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Delving into THE MANDALORIAN Chapters 9 and 10 with Suzanne | 015
21 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 fifteenth episode we're jumping into the second season of The Mandalorian, Chapter 9 "The Marshal" and Chapter 10 "The Passenger" with very special guest, Branwen's Star Wars-loving mum, Suzanne! It's our first 'in person' episode! We talk about themes, performances, story details, the brilliance of Amy Sedaris, bantha cruelty, Din and Grogu's character development, a possible Teedo, Misty Rosas amazing character work, and much more. Watch out for our brand new segment "West End Geek Girls", which may now have 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.
Merch now available: https://www.redbubble.com/shop/ap/174934721
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Transcript
Favorite Lines from The Mandalorian S2
00:00:03
Speaker
Amen.
00:00:16
Speaker
Sia. Hi. Have you got a favourite line from The Mandalorian Season 2, Episodes 1 and 2? Yes, it's from Episode 1 and it needs a little bit of explaining.
00:00:28
Speaker
course it The line I've chosen is, there it is. but so we get there That's all you get. And it happens just as the most ginormous Krayt Dragon you've ever seen appears. And it's the most unnecessary thing Mando has ever said. There it is. like Yeah, we can see. Amazing. so Hello, Bremwen. Hello. Have you got a favourite line from Mandalorian Season 2, Episode 1 and or 2? Mine's also from episode one. o If this thing divides all buds, I'll gladly pay for the offspring. Which is Pelley, when she wants a grogo of her own.
Special Guest Introduction: Host's Mom
00:01:13
Speaker
You're listening to Sisters of the Force, and today we're going to delve into Mandalorian Season 2, Episodes 1 and 2, and what a couple of episodes they are. Yeah, great. I'm so excited, and I'm even more excited because we've got yeah another special guest. Hello. It's my mum. Hi. It literally is my mum, Suzanne, who obviously is another massive Star Wars fan. No choice in the matter. Welcome to Sisters of the Force, which I know you've been listening to like the good mum that you are.
Guest's Favorite Podcast Moments
00:01:50
Speaker
What's been your favourite episode so far?
00:01:52
Speaker
My favourite episode? yeah of the hook of the podcast, yeah.
00:01:56
Speaker
I'll have to think about that one while we're talking. I know you enjoyed the Revenge of the Sith one with Jessica. Yes, yeah. i think you loved her Palpatine impressions, as did we all. Well, I've enjoyed them all. I'd find it very difficult to come up with a favourite. Oh, that's very difficult. That's very kind you. I was concentrating so much on which my favourite line. Okay, yes. oh yeah Speaking of. Give us your favourite line. Just giving you a hint. We usually do forget. Yeah, we do.
00:02:24
Speaker
um So shall I go ahead? Yeah. My favourite line, stroke lines. And from episode one, well, not episode one, the first one we saw... um was actually to show how Mando is becoming more invested Grogu, more caring. yeah And he says, think it was with the doorman, maybe, when they weren't allowed in, he said, wherever I go, he goes. And I thought, ooh. And then ah when he went off to fight the ah the dragon, he said to, um yes, help me out here. Kobban. Kobban.
00:03:03
Speaker
yeah Yeah. Take care of the child, which made us all think he was going to die. because yeah but i I thought both of those lines were very indicative of how he's sort of changing from this little creature who he's just carting around, not knowing what to do
Mando's Transformation: Bounty Hunter to Caregiver
00:03:22
Speaker
with.
00:03:22
Speaker
is actually beginning to care for him. Yeah. He's now his mate. yeah. Yeah, that that as a theme. I mean, I feel like that's the theme of particularly that first episode. No, more so the second episode a way. But yeah both of these episodes to kick off season two, because it had been like, well, I think for us in the UK, was only about eight months between season and one and season and two in the US. For some reason, got it way before us. I remember spending about three months trying to avoid spoilers. Trying to avoid all the spoilers. yeah in that time, it kind of brought us back into the world and reminded us where we left off with Mando. Yeah, he's gone through a massive, massive transformation, hasn't He's still not the best parent, though. Like, taking Grogu into a fight. To see a fight first thing. No, I didn't say it was a good parent. of his decisions are very doddy, but um but yeah his heart's in the right place. Yeah, he'll stand by Grogu, whatever happens. yeah Not so sure about Grogu here. Yeah, well, perhaps we're seeing some of the results of this bad parenting.
00:04:25
Speaker
Grogu's behaviour, which we'll most definitely get to. Yeah, I think what we usually do, muma as you know, as a regular listener, is we kind of go through and not necessarily scene by scene, but talk our way through each episode one at a time.
00:04:41
Speaker
We're still figuring out, this episodic approach, having just got used to breaking down entire films. Just used to films, yeah. It's a slightly different thing doing this. Especially two episodes in one episode is quite interesting.
Social Media Promotion
00:04:52
Speaker
Two different storylines.
00:04:53
Speaker
um Before we get going, dear listener, if you want to follow us on any of our socials, you can find us on Facebook and Instagram at Sisters of the Force Pod. um We're also on Blue Sky, Sisters the Force. Get on Blue Sky. ya, get on Blue Sky. Oh yeah, that that was aimed specifically at Blue Sky's got such a beautiful community of Star Wars lovers and um podcasters and it's just a really nice space. to be big shout out to all the star wars podcasting blue sky collective yeah um and you can also follow us on youtube and all of the regular platforms you can come and find us
00:05:27
Speaker
And talk
Recap of S2 Episode 1 Opening Scene
00:05:28
Speaker
to us. Yeah. Send us messages. Comment on our posts and things. We love to chat with you. Cool. Lush. All right. So my first note that I made this morning. When you watched When I watched it this morning. hour or two ago. an hour or two ago. My first note for the first episode was, spooky place.
00:05:50
Speaker
Very spooky. So is this the unknown place? Yeah, Mum, you asked us just before we started recording yeah where it was. but Because um the very first part of um the episode, I completely forgot to take notes. I was immediately involved in the programme. Excellent.
00:06:10
Speaker
And I've written one or two things and think, what the heck is that all about? Just scribbling a word down. I was sort of thinking more of when the fighting began. and it actually sort of reinforces what we've been saying about Mandalorian's attitude towards Gregor because one of the first things he does was push the little thingy, eat something yeah yeah but he sleep yes the pod in back, pushes him away. It looked almost vicious because he pushed so hard to push him well out of the way of danger and before he started killing people. Yeah, yeah. He is at least looking. And and Grogu has got his own little like emergency pod closing button, hasn't he? Yeah, I think he may have actually done that. Yeah, it's a snapshot. He gets pushed away, yeah. Yeah, at this point, we don't really know where this is as far as I could tell. i did a bit of research because I thought I should know.
00:07:02
Speaker
There is speculation online that it could be Nar Shudda, which is the planet where the Hutts are kind of from or based. which we've I don't think we've ever seen.
Speculation on Episode Location: Nar Shaddaa?
00:07:13
Speaker
We've seen it in animation. i think it's in The Bad Batch. And it's obviously one of these like criminal underworld yeah planets, in the probably in the Outer Rim. There are many, many of those.
00:07:23
Speaker
But it's nice to see a bit of that kind of like really run down. Yeah. i think when we've seen criminal places, it's often quite neon-y, like we were talking about. Oh, yeah. Yeah.
00:07:35
Speaker
Yeah, and in Attack of the Clones as well, that kind of like lower levels of Coruscant vibe. Yeah, sure. Yeah, so this one-eyed man who I was quite interested in, but unfortunately didn't last very long. But I did say to you about what what his name was. We didn't seem to know anything. Yeah, he's gorekaresh Gore Gore Koresh. Yeah, he's whizzed by. it He does get mentioned a couple of times name.
00:07:57
Speaker
by name Yeah, don I don't know. I'm meant to look up what race he is. Cyclops. Yeah, he's basically a Star Wars Cyclops. Yeah, maybe. He might have just been a one-off or... Yeah, yeah. Some weird surgery. Some strange thing. I loved all the graffiti in the streets. There was ah yeah all sorts of stuff. It's like Easter Egg Central, I expect. I did notice there is some graffiti about droids.
00:08:25
Speaker
And there is something that I think is mentioned in the Aftermath books, but it certainly has been mentioned somewhere. There's an organisation called the Droid Gotra or Gutra, which is like a kind of... We did mention it, think, an earlier episode. We have talked yeah. have been with Keshlan, where some droids decided to rebel against the concept of droid servitude. it's like breaking the shackles of being a droid.
00:08:49
Speaker
And they become a kind of an organisation or a guild type thing of their own. Okay. And I think there's an uprising in the aftermath of the the fall of the Empire, which is where we are, you know, we're only five years after the Empire's fallen. I forgot to read the graffiti. was too busy watching Grogu's face because that's kind of where we get the spooky vibes from. Yeah, yeah. He's reacting to the whole thing.
00:09:09
Speaker
The only reason I'm drawing attention to the droid gutter graffiti in particular is because, even more confusingly, Koresh at some point says, by the gutter. I think when when Mando's got hanging upside down and he's like, oh, yeah. Yeah, shouting out in desperation. And does he mean the droid gutter? And what is he saying that for? It's kind of So whether this deep planet is kind of under the droid gutter, I don't know. We didn't see any droids, I don't think. No, at all.
00:09:36
Speaker
So interesting aliens. They also didn't last very long. No. Yeah, I'd completely forgotten this scene exists, to be honest, because obviously the episode is so focused on the Krayt Dragon
Grogu's Survival Instincts
00:09:48
Speaker
storyline. Yeah, yeah.
00:09:50
Speaker
that That beginning bit kind of gets a bit lost. Yeah. There is that moment where Grogu clearly knows what's going on and he goes and touches his little button to make him. Yeah. Who loved that? Put him back in his little egg thing. Yeah. That's first time we've seen him do it himself. Normally other people do it for him. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I guess he's picking up all these things as they go along and realising what he can do. Figuring it out. I think there's a shot of Mando about to trigger his whistling birds. Yeah, he gets the whistling birds out and Grogu's like think Grogu's in the background watching. Yeah, he knows the whistling birds now. We all do. We're all like, we are Grogu in that moment. Like, uh-oh, it's all going to go horribly wrong here. But then it all gets really, really brutal, like that stringing up by the ankles and leaving to the scary monsters. That's very horrible. Yeah, there are some very sort of vicious moments in between all the cuteness and... Bonding, yeah. It reminded me of the very beginning of season one, episode one, where he cuts the quarren in half in the irising doors on the ice planet. And so I think it is, yeah, it's like we're getting two sides of Mando's personality. Yeah, but I guess that's inevitable. He's...
00:11:06
Speaker
He's having to look after not just himself now. Yeah. He's got somebody else to think about. And um that's the way you deal with it. If you don't deal with it quickly, then it's going to happen to you. so yeah I don't think anybody was planning to be particularly nice Amanda. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's true. Yeah. And to be fair, he's very much on a mission. He's been given this task by the armourer to take Grogu to his people, whoever they may be.
00:11:32
Speaker
And all of this is a kind of long-winded version of like how he's going to get there. And he'll do whatever it takes. as The more we see of Mando and Grogu as ah as a kind of companionship, we know that Mando will do whatever it takes. yeah And that means some of his less...
00:11:50
Speaker
fatherly behaviour. I think it's the way of the world at that point as well that definitely it wasn't just him. Wherever you go there yeah are things being done to other people. Yeah, we see multiple signs of that like in the aftermath of the Empire where we've got this lawless planet whatever's going on here with Gamorreans fighting for money and everything. But also later on with Cobb Vanth telling his story of the the mining guild and all of that. like We're seeing those kind of unsettled this which is why i love the aftermath trilogy because we have all these little interlude chapters which paint this picture of unsettled galactic conflict still it's not the peaceful i ideal that the new republic is supposed to be
00:12:37
Speaker
So my next note, instantly after the kind of commenting on the brutal death, yeah is, yay Pelly. Yay! I just wrote Pelly. It's just like the joy of seeing Pelly again. She's back. I can't get enough of her.
00:12:51
Speaker
Yeah, she is amazing. Fair play to Amy Sedara. She's made that character. I mean, I'm sure it's a brilliantly written character, but she is such a versatile actor when you look at the different things that she's in and the different characters that she plays. And this is such a specific character. It's so funny. And it's so Star Wars. And it's just...
00:13:10
Speaker
Yeah, it can't just be in the writing. yeah Her attitude towards the droids and relationship. How can you have a relationship with the droids? But she obviously does. I'm intrigued to see how much they write for her now. Like originally when they wrote the first episode that she was in, they were just writing this new character and we'll see who plays it and how she's going to play it.
00:13:33
Speaker
And now they know her. Like, were they right leaning into... I'm sure by write more Book of Boba Fett episode five, where she's back again. And by then, she's even more Peli. And it's a very Peli-centric episode. She's in it for the whole thing, pretty much, which is amazing. And also, Grogu, too, is sort of, I think, has clicked that she's a real softie. Yeah, yeah. And just the way he looks at her. Yeah, you know... The pit droids are proving Mando right.
00:14:06
Speaker
thought that was kind of funny that straight away they're wrecking the ship. I did have a question about there's one of these other types of droids that we've seen a few times. What are they? The big square ones that just kind of... oh power droids. power droids? Yeah. they' They're also called gonk droids. Gonk droids. They do come in some different shapes sizes, but most often they're like, yeah. They make a really cool sound. Yeah. it's just I mean, they're called gonk droids because originally we see them on the Jawa Sand Cooler in A New Hope. And he goes, gonk, gonk, as it walks along.
00:14:39
Speaker
Since then, we have heard them make a few different noises. yeah There's a great one in Bad Batch, which is part of the the crew of their ship. And Wrecker has, a a you know, he's got a sort of special relationship with it. He's often doing like weight training with it. Really fun. Yeah, and she's got R5-D4. Yeah, we've seen him before. Yeah, he's now a Star Wars celebrity. yeah I did get a trifle confused at the beginning of the um when a Mando was sent by the armourer. Yeah. I'm not quite sure how she knew where Mando should go yeah to take Grogu.
00:15:18
Speaker
but It just didn't feel like... I can't remember whether she specifically said Tatooine to him. Yeah, I think she did. no, Gorr Koresh told him to go to Tatooine. But he goes there looking for another Mandalorian. Oh, that explains my notes. yeah I thought I got them out of order, but no, I can see now. But now you've said that, it's made me think, is there a clue as to where that place where Gorr Koresh was in what the armour is at the end of season one? I can't remember it We'll just have to watch it again. Oh, no. What a shame. I don't mind watching that again. Yeah, it is a bit tricky to keep track of throughout this whole season because this whole season is like a series of side quests. Yeah. yeah Trying to find new characters. and Yeah. And like how each one leads to the next. And is a bit of ah a treasure hunt kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah, because really this episode doesn't really begin until they get there. Yeah, until he gets to Tatooine. Well, until he rides off into Mos Pelgo. Yeah. Which Meli... Meli Potto? Pelimotto. Pelimotto refers to as Mos Pelgo when she shows it him on the map and says it sort of doesn't exist anymore. Yeah.
00:16:29
Speaker
But I don't know if you mentioned it, but Cobb Vanth... has renamed it free town i think did they mention free town i'm sure it's mentioned somewhere spoiler alert mando goes back there okay in future episodes so maybe that's where we get free town maybe it's free town later on yeah i think it's the idea is that after the mining guild of god were kind of evicted yeah then they renamed it really is a symbol but yeah We've got some weird little creatures in the foreground. Yes. Yay. Did you notice that? We've been following shots where there are like establishing shots of a place.
00:17:06
Speaker
Oh, yeah. And there'll be the little creatures. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. yeah dude I don't know what they are. I've called them kangaroo mice. Yes. I was just going to say, I've got no idea what to refer to them as. Yes. Yeah, I thought they could be
Introduction of Cobb Vanth
00:17:18
Speaker
womp rats. Yeah. Because they were mentioned. Yeah. Or they called, who called Grogu? Paley Motto. Yes. Yeah, that was her pet name.
00:17:28
Speaker
A yellow womp rat. Yeah. And we've heard about them in various... They're mentioned in A New Hope. But haven't we heard that they're like two foot long in A New Hope? They're not much bigger than two metres. Two metres. think is what Luke says. That's what Luke says about yeah. Spoiler alert. We do get to see a womp rat in the docking bay, I think.
00:17:48
Speaker
there's one there whether we see it or not can't remember we'll find out i watch this space i obviously don't pay quite enough detailed attention well to be fair that episode we're talking about is full of details and little things to notice and we yeah this ride into um i'm going to keep calling it free town mos pelgo free down whichever one yeah it's so spaghetti western It is, yeah. As is that whole standoff, really, the whole sequence. Yeah, going into the bar, like the barman, and then Cobb Vanth's entry, yeah which Cobb Vanth is a niche character, at least he was. He, again, is from the Aftermath books. Yeah, I see. All the readers of the Aftermath books leapt off their sofas collectively this episode first aired. We were Mos Pelgo, Mos Pelgo, really? Surely not. And then the way they shoot that entrance... The barman says, you can ask him, he's right there. And the camera sort of tracks past Man there he's standing with the backlit thing with the armour on. yeah What a guy.
00:18:57
Speaker
Perfect casting as well, I think. Timmy Field on the phone is so good. is That kind of slightly gnarly, but well-to-do sheriff or marshal, as he's called. Great.
00:19:09
Speaker
And then I did write that there was a very convenient crate dragon attack during that standoff because it was all getting a little bit tense. Yeah, I agree. I thought that was a little bit contrived. yeah could Get that armour off now. there's a dragon.
00:19:27
Speaker
Who would have won I mean, surely Mando would have won a shootout between the two of them. Possibly. Convenient for Cobb Vanth that there was a dragon attack. Yeah.
00:19:39
Speaker
And yeah, the dragon, it's quite terrifying. It is really scary. I had that it was quite scary. It reminds me of a film, there's a film in the 80s, I think it was, yeah called Critters. And I think there was a Critters 2 and a Critters 3.
00:19:53
Speaker
And the creatures, can't much about it, but there was this thing of like tunnelling under the sand in the desert in a very similar way. okay Not quite on the scale of this. Not quite this giant. yeah I like the way it swims though.
00:20:06
Speaker
Yeah. to swim through the sand. Yeah. Very quickly as we find out later on. Yeah. I found the ah the yak a little scary. So like you're thinking, oh, look, there's a huge, enormous yak. Oh, my God, no, there's an even huge, enormous dragon going to swallow it. And that was quite shocking. It was shocking. i mean, we've only ever seen they ban the banthas, the yak things, as like Tusken Raider mounts. Yeah. And so we've seen them on Tatooine, so it wasn't too unusual. But to see one sort of like in a domesticated like human settlement, essentially, is quite interesting.
00:20:41
Speaker
I obviously don't pay enough careful attention to the names. They look like a yak to me. They do look like yaks. You don't get bogged down with the details like I do, sadly, which is good for you. Especially as he was only going to get swallowed up anyway. went on a Bantha deep dive this morning. Did you? I because I love a Bantha. I was quite upset at so many of them being eaten and lost episode. So did you find out anything you didn't know? I did. I wanted to know what the sound was. The sound that they made. Oh yeah. I wanted to know how they made it. So it was originally, yeah, such a nice sound, but it's a, it's a bear slowed down. Oh, slowed down. Wow.
Banthas' Sound Design
00:21:24
Speaker
Yeah. So it's the sound of a bear, but slowed down loads. And it was originally going be part of, they got the bear sounds to originally be part of Chewbacca's sound design. Yeah. But then they didn't, they used it for the banther instead. That's really interesting. You've got my brain running a million miles hour because in 1998-ish, I made a drum and bass track and I sampled the moment in A New Hope when we see some Tascam Raiders leap onto the back of a banter and ride And there's a brilliant bit orchestration which goes, and then banter roars. Yeah. And I sampled the whole thing of the orchestration and the raw. And I pitched it either up or down to fit the drummer bass tempo. And I can't remember which way I went because I may have taken it back to the original bass pitch. That's incredible. My other amazing bantha fact.
00:22:17
Speaker
Do you know about who played the original bantha? I do, but tell us. I was very excited about this. Do you know about the original bantha? No, do So the original bantha was played by an elephant. 1977. in nineteen seventy seven They dressed an elephant up. Elephants in the desert. Which, I mean, but how else? Like, we need to see Tusken Raiders leap on the back and ride one. Yeah. So they dressed an elephant up as a bantha and her name was Margie. oh She was an Asian elephant. So la is famous, famous elephant, obviously. And she kept taking the costume off because it was too hot. That's why she's in Tunisia.
00:22:54
Speaker
She didn't really have to get eaten though, did she? no, no. We didn't see any Banthas harmed the original. In the first one, in A New Hope, no Banthas were harmed. But yeah, apparently was a nightmare to film because she kept shrugging the costume off. Aww. I like that very quickly after this, the shot of Grogu hiding in the pot. And it was like immediately lightened the atmosphere. So all this horror going on. It's sticking out. I'd forgotten that. We
00:23:28
Speaker
um we do get some more Western tropes. Cobb Vance saying, what brings you here, stranger? oh yeah, yeah. And Sponchka, two snorts. Yeah. Also a great line.
00:23:41
Speaker
My next set of notes is all about a yeah great side quest proposition, more side questing. yeah I loved all the flashback lore stuff about Mos Pelgo and the mining guild and as we were saying earlier on, how it shows the galaxy in turmoil.
00:23:57
Speaker
And these little pockets of innocent, you know, communities and stuff. People getting caught up it, yeah. I don't think the mining guild is particularly a criminal organisation, like the Hutt cartel or anything like that, but they are obviously doing some pretty, you know, unethical. Not so good stuff. Yeah. Well, because they could, guess. Yeah, Power vacuum, isn't it? Yeah. Sweeping in. Yeah. I was having a conversation with somebody about this the other day. might have been us talking after we'd watched it about how the Empire, for all their awful Nazism, they did do some of that light order in the galaxy. And maybe some of that was good. Like Mos Pelgo was maybe a safer place to live. safer place than it was, yeah. I don't know. Possibly not. Possibly not.
00:24:41
Speaker
It's hard to say. find it quite hilarious that having watched two episodes straight off pretty much and then we sit down and have a conversation about what happened. Yeah, yeah. We're not obsessed at all. It was probably a good hour. Mostly because my partner's here and she's not a massive Star Wars fan, is what we said. And so we encouraged her to watch a couple of episodes of Mando with us because we had to to prep for the for the podcast so she's now been introduced to Mando and obviously that led to a massive conversation because she wrote down lots of questions of her own yeah well it's very difficult when you haven't had like the whole prequels and lead up and seeing a series already and yeah I find it quite tricky following it all yeah I have to put my knitting down my god yeah mum is the original knitter yeah I was going to wear my knitted Jedi symbol jumper today. Excellent. But maybe we'll put that socials. Put that on there. Hand knitted by my mum. Nearly as big of a Star Wars fan as I am. I've become more of a Star Wars fan, I think, since all these new programmes. Yeah. Yeah. It's so interesting. Definitely. It's given us like a regular contact with Star Wars that we wouldn't have had before. Yeah. Other than me pushing my luck on how many times we could watch the film. How many times could we watch this film?
00:26:09
Speaker
ah Nice. There's a very lovely community aspect to Mos Pelgo. think it's in the flashbacks that we see. No, it's straight after the dragon kind of visitation. We see all the townspeople putting back together. They come and put the town back together, yeah. Well, they're learning to live with it really, aren't they? I suppose they almost abandoned hope of being able to get rid of it. So they just have to live with it work around it. I guess that sort feeds into the deal that the town has to make with Mando and then even more so with the Tuscans. Yeah.
00:26:44
Speaker
That they've got to agree because it's like they say, it's only a matter of time before. Yeah, it's going to eat you all. Yeah, the dragon's going to start. It will eat all of you. Chomping. I think it was a nice, a sort of nice touch because Mando and Cobb were...
00:26:59
Speaker
at odds with each other and mando's obviously a furious that he'd got the armor and yeah trying to get it off him but then they obviously had to agree to work together yeah and oh what a concept that is oh look there's this massive massive problem let's fight about oh no let's not fight out let's work together and try and get rid of it my go we love a star wars parallel And I'm sure in the world in 2025, there's many, many, yeah.
00:27:31
Speaker
Well, and then, of course, Tuscan Raiders as well you another their aspect. Definitely. That they knew they had to work together and, you know, actually work. Yeah. Yeah. Seeing that little, their little mini side quest, sub side quest of going to get the Tuscans and Mando showing his like,
00:27:49
Speaker
affinity with the Tuscan people and he's obviously experienced like he knows how to deal with the dogs yeah and he knows about the black melon you know you've got to drink the horrible black melon yeah which to be frank looked pretty horrific it does look very horrific like spores coming off of it when they break it open This is the moment that had my favourite shot in this episode. Oh, wow.
00:28:11
Speaker
And it's just a really, really tiny throwaway shot. But as they pan over to ah the fire where the Tuscans and Mando and Cobber are sitting, there is a Tuscan in the foreground brushing a bantha's teeth. Oh, yes! It is those little touches. must have been very complicated. Was he brushing or was he sharpening?
00:28:33
Speaker
I think he looked like a brush to It looked very much like a polishy thing. Yeah. Brushing the panther's teeth. I love that they care for the... I mean, they obviously live like, community with creatures, don't they? Yeah, they do. Because they've got the mastiffs, which presumably help them hunt or something like that. Yeah.
00:28:51
Speaker
And then the the beasts of burden that carry across the June Seas. Yeah. Yeah, there was a line, I can't remember exactly who it was, who said it, but which is why I couldn't have it for my favourite line, but because um they were all sort of debating about what Well, I think they found the Sarlacc cave and obviously i've tried to get rid of it. Didn't get it before, yeah. And somebody said, we might be open to some fresh ideas. Imagine this, Mando, after one of them gets eaten. hilariously Yeah. feat. Yeah, I think Mando translates it to Cobb. That's right. And it's also deadpans. Yes, you might be. i I love Mando's description of the the Tuscans and I think this sort of some helps us to understand...
00:29:40
Speaker
about the Tuscans a little more. We've been talking about this in earlier episodes of podcasts where we're finding out more about the Tuscans and perspective of them has changed so much. But he says, I know these people, they're brutal, but so is the Dune Sea. And think that's like a really... Brutal people, but they live in brutal conditions. Yeah, they've been pushed into these brutal conditions in a way, yeah. And we also have that when Cobb's refusing to drink the spory thing. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And Mando says, well, you stole their water. Yeah.
00:30:09
Speaker
Translates that they've stolen. Yeah. You took the water, so this is what they drink. Absolutely. Mando's very much a peacekeeper. Yeah. In this whole situation with the townspeople, and he does quite a good job of sort of being a diplomat. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it is quite political, really, because it's not just all, you know, <unk> bam, shoot them up sort of thing. yeah so There's much more to it than that. yeah I guess like the backbone of it is that they've got to take out the Krayt Dragon, but it's yes it's the getting there, like you say, the kind of forming an uneasy alliance, I wrote down. Yeah, it's very uneasy. You absolutely know what the end result's got to be, but the way they get there is is interesting, yeah.
00:30:48
Speaker
We don't know a massive amount about the Sarlacc. I think there is more about it in sort of expanded, maybe the literary side of Star Wars. Yeah. But the only Sarlacc we've seen in live action has been in Return the Jedi, which is the pit that Boba Fett gets thrown into. And there's a theme of Boba Fett throughout this whole episode, of course, because Cobb's wearing... Cobb's wearing his armour. The thing, but I love the fact that we sort of get the Sarlacc mentioned. Yeah. It's probably a different Sarlacc with the sort of... The damage to the armour is...
00:31:17
Speaker
I think it's sort of emphasised a little bit. We get some shots of the armour and the helmet, particularly with the of acid burn marks on it to sort of show you what the Sarlacc has done, which is obviously got us thinking all the way through the episode. It's like what happened to Boba Fett? How did this armour get outside of the Sarlacc after Boba Fett was eaten and presumably killed? Presumably eaten. No one ever really died. In inverted commas. Maybe in season six of The Mandalorian we'll get that bantha returning that we thought we'd lost. Yeah, but they blew one of those banthas up. True, yeah. It was definitely a lot of explosives on that bantha. Speaking yeah, the journey back to the Sarlacc with the townspeople from Mos Pelgra and the Tuscans, everybody coming together. And seeing the bantha, yeah, carrying explosives. Carrying all the explosives. Yeah. Horrific. Yeah. Awful, awful, awful. That's no way to treat a banter.
00:32:09
Speaker
Yeah. that was Knowing that your plan is to blow it up. going to blow it up yeah. That was going to be my other favourite line, actually, was when Cobb Vanth says, there's no such thing as an empty Sarlacc pit. And Mando goes, there is if you eat the Sarlacc. LAUGHTER LAUGHTER
00:32:25
Speaker
I noticed Mando leaves Grogu without even yeah considering him. Just go away and stay safe and goes off to attack. And there he is. yeah, there's this massive There is. There he is. good. We've spotted him last. Oh, of course.
00:32:46
Speaker
there's a brilliant montage with Jon Favreau again we didn't say at the beginning actually that Jon Favreau is directing this episode and we've already observed many times many a
Emotional Shifts: Heartwarming to Intense
00:32:57
Speaker
montage he loves a montage and it's like Mando explaining the plan yeah is the voiceover to the montage and as he's explaining it we're seeing them burying the charges and luring the dragon out so good I also noticed too, it was only a tiny little shot of um when they were doing all this and he goes off and leaves Grogu and Grogu's ears flatten down and you can just see the concern in his face. yeah And yeah, I thought that was really good because Gregor quite often seems to just distance himself from whatever's going on. But with that, he was obviously concerned, which is a little bit worrying because normally it's like, oh, yeah, they'll be fine. They'll be all right. Yeah. He's obviously a bit worried there. I noticed that there's a nice little moment Cobb has, which is almost like a parallel with Mando and the child.
00:33:49
Speaker
a girl comes and hands a detonator control thing to Cobb and he speaks to her specifically and calls her by name and yeah like he's very fatherly towards her in the same way which is a really nice kind of parallel yeah Am I misremembering this because I forgot to check for it this time around, but I saw it the first time around a couple of weeks ago. But there's one of those focus pool dolly shots. It's dolly shot. Yes. Yeah, I wrote that down Cobb as the dragon appears. we yeah I don't know why they chose to do that. on Yeah. called him except timothy oliphant is quite easy on the eye any excuse for a yeah so dramatic it's quite and ah yeah it's quite a weird one it's kind of a mid medium shot of him yeah and i think it's just in the drama of it yeah yeah i don't know you will have heard that episode yet it's not come out no it's not been out yet because of our pre-recording schedule spoiler alert it's not live it's
00:34:48
Speaker
And by the way, should have said this at the beginning of the episode. We're recording in person. We're in the same room. Yeah, in the same room. All three of us. Eye contact. So different. Yeah, the Zolli shot. Mum, you probably know about this from our film. I do indeed. We've made many films together over the years.
00:35:09
Speaker
And it's where you are tracking in on the dolly. on a person so the camera is moving towards the subject but at the same time you're zooming out on the camera or vice versa and normally when you're zooming it's making the thing appear nearer or further so you're basically going the opposite way to what the lens is doing yeah and it does this amazing thing where the background kind of parallaxes and appears to expand or contract yeah it's often used in horror movies kind of like The moment where the poor victim... Yeah. But it was it it was our last episode. I think it might have been, yeah. JP brought it up and we're now tracking that as well. Yeah, looking for Solly shots. Yeah.
00:35:50
Speaker
Yeah. There's a classic one in The Shining. i think that's like yeah where we see the twins in the hotel corridor and because hotel corridors are like lend themselves to that kind of shot. Yeah.
00:36:02
Speaker
Classic. We get another dank Ferric. Yes. Mando's favourite curse word or curse words. I noticed that and also wrote, we're almost overusing womp rats now this episode. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because they've been referenced so many times in this one episode. This is an overuse. Well, my...
00:36:25
Speaker
sort of final really observation after all the horror and what went on was that Grogu didn't actually get very involved in this. There was none of his little sneaky hand movements and help, especially as Mando is in imminent dire danger yeah yeah he didn't really get involved so i kept thinking in a minute yeah but of course that is interesting yeah maybe he's just keeping his energy in reserve and possibly he saw the great dragon and went absolutely not yeah dare i say grogu was fine he was safe in his little pod and everything was good so you don't get involved let's keep out of it just leave it Man's all the sort of, honestly. Yeah. Man's all doing with it. Yeah. Real good.
00:37:11
Speaker
And then my last two notes on this was, I'm not liking all the Bantha cruelty. was not good episode of Banthas, generally. It was a bit hard on stomach toning.
00:37:23
Speaker
I'm wondering what they use to do the Banthas now, then. Well, they're not using elephants anymore, hopefully. I think there was a thing where they weren't going to use elephants anymore. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'm guessing it's a combination of CGI and there were definitely some puppets. Like the toothbrushing one. Yeah, yeah. hundred percent Giant puppet ones. Yeah, there's quite a bit of close-in Bantha stuff in this. They must have made a couple of... Made some big, yeah big contraptions. yeah I love a big puppet. It's very Star Wars. So now Cobb Vanth upholds his end of the deal. Mando's got Boba Fett's armour. Yeah. And a steak to take away. Yeah.
00:38:02
Speaker
a giant piece of dragon meat before we finish the kind of face off with the crate dragons oh yeah i love that we hear the tuscans whole range of vocalizations through the episode and when they're in conversation they use like a sort of softer version of their cry yeah and it just got more and more escalated as the episode went on obviously as the stakes got higher and then in the final bit where the the dragon is absolutely going wild they're using their full-on guttural war cry thing yeah it was really good to like hear that kind of range of yeah tuscan voices um yeah the thing i'd forgotten about was
00:38:40
Speaker
the speeder ride across the Dune Sea where... the pod racing speeders. Cobb Vanth has got a part of a pod pod racer. racer, And I think it's pretty much confirmed it's Anakin's. It's Anakin's pod racer. And if you listen, there's a couple of shots where he flies quite near and we hear hear it the sound design and I'm sure... Because the group beautiful thing about the pod race Phantom Menace, as we've already discussed, is that each pod has its own sound design.
00:39:04
Speaker
And I'm 100% sure it's Anakin's. Ah, sneaky. another little Another little Easter egg. You can't go to that screen. It definitely looks like Anakin's pod racer. Yeah, yeah, totally. There's a reference to a game that I've never played called Knights of the Old Republic. And I apologise to all the deep Star Wars heads that listen to this podcast that I've not played Knights of the Old Republic maybe one day. It does feel like it's a bit of a standard game that you've kind of got to play story-wise. um The whole story with the Krayt Dragon and finding the pearl inside the Krayt Dragon yeah is in the game apparently. Is the game. Okay.
Boba Fett's Return Tease
00:39:40
Speaker
so john favore was clearly referencing that quite closely which is not the first time he's referenced that game and the game has been referenced in and or as well there' some big stuff in and all season two that refers to nicely old republic and lucasfilm have just announced a new game coming out called fate of the old republic yeah which is apparently a kind of tie-in even though nights of the old republic isn't officially canon no it's pre-disney
00:40:07
Speaker
fate of the old republic is going to be and there's a lot of speculation as you can imagine about what the story content of fate of the old republic is going to yeah yeah compared to knight the old republic we will find out find out that'd be exciting yeah lush and then we've got intrigue my last note is intrigue o because we see yes yes the final the mystery man yeah I think we can kind of guess well we all knew yeah because it's clearly tomorrow yeah but like ah Tamara Tamara oh gosh
00:40:39
Speaker
Apologies. Yeah, we clearly recognise the actor. And it's a lovely finale to an episode that's had his presence, the presence of Boba. The entire time I want my armour back. Yeah. yeah I did think he's it's now going to be further away from him, like at least when he knew where it was when Cobb Vanth had it. I think he knows who's got it now. Like he's got a lead, think.
00:41:03
Speaker
And he does a lot of work in that one moment. Yes. Like he just turns and walks and we know exactly what's going on, which phenomenal.
00:41:17
Speaker
great Amazing. I loved episode one What a start to a season. Yeah, it's fun. It's like a film. It's like a little mini movie. Yeah. Very cinematic. There was the thing of, which I forgot to wash out for again, where they change the letterbox resolution from 2.35 to 1 or whatever it is that they film in generally to give it that cinematic feel. But when the Krayt Dragon appears, we go into like this sort of almost like IMAX type thing where we expand the top and the bottom of the screen to show the scale of the IMAX. Yeah. Yeah. Which I don't know if at the time whether it's the first show to do that because not many people have done that.
00:41:51
Speaker
But it is becoming more of a technique to sort of widen the aspect to show show different things. I mean, the aspect choice is a storytelling choice. yeah Always in a sort geeky filmakery way, which we love a bit of geeky filmakery stuff. That's the point. Yeah. Very cool.
00:42:09
Speaker
Episode two or chapter 10, we should say. Yeah, The Passenger. I was wondering this. Did they only start referring to them as chapters once we got to season two? No, from thing day one. It was chapter one, yeah. no yeah okay I love other thing Stranger Things does chapters as well. well yes Although they reset their chapters each season. Each time, yeah.
00:42:28
Speaker
But I like that kind of literary motif of chapters. Yeah, it's cool. It's cool. my first note for this episode this is the passenger and my first note is successful sneak attack yeah yeah who would have thought that mando would be caught out by a rope yeah but the old rope speed bike trick which we saw ewoks pulling off which admittedly imperial biker scouts are probably not so cunning as mando There's a hell of a cinematic shot at the very beginning of Mando in the Tatooine Wastes. Yes. And it's just like super widescreen. Yeah,
00:43:07
Speaker
So these three people, I put Tido question mark. Oh. In The Force Awakens. Ray finds BB-8 in the desert on Jakku.
00:43:18
Speaker
Yeah. And she rescues BB-8 from what she refers to as a T-Do, riding that labyrinth-style puppet. Oh, yeah. You remember? Yeah, I remember that. And she cuts BB-8 down out of the net yeah that he's got in. And she says, oh, he's just T-Do. doesn't care about anybody. Yeah.
00:43:35
Speaker
And I read in some associated book that Tido is the name for the race and you call them all Tido. They're all called Tido. But I feel like that little alien looked lot like a Tido to me.
00:43:49
Speaker
Maybe we need to do a side-by-side. little delve into that. Yeah, look out on our social media. I'll do a little side-by-side and we can decide whether it's the same where it is a tiedo species. Nice.
00:44:02
Speaker
Yeah, i was surprised that he got attacked so quickly, but then he did a very good jetpack attack back. Amazing use a jetpack. That's quite fun to say. Jetpack attack back. Jetpack attack back. Yeah, he does like a little remote control thing. Yeah, you can have this. It's fine. It's yours. Do whatever you want. No. And up again, it's a downy fool. Yet another brutal murder in front of Grogu. It a brutal murder, yeah.
00:44:26
Speaker
Grogu's witnessed too much. Well, I think it does have an effect on him because, um or at least I don't know that it directly affects him, but I think it's giving him permission to be a little more gruesome himself. Yeah. Because some of his... ah That's quite dark months. some Some of his habits in this episode I've found a little difficult. yeah I think i'm changed I changed my attitude towards Krug, from being a cute little sweetie to being actually not very nice, selfish little monster. He's a It's like toddler on the scale of yeah a horror movie. Not really understanding. yeah I put somewhere at the beginning a shot through the glass and it's when he was looking through the glass. Oh yeah, at the eggs. And his face was like, you know, he'd got one thought on his mind. You could call this whole episode Snacks. Yeah. But written in like a 1980s horror film font. I think more than Snacks. I think Greed would be more to the Because it's always a bit strange, his ah feeding. because
00:45:40
Speaker
It depends where they are. If they're going to a bar or something, you know, Mando can get him some food. But a lot of the time it's a bit random. Yeah, it's not going to be enough to sustain. Still developing creature needs more regularly. yeah so's It's easy to be critical about his ah eating habits.
00:45:58
Speaker
He's hungry. He needs to be fed. So no one's going to feed him, he's going to do it himself. He's going to do it himself. He's going to steal someone's offspring. There's a lovely music cue as Mando walks back to Mos Eisley and there's some really majestic...
00:46:18
Speaker
Western walking back to town trope. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Stuff with these sort of twangy guitars yeah and strings and they love their big drums. yeah I mean, i'm know in the the Mando theme Ludwig is playing his Tom Tom yeah thing, but they use a lot of kind of Kind of like, i don't know, whether they're Japanese drums.
00:46:39
Speaker
Taiko drums. Taiko drums, yeah. Maybe something like that. Yeah, yeah. Or it's possibly custom-made drums. Yeah. I know there's a native instrument, contact instrument for you music geeks. Yeah, yeah. Called cinematic hits, which are lots of those types It's lots of that of thing in it, yeah.
00:46:55
Speaker
And I wouldn't be surprised if it was some of them. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, they're used quite a lot throughout the show. And they're kind of... They're very mythical, which I think is intentional. And they fit really well with the Western Morricone-style guitars and strings. He's got a giant drum. yeah Just before we meet the Frog Lady, we meet Dr Mandible. Yes.
00:47:18
Speaker
I've actually written a note, Dr Mandible! We did get a glimpse of him last time Mando was on Tatooine, I think in Charman's Cantina again. yeah But this was like our proper... proper introduction to dr mandible yeah he's not a very good sabacc player apparently a apparently is like the hustler of all hustlers ah that was going to be my favorite line was stop crying you'll rust is it her that says however there's one more skank in the scud pie
00:47:52
Speaker
yeah she She does have some lovely expressions. She does. And Amy Sedaris again. I've just got to shout her Again, delivery of everything is just perfection. She's great. She has her own language. yeah Can we have a spin-off series? Can we have Bryce Dallas Howard directing Amy Sedaris as Peli and her antics? Just on that. And the bit droids. As you'll find out in the Book of Boba Fett, there's a whole other arc of Peli Motel that we don't know about involving Jawas and dates. Oh. I don't know if i do want that series.
00:48:28
Speaker
I think she could do a little side business of ah a playgroup. She obviously has an affinity with Grosvenor and even the droids. That would translate quite well, I think, to childcare.
00:48:43
Speaker
When she's translating Frog Lady and Mando says, she said all that? And Pelly says, i paraphrase. yeah Well, you need to do that, you see. It's definitely pointing in that direction. apparently Frog Lady, we still don't have a name for Frog Lady. Frog Lady. Other than Frog Lady. I think she's named as in the art of the Mandalorian book. Yeah, That's what she is in all the credits and in the subtitles. Because I like to watch with the subtitles on because then I find out what the characters are called. You do. So she's Frog Lady in that as well. That's a very good point, actually, saying one I shall remember. Yeah. Maybe on these rewatches we should. Yeah. You're always bugging me, Mum, to put subtitles on. Yeah. Can we just stop for a minute? I don't know who these people are. love a subtitle. So also massive shout out again to Misty Roses. Yeah. Who plays Frog Lady. She played Quill. Now she's playing Frog Lady. And an utterly different character. yeah. Like her little movement nuances of a mother...
00:49:43
Speaker
She's so sweet. so good. So good. And I really feel like Misty Roses needs her own. I'd love to see her have like a character performance where we see her because yeah so far we've seen her in, you know, very cleverly constructed animatronic masks.
00:50:00
Speaker
But she's an amazing actor. Physical performer. Yeah. I'd love to see her in something. I just said that Frog Lady's lovely. She is. I like Frog Lady. And then it makes you, yeah, not so sure about Grogu when he's... definitely....carelessly eating her spawn. So much in this episode. I found out that Frog Lady's race is called Querm Ribbit. Now we know where rubbit comes from, but I don't know where the querm is. Q-U-E-R-M.
00:50:26
Speaker
Querm. Querm. Okay, okay. I know about querm. not sure whether there's a frog sign. Doesn't mean anything to me. Might be a Latin thing or something. need to ask Derry who's up on his frogs. Yeah. Derry may end up on this podcast at some point. May end on the podcast at some point. Just to talk about frogs and frog races. Yeah.
00:50:45
Speaker
The music, whenever we see Grogu with the eggs, yeah is very misleading. yeah Because it's kind of this cutesy, yeah like, synth. Happy, it's quite Stranger Things happy. yeah A bit of 80s, like, beautiful synths.
00:51:03
Speaker
Dreamy. And like, it's that shot that you mentioned, Mum, through the water, through the canister. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It does bring out a sort of sordid side for me because he's aware of what these things are. i mean, it's not like um he's just a toddler. He's 50 years old. He knows what they are and what they're doing and why they're going. He's not, you know, he's not stupid, but it doesn't make any difference. got a lack of impulse control around them. But also he eats frog. He'd probably eat frog lady if she was smaller. Right. Oh, definitely. Take a chunk out of her, no I think the only reason he hasn't is because she's big.
00:51:42
Speaker
I just wrote he's a little git. Well, yeah, ah that my sentiments are there. Oh, by the way, we can't leave Tatooine without talking about the steak.
00:51:55
Speaker
No, I've actually got Gregory's appetite developing at the sight of the meat sizzling. He loves the spit steak. Yeah, he's watching it, isn't he? There's that Treadwell droid who we've seen. it There's some more Treadwell in the deleted scenes of A New Hope. Yeah. And they're just like, yeah, farming help droid type thing. And he's responsible for turning the spit.
00:52:17
Speaker
So funny. Sorry. Had to get that Yeah, definitely. It was good. Yes. so mando is on his way and it all goes horribly wrong in the form of carson taver and trapper wolf we've already seen trapper wolf but this is our intro to carson taver yeah who is becoming a very important character in the star wars galaxy yeah we were talking about this last night yeah he sort of glues some of the stories together yeah um as a sort of ranger of the new republic out in the outer rim he's amazing we want him to have his own show as well yeah bring him back we like him Maybe not so much from this. up We haven't seen an awful lot of him in this episode, we in episodes to come.
00:52:55
Speaker
And he's a really interesting character. My note on all of that kind of exchange was we've got a lot of, I just called it the X-Wing bureaucracy section. Yeah. Are they just like busy cops looking for something I don't even know. They're just like, they're making him follow protocols very like strictly and yeah and not letting him get away with anything. But then they go through that like amazing chase. yeah.
00:53:17
Speaker
Through the clouds. But then, like, the sounds very much end up really podracery for that whole chase. Yeah. It doesn't sound like the ships anymore. It sounds very much like a podrace. Interesting. i wonder if there's a different, like, sound design trick for X-Wings in Atmosphere. Yeah, and when yeah because when they're flying alongside him in space, we get that really nostalgic X-Wing sound from New Hope. But it sounds completely different when they're on the planet. Yeah. I wonder if they did that in The Force Awakens on Takodana when Black Squadron show up and we'll have to do a bit of sound design investigation. Something that actually did occur to me, I think it was just before all that...
00:53:57
Speaker
was that Mando wanted to sleep. Oh, yeah. He wanted to he left Grogu. And I didn't actually see exactly where Grogu was when he left him. Did he secure him? when he says nap time.
00:54:10
Speaker
He puts him in a hammock over the top of his bunk. Oh, right. there's tiny little hammock. Yeah, know Mando's little nook that he sleeps in. couldn't figure out where he was because was thinking good grief while he's asleep. Grogu's good. No, he locks him in. He locks him away from the eggs. Yeah, that's what I thought. Puts him in a hammock above him. sure he was safe. It's really adorable that Mando sleeps in the bunk and Grogu's suspended above him. They've got their little bunk beds. Yeah, because he just picks him up and goes, nap time, and shuts him in. He shuts the door. Nap time was a potential my favourite...
00:54:43
Speaker
so There's also little bit I wanted to just also point out that I thought, because I don't think this has got anything to do with the big picture, but I can't actually remember the exact moment.
00:54:54
Speaker
But I felt that Han Solo crept into Mando's brain for a bit. He turned quite sort of surly. The frog had spoken to him through the droid about him. Oh, yeah, yeah. And he said, not part of the deal. And I thought, oh, yeah, that's awesome. So that is very Ham. Yeah, very Salish, isn't it? Stick to the story. I'm getting paid for this, not this. Yeah. And yeah, it sort of, it was just a little bit hard, I thought. Deals off. But not surprising. That's a bit of a task, isn't it? I think that was about the eggs and having to transport the frog. yeah. He wasn't too happy about it, was he? No, he wasn't.
00:55:32
Speaker
The frog lady managing to get Zero to work enough to... Yes. But then the way that she talks through Zero is completely different to the way that Zero talks. yeah So Zero has got, when he was working, oh yeah he's really monotone. yeah But when she's talking through him, there's loads of inflection in his voice. And there's like a lot more emotion in it. Oh, definitely a rewatch coming up. yeah Because suddenly, like, because she's pleading with him at that point. yeah Zero's voice, is do it's got all of that in it.
00:56:03
Speaker
Yeah. Fair play to original order. Yeah. But still with the kind of droid monotone, but there's loads more inflection. Interesting. Like the fact that she can just hotwire a she can hotwire a a little crash zoom. We've been sort of semi-tracking crash zooms or smash zooms. I'm not sure whether it's crash or smash zooms in either of the X-Wings in the clouds. Nice little effect.
00:56:33
Speaker
And the radio interference, another sound design note, I think is after Mando's crashed possibly and we're hearing him listening in. Yes, it is after he's crashed. Yeah, and it's really messed up audio, as it would be in that situation.
00:56:48
Speaker
But the way they do the sound design is part analogue and part digital, because often when you hear like bad interference in sci-fi, it's either one or the other. It's either classic white noise, FM radio or AM radio style whistling and stuff, or it's digital glitch sounds. yeah yeah And to my ears, this had but both, which I love, because it ties... That's clever. the different of filmmaking worlds together. and Yeah. Okay, very geeky sound designer. That geeky, but I like Peyton Reed, who directed this, I noticed that he used Fade to Black a few times. Yeah, which I that. Which is really unusual, in such a short, episodic yeah TV episode. Yeah, Fade to You.
00:57:25
Speaker
It gave you this sense of passing of time, particularly as they were flying from Tatooine to Trask via satellite. That would have taken weeks. Yeah. I get the feeling that that was slightly used to sort of help us with the passing of time. Yeah, yeah. Because Fade to Black definitely suggests another day. Another time, yeah, yeah. Another bunch of time has passed. and there's one there where he's crash-landed and we kind of open back up again some time later sort of thing Mando's being very considerate looking after frog lady yes he's trying to keep you know find something to keep her warm and the eggs warm
00:58:02
Speaker
She's more concerned about the eggs. She wraps them in a blanket. He seems to genuinely care, which again, it's sort of like these two contradictory things that you've been talking about mum with this just very recently, the way you were talking about with the sort of being very strict about his mercenary yeah yeah deal, but also genuinely worrying about Frog Lady. Yes, I think this is and ah probably for him is a bit of a new concept because if you think of his upbringing, well, I think he probably just brought himself up. otherlar I think he was brought up by the Mandalorians and they're very close-knit and they only care about each other. Yeah.
00:58:37
Speaker
in a way Yeah, but he didn't have his parents at God. And so he was sort of working stuff out for himself all the time. That's what he's doing here a lot of the time, I'm sure. There's these contrasts of war and battle and fighting to be safe. Yeah.
00:58:53
Speaker
But then developing ah a caring side, obviously brought on by caring for Greg, you can't look after a small creature for all that time and not develop some kind of, well, you can, but unlikely. Yeah. Yes. And so and that's obviously transferred to the frog.
00:59:08
Speaker
And they did spend so quite a bit of time together, I imagine. Yeah. Yeah. in that sublight journey and yeah frog lady's very amenable person if i feel like yeah yeah she'd bring out best in mando yeah well she's probably quite grateful to him for what he's doing although yeah obviously it's a job and he's being paid for it but even so I like how he's also trying to keep the Grogu secret of the of the egg eating away from Frog Lady just to save her the worry, even though she probably knows how many eggs there were. here Yeah, well, that's what I thought. like Yeah, I thought she's going to come out and say, there should be so many. There's that hilarious line, which was going to be, it's a two-part line, really, where Mando says, how many did you eat? And Grogu burps. Yeah. He knows, that's why say he knows he should be hearing them. I had a question because Mando's trying to fix the Razorcrest and Grogu comes and is babbling at him, but Grogu's voice has now changed. Ooh. So before, mostly we hear Grogu as like baby sounds. Baby noises, yeah. But he actually starts babbling and he starts speaking a little bit, like babies babble. Yeah. But his voice is completely different and it now sounds like more languagey. Interesting. Than anything else. And yeah, he's making completely different sounds and it's when he's trying to tell him that the frog lady's gone, basically.
01:00:34
Speaker
So you mentioned, i think in the last episode, yeah about the origin of Grogu's baby... It's all animated baby noises. I've heard those sounds so many times. So they're like pre-existing library baby sounds. yeah yeah But then suddenly they're not.
01:00:47
Speaker
Because this is a specific moment, maybe? Yeah. But there aren't library baby sounds of a baby saying, Mando, come here. Come here, yeah. Frog ladies vanish. Yeah, yeah. Interesting. So they've probably got a voice actor or... They've got something going on there. I don't know what it is Interesting. I just noticed that it had completely changed. And it does go back to the baby sounds and the baby babbling. But it's it's like, i don't know. i kind If they pitched up what they had, it would have matched better. Wow. But they didn't. And so he's got a lower voice when he's trying to talk.
01:01:20
Speaker
Hmm. Well, that might be. Maybe, yeah. He's aging. Your voice is broken. It takes a while to actually properly break and maybe he sort of reverts back. that but I wanted to know how a frog lady knew she was going to find a warm water bath through that cave because that was a very rash move to carry those eggs yeah and trot off through the...
01:01:42
Speaker
caves and then end up in this lovely warm water bottle. How would she have known that? She must have sensed it. Yeah, amphibian senses. Yeah, maybe. Could be, yeah. Might have been a bit of a steam outlet or something. Yeah, yeah.
01:01:56
Speaker
I love that that she found that though, like the little hot spa. Yeah, yeah. And so cute with the eggs just floating in the water until Gregory turns up. Yeah. I actually, the first time i watched it, I think we've probably watched it a couple of times, but Whenever there's a a spider on the screen, yeah I just hide and don't look at it and wait for that bit to finish. Tell me when I can look. But because I'm doing this today, i wanted to make sure I had actually watched it, so forced myself to look. horror of a zillion spiders.
01:02:30
Speaker
I found that absolutely terrifying yeah because although they weren't particularly realistic spiders that we see, yeah they're still their movement and their crawliness andcuttling the and when they died, how they sort of scrunched up. And like to go for a man to have a gun and whatever it was, some kind of blaster, having to kill all those creatures.
01:02:55
Speaker
to survive. That was really horrific. It is horrific. And I do find the whole thing about The Mandalorian is it goes from funny and cute to horrific and murderous in like seconds. So all the time having to jump with your feelings to take in what's happened. It's a rollercoaster. Yeah, do have to accommodate all sorts of emotions. I wondered if Grogu set them off because they felt threatened after he'd eaten one of them. Oh, I'm sure that's what it was. Yeah, it must be. Too much of coincidence. Yeah. mean, I found the smaller spiders in massive quantities worse, really, than the whole big one. The big one, yeah, yeah. Because that's just another monster to kill off. Yeah, yeah, yeah. all these... Little one just sort of, oh, oh, Terrific, isn't it? I went, we're in Shelob's lair now. It's very Lord of the Rings. Yeah, it reminded me of that. With the cobwebs and stuff. Yeah, yeah.
01:03:48
Speaker
These spiders are across the Star Wars galaxy. They appear in different places. I can't remember what they're called, knobby white snow spiders or ice spiders or something like that. We see them a lot in Rebels on the planet where the Rebels team set up Chopper Base, which is in about Season 3, and they kind of stay there for quite a while. And they quickly discover almost identical spiders with the tall bodies. And they're, again, very difficult to kill off. So they develop a way of blocking them from coming into the base. Apparently they don't like radio transmissions or something like that. So they make kind a web of...
01:04:28
Speaker
transmitters around the base and it stops them coming through they'll like come up to the perimeter and just stand there watching but they have almost got a relationship in in rebels yeah well with um canaan yeah canaan's got a way of like sorry don trying we do it all the collections we love it he's got um he's got this way with that he understands them yeah and he was trying to persuade um esra Ezra yeah to back off and not antagonise them. I think it's the other way round.
01:05:00
Speaker
I think it's Ezra because Ezra's got that like connection with animals, like he connects with the purgils and the lothcats. Maybe. I don't know. I just thought in that instance that he'd because he'd been with them for some time before Ezra came along and I think he was trying to... I can't remember specifically. We need to rewatch Rebels. Too much. We have to watch Rebels Yeah, that's true. There is that. In 2029, we'll get round with it. Whichever one it is, it's through the Force. Like, they're using the Force to commune because the Bendu is on that planet as well. And the Bendu is Tom Baker. He's, like, got some kind of link with them. And so there's a Force thing, which is interesting that Grogu...
01:05:39
Speaker
could have potentially could have potentially could well he was eating them he didn't like ezra sees any star wars creature as a potential friend ally yeah force connection yeah it's kind of one of his gifts as a force user bro grogu is clearly not he's not there no he's he's eating them with all that going on and then we finally have a bit of a resolve yeah And I wrote, was Grogu feeling guilty as he watched Mando trying to mend the ship?
01:06:11
Speaker
I wrote that. Did he feel at all guilty? Because he must have been aware that this all blew up because he he ate the egg he he ate the egg and burn you know broke into the egg. Doesn't stop him going for the spawn again, then does it?
01:06:27
Speaker
No, he still carries on with the frog spawn. as I wrote the end. that, I wrote, no. the last shot proves he has no conscience. His hunger is all his consideration. Because that was the last thing yeah that we saw. it hadn't taught him anything at all. So i think he needs to do a bit more training. Yeah. okay if He's just hungry. At this point of the episode, it's that where Which you've yet to hear, Mum, because you've not heard any of Armando episodes yet. It's time! But there's a new segment on the podcast called West End Geek Girls, yeah which I still haven't written a theme tune for. But but by the time this comes out, you will have an it'll be here.
01:07:17
Speaker
Oh, thank you. Behold. The pressure. And I find something from the Star Wars role-playing game that has now appeared in the Star Wars universe, because a lot of what we know of creatures, objects, technology, ships, the whole thing, a lot of it was...
01:07:36
Speaker
devised as West End Games created the role-playing game and is still being used today which is a phenomenal legacy to that team that created that big shout out to West End Games and so I've been finding something in every episode that I know maybe didn't come from exclusively from the role-playing game but was outlined in detail in the role-playing game and Frog Lady during the spider attack magically pulls out a blaster from somewhere tiny bla And it looks like a very small emergency type blaster. It isn't named, but I'm going to say yeah for the sake of the segment, that is a holdout blaster. Okay. They are like miniature blasters that have only one or two.
01:08:15
Speaker
um no mean They don't have many shots in them. You've a few shots, yeah. And in this particular instance, I think the description of the holdout blasters in Galadinium's fantastic technology, guns and gears for any occasion, which was a supplement to the West End Games rules, which has got loads of like details of bizarre technology. And they describe holdout blasters small enough to be hidden in the hand of a human.
01:08:41
Speaker
Holdout blasters are common in urban areas with strict weapon controls and among undercover agents. So it's the kind of thing that is like... The little miniature revolver in the handbag that you might see in Agatha Christie's story or something like that. sure They require custom designed power packs and only hold enough blaster gas for a few shots, which tells us that blasters use gas to fire, which stands to reason, like argon or neon or something. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Okay. They're illegal or closely regulated in most systems.
01:09:10
Speaker
It feels like Frog Lady's kind of not on the run exactly, but like she's trying to live a difficult life. the fact that she's not with her partner. yeah Yeah. Well, he's had to arrange for this ship, which was obviously tricky. Yeah.
01:09:24
Speaker
Many systems, however, look on them as a self-defence alternative to the more powerful types of personal weapons available. So it's like you can get away with carrying a holdout blaster in some places. Yeah. Which I guess is what she's doing. What she's doing. She's got it. And she uses it to save Grogu, who's been eating her spawn this entire time. She's got a heart gold and she can carry the Holdout Blaster all the time as far as concerned. She's just Before all this, before she saves Grogu,
01:09:49
Speaker
they're running away back to the ship. Oh, yeah. And she moves. She does her
Animation and CGI Discussion
01:09:54
Speaker
frog move. Yeah, she goes between leaping like a frog. Yes, exactly. To get quicker. Yeah, amazing. I felt watching it this time, the animation of that looked better than my memory. Because it's clearly not Misty Rose's. No. She's very versatile. If she can that, then great. Fair play. I have a feeling it's a CGI frog or something. Yeah, yeah. But it looked really good this time around. So whether my memory just wasn't very good or... Yeah, it was really cool.
Favorite Musical Cues
01:10:20
Speaker
Super cool.
01:10:20
Speaker
I've got two favourite musical cues in this episode. Yeah. And one of them is just as Grogu is eating the spider egg. It all gets weirdly synth-y. Yeah. Just as they start hatching and it it's really minimal and really spooky. Interesting.
01:10:39
Speaker
Because one of my favourite musical cues on this episode was just before that, as Mando and Grogu are following the heat trail of her footprints. And it is Cynthia, but it's like bells. There's a lot of bells, which I'm guessing they're on an ice planet. Bells are often used to denote ice.
Grogu's Eating Habits
01:10:54
Speaker
Can I just interrupt your comment? Because something just hit me that did at the time, and I didn't write it down, was the whole thing was about eating the eggs. And in fact, somebody else noticed that. And saying about Is it about eggs It isn't Because he Didn't want the egg He found the spider broke the spider Yeah The spider Yeah he broke the egg open Yes Yeah in Interesting So he'll eat any darn thing He'll eat anything Eggs Living yeah Whatever it was a bit Alien-ish The scene in Alien Where they go and find eggs Yeah There's also a similar one In Van Helsing I think When they find vampire eggs Oh wow Yeah I just think he's gradually developing into something that's not the cute little Grogu at all. When he says cute, Faisal's her menace. We can have both those things.
01:11:47
Speaker
What was your other music It's right at the end, it's a bit later, so we've had this big battle with
Sound Design Appreciation
01:11:54
Speaker
all the spiders. Yeah. Favourite piece of sound design happens with all of the, it's just something incredibly spine-tingling and satisfying about that many spider legs in ice climbing over a ship. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sounds incredible. And horrific. And horrific. Well, I was wearing headphones this morning because I was listening to it.
01:12:14
Speaker
I was watching it in your spare room this morning. Yeah. Before we're even up. Before you woke up. I do my homework. and So yeah, I had my headphones on and it was like, it's great. That sound does something to my spine and I like it. Yeah.
01:12:33
Speaker
especially when it's in your ears. Well, I'm glad I did have to be forced to watch the episode. Yeah, you can now say you've properly watched it. When Bama mentioned about that episode, I thought, oh, not the spider spider. I have to say, I think it was your idea to watch it. It may have been. When I said which episode you want to be on, you were like, the spider one. I don't think it was that confident, but anyway.
01:12:54
Speaker
But I'm glad I did because i do feel it was really important in the development of all the characters. yeah The closing shot of Grogu... Yes. No, that's... Okay, the musical cue. I think the one i am the one that is my favourite is the X-Wings come and rescue
Composers and Score Evolution
01:13:12
Speaker
them. Yeah.
01:13:13
Speaker
And they have that little, you did some bad stuff. Clearing Mando's name. Clear the air, yeah. But as they leave, there's an amazing piece of score just as the X-Wings fly off.
01:13:26
Speaker
And it's kind of synthy and orchestral And it sounds really triumphant But they're just leaving Mando there They're like, no, get it sorted It's just X-Wings X-Wings bring forth the best musical cues I seem to think that we actually remarked about the music being very specifically amazing all the way through it was just It just seems to fit whatever's going on They've just brought the right music in I've always loved the music from the Mandalorian I've been a bit confused because I thought Ludwig stepped back for season two. like he They still use his themes, obviously, but I think they used one of Ludwig's team. But I think that's season three where that happens. So it's still got his fingerprints on it. It's terrific. It's the way a lot of film composers work. It's like Hans Zimmer. He's the kind of lead composer, but he'll have people orchestrating. And then gradually those orchestrators become composers in their own right. which is why the composer for Solo, you know, he was part of Hans Zimmer's team. His name slips in my mind at the moment. But I think that's kind of what happens in season three yeah with the score. But it's still very much good like Ludwig built this built amazing yeah music world. oh yeah. Watching the first series, I was just so blown away by the music. It was amazing.
01:14:42
Speaker
But yeah, the last shot. Last shot. Cheeky Grogu. I almost wanted a Looney Tunes like... Oh, yeah. Wiped to a circle. Wiped to a circle. So we're left with a little circle on Greg's face and then black. But no, either way, it's hilarious. I love
Love for Side Quests
01:15:01
Speaker
it. love both these episodes. I know have heard other fans talking about the fact that, well, this didn't really bring the story on at all. And why did we have this episode? Oh, no. For me, the side quests are like as fun as the big story. Of course, we love the big story arc. Yeah. the quest for Bo-Katan and the Mandos and the Jedi and all this other stuff that's going on and cloning and Thrawn and we love all that big story arc but Mando is Monster of the Week show you know that's kind of how it started kind what it does yeah I just love that it's what George Lucas originally loved with Flash Gordon yeah and those early you know sci-fi series that you said mum that you would have seen things like that at cinema yeah back in the day a long time back in the day yeah Which is great. Like the excitement of that, the cliffhanger ending and all of that stuff. Yeah, every week. So such a cliffhanger. Yeah.
01:15:52
Speaker
Gosh, that was a long time ago. love a side quest. Yeah. I just love a side quest. I mean, we're gamers, a lot of us. Computer games are pretty much a string of side quests. How else could you develop?
01:16:06
Speaker
Sorry. No, carry on. i how ah How else could you develop the um characters of Grogu, well, and Ando for that matter, yeah without those episodes? yeah You can't just, well, I don't know how else you can do it because they are so full of information about those characters. Absolutely, yeah. It needs the time, doesn't it?
01:16:27
Speaker
These two episodes are great, great examples of that. yeah The first one in terms of Mando, the second one in terms of Grogu, we see so much yeah of them. And all fabulous in their own way. Entertainment, it's just brilliant. I watched a film with my mum the other day and we both watched it and went, that was a really bad film, but had they done it as a series and fleshed out all these characters, it would have been amazing. yeah And like, the characters are all good, but just because it was done in an hour and a half, it's not...
TV Series vs. Films: Story Arcs
01:16:57
Speaker
is I feel like we're in that world we've got used to as an audience of TV series is now way more sort of what people watch rather than films and we're getting used to that long story arc which I love I've always loved a long arc both me and you mum are a huge Lord of the Rings fans which is a massive book with loads of lore and character development and like you need that long long term storytelling can I just have a little story you can take it off You don't tell stories You just mentioned about the Flash Gordon thing.
Early Cinema Experiences
01:17:31
Speaker
I've just worked it out in my head. I think it would have been about 1954, five. And we used to go on Saturday morning and it was serial. There would have been a cartoon and something, but it was always Flash Gordon serial.
01:17:46
Speaker
And this one particular episode, I was quite scared. at so This was in the cinema? Yeah, in in the proper Saturday morning cinema, sixpence, I think, probably. And so my mum would have just dropped us off so so she could go off around the shop and do something in the cinema.
01:18:02
Speaker
And um at the end, he was strung up somehow, Flash Gordon, and there was fire, you know, it was terrifying. I said to my brother, and my younger brother, so we were very young to watch this sort of horror, I said, i I'll just wait for you outside. And I started to go out and they wouldn't let me out. And I said, I need to go to the toilet.
01:18:25
Speaker
I couldn't say I'm too scared to watch it and they wouldn't let me out. I had to wait to the end. and So I had to hear it all going on. you to stay in the cinema. But then you know when you come back next week, he'll just get out of it really easily. I can't remember how to reveal at all how he got out of it. But every week it would be terrifying, but I couldn't stand it to watch my Well, this is the parallel. You've had to sit through spider Yeah, yeah. Spider horror. Yeah.
01:18:53
Speaker
Yeah, but you would let me go out if I had to. You could do some knitting. Yeah, yeah just that's my fail-safe. I do that when I'm watching scary films on my own or or with people. I'll be like, if it gets too much, I just pick up a project. I'm just going to do this. I'm not the only one. yeah I've even said it out loud. And this was silly because I was watching Insidious on my own. This is, again, a tangent, sorry.
Coping with Horror in Media
01:19:19
Speaker
I was watching Insidious on my own and it got really scary.
01:19:23
Speaker
And i just I paused it and I just said out loud, I'm going to go and make a cup of tea. And no one else is in the room with me. I'm putting myself through this. so And I did. And I went and made a cup of tea and I sat down in the kitchen room bit and then I came back and watched the rest of the film Fortunately for me, I don't think Mando gets any scarier than this episode. No. It is quite a horror episode. Yeah. Good work, Peyton Reed. You smashed it. Yeah.
Mother's Influence in Star Wars Fandom
01:19:48
Speaker
Mum, thank you so much for coming on. It's just fun. We loved it You'll have to come back when we're doing the next thing, whatever we're doing. Whatever next thing is. You're a big Star Wars watcher. In fact, we didn't really talk about that, about the fact that, you know, you've grown...
01:20:02
Speaker
to be quite a Star Wars fan. Yes. Particularly the last year. Taking you to the first episode when you were four. Yeah. It's your fault. And you brought me the Star Wars disco album.
01:20:13
Speaker
What a parent. What a parent. You set my life's path. a very young age. you kid Well, we hope you've enjoyed listening. Don't forget to follow us on all the platforms. Yeah, we told you about them earlier. You listen to that bit.
01:20:32
Speaker
We'll be back next week for the next couple of episodes, which I think is just me and you. Is it? Yeah. well That's not lonesome. That's not a lonesome and probably not in the same room. Yeah, we'll be back to 100 miles apart. Back to 100 miles apart. Oh, it's been very lovely to have seat. Yeah. And be able to sit in together. Yeah. Perfect. Amazing. It's quite nice having eye contact, isn't it?
01:20:54
Speaker
Yeah, we'll definitely do this again. Until then. Thank you for listening. Bye. Bye.