttles part there as well, the contrast between the two, because they both got the swing wings. Mando, obviously they rotate in the Z axis and the Lambdas rotate in the X. And yeah, like it's just really interesting, the contrast of the two upward facing wings. Amazing design in both apartments. But yeah, there's a lot of interesting stuff about Mando's
Bo-Katan's Motivations
00:48:40
Speaker
Again, as soon as Bo-Katan comes on screen, it's like, you know, you're going to get some little bits of lore. She says something about drop not all Mandalorians are bounty hunters. yes Some of us have a higher purpose, I think she says, which... Yes, she does. Here's season two three. i love Fett and Coska's little confrontation. Oh, so good. Little sidekick brawl that had your lines, Sia, which I did have written down. Yeah. know So good. It's initially like a banter brawl and then it turns into an actual physical brawl. A physical one, yeah. I like that their flamethrowers cancel each other out. It's quite like... Cosca does not mess about. She is quite serious. I think she's like beating Boba and Boba's no easy opponent. I mean, he's past his prime. Maybe. She's obviously right in hers. I found it interesting when Bo-Katan mentions like, oh, don't you mean your donor?
00:49:35
Speaker
Yeah. And I was like, so like obviously Django must have been known of, Boba is known of to some degree, but is it not known that Boba isn't he's He's a pure clone. He's not a... He's an unaltered, yeah. I was almost like, does she not know who he is? Yeah. Like, she's like, oh, you're just a clone wearing Wando armour.
00:49:55
Speaker
I think she does know who he is. I don't know if she comes in contact with him in the Clone Wars, possibly at some point. We'll have to find out. Yeah, it's on the schedule. We'll have to dig through. Even though he's a an unaltered clone, he's still a clone. you know he's still yeah yeah She's still right in terms of the donor thing. He's not a naturally birthed child of Django. He's he's been created. yeah But he was also raised by Django. Yeah.
00:50:23
Speaker
I feel like within the Mandalorians across the board, there's skepticism about Boba for whatever reason and Jango. think they resented them doing whatever they did, you know, the whole bounty hunter thing. She obviously made that dig about bounty hunters earlier on.
00:50:38
Speaker
I don't know how many Mandos have been bounty hunters other than Din and Jango and Boba. Can't think of any them. I'm sure. We haven't seen any. So and I feel it's not a very Mandalorian-ish. It's not very honourable, is it? No, although like the armourer doesn't seem to care.
00:50:54
Speaker
but No, she's pretty chill about it. But that's for the good of the cult. I mean, they the covert. yeah Yeah, yeah. He's bringing back the bacon, yeah, for for the foundlings.
00:51:06
Speaker
and We do get a bit about the darksaber that won't cut through Beskar. Foreshadowing. Foreshadowing. We're going to find that out. I like how this scene when he first says he's he's looking for Moff Gideon and she's like, oh, you won't find him.
00:51:22
Speaker
And then he's like, oh, well, we know where he is. It's almost the start of her believing because she's like, oh, yeah, ah I could get the saber. And then there's only like a few steps yeah till I get what I really want. Yeah, exactly. And this conversation really tells us everything we need to know for season three. It's setting up that big story of, spoiler alert, of like, Bo-Katan and her what her needs are, what her like motivation is generally in life.
00:51:51
Speaker
And it feels like she and Cosca are just sitting in this random diner on a random industrial planet somewhere, probably in the Outer Rim. Mm-hmm. She's not actually doing much about it, but she just needed a little bit of a prod and this prospect of capturing a cruiser that might actually be useful in her kind of, yeah, background tasks
Dark Troopers and Technological Threats
00:52:10
Speaker
that she's got in mind, which is pretty cool. Yeah. When they're talking about the plan, I think they're back on a ship at this point. I'm not sure. Plan time. Yeah, they're on the lander. Katie Sackhoff does an amazing job of looking at a hologram. Like, I see so many actors, because obviously holograms are going to be a CGI thing. And the actor's got to look at it and maybe put their hand in it, like um Robert Downey Jr. when he's playing Iron Man in the Marvel movies. And he's like... using Jarvis in, I think it's in Age of Ultron or something. And like, they obviously have to do a lot of work of like looking at and interacting with holograms. Yeah. But yeah yeah, just watch that scene again. She just does such a good job. Like her eyes are focused in the right place because you'd think you wouldn't really notice, but you kind of do when it's not right. Yeah. Sorry, just a tiny little actory thing. Little actory thing. Yeah. I like it.
00:53:01
Speaker
We've got Pershing spilling his guts. He definitely doesn't. He's definitely an old believer. He's just telling them everything they need to know. tells them all about the Dark Troopers, that they're not people anymore, that they tried a few times. But version three, which is what we're about. The weak point was the human. Yeah.
00:53:16
Speaker
Get them out and them destroyed. yeah Which has gone full circle because in the Clone Wars, Palpatine was seeing which is better, clones or droids. And, yeah okay, I'll use the clones. They're better.
00:53:27
Speaker
And we've now gone full circle to put in a droid inside a clone's armour. Quite interesting. Yeah. yeah Or even more so, droids to clones to non-clones, like people. To humans. Not that clones aren't people, but you know what I non-clones, and then back to droids. And he tells them they take a few minutes to power up, which I find hilarious. but Yeah, yeah.
00:53:50
Speaker
They're an energy drain. They take a few minutes to power up. They're just like my laptop. Yeah. And he shows them where they are. He's just like... Yeah, he's desperate. He's like, how much more can I help? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Doesn't really do him any good in the long run, but hey. No. Maybe it does a little bit.
00:54:08
Speaker
Kara drops the Pellimoto line, those dark troopers are going to be a real skank in the scud pie. Yes. And I looked up scud pie on Wikipedia and it just said, the scud pie is a type of pie. Yeah. Oh good, thanks Amazing Cheers I never have figured that thank you Wikipedia Thank you Wikipedia for doing that We've also got the plan, as they're going through the plan and then they're ready and Boba's got another one of my other favourite lines which was power up those shields princess I'll put on a good show I love the hyperspace pursuit I love them both being in the same lane so that they can pop out together. I bet Vader wished he was able to do that in Rogue One. Yeah. Getting there quick.
00:54:58
Speaker
I mean, I think technically he could have because they do it a lot in Rebels. And I don't know if I've seen it in Clone Wars, but definitely Rebels they do it And there's all sorts of other stuff with... beings that live in that move in hyperspace I think it's about how quickly you enter the lane behind the other one isn't it as to whether you'd still receive them in hyperspace yeah it's great so I think it happens in Star Trek in like warp they can do it yeah's yeah one of the JJ ones there was ah an Enterprise that could catch up with the other Enterprise in warp and shoot it in the warp which a lot of purists did not like
00:55:32
Speaker
No, mean, it is the whole hyperspace slash warp science is all very theoretical. And Seth calls it jump space.
Hyperspace Travel Dynamics
00:55:40
Speaker
He says we're about to drop out of jump space, which I found really interesting. Oh, did he? Oh, I didn't notice someone that one. Which makes sense. They talk about hyper jumps. They talk about, they use the words fairly interchangeably, but it's like, I wonder if that's a Djangoism that he's picked up. Maybe that's something how it used to be referred to. from I don't know. It's and another instance of our like two words for the same thing. We're going to
00:56:06
Speaker
publish them all day. We'll be doing analysis watches of the podcasts to then note down every time. We're going to break down this podcast episode.
00:56:18
Speaker
my God, that's getting far too meta. Jessica, lean back for me. I was going to stand up at the right moment, going do it now.
00:56:27
Speaker
For those of you who can't see, which is everybody listening, Jessica's wearing an amazing Sisters of the Force tank top, which I'm so here for. Yeah, it's very nice, very comfortable. I think that's the first and only Sisters of the Force tank top, that you are unique While we're in hyperspace, we get like this contrast between the Slave I hyperdrive, which is kind of quite gritty sounding. It's almost like um a motorbike or something, very light edgy, just like the rest of the sound design for Slave I, with the really, really smooth Lambda-class shuttle, which has this just like hyperspace. It's really beautiful. Well, those the shuttles are really good for flying casual.
00:57:10
Speaker
Oh, dear. just can't stop. I'm sorry. I'm This is why we have you on here. Yeah. It wears off after a while, the fun. never doesn't We get brilliant tension music when they drop out of, I suppose. like We're now into the episode proper. Aliyah Cain is deploying fighters. Obviously, her role as comm officer means you're in control. She also deploys the TIE fighters. Yeah.
00:57:37
Speaker
Gideon's theme, which we've mentioned previously, of like this kind of distorted 808 bass drum thing, yeah it's now fully orchestrated. Yes. all sorts of low instruments are playing it as they launch the TIE Fighters. I did say that scott ah ah the sound design of the TIE Fighters, which obviously is cool, but now like the score underneath is also yeah massive and very cool. I'm loving Gideon's theme. It's really...
00:58:06
Speaker
There's also a move in, blast them very soon after that. Over there, blast them. Freeze, drop your weapons. Yeah, they're both in there and it's brilliant.
00:58:17
Speaker
The deck officers really panic just before they come in. like They're coming in hot in the shuttle and he's just like, whoa, whoa, whoa. whoa hanic He does not know what to do. The shore landing reminded me of a few moments when Starbug landed particularly badly in Red Dwarf. Oh, yeah, yeah. Like the way it clangs off the walls. I was like, We've seen this. Gideon's not messing about as soon as he sees them.
00:58:43
Speaker
like We've got this team of absolute badass women. It's the best. I've never seen such an awesome ensemble of like warriors. And yeah, Gideon's like activate the dark troopers. He's not messing about.
00:58:56
Speaker
And this is my favourite musical cue at this point, which is not even
Dark Trooper Activation and Sound Design
00:59:00
Speaker
really, don't know, is debatable whether it's a musical cue. You just get this like cluster of strings all dissonant. Ooh. composer or ludwig or the arranger or whoever just told the strings all play whatever note you want like in between it's just terrifying we hear it again a bit later on but this is the first time we hear it is this the the noise as they're powering up yeah yeah because to me i've written down dark troopers activate to dubstep Dubstep, yeah. yeah but They are dubstep troopers. There's a pair of producers called Excision and Downlink who yeah me and my friends used to talk about how they made dubstep that sounded like robots either fighting or yeah beat me. um and It's like that. It's like they've channeled that type of dubstep, which makes so much sense because it's fighty robots powering up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, yeah, yeah it's great. And like you say, it comes back when they re-board and when they're marching to the bridge and when they face Luke outside the bridge. There's elements of it there too, and I loved it. Yeah. Dubstep troopers. There's so many different blaster noises as well in this episode. Yeah. When the girls are going through fighting, yeah there's like a point blank one that's so loud. I was like, I know that blaster noise. I've only used it once, and i was like, I don't know where I know it from, but...
01:00:19
Speaker
Yeah, really love it. It's so much fun. And we get the Imperial Siren. Yes. only inside the Dark Troopers' chamber yeah yeah where they're stored. It's not actually going off anywhere else. Yeah, which is really weird. like they Maybe they need it to hype them up, you know, yeah yeah to get those drones. They need their dubstep, they need their dissonant strings, and they need the Imperial Siren. strings and dubstep.
01:00:44
Speaker
There's a little move that they both do where they're, when they get confronted by the stormtroopers and Bo-Katan and, uh, Cosca jump off the bridge. Yeah. And then when the stormtroopers come in behind, they're like, ah, we were here all along. Bang, bang, bang. Yeah. It's really so good. It's like a night owl special. Yeah. Yeah.
01:01:03
Speaker
When we cut back to Mando and he's making his way, he's a bit like the Obi-Wan creeping through the Death Star sort of thing. yeah The music is just solo recorders playing his theme. It's like the absolute contrast of everything else about this episode, which is all throw everything at it, the entire orchestra and dubstep.
01:01:21
Speaker
But when it's Mando, it's just solo flute, which is reflecting his stealth mission that he's on, stuff which is very different from from the women who are like all out, like you say, all different blasters.
01:01:33
Speaker
I just wrote down Girl Squad. That's all I have in the note for that. I've written it several times. Kara's gun jamming and she's like, Dankferrick, son of a mudscuffer. And then she just starts using it as an axe. Yeah, and this is one of my, I have two annoyances in this episode. Okay. And this is one because that is how you ruin a gun. It's a delicate item. Don't start using it like a club. No wonder it breaks on her all the time. It's like, love, take a breath. We do know in Star Wars that you have to hit things, though, to get them to work. mean, Han Solo with a millennial falcon. Yeah, ship consoles, maybe. I'm not seeing anyone get, like, this is the first time I've seen a gun come back to life from being banged against the floor.
01:02:19
Speaker
Yeah,
Mando vs Dark Trooper Showdown
01:02:20
Speaker
that's true. i'm not I'm not into it. As someone who's like, i've I've been around firearms before and I know about firearm discipline and that's not what you do. That's not what She is a bit of a firebrand though. She doesn't miss about. Did you notice that Din's um stealth mission only succeeds because stormtrooper helmets have terrible peripheral vision? Yes. He hides behind these pipes and it's like, see oh no, they can't see a thing past here. Like, they've got their little diamonds. Oh, fuck. He meets his match with one dark trooper. That's kind of enough. The moment it opens the door and you get the eyes, it's so menacing.
01:02:57
Speaker
Brutal. And like it just punching him again and again and again. Yeah, so hard that he's going into the wall. head is going into the wall, yeah. But his whistling birds have been restocked. yeah You mentioned this before about how many there are. many They've been restocked at this point. I think this is the third law, yeah.
01:03:14
Speaker
Although Gideon does say, you've fired your one and only salvo later, as if he's clued in on, ah, you can't carry infinite with some birds. They're all very well, these things, but yeah. The only thing that saves him, of course, is the spear, which we knew it would be a key weapon in this attack. Can't cut through Beskar. Straight into the neck of a dark trooper.
01:03:34
Speaker
yeah The spear is the other thing that I have and a slight annoyance about. you two know, I'm assuming with your extensive sound experience that you know, of the term audible sharpness? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. know how when a sword is unsheathed in a movie, it makes a shling noise? So if again, if you've been around swords, that doesn't happen because you don't have a scabbard made of metal because that would want the sword. But this is a trope that has developed in cinema because when they have tried to have films without that noise, audiences don't like it.
01:04:10
Speaker
They need to hear the noise of the sword in the air. So it's this labeled audible sharpness, which I sign find so funny. It's like, yeah. yeah And his his spear does it when he puts it back under his overalls, which again, I'm like, there's no best car there unless you've accidentally stabbed your jetpack. That's not the thing. it only grates on me because I know it's not real. It's added.
01:04:34
Speaker
So are you having flashbacks? I'm having flashbacks. We have a whole folder of swords. Oh, yeah. Which we didn't know is called audio sharpness, but now we do. Yeah, I only learned that at uni. i Did you? I didn't know it. So I'm very happy to learn a new audio sound. Thank you, Jessica. I've got that folder somewhere. We've got a whole folder that's just, we were just playing with different metal sounds, trying to make swords, knives. sounds, yeah. we' were making a horror film that yeah it has a bit about cutting in it. And we were making the theme tune to the film and we wanted like percussive samples to use in the theme tune. The song came first, didn't it? Didn't we make the video? Yeah, we made, well, we wrote the song at the same time as I was writing the film. Okay. So was all like a combined All the thing, yeah. It was like a music video short film. Short film thing, yeah. yeah
01:05:27
Speaker
We just raided the shed. Your dad was quite bemused by the whole thing, I think. Yeah. I love that. He was just in the shed with all these microphones. He just left us alone.
01:05:41
Speaker
Having said all of this, and I do take your point about the kind of inaccuracy of audio sharpness, I do love the sound design. I guess it's when
Confrontation Between Gideon and Mando
01:05:50
Speaker
ah Mando's fighting...
01:05:52
Speaker
Gideon in a bit yes and it's like dark saber on Beskar yeah yeah I think we got the same kind of sounds in Ahsoka versus Elspeth back in the Jedi episode but it's this kind of like high-pitched ring that's got ah a kind of weird body to it that the Beskar makes but then we've also got the dark saber which has a very unique sound design and it's different from the lightsaber as well Yeah, I bought one of those lightsabers that you can get that does all the different colors and and it does a darksaber mode and they've got the sound effect of the darksaber on the little chip on it and it's such a unique thing. It almost sings. It's got like a high-pitched... It's very crackly as well. Super cool yeah and But yeah we're jumping ahead a little bit there we are but that's okay My only notes in between there Are that they tease us with almost a Wilhelm From one of the bridge stormtroopers It's so close oh you let's tease It's not one of the yeah Outtake No I think i think it's them imitating it again I think they're just they're just doing imitation ones We're falling off the Wilhelm We need more Wilhelms I'm sure we'll get some in the Clone Wars There's lots in Clone Wars I guess this yeah yeah we are back in the scene where Mando faces Gideon and yeah yeah Gideon says something about them being the murderous savages that they are. Yeah, as if the Empire doesn't murder everyone. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The pot calling the kettle black or... He also says... Oh, yeah, what's the line? The quactor calling the stiff-wing slimy. That's exactly what's going on there.
01:07:25
Speaker
He also says, a friendly piece of advice, assume I know everything. Yeah. Which I also quite liked as a line. but all right, go on. Which is proved wrong by the end of the episode.
01:07:38
Speaker
Pretty much. yeah His overconfidence is Well, he massively, massively messes up it because as we've seen over these two episodes, Mando's only cares about Grogu. And he makes a deal with Gideon to take Gregor and leave. Yeah. And then Gideon can't deal it. He's like, you know what, I'm going to chop him up. And it's like, you just messed up massively. Yeah. so Because if you'd have let him go.
01:07:59
Speaker
Yeah. Like. You've got what you needed. Yeah. You got what you needed. Yeah. He would have left you alone. If he was being honest about that. I mean, maybe he was trying to bait Mando. Almost certainly. But it still seems like a a slip up on his part. Well, my note for that section was Moff be bluffing and then best girl, bitch.
01:08:15
Speaker
So. Yeah. You can interpret it that how you will. i think that sums it up. There's a lovely moment when he's pushing the spear back and the dark saber's putting into the wall and whoever's in the suit, I don't know if it's Pedro at that moment, but whoever's in the suit manages to convey the panic of, oh God, I've never fought a saber. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like he flicks his head side to side so quick, Gideon looking at the saber as if like... how do I even fight this thing? yeah And then he calms after that, he gets knocked down and he can't, and that's when he disarms him.
Darksaber Showdown and Tradition
01:08:48
Speaker
yeah And he has to he has to just separate this device, almost superheating my spear yeah and pushing me back. It is, because you can see the Beskar is orange, yeah which is, I mean, anything else would have been cut into pieces, so it's pretty incredible.
01:09:05
Speaker
I just read my next note, I'm sorry.
01:09:10
Speaker
I don't even know what that means.
01:09:14
Speaker
I think it's something about a music cue. It might be those strings we're talking about. No, it's not quite them. But I said, we're back to the widdly woos. That'll be the flute, surely. The widdly woos. don't know what that It's not that widdly woo. It's a different widdly woos. Okay.
01:09:33
Speaker
And now we get to this like big finale on the bridge, which is a pretty spectacular finale, if ever there was one. Apart from the fact that you know they've taken the bridge, Mando's bringing Gideon in as his prisoner kind of thing.
01:09:49
Speaker
We get all this stuff about the Darksaber. Bo, like, immediately is hyper alert. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, she looks very uncomfortable. Yeah. Katie Sackhoff does a wonderful nonverbal performance in those couple of seconds of her face just being, like, trapped by tradition and honour and so angry, but so, like, what can I do about this right now? Mm-hmm. It really took me back to the scene in Rebels when obviously it's a similar thing where Sabine presents her with the Darksaber. And although it's a different situation and it has a different result, she takes it. But there's a similar look in her eye that was in the animated version of Bo-Katan, which, yeah, fair play to Katie Serkov. She is yeah absolutely incredible in this whole live action Bo-Katan thing. It's amazing.
01:10:38
Speaker
I have a question. Yeah. Because I have a moment where i was like, Did Mando forget that dark troopers can fly? Because they stole his son yeah and then you found out they're droids. So space isn't going to kill them. And they've got jetpacks. Well, it got rid of them for a time, didn't it? Yeah. Could have just closed that hangar bay foot field. like quote There must be a way to close that. It's an Imperial ship. There'll be a blast door. And then have been knocking on the outside. like Yeah, that's true. Or do a jump, just jump. like Yeah, jump like 20 feet. They're on bridge. Yeah, yeah. They've got yeah control of the ship. They could have just gone to any system. Two planets over, fine. yeah Yeah. And there'd then be this sort of like random tribe of dark troopers just floating around in space forever until some unwitting... Until they power down. yeah yeah
01:11:30
Speaker
I'm all for them. Yeah. Gideon drops an amazing line about the Darksaber. He says, the Darksaber doesn't have power, the story does. Story does, yeah. That's so much about Mandalorians, as we know, because of all the different sects of Mandalorian that we have, and that they all believe slightly different things, and some of them believe the same thing, and it's all about, they're very devoted to their own kind of mythology, almost, their own dogma.
01:11:57
Speaker
Which must be a real moment for Bo-Katan because she's already detached from the children of the Watch who are the cult, if we want to call them that. She's part of a slightly more relaxed sect of Mandalorians. They're slightly less culty. But hearing that line and knowing that she is part of that kind of Darksaber story must be pretty big.
01:12:18
Speaker
Yes. We've referenced this before, how the Imperial tech is well, everybody's tech in Star Wars. it's got It's kind of like this weird like juxtaposition between, they've got these super high-tech dark trooper droids that are yeah incredible, and yet the little monitors on the bridge are in black and white. white it's like fuzzy black and white and the sound of the siren that comes out of the control is like really low quality like low sample rate like you can hear the aliasing of the siren and i i mean i just love that as a design thing of like when they go low tech they really go in deep with the sound on the visual side of but yeah the troopers obviously re-enter and and they're making their way to the bridge which is coming
01:13:00
Speaker
The first time round, I did not know how they were going to get out How are you going to get out of this? Yeah. I didn't know how they were going to get out it. Is this when I started frantically texting you on my first watch through? Possibly. Yeah. Yeah.
Luke's Dramatic Rescue
01:13:10
Speaker
I mean, Gideon's going out of his mind. He's so excited by all of this. And we get the dissonant orchestra sounds again. We get the dubstep again. yeah yeah But then we get the siren again.
01:13:21
Speaker
And very quickly, we see an X-Wing fly by. we get Kara's amazing line. yeah what x week Great, we're saved. We're saved. But then we get Gideon's face. And all of our faces. Well, yeah like I didn't start twigging because I thought it was the New Republic X-Wing. Well, this is it I didn't start thinking of it until Gideon's face started changing. It wasn't Cara's line, it wasn't the X-Wing, and Gideon started to look panicked.
01:13:49
Speaker
And then I've written here, can dark troopers detect force users? Yeah, because they sort of panic, don't they? just Because they all know. They're like, whoa, yeah this is more of a problem than what's behind that door. I don't know how that happens, but that absolutely does happen, doesn't it? Yeah.
01:14:05
Speaker
I think my clue was Grogu because there's some very specific shots of Grogu like making noises and he's sensing something. My first thought was Ezra. like I did not for a million years think it was going to be Luke because Ezra is one of the only other Jedi out there that we know of. We don't know where he is at this point. ah we do now but we didn't then and I could see him having an x-wing like I just couldn't yeah cross that bridge to thinking Luke you know even when we saw a hooded figure walking through the corridors like i mean okay once the lightsaber was ignited yeah once it's green it's like okay we know for that's the confirmation but up until that point I mean I was literally standing up in our living room at that point yeah
01:14:49
Speaker
Probably screaming. I was jumping up and down. Very excited. The wildest moment. Now, Sia, I know you you texted me something, which I i don't hear many Star Wars fans saying. I i have listened to my favourite Star Wars podcast, Children of the Watch, yeah Matt Clacey on there. He has possibly a similar...
01:15:09
Speaker
response to you response okay they're now doing a re-watch like because they obviously watched it at the time yeah all these years later he they're doing a re-watch and he's calmed down a bit on his and his philosophy was he felt it cheapened the efforts of the team you know like interesting like they needed rescuing i mean i counter that by the fact that the episode title is the rescue which yeah There's multiple things that mean that they plan to get Grogu back, but also Luke rescuing them. My other counter for him, and I'm sorry, I'm jumping ahead because I don't know what your issue was. Ted, yeah, what was your response? Because I had a text from you that was like, ooh, this is going to be interesting. I'm not sure about this. Okay.
01:15:57
Speaker
All right, I'll tell you. Potentially controversial opinion. i don't like it. Yeah, no, this is this is fine. Controversy is what we're here for. Controversy. I didn't like it because my notes this time, because obviously this time I watched it, when I watched it this morning, I knew it's a rewatch for me. But the first time I watched it, I was a bit like,
01:16:17
Speaker
Yeah, and that's a lot of, like, he's just come and taken out an entire platoon. My notes this time were, ah, ah lightsaber trumps dubstep. But that's just fine. Clearly. you weren't, like, convinced that he could so efficiently just take out all dark it was the efficiency that he took them all out with and the also the, like...
01:16:41
Speaker
I don't i don't um didn't really like him being there. I felt like... it's It's kind of like... I just didn't want him back. I was a bit like, I'm not sure. I'm not sure I want him back. But it was also the kind of weird effects of his face freaked me out a bit. And I think all of that was playing in to my kind of being a bit uncomfortable about the whole thing. that was Him turning up at the very end and saving the day.
01:17:07
Speaker
That's like a Star Wars trope, isn't it, though? It is a Star trip. Whether it's Vader flipping sides or everyone's ships turning up in a Rise of Skywalker, like we're at the final moment, the the goodies look absolutely screwed. Oh, look, here's a big damn heroes moment, to quote Firefly. Yeah. but There's a couple of things so I had about like the fact of of this kind of person turning up out of nowhere. We know why he came. like We know why he came. We saw him a couple of episodes ago. yeah But i feel like as a... Grogu rang him. Yeah, on the Jedi phone. That makes things a Jedi internet into planetary Yeah, that's true. I've been left behind. i need a babysitter.
01:17:50
Speaker
I think it it's needed to remind us how powerful the Jedi are Yes. Which we've not really seen for a while. And even like the sequel trilogy, we've not had like very good Jedi. We've had like...
01:18:07
Speaker
Ben Solo versus Rey was pretty good in The Rise of Skywalker, but even there quite early on in their journeys, you know, using in lightsaber dueling and stuff and using the Force. We haven't seen like powerful Jedi since the prequels in a way. Yeah. so Outside of the animation space, of course.
01:18:24
Speaker
But so it's kind of that and it's important for Mando in the story ahead as to like why Grogu should go and do that and and like his commitment to delivering yeah Grogu, nearly said Yoda, delivering Grogu to the Jedi. And yeah as far as the CGI face thing, I'm totally with you. yeah like ah For a while I was saying, we need recast. Why have we not got Sebastian Stan or somebody out there? We yeah should just have someone. But...
01:18:54
Speaker
Last time I watched this last night, I've seen this episode about four or five times now. This time, while I was making notes, I was like, okay, no, we did need to see Mark Hamill at this
Grogu and R2-D2 Interaction
01:19:04
Speaker
point. like Going forward, by all means, let's recast. But because we're in TV series world, we're in...
01:19:12
Speaker
Disney, you know, this is a whole new kind of era for us in this kind of post-Return the Jedi, whatever, like building towards the sequels. I'm kind of glad we got to see Mark Hamill's voice. It was very Uncanny Valley. For me, it wasn't even as good as like Tarkin and Leia. I found Tarkin way creepier in Roblox. did you yeah i mean i find tarkin creepy anyway so maybe just like clue it's just yeah yeah yeah i don't i guess there wasn't as much with luke like we didn't he was very still he didn't do do very much and i've kind of like the voice the voice was quite good tell you who i was excited to see
01:19:49
Speaker
r two Yeah! I wrote that. I wrote f***ing He's a little wean in and he chats to Grogu. I've written, he does maybe the translation is, yo, little dude, I've not seen you since the Jedi Temple. How's it been? Because we know R2 knows everything. and yeah like keep He was around. He was Anakin's droid. Grogu was there. Well, this is very true. However, I'm still pondering because we still don't know Grogu's full story. And I don't know whether he was a secret at the temple because nobody, Ahsoka didn't know him. No, that's true. Nobody seems to have yet known Grogu. We'll find out. I'm sure we're going to find out. Ahsoka was barely at the temple.
01:20:30
Speaker
Like she was when she was a lot younger, but then she'd been almost semi-disgraced. I'm not Clone Wars knowledge, so correct me if I'm wrong. yeah But Anakin took her on because she'd been a bit disgraced.
01:20:42
Speaker
I don't know. Yeah, she was already like 14 or something at that point. So she would have been there for quite a few years training. Whether Grogu, because Grogu would have been, would have been there.
01:20:54
Speaker
Yeah, because Grogu's 50 years old. I was trying to do the maths, but he'd have only been quite young. so He's about Anakin's age because the whole Force Diad thing. yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So he would have been around. Yeah.
01:21:05
Speaker
My other reason for thinking this about Grogu and the Jedi Temple is that with this sort of mythos around Yoda and his species, like nobody mentions the name of the species ever. we still don't know. Yoda in this, like, he's a very specific character. And I could see that if the Jedi Council had another kid of that race they might very well keep him secret yeah as a sort of like yeah we're gonna try like because otherwise he'd be a big threat to all sorts of things maybe i don't know it's just might i've just been like pondering grogu and like his existence and you know why nobody seems to know about him even well could he have been a secret because maybe yoda and yaddle had a padme and anakin There could be that.
01:21:52
Speaker
Yeah. yeah Interestingly, we were talking about Yaddle in Ahsoka episode. Yes. Because Ahsoka said something about, I've no only ever known one other of his kind.
01:22:04
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And again, Yaddle... worked with Ahsoka. I'm sure in Tales of the Jedi, we see Ahsoka as a child being trained by Yaddle. I'm pretty sure. So that's a plot hole. So is Yaddle the same race?
01:22:17
Speaker
Has that ever been confirmed? looked back because the reason we were talking about it was that when I looked up Grogu on Wikipedia, it said that there was only one other, unknown species, only one other, which is Yoda. yeah And then you told me about Yaddle and then I went and looked at Yaddle Yaddle's Wikipedia page and it said same species as Yoda. So... Do you remember your mum? Do you just remember her smile and sadness? For for those who can't see, her again, which is everybody, Jessica's just having a little chat with Gregor.
01:22:53
Speaker
His answer was inconsistent, I'm sorry. It was just gurgles and noises. Did Grogu write the Wikipedia page? Yeah, I think so. Grogu's taken over, like he's infiltrated the fandom in on every level.
01:23:09
Speaker
Right. Talking of Grogu, getting back into this episode, yes we get Grogu's theme, which I've been referring to. i didn't know was called Grogu's theme until this episode, and I kind of realised it's Grogu's theme. I mentioned it in the Frog Lady episode when Grogu's looking at the eggs. And it's this Lydian tune, this very kind of like atmospheric, dreamy synths. yeah And then we heard it again a couple of episodes ago, I think in the Ahsoka one. And now we get it again when Din takes off his helmet.
01:23:40
Speaker
Yeah. And I have searched for it and I think it is called Grogu's Theme. is called Grogu's Theme. It's beautiful. It's Lydian, which is one of my favourite modes. It's a lovely scale. It's such a beautiful moment when you think about the fact that probably no one's touched Mando's face since he was a child. Yeah. Oh my gosh. And they use the puppet so well.
01:24:00
Speaker
Actually, that allows me to talk about, because I wanted to think about the animatronics, because I've heard you mention on other podcasts about Grogu. So he is a $5 million dollars animatronic puppet. Oh, my gosh. Using some of the tech that Disney developed for a Tiny Groot. Yeah. Two puppeteers operate him. One does his eyes and mouth, and the other does all the other facial elements, so the ears, the wrinkling. Wow.
01:24:26
Speaker
And when he walks and sometimes to have him less prominent in a scene, there is some CGI used. yeah They were planning to use a lot more at the start. They had the puppet, but they were planning use a lot more CGI. And it was actually Werner who called them out. There was a moment he was acting opposite Grogu and they went to take the expensive puppet away. And he said, and I have to quote,
01:24:52
Speaker
leave the puppet you are cowards for wanting to remove it star wars pioneered this art and that should be honored leave him don't be a coward and i love that that werner just was like so sorry out i could not love him anymore like i yeah just having him in star wars was enough but to know yeah but to know that he said look And he's right. You go back to the original trilogy and it was groundbreaking with puppetry. Puppets. I mean, we were talking about the kids in the Sanctuary episode with the kids and on the kind of fishing planet and their reactions were just, they were just kids reacting to an amazing puppet. Like, yeah how could they have done that with CGI? You know, it's just incredible. His voice as well. I looked this up as well. Grogu's voice is made up of two different infants' voices and it's mixed with two animals.
01:25:42
Speaker
One is a kinkajou, which is a very strange tree-based mammal that looks a bit like if a bear and a cat had an illicit tryst. That must be the bear babbling then. And the other is a bat-eared fox, which is a very specific type of fox with some whistly and chirpy vocalisations. Originally he had way more of the two animals and then they remixed him because they needed him to sound a little bit more...
01:26:10
Speaker
human-ish relatable baby-ish because I tried to find this information and I couldn't find it so I found that on the Wikipedia page about Grogan admittedly I didn't look very hard i can tell But we've had a conversation about his baby voice because it is animated baby voice yeah in a lot of... No, it's not. is it's Some of his vocalisations are used oh used in other animated things. Oh, I didn't know that. They're like sort of like out-of-the-box baby sound effect. I've got for some of them. Oh, wow. On hard drives because it's your... But if they're blending them with, you know... now That must be when he babbles a bit more.
01:26:51
Speaker
It could be, yeah. Interesting. He does babble. He does have like a wide range. Yeah, he's got almost like an entire like vocabulary made of noises. yeah yeah And some aren't even open mouth noises. He's got a lot of little groans and like, yeah. I think it is much less in season two, actually. I think season one, we had a lot more of the generic baby. Yeah, season two, there's definitely an evolution. Definitely.
01:27:16
Speaker
There's some cinematography stuff that kind of stood out to me in this like final sequence once
Homage to Return of the Jedi
01:27:21
Speaker
Luke appears. And I don't know if it's done specifically when Luke is in shot, but it feels like the type of lenses they're using, like the choice of the lenses and the color grade is very Return the Jedi. yeah There's a particular way that the colors pop and that the grays look in a particular way that we see a lot of in Return the Jedi. Yeah. Return the Jedi has got such a specific look.
01:27:43
Speaker
I mean, yeah it looks like a Star Wars film, but it does look different from Empire in A New Hope. yeah Empire is very washed out. Yeah, yeah. yeah Whereas Jedi is more like vibrant. And I don't know if that's something to do with the technology at the time or what, but whatever it is, I'm sure they're using some LUTs on like the kind of colour grading to make it look make it look like Jedi. Because it's the closest thing that we've got of Luke, timeline-wise. Yeah.
01:28:09
Speaker
Although it reminded me, the final hall leading to the bridge, I've got like father, like son, Vader hallway scene, Rogue One written in my notes because he even pulls a dark trooper towards him onto the blade like Vader does. And it's like, yeah yeah yeah car, you the apple hasn't fallen that far from the tree, has it really? That's true.
01:28:29
Speaker
That's very true, yeah. My note was he makes short work of an entire platoon with his hood over his eyes entire time. He can't bloody see. He learned to use a lightsaber with a hooded helmet.
01:28:42
Speaker
He did, yeah yeah. Yeah. Your eyes can deceive you. Yeah, whatever you must trust the living force here. Yeah. Yeah. yeah yeah sorry No safety rails, so just don't walk too far on a diagonal. Yeah, yeah.
01:28:59
Speaker
When Gideon opens fire on Cosca and then turns the gun towards Grogu and Mando just launching himself ah onto the floor. It's just such a beautiful, like, yeah I'm going to take this shot. I love this kid.
01:29:15
Speaker
Like, even though he knows his armor can take the blaster rounds fine. yeah yeah It's just, yeah, I really loved it. But the thing I wanted to ask you to was whether you noticed, I found, I ended up rewinding and listening to it again, the music that plays while Luke fights the troopers. So yeah it's,
01:29:34
Speaker
I'm calling it original trilogy style in that it's more strings, the flute isn't there, and it's quite orchestral, but it's not quite any of the original trilogy themes. yeah And then it merges more and more into those and finally becomes that when he unhuds on the bridge. And I found that wonderful, but then...
01:29:53
Speaker
they They flip it almost because when he walks into the elevator with Grogu, it's the Mando theme music, but done with the orchestral huge strings. Yeah, yeah. And I just found it, I don't know how to describe how it made me feel. I was like, this is really interesting, the meshing of the old and the new and how they've done that.
01:30:12
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And I just wanted to know if you two had like keyed into that and what your thoughts were as people who are far more knowledgeable on music than me. That's very interesting. I didn't notice it this time round. I feel like in the kind of back of my memory that I may have felt something about that on on an earlier watch. I'm guessing from what you're describing, because I honestly didn't notice. I noticed the music at the beginning of the Luke sequence with the guitar. It's like, it's sort of almost the kind of Western, Iñino Morricone guitar type thing. Yeah, yeah.
01:30:42
Speaker
over Luke, which it has that same effect of like, wow, what's what's going on here? It's still heroic and epic, but it isn't what we're used to hearing with Luke. But feel the whole of that is reminding us that this is still the Mandalorian. It would be very easy to get swept away with Luke Skywalker. And and just go straight into old themes and stuff. Yeah, yeah. So although they use a bit of that, it keeps bringing us back to the Mando, monday yes which is where we're hanging out. And we're still, yeah, we're still in this. Yeah, in Ludwig land.
01:31:09
Speaker
Ludwigland. I'm happy in Ludwigland. it just has that that mando. But it has that rather than, i don't know what instrument they've been using all along for that, but it sounds very much like instead we're doing this on a bunch of violins. It's like... yeah We're going to it as if... Like a triumphant rise, as if it's original trilogy mando music. well we're going do it as if John Williams wrote it rather than Ludwigland. Definitely. Yeah. yeah I love that. I love the way you describe that as like a meshing of the two things. That is so good. Yeah. Because that's because it has a very unique, um the leitmotif of the flute, the wah, wah, wah. And then the way that's used, like you say, there's Gideon's theme, there's Grogu's theme, there's the Mandalorian itself's music. It has a very unique musical flavour.
01:31:59
Speaker
the whole show and then they brought luke in and like you say deus ex jedi he comes and saves the day but then they almost go but it's still mandalorian even though he's taking grogu away we're still uh staying homage to what's come before because he is from the before and he's come and saved the present yeah yeah i found it really satisfying like i say i listened to it to rewound it and i was like close my eyes and listen yeah yeah it is really satisfying I think that did inform my reaction to it actually, because I remember one of my sort of like fifth sense memories of watching it the first time was, oh my gosh, like, oh yeah, we're in that galaxy, aren't we? Like, even though we've had Ahsoka and we've had Bo-Katan and we've had all these other characters, mostly they come from animated stuff.
01:32:43
Speaker
But to actually see Luke Skywalker, who is the original Star Wars hero, like, I don't know, it's somehow like really using that word mesh, like you said, meshed it into...
01:32:54
Speaker
the Star Wars galaxy that yeah I'm familiar with from 50 years ago. like That was a big thing. That was a big thing. and And I'm guessing the music played a big part in that without me even noticing, which is really cool. Yeah.
01:33:07
Speaker
Incidentally, can I go on a tiny tangent? Of course. You know we're here for tangents. I do orchestral music lessons in primary schools. and Cool. And we're doing John Williams as our composer for year year three and four. We played them Indiana Jones.
01:33:28
Speaker
They didn't get it, but they were all like, it sounds like Star Wars. And I was like, there's a reason for that. And they were like, why? Why does it sound like Star Wars? And was like, it's the same guy. It's Han Solo's dreams in carbonite. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:33:43
Speaker
So then they wanted to hear Star Wars, so we played them like three different pieces but from Star Wars and they were all so into it. Nice. We're showing them videos of the orchestra with John Williams conducting as well, so they were well-chuffed. Yeah. I've been doing a bit of those like YouTube rabbit holes of John Williams conducting Star Wars music. And there's something... He just looks so happy when he's doing it. He's just so he's got this little lovely little smile on his face as he's conducting away at this orchestra. And it's like, yeah, you wrote that. And yeah, you know. this There's something about watching the orchestras play it as well. Because normally you see it in the context of the film. But watching musicians actually playing it And I know he didn't orchestrate all of it. yeah Lots of different people did, including a trans woman
01:34:26
Speaker
arranger which I did not know about until recently nice bit of music history yeah in Empire Strikes Back I think she worked on as an arranger orchestrator anyway so all these different people are doing it but still like if you watch a concert of like John Williams classics it's mind-boggling yeah like The guy I don't know, i can't can't find words to describe what he has done for popular culture. you know You've got year three kids who already know the Star Wars themes, of course. And it's so built into the DNA of our culture around the world, not just in the West even, but Star Wars is pretty much global. yeah
01:35:03
Speaker
But then there's E.T. and yeah just like so many, Superman. He did Jurassic Park as well, didn't know Yeah. Yeah, he did. So after all this spectacle, oh like we have a first for ah Star Wars television, which is a post-credits
Boba Fett's Future at Jabba's Throne
01:35:20
Speaker
scene, kind of. Second. aren't we through a credit scene Second. And all season one was out before this, wasn't it?
01:35:26
Speaker
Oh. And has the post-credits right at the end. The dust star bit. Yeah, of course. Okay, stand corrected. feel smug. Good. Good.
01:35:36
Speaker
good But yeah, we have a lush little etilogue here, which... made my evening last night. i was shouting with joy again. I'd forgotten about it, to be honest. Yeah, same. I forgot about it in first rewatch last week. When I rewatched again, I was like, oh, I was fast-forwarding to see if there was concept art. And I was like, oh, there's this bit. This bit is amazing. Like, mean, knowing what we know now, it's kind of interesting. But yeah still, that it continued with this Return the Jedi vibes, which were just about with Luke. No frog this time. no No creature whatsoever. is But we do have the shot of like, well, Fennec first, but then when Boba comes down the stairs and you see his shadow and it's, oh yeah, it's the same trick of like, who is this coming? Well, we know he's coming because we've just seen Just seeing Fennec. Fennec come down. Yeah, yeah Just the directing of the scene and like the kind of intentionality about it and Boba's just determination with what he's going to do. It's no messing about. He just takes out Fortuna. i love that Fortuna has just become Jabba. Yes. Like he's just sitting on the throne. Although he has a different taste in Twi'lek, he prefers blue rather than green. Slightly different, yeah. Yeah.
01:36:51
Speaker
ah um And Fennec just helps herself to a drink at the end. and i lot She's got the Spotchka. The Spotchka. Amazing. She's get This is why the action figure of Fennec that I've got has Spotchka is because of this. Because of that scene. Tableau. Yeah. yeah So good. And she just sits so casually on the arm of the... On his right hand, right hand woman. Yeah. yeah yeah All of the feels over this. Yeah. The more I watch, the more I love Fennec and Boba. I mean, I know there's a lot of criticism of the the Book of Boba Fett as we're about to start watching, but I'm sure on a rewatch I'm going to love it all the more. People get over it if they have a nice long soak in the Bacta tank. yeah
01:37:32
Speaker
It's what everybody needs. It's what we all need. I think after this marathon episode what we all need. Oh, another long one. It's always I'm when I'm on, isn't it? With these two episodes as well. Yeah, there a lot to talk about. This was a lot. You can't skip through this. It's big stuff. We should have probably done them one each. One episode per episode. Oh, no, but then I could only come for one. So, yeah, I'm glad you didn't. We got the benefit of you for both, which I'm so happy about.
01:37:56
Speaker
you hear that, Grogu? It was a benefit. Yeah. Listeners, if you're still here, congratulations. Don't forget, you are still here, you must like it. So give us a five-star review. Buy some merchandise. Jessica's just showing us her merch. It's so comfy and well-fitted. You should definitely buy a tank top. It's beautiful.
01:38:16
Speaker
And obviously, follow us on all the things. Tell your friends this is big friends, can you please – Jessica's really good at this. She talks to us on YouTube. But – We do love interaction. Yeah. Talk to us. We come and talk to us.
01:38:34
Speaker
yeah we We are sustaining our listenership, which is a very positive thing for, you know, so far deep into the podcast that we are now. I'm very happy about that, but we need to grow our listenership. So we're not quite into the outer rim yet.
01:38:47
Speaker
No, we haven't made it to the outer rim. Possibly not even in the expansion region, but that's where we're aiming for. Yeah. were We're breaking out of the core worlds. So, There we go. We've had such a great time, Jessica. Thank you so much for coming on. Thank you for having me again. be name with your joy We're going to be seeing you again very soon. And I can't wait.
01:39:10
Speaker
Until next week, we will see you very soon. Bye.