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Delving into THE MANDALORIAN Chapters 7 and 8 with John-Paul | 014
23 Plays11 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 fourteenth episode we're jumping into the finale of the first season of The Mandalorian, Chapter 7 "The Reckoning" and Chapter 8 "Redemption" with our fabulous guest and great friend, John-Paul. We talk about themes, performances, story details, lore drops, heavy repeating blasters (E-Web for those in the know!), ugly River Styx gondola droids, synthesisers, 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 & Characters from The Mandalorian
00:00:16
Speaker
Hi. What is your favourite line from Mando season one episode seven and or eight? Would anyone care for some tea?
00:00:29
Speaker
It started off as nothing and slightly turned into an IG impersonation, didn't really work, so we'll go with it. Sia, what's your favourite line from The Mandalorian Season 1, Episode 7 and 8? I've got loads, but I'm going with, can I offer you a libation to celebrate the closing of our shared narrative? That was literally going to be mine until about two seconds ago.
00:00:54
Speaker
And then I changed it. I told you we might end up with the same one. It's an infinite infamous line. We
Introduction to Hosts & Guest
00:01:00
Speaker
love it. It goes down in history of lines in Star Wars, I think. I was just like, for what are you even trying to say? i haven't had to pause it and listen again and be like, I don't even understand what that means. We love you, the client. We love you. You're listening to Sisters of the Force. I'm Bram Wen. And I'm Sia.
00:01:19
Speaker
And today we're going to delve into The Mandalorian Season 1, Episodes 7 and 8, which are outrageously good episodes. Before we get into them, don't forget you can follow us on Facebook and Instagram at Sisters of the Force Pod, or if you go on YouTube or Blue Sky, you can find us at Sisters of the Force.
00:01:39
Speaker
And if you go on any of our links in bio type things, you'll find a link to our merch page on Redbubble where you can buy fancy... This is not official medium, but you know, we're wearing merch. Sue has got her hoodie on, which we love. But you can also get all sorts of other wonderful things. I may have bought some family presents from our own Redbubble store, which I think is the way to go. So yeah, go on. There's only one design on there at the moment, but there's loads of different things. You can get that There will be more. There will be more. This week we are also incredibly privileged and excited to welcome an amazing friend of both of ours, John Paul Davies. Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to the pod.
00:02:17
Speaker
Hello. Thank you so much for coming on. It's so good to be reunited. Thank you for having me. In Star Wars-y kind of way. It's kind of a new unition for us. i just made that word up. Unition. new unition. Unition. That's going on the merch instantly. Yeah. It's the Sisters of the Force Unition. I love it.
00:02:40
Speaker
Actually, you both appreciate this. I'm reading um Rick Rubin's book and he just makes words up. yeah Excellent. Does he? Yeah, just makes words up and just checks if they're okay and decides if they make more sense than what he would otherwise you just use. Just uses them.
00:02:54
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I do that all the time. It feels like quite a kind of Muso-y thing to do. I think so. And definitely a Rick Rubin thing to do. Definitely. you want to tell us a little bit about yourself? or We know you as like a musician, songwriter, performer and teacher and all sorts of other amazing things.
00:03:17
Speaker
Tell bit about yourself and how did you get into Star Wars? Like where did your Star Wars journey begin? yeah, that's what was going to go with. The musician and teacher was going be my line. You'll go to. So, yeah, so I'll go with the Star Wars. So Star Wars...
Star Wars Accessibility & Nostalgia
00:03:30
Speaker
I would have come across them on TV first. So it would have been the films every Christmas when they used to come round. Yeah, yeah. Four, five, six, the original trilogy. That would have been the ones I would have seen coming on TV. Like Christmas and stuff. Yeah, yeah. So trying to think today, would I have actually watched them in order first time round?
00:03:50
Speaker
I may well not have. I may have seen whatever was on. And it might have been the 40 minutes when you got back from your grand's house and you just happened to turn up. It might have been that sort of situation. And it's like a drip feed that gradually I sort of understood, ah, this is what's happening. So I would have been very small.
00:04:05
Speaker
But I do distinctly remember that my first proper cinematic experiences of Star Wars were Caravan of Courage. um Yes. Oh my gosh. And then the Battle of Endor, I think it's called the second one. Yeah. So you saw them at the cinema? i definitely saw Caravan Courage in Brenhaman cinema. I remember that distinctly. Yeah. Yeah. wow Because we were debating this a while ago as to like whether they even made it to the cinema, whether they were just like VHS. But yeah evidently they did. They did. I'm sure. Wow.
00:04:33
Speaker
Maybe I've fabricated the memory myself, but I'm pretty sure. I'm sure you're right. You sound pretty sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then the Ewoks cartoon and the Droids cartoon. So those were big part my childhood. Yeah, yeah. They were really big. I've tried to watch them again with Oliver, my seven-year-old, and they are so bad.
00:04:50
Speaker
I mean, my gosh, they're wonderful, but the audio quality, it's really hard to hear what's going on. It's hard to actually pick it out. Excellent. More so Ewoks. Droids, lesser. Droids was actually okay. was going to say, I haven't gone back to the Ewoks one, but the Droids one I have been watching, and I know what mean, it's very sound, and the theme tune, it sounds like Stranger Things sound design to make it sound 80s kind of thing.
00:05:14
Speaker
But I mean, I loved them at the time. They were you know compulsive viewing for us as kids, definitely. Yeah. So that was my that's my big in the Star Wars, because we didn't even have a video player, let alone have them on VHS. So yeah you know so it literally was whatever came on TV, that was it.
00:05:29
Speaker
It's amazing that we just have access to them all now, like even those cartoons. It's wild. You don't know how lucky you are, kids. You don't, it's crazy. We you know we just, whatever came around, as a say, on TV yeah once a year, that would be what it.
Expanding Star Wars Universe
00:05:42
Speaker
You just had to take your chances and, yeah.
00:05:45
Speaker
I was going to ask if you have any favourite lines from these two episodes. I do. And they're all grief cargo lines. Because every line he has is amazing. And his delivery of them all, of course, is amazing. So my favourite one, full stop, is, he's trying to eat me. He's to eat me.
00:06:05
Speaker
which I absolutely love before and actually saves his life. ah yeah yeah um but But I've also got, come on, baby, do the magic hand thing.
00:06:17
Speaker
That was like my other choice. Definitely, that was up there for me. My second choice was, you might be surprised to hear this, but I am alive too. But for the nicest one is some of my favorite people are bounty hunters. think it's a lovely line. That's a lovely line.
00:06:39
Speaker
These two episodes are wild. I'd forgotten how. I think I started watching episode seven on Saturday, I think it was, and thought, oh, yeah, yeah, it's the finale, each couple of episodes. I can't remember what happens. Sure. I haven't watched it for a few weeks or whatever. and But then as they went on, and i was writing things down, I had to keep stopping and rewinding and stopping and rewinding because they suddenly throw so much Star Wars lore at us. Yeah. Like, yeah.
00:07:05
Speaker
In quite a subliminal way at first, which I think is why I didn't remember it being like that until you actually start analysing. Well, it's all kind of like they do it all very, and here's a big lore drop that we're just going to assume you know. like Yeah, which is very on brand for Star Wars. I think we've said that in earlier episodes where they just drop you in as though you know what's happening. is the The classic is Ben Kenobi, you know, years ago when I served with your father in the Clone Wars, you know, awkward.
00:07:32
Speaker
What Clone Wars? What are you talking about about? But it's definitely something that exists already. And yeah there's a lot of that in these episodes to the point where this is five years ago, six years ago that these came out, six years ago in the US.
00:07:45
Speaker
Why did they get it before us? It's not fair. And five years ago here. But all that stuff in now is so entrenched in in the lore that it feels weird that this is the origin of some of those things.
00:07:56
Speaker
But we'll get into those things as we go along a little bit. And you can stop me going down too many ramps. I'll do my best. So, John Paul, we usually we we've do this in all different ways, but lately we've been kind of going through roughly in order within an episode kind of thing, just yeah sort of like talking about each of the different scenes or ah the different sort of interesting points that come along in in the kind of flow of the story.
00:08:22
Speaker
if you're done with that, we'll probably delve into it. Yeah, we'll delve into
The Mandalorian Recap & Lore
00:08:25
Speaker
it from the beginning. Yeah. Hmm. Before we even get into it, yeah by the way, yeah, we should say we'll do episode seven first, The Reckoning, which is directed by Deborah Chow, who you may recognize from the previous episode when she was an ex-wing pilot. like it was committing horrific war crimes along with Dave Filoni and Rick Van Weir just like blowing up people with no real anyway so she she's also known as being the kind of showrunner slash director of the Obi-Wan Kenobi series right so it's a shame that she where it's not shame because she made a snap series which is amazing but it meant that she wasn't so involved in in Mando season 3 because she was tied up doing Obi-Wan oh right okay She's hanging out with Ewan, it's fine. yeah yeah Yeah, she's bringing us some more Ewan magic, which we're always going to be here for. Season two, maybe.
00:09:19
Speaker
and to them um Before we even get into the episode, we've got my heart breaking because we see Quill and... you already know what's going to happen if you've seen it before. And so you're seeing Quill and you're like, oh no, I know why you're showing me him now and it's not fair. and What, in the recap? Yeah. Oh, yeah oh I skipped the recaps.
00:09:41
Speaker
o I didn't. Controversial. It'd been too long. yeah this is been while It's only been two weeks for me. so When did you watch these first, John Paul, originally? Well, a little late. So I reckon a couple of years ago. was a little late on them. Yeah. So I think I didn't start ending them until season two was out. Yeah. yeah. But that's cool. So you could just kind of watch through those two seasons. Yeah, yeah. See, that's how I like to do things. I like to have enough out that I can binge it in one go. I didn't do Andor at all until they were all done. Wow. Yeah.
00:10:15
Speaker
And then that just blew my mind. That must have been an intense few weeks. was. Kate was marking and it was just on. Okay, so Kate's never seen Star Wars. You might My wife has never seen a single second of Star Wars until I put it on and i knew she wouldn't want to watch it. She was just marking It wouldn't distract her. And then it's that amazing few episodes with the name is gone. The name is gone. Gollum.
00:10:42
Speaker
uh oh andy circus yeah the prison right yeah and she couldn't stop watching it how so she bought all the rest of it she put a marking down and she watched every single episode from then to the end kate has now seen some star excellent amazing what a thing to come in on i know yeah i know welcome to the rebellion like literally yeah But like you were dropping Lauren things, I think they do that very, very well actually. Yeah. Because it's knowledge that you don't need to have yet.
00:11:10
Speaker
Yeah. But it bit widens the universe, doesn't it? It does, yeah. So I think you could ignore a lot, can't you? Yeah. Just take it as that's just what it is. It's just the universe you're in and then just gradually absorb things. I like that. i've always liked that about it. Yeah. Yeah, I love that. I think that thing of loving fandoms and you know TV and film worlds where they are very dense and detailed. and Because not everything is. you know If each film comes out and it's just a one-off film, they're not going to give you that level of detail.
00:11:41
Speaker
But as a fan of stuff that is bigger and has a broader kind of like history and lore about it, then... ah Yeah, I love that thing of being carried along for the ride kind of thing. yeah and it And it kind of soaks into you via osmosis until suddenly you realise that you know so much about this world. and You don't really know how you know so much about this world. I think it's interesting because I sometimes have the opposite problem with things is if there's too much, I'm then put off because I go, this is this is too much of a big commitment to get invested in all of this because there's so much going on. Yeah.
00:12:16
Speaker
I feel that has been putting people off with Star Wars. The more shows come out and the more film come out, a lot of potential Star Wars fans would be, oh, no, I don't know to start. think the MCU suffered from that a little bit, didn't it? For lots of people coming when it got big, realising they had like 10 years of film to watch today. catch up on it. Well, that's where I haven't done that. I've just gone, that's too much. I've spent time trying to persuade people who you know are going to like that kind of thing. But the whole of the 21 or 22 films or whatever it is, it's amazing. But you're then like asking them to commit 42 hours of time to something they may or may not be interested in.
00:12:58
Speaker
Yeah, it is difficult. It's tricky. But hopefully the storytellers, you know, in terms of Lucasfilm, I don't know about Marvel. I think Marvel do it pretty well as well. If you just jump into something, yeah you will catch our catch up. You will yeah. I think so, yeah. Yeah.
00:13:11
Speaker
Well, some of the Star Wars shows maybe more so than others. Like you could probably watch The Acolyte with no other knowledge of Star Wars. Definitely. Of anything. Enjoy as like a weird fantasy sci-fi. Yeah, because I have no knowledge of that that era at all. No. And I just watched it. yeah I've loved it. It just doesn't need to connect. I mean, there are connections and if you read all the High Republic books and blah, blah, blah, but yeah you don't have to. Whereas some of the others like Obi-Wan Kenobi, for instance, as a series might not work so well because he didn't know stuff it really relies on a lot of those ties and in some
00:13:43
Speaker
weighs nostalgia a little bit. I'm not saying that it's like a, that's its only purpose. Of course, it has an interesting story to it and it gives us much more information about some characters that we thought we knew really well. And there are still some surprises, but for a non-initiated viewer, it's probably
Character Dynamics & Motivations
00:14:01
Speaker
not the one to with. It's not really a standalone. I think possibly this why Mando such a success because when it started, although here we are at the end of season one talking about the fact that there's a lot of lore in it, it doesn't start like that.
00:14:13
Speaker
In fact, up until this point, there's not really much of that. It's all We've got new planets, we've got new characters. There's very little of existing pre-existing Star Wars injected into it in terms of actual direct references and people and places. It's all kind of new. It's only now at the end of season one. And I think watching it the first time around, we all began to think, oh, this is a bit bigger than we thought it was going to be. We're linking. Yeah. We're sort of like, oh, rebels, Clone Wars, whatever. You know, like there are little seeds of connection being sown here that definitely, as we'll see when we go on into season two and three, like,
00:14:50
Speaker
It builds on massively. So we've got this beginning of grief coming in in hologram form. Yeah. And giving us some great exposition. Am I right in thinking, was this the message that in the previous episode, Zero the droid was watching? Or was he watching a An older one? he was watching the older one. Right, okay. He was watching a previous one talking about the client and talking about yeah about having the asset.
00:15:15
Speaker
So he was watching an old one, and I'm pretty sure this one's coming in kind of as Mando's viewing it. It's like a live one. It feels live, doesn't it? Yeah, yeah. And he's straight away, like then Mando's on a mission. He's got to get his team together, which I love. yeah I love the sort of payoff of, oh, let's go and revisit all these people that we've met along the way. It's such an 80s fantasy movie vibe.
00:15:39
Speaker
Gathering the crew. Yeah, yeah. I'm trying to think, in in do they do that in The Dark Crystal or one of those types of films? Labyrinth does a bit of that. Yeah, they do a bit of that. Yeah.
00:15:50
Speaker
And first stop is kara back Sorghum. Yes, I thought that she was meant to be laying low. She's fighting in a bar. She can't help herself.
00:16:01
Speaker
I did discover in the um art of the Mandalorian season one book that originally instead of this amazing wrestling game that she's playing with this guy, yeah they had like a board game with floating pieces designed oh with these little triangles that kind of face each other. do you think that was before they cast an MMA fighter? Very likely. And then went, wait. i don't know. i think the early artwork, it did look like her. And I think they kind of cast her.
00:16:29
Speaker
But i think they made the right choice because this is so exciting. They've got like pod racer, you know, the little... Tethers. Yeah, the little electricity tether thing that holds a pod race together. It's like them holding people together. Holding them together. And they use it as a weapon as well. Yeah, she kind of strangles him with it. Yeah, that's how she wins, isn't it, at the end? It's terrifying. She's tied to him, but also, Yeah, amazing. And we get to celebrate with a huge bottle of Spotchka, which we now know all want for Christmas. Spotchka?
00:17:03
Speaker
Spotchka's the blue luminous drink that they have. Is that Spotchka? It's Spotchka. And it's something like, what is it, 12 parts krill? Yeah, we looked up the recipe and it's krill. I don't know if you remember, but in the episode called The Sanctuary, where it's like this nice little fishing village on a nice planet. Yeah, yeah, love that one. That's Kara's first episode, is it? Yeah, he finds her and they go to rescue the village. the seven samurai. Yeah. And the fishing village, they fish for this blue krill, which are like little shellfish type things or crustaceans, suppose they are.
00:17:39
Speaker
and And they brew... That's what they make, spotchka....alcoholic spotchka out of it. And it's massively in demand, which is why they're being attacked. sounds disgusting. It does sound repulsive, but they evidently love it. It pops up again in the Book of Boba Fett when... Oh, no, hang on. It pops up again first in Mando season two on Tatooine. So it's like across the outer rim. It pops up in episode eight as well. Yes. It's definitely the Drink of Kings. Spotchka Watch. Spotchka Watch, yeah. Spotchka Watch. We shall track Scotchcar.
00:18:15
Speaker
But that's like the first chapter, I guess, of his recruitment is yeah yeah persuading Cara. As soon as he mentions that the client is an imperial, she's all in. having been... She's like, yeah, all right, sure. Yeah, like you said, she was trying to lay low.
00:18:29
Speaker
She's in a potentially dangerous position as ah an ex-Republic shock trooper and she doesn't want to draw attention, but she does when it comes to taking out an Imperial. So she's all in. She is all in and she's remarkably loyal Mander all the way through these two episodes, isn't she? Yes. yeah absolutely Especially in episode two. was quite struck by that, watching again. Yeah, definitely. You mean episode eight, sorry. what You mean two of... yes sorry, yes. Episode eight, yeah. Episode eight, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:18:54
Speaker
Yeah, she does all sorts of things beyond her pay grade, if you like. Yeah. She was just recruited to help him out, but in the end is trying to save his life repeatedly and taking huge risks to do so. So she's the kind of friend you want to have. Yeah. She feels really invested in it all, isn't she? Yeah. Yeah, and it feels like it's for him. Whereas a lot the other help he gets is because of Grogu, because he wouldn't, you know, he's great. He's cute. He's adorable. But yeah, she seems to be doing it for the Mandalorian, for him.
00:19:26
Speaker
she doesn't particularly like Grogu either. No, she's offered to carry him at one point and she's like, oh, i don't really do babies. Yeah, don't do babies, yeah. yeah And he did try and kill it. True, true, yeah. Well, yes. I mean, maybe there is something, there's a little and enmity enmity between them.
00:19:44
Speaker
Before we get to the second chapter, we have that hilarious bit where Grogu kind of peeks down at them and Kara's checking out all the guns in Mando's huge collection. and We see Grogu's head appear upside down.
00:19:57
Speaker
He's just like looking down from the hatch. And then the ship goes wildly out of control because he's starting to play with the controls. He's so perfect. He's doing a little toddler thing.
00:20:10
Speaker
Button bashing. But here's where the lore starts to really kick in Well, it's kind of projecting lore into where the story may or may not go in the future once we get back to Quill's farm and there's this fascinating conversation about cloning. Oh, the genetic splicing thing. Yeah. Yeah.
00:20:29
Speaker
Where he asks if he's ah he' a gene splice. Yeah, he says, I think it might be a Strandcast is um Mando's line. And your ears immediately prick up. Particularly if you you know watched The Rise of Skywalker, I suppose The Last Jedi to an extent. And you know we don't really know what's going on by this point.
00:20:50
Speaker
But yeah, it kind of made my ears prick up anyway. All this talk of Gene Vam's and Strandcast. I don't think we've ever heard the term Strandcast before. No, I didn't quite catch it actually. Yeah, it's it's quite a subliminal law drop, I guess, in that sense. Yeah, no, I remember the conversation, but I didn't catch that term. I didn't quite cure what you said. Yeah. I mean, it's a very throwaway line, and it's before the really interesting stuff. It's what starts the conversation. It's what makes Quill start to respond and talk about the fact that he used to work in gene farms, you know, in genetics and stuff.
00:21:21
Speaker
He says this one looks evolved, which I guess is version, like, I suppose you could say there are sort of different tiers of of genetics. One being a clone, like a clone trooper who's been manufactured by the Kaminoans. And so then you've got like Boba Fett, who's like a clone, but with no adjustments or accelerated growth and all that kind of stuff. And then you've got what Quill calls somebody who's evolved, which means somebody who isn't cloned. just kind of born rather than cloned but it yeah it creates this kind of almost hierarchy and it's a bit i don't know how i feel about it yeah yeah which has been a storyline throughout the clone wars and the value of the clones as people you know as beings yeah you know they're kind of disposable weapons in a way but at the same time when you've got series like the bad batch where we get to know the clones and they're
00:22:11
Speaker
individuality and all that kind of thing. it all a bit more. Yeah, probably going off on a tangent here a little bit. But it does make us instantly think about what was happening to Grogu and why did the client want him and what was Dr. Pershing going to do to him.
00:22:24
Speaker
We heard talk of m counts and, you know, our brains as Star Wars fans are immediately... ignited Yeah, because later on, um grief sort of discards all a bit, doesn't it? And says, oh, a pet or, you know. Yeah, the pet tree wants to eat it. And yeah, suggested by the stormtroopers that it's going to be eaten. So there's lots of that sort discarding of the idea. But I think, yeah, there's much more because knowing the client. yeah I think we know there's much more going on there, don't we? Definitely. yeah and And we know, which not everybody knows in the story, that Grogu has powers. It's clearly force sensitive. We know nothing else beyond that really um at this point. We still don't know an awful lot about that side of Grogu and we still don't know much about the cloning thing either.
00:23:10
Speaker
I think we know that ultimately where the cloning thing is going to go from The Rise of Skywalker, which is kind of, and we've talked about this a lot, about whether it's okay for Star Wars to say, here's a film, and there's this kind of infamous line that gets dropped by Poe, where somehow Palpatine returned, and everyone says, oh, well, that's just stupid. Why i didn't we know anything about that? Well, we haven't had the content to tell us that yet. And is it okay that we're now retrospectively going to get all of that? Yeah, I think so. Definitely. yeah kind of like you Do it that way around. Because the the film was in the cinema for how long? you know yeah what Months? yeah and Whereas the canon's going to be there forever, isn't it? So yeah. Yeah, yeah absolutely. Make it work. And Star Wars has always been a kind of, well... Out of order. yeah Yeah, exactly. Since the end of the original trilogy.
00:23:56
Speaker
It's been built and built and built outwards and backwards and all roundwards. And that's just how Star Wars storytelling works. And if we're not used to it by now... Yeah. Noah was telling me about a way to watch them the other day. He was saying that you should watch now best that's been suggested. One, two, four, five, three, six. I've heard that. So is that called the machete? Is that the machete order? Is it? yeah i don't know. Yeah. I love that. It sounds great. That is cool. Okay. There's kind of expansions on that as well now with Solo and you know the animated series and stuff, which there is it is so difficult.
00:24:32
Speaker
Yeah. How do you, because in some ways you don't want spoilers, but at the same time, it's kind of fun seeing the payoff. You've got to start somewhere. Yeah. Like, even though we knew that Darth Vader was Luke's father and Anakin Skywalker, I still had the biggest thrill watching Revenge of the Sith for the first time in the cinema. Yeah. Like the most bizarre film to watch because you know where it's going to end, pretty much. Yeah, but Obi-Wan's the same. The series is the same. You know it's going to go. But I was constantly in fear for Leia the whole way through. Yeah. Regardless. Regardless of it. Yeah, it's crazy. It's absolutely crazy. wild. But it's definitely something that I love about Star Wars, the ever-expanding...
00:25:14
Speaker
threads and stories and the interconnections between all and I was so happy at this point i think realizing oh this is about cloning it just got me yeah so excited because there's so much already in Star Wars about that but this is a part of it that we've never seen and this whole idea of force cloning and yeah the possibilities so was Quill insulting Cara with his comment about her. I don't think so. Because it felt a bit like an insult. Maybe. I mean, he's quite... We were talking about it with Sarah in Episodes 1 and 2, how...
00:25:49
Speaker
He's just very forthright about how he speaks. yeah He's very precise and you know intentional. I don't think he would play those kinds of games. I think it just no it's easy to interpret it like that.
00:26:01
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. She seemed to. Yeah. I think, yeah, she seemed to, but then she would. She would, yeah. No, she would. She's quite untighted about these kinds of things. She is, yeah. I did have a note about her just being, she's very perceptive, but she's just so quick to jump on a thing. Yeah, yeah. I kind of like that about a character. Yeah. I like it. Yeah. Spontaneity kind of thing.
00:26:22
Speaker
but The little montage. And we know that Jon Favre loves the montage. We've had so many montages already. We're only in season one still. But the flashback of him rebuilding i g And it's almost like Frankenstein where he's yeah bringing electricity to bring this beam back. He's got that TIE fighter
The Empire's Lingering Influence
00:26:43
Speaker
cockpit window on his worktop somehow. It's like the design of it is all really cool. And the music is like, it's a Kung Fu montage, 100%. Montage, yeah. With the little flutes and... um strings and stuff it's just so oh perfectly stylistic and right in the mandolin i love ig11 he's great he is so great well i couldn't believe how much we cared about him yeah in two episodes i know i mean i okay i know we've seen him before but we haven't seen him in this state before we haven't seen so suddenly we've gone from like literally you know 20 minutes into the first episode seven
00:27:18
Speaker
he's introduced and then that's it. you know We care immensely for the rest of the whole thing to the point where you know his sacrifice is incredible. Devastating. What a character arc.
00:27:29
Speaker
Yeah. Do we think that there's a little bit of like residual care as well from episode one where we only saw him for like one scene and he was being slightly ridiculous because he kept wanting to self-destruct to stop himself falling into the wrong hands?
00:27:43
Speaker
But he teamed up with Mando and okay, he was going to kill the asset at the end. and Only Mando stopped him at the last minute from killing Grogu. But he didn't know. He was programmed to do that. And that was his mission.
00:27:56
Speaker
But he was helping Mando. And I feel like there's a little bit of residual... little bit of residual... Oh, definitely, yeah. But I just couldn't believe how well it was done a short space of time. It's still very short, yeah. space of time yeah even with that I think it's also many part of the Quill thing, because we care about Quill so much at that point, and Quill's done all this work, and that's what the montage is there for, to show you how much work that Quill put in. Yeah, definitely. too making him so sweet and turning him into a nurse. And Taika. Taika's voice acting. Yeah, Taika's amazing. That does really help. Ridiculous, monotone, like, IG thing, but it's just adorable, especially when he's got lines like, would anyone care for some tea? It's just yeah hilarious.
00:28:38
Speaker
He's lush. Quill has also got this thing about service, which I totally get. It's a really interesting part of his character. We know, of course, we're treated really badly. What I do love is when he says, I gave three lifetimes. Yes. You suddenly have this depth to him that we didn't have before at all, about his sacrifice and what he's done to earn his place now. Yeah. I think that's really... I can't get over how good a character he is, actually. He's incredible. Not just the writing of the character, but the presentation with, you know, the combination of CGI and and of... Yeah, Misty's performance. Modelling. Yeah. Robotics. And the voice performance from Nick Knoll is yeah incredible. yeah My note was that he's lovely.
00:29:15
Speaker
He is lovely. Don't sum it up. He is. It's heartbreaking. We just want him more, please. He kind of chooses to come. Because he wants to save the child from Imperial capture because he understands what it's like to be in service to the Empire.
00:29:31
Speaker
I think that's the point about his you know servitude. um And that's what motivates him to be there. Interesting that both their motivations then are the Empire, aren't they? really Yeah. yeah Yeah. Yeah, from different perspectives. From different ways. Yeah, different perspectives, yeah. Considering that the Empire is in retreat at this point and the timeline, they are still evidently quite...
00:29:52
Speaker
a feature of the Outer Rim, which I think is where most of the Imperial remnant have kind of holed up in their own little factions. And it's obviously still quite a yeah, quite a thing. Mm.
00:30:03
Speaker
and that's what really love about Mando is that when you get to the end of Return the Jedi, you think that's it, don't you? yeah You think everything's just been turned off. yeah Everything's disappeared. And then you don't ever think, actually, they they're just there still. This is going to take quite a while to dismantle. Yeah, it was quite shock because sort knew where it was in the timeline. And when it started, I was like, oh, hang on a sec.
00:30:27
Speaker
How are these guys still around? you know it was i love that about it. and There's some really cool stuff about the different ways that manifests. In this, for instance, we see the client and his stormtrooper guard who all look a bit beaten up and their arm is dirty and you know they very much look like decommissioned troopers. But then Moff Gideon's troopers are all pristine. They're pretty looking. And then there are some other characters...
00:30:49
Speaker
in some of the um ah novels that have come out in the same time period. There's a whole load of them on Kashyyyk, the Wookiee home planet, and they've gone very kind of rogue and and feral almost. Yeah, gone native. Yeah. seems seems to be And then in Soka, we've got Grand Admiral Thorn's troopers who are different again. It's like this whole...
00:31:10
Speaker
Whereas when the Empire was still in power, quotes, everything was uniform. yeah But here we've got all these different Imperial Warlords and yeah moths and stuff. Kind of like the Mandalorians then, because we've got different factions of them as well. Ooh, I'd never thought of that. That's all really interesting. yeah like this I only had that thought right now. I love it. I love that thought. This is why we're here, to find these thoughts.
00:31:34
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. So we've assembled a crew. Mm-hmm. We've gone back to Navarro. Yeah. My next note was, nice standoff, I want a blurg. I love that we're getting more blurgs. I love how they fitted the blurgs into the Razorcrist. Yeah.
00:31:52
Speaker
There's a little diagram in the Mandalorian book and they're showing you how they had to make sure that the Razorcrist had enough space in the hold. To fit some blurgs. they draw the scale of the blurgs to make sure that they fit them. I think they only fitted two in the drawing, but three come out on the... Three come out. There's little bit of blurb cheating. Bit credit license there.
00:32:15
Speaker
It wouldn't look the same if they only had two, though, because they all needed one for that standoff. Yeah, it's a good
Grogu's Powers & Tensions Rising
00:32:21
Speaker
standoff. It is apparently... I have not seen Once Upon a Time in the West, I must admit. It's another film I need to watch. But apparently there's strong element of that in this... Okay. Kind grief Mando standoff, like team up kind of thing. Yeah, I've seen it. I think it's just a standard kind of, you know, like a Western trope. Yeah, it's a standard Western trope. Yeah, I mean, it's in lots of things, isn't it? But yeah, probably just a strong example in that film. Yeah, that's cool.
00:32:49
Speaker
I wanted to know a bit more about the bounty hunters that Kreef brings with him. We don't get to find out very much because they don't don't get anything about them. No. I love that they're really good example of how good character designers think about the silhouette. And I've definitely read that lot in Star Wars. Like if you look at most Star Wars bad guys or good guys even, I mean, look at Darth Vader, the silhouette. You don't need any more than that to tell you it is. And across the board in fantasy and sci-fi, especially where you've got a lot more room to play with different races and species and so on.
00:33:19
Speaker
um But they all have slightly different like helmets and goggle configurations. and Yeah, yeah. Yeah, there are a few different races in there. Clever. My next question is, we had a ah strange creature...
00:33:31
Speaker
A weird goat wolf thing the lava lake. John Paul, we've been tracking this thing. What is it? There's a Star Wars thing of establishing shots with creatures in the near foreground. So the kind of original is Jabba's Palace with a little frog thing that catches a yeah a little bug or something.
00:33:50
Speaker
And it's become a thing in Star Wars. It's definitely like a conscious decision to do this. This is a slight adaptation because the goat is quite big and it's not a massive wide shot, establishing shot. It's like a travel shot, isn't it? They're kind of still on the blur. Yeah, they're just walking across. Is that the goat that they are then turning on the spit a few minutes later? Oh, no!
00:34:12
Speaker
I hadn't considered that. I hadn't until this watch through it and I i thought, well what is that goat doing there? Apart from being a standard Star Wars ploy, but it's pretty sure it looked about the right size. and Well, it's something, it? some kind Navarro wildlife, which must be fairly thin on the ground on a lava planet. And that's the most disappointing bit of that whole scene. They don't get a chance to eat it. No! No! No!
00:34:38
Speaker
It just suddenly whipped out. Did the creatures fly off with the thing off the spit as well? Yeah, they did. That's the first thing that happened. That's the first thing, yeah. Yeah. Because I noted that, you know, that wasn't the only thing that got taken.
00:34:50
Speaker
No. One of the blurbs goes, doesn't it? yeah One gets taken all together and one gets, think, killed. One of the bounty hunters goes, I think. Yeah. yeah Brutal. It is brutal. What are they?
00:35:00
Speaker
What are the dragon things? They're called reptavians. Reptavians. Particularly imaginative title as they're avians that are reptiles. I think they're loosely based on Ralph McQuarrie's creatures, one of the creatures from Dagobah when he was doing the concept art for Dagobah in the original trilogy. And I think it was a snake lizard or something like that it was called, or a snake bird, I can't remember the name of It was the same thing where it's like two names jammed together to make a new alien name. Yeah, yeah, And I think design-wise, that's kind what they look like. They're sort bat-like, aren't they? A little bit. They've got more dragon-y. A bit like dragons. Yeah, dragon wings. Dragon-y, I felt. Little dragons. Yeah, and the poisonous fangs, I guess, because they take a bite out of poor grief. Oh, grief. Just before we get there, he's trying to eat me. Yeah. It's kind of quite like it creeps up on you, the scene, because it's initially just, you know, oh, he's going to be fine, he's going to be fine. But then he's gradually like, I don't think I'm going to make it, guys. You know, it turns into that, which is pretty terrifying.
00:36:05
Speaker
But yeah. Yeah. Grogu saves the day. Is this our first instance of, oh, well, we saw Grogu trying to heal Mando. He tried to heal Mando before, but Mando kept putting him away. Yeah, he didn't know what he was trying to do, I don't think. Putting him back in his crib. Yeah, which is really silly because he could have just helped you heal. Could have just healed him, yeah. I think this is the first time actually, yeah. Yeah, this is the first time he actually manages to do it.
00:36:29
Speaker
And then they're off. They're off. My my next note was quick, new plan. Make a new plan as fast as possible. There is some lush music, which was almost going to be my favourite music cue of the travel thing. Again, it's like this kind of samurai.
00:36:48
Speaker
There's some flutes, but they sound a little bit Eastern, even though they're just traditional Western, like classical flutes. But they're playing those kind of Eastern-y kind of lines.
00:36:59
Speaker
So amazing orchestrations. Love it. I was getting the Lawrence of Arabia sort of vibes on that as well. That sort of sweeping, epic sort of feel. And the travelling as well. It just all had that sort of tone to it. Same stuff going on, yeah.
00:37:12
Speaker
There's quite a variety tonally of music in this. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah, a bit of a plot twist because grief just turns on his men and decides. Yeah? is yeah Are all his men dead at this point?
00:37:24
Speaker
Well, he kills the last two and explains that he was they were going to kill Mando, but because Grogu healed him, he's changed that mind and he wants to keep Grogu as well. And he's gradually falling in love with Grogu.
00:37:37
Speaker
inevitably yeah because I got the vibe that Grogu healed him because he was so nice to him and he picked him up and looked at him for the first time yeah he was just giving nice vibes wasn't he yeah so interesting that at that point he was thinking of betraying him and Grogu didn't pick up on it wow Grogu doesn't really seem to pick up on it, though, because he doesn't with Mando the entirety of the beginning. He tries to help him. Yeah, i think he's like anybody who's a friend of Mando. I think he understands that Mando saved him at the beginning. Yeah. Like his first meeting with Mando was as a savior.
00:38:08
Speaker
And so he immediately swore a kind of allegiance to him. And I think it's like any friend of Mando is a friend of mine. That's kind of how I read it. Like you can see that grief and Mando kind of working together. It's difficult to know because we don't really know how much Grogu is understanding.
00:38:22
Speaker
He's 50. He was in the Jedi Temple. He must understand some basic, I would have thought. Bits. Yeah. We don't really know. They do the old fakie binders ploy, which is a Star Wars classic. Stick the binders on. We've had this in this series more than once as well, think, binding. Yeah. I'm sure it's in Rebels loads as well. It's a classic.
00:38:50
Speaker
There is a sense of risk to this whole thing. I think Mando is a bit unsure. But once he commits, Kara commits as well. She's definitely, as we said earlier, she seems to be on side with Mando. But she doesn't trust grief, does she? No. No, not at all.
00:39:05
Speaker
She only seems to trust Mando. Yeah. Yeah. We meet these two, two biker scouts that become iconic in the next episode. They're played by Jason Sudeikis, who is an SNL like Saturday Night Live comedy performer. He's well known in the US, less so here. I don't don't think i I know his name, but i don't think I'd have recognized him Yeah.
00:39:27
Speaker
and Adam Pally, who's also a comedy actor, who was in The Mindy Project, which I've never watched, but it is on my watch list because I love Mindy Kaling. They're kind of known comedy performers and it's just amazing. like We love a good Stormtrooper cameo.
00:39:41
Speaker
then They're littered throughout the sequel trilogy. ah yeah They're really funny. and we only We meet them a little bit in this and I presume they're the same two that we meet at the beginning of the episode. It's so funny.
00:39:53
Speaker
I did have a note here just saying, uh-oh, scary troopers. so there's some This is where my notes go out of time. I've got no idea what's going on at this point. There are an awful lot of troopers. There's a lot more than the four that grief suggested they would meet. It's immediately like, oh wait, the whole of the city is full of troopers.
00:40:14
Speaker
And they're taken to the cantina, which is... was the cantina, but is now the new Imperial headquarters since they blew up the client's base, wherever that warehouse was. yeah So yeah, we've we've got this new sort of environment for the Imperials.
00:40:30
Speaker
the The client is still rocking his dialogue, as you demonstrated with your favourite line. What exquisite craftsmanship. I love it. says, we'll all be quiet. Yeah.
00:40:46
Speaker
I go, hush boys. We will all be quiet. He's so excited to see. Let see the yeah this very weird. His motivations are so questionable. So questionable because he's obviously like being considerate to the fact the child is asleep.
00:41:03
Speaker
But then we know that not survive. We know that he's trying to kill it. Yeah. Yeah. I like how we're so strange we're told that he is absolutely loyal to the Empire still because he says the Empire improves any system it touches, which is, apart from being brilliantly written line, it just tells that the client is all in with the Imperials. We already knew that really because he's got this huge Imperial medallion and still yeah continuing with the Stormtrooper Guard and everything else. But it really helps us to sort of understand that.
00:41:35
Speaker
ah which is then accelerated by the fact that we've got this Gideon um Zoom call.
Moff Gideon's Arrival & Impact
00:41:40
Speaker
Yes. Which does not go well. It ends horribly, unpredictably.
00:41:46
Speaker
with a doesn it doesn't go well, but I didn't realise until I re-watched it now the Gideon kills him. Yeah. Kills the client. Does he? Yeah. the trip is outside, it's not Mando. It's not Mando. No, I even rounded the check. blast comes through the window. The blast comes from outside, yeah. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. So he's Zoom calling him from outside. Yeah.
00:42:08
Speaker
Yeah, and you can see he sort waves it away, doesn't he? As if like I've had enough of this. And then the next second, it's just a blast through the window. The line of black-armoured troopers are outside and they just shoot up everything. Wow, I've missed that at least five times.
00:42:26
Speaker
Okay, i need to I need to get my wits of about me I think Mando does shoot as well, but it is but the shots definitely come from outside. yeah I put in my notes that it's absolute chaos. Yeah, it is chaos. It's absolute. Moth shot first. Yeah. Moth shot first. Okay, new merch. I put in my notes, dramatic yawn. Moth shot first. I think I was just confused because he's a hologram. thought in my head, he's still on his capital ship somewhere, but he hasn't come down yet. No, he's on his way. He's on his way. Yeah, he's not there at that point. He's still on his way. A lot of troops are there and they fire. Okay, I get it. I get it. I get it. The troopers fire and we don't get... After the scary troopers do their thing it all gets a bit chaotic, that's when the TIE fighter starts this the death troopers? this the death troopers going with the black?
00:43:15
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And they've got terrifying voices. like All stormtroopers have slightly distorted voices because their helmets have got yeah know voice translators or whatever in them. Whereas with the death troopers, they have like the distortion level turned up to 10, which rather than being on like two and you can barely understand them in rogue one i don't know that we hear them speaking in this i can't remember if there's no didn't hear them they didn't say anything trust me they're terrified fired up okay when we watch rogue one listen out for their voice like you can't make up what they're saying they have been disappointed like they're not very successful in rogue one they're do very well they don't live up to their terrifying name and presentation but in this they're pretty good I seem to remember yeah so then we get the scary TIE fighter appears yes and Kara goes who's this guy which was also a great line it's a great TIE fighter land as well isn't it yeah we've never seen that happen where wings are folding down no
00:44:15
Speaker
I always assumed it just sort of landed on the wings and just, yeah you know, you get a land and ladder. yeah I'm sure we've seen something like that. in in Andor, have we seen something like that? We've seen that in Andor and Force Awakens. Yeah. variouss yeah And Rebels as well. I love the way it folds up. So whether this is a special one, like a special Gideon, he does love his toys as we find out as time goes on. And this could be just a specially designed. There are all sorts of adaptations of the tie.
00:44:42
Speaker
Again, in Rebels, there's lots of different storylines that involve custom ties and different types of tie. So this could be a unique Gideon tie. He doesn't want a ladder. No. He doesn't want to go up and down a ladder, no. Gideon doesn't go down ladder. It's not his look, is it? No. Even with the foldable wings, we don't see him get out.
00:44:59
Speaker
No, not even that. A kind of cutaway, and then it's back. No, he's outside in front. We didn't see Giancarlo climbing out awkwardly. LAUGHTER And my favorite music cue happens here. It's very minimal. It's like tuned 808 bass drums, like playing notes going boom, boom.
00:45:20
Speaker
with low double basses with it. So we've got like these orchestral low end, as low as you get in the orchestra with yeah dubstep style bass drums. It's just... Bass strut. Yeah. It's monophonic, but it's just like evil and what tells us so much about his character.
00:45:41
Speaker
It's like, you better live up to this, Gideon. We're setting you up big here with our distorted bass drums. Yeah. You have something I want. there Hold that thought. He's terrifying. He's just terrifying in general. Yeah.
00:45:57
Speaker
Yeah. Remember that speech, this whole speech. Scary, scary man. Keep it in mind. You'll remember it. For the end of season two. yeah Okay. You have something I want. What a speech. He's really laying it And then, well, I'm going to find it difficult to talk about in the end of the episode. But it does not go well for poor Quill.
00:46:16
Speaker
No. I read about the sort of design factor of the fact that when we see that, because we don't see him getting killed exactly. No, it's very clever. It is. And he's reaching out. He's lying there and his hand is reaching out for Grogu.
00:46:28
Speaker
As though he's like, even to his last breath, he was trying to make sure Grogu was safe. He's safe. yeah Yeah. My note on that was just, this is a little bit too much for this morning. Yeah.
00:46:41
Speaker
Watching it very early. I love the fact that he wasn't replying before that happened. Yeah. If we're led to believe that it was happening in the time when it was. Yeah. Yeah. Which I think it was.
00:46:54
Speaker
I think he was just so focused and so determined to get back the Razorcrest. It was just like he didn't have time or energy to speak to that. Yeah. I saw him as like just holding on to Grogu. He didn't even want to let go to press the comms. No, that's it. The dedication to the mission was there, wasn't it? Yeah. Yeah.
00:47:10
Speaker
Yeah. Oof. Sad times. Yeah, it's a brutal end. And the credits were just orchestral. There's no electronica or electric instruments. It's just orchestra, which leaves you feeling even more raw somehow. I don't know. It's like it's all been stripped away. Yeah.
00:47:29
Speaker
Thanks. Thanks for that. Thank Deborah Chow. This is why we like binge watching, because you can do the next one instantly and then you don't have to dwell on that. I think I was foolish enough to be watching this on a week by week, and it's pretty hardcore. That is quite hardcore. But the anticipation for episode eight, Redemption, Taika Waititi. I love everything he does. too. He's great.
Balancing Humor and Action
00:47:54
Speaker
For different reasons. This is so unlike everything else I've ever seen that he's done.
00:47:58
Speaker
But it's equally amazing as everything he's ever done. My first note in this episode was you don't carry babies in bags. That's not... That's not okay. That's not okay. You don't hear babies either. You don't punch babies. You don't punch babies. You don't carry them in bags. If it was 50-year-old baby, you still don't punch them. You still don't punch them. I think at the point of the punch, if you hadn't already set your countdown timer for the expiration date of these steps, at this point you knew we were into less than a minute probably. I love one of them had a line where he says, can I see it?
00:48:36
Speaker
It's just like this kind of gross fascination, which is probably understandable. You know, they're just soldiers. You've got to see it. It's so funny. But they shoot off for that can. thats Yeah. They can't hit the can. This is absolutely informing. Another thing that we've been tracking over this podcast, which is stormtrooper accuracy. Stormtroopers can't shoot. Yeah. I made this great argument early on that they can shoot and that somebody has done some statistics that shows that they're more accurate than most soldiers in our world. Really? Yeah. shooting Unbelievable, right? in In combat, shooting is very unlikely to actually hit. It's not as easy as it seems like it's going to be. bit of a gross thought that if you wouldn't have ever necessarily considered that.
00:49:23
Speaker
And a although stormtroopers do miss a lot, they do hit sometimes. and so can't These ones can't shoot them. Yeah, these guys are dragged down to percentage by quite a lot. yeah see They're trying to hit something that's not very far away and is static. And not moving, yeah.
00:49:40
Speaker
It's so well done. It's brilliant. When he shakes it at the end, he shakes his blaster, the chair. What is shaking it going to tell him? It's faulty.
00:49:51
Speaker
I like seeing them though. I like them being like, of course they're scout troops. They're going to get bored like just waiting around. What they going do? I love those little insights into that world because in the original trilogy there just wasn't time. No. They were enemies. That was all we had time for. yeah But now in these longer form storytelling we get these opportunities to to find out that things aren't as straightforward as you might think. Yeah. Or at least they aren't until IG turns up and absolutely annihilates them. Yeah.
00:50:19
Speaker
IG's an accurate shot. Yeah. He does all sorts horrific things to them. Yeah, breaks arms, smashes heads. Yeah, that was unpleasant. But then he apologises. He's the only character to have apologised to Grogu for witnessing violence. I mean, he's a nurse at the end of the day. before Okay, so we're going back to the siege now. The siege is now in full effect.
00:50:42
Speaker
Mando and friends are kind of holed up in the remains of the cantina. Okay, through this rewatch of The Mandalorian that we're doing, I've introduced this new feature that I've still not made. Oh my God, it's done. I need a musical cue for it because it's called West End Geek Girls. Where I find something in the two episodes that we're watching that stems from the Star Wars the role-playing game, which is a late 80s invention made by West End Games, hence West End Geek Girls. West Geek Girls. There's got to be some sort of Pet Shop Boys theme here. This is what we need, yeah.
00:51:20
Speaker
I played the role playing game when I was at school and I'm really getting back into it as a result doing this podcast. So I felt like it was a chance to celebrate that. So this week's West End Geek Girls comes from the second edition, which I also have as well as the original version. And it's a little section about heavy weapons, in particular the E-Web Heavy Repeating Blaster, which gets name-checked as an E-Web. I love the fact that they call it an E-Web because it was specifically called an E-Web in the role-playing game. Okay. And yeah, there's two different types in the second edition. I think in the original edition there three different types. There was way too many types of repeating blaster. Okay. But in this version, there's light repeating blaster, which is kind of, I think, what Kara's using. Yeah. And Paz Vizsla, the Mandalorian in The Children of the Watch in episode three, I think it was. Anyway, so it's longer than a regular blaster rifle for large scale actions. It's kind of like a supplement to your usual ground squads. You might have one person with one of these, but they are normally on some kind of tripod or mount, unless you're Kara Dune, of course. Yes. And you're just carrying it. But what we've got here that the stormtroopers are setting up is an E-Web repeating blaster, which used to be called a heavy repeat blaster, which you can actually mount on a ship. It's the limit of what you might call portable blaster technology. It's just about movable by troops so they can carry it around, but they can't fire it without a tripod to mount on, which is what they're doing. Again, it's usually like a support weapon for a squad, which is exactly what's going on here. I do love the fact that it came like a Stormtrooper colored flight case. Yes. I loved it when they opened it, they brought it out like, you know, we're on brand. It's okay, we're on brand. It matches everything else. We're going to continue the imperial aesthetic to the end.
00:53:17
Speaker
For context, the light repeater, like what Kara's using, does 6D damage. So that could be up to 36 points of damage if you're playing the game. yeah Whereas this is 8D, so that's up to 8 times 6, 48. Is that right?
00:53:31
Speaker
so Sounds about right. Oh, my maths is all over the shop. No, no, no. I need to get flared again. multiples I'm a singer, I don't do maths. It has its own power generator, as we discover, because they blow up the power generator, which is what?
00:53:45
Speaker
yes pretty much takes out mando takes out everything yeah yeah but i think in that speech grief does go through about but three different versions of that yeah that's yes so maybe he's he does he reference quite specifically and says yeah you may remember his predecessor or you may have seen so he actually does reference three different versions i miss that but i so love that that just absolutely backs up what i've just been talking about yes yeah totally does is it that there's definitely definitely that The reason I'm doing this is because Dave Filoni 100% played the role-playing game when he was at school. There's no doubt about it in my mind. Yeah. um As well as most of the designers of this program. It was made by Blast Tech, by the way. I forgot to mention Blast Tech, the company that makes the E-Web. I don't know if it's the same one that we see on Hoth ah when they they finally infiltrate the Rebel base.
00:54:32
Speaker
And we see some stormtroopers setting one up when Vader steams in just as the Falcon escapes. Yeah. Anyway, sorry, that was a real digression. I have question. Yeah, you know how it goes. I've got a question about blasters in general.
00:54:45
Speaker
Watching this this morning was the first time that I've ever stopped and gone, how what what's the ammo
Star Wars Weaponry & Lore
00:54:52
Speaker
situation? Partly because of the that trooper that shakes his to check if anything's faulty, but partly because they're talking about repeating blasters a lot and Kara just shoots whatever she feels like whenever she feels like it. Yeah.
00:55:05
Speaker
Obviously, they're not they don't have ammo like some guns do. Yeah, they don't fire like physical projectile. like physical things. The repeating here is the squeeze, I think, of the trigger, isn't it? Yeah. So the repeating is the fact you squeeze that squeeze the trigger and it keeps on shooting rather than normal blaster. just have to squeeze, squeeze, squeeze. Yeah, it keeps squeezing. yeah It's just a burst of energy.
00:55:25
Speaker
But is it then unlimited? Blasters have power packs, which we never see them having to recharge. But if you played the role-playing game, your game master would... inevitably tell you that your blaster pack has run out in the middle really tense fight. Oh, and you have to recharge Yeah. The most annoying thing. So yeah, they charge up. I read somewhere the other day that the idea they color the blast so that you can see, like, wouldn't have visible. when it is charging.
00:55:54
Speaker
Theoretically. Oh, okay. This is me reading like the biography written by the guy who was part of writing the role-playing game in the first place. is The reason we're doing this role-playing game, by the way, John Paul, is like it is not just me being completely tedious. It's because loads of lore in Star Wars did come from the role-playing game. The role-playing game was written when the original trilogy had come out, that was all there was. There were no novels. There was nothing. I see. And somebody, this company, West End Games, there were about, i know, five or six people mainly who worked on the role-playing game. And they were licensed to use the Star Wars world. And they wrote loads of stuff building out from the original trilogy. So much of that stuff has informed...
00:56:33
Speaker
firstly the expanded universe novels that are now considered legends because disney like debunked them kind of thing but also now it's been carried forward into the new disney canon like a loads of it goes back to the role-playing game it's wild i can imagine because i've just started dnd and oliver's just got into warhammer So I can imagine the size of of what they did just from that. Oh, that's exciting news. I know. exciting. This has got my brain working now. right I had a note because then Cara talks about the mind flayer and I was like, hang on.
00:57:11
Speaker
That's a D&D monster. 100% D&D. That was so funny. It's also Stranger Things name checks the mind flare a lot in, think, season two. Yeah. And as soon as that came on Stranger Things, I had to go and find my original second edition monster manual and go, Mom, look! Look!
00:57:32
Speaker
Yeah. There's such a throwaway line that Kara does that. I don't know if that's just like a little Easter egg. i've I've never come across it elsewhere in Star Wars. Grief just goes, that was all propaganda. Yes, that's right. I wonder if it's referring to, in Rogue One, there's Borg Gullet, which is this creature that lives with Saul Guerrero's team. And they attach Bodhi, the Imperial um defector,
00:57:58
Speaker
to it and it extracts stuff from his memory and also leaves him like absolutely deranged for a little while. He does get his memory back, but for a while, while they're escaping from Jedha, he's absolutely lost his mind because of what Borg Gullet Maybe there is a mind flare. And it feels a bit mind flare-ish. Mind flare-ish, yeah. Okay.
00:58:16
Speaker
There's evidently some some things like that in Star Wars that could be, yeah. Yeah. I then also had a note about Moff Gideon being cold and terrifying. yeah He knows too much, but he does have direct and clear communication, which I appreciate. Yes. You know where you stand. You know exactly where you stand with him. Yeah. There is one great line. can't remember what it is now. BBC says, i will do whatever I need to advance myself or whatever is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I will act in my own self-interest. That's it. Yeah, yeah, that's it. And just ah perfect. Just like, that's what it is. But yeah. oh bit But there's, know you've been doing the, yeah what's it called? The Wilhelm Scream? Yes. Watch. Yes, we are. I thought maybe I'd challenge you to see if you could spot any dolly zooms. All right. sure Dolly zooms. Yes, because there's one right at the end of what I'm calling Moff Gideon's Night of a Thousand Tears speech.
00:59:10
Speaker
Yeah. When he references everybody. Everything. Yeah, gives all the background. Yeah, yeah. And gives the impression that he knows far too much about them. Yeah. Just at the end. It zooms in normally, and to the very end of it is a little dolly zoom, just to sort give a little bit of bite to the end of the speech. Amazing. So if anyone who's listening, a dolly zoom, do you want to blow by blow what a dolly zoom, how it works? on then. Well, it's quite basic, I think, really, isn't it? It's just zooming in with a... So moving forward with the dolly while moving back with the lens, or vice versa. It'll work either way. But I think that's generally how it's done. I think it's a camera on What do you to call it? Wheels?
00:59:46
Speaker
a yeah i'm a dolly yeah A camera on a dolly and the dolly moves forward and then the zoom mill lens goes back and then that creates this slightly disorienting effect. yeah I think me and Ollie spent a really long time trying to do it on a carton of orange juice once. Amazing. yes And I think that was with you. That was your camera. yeah i remember. what The behind the scenes of The Messenger, yeah. Amazing. Wasn't all the flip cam? Oh, it might have been the flip cam, actually. Wow. Which would belong to the school. Anyway, yeah. time.
01:00:18
Speaker
Classic. If you watch Severance on Apple TV, the whole premise of that is this going in and out of the workplace. Oh, yes. You said about that. During the elevator ride, it does like a close, solly, as they call it. Is that the call? Solly. Solly. Yeah. The classic one is that is that is the Jaws moment, isn't it? That's like that yeah yeah the epic classic one. Yeah, yeah. Absolute classic. I hadn't even noticed that. Amazing. I love it. Yeah. Okay. Let's talk about the speech because this is the big law drop as far as I'm concerned. yeah This is where we start to go like, wait, what?
Cultural and Historical Insights
01:00:51
Speaker
he Yeah. The name checking of everybody. All of them. Yeah. He knows who they all are. Okay. so the Siege of Mandalore, Night of the Thousand Tears. Yes. We still don't know the full details of this, but it's been told in a variety of different ways since, um just in a sort of small way, but we're only getting little nuggets. They're still like leaving us wanting more, which is again is a great example of how st Star Wars lore is just thrown at you and you don't really know all of the details, but you you hope that one day we'll find out.
01:01:24
Speaker
But from what we know, it was around four to five years after the Battle of Yavin, so probably about five years before this. Okay. And Bo-Katan, who we're going to meet, but we've already met in Clone Wars and and Rebels at this point, at that point was the leader of Mandalore, the planet Mandalore, and they call her the Mandalore. And claimed planet as the Empire were trying to sort of infiltrate them. Okay. And the Empire absolutely annihilated them and wiped out.
01:01:58
Speaker
Most of them. Yeah. Destroyed the planet in terms of it's still there, but it's pretty much unlivable. Right. It's been absolutely desecrated. And remaining Mandalorians have, we don't really know where they all are, but they've drifted off in different factions in their small kind of cells like the Armourers. Yeah. little cell seen, yeah. That she's got going on on Navarro, or were on Navarro, but we don't really know where they are now. And we don't really know at this point where any of the others are, but we do know roughly what he's talking about if we've watched all of Clone Wars and Rebels. You've got sort of working knowledge of what was happening on Mandalore, and you can sort of guess what may have happened in the meantime. Right, okay.
01:02:40
Speaker
But you're left dying to know. And of course, we get the amazing reveal at the very end of this episode, which we'll get to, yeah which tells us even more about what may or may not have happened at the Siege of Mandalore. The Night of the Thousand Tears, I understand, is just one part of the purge of the Mandalorians. amanda laureians yeah Which pretty gruesome. Yeah. yeah Because then we've got some flashbacks.
01:03:06
Speaker
Yes. Where they're talking about Mando flashbacks. And this was one of my favourite music cues. Yeah, this is brilliant. It's incredible. When the lid drops down and the explosion happens at the same time, that's just fantastic in itself. Yeah. yeah There's something about the B-3s, or I can't remember, the super battle droids. Yeah.
01:03:29
Speaker
the heavy and upper body ones yeah that don't say Roger, Roger. yeah I was thinking, oh, is this the first time we've seen them in live action? And of course it's is's not no because we saw them in the prequels a fair amount. But because the prequels were early days of digital animation, you know, technology then, yeah, they didn't look as real and as heavy somehow. But I will say they do fall over very easily in this scene. I was watching, there was like two blasts and they're down, each one of them. was quite surprised by that. So they look impressive.
01:04:04
Speaker
Maybe being top heavy didn't help them out. I would say that's just telling us how powerful Mandalorians are. I think so. My memory of the Clone Wars is that they didn't do very well in that either. Like clones were just shooting them down left, right and centre. They weren't particularly any better. it a bit more intimidating looking than B-1s.
01:04:24
Speaker
The really skinny ones, yeah. Yeah, which are more comedy value. Yeah, but it's nice seeing them again. And it kind of places this story a little bit. We're not quite sure where or when or anything. We still don't know. yeah I'm sure at one point, maybe in the film that's coming out in May, we might find out a little more about his background. But it does tell us a bit about a bit more visually about the idea of foundlings yeah and that...
01:04:49
Speaker
The Mandalorians will rescue young people that need rescuing when they can and adopt them into their creed. And we get that little two part dialogue where Kara says Mandalorian isn't a race and Mando says it's a creed. Which did we kind of hear the armourer say that? oh Yeah, the armourer said something like it. Yeah, it which tells us that you don't have to be born Mandalorian. yeah You can be adopted into into it the Mandalorian way, which I love. I really love that. Again, it it responds to, there was a lot of debate in the the fandom about Jango Fett and consequently Baba Fett as whether they are Mandalorians. and Well, we've seen Jango Fett's face. Yeah, but that doesn't necessarily tell us whether he's a Mandalorian or not.
01:05:37
Speaker
He could be anybody. And we don't know if Mandalorians are all humans at this point. yeah We've seen Mandalorians in the Clone Wars and Rebels without their helmets on yeah many, many times. but And they've all been humans, but there's nothing to say that they they're all human don't have to be human. Yeah, yeah yeah exactly.
01:05:56
Speaker
So is is it answers a lot of stuff, but it also asks such questions. Yeah, yeah. Which love. On a side note, what I found watching it back again was having seen season two and three, yeah it was actually quite nice not having that much Mandalorian lore in the most of this. yeah it It was nice to have a lighter, just, you know, adventure-y sort of shoot-em-up vibe going on. It's just a conversation. Yeah, yeah I loved season two and three.
01:06:25
Speaker
i really did. But the first season, I think... I don't know, it had more of that sort of gunslinger kind of feel to it, didn't it? yeah And I think it was a nice way in, definitely, to off this whole extended you know universe with all the with all the TV shows. Interesting. I think that ties in back a lot to what we were saying at the beginning of the episode, where...
01:06:45
Speaker
There is Star Wars where you can just get thrown in like this, like season one, whereas season two and season
Storytelling Styles & Future Directions
01:06:51
Speaker
three get increasingly weighed down by their attachment to Rebels and the Clone Wars particularly. Interesting. Which is different things for different yeah people, I guess. and And the hope is, as you say, that people can come into this series, season one, and just go along for the ride. yeah And then gradually they're going to learn about these people. And I can't imagine...
01:07:12
Speaker
watching season three without knowing what I know about Clone Wars and Rebels. but I'm about to. Yeah, like I'm intrigued to find out if you make sense, like what your interpretation of it all is and how it sits with you and whether it feels like whether it feels like it makes sense. I'm sure it will because it's being made by you know very clever storytellers that...
01:07:35
Speaker
I'm sure, talk about this stuff all the time and try and figure out how can we get... Their aim is to get more people to watch Disney Plus at the end of the day. Well, that's a very merciless way of putting it. That's Disney's aim. but yeah I don't think that's Filoni and Favreau's aim. Filoni and Favreau have each got different aims. I think Favreau is probably more on that thing of let's get everybody in to see this show yeah because he likes telling stories to lots of people. He's a very brilliant filmmaker and that's what he does so well in all sorts of different settings. Whereas Filoni is more...
01:08:05
Speaker
I just want to tell people about Mandalorians and about the Jedi and about the nuances and the details. And I'm sure between them, they've got quite a good kind of chemistry of one informing the other about all the details and the lore and everything else. And the other one saying, yeah, but we're just trying to tell a good story. yeah And the balance has shifted a little bit throughout the seasons. It'll be interesting see where they go next, because it feels like at the end of season three, we're jumping forward massively here. It feels like it kind of wrapped up.
01:08:32
Speaker
It was almost a full stop yeah of sorts. I was quite surprised when i saw the film coming out, actually. Yeah. Well, I feel like the full stop has finished that big diversion that they did in in about Mandalorian. Because, spoiler alert, there's quite a lot about what's going on here. Can't cover my ears. It's going to come up. You're forced to listen to our spoilers. Yeah, we find out a lot more about Mandalore and Okotan all this other stuff.
01:09:01
Speaker
so there are If you've watched Clone Wars and Rebels, you know some of any anyway, but if you don't, it doesn't matter. You're going to get it fed to you. But it does all wrap up. Okay. But it's not the end of Mando's story. And I think I, like you, were surprised, John Paul, in that, wow, we're getting more.
01:09:17
Speaker
It's going to be a film. Interesting. I wonder how that's going to work. But I feel like they're reset. I think that's the exciting thing. is that ah From what I've heard as well about the film, not that we know much about it at this point, but from the rumours and the different podcasts that I listen to, people talking about it it feels like it's going to be back to a season one style vibe where it's an adventure. yeah It's not yeah weighed down.
01:09:41
Speaker
Weighed down with lore. Having said that, I hope we find out more about Grogu in particular because we haven't found out much about I think that's going to happen, yeah. Yeah. It has to be. I like purposefully, they had to pause the Grogu story. They did feed us a few little nuggets along the way, but
Musical Influences in The Mandalorian
01:09:55
Speaker
mostly they paused Grogu's story so that we could tell Bo-Katan's story and just sort of resolve all of that, which whether they intended that when they wrote this Moff Gideon stuff, I don't know, because it's a big setup what he's saying here. Yeah.
01:10:10
Speaker
It's interesting how they got there. Interesting. Yeah, that music in that flashback, Again, it's like South Asian, I think Indian flute yeah and Spanish guitar. yeah And it's this kind of mysticism with the Western.
01:10:24
Speaker
yeah like yeah and there's a really bizarre LFO pulse thing that goes through quite a lot of it right up until the doors are shut. And then once the doors are shut, it kind of all cuts out. There's the explosion. And then when they're opened again, we just have one guitar For a bit. Yeah. Before the strings come back in. It's the Brian May electric guitar, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. It feels like whether it's Mandalorians in general or whether it's this particular sect, the Armourers sect of the Mandalorians, do seem to be represented by this distorted electric guitar. We had it in season one with the major seventh dissonance called Dale Orme.
01:11:04
Speaker
Whatever it is, can't sing major song. Sorry, musicianians over little musicians. Wait. Did you get Brian May vibes, John Paul, as a Queen fan? Yeah, there is a bit of that throughout, isn't there? It's really, and I mean... Oh, yes. It's kind of like harmonised twiddling. Yeah, more Queen, I think. Well, I think, well, we're both just thinking of the one yeah that Steve Howe is on.
01:11:29
Speaker
Innuendo. Yes. Yeah. suppose you're feeling Innuendo vibes, yeah. Yeah. Oh, I hadn't even thought about innuendo. No, I was thinking earlier, Queen, but innuendo, yes, 100%. Yeah, yeah. It's innuendo sort of vibes, isn't it? Absolutely. Yeah. So, yeah, my note on the music was, as a music teacher, I always teach this film music unit and yeah give them the option of of who to choose to look at. You know, are they going to look at John Williams? they can look at any Marconi, are they gonna look at, you know, whoever it might be, Howard Shaw or whoever. yeah And I always say to them, you don't go for TV, you know, go for for films. And it's completely changed in the last yeah five years or so, six years since Mando and since other things have come out. And they're saying, well, can we just yeah look at Stranger Things? and like, well, yeah.
01:12:09
Speaker
so It's all so cinematic now, the scoring, isn't it? And Goranson's work on the theme and everything is just incredible. yeah We were talking about it um a few weeks ago, the behind-the-scenes series on Disney+, plus the gallery, yeah where they do the behind-the-scenes of season one of Mandalorian. There's an entire episode about Ludwig Lundgren. And it's so interesting and so cool. It's the kind of thing that as musicians, we'd love to see like these creators, how they work, their workflow and seeing footage of them creating. And like, we so rarely see that, but they gave him a whole episode and it's so interesting. Definitely recommend it. And it'd be a good one to show any students who are doing anything like this. Like his work process is so interesting. How he does so much of it at home, just, bashing around on his instruments and yeah like the main who doo doooo yeah you get that feel it is very organic and i think it ties in with the whole vibe of the series is bringing it back to being more physical doesn't it it feels like a physical score and obviously are lots of electronic elements in there but again you can imagine somebody sitting there with their synth and creating those sounds in the you know in that sort of way exactly what he was doing yeah he's got quite a lot of analog synths in there isn't he he's There is a lot. He's got modular in his studio. And like for anybody listening who doesn't know modular synths are these huge synthesizers that came around in the 60s and 70s that you plug into each other. and you have to patch them. Like old switchboard look.
01:13:36
Speaker
Exactly. yeah Very fiddly and prone to mistakes and not working and everything else. But that's part of their charm. And I think Ludwig is very much that kind of artist that would integrate that kind of It's of what makes it fun. yeah Yeah. He had a big job to do. yeah Even like the animation series...
01:13:52
Speaker
They dabbled a little bit, but they mainly stayed fairly close to the the John Williams template. Whereas this was going to be something different. Completely different. An amazing job of creating something that was still Star Wars.
01:14:06
Speaker
I think his influences of Morricone and, you know, samurai movies, this very much informs his stylistic choices, which made sure that it stayed in Star Wars. yeah You couldn't...
01:14:20
Speaker
fail but make it Star Wars if you use those influences. yeah So while Mando's giving this whole speech, Griff's casually drinking Spotchka in the background.
01:14:33
Speaker
it's not like a good time manjo's having this whole like outpouring of this is where i came from blah blah all of this stuff and then like that it just keeps cutting away to one grief drinking in the background of the story and then ig speeding through oh yes ig oh my gosh with grogu strapped to him And I have an interesting note here that IG-11 shoots a couple of troopers.
01:15:03
Speaker
Grogu laughs.
01:15:06
Speaker
But I laughed as well. I laughed at the exact same point. It was such a brilliant comic death. It was fantastic. Yeah. Is this another branch of our tracking of whooping while killing? Whooping slash laughing while killing. Like Finn and Rey in the gun turrets of the Falcon, whooping in joy when kill somebody. Which we've seen in the original trilogy. It happens throughout. now we've got Grogu, who's effectively a baby. Yeah, laughing at death. Learning bad habits.
01:15:38
Speaker
But the laugh that he does is a stock sound. Is it? I know it's a stock sound because it's in my library. Oh gosh. And if you listen to loads of BBC audio drama like I used to, i don't so much anymore, but i used to. as Such a sound. You hear that laugh over and over. like It's the the baby's laugh that...
01:16:02
Speaker
This baby laugh meme. Amazing. We need to get that on the soundboard. I don't think it's an actual audio. I've got it. I'll find it. I don't know if it's a meme in general or whether it's just really hard to get babies to make sounds clearly. So there's only a few in circulation. Yes. Because you notice the same babies popping up over and over again in like in a lot of media.
01:16:30
Speaker
I wonder if there's more of that in Grogu's... There is. Yeah. The way he babbles a lot is like kind of... I've heard those babbles before. It's not... Interesting. That's fascinating. It's a soundboard.
01:16:42
Speaker
Wow. I love that. I loved seeing more of IG's animation. I still can't figure out how how they've animated him. It's so cool. it's so It looks a bit like stop motion, which is how they animated the original Scout Walkers in Return the Jedi, yeah with models and moving them a frame at a time.
01:17:01
Speaker
But it doesn't look quite like that either. But it doesn't look like computer animation either. Need to find out how they did it. The information will be out there somewhere. Yeah. i need to do our research better. I did think there was a slight shift in the look of him after the fight and then when he got on the speeder, there was a definite like different look.
01:17:19
Speaker
The colouring different. Yeah. wonder if this has to do with his lights because he's got all the lights on his head and stuff. Maybe he illuminates himself differently when he's in different moods. yeah He's quite moody, isn't He is quite moody. That's great. I love it.
01:17:35
Speaker
I like the flametrooper who comes to with the flamethrower to start burning them out. Yeah. He's got like red on his armour, like red painted on. separate Real Isengard vibes when I saw him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Straight away. It is, isn't it? Yeah, real Isengard vibes. We've been noticing a few Lord of the Rings tie-ins, actually. There's a lot. When you said about the travelling shot earlier on with the music. Get off the road. Yeah. yeah okay Yeah, my note there was just, ooh, red fire trooper. Grogu does his little bit of magic. Grogu does the magic hand thing.
01:18:14
Speaker
Yeah. The magic hand thing, baby. Come on, baby.
01:18:21
Speaker
So Mando gets blown up by the power pack from the the eWeb and IG is ultimately going to try and save him. Yeah.
Character Voices & Performances
01:18:31
Speaker
And I'm wondering if he originally had a built-in back to spray or whether that's something quill... that quill put Because I can't imagine an IG unit who...
01:18:46
Speaker
Traditionally, they're just assassins. like yeah They wouldn't need to save people. Yeah, why would they have Bacta? That's interesting. But it totally would stand that Quill would install that as part of his nurse because he's a nurse droid. Yeah, definitely. He's now got medicine.
01:19:04
Speaker
And then we have a face reveal. We do have our first Pedro moment. I know that it's Pedro, but I still wasn't ready for that.
01:19:14
Speaker
And I don't know much voice doesn't go with the face. No. It's so bizarre, knowing Pedro. Did you just say that you don't know how much you like him? What? What? What was that?
01:19:26
Speaker
It's here. So I'm not going to judge you for not liking Pedro. It's fine. don't like Pedro. I have a type, it ain't it. It ain't it. I think that that Pedro is not his face necessarily. i mean, according to the internet, it's his knee anyway. What?
01:19:47
Speaker
Hang on, de's anie I'm not glossing over that. Tell me more about the knees. There's an entire like fandom of Pedro's knee, his slutty knee. i think because at one awards ceremony, he posed with his knee out. He's wearing the shorts.
01:19:59
Speaker
And since then, i mean, I'm in a Facebook group that's just dedicated to Pedro's knee. I'm in a respectful way. You're worshipping the knee at a distance. Yeah. worship'reping the knee at a distance yeah just quietly appreciating the thing is there's a corner on the internet for all of us for everything and if you're in the right amongst the right people there's no judgment incredible unfortunately we never get to see his knee in the mandalorian we'll take his face we'll take his face even if he's a bit battered no i don't think it matches the voice that's interesting actually i hadn't thought that it wasn't a match until you just said it just now yeah it's really odd i just can't i can never quite match the two together i know what you mean
01:20:43
Speaker
It's really strange. I think that's why it works so well when he has the mask on, when he has the helmet on, sorry. Is that you don't all the time think it's Pedro. It's it's yeah because the voice works so well by itself. I didn't know until the credits of the first episode that it was Pedro. There we go.
01:20:59
Speaker
I mean, you wouldn't. And his voice is not his typical speaking voice. He's so he's got a voice character for Armando. He's doing it very much as a voice actor, which is super interesting, especially as like he isn't in the suit most of the time as well. So there's all this weird combination performance thing. And yeah,
01:21:20
Speaker
as soon as we see his face, it doesn't match. Whereas it is the one thing that actually does match. Yeah. Because is his voice. Because it is his voice. Yeah. That goes to that face. But not with that body most of the time. Yeah. Super interesting. It is interesting.
01:21:32
Speaker
I love the sort of the way they've built this character. Mm-hmm. in such an unusual way it is an unusual way and maybe think first time i watched it I thought you've got the two main characters one you can't see their face and the other can't speak it's a puppet it's a puppet yeah you can't speak you can't make words so the two main characters between two of them barely are one usual character are they yeah it's very very clever But i love this scene with IG. It's beautiful. yeah
Mandalorian Lore & The Armorer's Role
01:22:02
Speaker
I'm not living thing. Yeah. But at that point, you've humanized him at that point. And he very is... Then he follows it up with, think that was a joke.
01:22:12
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Straight after. you've got, I'm not living thing. You've damaged your central processing unit. And then that was joke. Yeah. Was that Taika ad-lib on that? Because that feels very Taika, to just like button the scene with that rather than... Yeah, he says something about his central processing unit. says, you've damaged your central processing unit. And Mando goes, do you mean my brain? And he goes, that was a joke. It was meant to put you at ease. Now we're going to meet another iconic helmeted character that we love already. Armourer!
01:22:42
Speaker
And she doles out another load of lore. She even says, yeah I'm talking of songs of the eons or something. I can't remember the exact word. So I had a note there being like, we've talked about songs a couple of times. She's mentioned you'll have heard it in the songs before.
01:22:58
Speaker
And I'm like, where are these songs? I would like to hear them. Yeah. My guess is that it's just fantastic. fantasy stories yeah wording of like this is how we tell our tales kind of a thing yeah like a bardic sort of yeah yeah it says about oral tradition of an ancient race kind of yeah isn't it yeah yeah where stories are important yeah yeah absolutely a lot of tradition involved but it could be there are actual songs yeah that's why i took it as where are the songs yeah yeah But that might be just before they run into the armourer again is yeah potentially my favourite piece of score because it goes really, really minimal while they're walking through the sewers.
01:23:40
Speaker
Yeah. And they're like trying to find their way through. Do we get those clashing major sevens again? Yeah. And then the choir comes in. Yeah. And I am a sucker for a choir. Yeah. You're a big choir cho found cho fan. a choir fan. Choir singer, choir performer. But yeah, I think that's my favourite bit.
01:23:59
Speaker
Ultimately, she well she hints at this whole thing about the Mandalorians and the Jedi, which is sowing some seeds. We already know a bit about that. Yeah, but she's definitely sowing seeds of the future there.
01:24:11
Speaker
Yeah. And she gives him a jet pack. Yes. The rising phoenix. The rising phoenix. But again, it's like fantasy gobbledygook, isn't it? But of the most beautiful kind. Yeah.
01:24:24
Speaker
and And establishes his mudhorn signet. Yeah. But she also drops all the foundling lore, so she's kind of solidifying this, Grogu is yours to take care of now. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, you are a clan of two. yeah Yeah. So he's now a new clan, which is, well, which again, we were just saying, can Mandalorians be other than human? Well, evidently, because she's just told that Grogu Pretty much said, Grogu, he's a foundling, yeah. She says he's your foundling now. that fun You're his father. Yeah.
01:24:52
Speaker
Yeah, you're as well as that. He's now got a mission yeah for season two, which is awesome. I love her little scene where she's just kneeling and meditating. I know, and then she just kicks ass. Yeah. With her tools, which are now her weapons as well. How often do you see a stormtrooper's mask break?
01:25:10
Speaker
Yes! Never! That never happens. Just takes half of it off. She's away with her little tongs or hammer or whatever it is. I've got the little action figure on of her and she's got the the little hammer thing. little right Okay,
01:25:26
Speaker
this is potentially my least favourite droid ever. I don't know why it freaks me out so much. It's so disturbing. But the fairy droid really scary. It really is. Nothing's in proportion. It's just so odd. We're sort of duped into this full sense of security, oh, it's an unit. It looks like it, yeah. Oh my God, it's standing up. It's got legs. Oh, that's wrong. And it's making r two sounds, yeah but it hasn't got an R2 body.
01:25:53
Speaker
It's got some river sticks kind of look to it. We're pushing along. is Oh, I know. I think that's intentional. It's terrifying. So
Innovative Filming Techniques
01:26:02
Speaker
this chamber that they're in is a really...
01:26:04
Speaker
interesting use of the the volume where they film, you know, the sort of like horseshoe screen, wall of screens, which is how they... Have you seen any of that, John Paul? No. Where they film, they don't use cool blue screens. They film in what's called the volume, which is a horseshoe arrangement of LED screens. Right. And on the screens, they show the backdrops and they create the backdrops digitally beforehand.
01:26:27
Speaker
And then the lighting of the LED screens is connected to the camera. So as you adjust the camera lens, so say you do like a zoom or something like that, the background all changes. if you're in there, it looks a bit weird. all goes a bit blah, blah, blah. Like bit of Mission Impossible when he's walking down the corridor. Have you seen that one? He does it in real time. Yeah, it's amazing. Oh, wow. Yeah, yeah. I can picture it.
01:26:50
Speaker
Inception, there's some stuff in Inception where the the city starts to warp a bit. It's that kind of thing that happens. But the actors then, at least they're roughly in the environment rather than just being in a green screen room. They're in a space that vaguely looks right. And then obviously there's bits of actual set, but yeah only very partial set. like They don't have to feel very much. um And it illuminates the cast as well. so they don't have to light.
01:27:12
Speaker
The lighting is all very natural because it comes from backdrops and it speeds up post-production. So it's really cool. Again, it's in that gallery behind the scenes thing. Really worth a look. um So this they had to make this, like design this cavern of lava to be as big as the volume, or at least bigger than the volume, so that it looked right, if you know what mean. was smaller than the volume was across, which is I think 70 feet diameter.
01:27:39
Speaker
So it's got to be least as big as that. So obviously there's no real cavern, no real lava thing. It's all animated. What? but like they're in what do you mean not sure how like what the boat is in you know the ground do they led the ground because what are they doing the lava is really well designed as well because it's kind of black and crusting it's not just it's not flowing which sometimes looks a bit fakie because real lava is cooling you know as it goes along and it's it's very realistic Is it IG who goes,
Season Finale Highlights & Speculations
01:28:11
Speaker
careful, it's laughter? Does Kara say, kidding? Brilliant.
01:28:19
Speaker
brilliant And so now they're on this weird like Venetian gondola down the river Styx, as you said. The fairy droid's kind of whistly singing. it's like i quite like I like his sound design, but I just hate the look of him. It's just awful.
01:28:36
Speaker
Terrifying. And one of the saddest sacrifices in Star Wars memory. What, when Calva kills the droid? no No, that's fine. No. That droid deserved it just for looking creepy. Just for being. In fact, probably less creepy when the head's off, actually. Yeah, it's fine. Once the head's gone, it's okay.
01:29:01
Speaker
Yeah, no, I was referring to IG. His absolute commitment to protecting Grogu, which is what we all want to do. We're all 100% with him. Promise me he'll be safe with you and then I can do my other ah default to other programming.
01:29:17
Speaker
And it works. He blows and finally gets to do his self-destruct that was promised at the beginning. side um And blows up a load of stormtroopers. He probably whooped as he did it yeah in his own IG way. get to Then the TIE fighter, which... yeah the the terror of the TIE Fighter sound design works every time Jetpack versus TIE Fighter is my note I think Giancarlo Giancarlo sorry I'm mispronouncing his name loves being in the cockpit of a TIE like if you watch it with that in mind like he does look like he looks quite happy his choices are just like I am a loving this he does grin when Mando lands on the top he looks up and gives a massive grin just like yeah there he is it's brilliant got him
01:30:07
Speaker
It's so cool. What a finale moment for the season. like really We did not go into this expecting to see Mando jetpacking onto a TIE fighter and then you know blowing it up blowing out in the sky. Pretty much unsuccessfully because...
01:30:24
Speaker
Well, he survived it. At the very end, of course, he survived. We do get that little bit of um Mando leaving, big orchestral moment, which drops to the little, ah is it Glockenspiel or Celeste? We always get it at the end of the credits. I think it's a Glockenspiel. I think it's a Glockenspiel. As he's burying Quill.
01:30:44
Speaker
It's like a really intimate moment with the little twinkly doooooooodoo doodoooo doodoodoooodoo whatever it is But yeah, the Jawas are already on the tie. Taking it apart. Doing their thing. I did notice that Jawas, when they run, they always run with their arms up in the air like this. fail So when they run away, they're like, whoo, run. Put their arms up in the air.
01:31:12
Speaker
Again, in the role-playing, I think it might have been the same guy that played the Ewok. I think I mentioned this in an earlier episode. Oh, yeah, yeah. A friend of mine played an Ewok in the role-playing game. It incredibly annoying. I think at another point he played a Jawa. Also annoying. same annoyingness. It's like you've only got two words in your in your dictionary and we've had enough of them already. Yeah. But yeah, massive moment for Clone Wars and particularly Rebels fans, I think, as the Darksaber blade cuts through the body of the TIE Fighter and out steps Gideon wielding the Darksaber. What a cliffhanger. du du du Intrigue. This left us for, a ah well, in the UK, I think we had about eight months before season two came out.
01:32:00
Speaker
And the speculation was wild. Yeah. That was a question. It's a darksaber then, is it? Yes. yeah I'm not going to answer that question. Fine.
01:32:11
Speaker
That's if you want to actually go to bed tonight. Fair enough. I will look it up on my own. The presentation of Gideon there is that he's totally assured and confident with it. And it's again, just like that whole thing of dropping it in, isn't it? It's just there he is. There it is. He isn't even brandishing it, is he? Really? He just cuts his way through and then he's just holding it casually. Like this is just part of his armor, isn't it? It's just, it's great. It's really well established from the off. I mean, knowing how hallowed this weapon is, the fact that he's just using it to casually cut his way out of the time. As a tin opener.
01:32:48
Speaker
Yeah. It's like, wow, this guy mean. He's absolutely off the scale. What a guy. What a guy. Wow. Amazing. This was great. Thank you so much, John Paul, for having me. Thank you. If you're ever in the mood for any more Star Wars in the future, we'd love to have you back We'll be doing many more things. Definitely. I think we're going Clone Wars next after this.
01:33:16
Speaker
I have a feeling Andor's going to be not far beyond because all of our previous guests are constantly saying, can I come on from and i for Jessica's pinning me down and she's making me watch all of it in two days. Andor in two days? We're going to do Andor in two days, or at least a bit of it, as much as we can in two days. Good luck. So thank you you everybody for listening and coming on this Mandalorian Season 1 journey. We'll be back next week with Season 2, Episodes 1 and 2 with a special guest who's um very close to home.
01:33:48
Speaker
Quite literally in my home as we speak. And has consequently become a massive Star Wars fan. So she's going to come on for Episodes 1 and 2 of Season 2.
01:33:59
Speaker
I can't wait for these next two episodes. They are both delightful. Excellent. Yeah. We will see you then. Until then. Bye. Bye.