#bedlam watches tcw

[bedlamsbard]

oh yeah for those that don’t remember I used to be able to tell you literally anything you wanted to know about in-universe pin-up art in Star Wars. I probably still can because I don’t think there’s been new pin-up art in Star Wars since Rebels S1. (The first few eps of Rebels S2 reused some old pin-up art from TCW, including a couple of unused pieces that were developed for the original Bad Batch eps then got cut out of TCW S7 and actual TBB years later.)  Rebels S1 got away with so much stuff because Disney wasn’t paying attention back then.

but also. the amount of background semi-skeezy sexiness in TCW if you’re paying attention is...A LOT. and that’s not even getting started on the Twi’lek table dancers.

this is all pinup art that really truly no lies actualfax appeared in TCW, just from a quick trawl through my files (which is why it’s so Twi’lek focused).

and of course how could we forget the topless poster (or space Playboy cover) in Zeb and Ezra’s room with the strategic crease

#bedlam watches tcw #bedlam watches rebels #okay that was your weekly star wars thought #also I had to pull up rebels for this because I couldn't find my original screencaps and...I miss them #(NOT THAT MUCH THOUGH ALEX DO NOT HOLD AN INTERVENTION)

[bedlamsbard]

I hope you're well!

I'm a bit fuzzy on the Death Watch. Bo-Katan joined them then left them. Would you say that they had an important role in Rebels- or post-Rebels era politics? I'm curious on your thoughts on them from your bedlam watches star wars tag 😄

My read on Death Watch is that Death Watch ceased to be an entity when Darth Maul took over Mandalore in TCW S5 and reformed the majority of what had previously been Death Watch into his own followers, the leaders of which were personally loyal to him. (See him being broken out of prison in Son of Dathomir and later his actions in TCW S7; also the number of Mandalorians -- Mauldalorians, even! -- who have stylized Zabrak horns on their helmets, something which does not appear previously.) By this point Maul's Mandalorians had become legitimized as representatives of the "legal" government and were completely detached from their previous role as Death Watch. Bo-Katan's followers who broke off from Death Watch with her do not seem to have ever used the Death Watch name and functioned as an entirely separate entity with entirely different goals than Pre Vizsla's Mark 1 Death Watch. By the end of TCW, they are now functioning as representatives of the legitimate government. Given the overtones of the Death Watch name and its previous incarnation as a violent terrorist organization, it is not in Bo-Katan's interest (and she's smart enough to realize this) to revive the name. There may well be a few Death Watch holdouts who did not side with Maul or Bo-Katan in the Clone Wars and post-Clone Wars era who are still using the name and consider themselves members of Pre Vizsla's Death Watch, but they are not a significant political factor in Mandalorian politics.

In our real world history, there are terrorist groups who have essentially gone legit and kept the name once they became legitimate political parties in themselves -- I can't think of any off the top of my head because this isn't an area I'm very familiar with -- but given the way Mandalore's politics shake out in TCW and later on, I don't see this happening with Death Watch. I just think that as of Maul's takeover in TCW S5, Death Watch ceased to exist in any meaningful form and likely ceased to exist entirely. They're not a factor in the Rebellion era at all.

I do see the Children of the Watch and Death Watch as two entirely separate and unrelated groups that just happen to share a similar name -- go down the Wiki list of designated terrorist groups and there are a lot with very similar names that have nothing to do with each other. ("Watch" may have a specific meaning in Mandalorian culture, or it may be the equivalent of "army," "force," or "front," all of which feature heavily in the names of many real world terrorist groups, and which the Lucasfilm PTB wanted to avoid for just that reason.)

#therealimagine28 #bedlam replies #bedlam watches star wars #bedlam watches tcw

[bedlamsbard]

I swear to god What If just grab-bags characters from across the franchise and never once thinks about what role they play in their original narratives or even across the mainline MCU and you can't just do that. why are 90% of these characters here it makes no SENSE.

#what if is designed to make me specifically insane #I could fight marvel's what if and win #bedlam watches the mcu #what if spoilers #sort of (not really) #also this episode very unfortunately came me tcw flashbacks though if it was tcw it would have had more naked women

[bedlamsbard]

sometimes my Star Wars rants go to the "I can't believe Disney took all the sexy stuff out of Star Wars" and you know what? I'M RIGHT.

#pour one out for the real victim of the disney buyout #all the pin-up art in tcw and the sexy twi'lek dancers #my superpower is spotting sw pinup art at forty paces #and let me tell you: IT'S GONE #I CAN TELL YOU THE EXACT EPISODE IT LEFT #it made it all the way through rebels s1 and then disney realized there was SEXY STUFF in STAR WARS #bedlam watches star wars

[bedlamsbard]

got to Thor in my Phase 1 rewatch and rewatching the Asgard stuff is always a trip for me, because, like, the Loki show got me out of Star Wars and I was very much an Asgard girlie for like...nine months. and then I bounced cheerfully over to Captain America (with a side of Black Widow) and have been there ever since.  I wasn’t even there for a year.  it’s not really switching fandoms because it’s still the same fandom (and there’s a lot of Asgard in Horizon), but it’s definitely switching focus within the greater fandom.

#bedlam watches the mcu #loki show was truly me speedrunning my rebels experience #and to a different extent the thor films were me speedrunning my tcw experience #complete with the ending installment/next step that I hated (or in tlat's case just refused to watch because I learn from my mistakes)

[bedlamsbard]

for my weekly Star Wars thought I will offer this (which I have definitely had conversations about before but I’m not sure I have here): TCW S7 was not good but I don’t think most people are ready to have that conversation.

#it wasn't!!! #it was shiny but it wasn't good #unless I already had my weekly thought which was about the mando ahsoka concept art but I've already forgotten when that happened #could have been last week #could have been this week #who knows #bedlam watches tcw

[bedlamsbard]

remind me sometime to talk about how the closest Star Wars equivalent to the MCU isn’t Star Wars as a whole, it’s TCW

#it's not 1:1 but I do genuinely think I'm right in terms of framing #mcu phases 1-3 perhaps rather than the mcu as a whole #bedlam watches tcw #now I have a whole three points of comparison lol

[bedlamsbard]

Putting aside aesthetics and characterization (inasmuch as I can), I have been trying to logic out why Mando Ahsoka feels so different from Rebels Ahsoka (to me, personally; I know many other people feel fine about it), especially in terms of having a character who’s known in Rebels for her “I am no Jedi” line going to a character who is specifically introduced as “The Jedi” in The Mandalorian.  (And who is identified as “Ahsoka Tano, Jedi Knight” on merch -- merch is merch, it’s essentially meaningless, but it’s still a choice that was made somewhere along the line.)

“Shroud of Darkness,” Rebels 2.17

“Twilight of the Apprentice,” Rebels 2.21

This is strictly Doylist and not Watsonian; I don’t care what went on in the character’s life in between Rebels and Mando; I’m trying to guess what was happening in the writers room.

I was noodling through this on Twitter, in case it looks familiar.

My first thought was Dave taking a cut scene from Rebels as canon going into Mando, something he shared on Twitter back in the lead-up to S4.  Looking at this again I’m not sure this was a cut scene or a scene that he wrote that never made it into the actual script. (Certainly I can’t see how it would have fit into the episode.)

Here Bendu specifically identifies Ahsoka as “former Jedi Knight.”  This is also obviously not canon, because Twitter posts aren’t canon, Dave.  (Though that doesn’t mean that he might have taken it as part of his working backstory for the character anyway.)

I was then thinking about TCW and the unused TCW arcs as they existed in 2016 when this aired (with the rough guess that Rebels S2 was probably written in 2014).  There are three Ahsoka arcs that were written and existed in 2016 in some form (”scripts and some artwork” is what Pablo Hidalgo says, and some pre-viz and recordings from the original Walkabout arc that were shown at a couple Celebrations), but which hadn’t made it into S6 (which came out in 2014): Ahsoka’s Walkabout (in its original form with Nix Okami instead of the Martez sisters), the Siege of Mandalore, and an arc which would have taken place between those two, “Return to the Jedi.”  We know about these because of a panel from Star Wars Celebration Europe in 2016 called Ahsoka’s Untold Tales -- I was actually at this panel, but I haven’t thought about it in a while.  Here’s the SW.com liveblog of it; here’s the video.

I remember hearing somewhere that the TCW team had nine seasons or so written, but can’t find the source for that number now.  When S7 was made, there were obviously a lot of compromises made that we’ll never really know about, minus a tell-all memoir or documentary, which probably isn’t coming any time soon.  Knowing that this Return to the Jedi arc existed, I wondered if at one point Dave had tried to get all three Ahsoka arcs into S7 before having to give one up for the Bad Batch arc (especially as we now know there’s going to be a Bad Batch TV show); it’s also entirely possible that at one point in the production process there was the possibility of a full 22 episode season floated, which would have made three Ahsoka arcs in one season less unbalanced.

I went to go look up what the Return to the Jedi arc actually was, since 2016 was a long time ago and I haven’t really thought about this panel since.  My guess is that it had been intended for one Ahsoka arc per remaining season (7, 8, 9).  Pablo Hidalgo says that after the Walkabout arc, Ahsoka would have stayed on Coruscant as “an under-city vigilante of some degree, helping people who can’t help themselves,” and Dave points out that he talked about this with George Lucas, as well.  The Return of the Jedi arc would have involved Ahsoka finding out about a nefarious plot targeting Yoda and working with the Jedi to figure out what’s what with that -- this revealed that below the Jedi Temple was an ancient Sith shrine. (Some details of this were revealed at Star Wars Celebration Anaheim in 2015.)

Ahsoka would have been protecting the holocron vault from Darth Sidious, putting her lightsaber blade through the door while Palps shoots Force lightning up the blade.

“The whole purpose of that particular arc would have been to bring Ahsoka back. She’s not a Jedi, she doesn’t change her decision, but she gets involved in Jedi business again.”

The next Ahsoka arc and the final arc of the series would have been the Siege of Mandalore arc, which “reunites Ahsoka with the clone troopers, with Anakin.”  My guess is that the end of the Return to the Jedi arc would have involved Ahsoka making the decision to go to Mandalore because the Jedi themselves couldn’t get involved in that conflict at the time (especially the emphasis in the panel that Pablo and Dave put on Ahsoka as being “a responsible person” who couldn’t ignore that the war was still going on, and because Ahsoka knew Satine).  (It would be interesting to know when if this arc would have fallen before or after the Darth Maul - Son of Dathomir comics, which are based off another unmade TCW arc.)  This would probably have put as much as a season between this arc and the final arc -- given TCW’s funky timeline that doesn’t mean much, but in terms of audience expectation it helps.

(also, damn, the context of the beginning of Siege of Mandalore in the original concept vs. how it actually happens in S7 is very different -- like, on the surface identical but the emotions involved are totally different.)

Before going into the next part of the panel (post-war), Pablo Hidalgo adds “We consider it to have happened and that’s how we inform the writing in Rebels, because that’s the history that these characters carry in their heads.”

So going into Rebels, the writing team was working with the background that Ahsoka had not only left the Jedi Order once, in “The Wrong Jedi,” but had reinforced her decision not to go back to the Jedi by not returning to the Order during the Return to the Jedi arc.  That explains why in Rebels she’s so adamant about not being a Jedi or being in the Order; it’s a decision that she has made not once, but twice.

Fast forward four years to 2020, where we have the Siege of Mandalore arc in S7.

It’s heavily implied that Ahsoka was planning to go back to the Order after the end of the war, and in fact Yoda treats her as such.

Now, there’s no way to know if this exchange was in the original Siege of Mandalore scripts short of those being released at some point (which is possible but seems unlikely when the character is still in play), but because of the way S7 plays out there is no way to put the Return to the Jedi arc back into the story, which means all the emotional context and Ahsoka doubling down on not returning to the Order is thrown out of the window.  That’s a fair chunk of backstory to take into the Rebels writers room.

(It should also be noted that presumably E.K. Johnston wrote the Ahsoka novel with the assumption that that arc was still part of Ahsoka’s working canon, though she may not have seen scripts for it; I feel like I read somewhere that she had seen scripts for the original version of the Siege of Mandalore, which changed quite a lot between original concept and the eventual 2020 version, as is evident from the novel vs the show.)

Going into The Mandalorian, then, Dave Filoni is not only working without a writers room (as Mando has only had two writers, Dave Filoni and Jon Favreau), but working with an entirely different continuity than what the Rebels writers room was working with.

Trying to backtrack when various scripts were written is an exercise in futility to some extent; I usually guess anywhere from a year to two years out from when the shows air.  (I seem to remember that around this time in 2016 it came out that Katee Sackhoff was doing something for Disney, which ended up being the recording for Bo-Katan in Rebels S4, which wouldn’t air for another year, but don’t quote me on these dates.)  Dave ends the panel by saying that “After the season 2 finale for Rebels I was very adamant that that was it for Ahsoka...in Rebels...but after this reaction it might just be possible...it might be possible to see her again. She might have something to do. Maybe.”  (For those trying to run dates in their heads: the con was in July 2016, the season 2 finale aired in March 2016, WBW aired in February 2018.)  My guess is that they hadn’t recorded for that part of S4 yet (and S4 is so weirdly paced that I have questions about how it was made), but that the initial scripts for S4 had already been written at this point.

Looking back at the Star Wars Celebration Chicago 2019 TCW panel where Ashley Eckstein talks about getting the news about TCW S7 from Dee Bradley Baker (rather than from Dave Filoni, and hoo boy is this uncomfortable to watch knowing that the script for “The Jedi” had almost certainly been written and Dave may have already made the decision not to talk to Ashley about it), there’s still not like...a clear way to tell when that happened.  Except that Dee talks about “wine tasting with the Rebels,” which likely puts it back when Rebels S4 was either still actively airing (2017-2018) or before it had wrapped filming (2017).  (I actually vaguely remember seeing pictures from this wine tasting but I can’t remember whose twitter it was on and going to look feels creepy.)  Probably the scripts weren’t fully revised at that point but they may have been -- still, this was certainly after S2 and could potentially be before S4 had been fully finalized.  We got the TCW renewal announcement in 2019, but the animation wasn’t fully completed yet so didn’t get more than that teaser trailer.  This is only important insofar as it involves which set of backstory was being used for WBW Ahsoka, an episode that Dave Filoni wrote and co-directed.  (Honestly? I think Mando Ahsoka matches okay with WBW Ahsoka but is a little off Rebels S2 Ahsoka, but that’s off my memory of WBW, an episode I refuse to rewatch.)  Certainly with the epilogue he knew he was setting up for something else.

ETA: I FORGOT AN IMPORTANT PART OF THIS TIMELINE AND THAT’S THE RISE OF SKYWALKER because I try not to think about TROS, frankly, but as we may remember Ahsoka is included in the “be with me” scene in the final confrontation.  This always struck me as weird given the “I am no Jedi” thing from Rebels, but she’s the most well-known female Force-user so I had just mentally written it off as easy shorthand and JJ Abrams being lazy about it. HOWEVER, presumably JJ talked to Dave about which prequel era Jedi to include (there’s a note in one of the previous SWC liveblogs about Rian Johnson being in the Rebels writers room at some point).  TROS came out in December 2019, I can’t recall exactly when they did the voiceovers for that scene (if anyone has ever mentioned it), but it was probably fairly late in the process since I believe that there were still edits being made up until fairly soon before the premiere.  (I have a completely different theory that the Lego Star Wars Holiday Special from this year was written off an earlier version of TROS.)  If Dave had already moved towards making Ahsoka more inclined towards the Jedi, with a full-on return to calling herself one regardless of the existence of the Order (as Mando implies), then her inclusion here makes a LOT more sense than it did a year ago.

Anyway this is all very conspiracy theorist, but it does explain something that was puzzling me: Rebels S2 Ahsoka and Mando Ahsoka (as well as TCW S7 Ahsoka and potentially Rebels S4 Ahsoka) were written off slightly different backstories which differed in one very key thing: how committed Ahsoka was to no longer being a Jedi.

Now, this sort of thing happens all the time in anything with an ongoing continuity; obviously TCW makes major changes to how viewers might read or write Obi-Wan and Anakin/Vader in RotS or the OT.  I was just trying to narrow it down in this particular case because until I started thinking about it I had assumed that it was all being written off the same assumed backstory. And many people read Ahsoka differently in Mando than I did or found her perfectly in character, this was for me to track references down about something that was bothering me in hopes of an explanation that would satisfy me.

#bedlam watches the mandalorian #bedlam watches tcw #bedlam watches rebels #mando the jedi #btw this is the same sort of thing I do for academic work this stuff is just easier because I remember it better #and can google it which I usually can't for scholarship

[bedlamsbard]

there’s literally nothing more hilarious to me than the idea that after “Victory and Death”, the next time Ahsoka sees Maul is

*war flashbacks*

#this is the actual reason I watched tota immediately after the finale #bedlam watches tcw #bedlam watches rebels #swr twilight of the apprentice #tcw victory and death

[bedlamsbard]

if Star Wars doesn’t bring the Weequay flying saucers into live action they’re even more cowards than I thought before

#they won't #bedlam watches tcw

[bedlamsbard]

(in response to this post)

This turned out really, really long, so, uh, apologies?  The short version is that the number one rule is that your legacy characters don’t undercut your main cast.

I think Rogue One and Solo pulled it off -- Solo is a weirder case because it’s a prequel story about a main character, but Rogue One’s use of Tarkin, Vader, Mon Mothma, Bail Organa, etc. worked for me because from the beginning they were there to support the original characters in the film and never wavered from that.  Rogue One also benefited from knowing exactly what it was going to do and never wavering from that for an instant.

In terms of the shows, TCW is also not a straightforward case because it was using film characters as its mains and pulling from all over, but in terms of OT characters that appeared in the show, I am pretty happy with how TCW pulled off Chewbacca in Wookiee Hunt (3.22) -- puts him there, uses him well to support the main character of that particular arc (Ahsoka) and the other supporting characters (the other youngling Jedi), but it doesn’t turn into the Chewie episode. Same with Ackbar in the Mon Cala arc in S4: support, not overwhelming, doesn’t waver from the central theme of the arc.  Tarkin’s the other big one, and I’m pretty satisfied with the way he was used in TCW -- he’s always there in reference to the main characters of the arcs he appears in, and not in reference to himself, if that makes sense -- he’s there because having him there specifically makes more sense than it doesn’t.

(Honestly, I think the little philosophical lessons really helped with TCW being able to keep its focus: they have to drive straight towards that and not hesitate about it.  Every time they dropped those (I’m talking about you, Siege of Mandalore), they ran into a problem where they sort of wandered around a bit.)

Maul...I like Maul a lot.  I don’t have that much of a problem with the decision to bring him back into the timeline in TCW (at least you always knew that when George Lucas was doing something he was doing it because he enjoyed it, instead of the current case of “are you doing it for a purpose? for cheap lulz? for the aesthetic? are you setting up a sequel? are you trying to course-correct another piece of canon?”).  I do think Maul got overweighted in S7, and this is partially because they didn’t really have the space to build him up from where he ended in S5.  The Darth Maul - Son of Dathomir comic helps a little, but S7 is such a rapid switch from where he is in S5 (and you do have to assume that most viewers hadn’t read the comic) that he then pulls in too much narrative weight, and that’s because S7 was trying to do something really, really different from what the previous six seasons of TCW were trying to do.

Rebels sometimes pulls it off, sometimes does not.  Since we’re on the topic of Maul already, I am actually fine with Maul in Rebels.  I don’t actually think he was used to his full benefit because they pulled back at the last minute, but Maul in Twilight of the Apprentice? Fine with that. Same with Holocrons of Fate and Visions and Voices. (I’ve got a few other problems with Visions and Voices.)  Maul is always there in relation to the main characters of the show, not in relation to himself and not in relation to a non-Rebels character.  Did it have to be Maul (back in TotA, obvs, not the latter two)?  No, but it makes sense and it works really well thematically with all of the characters present in that episode.  Holocrons and Visions and Voices, same.

Twin Suns, on the other hand, another Maul episode, was a disaster -- beautifully made episode, everyone is in character, it should never have been made.  (I’m currently grumpy about this one specifically because I recently saw an “Ezra shouldn’t have been in Twin Suns” take.)  Yes, Maul and Obi-Wan are both interacting with Ezra, but Ezra in this ep is basically himself the McGuffin.  Neither the actual, thematic, or emotional conflict in the episode revolves around Ezra even if he’s the instigator of that final showdown.  If you can start and end an episode without the show’s main cast (and Rebels differs from TCW in that it did, very specifically, have a main character as well as a main cast), you’ve made a mistake.  Not to mention that Twin Suns takes a bunch of narrative and thematic weight that was set in TotA and earlier in S3 (such as the Maul/Kanan and Maul/Ezra parallels), and then completely ignores it in favor of a confrontation that is not going to be emotionally significant for viewers who are there for the show’s main cast.

Darth Vader mostly works in Rebels -- in S2 in isolation, not as part of the greater Rebels plot arc which is a weird hot mess of deescalating villains season by season (a whole ‘nother thing).  In Siege of Lothal he’s set up in relation to the main cast and that’s who most of his interaction is with.  Same with TotA, though I sometimes think more weight is put on the Vader/Ahsoka duel than should be there in terms of who the main cast are.  Sometimes I think it’s fine as is.  His other brief appearances are fine, since he’s mostly there just to loom and use up the fabric animation budget.

Tarkin really works in Rebels -- this is honestly Rebels’ biggest legacy character success, my gods, his introduction in Call to Action is terrifying.  Did it have to be Tarkin?  No, they could have made an OC and had the same role, but Tarkin here, in this context?  It ups the tension level a thousand percent, we see him ordering around the Imperials in the show (and the execution scene still gives me chills), and the end of Call to Action, when he’s talking to Kanan on the gunship and orders the destruction of the communications tower?  This is easily one of the most terrifying thing Rebels has ever done and to be honest, I’m not sure they ever topped it in terms of sheer presence.  Evacuating the star destroyer in Fire Across the Galaxy? Perfect parallel to ANH.

From S2-S4, Rebels really wavers back and forth on their use of legacy characters and this is true of the show as a whole from that point onwards -- when there’s a legacy character, they tend to be overweighted in terms of the episode and in terms of how much narrative space is given to them rather than to the main cast.  Not all the time (I have issues with the S4 Mandalore arc, but I think Bo-Katan was played fairly well because most of the narrative weight was still on Sabine), but a lot of the time.  The Future of the Force is really bad on this in terms of Ahsoka -- most of the episode is still focused on Kanan and Ezra, but then they’re taken off the board so she can have her dramatic fight scene.  Shroud of Darkness -- I go back and forth.  (I have other issues with Shroud.)  Leia in A Princess on Lothal -- mostly okay, but some weird moments, like using her to rally the Ghost crew into action?

Wedge in The Antilles Extraction -- fine  He’s played in relation to Sabine, his presence in the ep is thematically consistent with everything else they’re doing. Saw Gerrera in both S3 and S4 I really go back and forth on.  I think I’m mostly okay with him in terms of how he’s played in those four episodes, but I also think there are a lot of questions raised in terms of, like, his relationship to the Alliance.  (This goes for his appearance in Jedi Fallen Order as well -- I’m fine with it, it’s not mindblowing, it was nice to see.)  Mon Mothma I go back and forth on and part of this is because I’m not entirely sure what they were doing with the Rebel Alliance -- this same thing is true for Saw Gerrera.  Especially in the back half of S3 (though it appears earlier as well), Rebels is intersecting more and more with the Rebel Alliance in the lead-up to Rogue One and ANH, but I don’t think they were really entirely sure what they wanted to do with that thematically, which is how we get these wildly varying views of the Alliance even from within it, especially in S4.  Which is part of the reason why S4 thematically is A DISASTER.  (y’all I should not have come out of S4 hating the Rebel Alliance and I still can’t tell if they did that on purpose or not?)

I’m not mentioning every legacy character in Rebels here (Cham, Hondo, Madine, C-3PO and R2-D2, Bail Organa), but mostly the ones where they pay major roles.  Rex I think Rebels mostly managed to pull off having as treating him like supporting cast and not overweighting him as character.  -- The clone trio at the beginning of S2 has them in relation to Kanan, Ezra, Kallus and the stormtroopers, etc., not just in relation to themselves.

(I have no idea how to talk about Thrawn in this context because Thrawn isn’t exactly a legacy character from the current canon, but on the other hand he’s a major EU legacy character, so he’s also just a weird god damn case in general that doesn’t really have a parallel in current canon?)

What else we got -- Star Wars Resistance; doesn’t use that many legacy characters but uses the ones it has pretty sparingly.  Poe is always there in relation to Kaz, Leia has a very brief appearance, Phasma and Hux are mostly there because it makes sense for them to be there, same with Kylo Ren.  Resistance has its issues (both thematically and with pacing) but this is not one of them).

Jedi Fallen Order -- Saw was fine; Vader wasn’t overweighted once he showed up.  Battlefront II had its legacy characters almost entirely in context of Iden and Del; they weren’t there just to be there.  (And not being a gamer I’m not one hundred percent certain how those two felt in actual playing, vs. my watching them on YT.)

(I am not terribly familiar with the current canon books and comics because I stopped reading them a while ago.)

Non-canon example from Legends: Han Solo’s appearance in the Wraith Squadron novels.

The short version of this is: if you’re going to use legacy characters, you want them to be there in relation to your main cast. It has to work thematically; they can’t undercut your mains. Their stories, no matter how important to the saga as a whole, should not overwhelm the main cast of your actual show/film/game/whatever. And they definitely should not undercut your mains.  (I think Mando did this fine with Bo-Katan, tbh.)

#bedlam watches star wars #bedlam watches tcw #bedlam watches rebels #kimothee-chalamet #bedlam replies

[bedlamsbard]

@comentter asked about the TCW series finale

Sorry if I don't remember, but did you ever talk about the last 2 episodes of TCW? I only remember the motion capture thing from the first 2 of the arc. I was annoyed at the changes to the story they previously established in the novel and Rebels (which included Rex and Ahsoka splitting up) and for some reason I can't figure out, it didn't feel like a real ending to me...

I don’t think I’ve talked about it past expressing my annoyance about using Sam Jackson!Mace and Hayden Christensen!Anakin during Ahsoka’s vision. (WHICH I AM VERY ANNOYED ABOUT.)

I don’t have particularly strong feelings about Shattered/Victory & Death -- I think they’re two of the better episodes of S7, but I think S7 is honestly the weakest of all TCW as far as theme and story arc go.  They are also, unfortunately, probably the most aggravating case in S7 of throwing out previously established canon from Johnston’s Ahsoka novel and from Rebels.  And like, there’s not really all that much to throw out! So you mostly have to work to do it!

(Under a cut because this got long and honestly I probably forgot stuff since I haven’t rewatched in a while.)

The big difference is, obviously, the change in location from Mandalore (I believe the novel either strongly implies or outright states it’s in the middle of the battle?) to the ship.  Putting aside Filoni’s comments from SWCE a few years ago about Ahsoka teaming up with giant wolves (I think it’s extremely likely that that was wistful thinking and concept art on his part, rather than George Lucas’s actual plan), the advantage of putting Order 66 on a star destroyer in hyperspace is that it’s about as confined a space as you can get with no escape.  And that works pretty well in the actual episodes -- it’s a nice callback to “Brain Invaders,” as well, though I’m not sure it was done deliberately.  It also limits the number of moving parts available, so rather than having to worry about Mandalorians on both sides (and civilians...would have liked to see those in the Siege eps...that’s a different rant), all that the audience has to worry about are Ahsoka (and Rex, later on), the clones, and the wild card, Maul. Which admittedly is done very well -- like, the way the clones turn on Ahsoka?  Terrifying!  I don’t think they really played into the claustrophobic atmosphere of being trapped on a ship in hyperspace with no way out enough; I actually do think Brain Invaders and A Test of Strength, and even the flashback scenes in Jedi Fallen Order, did it better.  (Not even ONE scene of crawling through the vents? are you even Star Wars?)  On the one hand, it’s been done before, do you really have to do it again?  On the other...y’all made the decision to do this.

I actually hate that Ahsoka has the ~vision of Anakin’s fall -- it’s very jarring, it makes no continuity sense (in all honesty, it’s the sort of thing I’d expect from the ST, so maybe in that context it does make continuity sense, lol), and I think to some extent that it weakens her later reaction to Vader/Anakin?  Also, as I’ve said before I’m very, very aural and pretty sensitive to character voices: the decision to use Jackson!Mace and Christensen!Anakin, even with Hayden transitioning into Matt Lanter, threw me out so badly that the scene lost all emotional impact.  This is a me problem.  Most people I know were just happy that Hayden was getting acknowledged.  Which is honestly not a great storytelling method, we want to tell the story and not acknowledge other actors. But again: this is a me problem.

I really do love the rising sense of tension from the beginning of the episode to the actual Order 66 moment.  It’s just genuinely terrifying, since the audience knows what’s coming all along.

Maul -- *flips hand*  I love Maul.  I think these two eps did a really good job at showing how terrifying Maul can be, even without a lightsaber -- especially without a lightsaber, rather.  I was a little hesitant initially about Maul being able to destroy the hyperdrive with the Force alone, but after thinking about it for a day or so (back when the ep aired, last May) I was fine with it.  I think Maul’s the one character for whom that kind of sheer power is believable, going back to his TCW debut -- if you ever look at spider-Maul closely (and Sam and Dave talk about this in the commentary to that arc), you’ll notice that some of the pieces of metal on his spider body aren’t actually attached, they’re hovering nearby; he’s holding his spider body together with the Force itself.

Rex. The other big departure from canon, because of his “we all had a choice / I didn’t betray my Jedi” comments in Rebels.  From a storytelling POV, this is the most dramatic possible route to go, and it makes sense that they did it.  I think it was either @alexkablob or @mylordshesacactus who said back when that it works well that Rex can’t shake off the command from the chip, that none of the clones are immune to it, because otherwise it looks like none of the other clones cared as much about their Jedi as Rex did about Ahsoka.  I do genuinely wonder if back in the original plan for the remaining two seasons of TCW, there was a scene where Rex had his chip removed, given that comment from Rebels. (And I’ve talked before about changes made from the ~original TCW scripts used for the Rebels backstory to the actual S7 and Mando, though admittedly in that context it was about Ahsoka.)  If originally the plan was for the Order 66 sequence to take place on Mandalore, then that suggests the unlikelihood (though not impossiblity) of Rex and Ahsoka removing his chip.  Given the arcs that we actually got in S7 there was no place to do it...I really do wonder what was in some of the scripts that have been talked about elsewhere but didn’t make the cut for S7.

(God, the one I actually really wanted was the Rex and Artoo’s Excellent Adventure one, I’ll be bitter about this forever.)

I assume Ahsoka and Rex split up afterwards -- the fake grave from Ahsoka was kind of weird to me, tbh, so I’m fine with them not going that way, but.  *shrug*  It is what it is.

The end is...fine. Like, emotional!  I had an emotion! They wanted me to have an emotion! My TCW and Ahsoka feelings have been broken for a while now so my emotions definitely were not what they would have been even two or three years ago.  (And I mean this by when the ep actually aired, not what my emotions are now; they haven’t really changed that much.  Well, my resentment grew, but it is what it is.)

I think...I just recently saw again the comment from Filoni about this, so it’s on my mind -- one of the major problems with S7 across the board, and honestly highlighted in the finale (which, again, is great), is that according to Filoni, TCW was always about Rex and Ahsoka, so S7 had to be about Rex, then about Ahsoka, then about Rex and Ahsoka, together.

TCW is not about Rex and Ahsoka.

That’s not to say that Rex and Ahsoka aren’t main characters, because manifestly they are, but the previous six seasons of TCW are not about Rex and Ahsoka.  At its core, TCW is about Anakin Skywalker, in the same way that the PT is about Anakin Skywalker (and the OT, to a different extent); TCW’s big strength compared to the films, however, has always been that it has the space to go beyond Anakin’s immediate story and deal with everything else going on in the galaxy, some of which overlaps with Anakin and some of which doesn’t.  The choice to make S7 three four-episode arcs has the side effect of narrowing the universe and limiting the stories told -- S6 is, I think, only one ep longer but feels like it’s a full season, because it’s a mixed bag of arcs of varying lengths, with a number of different foci.  Some of the claustrophobic feel of the focus on Rex and Ahsoka works for the finale because of the actual setting of the episodes, on the very claustrophobic ship, but on the other hand...thematically the whole season feels off because Filoni’s interests are very different from Lucas’s (and while we all love to give Filoni credit for everything in TCW, Lucas was showrunning it and all the really weird and controversial stuff in TCW, including Ahsoka, Satine, Mortis, and Maul, all came straight from George Lucas).  The finale feels aggressively narrow as a result -- which on the one hand, works, because yeah, it’s kind of neat and makes sense that Rex and Ahsoka don’t know anything else about what’s going on in the larger galaxy or if anyone else is alive.  On the other hand, it...doesn’t work.  (For me, obvs! Your mileage will vary!)

#comentter #bedlam replies #bedlam watches tcw #tcw shattered #tcw victory and death

[bedlamsbard]

My unpopular opinion: Rebels, for the most part, does a better job at portraying the Force than TCW.

Maybe I'm too hung up on the perception abilities of Force users in the old books, but it bugs when in TCW a Jedi walks into a room where a non-force sensitive is hiding from them and the Jedi isn't able to find the person just from sensing them in the Force. Or when a Jedi gets knocked out from behind by not-a-droid and has no clue about it. Etc.

I know Rebels does this too sometimes, but I like the portrayal Force abilities that aren't "lift rock" and "push people" a lot more.

Probably just a difference in how one is able to show the Force in writing vs. animation, but that's my weird opinion

strongly agree | agree | neutral | disagree | strongly disagree

I don’t think I agree or disagree?  I’ve always gotten the impression (and this is how I write it), that while there’s a certain amount of passive sensitivity on the part of Force-users (such as that kind of very split-second foresight we see with their reflexes), when it comes to perception there has to be more active sensitivity -- in other words, that they have to be consciously thinking about sensing another being in order to do so.  I’d think that there’s also a certain amount of, hmm, ambient “noise” that Jedi probably normally just live with when it comes to other people, so it becomes second-nature probably in infancy not to sense other individuals or groups because otherwise it’s just RED ALERT ALL THE TIME HERE’S A PERSON THERE’S A PERSON HERE’S ANOTHER PERSON HERE’S A SPACE DOG THAT WANTS TO STEAL YOUR LUNCH etc., and that’s not really sustainable.   Also, for Jedi specifically -- my guess is that they’re also raised to have pretty serious ethics about that sort of thing; you live in a building full of telepaths (regardless of the fact that the Force isn’t specifically telepathy), it is very likely common courtesy not to use the Force to seek others out unless you really, really need to.  And I bet on Coruscant, a city-planet with a population of billions, even narrowing it down to a room (and unless you’re making an active effort at it, the way Kanan does after he’s blinded, how easy is it for the Force to perceive something like a room or a building as something other than just “big space”?) is near impossible.

I said this about Coruscant and the Jedi Temple specifically in an unposted chapter of Crown:

He hadn’t lived on an ecumenopolis in years, but there were reasons and reasons besides the fact that the capital of the Republic was here that the Jedi Temple had been located on Coruscant rather than on some other less populated world that those uninitiated into the ways of the Jedi thought would have suited the Order better.  For one thing, it taught extremely Force-sensitive younglings control and it taught it fast.  Kanan couldn’t have replicated it with Ezra if he’d tried, and he hadn’t had a way to; he had crossed his fingers that Ezra wouldn’t have reached the age of fourteen still alive and sane without figuring it out on his own even in the considerably less-populated Capital City.  

For the difference between TCW and Rebels, I think part of it is also just the difference in what the two shows are portraying -- TCW is an active wartime situation and its Force-users are people who have been raised in the Force since near-infancy (I’d bet that Anakin has a little less facility at some aspects of Force use than Obi-Wan and Ahsoka because he didn’t get some of that early training).  In Rebels -- and especially in S1 -- it’s a big deal when characters use the Force, because in the Empire, using the Force where someone can see you do it is a death sentence.  And I think it’s also notable that Ezra was not raised as a Force-user, so his perception of what the Force can do, how to use it, and Force ethics are different from TCW characters’ even if he got taught them by Kanan...who mostly did not actively use the Force for fifteen years (and probably tamped down as much as possible on passive sensitivity).  A lot of Kanan’s active Force use comes after he’s blinded, and I’ve always gotten the impression that while he’s then using the Force for active perception, it means his passive sensitivity tends to slip a little because his concentration is on what he’s doing actively (and presumably he’s doing it in such a way that he’s also not plucking thoughts out of other people’s heads or anything along those lines, which is probably more work).  Which is in line to me with what happens with TCW -- using the Force is work if you’re trying to do something specific; Mace Windu can find a single group of people in a crowded city (in The Disappeared Part II), but it takes him a few minutes of intense concentration, and once having found them, it’s easier to follow them that keep using the Force to track them.

#meme response #bedlam watches rebels #bedlam watches tcw #comentter #bedlam answers

[bedlamsbard]

everything I’m seeing about the SPN finale (and the GoT and 100 finales before it, and a host of other ones before those, including, yes, TCW, Rebels, and Resistance) is confirming for me that 99% of all shows should end by getting canceled. I have never in my life been as satisfied by a planned series finale as I have been by a season finale when the PTB didn’t know whether or not they would be back next season.

I’ll grant TCW’s a weird case because it had THREE series finales, and like...the Shattered + Victory and Death duo is fine. It’s fine! It’s good! I’m not saying it’s bad! Just for me it faltered a bit in the same way that S7 faltered in general, and anyway TCW’s not a great example for this because, see again, three series finales and also coming back six years later means that it skews results.

We don’t talk about the Rebels finale unless I’m drinking and in a very specific mood.

The Resistance finale is fine but I will never believe that that show was planned for only two seasons and Lucasfilm just doesn’t want to admit that they canceled it. Which I guess bears me out because their series finale reads like a season finale and Lucasfilm could bring it back at any point, which in my opinion is what all series finales should do: keep your options open so that you can bring it back at any moment if so desired.  I realize that many people like “endings” and prefer things to be not quite so open-ended (unless they’re in it for fanfic reasons, either reading or writing; in my experience the best plotty fanfic comes out of hiatuses), but I’m just very...keep your options open, guys. also, epilogues, don’t do them.

*frowns*  Though thinking about some of my problems with ongoing Star Wars stories, I don’t really feel this way about books so much, but that’s a whole ‘nother thing. (My gods, guys, you can finish a story, it’s okay, don’t leave it THAT open-ended, Lost Stars.)

In general I find rushed endings are...very seldom good.  Sometimes they can work, but more often the compromises that have to be made outweigh the story that the remaining space is capable of telling. (TCW S7 and Jericho S2 both come to mind here.  I actually don’t hate BSG S4 and quite like a lot of the finale, but think they should have ended somewhat earlier in the episode.)  (We don’t talk about Rebels S4 without alcohol and me being in a very specific mood, but boy is that ever a prime example.)  (...I don’t think I’ve STILL ever seen the back half of Farscape S4, come to think of it, or The Peacekeeper Wars, despite doing three series rewatches. For some reason I peter out mid-S4.)  (Bizarrely, the same thing is true of Prison Break.) (Okay, I’m a bad example because I hate endings -- there are a handful of shows where I’ve seen all of S1 except the finale and then can’t go watch the rest of the series because I haven’t seen the S1 finale. Yes, this has happened multiple times.) (how many parentheticals can I fit in one paragraph.)

#bedlam watches tv #bedlam watches star wars #bedlam watches tcw #I GUESS

[bedlamsbard]

me being mad about lekku probably isn’t even my most unpopular fannish opinion from this year, just the one I’ve actually talked about. consider the following: I don’t think the Siege of Mandalore arc was good.

(oh don’t worry I have plenty of other unpopular opinions from previous years. I’m sure someone’s immediately going to ask me about this one, too, since I don’t think I’ve ever talked about it. But I think I’m just going to reblog stuff for the rest of the night unless I suddenly get really mad about something else later.)

#bedlam watches the mandalorian #bedlam watches tcw #I've also got a couple more asks to answer from a few days ago

[bedlamsbard]

You must be an extremely visual person. Cause, like, I certainly see graphics, puppets, etc that I would agree don't look natural, but for me, they don't detract from the story or characters

UUUUUUGGGGHHHHHH I just wrote a really long response and then accidentally deleted it due to new mouse error. :(((  

I’m very visual in very specific ways that apply to Star Wars, but not necessarily to other things that I’m watching or reading for fun.  Part of this is because I’m extremely characterization- and atmosphere- based; those two are the be-all, end-all of any Star Wars media I consume and they have to be there, otherwise my brain instantly tosses them out as “not Star Wars” and won’t move past it.  In any kind of media without recurring characters from the PT/OT/TCW/Rebels, the atmosphere has to hold that entire weight -- it has to feel like Star Wars, which is a bit amorphous and obviously is something different to every audience member!  (Which is why equal numbers of people say both that the ST feels like Star Wars and that it doesn’t feel like Star Wars at all.)  For me, not-quite-there puppetry or bad body paint or unconvincing prosthetics breaks the atmosphere -- if there’s more going on to appeal to me and the rest of it I can parse as “Star Wars” without difficulty, then I can usually look past that.

(And yeah -- the flip side is also true; if something can nail the atmosphere but can’t hold characterization together at all (or at least the characterization I care about, let’s be real), it’s gone, it’s out, I can’t deal.  I think it’s a bit rarer to get that, because if you can’t get the one you usually can’t get the other, but it’s happened.)

It’s also just not a live action problem -- the same thing has happened to me with books and comics, but also it happened for me with TCW S7 and the Maul vs. Ahsoka duel.  I’ve talked about this before, but I’ll restate it here: I literally cannot parse it as Ahsoka fighting because Lauren Mary Kim’s style is so, so different from Ahsoka’s normal style that nothing else going on there matters to me.  I don’t care how great the visuals are.  I don’t care that it’s still Ashley Eckstein’s voice (though honestly I do think the dialogue is a bit off).  I don’t care about any of the emotions or the themes or the music or anything, because the way my brain works I literally cannot parse that as Ahsoka and in this context, I also cannot parse it as Star Wars, because it is so very different from every other fight scene in TCW.  Would it work in live action?  Probably (if it wasn’t supposed to be Ahsoka). Does it work in animation? No.  (And it does for other people and that’s fine! This is just how my brain processes it.)

For The Mandalorian specifically, in this case the problem isn’t just that the puppetry isn’t convincing or the body paint is bad or the prosthetics are awkward -- I have a host of other problems with the show and these problems just pile on on top of them.  I don’t think the story is good.  I don’t think the characters are good.  None of the other scaffolding is there for me to be able to say that something like this doesn’t actively detract from the experience of watching the show or what I think about it.  And that’s for me -- that’s not going to be true for everyone, of course!  (For example, I have never had a problem with Star Wars Resistance’s visuals, but for many, many fans I know the visuals were a dealbreaker that they could not move past.  I know several people who feel that way about Rebels, and I know people who feel that way about TCW.  I know people who feel that way about Alden Ehrenreich in Solo.)

Also, at the end of the day, I am just not a big fan of stop-motion animation or puppetry in the first place -- maybe I just didn’t watch enough Sesame Street or Muppets as a kid.  (Actually, given the fact I just had to google to see if they were the same thing or not that may actually be the answer, though I did grow up on Harryhausen films and those use stop-motion all the time.)

#bedlam watches star wars #bedlam watches the mandalorian #bedlam watches tcw #lessattitudemorealtitude #bedlam answers