Transcript
Speaker: Recently, we had one of the greatest joys that maybe a human can ever experience, which is holding eight day old puppies. that It was not eight puppies who were one day old.
Speaker: It was nine puppies. eight of whom were eight days old and one of whom was five days old, but he was much bigger than the eight day old puppies because his mom just grew one big puppy instead of a whole litter.
Speaker: But we will post pictures of these puppies. Because, oh my God. thank you are the cutest. They're Britney Spaniels. they Their eyes and ears weren't even open. I didn't know, which you would think that being married to someone in vet med, I would know basic facts about puppy development. But they don't really deal with a lot of little, little puppies. So when they're just newborn pre-weaning...
Speaker: they They have little tiny ear flaps, but the ear opening is sealed up and their eyes were closed. And so they were just kind of squeaking and wiggling. And Rin, tell the people what yours was doing.
Speaker: That was so cute. Yeah. Well, she was laying in my hands, which I could fit her in one hand, but to support, I had her in two. And just stretching out her back legs and spreading all of her toes. And then she'd curl back up.
Speaker: And then she'd stretch and then curl back up. And sometimes to a big yawn. And I made what I think was the very astute point, which is because they are babies, fresh and new, and they're growing so fast, every big stretch they do is the biggest stretch they've ever done and that's magical and they were just so fucking cute and their poor mom maya maya such a good girl she was exhausted you could see that especially when the puppies were nursing the look in her eyes of oh my god these things
Speaker: No, she just, we came into the room. She was so, so happy to see our friend. he Because she belongs, in little a little bit of context, she belongs to our friend.
Speaker: Our friend's mom is the breeder. She's been breeding these dogs forever. So the dog is temporarily in residence with our friend's mom. Yeah. so So Maya was so, so happy to see our friend.
Speaker: And then when we got in like the little puppy area and we started picking up the puppies, she was just like, oh, thank fuck somebody else is here to watch them and like got out of the bed and like went and laid down as far away in the tiny little space as she could get from these puppies. Yeah.
Speaker: And I don't blame her. And it just meant that we got to snuggle them and she wasn't, you know, overly, it helps that she already knew all of us. Miles was there too. So the three of us and our friend And the doggies. And she's just like, oh, yeah, I know these people. Go ahead. Take some babies. And I wanted to I wanted to hold them all, but I didn't want to put down the one that I was holding because it was asleep and it was dreaming and its little ear was twitching and its legs were kicking. And it must have been dreaming about milk because that's the only thing that it experiences. so yeah, and it was like dream suckling. Yeah, it was a really cute.
Speaker: It was if you took a puppy out of the pile and put it down, not directly back in the pile, it would squeak and then crawl around until it found the pile again. And they love to stack. They love to stack.
Speaker: see I desperately wanted to shove Millie, the little one I was holding for most of the night. I wanted to shove her in my purse like a breadstick and leave. Yeah, I mean, she's about the size and shape and color of a breadstick.
Speaker: Oh my God. She was, it was perfect. i go back and i look at those pictures and watch those videos at least five to 10 times a day. They're really essential for my mental health. And it's also a compliment to us that we get to see them because new, new, new puppies are extremely fragile. And really the only reason that you would ever meet a puppy that small is if your dog has puppies or if someone who really trusts you has a dog that has puppies because this is not a time when they should be exposed to tons of people but we are special little noodles and we got to see them it was great i i had such a wonderful time it was it was like a 45 minute drive and i didn't get home until like almost 11 and it was so worth it
Speaker: And we also got to see our friend, which is great because don't see them that often, but mostly was puppies. Right, they live in another country. Yeah. Kawalki and monkey lizards are not nearly as cute as puppies.
Speaker: I would agree with that. But I did like this one. I thought it was very funny.
Speaker: And and welcome back to another episode of the phantom apprentice my name is rin i'm one of your hosts i grew up with star wars and with the lord of the rings and with other bits of nerdy media spoonfed to me by my father the ultimate nerd and in my adult life i have been returning to some of this nostalgic media from my youth and dragging my friends along with me particularly, in this case, my dear friend Sam, who did not grow up with Star Wars.
Speaker: Hello, I'm Sam. I'm the other one. We are moving along in kind of an interesting sideways direction. If this is your first time tuning into the Star Wars season, we are not going about this in the most typical way.
Speaker: It's the most, I have been assured, the most emotionally damaging for me specifically way. This is concocted for maximum emotional damage. And I am just going yippee.
Speaker: Yep, that's the idea. I still have a couple of things that I'm like playing around with. It's like, do I want to, you know, get the introduction of certain characters? Because like certain characters get like peppered in throughout things and then they're main in something else.
Speaker: Or do I want to preserve like a villain entrance here? Or like, where do I want to do things? hmm. So we're still like moving some things around. But right now we are smack dab in the middle of the Clone Wars.
Speaker: And today we are covering the second half of season one, episodes 11 through 21, except for episode 16, which we already covered because of weird chronological order bullshit.
Speaker: Anything else before we get started? No, I think we should just get right into it. So as we have established in previous Clone Wars episodes, the plots aren't that deep. So we'll just do a quick little summary and then any commentary that we have on the episodes as we go through.
Speaker: So our first one for this episode is season one, episode 11, Dooku captured. You'll never guess what happens. Dooku is captured, but not by the Jedi. He is taken to the planet Florum and held for ransom.
Speaker: we have to go ahead and mention the phantom apprentice rules of fantasy rule number one magic makes you dramatic because ah first of all obi-wan enters obi-wan and anakin enter count dooku's chamber obi-wan we've we've mentioned like obi-wan like flirts with ventris every time they fight h and this is Whatever the related version of that is, it's just more dramatic banter. Yeah. It comes in, well, if it isn't Count Dooku, and Dooku's reply Obi-Wan Kenobi, I thought I sensed an unpleasant disturbance in the force.
Speaker: And then Dooku escapes down us like a laundry chute that opens up underneath his meditation pad. I called it the silly slide. And obviously he knew it was there. So I have a lot of questions.
Speaker: Is this usually where he goes to meditate? Did he know that our friends were coming and then set up a whole thing really quickly so he could have the dramatic escape?
Speaker: Was this something he just suddenly realized in the moment was down there and he was somehow sitting on top of it? I don't know why he was doing this. It's very stupid, but it's very funny.
Speaker: Yeah, it's not like a Jeffrey's tube because we don't see like ladders or anything. And it just spits you out into the hangar. So you said that in a way that implies that you know what that is. What is a Jeffrey's tube?
Speaker: There's a new phrase to me. It's a Star Trek thing. It's all the little tubes that go between the floors and the Starship Enterprise. Oh, okay. Because they have like, you know, their turbo lifts and their main corridors, but then they have the Jeffrey's tubes. You can crawl around in the Jeffrey's tubes.
Speaker: Okay. And this is also a good place to mention something I could have included in the banter, but I forgot until now. I have a deathly phobia of submarines. This is a fun fact about me.
Speaker: I haven't had any bad submarine experiences. I'm just very, very scared of them. Miles and I went to Philly on vacation last year and there was a submarine like docked in the harbor, a historical one that you could go and climb on. I didn't even want to look at it. It filled me with the visceral unease. And the other day i was chaperoning a field trip to a similar kind of thing in my area. It's these, you know, historic warships that you can go and walk around on and see some military propaganda and learn about history.
Speaker: The moment I stepped foot in the lightless, airless chambers of this fuck-ass boat, I realized that the inside of a fuck-ass boat is indistinguishable from the inside of a submarine. And I was very, very scared. it was these dense, narrow passages With this dim yellow light and the stale air smelled like paint thinner.
Speaker: And there was weird crackly vintage radio playing for ambiance. Occasionally, not often enough for you to expect it, but occasionally there would be just a full size mannequin in the middle of doing some task and you just see it out of the corner of your eye.
Speaker: horrible and I'm also claustrophobic it was the worst thing ever so now come and I did that after I watched these episodes so now coming back to these episodes and seeing people on the space version of a fuck ass boat nope nope nope no no no nope I could not survive in Star Wars absolutely not never the idea of dropping into this Jeffrey's tube or not Jeffrey's tube because it has no letter absolutely not worst thing ever so this is just now going to all all of my future watches of knowing how awful because it's basically like a submarine except you have the vacuum of space which will crush you just as effectively as the water unless you are a billionaire in which case submarines are very safe and good to go in and you can have a cool vacation
Speaker: It's safe and good and cool for you. So keep that and jot that down. It is like, is it the third anniversary of the Ocean Gate bullshit? Oh. around there now?
Speaker: i don't know. it is it is close to the anniversary of the Ocean Gate disaster. Anyway. Oh yeah, it was June 18th, so it just passed. Nice.
Speaker: Moving on. I noticed as they're escaping, Obi-Wan starts the ship, but he doesn't like take off because Anakin is the pilot. Oh, I didn't notice that. He's just warming up the car for him.
Speaker: Passenger princess, Obi-Wan. I'm also noticing in all of these episodes, really, i think the pacing of information being revealed is very effective because I'll have questions things will occur to me and then they'll immediately be brought up and answered so Anakin and Obi-Wan crash land on a planet and they start looking for Dooku in caves and my first thought is shouldn't it be really easy to find him if you can sense him with the force because he's this powerful force user that probably has a distinct signature and then Obi-Wan points out that there's a lot of life forms in the cave So they're kind of masking his signal. And I thought that was a really good point because otherwise the whole conceit of the episode would fall apart.
Speaker: Every now and then they'll do that where they like actually explain something. And then sometimes you're like, guys, I get what you're doing here, but it doesn't translate to Star Wars. We'll talk about that in a little bit. um Anyway, we get Gundarks. All of those life forms in the cave are Gundarks.
Speaker: Yes, which you may recall that Obi-Wan hasn't seen Anakin this nervous since they fell into that nest of Gundarks. So hey, some Gundarks, which I don't know if this is that incident, but now we know what they look like.
Speaker: Well, it's it's not that incident because this is after that situation. So again, they're plagued by Gundarks. Which, they're like, I guess this planet must be whatever. It's like, but Gundarks only exist on this planet, so it has to be that planet.
Speaker: So you've been here before, and again, fell into a nest of Gundarks? Whatever. Dooku manages to evade them.
Speaker: And we are introduced to a scoundrel. Yes. And, you know, I think we we've talked about scoundrels before because we've met Han Solo.
Speaker: I feel like there's there's only a couple of classes there. Yeah. you have jedi and sith and they're sort of the opposites yeah you have bounty hunter you have scoundrel and you have like general fighter and then in some of the later stuff like you have like politician And these all kind of mix and match.
Speaker: And you have, you know, for all of these, you have sort of that light to dark side shift. Yeah. And Hondo Onaka is definitely not the good kind of scoundrel, not the scoundrel with the heart of gold that we see in Han Solo. i love Hondo Onaka. I think he's really fun.
Speaker: He's such a good character. He is played by Jim Cummings, who is an absolute voice acting giant. h Since 1988, he has been Winnie the Pooh and Tigger in all things Winnie the Pooh.
Speaker: He was the singing voice of Rasputin in Anastasia. And I learned by reading his Wikipedia article and his IMDb, he's a voice matcher, like so many voice actors. Like we've talked about James Arnold Taylor matches voices.
Speaker: But apparently, this was news to me, on the track Be Prepared from The Lion King, ah Jeremy Irons plays Scar and sings Scar's part, but had a vocal issue during the track. So Jim Cummings finished the track.
Speaker: Oh. So he is half of Scar on Be Prepared. And no idea. Had zero clue. Yeah.
Speaker: That's wild. Just perfectly matches Jeremy Irons. He was also the narrator the title narrator in the B-movie for our younger fans.
Speaker: you You kids like the B-movie, right? I think that's now a millennial thing, i guess. The other super fun thing about Hondo is he's got a flying saucer.
Speaker: Yes, it's just a classic straight up flying saucer and it's wonderful. I love that their little shuttle looks almost like a mini Starship Enterprise. isnt Because it's got like a saucer, but then it's got like two jets that like aren't quite the two nacelles, but like they come really fucking close to being the two nacelles and it's really funny.
Speaker: And speaking of scoundrel activities, Dooku's ransom is the equivalent of one million credits in Spice. And this is where I must ask, what the fuck is Spice?
Speaker: It is an extract of sandworm larva and it's found only on the deserts of Arrakis and House Atreides farms it and... That's a fucking... That's not Star Wars. No, it's not. No, it's not. Because... it's Because Star Wars is George Lucas's poorly disguised Dune fanfic.
Speaker: But what is it? Is it, I was assuming it was drugs. Like this is cocaine and everyone's cool with it. I have no fucking idea what it is. Like what's, why is it valuable?
Speaker: Right. So spice, we've only heard it mentioned. Like there's the spice mines of Kessel. And so it is, it's a mind substance and we'll learn like, you know, we're meant to assume it's drugs.
Speaker: In Dune, it's drugs. Yeah. Yeah. It seems like a pretty obvious analogous substance to drugs. Right. But we will learn over the course of the series that like like many drugs, it can also be made into medicines.
Speaker: h But it is super duper valuable because it's more commonly made into drugs. Yeah, that tracks. Yeah. Yeah, and unlike credits, this spice is a lot easier to move through the black market with.
Speaker: That makes sense. Dooku is like trying to talk his way out of being kidnapped by Hondo and his crew. he at one point is like, I'm Sith. And Hondo is not concerned at all.
Speaker: And i have to think the reason for this is like the Sith have stayed in the shadows for so long and I have to imagine the Jedi did not like popularize the Sith are back.
Speaker: That'd be kind of a bad PR moment. Right. So I have to think that like the Sith are a fucking myth in the galaxy. I have to think like Hondo is probably just sitting there like, yeah, sure, buddy.
Speaker: Yeah, whatever you say. You're Sith. Okay. Nice. Cute. Oh, Sith Lord. And then when the Jedi show up to supposedly see that, yes, Dooku is actually there, so then maybe they'll pay the ransom in Spice.
Speaker: Hondo is playing super dumb to the Jedi because he knows they underestimate him. Mm-hmm. And you know immediately he's going to stab these guys in the back. Oh, yeah.
Speaker: And, you know, the next episode, we get a great line because he does you know kidnap Anakin and Obi-Wan as well. Hondo is talking to one of his ah underlings and goes, As my sweet mother always said, Son, if one hostage is good, two are better.
Speaker: And three, well, that's just good business. You know, it seems like he loves his mom. And that's great. Yeah. Yeah. and Man, ah Hondo is a villain in this instance.
Speaker: Yeah. Hondo falls into, i think, our he he hits our villain rule. He monologues. He loves to monologue. This man will not shut up.
Speaker: He doesn't monologue as much as one of the villains will meet later. Yeah. But he does love to talk. Mm-hmm. Anyway, Hondo kidnaps them, and we're sending Jar Jar with the spice.
Speaker: Yes, so now moving on to the next episode, season one, episode 12, The Gungan General, and from the title, you know how that's gonna The Jedi get put in their get-along shirt, and JJB ends up in command of delivering Dooku's ransom.
Speaker: So that's great. So the reason that our guys end up getting captured Is because Hondo tries to drug them and they see through it and switch the drinks, but somehow still end up getting drugged anyway.
Speaker: And I'm not really sure how that happened because it's very obvious that they notice what's happening. They do a whole clever force levitating the cups and switching them. So how did they end up getting drugged?
Speaker: They say at one point, oh, that pirate brew was stronger than we thought. So so they just got regular drunk. They may have just gotten regular drunk or or it's an Iocane powder situation and everything was drugged.
Speaker: And I can understand that reference now because we watched The Princess Bride last week because I had never watched it before. And, you know, I live on Earth and like lots of things I know general references. And I was thinking in the back of my mind, you know, maybe I saw this once and I just forget.
Speaker: No, I definitely have never seen it before. but These are all some Jar Jar heavy episodes and I was struggling, especially because Binks is not voiced by Ahmad Best this time.
Speaker: Oh, he's not. i didn't even notice. Of course, I didn't notice the difference, but I just... It was, it was you know, Jar Jar-ing. But, um...
Speaker: Speaking of the Princess Bride, there's a line, Hondo goes, I don't want to kill you, per se. In fact, you seem like decent fellows. And my mind, of course, immediately went to Anigo Montoya.
Speaker: You seem a decent fellow. I hate to kill you. You seem a decent fellow. I hate to die. The only other like bits of note from this episode for for my thoughts anyway.
Speaker: Jerder somehow tames the space rhinos. Somehow. He's good with animals, it seems. Sometimes. Yeah, he seems to have a special connection with the creatures of the land.
Speaker: The clones know that he's a fucking chaos god. And use that to their advantage, which seems like it could very easily backfire. But they got lucky. Yeah.
Speaker: And I do love at one point that one of the pirates refers to him as representative bink. but Just one. Just one bink. Just one bink. And importantly, when Obi-Wan and Anakin are freed from their weird heart-shaped suspension bondage.
Speaker: Not to kink shame, normal heart-shaped suspension bondage. Well, it's like the two, ah it's Anakin and Obi-Wan are like hanging by their wrists in like weird energy suspension bondage.
Speaker: And it's the two of them and the weird energy all form a big heart. I didn't notice that. That's really funny. I was mostly hung up on the fact that they keep escaping and getting recaptured and escaping and getting recaptured. And I was very over it by the end of the episode.
Speaker: Yeah, it it was a little Benny Hill-esque. But Obi-Wan makes a valuable ally by not taking revenge on Hondo.
Speaker: is he Hondo goes from being like, I'm going to take advantage you of you at every opportunity to being like, I respect the fuck out of you.
Speaker: isn he And this is going to come back. Yeah. And then Obi-Wan warns Hondo that Dooku does not share our sense of honor. Yeah, something like that.
Speaker: And he knows where you live. Bye! But warning Hondo and not taking revenge on Hondo was a really, really smart move on Obi-Wan's part. And we'll see more of that later. Any other thoughts?
Speaker: The only thing I enjoyed from this episode besides the get a along shirt, which was very delightful because the three of them are all chained together with energy handcuffs. And so they're making lots of silly quips and it's amusing is that in the final scene, as our guys are taking off, we zoom out on the pirates and one of them has a peg leg.
Speaker: And I thought that was fun. Yeah, they're they're just pirates. Yep, just regular regular pirates. But we can move on to Season 1, Episode 13, Jedi Crash.
Speaker: Again, you'll never guess what happens. The Jedi crash on a planet and Anakin is badly injured. Ahsoka goes to find help, but the lemur people on the planet have serious reservations about the Jedi and their part in the war.
Speaker: some Some fun bits from this. When they're crashing on the planet, Rex looks at Ahsoka and goes, hey, kid. And she interrupts him like, I know, i know, I'm hanging on.
Speaker: And I love this because this single interaction establishes so much of their relationship. Mm-hmm. We've seen a little bit so far, but this establishes, like, Rex has come to the conclusion, oh my god, Anakin is gonna get this girl killed.
Speaker: Yeah. And she's not gonna do anything to stop that. So I'm going to see if I can't give her a fucking survival instinct. rex is just like i'm seven how did i end up being the one in charge here it does fuck me up to think that ahsoka's probably older than him chronologically yeah probably ah but they have like accelerated learning or something yeah yeah anyway but yeah i love that little that little dynamic is very it's very siblings
Speaker: Yeah. And you know he has to warn her to hang on because Anakin cannot resist jumping out of a moving vehicle. It is impossible for him to enter and exit any kind of vehicle normally. He has to jump. He can double jump in real life and he will at every single opportunity.
Speaker: so you know that tracks for him and he sacrifices himself to save everyone else from an explosion it's very noble but ahsoka saves him yeah he holds it back with the force yeah and then we get to meet a woman which is great do you want to talk about her I do you want to talk about Isla Secura, Jedi Master Isla Secura. I want to talk about her probably towards the end because I have actually a lot to say about her. Yeah, we'll establish some of the things that she does as we go on.
Speaker: But she's there. That's cool. Everyone has to leave Anakin behind to find help, which is really hard for Ahsoka. And General Sakura is saying this is the only way that we can help him is by leaving to go find someone to help us. And they have a really good talk about Sakura's bond with her own master and relating to her struggles with attachment, which is kind of nice. that I don't know if we've had anyone talk to Ahsoka about this
Speaker: a at all be in a way that's compassionate and saying yes i also have had these feelings and this is something that happens and it's something that we can deal with as opposed to just no attachments fuck you that was nice yeah she's younger too we get all of this like bullshit from the older jedi masters who are just kind of like, well, yes, Jedi should not have attachments and you should deal with that.
Speaker: And she's like, girl talk here. Yeah, this this shit happens. Yeah. She's the first sibling in the family to go to therapy. She's breaking the cycle.
Speaker: Well, not quite that extreme, but you know, it's nice. It's nice. It is. I did like, i do love the Jedi getting confronted by people basically telling them they're responsible for what's going on.
Speaker: Yeah. I think the whole thing with the Lerman is really nuanced and it's really interesting. I like it because you have to reckon with the fact that not everyone sees the Jedi as the good guys. We've had the whole, you know, you're the lapdogs of the Senate. We've had that angle.
Speaker: Yeah. But this is more, you know, that's like we are involved in this conflict already and you are not advocating for us in the way that we'd like versus we want fucking nothing to do with this conflict and you're all perpetuating this bullshit and we don't really care which side you're on. We don't want to be involved. That's very different. And it's really interesting.
Speaker: Yeah, the there's a line, you know, Jedi are no peacekeepers. And then the shot zooms in Master Secura's saber. Mm-hmm.
Speaker: And you know they're arguing that there's they're fighting for freedom and for peace. And the Lerman leader asks, and freedom and peace require fear and death?
Speaker: Which, there's the question, isn't it? And they've already been affected by the war because their leader says, you know, they have a very strict code of nonviolence. And they have somewhat recently relocated to this planet so that they could be out of the path of destruction. And so they have already gone to such extremes to not be involved. involvedd And now you are dragging this conflict to their doorstep.
Speaker: Again, just one of my questions on timing, because it seems from talking to them, it both seems like they've been there forever and like they haven't, like they've been there for a whole generation and they moved there to escape violence, but what violence? And it's implied that like they were moving to escape the war, but the war hasn't been going on for very long. It's The timeline is not clear, and it won't become clear because this is Star Wars.
Speaker: As we move into the next episode, I would like to have a brief aside on lemurs. Please do. I would love to learn about lemurs. Lemurs are a group of streptocerian primates, which means they have wet noses.
Speaker: Aww. that are exclusively native to Madagascar, and they are super, super biodiverse. Madagascar in general is super biodiverse. The environment that we see in this episode is inspired by Madagascar.
Speaker: The Lerman are, they're lemurs in their design, they're lemurs in their locomotion, in their size. Well, not in their locomotion necessarily, because they travel by rolling. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: But they apparently have to dramatically leap up in the air. They have to like dramatically leap up into the air so they can turn into a ball and then start rolling, I guess. But when they're walking on the ground, they're sort of walking sort of sideways because they're clearly adapted for a more arboreal lifestyle or they evolved from more arboreal beings.
Speaker: Yeah, Madagascar has been so like, has been separated from the mainland for upwards of 80 million years. Oh, shit.
Speaker: I did not realize that it was that intense. It's very, very old. And because it's a super geographically diverse place, there's, you know, there's mountains, there's forests, there's lowlands.
Speaker: You get a ton of biodiversity that like has nowhere else to go. It's far enough off the coast. You're not going to get too much, like too many things clinging to rafts and drifting out.
Speaker: They're very cool. They're cute little creatures. Yeah. They're super cool little creatures. They are, a lot of them are nocturnal. Some of them are diurnal. Some of them are arboreal. Some of them are ground dwelling.
Speaker: They're super physically diverse. Some of them look more like monkeys. Some of them look more like raccoons. There are no flying lemurs as as much as we may wish for Momo to be real. Momo is sadly not real.
Speaker: Tragic. and But they have they range in size from a teensy, teensy little 30 gram mouse lemur. I need to look up mouse lemurs right now. I was just looking at pictures of Zabumafu, but I need to see mouse lemur.
Speaker: Oh my god, that's so cute. Yeah, and the largest lemur, the ah babakoto or the Injury, can be up to 9 kilograms or 20 pounds. Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, they're kind of freaky looking. And prior to humans settling on the island, there were lemurs even the size of gorillas. It's very much like Australia on a smaller scale.
Speaker: It has been so separated from the mainland for so long that there has been so much time for evolution to do its thing. Yeah. Anyway, the Lerman are more or less like ring-taily lemurs, kind of but without the ring-tails.
Speaker: Yeah, they don't have like a specific lemur they're they're based off of, but George Lucas designed them based off of lemurs he saw at the San Francisco Zoo. Oh, that's kind of cute.
Speaker: Moving on, the next episode is season one, episode 14, Defenders of the Peace. The Separatists are here to test a new weapon on the Lerman, who have to choose between their beliefs and dying.
Speaker: This episode is full of war crimes. We meet General Locke Durd, who is a Separatist general who comes to the planet to test a new weapon, the Defoliator.
Speaker: h which will destroy organic matter but leave machines unharmed. um And it seems like it's basically just a giant firebomb. Yeah. So we have, you know, the the testing weapons on civilian areas. Because first they test it just sort of like out on the plains.
Speaker: Fine. But then they, Locke Durd says he selected the planet because it's inhabited. And he intends to test the weapon on the Lerman. Yeah, that's pretty fucked up.
Speaker: That is a war crime. um Also, at one point, one of the droids while fighting goes, no survivors, which is also a war crime.
Speaker: Not giving quarter. Also war crime of attacking civilians on purpose. Anyway, during the first explosion, Rex and Commander Bly, who is ah Master Sakura's second in command,
Speaker: are investigating the separatists and they have to run away from the first explosion of the first test of the defoliator and Bly trips and Isla is running before he trips to like go save his ass that's some Jedi intuition bullshit yeah and uh I think I need to introduce to you the Isla Bly ship oh Blyla Yeah, that one's a big one, apparently. ok tell me all about it.
Speaker: i don't know a ton, but apparently it's it's a sizable ship. she' is She's usually either shipped with Commander Bly. Usually, supposedly, they had a very secret love affair during the Clone Wars.
Speaker: Or, and I believe it may be canon that she shared a moment with Kit Fisto at one point. Okay, we have established that as a hot alien. So I hope she got to share a moment with Kit Fisto.
Speaker: We can talk about her design in a second because we we need to talk about her design. Yeah. But these two episodes have like a weirdly stacked cast.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. Like, you know, sometimes, you know, there's there's usually like a guest star. But here we've got three big ones. We've got Tiwat Ka, who is the elder Lerman.
Speaker: He is voiced by George Coe. George Coe has been in one or more episodes of pretty much everything from 1960 until he died in 2015. Just the stuff that I recognized the name of.
Speaker: And he
Speaker: l a law max headroom magnum pi the golden girls the hollywood detective the fatherowwling mysteries matlock collombo murder she wrote equal justice nightcot star trek the next generation law and order the nanny the west wing smallville gilmore girls' numbers bones king of queens private practice nip tuck supernatural crazy anatomy legend of chora two and a half men and he voiced woodhouse and archer Okay, damn.
Speaker: Man has been in everything. Clearly. And they just, you know, yeah, got him to show up and voice this little character for two episodes.
Speaker: Alice Akira is played by Jennifer Hale, who plays, among other things, Avatar Kiyoshi in Avatar The Last Airbender and Legend of Korra, Jean Grey in all X-Men animation.
Speaker: She is Sam and Mandy in Totally Spies. She is several characters in the Powerpuff Girls, Miss Keen, Princess Morbucks, and Sedusa. She is Samus Aran in Metroid, Bastila Shan in Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic, Jaden Korr in Star Wars Jedi Academy, the voice of the female trooper character and of Satele Shan in Star Wars The Old Republic, and most importantly to me, she's Commander Shepard in Mass Effect.
Speaker: You were asking me knowing that I would not know the answer, but you had to try saying, Sam, did you maybe recognize her voice? And I said, no, I have no fucking idea who she is. but she's Shepard, which reminds me I need more Mass Effect. But I've had a bit going on. been a bit busy.
Speaker: That's fair. No, i think I think that's more than reasonable. And then General Locke Durd is voiced by George Takei. Oh, okay Who has, if you're if you're not familiar, he has an incredibly long and storied acting history. But most importantly, he's Commander Hikaru Sulu in the original Star Trek.
Speaker: Sir, you're in the wrong star thing. Ha ha ha ha! ah Okay. All right. And he has a very distinctive voice. Now that you pointed out, I can hear it in my mind, but damn, that's a hell of a poll. Okay.
Speaker: Yeah. So that's like three big ass fucking names that you just got to guest star. And Jennifer Hale will be back. She plays Rio Chuchi as well in the next episode we talk about.
Speaker: But yeah, those are some big pulls for like ha little little little guest characters. But to talk a little bit more about General Sakura. Yeah, I think tragically i need to look at a picture of her.
Speaker: Well, first thing is Googling anything, just Googling her name immediately shows up porn. Do I have safe... I have safe search... on Let's see what DuckDuckGo pulls up.
Speaker: DuckDuckGo gives me a bunch of blurred shit. Clone Wars. I have safe search off AI images hide. it all looks pretty normal.
Speaker: i wonder what I get if I try Google Images. Because... Oh, does her is her name spelled with two A's? oh Two A's. Yep. Okay. That's why. I was spelling it with one A, but then the moment I did two A's, okay. I just spelled it wrong.
Speaker: ah That is graphic. Okay. I'm going to close that tab now and look at a normal. Because, you know, I am a supporter of Freaks and perverts, I think that they should be allowed to do whatever they want. I don't need to look at that.
Speaker: I don't want to. So I'm just going to go ahead and look at screenshots from Clone Wars, if that's all right with everyone. And it's good with me. Yeah, okay.
Speaker: Yeah, you you had a particular comment on her her design. i mean, the only comment that I really had is she is the most egregiously sexualized character That I've seen more so than Ventress by far.
Speaker: Because yeah if you Google or DuckDuckGo her, her name is spelled with two A's. i As we know, I just learned this the hard way. A-A-Y-L-A.
Speaker: Look her up at your peril. She has... Not on a work computer. Wild hips. It's not so much the cleavage, though there is that. It's really the lower...
Speaker: regions. Her hips jut out at this angle that i have to just attribute to the fact that she's an alien because human bodies aren't shaped like that, really.
Speaker: And she has pants that are as low riding as they can possibly be while still being... I think she's wearing pants. I don't know if it's a skirt, actually. Yeah, it's pants. It's like... that They're like rolled down, like multiple rolled down like yoga pants. Yeah, no, literally. It is flirting with danger. You can see her hip bones. But it's this very... like She is the closest to a centrally designed character that I think we've seen because Ventress is very sort of angular and bony and ethereal almost.
Speaker: And Sakura is very... fleshy she's like a very like sensual tactile design she's got these big squishy tail things on her head the way that she walks which if she was a real live person i would say okay that's just what her body looks like that's just how she chose to dress herself but she was presumably designed by george lucas and you said that this was based on her appearance in one of the movies which i have not yet seen but It's depressing to watch her.
Speaker: it really, it hurts my heart. as I can't even enjoy being gay about her because I just get angry about the way that she's designed.
Speaker: what's the What's the Jessica Rabbit habit thing? you know, I'm not bad. I'm just drawn that way. I've also never seen Who Framed Roger Rabbit. That's another...
Speaker: missing piece of culture but I did know that because I'm a Jessica Rabbit supporter but yeah she might have a little bit of Jessica Rabbit disease here and she's a cool character but her design is like I said egregious she's also just kind of grimy they're all grimy right now but we have established that being grimy can be sexy and so I do think that adds to it but that might just be me that might just be our issue But I think that also adds to the sort of like sensual, physical nature. Like she has dirt on her. Ventress is very sort of, and I'm contrasting the two because there's not a lot to work with here. I'm pulling from a very limited pool. But Ventress is always kind of pristine and aloof and secure as very, you know, down in the dirt with the people and she's fighting on the ground. So I think that it's an interesting contrast, but.
Speaker: I don't want to talk about her anymore. You say things about her because I'm just going to devolve. Well, this is more characterization than we get in Revenge of the Sith for her.
Speaker: Like we don't actually really like we don't really see her much in Revenge of the Sith. We see her very, very briefly. And we'll talk about that when we get there because i I have things to say about that, but I can't say anything right now.
Speaker: So listeners, if you know, you know. Otherwise, if you're me and you don't know, we'll be patient. The problem is the Twi'lek of it all. Yeah, what's going on with the Twi'leks? Because it seems like this is a much broader... In my little observations of all the pinup posters that are scattered throughout the series, they're often of Twi'leks. It seems like even within the world of Star Wars.
Speaker: And, you know, there's the Twi'lek dancer at ah Zero the Hutt's club. This seems to be a thing. Yeah, so, because we're going to talk about the Twi'lek homeworld shortly. We're go to talk about the battle for Ryloth in a little bit.
Speaker: So I guess we might as well talk about Twi'leks now. it Within Star Wars canon, they're super, super common throughout the galaxy. h And there's some, you know, all sorts of problematic bullshit with them.
Speaker: There is in some of the Star Wars, like legends books, the old expanded universe stuff, where which none of that like ever agreed with each other. But when we see Twi'leks in the original series, they are exclusively slaves of Jabba the Hutt.
Speaker: hu You know, scantily clad dancing girls. So... I don't remember the book. I feel like it had something to do with Boba Fett.
Speaker: But I remember one expanded universe book that I read as a kid um that had a big piece on Ryloth. And...
Speaker: you know According to that author, it was there they were a super patriarchal society and all of the female Twi'leks were essentially slaves.
Speaker: And dance you know learning to sensually dance was like a big piece of the culture. And... all male Twi'leks filed their teeth to points. And which like that, that piece seems to have carried through into canon, into modern canon. But like, and I don't know when this book was written. I feel like it was written before the prequels even.
Speaker: So we we weren't working with a lot of source material. But yeah, i mean frequently when we see people dancing, when we want a sexy alien who's not a human but is human-like enough to still be sexy we have a twi'lek yeah and they can be fun colors they can be all sorts of fun colors so that adds to the fun and so and i feel like they're probably pretty easy to either you know animate or it's a pretty easy costume to make and put on somebody yeah
Speaker: There's not a whole lot of makeup. It's just a like, here, put this thing on your head. And now you're a Twi'lek. And then we use whatever color body paint we have. And congratulations, you're a Twi'lek.
Speaker: Exactly. Yeah. So it's like that those pieces serve to come together and have us now with like the stereotype of sexy Twi'leks.
Speaker: You may recall when we first started talking about, what was the first prequel movie that we watched? Because I'm forgetting the titles. Phantom Menace. and minutes Yeah, I think so.
Speaker: There was the article that I had found that was basically talking about aliens as a stand-in for race in the Star Wars universe. It's that, again, it it will continue to be that forever.
Speaker: absolutely. I did have a couple of non-Twi'lek things to say about this episode. Please. Circling back to the Lerman real quick. The internal conflict within the Lerman and them versus the Jedi, I thought, like I said before, was really interesting.
Speaker: The main internal issue is the father Lerman representing the more traditional ways saying pacifism at all costs if we die we die if the separatists get us they get us we're not betraying our beliefs versus his son going i think that we have the right to defend ourselves and i don't want to die and Yes, pacifism is important to me. I share your values. But maybe we can be a little more flexible.
Speaker: And the father being the one in charge, the voice of tradition, speaks for his community and tells the Jedi they do not want to be helped. They do not want whatever the Jedi think they're doing.
Speaker: It's not helping. Go away. Do not help us. And then some of the younger Lerman send out a spy to go follow the Jedi and see what they're doing. But then we have the issue with the Jedi.
Speaker: going okay what is our moral obligation here are we obligated to help these people who have told us explicitly we are making the informed choice we don't want to be helped or do we still involve ourselves despite their wishes not knowing that they had sent their own recon person to go follow them and that they had already made their own choices independently It was very interesting. And then the Jedi do decide, like, listen, we cannot just let you guys die. We have seen this horrible, terrifying weapon.
Speaker: at least let us give you a heads up. But I thought that it was interesting to see the Jedi struggle with that. And weirdly, it reminds me of the beginning of The Incredibles when there's the guy who's suing Mr. Incredible because he didn't want to be saved. But I think that that's just a very interesting conundrum. I don't have a good answer to it. um I think probably where I would come down in this specific situation is the leader Lerman obviously...
Speaker: does not speak for everyone. His community is not fully in agreement. And so there are people who want to fight, people who want to live, and so it would be wrong to abandon them.
Speaker: But there's a lot take into consideration there, and I just think that it was a really nuanced issue for a Clone Wars episode, and I like that. And then at the end, you know, obviously they do stand up for themselves, shocker, and then the father and son have another conversation, and they're saying,
Speaker: You know, we made it, we survived, we defended ourselves, but at what cost? At what cost to our identity, to our culture, to our desire to stay out of this?
Speaker: There are going to continue to be consequences for us, even though the day is saved for now. Mm hmm. Only other piece from these episodes that I wanted to bring up was at one point, Admiral Yularen asks General Sakura, are all Jedi so reckless? And she responds, just the good ones.
Speaker: She's part of that. On the one hand, she is she part of that younger crew of like more reckless war raised Jedi? She's a Jedi master. So clearly she's been doing this for a little while.
Speaker: But in canon, she is the former Padawan of Jedi Master Quinlan Vos, who remember when I decided we were going to make a lovely little list of Jedi that are going to give Obi-Wan Kenobi an ulcer?
Speaker: Ah, yes. Quinlan Vos was the inspiration for that list. Oh, no. So, you know, maybe she's been at this a little bit longer, but she was, again, like Obi-Wan being trained by Qui-Gon. She was also trained by like kind of a loose cannon maverick.
Speaker: o she is what Ahsoka could become. Yeah. Right. We don't get any information here about Quinlan Vos, but like doing the one-to-one comparison of Quinlan to Anakin, Ahsoka to Isla, this is who Ahsoka could become if everything went smoothly.
Speaker: And we know that it won't. Yeah. But it's interesting to get that, that look from sort of our outside perspective. Yeah. Anyway, that's all. Let's move on to the next arc. And this is just a single episode.
Speaker: Yeah. Easy peasy. Season one, episode 15, Trespass. What could have been a peaceful first contact turns into a fight because one guy is racist against the moon's indigenous population.
Speaker: listen Which the one piece, Pantora is actually the moon of this planet. Oh, okay. My apologies. So it is the planet and then the people are... Gotcha. Yeah, they do say that throughout the episode. I just got it mixed up. So and 3PO and R2 are in this one and everybody gets snow outfits, which is fun. I love when everybody gets a new outfit.
Speaker: I did love at one point 3PO goes R2 would like to get out of the cold and R2 turns like bitch don't speak for me. but Yeah, this is just a, ah you know, slightly racist Western.
Speaker: Even the design of everything apparently was made off of black and white photos of the Badlands. Interesting. I absolutely love the pattern on Rio Chuchi's cloak.
Speaker: It's very pretty. She has a nice outfit. It's very pretty. She is, again, also played by Jennifer Hale, which, man, that woman is dynamic to go from the the French accent that Alice Akira has to this sort of sort of vaguely South African accent that we hear from Senator Chuchi.
Speaker: I would like to submit the theory that Chairman Cho absolutely knows about the Tals. That makes a lot of sense, given that he is such an aggressive hater for no reason. This all seems entirely unprovoked.
Speaker: It's like from the get go, he's very, very, we are the only ones here. We own this planet. It is ours, no doubt. Don't question me. It's like he he knows that the Tals are there and he desperately wants to avoid them being noticed.
Speaker: And then when they're noticed, he's all over the place. He's like, well, they have to be trespassers. And Obi-Wan's like, no, they're not advanced enough for space travel. Well, they attacked us. It's time to fight back.
Speaker: Well, we promised we hum them peace. Well, we own them. This is our planet. Well, they've been here longer. Well, they're animals. They're not smart enough to negotiate. They can't be trusted. It's the just moving the goalposts further and further and further back.
Speaker: h Also, it doesn't seem like there's a whole lot here on Ordo Plutonia. So i is is he concerned about mineral rights? Like, what's the deal? Yeah, it's very unclear what his actual problem with them is.
Speaker: His problem is he's a his problem is just he's a racist. Yeah. I was amused that the senator is understandably insecure because the chairman is just constantly tearing her down and steamrolling her at every opportunity. But then she's talking to Obi-Wan about the impending negotiations with the Tals, who are the snow people on the planet.
Speaker: And she tries to order him to negotiate on her behalf. And he basically goes... This is literally a you problem. i am not doing this, bestie. It's like, no I'm not gonna.
Speaker: You have to do your own job, Senator. Thanks. Again, Obi-Wan's a good teacher because we clearly like we clearly see she's young. She's clearly a junior senator.
Speaker: She's clearly not terribly confident. And Obi-Wan's like, here, go have the confidence. You gotta do it. is it And then the whole thing is peacefully resolved with a few polite sentences like it could have been from the beginning at the end. There's a very nice speech about peace or whatever, and that's fine. But just the stakes of it felt weirdly artificial. And I think that believing the chairman knew about the Tals from the beginning is the only way this episode makes any sense to me.
Speaker: Yeah, it's just about, like, the Tals want to be left alone. They would like people to leave, please. And the chairman is like, absolutely the fuck not die.
Speaker: But there's no, like, real motivation for him giving a fuck about Ordo Plutonia. Although, that said, they circle up the speeder bikes, they're circling the wagons, and...
Speaker: it's it It is a classic Western. And in the history of this country, in the history of America, we had manifest destiny, people desiring land for no other reason than to take land.
Speaker: It's not useful to you, Westerner, who does not know how to live here. Yeah. The people who have... lived on this land for thousands of years know how to live here but to you it's just it's just desert but you must have it because greed yeah we do get some rare level-headedness from anakin and i do like that even though it's in defense of the chairman i do like that we get to see the rex being a badass We get to see Rex being supremely competent, you know single-handedly fighting off a whole group of Tals, rescuing the chairman and escaping.
Speaker: Yeah. Overwhelming odds getting out of there. Especially because the chairman seems to actively have a death wish. He's being stupid and reckless. And so Rex has to rein him in, in addition to doing what is already a very hard job, also trying to work with the very combative person.
Speaker: He does great. Yeah. Congratulations, Rex. I have nothing more for that episode. Would you like to talk about the Blue Shadow Virus? The Blue Shadow Virus. Yes. Season one, episode 17, the Blue Shadow Virus. The evil Dr. Vindy is cooking up a deadly virus on Naboo.
Speaker: Anakin takes a risk saving Padme instead of chasing after the doctor, and it just barely works out. Dr. Nouveau Vindy, just for your... He's a Faust. I should know more about what specifically that is meant to convey to me, but I don't, so I will choose humility and I will have you explain it.
Speaker: The story of Dr. Faust. Dr. Faustus. a Faust made a deal with the devil. A Faustian bargain. Okay, okay, okay. Yeah.
Speaker: Anyway. This is the guy who really loves to monologue. Yeah, no, this is a villain. And, you know, he made a virus, but maybe war is the real disease. Did you ever think about that?
Speaker: That you're spreading your disease of war, you guys? And the virus deserves to live. Why do you deserve to live more than a virus, huh? fucking Also, I thought viruses weren't alive. This is something that has plagued me since eighth grade science. I don't understand how viruses work. I know they have DNA and they can replicate, but they're not like ah they're not like bacteria. They're different. They're not a alive. What the fuck is a virus? Please explain why. a virus is to me best this consumes me i lie awake at night unsure what the fuck a virus is hello dear listener my name is rin i'm a biologist listeners i promise i'm really smart i know a lot of things i just don't know the things on this podcast that's the whole thing i promise i know a lot about other stuff if you want to know the history of the stradivarius violin i can tell you
Speaker: Well, and this is why i specifically poke at sound and be like, I need to know about the textiles and the costumes and also ah the botched Buddhist philosophy inherent in the Jedi. Yeah, I can do that. I can do lots of stuff. Just not not viruses.
Speaker: Yeah. So is a virus alive? no They have DNA, right? So some do. Some also have have single-stranded ah RNA. Some have double-stranded RNA. That's the life stuff. That's the life spaghetti. So they have it, they should be alive.
Speaker: Yes and no I'm so mad. So the you know the eighth grade science ah version of what is alive is you have your qualities of life is it must be made out of cells. It must take in energy and excrete waste.
Speaker: It must be able to reproduce. It must be able to respond to stimuli. It must be able to grow and adapt and change, um maintain homeostasis.
Speaker: And whether or not viruses meet that they're not formed of cells they can't reproduce without the aid of an external cell they are a a bunch of genetic material wrapped up in a protein coating so where does the genetic material come from i'm really hung up on this So viruses reproduce by hijacking a host cell.
Speaker: So they hijack a host cell. They put their genetic material in the host cell. And then they use the host cell's reproduction structures to make more viruses.
Speaker: Okay, that makes sense. But if it's not alive, why does it do it? That's such a good question. don't know. And that's not something that I can answer for you.
Speaker: So whether or not these are like, this could have been you know a regression of like small parasitic cells. That's one hypothesis.
Speaker: Another hypothesis is that like it's genetic material that like, quote, escaped from larger organisms.
Speaker: There's also the virus world first hypothesis. Yeah. Which is that instead of cells, the first like living things were basically viruses.
Speaker: But then how could they reproduce if there were no cells? Chicken and the egg. Yep. I hate it. Uh-huh. Welcome to biology. i will be in a cave with my 14th century Buddhist poetry. i will be doing other stuff that's not that because damn.
Speaker: As somebody who actually, like in my day-to-day job, works with viruses, I make viruses. It is possible to synthesize a virus from nothing.
Speaker: So what Dr. Vindy does in these two episodes where he creates a virus is technically possible. Biological warfare, viral warfare, by the way, is a war crime.
Speaker: We need to keep a counter. I need to get a little ding sound effect to put it in there.
Speaker: Yeah, I was upset. So here's the thing. The purpose of a virus basically is to produce more viruses. that like It seeks to reproduce.
Speaker: A successful virus is one that is successful enough to reproduce and spread without killing its host too quickly.
Speaker: Because if it kills its host, it can no longer reproduce. Right. Yeah. so and you know some of them you know there are plenty of viruses that kill their hosts but like a successful spreadable virus which first of all this does not seem to be a transmissible virus it doesn't seem to be transmissible from person to person yeah it's just in the water and in the air Right. And the creatures drink the water and they immediately die.
Speaker: This is supposedly a super dangerous virus, but it doesn't seem to spread from creature to creature and it kills instantly, which means you can basically immediately track back to the source, which means it should be very easily containable.
Speaker: Also, the bomb distribution system, heat from an explosion would likely kill the viruses. oh that's a good point. Also, they're visible in a big, like, floaty mass, and they just expand outward like a gas. Like, I had to think, like, this isn't actually a virus. This is just, like, sarin gas.
Speaker: Yeah. Because that's that's what it's acting like. It's acting like a poison, like a poison gas, more than it is acting like a living... quote unquote, living thing.
Speaker: Yeah, I was just, i was just very angry. I was, had quite frequently was like, that's not how this works. Yeah, no, I think that's very valid. And also, supposedly, the blue shadow virus spreads in water.
Speaker: But he has perfected an airborne strain by shocking it with electricity. And I was like, that's, again, not how that works. The only technique that I could think that does anything even remotely similar is electroporation, which uses electroshocks to make a cell membrane more permeable.
Speaker: We frequently use it in the lab. um When we're in the first step of making our viruses, we use it so we can add our plasmid DNA to our bacteria so we can get the bacteria to then replicate the plasmids.
Speaker: Anyway, i was i was just being angry about the bad science, but I can't be too angry about the bad science because we just have... He's a mad scientist and fine. And I had to be angry about other things in the episode because one, Padme is so fucking malnourished that...
Speaker: You can highlight her rib cage. She has the open midriff top and you can see where her rib cage ends and then her stomach is hollowed out and sunken in Yeah.
Speaker: So had to be angry about that. I also had to be angry that Pepe Bao, the female Gungan, is pink so we know she's a girl. Yes, and I immediately, I saw her and then I wrote, if she becomes a love interest for Jar Jar Binks, I swear to God. Because this is a thing. this I think immediately of Lilo and Stitch when they made a pink Stitch to be his girlfriend. This is a thing. is Oh, we'll just make a pink one and that will be the girl one that's the girlfriend because it's pink and it has some sort of body part that looks like hair, but not because it's an alien.
Speaker: Frustrating. Also, Padme is constantly fucking getting captured. Padme is a professional damsel in distress. Yes. I want to believe that she is not that stupid.
Speaker: But at a certain point, I am going to victim blame Padme a little bit because you keep getting captured. Stay home. Why are you? Why? um I had a couple of just little snips and quips from this one because there was some good banter.
Speaker: Obi-Wan and Anakin are talking about what they will have to do to destroy the secret lab and also maybe rescue Padme, but also maybe kill her. You seem a bit on edge. There's a good chance we're about to destroy all life on this planet, including ours and the senators. So yes, I'm a bit on edge. Why aren't you?
Speaker: I'm better at hiding it. That's great. i I thought that was really funny. And then there was a thing at the end where Anakin is calling on the comm to Ahsoka and he's saying, have you seen Padme?
Speaker: And she says, she's right next to me. I'm okay too. Thanks for asking. Ahsoka's starting to figure some stuff out here. yeah And i will die on this hill. So there's, you know, a hologram transmission and Padme saying, Anakin, whatever you do, make sure no one ever opens this bunker. So we don't release the poison into the world. This is my final wish. I, and then it cuts off. She obviously is about to say, I love love you. Cause she thinks she's about to die. and
Speaker: And Ahsoka's standing right there while she's sending this message because she's also on the Zoom call. So the message cuts out. But I believe Padme completed that sentence. And then Ahsoka went, bro, Senator.
Speaker: And, you know, she was busy dying of a virus, so I don't think that they really talked about it. But I believe that Ahsoka caught on way earlier, and this just confirmed it. She knows. There is absolutely no way that Padme did not finish that sentence and that Ahsoka didn't hear it. So that's that.
Speaker: Yeah, the ah the other piece at one point, Anakin is like doing his overprotective boyfriend schtick and being like, you let her go out there alone? and Captain Typho was like, Representative Binks was with her. And R2 beeps.
Speaker: does Does two little beeps. And I was like, that is R2 going, oh, shit. Yeah, that's worse than being alone. Yeah, or more likely, oh, shit. Yeah.
Speaker: We have, oh, the other piece where I have to be like, this is a poison. They keep referring to antidotes. Viruses don't have antidotes. They have antivirals or they have vaccines. Anyway, also i had a question about when the ah clones' helmets filter things or serve as airtight spaces and when they don't.
Speaker: Because it seems it's it's up to the whims of the plot. Maybe they have multiple helmets. Maybe. be Anyway, ah the next episode, which again continues this arc, is Season 1, Episode 18, Mystery of the Thousand Moons. Anakin and Obi-Wan find a cure for the Blue Shadow virus and free a planet from a separatist trap in the process.
Speaker: And this episode and the last one feature a very cute little droid that we've seen before on the bad guy side. It's kind of like a bunny with a ball body. It's just very cute and mischievous and I enjoy it tremendously. And this one features heavily in the plot because it's running around with a secret little bomb.
Speaker: Yeah. So they have to get the cure from the planet, but then they can't get off the planet. I do have to wonder, like, there's no reason as to why...
Speaker: The separatists would want to stop people from leaving this planet. It's not clear. Yeah. Also, we get to meet an angel because the angels live on the moons of Iago. Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, because Anakin, when he first meets Padme, asks her if she's an angel. I heard the star pilots talking about them. They live on the moons of Iago, I think. Because I remember that there was such a thing as angels. And then I went, oh, holy shit, a literal angel. Okay. But I didn't realize this was the spot. Aw.
Speaker: Yeah. I don't really have a whole lot for this episode. I did have, at one point, Padme describes the clone deaths because they're all fighting the virus.
Speaker: Padme describes the death of the clones as a waste. And Rex delivers a gut punch of a line. With all due respect, Senator, it's what these men were born to do.
Speaker: Woof. Yeah. At the end, they tell Jar Jar he's going to be trained with a blaster so that he's less of a danger to everyone. And Rex is like, I'm, i am not doing that.
Speaker: is it obi-wan who's telling him this because it's very diplomatic he's saying you know charger you you were just such a hero you did such a good job in fact we would love to give you additional extra special boy training so that you can just hone your skills with a blaster because we'd see your potential and rex is like oh i'm not fucking doing this but obi-wan was just doing it in the most delicate way possible and it was really good Yeah.
Speaker: And then the other thing I noticed at the end, just for, again, more design things, when the virus is infecting them, because the airborne strain, I guess, kills less quickly. It's just a slow, agonizing death.
Speaker: And they get super veiny. um And i have to assume it, like, saps the oxygen from your cells or something. The veins on Ahsoka are on her face and arms and chest, but not her midriff. That's still just as orange as before.
Speaker: Which I have to think is like, oh, the animators forgot about that one. Probably. Yeah. That's all I got for that one. So the next little chunk of episodes we have is about Ryloth. Do you want me to do just like boom, boom, boom, the summaries?
Speaker: talk How did you want to do them as a chunk? Yeah, let's boom, boom, boom, the summaries. They're, you know, they're three like separate episodes, but it is, you know, all building to the Battle of Ryloth and this the not quite season finale, but the season finale.
Speaker: Sure. So, 119, Storm over Ryloth. Ahsoka is understandably traumatized after losing her whole squadron and redeems herself with a new audacious plan. 120, Innocence of Ryloth.
Speaker: Twi'leks are being used as living shields to keep cannons from being destroyed. And in the process of freeing them, two clones, Waxer and Boyle, go on a side quest and obtain a new baby sister. 121, liberty on Ryloth.
Speaker: Mace Windu has to do military shit and mediate internal Ryloth political disputes, and it all works out in the end. So this is all focused on stuff happening on Ryloth and Ahsoka being very, very traumatized and being put in charge of things she really shouldn't be in charge of. And she's 13 and the clones adopting an adorable baby temporarily. And it just melts my freaking heart.
Speaker: That was cute. That was really cute. Just, I think it's Boyle is like kind of like less comfortable with it. But Waxer is like, she's a kid.
Speaker: but Take care of kid. Central human, human need. Child, take care of child. There are multiple scenarios in these couple of episodes of using Twi'leks as living shields.
Speaker: Which is a war crime. The big two things that I noticed in the first, well, three things that I noticed for the first episode. One, why is the astromech droid directly in front of the cockpit on the Jedi fighter? That feels like it would be bad for visibility.
Speaker: h Two, Wat Tambor, the Separatist leader, is in a mirror because we have to have a scary non-Western term for the evil guys. Clearly. And three, Neimoidians are always a racist character, but this one felt like extra.
Speaker: This one felt like they really leaned into it. I feel like we've seen some other Neimoidians who weren't as bad. And this one, they really went back to their roots and it was pretty rough. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. I had a little please one little thing that was so stupid, but it bothered me so much. Why are the ships on fire in the vacuum of space in the first chunk of this?
Speaker: These three, the ships are ablaze. They're engulfed in flames on the outside in space. And that I have a hard time suspending by disbelief for that one.
Speaker: Yeah, I am not a physicist, so I'm gonna just say, mm-hmm, and move on. That's so fair. In Innocence of Ryloth, the little twilight girl that they find keeps calling the clones, ah I forget if it's Nera or Nera?
Speaker: Nera. She keeps saying, you know, Nera, Nera. She just only knows a couple words apparently and ah She just keeps saying it throughout the entire episode. And Obi-Wan speaks Twi'lek because of course he does because he's perfect.
Speaker: And so at the end you know, they have their little cute goodbye. They've bonded. They're saying, you know, have a good life with your family, whatever. And then one of them asks Obi-Wan, Sir, what is that she keeps calling us?
Speaker: Nera. It means brother. Absolutely devastating. The clones all refer to each other as brothers, too. So that's just doubly perfect. It was so cute, too, because she trusts she calls them that immediately. And at first...
Speaker: I think Waxer is the one who likes her more and Boyle is the one who's a little more standoffish. So they first meet her and they can't understand there's language barrier. And Waxer takes off his helmet because he says, she's probably scared of us. She probably thinks we're droids, but she knew that they weren't. She knew that they were people.
Speaker: Well, she it's she doesn't speak to them until they take off their helmets and they give her food. Because she's she's like curious about them, but like, still not like as afraid as she would be if she was like, oh shit, that's a droid. But just even the compassion to be like, she probably thinks we're droids because we're wearing big scary helmets. As somebody who works with kids, A plus, costumes are fucking terrifying to kids. So yeah, to think, oh, hey, i am in an unfamiliar outfit. This kid may not realize that I'm a person in here. Let me take it off.
Speaker: As someone who I assume has not had much exposure to children, that was really nice. Yeah, all all of the children he's had exposure to are his clone brothers who are also all raised as child soldiers.
Speaker: Yeah. I had a question about, because the word Nera gets used, Obi-Wan is conversing with the kid who has a name and I don't recall what it what it is.
Speaker: Ah, yes. Numa. um So the baby's name is Numa. Numa. But Obi-Wan's conversing with p Numa and she says something, two sentences that end in the word Nera or words that contain Nera as like a a syllable.
Speaker: And I was like, okay, is this a is this like contextual? Does it mean family? In certain contexts. Because it seems like he's asking her. like Where's your family?
Speaker: Where are your people? And she's like they're over there. yeah Which hard to tell whether or not this. Because sometimes. There are entire Star Wars languages. That have like grammar.
Speaker: And. actual words and people have like made full conlangs. Sometimes it's fans, sometimes it's Lucasfilm, and sometimes there'll be an alien speaking and it is in fact Dave Filoni reading the Smurfs in French badly.
Speaker: That makes sense. Yeah, yeah, i can see it. And that is in fact how Dave Filoni did one of the aliens. You know, why not? You gotta... French is already a weird language, so, you know, make it work for you.
Speaker: Yeah, read random words from the Smurfs in French. In bad French. Mispronounced. Speaking of French characters and character design, I feel like Numa has a little bit of the disease of, like, medieval paintings of the baby Jesus that were made by monks who have never seen a baby.
Speaker: She has a little bit of that design. She looks kind of like an elderly person. She looks kind of like a senior citizen in a baby's body. She has a really weird face that's just not quite right. And I think that she could be redesigned to be much cuter. But I i was just amused by her. She was very cute and very endearing. But just her look, i was like, maybe take that one back to the drawing board. Try again.
Speaker: Yeah. There was also a cute little thing. In these episodes, I was mostly noticing little side things because the plot was good and it was rewarding emotionally, but it wasn't that complicated. There was no nuanced details.
Speaker: ethical issues but in liberty on ryloth it's not really a b plot it's more of a c bit but one of the clones is really intrigued by the blurgs and starts trying to greet them and then it knocks him over and there's this whole arc of him gradually building a rapport with the blurg and then he gets to ride one in the end and i thought that was really cute that was fun Yeah, the all three of these episodes are like World War II adaptations, in part because George Lucas very much wanted to design the Free Ryloth movement led by Champs and Doula off of the French resistance.
Speaker: So that is why the Tweetleks have sort of a vaguely French accent. That is why they are the way they are they They are meant to be the French resistance. Yeah. That is why Liberty on Ryloth has Tambor robbing them and, you know, Nazi gold. And why the whole plot of Liberty on Ryloth is taking a bridge so they can get into the city in this universe where they can fly. Yeah. But it's a special laser bridge or plasma bridge or whatever the fuck it is. Yeah, it's it's hard light.
Speaker: And Innocence of Ryloth is apparently loosely based on The Guns of Navarone, which is a 1961 film based on a World novel.
Speaker: I did not find a specific basis for the first episode, but again, it's got major sort of both like World War II vibes and also just there is a trope of you know the the general that understands and respects his enemy.
Speaker: Yeah. And that is, you know, the Neimoidian Admiral is like painted as one of those... the general who wants to understand the motivations of his opponent. And I'm like stroking my chin here as if it if there's like a goatee, an evil goatee. Yeah, this is a very intellectual, cerebral exercise. You know, there's an elegance to the battle.
Speaker: I had the most thoughts for Liberty on Ryloth. We get a line about how the older models of Battle Droid had a central computer and the newer droids don't.
Speaker: One of them goes, we we're independent thinkers. And then there's entire chorus of Roger Rogers. Very funny. Very good. Shamsundula has a bunch of tattoos all down his leku, his head tails, which like they're supposedly super sensitive organs. So that must have fucking hurt.
Speaker: and man is a badass we're introduced to a guy named gobi who got hurt and syndula's like i need you to get better and gobi very clearly tells him fuck you syndula it's he says ranfanyo which is very obviously sort of a good natured but still a fuck off dude yeah Wat Tambor orders on multiple occasions civilian targets to be bombed and also to use the Twi'leks as human shields, which are both war crimes.
Speaker: The shot that I honestly loved from this last episode was the bridge gets turned off when Mace Windu, who is leading the assault, and two of his clone troopers are on the bridge.
Speaker: And so they start falling and the sound goes muted. And we're like just hearing just a little muted alarm and like heartbeats.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. As Jedi Master Mace Windu does some cool ass Jedi Master shit and throws the two clones of the Force and then Force leaps out via, you know, leaping on the falling trucks. Badass shit. Love it.
Speaker: Yeah. That's pretty much all I've got in my notes. My brain is also running out. It is getting late for us. So perhaps we shall say our goodbyes to our dear listeners.
Speaker: Or I guess you have the one other piece in your notes. we have Dooku continues to be disappointed in his subordinates. Yeah, he's really over it. We talked about this last time, but the cartoonishly incompetent characters in this cartoon are not funny to Dooku. He is not about it. He wants people who can actually do their jobs.
Speaker: Yeah, we we have cartoon villains and then we have Dooku who like is like, no, but I actually have an agenda here, guys. And I need you to step it the fuck up. He's it's not exactly like the one human in a Muppet movie, but it is somewhat similar that he is because the problem with comparing it to that is that the humans and the Muppets have a fundamental respect for one another. They are yes. And they are existing in the same universe.
Speaker: And it's either human playing by Muppet rules or human treating the Muppets like world-class actors, but they're all on the same page. Whereas in this one, the the universe transfer is not fully complete and Dooku is just the one guy with gravitas and seriousness who has found himself in a children's cartoon, which actually could be fucking hilarious. That could be a really good Clone Wars that's exactly the same, but somebody edits Dooku's lines so he is aware that he has been shunted out of his reality immediately. into the stupid cartoon reality and he is trying to get back to his real reality oh this is good somebody do this you can have that one for free because I'm not going to do it
Speaker: So we're going to take it out. Next time we're going to dive into season two. There is technically one more season one episode. It is not chronologically happening now. And when I did my watch through, I was super fucking confused.
Speaker: So we're not going to touch it. Okay. So the next time we will be discussing season two episodes one through three, Holocron Heist, Cargo of Doom and Children of the Force.
Speaker: Then we will be following it up with season two, episode 17, Bounty Hunters and season two, episodes 18 and 19, Zillow Beast. And then season two, episode four, Senate Spy and episodes five through eight, The Legacy of Terror arc.
Speaker: Ooh. Ooh. So, if you'd like to come back to hear us discuss the legacy of terror, you can subscribe to our podcast and you can get notified immediately as soon as a new episode drops.
Speaker: We release every other Tuesday. If you can't wait that long, we have a hefty backload of both now Star Wars as well as Lord of the Rings discussions and discussions of the Martha Wells novellas and novels The Murderbot Diaries.
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Speaker: That is the best way to get in contact with us. I check the other social medias much less frequently. So if you would like a response, send us an email. If you like what you're hearing, leave us a five-star review, leave us a comment, leave us a written review.
Speaker: But most importantly, tell your friends about us. We're a small podcast and word of mouth is the best way for a small podcast to spread. And wouldn't you love to have more people to yell about Star Wars with? That's why I made this podcast.
Speaker: You can spread it like a virus or a poison, depending on how it spreads. And before I devolve into more angry about bad science, I bid you all adieu.
Speaker: See you next time. Bye. The Phantom Apprentice is produced and edited by Rin and Sam. Our music is composed and performed by James. You can find more of his work on Spotify and Bandcamp under Bayruz, B-A-E-R-U-Z.
Speaker: Our art is by Casey Turgeon. You can find more of her work at KCT Designs on Instagram. The content discussed is the property of the original copyright holders and is used here under fair use.
