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Delving into THE BOOK OF BOBA FETT Chapter 5 | 021
21 Plays16 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.
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 twenty-first episode we're continuing our journey through The Book of Boba Fett with a whole show dedicated to the BDH masterpiece, Chapter 5 "The Return of the Mandalorian". We talk about themes, performances, story details, ring worlds, Mandalorian lore, Peli's droids, why Branwen is so obsessed with this episode, and much more. Watch out for our "West End Geek Girls" segment, which now has a little theme tune! Wizard.
Sisters of the Force is a weekly, UK-based, Star Wars podcast, produced with joy and love by Seah and Branwen. Sisters of the Force theme by Seah and Branwen.
Follow us on Instagram @sistersoftheforcepod, Bluesky @sistersoftheforce.bsky.social, https://www.youtube.com/@SistersoftheForce, and https://www.facebook.com/sistersoftheforcepod.
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Transcript
00:00:16
Speaker
Sia. Hi. Hi. What's your favourite line from The Book of Boba Fett, Chapter 5? Mine's a two-parter. Smooth as a gonk scompjack.
00:00:30
Speaker
I think we need... Oh, we definitely need a... And I think we'll have bunch of my pinkies as well because this is the first time ever we've picked the same line. We've picked the same line. All right, do you want to do half of it then and I'll do the other half?
00:00:44
Speaker
no, I've got another one. I've got another one. You've got another one? Okay.
00:00:49
Speaker
Excellent. Yay. It's surprising that it's taken that long for us to do it that, actually. It is, yeah. But i mean, that is an exceptional line. It's an exceptional line. An exceptional delivery.
00:01:02
Speaker
Branwen. Hello. What is your second favourite line from The Book of Boba Fett, Chapter 5? They're quite furry. Very furry. Lots of issues.
00:01:15
Speaker
Incredible. I don't know i didn't think that first, to be honest, because when I first watched that episode, that line haunted me. I had that down as well.
00:01:27
Speaker
You're listening to Sisters of the Force, a Star Wars podcast with me, Branwen. And me, Sia. And we're here to discuss the book of Boba Fett, Chapter 5, The Return of the Mandalorian. Oh my god. Oh. This is, as I've repeatedly stated throughout this podcast, my favourite episode of Star Wars television. I'm going to go as far as to it's my favourite episode of any television and it's my favourite bit of Star Wars ever.
00:02:00
Speaker
Interesting. That's huge. That is That's crazy massive. I mean, I think it's joint top TV episode ever with Strange Things Season 4, Episode 4. Okay. Goodbye Billy whatever it was called, which...
00:02:14
Speaker
broke me for days. That was hard. The end of that with Kate Bush. Oh my god. That was a good bit of Yeah.
00:02:24
Speaker
yeah But so is this. For many different reasons, this always makes me cry, for very different reasons. Very different reasons. I'm really excited to talk to you about this and kind of find out find out what it is. What what is it? what's what's What's going on? That's a big question, isn't it?
00:02:42
Speaker
Yeah, there's a whole load of things, which I think we'll... get into as we go through it yeah think there I mean hopefully by the time I've rabbited on for very long which is why we're only doing one episode this time around that will be it'll be clear explanation yeah yeah okay because I loved it I love I love this episode it's great yeah but yeah I I am missing Grogu oh yeah Grogu's not in it is he no not at all I mean we see a little shape yeah yeah He is mentioned. He's mentioned. Yeah, I know what you mean. I've not really thought about that. I mean, I love Grogu, but he's not the only thing I love about the show. No, of course. That he's
00:03:25
Speaker
Yeah. I don't know. I'm not 100% sure why it hits me like it does every single time I watch it. Interesting. There's lots of layers. A lot of it is to do with Bryce Dallas Howard, yeah who directed it. As I've said before, I think she's a phenomenal director of yeah Star Wars TV. There's been people talking online a lot about the fact that as...
00:03:49
Speaker
Dave Filoni has now taken over as co-president of Lucasfilm. There's been talk for a while about him having a film to direct, which is like a culmination of the Mandoverse slash Ahsokaverse. And it would have characters from Skeleton Crew and Book Boba Fett and Mando and Ahsoka. All culminating with a big Thrawn-style finale. Potentially a film, but Kathleen Kennedy recently said that that's on the back burner. And everybody who sort of invested in Star Wars has been sort of, well, invested in the Mandaverse particularly, has been sort of like a bit disappointed, I think, that we thought this is where we are heading. so And now we're thinking, is this going to be wrapped up in Ahsoka Season 2 and it's going to be a bit of an anti-climax maybe? i don't know. But... yeah
00:04:36
Speaker
The talk online has been, why are they not giving Bryce Dallas Howard that film? Like, if Dave's too busy, he'll still be able to, like, executive produce it. He'll still be there. over here But she would be the perfect candidate. She did an amazing episode of Skeleton Crew in that series. And she's doing two in Ahsoka Season 2. And she's done this and she's done...
00:04:58
Speaker
one in every mando season yeah she's like very consistent throughout of everything and she's a fan favorite there's very few people who don't rate her as a star wars director yeah sure i watched a few little interviews with her last night because i just you know i wanted research yeah i guess it's research we're actually doing work for the podcast And she was talking about how close she was with the Lucas family, which I know we've mentioned before yeah because of her dad, Ron Howard.
00:05:27
Speaker
Apparently she got really friendly with Natalie Portman around the time of the prequels just because of like the gang that she was hanging out in yeah And she really wanted to go and shadow her dad when he was directing solo. And at first he was like, no you don't. I can't, you know, yeah I'm directing a film. And I think they were under a lot of time pressure because he got brought partway through.
00:05:51
Speaker
But she persuaded him in the end and she did go on set and got to know the people at Lucasfilm. And now the house that she lives in has... the twin sons of Tatooine painted as a mural on the outside of it. Wow. Like she's so, she's very much in love with Star Wars. She's into it. And feel that comes through in this episode. I think that's a big part of it because I feel her love in it.
00:06:15
Speaker
Yeah. And I don't know, there's there's so many things about this episode that to hit me. And yeah, I'll try and bring them up as we get to them. Okay. Very short recap they gave us. yeah really like Yes. Hardly anything.
00:06:30
Speaker
Yeah. it's just it's Just the headlines really. Yeah. The last bit of the last episode really. Yeah. yeah I suppose a lot of it isn't necessarily relevant to this episode.
00:06:40
Speaker
True. Yeah. Because that's what the recaps are really, aren't they? They're just what is relevant to what you're about to see. Yeah. Yeah, that's very true. And because it should have been recap of Book of Boba Fett, there's nothing because we're completely sidestepping. And it would have bit weird if they'd put recaps of Mando and Grogu, you know, a big recap about that.
00:06:59
Speaker
So yeah, it does make sense. Yeah. And I think it just left us like, what we going to get? What is happening? Which is what the first time around I think I was saying the whole way through. Because obviously it was massively teased at the end of the last episode of Book of Boba Fett because we got the theme and we got the reference to the muscle. I didn't think we were going to get a whole Mando double side quest. whole Mando one, yeah.
00:07:22
Speaker
I thought we were just going to get Fennec finding him somewhere, a little blaster fight with somebody to get him out of a difficult situation. yeah. And then back to Boba, you know. Absolutely not. This is where we're going to This is going to happen. Boba's not actually in this episode, is he? He's talked about, but he's not in it. Yeah, he's in the credits because he's in the recap, I guess. Okay. I guess he gets credited because of that, but yeah, he's not actually...
00:07:45
Speaker
Incredible. Such a wild swing. And yeah, people weren't happy. Oh, for God's sake. think we've learned to live with it. I've had enough of these people. They need to go away. Yeah, exactly. Right, so this opening scene is pretty brutal. Mando's on job.
00:08:02
Speaker
yeah Yeah, we just pick him up mid-job. Mid-job. It's really brutal. It's a grim place. you know what it reminded me of? This is not a franchise that I expect you'll have had anything to do with. but You know me.
00:08:16
Speaker
i do um ah It's a very Saw building that he's in. Do you know, I've never seen any of the Saw films, but i have seen clips of some of them.
00:08:28
Speaker
So I kind of got the gist and yeah, got that. It's meatpacking place, isn't it? but it's Yeah. It's an abattoir slash butcher. It's very Saw. Yeah. It's quite horror generally and like the hanging translucent curtains that, you know, when we get his silhouette. I mean, it's very like Western as well, but it is because of the nature of it being in this, yeah, it's very horror. Just for a little moment, isn't it? Yeah.
00:08:56
Speaker
I've been noticing it a lot, but we've not really brought it up. There's a particular iteration of, it's not even the Mando theme, it's just a little figure, which is like a high harmonic of the recorder. Because the recorders, these big bass recorders that Ludwig ah plays on, using you have that kind of rich, warm, deep, woody sound. yeah But you can blow harmonics with them as you can with most wind instruments, where you sort of overblow them. That's how flutes work effectively. Yeah.
00:09:21
Speaker
And there's this high-pitched recorder squeal that happens occasionally, and it's usually got loads of reverb on it, and it happens as he walks through the drapes, and it's like horror Mando. Because not pleasant. No, it's not pleasant sound at all. As someone who regularly teaches 25 children recorders... no. Oh, no. I hear a lot of recorder overtones and it's grim. Yeah.
00:09:45
Speaker
You just need to like reframe it as like Mando, Mando doing something. I just wear Violent. Yeah.
00:09:53
Speaker
But I think we hear it later on in the episode. It's the sound that we hear often from Mando. It's sort of yeah one of those things where is it music? Is it sound? it's Yeah. There's a lot of that in this episode, actually. There's quite a few moments of, I'm not sure whether that's a music cue or a sound cue, but I like it. Yeah. Yeah.
00:10:10
Speaker
I'd love to know how much like interaction, because I keep going on about Bryce, how much interaction they have with the composer. Because obviously Ludwig and his colleague have like composed the whole season.
00:10:21
Speaker
So they've got like a through line and they've got motifs and themes that they're going to keep reusing. Sure. but Each director must have some of their own ideas as directors do, some more than others, some are less musically minded than others. Yeah, it's just interesting. I'd love to hear more about that. Maybe I need to rewatch the the little gallery episode I shared the other day because I think they probably talk about it. and Exciting.
00:10:45
Speaker
There's another crime boss who's just sitting chilling. Who are these guys, please? This is Khabibayas, who's a Klatooinian. They're the same species who raided the fishing village in Sanctuary in Season 1. I thought I recognised them. They've got that dog vibe going Yeah, yeah.
00:11:04
Speaker
And that, incidentally, was Bryce Dallas Howard again. Okay. There's a link. Because we have seen Klatonians in Mando, I think, and Booker Boba since. Yeah. Pretty sure. But this is definitely featuring them again. Yeah.
00:11:18
Speaker
Maybe she likes them. and Yeah. I don't know why they're horrific. They are. Actually, no, to be fair, they're not that bad. No. They're worse. The ones in Sanctuary are pretty horrific. Yeah, these ones are fine. In this one, even this guy, we don't really know what he's done. He's just running an abattoir. We're going to murder him quite quickly. We're just going to cut him in half, yeah.
00:11:36
Speaker
I mean, Mando does give him... so you know I think they underestimate him. Yeah. And that's their mistake. That's the problem. And he's not got the hang of the Darksaber at all. No. This is where we first start to see how difficult yeah it really is. I mean, we did see that bit in the Gideon fight, didn't we? Yeah, yeah.
00:11:55
Speaker
But not it wasn't as obvious as this, where he's really struggling. He's really struggling. He gashes his leg open yeah with it. But he's very honourable in that he only takes out cab are buyers yeah it's only the ones that he needs to he's very like yeah does he take any of the minions out i think he hits them think he hits them but i don't think he kills them yeah doesn't yeah because they kind of all gather up and yeah i think can't remember anyway he lets the other ones off the ones are all out in the waiting waiting for him he tells them to go and raid the desk essentially he's like there's loads credits in there they're not mine go for yeah I just wanted to call out, um I'm going to refer to this a few times, the cinematography-wise, there's some really interesting framing yeah in all of the scenes, but I really noticed it in this conversation that he has with him when he first arrives. And it's it's very subtle because it is only just like a conversation and she doesn't own anything wild with the cinematographer. It's fairly traditional, but it's so beautifully, like the framing The angles and the kind of distances and the spaces and the lens choice and stuff are just all really nice. Maybe I'm looking too deep, but once I'd noticed it in this scene, I did notice it in later scenes as well, yeah which I think she's just got a really good eye, which she would have yeah hanging around with Ron Howard all her life. To be fair. yeah So we've got the the head. Yeah. The head of this. Taken there, which was done very... high
00:13:24
Speaker
Yeah, don't be like PG-wise. Put it in bag. We don't have to actually see. Doesn't he say to the crime you should put this on ice? Yeah. Or something like that quite quickly. Yeah.
00:13:36
Speaker
So after this little prologue, we get a kind of clever collage of musical themes on top of each other. The Book of Boba theme and the Mando theme, which we knew all along would work well.
00:13:51
Speaker
I presume Ludwig, he composed the two themes and then I'm guessing Joseph Shirley put the two together. think that's probably how works. Quite possibly. Potentially. But whoever, I'm sure it was like a bit of a... Combination. You know, collab effort. Yeah. It's brilliant.
00:14:06
Speaker
It works. Suddenly then we're introduced to a ring world, which we've never seen the like of in Star Wars. Yes. Okay, tell me about this, because I was like, where are we? What is this strange, stringy space city? and It's very weird, yeah. It sounds incredible. I mean, it's something that we've seen in other science fiction, like hate the Halo game, for instance. Okay, yeah.
00:14:31
Speaker
Back in the early days of the Xbox. Anyway. And plenty of other sci-fi stuff has got Ringworlds in them, but Star Wars... It's a new thing.
00:14:42
Speaker
So this is called Glavis or Glavis. can't remember you pronounce it. And I went and watched a YouTube video by Eckhart Slade, who's quite a cool YouTuber who breaks down Star Wars and talks about stuff. And he did like a whole video about the lighting on Glavis. The lighting is insane. is wild because like scientifically it's really difficult to figure out what's going on. Yeah. There must be a sun somewhere or a star, I should say. Yeah. Or a sun. Yeah. That's kind of lighting it. But the way areas of the ring pass from day to night.
00:15:18
Speaker
Quite quick as well by the looks of it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He said Eckhart had found something, it remember where they found it, in Lucasfilm somewhere, yeah talking about the fact that the ring had a cutout, like a section of it missing. And so the starlight could sort come through. But then that would still only work if the thing was spinning in a particular way and aligned very particularly with that sun. Yeah, it would have be. It still wouldn't make a lot of sense. So the upshot of Eckhart's ladder video was he didn't really know. It just looks cool. it could be something to do with mirrors. There was mirror speculation because that's been a thing before.
00:15:58
Speaker
And it could just unnatural light, you know, somehow. I don't know, but it's really, really cool. Even though it's like quite a thin looking world being as it's a ring, it still has layers it, which I really love. Like you get overhead vehicles flying over or repulsor lifts and things on rails and stuff like that. Yeah. Which is awesome. Then we've got the subsection, which we're going to visit later. Yeah, yeah, the underworld. The underworld. It's not really, yeah, it's hard. The underworld, city, undercity. I think they give it name, but I can't remember what is, I think, in the subtitles of the issue tip that we're going to be in a minute. And look, there was a great theme over the reveal of the ring world as we sort of saw it. It's like really spectacular. The queue is amazing. it's very majestic, which is not something we normally associate with Mando particularly. And then we get this elevator scene. This one-er. It's just the most unbelievable one-er I think I've ever seen. I know they are, like, people make them in films, throw them in just for fun, just to see you can get away with. If you ever get Apple TV, there's a show on there called The Producers, I think, maybe. Okay. That doesn't sound right. It's a show with Seth Rogen as the main character, and it's set in Hollywood. It's really brilliant. People are now shouting at their phones. Okay.
00:17:19
Speaker
And it's like pastiche on Hollywood life in yeah the world of film. He plays like a film producer. And there's one episode called The Wanna. And it's about him going on a set where they're trying to shoot a wanna. And he keeps getting ruined by him because he's such an annoying executive producer guy. nice But the joke is the whole episode is a wanna.
00:17:39
Speaker
Yeah. And is' for not it's like half an hour long or something, and it's just wildly good. love Clever. But this is up there because it's in Star Wars, and that makes it more impressive.
00:17:51
Speaker
That makes it better. so I went looking like mad last night and this morning trying to find the information that i had in my brain about this because I've definitely heard Bryce or Favreau or somebody talking about it. i even went and watched the gallery about the making of Book of Boba Fett to find this bit and no mention of it at all. So I don't know what's going on but...
00:18:14
Speaker
They did this in the volume, clearly. Yeah. The pre-production that must have gone into it is unimaginable. Quite a lot, yeah. To have all of the backgrounds, because we're constantly seeing, even when he's in the bar chatting to the crime boss, you can still see out of the doorway yeah the ring in the background and life is going on in the city beyond. still going, yeah, yeah.
00:18:36
Speaker
Ridiculous. So he will have come up in the elevator. While he's in the elevator, we're focusing on Mando and the Cascadag character who's like eyeing him up in a slightly nervous way. Which is a beautiful moment. Yeah. But having them turned around meant that they could change the set from the street. I mean, it's not really a set, but they would have had to wield in the bar yeah and some tables and potentially the archway into the other bar. I don't know.
00:19:05
Speaker
Okay, that's a lot. And then remove it all again when he goes back down in the lift afterwards because it goes all the way through the yeah lift up into the room, back out again, and it's all Steadicam and it goes around the back of the table. So good.
00:19:18
Speaker
at The timing of it, the music, like the way the music fades in, that helps to sell it as well. like As he's going up in the lift, you start to hear the club tune. Because it's diegetic music again. There's people dancing in very strange way relate to it.
00:19:32
Speaker
It's my favourite music cue in the episode, I think. Oh, I had a note about the diegetic music being like lo-fi beats for Star Wars. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There is, I mean, there's those, they are on YouTube. Yeah, of course. There's one with like Ahsoka sitting there at the table in the nice Japanese bedroom, you know, the one with the girl writing. Sure. Or tapping on the laptop, it's got Ahsoka.
00:19:54
Speaker
ah Yeah, it's very lo-fi. It's just that kind of like muffly, filtery synths, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. Electronic beats, quite chill. Yeah. Love it. So good. I just wrote capital letters, how, question mark, two information marks, about the whole thing. About the whole thing. So Mando goes in, yeah and he sees this issue tip. Okay.
00:20:18
Speaker
It's happening already. We're breaking this tradition. Okay, go on, tell me. I've got two West End Geek Girls for Because I couldn't decide which. Is that allowed? I'm changing the rules. It's our podcast, we do what we want. This episode is, and we're only doing one episode, and I'm going to try and keep them short. Okay, cool. So, Ishi Tib, because it's an alien that we don't really know much about, and it was glimpsed in Jabba's Palace in Return Jedi, and Yeah. That's where the first one was seen. I can't remember what they would have named the character if they even had an action figure for it kind of thing.
00:20:53
Speaker
But our friend at West End Games and decided to name it Ishi Tib. I say our friend, it could have been any one of the people who wrote it at West End Games. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Actually, I have a feeling it have already been called Ishi Tib, but they obviously hadn't fleshed out the character. Yeah.
00:21:06
Speaker
But I think he's in the Galaxy Guide 4 Alien Races. fleshes him out. ah They come from Tiburin, which is a world covered by shallow ocean, which I love the specificity of that. It then just explains that Tiburin's axis is perpendicular to its orbital plane and its orbit is almost perfectly circular.
00:21:28
Speaker
That hurt brain. don't quite know what that don't know what that means. But what they say is that it has no seasonal variation. Okay. And the the currents of the kind of briny worldwide ocean act as a sort of thermal pump transferring solar heat around the from the equatorial regions to the polar regions. So generally the gut the whole planet is temperate and tropical, which is a lot of Star Wars worlds are like that. quite They kind of defy all of our kind of biology and physicals in that they just have the same climate throughout. Like Tatooine is all desert and Camino is all water or whatever. They don't tend to have a lot of variation, which is yeah not the way that we think of how the galaxy works.
00:22:09
Speaker
So on their home world, Ishii Tibbs live in cities built upon carefully cultivated coral foundations. Though they live on land, they no longer... have reason to fear the sea because they have domesticated or driven off even their most ferocious predators.
00:22:23
Speaker
And now they cultivate edible seaweed in vast underwater fields, maintain huge schools of fish, bred especially as food, and harvest crustaceans and shellfish from immense underwater corrals. oh They strive for harmony with their aquatic environment. I love this. Their cities are not so much constructed as grown from the living coral. I think there are other Star Wars species that do this, but I really love that they do this.
00:22:46
Speaker
And because what pollutes, one part of the ocean pollutes it all because of water, they utilize no technology that can foul their environment. patiently testing each scientific discovery for environmental impact before legalising its use. I mean, that's lovely. Can we just start doing that, please? That would be great. So my takeaway from all of this, and the reason, like that doesn't sound like what we're seeing here no on Glavis.
00:23:11
Speaker
So they do go on to explain a little bit more, and I'm kind of pressied in that. Because of their ecological morals, they're kind of innate in their race from the way they live their lives. When they go out into the galaxy to like seek unemployment or whatever, which is why a lot of people would leave their home planet, that does not scan with galactic corporate employers. Oh, yeah. Good point. so they just really struggle to live in that legit corporate thing. And so i think that's why they end up...
00:23:43
Speaker
crime bomb either going home or becoming you part of you know a criminal underworld or whatever, like just getting lost in the world of crime because they just can't align themselves with that ecological upbringing. I don't know. It's an interesting concept. It is interesting. I love the the thought that went into that. Obviously, when they wrote this description of the digitized, they never knew that a character was going to turn up in... Yeah....savolta years time or whatever it is. Yeah.
00:24:13
Speaker
But I was just curious as to why an alien like that is doing this. Interesting. Anyway. Because they definitely seem very crime bossy, don't they? Yeah.
00:24:23
Speaker
Yeah. And I'm using they as well because I wrote down he. No, I wrote down she. thought it a she. But on Wikipedia, there's no name or anything, but they use he. But it felt like she.
00:24:34
Speaker
So they, maybe. They. We'll go with they. They don't mention, i don't think they mention anything about gender on the Isha Tib description, even in the roleplay game. Yeah, that's where we get that. I'd i'd put that on ice line. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'd put that on ice. i My note for this bit was, I'm confused, but I'm rolling with it. Yeah. I think this is really just a way of Mando getting his information. He's trying to find the covert again, clearly.
00:25:04
Speaker
And he's just a bit lost, i think, because he's missing Grogu. So he's doing jobs. His heart's not really in it. Doesn't have a mission. Yeah, he's trying to reconnect with the covert because his mission that the Armour gave him He's done. Her mission for him was to go and reunite Grogu with his people and Mando's done that. yeah So now we can go back to his covert and kind of rebuild his Mandalorian identity, I guess. Mandalorian hood. Mandalorian hood. Yeah, we'll have it. so That's where I'm going with it.
00:25:36
Speaker
Which is where we go. Which is where he goes. We're going. His Mando Glicho Vision TM leads him via mythosaurs that randomly put in ultraviolet or some out-of-the-range-of-normal vision. Yes, so that you can see them.
00:25:53
Speaker
Yeah, which is kind of cool. And we're back with the Armourer. Did you notice that orchestral version of the guitar thing? You know, from Season 1, the like major down
00:26:05
Speaker
thing It's like played on strings now. Oh, that is cool. It makes it feel bigger and more Star Wars-y somehow, like more familiar Star Wars, which I think i think this is some of the stuff that like Bryce Dallas Howard, I don't know that she whether she intentionally did it or just her Star Wars instincts, but I feel like she was pushing more...
00:26:30
Speaker
pure Star Wars into Mando. Yeah, it did feel bigger score-wise. Yeah. Like, yeah it felt a lot more orchestral score-wise. I don't think I was generally paying that much attention, but I was, I did notice that. Yeah,
00:26:45
Speaker
It is big. There's a lot of more big, particularly in the last you know the last third of the episode. Yeah, there's loads. It does get very big and emotional and big strings and the big horns that we, you know, very John Williams-y. Yeah, yeah. Which is interesting because she's also dialed down everything to very personal things.
00:27:04
Speaker
Mando versus the Armourer, you know, in personalities and so on, it's very small stories. And then him with Peli later on, it's just really like four people in the episode, really. You know, it's very minimal.
00:27:17
Speaker
But that's what Bryce does, how it does best. Yeah. That kind of thing. That's cool. But yeah, we find the Armourer kneeling. We get a little bit of lore. Yeah. Tiny bit of Mandalorian lore. whole load of Mandalorian lore. Yeah. I think things is the most Mando lore we've caught in one chunk. It's a lot, show in one go. really is.
00:27:39
Speaker
He gets like cured by Paz. We've got this kind of underlying background threat of Paz who is not having it at all. He's no really sceptical of Mando as much as he was on Navarro. He's kind of always been a bit like that, hasn't he? But he's always, he's done whatever the armourers told him to do. Yeah, and he kind of continues to do that, but he is still... Slight malicious compliance. Yeah, yeah, i think so. And he's pushing it. He definitely is pushing I think as soon as he sees the Darksaber, which yes is made by one of his ancestors and has a lot more...
00:28:12
Speaker
We don't know who the armour is. We don't know what family the armourer comes from. no But presumably she's not from House Vizsla because she would have reacted in a similar way to Paz, I think. But she's also really chill as a, like well, she's not. She's a cult leader, but she's also like... Yeah, she's measured. She's more measured. Yeah, that's it. That's the word. Measured. Yeah, I what you mean. Like her her um measuredness can come across as chillness because she never raises her voice or moves quickly or does anything. I mean, she does bit when she's training him in a bit, but...
00:28:47
Speaker
yeah I like how they kind of scattered this lore throughout this sequence because a few things happen. like He gets healed, then he fights with the Armorer to practice with the Darksaber, then he has a duel with Paz Fizzler. So there are these little things and they don't just do the lore in one block. In one block, no. It's kind of given throughout, which is kind of cool. and Some of it is the kind of classic Armorer flashback. Yes. yeah She's talking about Bo-Katan as she's forging. Yeah. So that's where that little drop is. Bo-Katan is a cautionary tale, she says, which is quite true. like I think this is all basically catching people up who haven't watched Rebels. Okay. Because it's Rebels where we see the turning point that Paz is so upset about when he's like...
00:29:32
Speaker
So she should never have had the Darksaber, she was given it kind of thing. And yeah, I guess this is catching people up on that because we know we're going to go back for more Bo-Katan in the future and we need to be a bit more clued up as to the Darksaber and the rules of it and everything else. It's very folklore, though. I've heard this story lots and lots of times. About, like, something that you need to... Of, like, must be won via battle, must be, yeah, there's swords and wands and whatever else. It's all sort the same thing, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it is. It's that same folklore.
00:30:06
Speaker
Transcends all sorts of stories. Yeah. I mean, I guess it's just they all mean stuff to us. Yeah. of Whether they're just ingrained in our DNA or just through storytelling or whatever. But I guess it's that familiarity thing, isn't it? That we connect to stories through familiarity.
00:30:23
Speaker
And it's a balancing act, telling a good story to give some familiarity, something for the audience to cling on to, while also challenging them as we are constantly challenged. I wonder if there's a way out with the Darksaber. Like, whenever I've heard this story before, there's always been a way of like, well, people will do this the bloodshed way, but there's also a non-bloodshed way. Yeah.
00:30:46
Speaker
I don't know if they mentioned it in this episode or where it gets mentioned. You don't have to kill the person. Yeah. Well, Mando didn't. Yeah. He just took it from Gideon. Yeah. when He had sort of just overpowered him.
00:30:57
Speaker
And the same, he doesn't kill Paz either. Yeah, this is true. Yeah. I think there's more to learn. I think we do learn a bit more in season three. Okay. I still haven't seen it. It's coming soon. Very, very soon. i know, but I've got to binge watch it before we get there.
00:31:15
Speaker
Paz is gutted that Mando didn't kill Gideon. Yes. The blood of millions of our kind is on his hands. Yeah. But then that's that's into revenge and that's different again, isn't it? That's the whole... Yeah. And there's scepticism about the New Republic because Mando's trying to say, well, he's going to do his time. And yeah you can almost see the armourer's eyes rolling at this. yeah like She does not believe the New Republic is going to no give justice to Gideon.
00:31:39
Speaker
No. We get this amazing foreshadowing, maybe, maybe, the song of eons past foretold of the mythosaur rising up to herald a new age of Mandalore.
00:31:52
Speaker
Sadly, it only exists in Legends. okay. Yeah, right, whatever. Yeah. Absolutely not. Something's going to happen. There's some more stuff about Children of the Watch and we learned that they were on the moon of Concordia and that's how they survived. That's why the armour is still alive. Because she's talking about this, we've got this really emotive music cues happening. We've got all of the that that talk about where they were for the Night of the Thousand Tears and all of that. Yeah. And all of that sequence. Yeah.
00:32:22
Speaker
It kind of made me understand why she's quite as fanatical and they are as culty as they are yeah by that point, because they're very much like they've had their beliefs confirmed by what happened on Mandalore, basically. So now they've doubled down on the fanaticism. 100%. Yeah, that's quite interesting. Which makes sense. I think they then must be... I mean, i think it's pretty obvious that they're a kind of splinter group of...
00:32:49
Speaker
of Death Watch, which were the original, when Mandalore was being peacefully ruled by Satine, Bo-Katan's sister. Yeah. and this kind of breakaway gang, including Bo-Katan, who wanted to go back to their warrior ways. Right.
00:33:05
Speaker
So yeah, they were kind of proved right that they should have remained potentially a warrior race and been able to fight back. But I mean, how they would have fought back against yeah the the might of the Empire. I mean, it's absolutely brutal. The yeah amount of TIE bombers and we see the domed city of Sindari exploding, those KX droids just, and and the Viper probe droid thing. Yeah, it's a lot in a very short space of time. Yeah.
00:33:34
Speaker
What flashback. Yeah, the name The Night of the Thousand Two Years is not an understatement. brain means No. So. She makes something for Grogu. She does. of the spear, which is really nice. We get this lovely little tinkling of the little rings for making chain mail. Yeah, tiny ring mail. And the package that she gives him looks like Gregoo and it's very cute. Yeah. I think it was like a nice little touch. She's got a big heart. Yeah.
00:34:03
Speaker
But then almost instantly we're dueling. Yeah. She's teaching him to use the dark saber yeah um and counting in Mandalorian. Solace, Tad, or however you pronounce it. Emily Swallow kills it, yeah as always. She's great. He's really struggling.
00:34:19
Speaker
Yes. And then they agree to have a duel with Paz because Paz has taken his claim. He's taken his claim. Kind of rightfully so. If he doesn't believe that Mando's taken it in the way that he thinks it should be taken. Yeah, well, it seems like he he believes more of the bloodshed theory. Yeah, yeah, which tracks, I think, with his... Yeah, with him as a person. Yeah.
00:34:40
Speaker
But i kind of, it's it's interesting. This duel has got the best sound design. Right. So far. Love it. Great. Everything sounds amazing. Not quite as cartoony as the rest of the Booker Boba Fett fights have been, but Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a bit more real, isn't it? It's a bit more real, but it's still very great. But there's that, this is one of the points where there's ah I don't know whether it's sound design or a music cue going on, but there's, it's just cool. It sounds good. Yeah.
00:35:09
Speaker
Oh, I'll need to re-watch it again because I didn't check all this. Oh, that was great. That was my favourite bit. Love it. I loved it. One of my favourite bits. But I also noted that they kind of, they took him in quite quickly. Your quest is over, you're now back with us. yeah And then they booted him out quite quickly as well. Well, yeah. I mean, I think the messy fight and the kind of tension behind the fight yeah and the messy way the fight resolves. Yes.
00:35:39
Speaker
And then know if the Armorer knew, like, did she suspect that Din's taken his helmet off? Like, was she just sort of coming to Paz Vizsla's aid? Because at the end of the day, Paz Vizsla has been completely loyal to her and stayed with her. Yeah.
00:35:54
Speaker
Yeah, it's interesting. But Although you're a Mandalorian no more. She boots him out. fast it sets up this uh he's not quite a mandalorian yeah but grogu's not quite a jedi it's very setting up a group of the two of us kind of thing mando had just got himself to a place where he's like right now i know what i'm doing again and now he's like all right now i've got to go and wait bathe in the waters of the minds of mandalore which is on an inhospitable planet and It's going to be tricky. And she's like, yep, bye.
00:36:31
Speaker
Not in so many words. This is the way. This is the way it becomes a really annoying phrase. Like, it's like agreement, but it's also like unlucky. Yeah, yeah. Sure.
00:36:42
Speaker
Yeah, i kind of thought they're now it's setting up not quite Mandalorian, not quite Jedi, but some secret third thing. I like that. the Both of them have are like in between their personalities. Their identities are in question, yeah. Which is good omens really good. yeah I like it. It's very good omens.
00:37:04
Speaker
yeah, yeah. yeah yeah That's very true, actually. yeah It also, yes, is setting up season three and yes really like where season three gets to and where this film might take us, we don't really know. o and and so It takes flight 1020 non-stop to Tatooine. Okay, I actually wrote the weapon shedding might be my favourite music cue. So funny. Straight after the other music cue.
00:37:31
Speaker
Yeah. And we also had like in between, we had like a very weak version of the theme yeah with tragic strings as he walks away, hobbles away, still not walking very well. Yeah. Yeah. So there's been like a whole sequence of completely different musical styles.
00:37:47
Speaker
Yeah, this is like cheesy bossanova drum machine. I love it. And it's just hilarious watching him shed all his weapons as well. Yeah, it's a classic trope. I love it.
00:37:59
Speaker
yeah Yeah, it's an ah RX droid, which i think originally was experienced in Star Tours, which is part of Disneyland, like the kind of Star Wars experience in Disney parks. Okay. Yeah. And it's also been featured in Rebels as well. yeah and similar like Anybody who's been to Star Tours in the parks yeah like will immediately have been like, oh, it's I've seen that droid. Which nice. That's cool. I noticed that when he lands on Tatooine and he's getting his weapons back, that the voice of the droid has like a glitch like Dio from Rise of Skywalker. Sounds like B from Andor. Oh, yeah.
00:38:38
Speaker
It's these kind of droids with dodgy speaking algorithms. yeah It's kind of interesting. I think it's just any droid that's got a vocal circuit okay can have this malfunction. Can end up with a stutter. yeah Because we've now got the little wheelie droid from Rise Skywalker, B2, is that his name, from Andor, and this droid, they've all got the same glitch. Yeah. It's probably quite realistic. Bad AI, you know. yeah Failing AI.
00:39:11
Speaker
So we have a little moment on the Starliner with this kid. Love it. I was literally doing this in a cafe the other day. I'm very distracting to toddlers, apparently. His parents were trying to have this meal and their kid just wouldn't stop staring over at me and I was pulling faces when they weren't looking. Amazing.
00:39:29
Speaker
isn I noticed in the artwork in the closing credits that it was a human kid in the original design. Oh, it And there was a Rodian sitting in front, but not.
00:39:41
Speaker
Not a Rodian child. I think it was a human child. I think that's what it looked like anyway. But i love that they made it a Rodian. It just felt so much more Star Wars again. Christ Dallas Howard was probably like, we're having a Rodian because it's Star Wars. Yeah.
00:39:56
Speaker
I love it. Do we get a snippet of Grogu's theme as well when he's having a little look at the package? think so, yeah. There's some little flute music. It's definitely Grogu instrumentation, whether it's the theme, maybe it probably is. I couldn't really tell.
00:40:09
Speaker
In the background when he lands in Los Isley, there's another one of these long archways I noticed. This is completely irrelevant. But it's like the one that was on Corvus, like the entrance to the city where Morgan Elspeth was, yes where Ahsoka was. There's that like entrance to the city with the kind of low-hanging, it's very Japanese architecture-looking thing. And there's also one at Nima Outpost in The Force Awakens well. I've literally just edited this bit of that episode. Oh, wow. Then you know what I'm talking about. I know exactly what you're talking about. Well, in the deep background, and I don't know if I've seen one in Mos Eisley before, Maybe.
00:40:45
Speaker
Maybe. But anyway, we're always seeing different bits of Mos Eisley. Yeah. We get a creature shot. Yes. But it's a droid that's carried off by a womp rat.
00:40:59
Speaker
We finally see a Womp Rat. I have a feeling they might have been in computer games before now. But this, I think, is its first live-action debut. We only get a glimpse. yeah ah There's droid after droid after droid. I mean, I screamed. There's a little droid called a BD droid, which is like walks on two legs. It's very short.
00:41:19
Speaker
um and it helps mando a bit later on yeah if you played the jedi fallen order jedi survivor computer game series you play kyle kestis who's like a jedi survivor of order 66 yeah and he carries his bd unit around on his back and bd is forever jumping down and helping and shining holograms and like that scene later on when mando's asking him to show him where to put the panel. Oh, yeah, and he shines a hologram up there. It's literally like a scene from Jedi Force. I think that's the bit that breaks me every time right because it's like that. I've played that. Oh, my God, ah that is my droid. Oh, my God. You get so attached to that droid through the whole game. It's amazing. Such a brilliant touch because I think, i think okay, getting to the point of like why this episode
00:42:07
Speaker
gets me. yeah Apart from all the man amazing Mandalorian lore stuff, which I love. Although that is to me, that's only one part of Star Wars. It's like one micro part of a big much bigger picture of what Star Wars is.
00:42:20
Speaker
This whole sequence with Peli, I mean, I know it's Easter eggs and I know it's fan service, but It weaves in so many bits from so many different bits of Star Wars into one kind of sequence, one got location, if you like. It's not just one scene, but it kind of is one one long scene, if you like. Yeah, yeah.
00:42:40
Speaker
There's loads of prequel love in it. Loads of prequel love. Like the fact that it's an M1 starfighter. Yeah. We've got the pit droids as well. Yeah. But then we've got a Treadwell droid, which is Luke's droid from the Lars Homestead. We've got a Womp Rat. We've got R5-D4. Yeah. Ah!
00:43:01
Speaker
Another one! We've got to have R5-D4. Do it. looked in the Galaxy Guide a New Hope sourcebook. Okay.
00:43:16
Speaker
course. The first sort of like post-initial release of the role-playing game, they brought out these galaxy guides. Yeah. And three of the galaxy guides were one for each of the original trilogy because that's all we had at the time. Right. So there's a New Hope one, there's an Empire one. It's very specific that, you know, the particular characters and particular aliens and particular this places and all of that. So they mention R5-D4 because this is the very same R5-D4 that had a bad motivator.
00:43:42
Speaker
Yeah. So... The five series of our R units were produced in the initial boom, each supposedly better than the previous release. So like R1s, R2s, R3s, R4s.
00:43:54
Speaker
In the long run, however, it was the R2 series that won long-lasting acceptance for reliability, durability, and sheer workmanship. Not sure that's remained canon, but I quite like it. Boost R2, why not? yeah sure But that doesn't mean the other droids didn't try though. One of the last droids produced in this now discontinued R5 series was a small red astromech called R5-D4. Determined to prove the critics wrong, R5, or red, worked as hard as its server motors would allow to make its owners proud. but even the most willing droid can rarely rise above its programming and hardware capabilities. The little droid bounced from master to master, eventually winding up in the Outer Rim territories, serving whoever had enough credits to make the purchase.
00:44:36
Speaker
Dejected and envious of the more popular series, especially the R2s, Red became cranky, bitter and spiteful. Which are not desired traits aboard cramped spacecraft.
00:44:47
Speaker
The poor droid's lot in life reached an all-time low when he was acquired by a group of Jawas on the desert planet Tatooine. During his time, however, Red was fortunate enough to witness the initial seeds of the galaxy's new hope, in quotes. In many ways, the events that occurred while the droid was aboard the Jawa Sandcrawler have served to brighten his outlook considerably by making Red feel as though he finally performed a needed and useful service. And from the glimpses we've seen in Mando and Book of Boba Fett, I really want to know what happened in between the last homestead scene when his motivator broke. Yeah. Who fixed him What has he been up to ever since? Where has he been? You can see still see he's a bit cranky. like He's got a mood about him, which I love.
00:45:33
Speaker
ah There's also the From a Certain Point of View books that's been written, the short story books of each of the trilogy movies. There's one R5-D4. Okay. r five d four okay Obviously, in the New Hope one. And it reframes the whole scene where art persuaded him to pretend to break his motivator, or to actually break his motivator. Okay. And R5 was like, he did not want to do this because it meant staying with the Jawas when he wanted to be sold to a nice farmstead somewhere. yeah good But he did it because he understood from R2 that this is very important work. R2 has to make this escape and go to ah Luke and da-da-da-da-da-da to find Obi-Wan. Oh, wow. And all of that kind of ties in with the role-playing game yeah stuff. Like, this is super early lore from the role-playing game. And I feel like they the way they brought R5 back in kind of, it does create feel like it's continuous with this description from way back in 1990 or whatever it was. That suggests then that there is...
00:46:38
Speaker
nature and nurture going on within droids, droid programming. I think so. Yeah. yeah Which we've kind of talked about before. Yeah, we have. we and Really early on, we started tracking droid behaviour. Droid behaviour. Yeah. And ah this this whole sequence in Peli's docking bay... Yeah. Is full of examples of this. And and I'm guessing Pally probably doesn't do regular memory wipes because we've discussed about how it's often down to memory wipes. Yeah. Whether they develop a personality or not. Yeah.
00:47:09
Speaker
If they don't wipe them every week, they're going to start to learn and start to develop, you know, like AI personalities. And I think that's... What's going on in all of these droids that become characters? I mean, R5 is not like a big character, but we all know and love him now. Yeah.
00:47:23
Speaker
I'm so glad he's back in the Mandoverse and, you know, it's great to see him thriving. Yeah. Just thinking about B in Andor as well, because he's so emotional. He's such an emotional little droid. Oh my gosh.
00:47:36
Speaker
Yeah. And there's no way that his memory was being wiped. No. Yeah. there And he's incredibly motivated by emotions as well in a way that not many droids we don't see that often, I guess. Yeah, and although we don't see Marva interacting with him very much, I feel like Marva would have encouraged his yeah personality. Like she's a real, her belief in the rebellion and everything like shows how she's all about the individual and about personality. I could just, I mean, yeah.
00:48:06
Speaker
We'll talk about that when we get to it. Yeah. When we get there. I was delighted to see a Naboo Starfighter.
00:48:16
Speaker
Oh my gosh. That was lush. Even that, like, I think the reveal was a bit anticlimactic. Like, she's trying to pull the sheets off of it. It's not working. It's just like, he's not having it. And looks That's far from the Razorcrest that he was hoping for. Right, I've got a question. Okay.
00:48:34
Speaker
Was the fact that she didn't seem to know why he was there and she obviously like kind of, oh right. Yeah, of course. Yeah, I've got you a ship. Yeah. Was it Fennec pretending to be Peli sending Mando a message to lure him to Tatooine because Fennec knew he was coming.
00:48:52
Speaker
Yes. She was going to get him. He may not have come again. Oh, interesting. For anything. What is the one thing that he would want? a new Razor Crest. Yeah. So let's fake a message from the docking bay where he left his ship before saying that I've got your Razor Crest. And then Pelly's just bluffing. Yeah. Which Pelly, everything she says is a bluff. It's a bluff, yeah. It's totally in character for her to do that. Because when he's... Otherwise, what would be the point of him saying, I got your message. Yeah. Where's this ship? And her being like, what? What message? Yeah, i couldn't yeah that makes sense. that's a good
00:49:27
Speaker
That's a good solid reason for that. My reading of it instantly was, Pelly's done what i so often do and just completely forgotten that she had that conversation. Could both be,
00:49:38
Speaker
But your way makes more sense. I only thought of it when I saw Fennec jumping down off the wall she was sitting on. It was like she knew when to come and where to come. yeah Otherwise, how would that have happened? Yeah. And there was no like Mando saying, I got a message from Fennec.
00:49:55
Speaker
No. He said Benny. Yeah. Either way, she has got a ship for him. and Yes. She's got a lot persuading to do. Yeah. It is a cool ship. So they we get this amazing montage then of them basically rebuilding it. This is the bit that breaks me. The music throughout the montage, like it builds and builds. Pally, I'm sure shes she's got script, like because she doesn't know all of these like technical names, but she's also ad-libbing like a trooper because she's yeah an amazing improv actress.
00:50:28
Speaker
But like all of the technical jargon, they're not afraid to run from the technical jargon. Turbonic Venturi power simulator. I know. I was just, I zoned out in the way that I zone out when people talk about, I don't know, fixing cars. Jessica's going to hate that one. sorry jess Sorry, Jessica. I know what you mean. Like, I think my Star Wars is Twitch, probably role-playing game-wise, I think, because the role-playing books are all about that detail. Yeah, sure. Like, there's a certain Star Wars fan of which I am wholeheartedly one of. I'll raise my hand.
00:51:00
Speaker
ah that love all that geeky detail but it's it's planted for either yes you it's like yeah yeah they know a lot of people are just going to be like yeah whatever let's just get to the point and then there's going to be people like brown me who are like hold on a minute pause on the subtitle because I need to know what that was I to know exactly what that thing is yeah that's fair I I glaze over quite easily so but i loved it it was purposefully done I think the purpose is her and Mando bonding and her yes like feeding Mando, you know, making him be enthusiastic to the point where he starts saying, okay, we want this, this and that. Like he gets her to bring the jowas in so that he can reel off his list of like power mods that he wants to put on the ship to make it go faster. And she's then going like, yeah, whatever you want, I'll make it. I'll fit it on somehow. yeah don't worry about the sizes and all of that. in The montage just, but I wish I could go back and watch it the like I did the very first time. But even last night, which was probably my fifth viewing, I was still, i don't know, just every new little detail brought so much warmth from the BD unit using the hologram to show where to put the thing. From the Jawas bringing in the cryogenic density combustion booster. Oh, yeah. gutsy little fellas.
00:52:17
Speaker
Which is the little stick thing from the trash compactor that Han Solo's holding to stop the walls closing. but Like all of those. It's just one thing or after another. I mean, we're already reeling from the n one like just the concept of the N1. And seeing an n one like go from skeleton, this is what my dad said last night. He was like,
00:52:36
Speaker
They actually built this thing while they're shooting the scene. yeah And if you go and look at the behind the scenes, it is a set of the thing. i mean, it's in the volume, I think. Actually, I'm not even sure if it's in the volume.
00:52:46
Speaker
But they're they're building this N1 while they're making the montage. It's unbelievable. It is so cool. There's some clips of Doug Chang, who was, you know, he's in like one of the main visual guys at Lucasfilm and has been since the prequels. And I think he designed the N1 Starfighter. And there's a beautiful clip of him the behind the scenes sitting in it because like he probably never got the chance to do that. And particularly doing it in the volume where they can just like project Starfield behind you as they did in this, you know, episode. Like we see Mando flying
00:53:21
Speaker
There's a gonk droid. There's gonk There is a gonk droid. Doing its job. We never see them actually doing its job. It's powering up the ship. Peli says, I'm a local gal, which is a direct quote. Well, not direct quote. of Almost direct quote from the pod race commentator in Phantom Menace. Anakin Skywalker, a local boy or something said in almost the same accent. Yeah. It's just Easter egg after Easter egg from all different eras and your heart is just glowing. Yeah.
00:53:52
Speaker
Loved it so much. I love that there's a little like when the Jawas bring in whatever it is they bring in. The cryogenic density capacitor booster. Thank you. Just wanted to give you an opportunity to say it again really.
00:54:06
Speaker
Thank you. ah Yeah, when they bring that in, the we get a little bit of Pelly speaking Jowies for a bit, which is great. She's so good at it. like It just sounds like Jowers. I'm like, did she do the original Jower voices? Yeah, yeah. What's happening? But then she's like, oh yeah, they stole it off a Pike Spice Runner. Yeah.
00:54:29
Speaker
That feeds us back into the Boba Fett story, which we forgot about. Oh, no, we are still in this universe. Yeah, we still in universe. I love that. She says, these critters could find a scud in a krill pond. Yes. Which even that, like we've heard the scud pie thing before she used that line and somebody else used that line. And then the krill pond is like a callback to Bryce Dallas Howard's episode in Man of Season 1. What is it? Do we still know what a scud is yet? No. It's not explained on Wikipedia anyway. I can't find it. As this is an audio medium, I feel like I just have to let everyone know how wildly the gesticulations got. the enthusiasm It was going to happen. it was going to happen ever, this is the time.
00:55:14
Speaker
Just before I came up to record this evening, my mum was like, poor Sia.
00:55:22
Speaker
Because mum has watched that episode with me probably, as I say, about five times. And after every episode, I'm like fighting back the tears and trying to express to my dumbfounded parents why this thing does something to me that I can't explain. it's all right. We've got a bigger audience now. Yeah.
00:55:40
Speaker
and Somebody out there, one of our listeners, please do you feel me on this. Is this not prime Star Wars TV? oh Right, I had to look this up. A wart rooster. You remember last time or a couple of times ago we did wart as West End Geek Girls, the little frog creature? So this dinosaur cockerel thing is called wart rooster. It crows the morning. I literally just said rooster monster. Yeah.
00:56:06
Speaker
I was happy to do that, thought, I know it's have a name. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can't see how it relates to the frog, but whether they got the name Wart from the role-playing game from the frog creature and decided to reallocate it, or whether they're implying it's related to the frog thing. Yeah, somehow. Because maybe they're both a bit reptilian. a perfect rooster noise, though, funnily enough. It does, yeah.
00:56:28
Speaker
Which I was like, come on. Come on. I'm speculating that was fair for can sound design that. ah stick it through a phaser or something i don't know all of these shots like the pit droid wheeling the ship out like against this cinematography like all of the depth of field that she uses like the the lens choices it's so good there's a lot of reveals throughout the episode yes all the different segments and every reveal is just handled so beautifully Pelly, like, oh, it's, a yeah, I'll tell you what, another thing, apart from Bryce Dallas Howard, and we are a Sisters of the Force podcast, yeah we are shouting out the women in Star Wars, and I will shout Bryce Dallas Howard till the day I die, but yeah Amy Sedaris, who is not somebody you typically associate with, like, fantasy, sci-fi, whatever you want to call Star Wars, she... brought so much to this episode. Yeah, like she's amazing. Apart from all the techno gobbledygook, her relationship with the droids, her relationship with the Jawas, the way she's kind of goading Mando into like being interested in the ship in the first place, to this point where she just makes me cry the way she's surreptitiously watching him.
00:57:38
Speaker
yeah As he's perusing this, he's walking around it and she's like watching him knowing he's fallen in love with it. And like her pride in that is just so good. yeah Okay, I'm tearing up now. Amy Sedaris, she's so good. She is really good.
00:57:54
Speaker
She better be in the film. Right, okay. I speculate. There's a line she says earlier on, and I think it's in the montage or near the end. He says, I think, I didn't write down who says it, but I think it's him saying it.
00:58:06
Speaker
You get me a Razorcrest, you can have it right back. So yeah that hasn't happened yet, but we've seen the trailer of Mandalorian and Grogu and he's flying a Razorcrest. So he's got a new Razorcrest. are we going to get Pelly finding him a Razor Crest after all?
00:58:22
Speaker
And it's painted yellow, like there's some yellow marks on it, which is what they've taken off of this N1 because the N1 is originally a yellow. Yeah. very staright to than normally yeah Oh, interesting. Of many layers. So many layers. I'm still trying to look for call forwards, foreshadowing for the film. So I love the Naboo Starfighter and I love that he loves it and I love this whole little, I love the building it and the taking it out for a spin. Oh my God, yeah. But practicality, Razor Crest. not great for...
00:58:55
Speaker
Razorcrest kind of wits. My dad said exactly the same thing. He's like, wow where's he going to sleep? Where's he going to put his things? Where are the carbonised blocks of his bounties going to go? Exactly. It's not practical. Come on, Pelly. The symbolism is, though, he doesn't care about that life anymore. She knows. Yeah, that's true. Even though he hasn't got Grogu with him, she knows. She built Grogu hatch. She's got the Grogu hatch ready to go.
00:59:23
Speaker
She knows Mando better than he knows himself. Yeah. And it was never going to be forever. And that line, I think, you know, foreshadowed the fact that we were going to get this starfighter for a season and we're going to love it.
00:59:36
Speaker
And it's super cool. And that it is worth having just for this secret, like the run through Beggar's Canyon. Yes. Oh, my God. the camera work like The camera shake is different, I swear. like I know we have the camera shake thing on ships and we get that a lot in Star Wars to get that kind of visceral kinetic energy of movement of ships and technology.
00:59:57
Speaker
But something about it, maybe it's the way they're doing it in the volume and that it's so real because they are actually moving in this thing. and yeah i mean, they're not moot they're not flying, obviously, but they're like being able to shake and rock around a bit while the background...
01:00:13
Speaker
is there with the star feel i don't know it's just very visceral and realistic i thought it'll wave to the kid yes they go up do we know what a gonk scomp jack is okay yeah that line which we both picked i need to talk about this line gonk is another name for a power droid Yeah. A scomp link, as we learn Jedi Fallen Order and probably various other computer games, is the connection that droids make when they hook up to a computer. Okay. So in Fallen Order, i mentioned that Cal Kestis, the character you're playing, carries around his BD unit on his back. Yes. And every time they get to a computer terminal somewhere, BD jumps off and then connects and like has a scomp link. And they talk about the scomp link. The kind of background chatter that you Cal talking to the droid is like plug into the scomp link. So the s scomp jack is the little connector. Yeah.
01:01:10
Speaker
Yeah. So obviously, gonk droids have really smooth connections to the things that they connect to. And if that's not the most valuable piece of Star Wars lore you've ever heard, i don't know what is. why Why are we even doing this podcast? Oh my God. so funny. but so Sorry, yeah I'm not going to keep going down this rabbit hole too long. I've already waffled way too much and gesticulated way too wildly. Let's get on with the story. My next notes are a bit confusing.
01:01:41
Speaker
Trying to read my own hieroglyphs that I scribbled at this point. and Also, I was writing in pen, which I don't like to do. I like pencils. Yeah.
01:01:53
Speaker
I wrote another creature. I think this is in Beggar's Canyon. I think we've got a creature shot. A flyby, yeah. A flyby creature shot. And then we get a new theme, which I assume is the ship's theme. this yeah Yeah. I think you must be right. Yeah. I'd written that the music comes in as he goes up into the atmos.
01:02:14
Speaker
So he it's all sound design. It's all very podracery while he's... whizzing over the surface. But as he yeah as he goes up into space, that's where the music swells. And I think you're right. I think it's like N1 theme. Yeah. Let's track it.
01:02:28
Speaker
Okay. Track the N1 theme. I need to listen to again. Listen to it, you know. Yeah, I can't remember either. It was very early this morning that I watched it, to be fair. So he's up in space. He's waved to the little kid, which is the most beautiful circular storytelling ever. Whether that was in the script or whether that was a directorial thing, I don't know, but it's brilliant. Also, they can't have spent that much time on Tatooine if they're on a ship. They came and went, yeah. Came and went really fast. Maybe they came to see their uncle Greedo. yeah, yeah. And then it turns out, man shot first.
01:02:59
Speaker
Oh, no. dar So they just went on back to where they came from. um Yeah, but he's instantly, instantly pulled over. Beeps.
01:03:11
Speaker
Dank ferric. It's Carson Tava and Reid, who I don't know if we got his name, but I looked him up. A police car cut me up today and then pulled over a van in front of me. I was like, excuse me. It's a sign. Yeah, weird. Did he ask you to transmit a beacon? It was an unmarked car. An unmarked one? Yeah, I was like, what are you doing? You've just cut me off at a roundabout. And then it pulled over the van in front and I was like, oh, okay. Oh, it didn't pull you over. No, I drove around him. I nearly ran him over, actually. that was bad Don't admit that.
01:03:42
Speaker
ah sounds like drama drama in the city just just driving through some werbex
01:03:50
Speaker
anyway so we've got the x-wing police have shown up yeah this guy reed the second pilot who does most of the talking max lloyd jones if that's got to be a welsh guy sounds pretty well that's very welsh so named lloyd jones he is the guy that doubled up as luke in the season two finale of mando oh Oh, okay. So he was the one on set with, you know, dots on his face and whatever. It does mean they can't use him now to play Luke because obviously they can recast Luke at some point and yeah people are saying we could just have him because he does look a bit like Luke. Yeah.
01:04:22
Speaker
So he does a lot of the talking. He's trying to get Mando to transmit. Mando does all the right things. He's a very yeah good citizen, transmits his beacon, he explains the discrepancies. They've just literally modded the ship. And he does that really honest thing of like, we were just taking out for a trial. i will get it sorted.
01:04:40
Speaker
Oh, we'll let him off with a warning. But... Yeah. But Carson is going to start asking him some dot connecting questions, which I love Carson Tover. He's going to be in the film. There's great no doubt in my mind about that.
01:04:53
Speaker
yeah I think the film has got some of these connections of like what Carson Tover thinks is going on in the Outer Rim. And what may actually be going on. you know, it's all of that stuff that we're going to see a bit of in season three as well of Mando. But Mando's not really up for this conversation. No. He presses the button that was set up just before the montage, I think, yeah when Peli shows him the button, the thruster button, which is classics. Great. I just heard them talking about American Graffiti, Lucas's first big feature, which yeah Ron Howard was in.
01:05:26
Speaker
Okay. Presumably this is before Bryce was born, i should think. She will have watched it many, many times. And it's all about like cars and cruising. Speed chases. Yeah.
01:05:38
Speaker
He's instantly gone. Yeah, he presses the button. It's so good. Reid is like, did you just jump light speed? like, no no. That's just an M1 thruster. And this is before the Jowers got all of the bits. Well, don't know maybe the Jowers did get all the bits that Rando was asking Yeah, I think they did. I think it was implied that they did it all in that montage. Right. Yeah, that makes sense. The passage of time. They did it all overnight. I think it was one night of hard work. Pelly says, how was it?
01:06:04
Speaker
Wizard.
01:06:08
Speaker
I had to record that bit and then use spectra layers and cubase to strip out the music so that we can have just Pedro on his own. Wizard. Wizard. I'm going to be that. not on soundboard forever now. Excellent.
01:06:21
Speaker
do a pinky. Wonderful. We're building a collection annoying... We've got quite collection. I mean, lot i think I just burst into hysterics at this point because is' silly it wraps the Phantom Menace callbacks up in a little bow and says, there you go, you don't need to watch any more Star Wars. Yeah, done. And then Fennec. Yeah, just a little Fennec epilogue. A Fennec epilogue. Fennec epilogue.
01:06:49
Speaker
A Fennec epilogue. Fennec epilogue. Before we started recording, we did say we were quite loopy already. don't either of us got much sleep last night. but I don't think did. Don't let Bran win loose on this episode at any time, let alone when she's really tired. On not much sleep.
01:07:09
Speaker
Oh dear, what a time. Yeah, she she just appears. She's done some parkour again, yeah guessing. Yes, she's just... Peli says something about one of you being deprogrammed to the droids because they keep making mistakes. Yeah. Yeah, because she'd got them to lock her out or something. Yeah. I think that was the implication. That's what she said. Yeah, and she, Fennec, like, asks Mando if he wants a job and he says, tell him it's on the house. on the house. Love it. Yeah.
01:07:38
Speaker
What a ride. What a ride. What a ride. if I could only ever watch one more thing ever for the rest of my life, it would be this episode. Interesting. But I get that it's not everybody's cup tea. Yeah. It's a great episode. i think popular in the Star Wars community because it's got a little bit of something for everyone. Yeah. Loads of stuff going on. And I guess it points to the fact that I just love such a broad spectrum of what Star Wars is. Yeah. I know there are some fans that prefer stuff about this and there are some fans that prefer stuff about that because there are all these different things. And like we're fed all these, particularly since Disney brought us all these TV shows, they're all different styles aimed at different audiences and so on.
01:08:18
Speaker
But I'm one of those, i think, probably many Star Wars fans that just laps it all up and loves it all for all the different reasons. Yeah. and the fact that it's all part of one big thing. And I just feel like this episode had a bit of everything. It had speed, starfighters, had Mandalorian lore. It didn't have Jedi, but it did have the Darksaber, so we had some sort of saber combat. It's kind of talking about Jedis a little bit as well.
01:08:42
Speaker
Yeah, Jedi were mentioned. was mentioned. And there was much implication of Jedi from things like the Jedi Fallen Order Easter eggs. Yes. The Anakin Easter eggs. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, just seeing Begg's Canyon is like both Luke and Anakin yeah are sort of caught up in those things. So it's got...
01:09:00
Speaker
Things from all eras and all parts of Star Wars. And I think that's why i love it. You don't see many episodes that have that density of things. Of everything, yeah. While seeming like quite a simple story of, like we said, four characters pretty much.
01:09:12
Speaker
Yeah. And a bunch of droids. And a bunch of droids. Non-speaking droids, apart from the ones on the Starliner. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. None of Peli's droids speak, do they? They all just bleep or gonk or yeah chatter.
01:09:27
Speaker
Oh my gosh. What a ride. Anyway, guys, I hope you enjoyed, like me, just spilling my heart out on the podcast. We love it. I've had a whale of a time. Thanks for listening. That's what we're here for. Yeah. We will be back next week for the wrap-up of Boba Fett. Oh, God. We've got guest. We've got a guest. We've got guest. Oh, my goodness. cannot wait. And it's a new guest. It's not a returning guest. This is quite exciting. So excited. Get ready because she's going to be coming you know what?
01:10:00
Speaker
Yeah. You're going to struggle to get any sense out of me next week, I think, because, well, I don't know. We'll have to see if we can medicate both of us to the right extent.
01:10:13
Speaker
That's so funny. We quite often communicate non-verbally, so, you know, that's great for an audio medium, isn't I'll be coaxing dialogue out of you. Honestly, I'm so excited. I'm really excited. It's going to be very funny. And listener, you should be too, because it's going to be a good one.
01:10:30
Speaker
and so we're goingnna wrap this up. And then after that, we're going into Mando season three. oh Oh my God. I've got so much catching up to do. I need to finish Stranger Things. This is ridiculous. Too many things to watch. know Too many things. And a book to read. I know the feeling. We've only got to one episode a week, though.
01:10:45
Speaker
Yes, that's true. From Mando season three. We're going to do one episode per week so that we can get into the details. Yeah. And also talk about the various things that we're going see along the way, hopefully, in terms of marketing. Exciting. Although, fair warning, we're not a real-time podcast. No, we're five weeks ahead of Things we're talking about you some time ago. Yeah. But we will still discuss those things. They're part of the lead up to the film.
01:11:09
Speaker
Sure. Anyway, as always, follow Follow us on stuff. Follow us on the things. Follow us on the things. Instagram, Blue Sky, YouTube, Facebook. Facebook, yeah. and we go. Those are the things. I think that's it so far. Those are the things. well i think Insta is probably the the most one. That's the one where you'll you've got half a chance of finding me. Yeah, this is true.
01:11:33
Speaker
I'm lurking around on the other ones most days. So, yeah, come and say hi to us. Excellent. Did you enjoy this episode, listener? we want know. Did you like Return of the Mandalorian or did you think what the heck is this doing in the middle of Book Boba Fett? What's going on in the Book Boba Fett?
01:11:49
Speaker
But if you did enjoy it, what bits did you like? Which of the little nuggets what sort of all of the things did you love the most? I'm really intrigued to hear what other people thought. Yeah.
01:11:59
Speaker
Until then. See you later. Bye. Bye.