UNEARTHING STAR WARS TELEVISION: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

“You’re going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.” James T. Kirk, Battlestar Yamato. Episode Three: Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.

I think the most annoying think about the character Ahsoka Tano is that she’s called Ahsoka and not Ashoka. Whenever I go to type this name out, I have to correct something that shouldn’t have to be corrected. Rewind. Fix that name. She’s Ashoka.
   Now a rather annoying/endearing/but truthfully annoying side character can come along in a STAR WARS show and call her Ash for short. Lightsabres hum into life as she jokingly takes offence. You can’t shorten her name as it is. She should be Ash. But I see from the space wildlife documentary ALIEN that this seat is already taken. Ahsoka she must be.
   I tuned in for the first episode of – checks notes – AHSOKA. It’s the habit of streaming companies to drop two or even three episodes of a new show on you, providing a mini-binge so that you can get into the show’s stride or rapidly walk away if the whole thing isn’t for you.
   AHSOKA started off with two episodes available. I watched the first one and stopped dead. There seemed to be a lot of things going on in the show that weren’t really things going on at all. Let’s have a shot of this motorway leading to a tower. I guess that’s meaningful, somehow.
   Here’s a ceremony starring Clancy Brown. He’s portraying a guy, I guess. We’re waiting on a famous rebel from the rebel days. But she’s so rebellious that she doesn’t turn up for the ceremony. Going off to that tower is her priority.
   To quote Al Pacino, I am…over-fucking-whelmed.
   After I watched the first episode I wasn’t pointing at everything, DiCaprio style. I had the distinct impression that I’d missed something. Like, oh, I don’t know, an entire television series. Unnervingly, there were multiple guides online telling me about the sort of homework I had to do…just to follow this show.
   REBELS somehow passed me by. Apparently, aside from a few other things on the list to watch, this was the thing I should have watched first. I didn’t head straight over to episode two. Instead, I started watching REBELS. The format is short enough to make it easy to mini-binge.
   Around twenty minutes per episode.
   Pretty soon I was pointing at everything, DiCaprio style. That was in the AHSOKA opening episode. And so was that. This. Those. Her. Him. That there. Jesus Christ, it’s Jason Bourne Clancy Brown.
   What’s REBELS like? It’s full of STAR WARS cheese, and is all the better for that. Stormtroopers still can’t shoot for shit. Droids constantly save the day when they aren’t clowning around. Other film ideas sneak onto the show with varying degrees of success…3 GODFATHERS, JAWS, other STAR WARS movies...
   I shouldn’t have to do homework to catch a show. Okay, yes, I should watch a few STAR WARS movies first; I’ll grant you that one. But don’t you get the feeling that the world was a much better place before we started numbering World Wars and STAR WARS films?
   Hailing from the world of boardgaming you’ll just end up confused by ANDOR, which isn’t a series of Tolkien-lite boardgames packed to brimming with cardboard pieces. ANDOR is set around the same time as REBELS is – leading up to the rebels actually getting somewhere against the EVIL EMPIRE®.
   In STAR WARS, Episode IV: A New Marketing Strategy, the rebellion finds the somewhere it gets to is between a rock and a hard place. This means the odd cameo in ANDOR, and more of the same in REBELS. Spoiler alert: stormtroopers are in plentiful supply.
   The format for REBELS is one of a spaceship with a crew acting like an extended family of misfits. STAR TREK crewmembers, with less planet-hopping and plenty of STAR WARS. The rebels spend far too much time on the one planet. That’s where the levels of disbelief reach cheese-laden proportions.
   But we waive that point. We do not press it. We look over it.
   To wipe out the regular cast of rebels would mean destroying the whole planet they are constantly using as their base. If only the EVIL EMPIRE™ could come up with some sort of handy beach-ball sized gadget to crush that problem. Maybe a bit larger. Need to look into the physics of that.
   Away with the concept of physics in STAR WARS, and also STAR TREK. Never let science get in the way of the story. If you did, the main cast would be dead after the first firefight in a cupboard. Hangar. I meant to type hangar.
   Noisy infiltration of Imperial Base? Check. Last-minute daring rescues? Check. Bickering rebels who must band together to face the greater threat posed by the Disney Empire®? Check. Clunky references to STAR WARS movies? No, they have to be MacClunkey references.
   We’ve been down this path before. THE MANDALORIAN ran for two series. And then it became the BOBA FETT SHOW. Then it went back to being THE MANDALORIAN again. If you weren’t interested in Boba Fett and skipped all of his episodes, returning to the regular show after a self-imposed gap would leave you wondering about a few things.
   Making the later episodes of Fett’s show essential viewing for the next Mandalorian series is all about the business of getting people to watch both shows…and less about the business of telling a good story. It’s like, oh, I don’t know…
   Doing a 2006 Superman sequel to a 1980 Superman movie while ignoring the really rubbish Superman films made after 1980. So the thing is…26 years go by, but in the movie Superman has been away for five years. Everyone is recast for reasons of a quarter of a century going by. Some of the music score and dialogue is reheated from earlier movies…
   And the plot is a mix of Lex Luthor restructuring American real estate from the first film…while throwing in a dash of Lex Luthor turning up at Doc Savage’s Superman’s Fortress of Solitude from the second movie. We’re ignoring Richard Pryor and Nuclear Man from later outings. Thankfully.
   Superman Returns. I watched it once. And I’m still waiting for that movie to start.
   You can watch two watchable Superman films, skip two skippable Superman films, and still come to the conclusion that the fifth Superman film was not required.
   Luckily, there’s only one movie about a shark called JAWS. Then there’s Highlander. There can be only one. That lone movie, The Matrix, is terrific. Those two ALIEN documentaries and the two TERMINATOR films…so glad no one continued with those franchises. There isn’t a ROCKETEER animated series. I don’t know where you are getting these lies from.
   Though there is a TERMINATOR television show that allowed Dean Norris to appear in the movie and TV versions of the story. We cut that much slack to the accountants and other bean-counters.
   What is my Superman point? A franchise that continues after a gap means nothing to the viewers who missed the earlier stuff, no matter the quality of the material. That’s what we learn from Boba Fett. Here’s Ahsoka. She’s been in those pesky CLONE WARS. Fair enough.
   And she’s already had her live-action debut in someone else’s show. Miss REBELS and you are left staring at a lot of deep symbolic landscapes that have shallow symbolism for us. So much for episode one that stopped me in my tracks.
   Disney owns MARVEL, and the problem of how much homework you need to do is even more pronounced over there in the superhero setting. Away with the physics of superheroes. The question you must ask is this: do I REALLY need to watch this, that, those things, and all that other stuff just to follow the latest show?
   In the case of AHSOKA, I don’t think I had any choice. I was forced to stop. Then it was up to me to seek out the big plug for the massive gap I sensed. Luckily, watching REBELS, I viewed something that was fun. As I type this up, I am around halfway through the run of rebellious hijinks.
   Will 70+ episodes of REBELS place me in good stead to return to several episodes about Ahsoka? Doesn’t matter. I’m having fun watching a bunch of misfits sneak around Imperial bases. Even the bane of science fiction, the ventilator shaft, doesn’t spoil the show.
   Do you need to go back and watch that thing to understand this thing? Depends. That’s as good an answer as I can give you. To dodge REBELS, you might be left puzzled by many a twist and turn, and character introduction, and basic chunk of plotting. The consequence of doing a bit of homework meant that I unearthed a good show I hadn’t really taken in, when it appeared a few years back.
   So do we live in a golden age of television? Whatever that means. Now that we’re free of television’s shackles, and choose our own way of watching, consuming stories, perhaps we are. You still have to hack through a lot of fool’s gold to reach the good stuff. Remember this.
   On that point, I’ll return to REBELS. Spoiler alert: stormtroopers are easy to impersonate. That’s also a spoiler alert for STAR WARS. I won’t say which episode, in case you haven’t seen any of it. You can safely skip the Ewok spin-off movies. I think everyone did.