The Mandalorian and Grogu

We all know that May the Fourth is Star Wars Day, but did you know that just like how there are different dates for Easter and Christmas in the Orthodox Church, there is also "Orthodox Star Wars Day" on 25th May, which is the date Star Wars was originally released in cinemas in 1977? Well, if you didn't know that, now you do. 

A couple of nights ago, on Orthodox Star Wars Day, Cathy and I went to the local Odeon to watch the first Star Wars film to be released for seven years, The Mandalorian and Grogu. (Yes, it really has been seven years. That was a whole pandemic ago!)

This latest Star Wars film is about the Mandalorian bounty hunter, Din Djarin, and his foundling trainee, Grogu, continuing their story from the three TV series of The Mandalorian (and the episodes of The Book of Boba Fett that they rather stole the show in).

Very mild spoilers follow below...

If you haven't seen the TV series, then you might struggle getting into this story. It is quite episodic, with three distinct story chapters that could have been episodes in a fourth series. (There are primers available online to bring you up to speed.)

The Mandalorian is now working for the New Republic, as a contractor bringing in former Imperial generals who are operating as war-lords. This makes narrative sense to me, as the surviving Imperial factions pose the most risk to Grogu, the child in the Mandalorian's care. 

His work for the New Republic brings the Mandalorian into the orbit of the Hutt gangsters who first appeared in The Book of Boba Fett. Carnage ensues. 

I enjoyed watching this but there were moments when it felt a bit indulgent. Dave Filoni, current president of Lucasfilm, uses the film to bring back certain characters he created earlier in his career. Notably, this includes Rotta the Hutt, spawn of Jabba the Hutt. 

Rotta is presented as a complex character trying to emerge from the bloated shadow of his father, but it feels a bit worthy and preachy the way its done. Rotta first appeared in the Clone Wars cartoon series that had a 'moral' for every episode and his story arc feels very Saturday-morning-cartoon.

There are some niche references as well. The INT-4 mini-rig vehicle produced as a toy by Kenner in the early 1980s makes a live action debut. It's the latest in a line of appearances in modern Star Wars media of those early toys that were the product of a toy designer's imagination way back when. 

Another returning character is Zeb, the darkly comedic Lasat from Star Wars Rebels. He was my favourite character in Rebels and it's nice to see he has survived the war against the Empire. He's still serving in the military, though. The war isn't quite over everywhere. 

My favourite callbacks were when the film-makers leaned into the "baby Yoda" idea and had Grogu picking up little Yoda-isms. He spends some time living in a swamp, with a mud hut and a walking stick. Cathy pointed out, there is also a crashed spaceship in the swamp - another Dagobah reference.

There has been some criticism of modern Star Wars - particularly the Mandalorian series - being geared towards 'fan service' (I thought BOBF had too much). But really why not provide some service to the fans? After all, it's the fans that turned this franchise into the behemoth it is. 

Next year it will be a whole half century since the first instalment of Star Wars was released in cinemas. I doubt The Mandalorian and Grogu will have the same cultural resonance, but as a small continuation of what has turned into a cultural movement, it ticks the right boxes. It was a fun movie and made me, a self-confessed fan, happy. 

More reviews

The Mandalorian Season 1

The Mandalorian Season 2 

A conversation about religion in The Mandalorian Season 2

The Book of Boba Fett review 

Our scary cute Hallowe'en

Cathy has arranged some suitable toys on our mantelpiece for Hallowe'en.

I particularly like how Jack Skellington is next to Sally... Brown from Peanuts. Is he moving on to a new Sally squeeze? 

This chap is new to the mantel this year.

And the mummified Grogu is also a new addition.

We also have some spookified Cars characters - Luigi and Guido.

A Lego Hallowe'en scene

A vampire mad scientists lab with Frankenstein's monster in Playmobil. (The ghost also lights up!)

A Sylvanian Families little cat in a ghost costume (cuteness overload!)

And a bucket of bats who can zipper their wings together to keep warm!

It might not be very scary but I love our seasonal display of toys!

And if you want to see the mantel on TikTok, you can!

Star Wars Day 2022 – reviewing The Book of Boba Fett

I’ve held off writing a review of The Book of Boba Fett because when the series ended I wasn’t really sure what to make of it. I wanted to have a think about it. And then other stuff happened. But as its Star Wars Day, this feels like a suitable point for a late review.

We don't talk about Fett Club

As a long-time fan of the Star Wars universe, and a collector of Boba Fett action figures (my ‘Fett Club’) I was looking forward to seeing what they did in the series. Particularly as we were going to find out what happened between Boba’s fall into the Sarlacc Pit and his encounters with the Mandalorian who had come into possession of Fett’s armour.

In The Mandalorian TV show Boba didn’t seem so villainous. He was no longer working for the Empire, but was on his own mission, giving service based on honour rather than for money. He had become more than a bounty hunter, in the same way that the Mandalorian was rising above his profession to become the protector of Grogu.

The Book of Boba Fett promised to tell us how that redemptive path had opened up for Boba. And it started really well, Boba dramatically thrusting his way upwards through the sands after he had burned and torn his way through the flesh of the Sarlacc. That made the first episode, with his subsequent capture by Tusken Raiders set up the notion of a man finding his true identity when he had been stripped of everything else.

However, the problem wasn’t in the flashbacks that showed Boba grow into an understanding of loyalty and belonging. The problem the show had was the contemporary setting – Boba’s conflicts ‘now’. Having taken control of Jabba the Hutt’s crime syndicate, he just seemed unable to actually do anything with it.

I have seen that described as the ultimate case of a low-ranking employee thinking they can run the company, only to discover that, in fact, they do not have the skills to do so when they finally get their break. Boba is not a leader, and his desire to rule fuels his failure to gain the respect and status that he covets.

The series itself didn’t help deliver the story. I agree with the comments that the story could have been told in chronological order and it wouldn’t have affected the telling that much. The whole “Dances with Tuskens” storyline of Boba’s spiritual awakening never really chimed with the contemporary action as he established himself as Jabba’s replacement. The murder of his adopted tribe could have been a pivotal turning point in the story, pushing him towards a vengeful streak that culminated in his violent takeover of Jabba’s palace and schemes.

The series set up numerous feints as who Boba’s main opponents were going to be, starting with Jabba’s cousins, who then exited rapidly from the series. They were replaced by the Pyke Syndicate, which was introduced in the film Solo as the operation in charge of the spice mines on Kessel. But they weren’t a particularly exciting opponent even if they did have military grade death robots at their disposal. 

And then there was the peculiar suspension of the storyline to have two episodes almost entirely centred on the Mandalorian and Grogu. This included a sequence of Jedi training for Grogu with Luke Skywalker no less, delving more into the lore of Mandalore and the Darksaber, the Mandalorian getting cast out of his hardcore religious cult as an apostate, and a cameo for Ahsoka Tano where she referenced knowing Luke’s dad. The two episodes were almost standalone and completely derailed what little momentum The Book of Boba Fett had built up.

We also had to sit through egregious levels of fan service. At one point the action was literally The Mandalorian driving a Naboo Starfighter around Beggar’s Canyon on Tatooine, which really felt like the kind of fever dream fan-fic that would be written by an excitable teenager. I didn’t mind Max Rebo turning up having somehow survived Jabba’s sail barge exploding next to the Sarlacc pit. I enjoyed Boba Fett learning to ride a rancor. But some of the nods and references within the show were parachuted in just because the writers could. It gave off a vibe of desperation – as if the show’s writers were running out of ideas and content.

Two big characters making their live action debuts were the Wookiee bounty hunter Krrsantin, who had appeared in various comic books, and Cad Bane, who featured in several storylines in The Clone Wars cartoon series. Neither character was developed much beyond what we already knew. Cad Bane’s late appearance in the series meant the duel with Boba Fett lacked any weight at all. In The Clone Wars, Cad Bane was the protector of the orphaned Boba, and his mentor as Boba grew up. The shoot-out between them should have been a proper cinematic moment instead of something thrown in to pad out the final episode.

And that need for padding, ultimately, is where I feel The Book of Boba Fett really faltered. There was no core drive at the heart of the story. Boba had seized control and the story was what he did next…. except he didn’t really do anything next. There were moments along the way when it looked like things were about to start happening, but then the action stalled.

So, ultimately, this was a really frustrating series. It got hijacked as the staging point for the third series of The Mandalorian, which will now feature the Mandalorian and Grogu together again after they parted at the end of the second season. Personally, I think Boba Fett deserved more of the spotlight from the series that was ostensibly telling his story.

Erasing Cara Dune from Mandalorian merchandise

Cara Dune was a major character in both seasons of The Mandalorian. She debuted in the fourth episode of the first season, when the Mandalorian and the Child he is protecting seek sanctuary on a quiet planet. Cara is also hiding out there, and they team up to protect a village that is being attacked by hostile bandits.

At the end of the first series, the Mandalorian assembles a team of allies that he has made on his various adventures, to take the fight to the people pursuing the Child. Cara joins him and at the end of the final epsiode in the series, stays behind on the planet Navarro, where the showdown took place.

A few episodes into the second season of the show, the Mandalorian returns to Navarro, at the request of Cara and another character, to help them destroy a remnant Imperial base. In the process, they discover some more of the Child’s back-story hinting at why the remaining Imperial forces are hunting him. At the end of that episode, Cara is recruited by the New Republic to become a Ranger, which is a bit like a police sheriff.

At the end of the series, the Mandalorian approaches Cara for help, using her privileges as a newly minted Ranger to find and recruit someone to help him in his mission to rescue the Child from the Empire. Cara joins the Mandalorian and is part of the climactic battle against the Imperial warlord who has captured the Child.

So, as a character, Cara plays an important role in the story arcs of both seasons of The Mandalorian. However, after the second season wrapped, the actor who played Cara, the former MMA fighter Gina Carano, made negative comments about transgender people and refused to apologise. Gina then moved on to other topics, including conspiray theories about the pandemic, and was subsequently fired by the Disney Corporation. This was despite her being lined up to star in a new series set in the Star Wars universe, which Disney has decided to ditch as well.

So, basically that means it’s the end of Cara Dune as a character in future Star Wars projects. Because of the controversial comments made by Gina Carano, any attempt to recast the character would just dredge up all the reasons why the original actor got fired. Disney have decided to move on without both Gina Carano and Cara Dune.

Disney has the right to not employ people who don’t share the organisation's values. As the controversy dragged on, Gina Carano, had several opportunities to retract comments and de-escalate the situation. Instead, things got more toxic until Disney decided it had had enough.

However, Disney has now gone a step further and started removing the character from materials relating to The Mandalorian.

Towards the end of last year, Topps released a set of trading cards in the UK based on The Mandalorian. It was basically a re-release of two sets that had come out previously in the USA, with both sets combined into one big set covering both series. However, Cara Dune is notably absent from the cards.

Cara appears in a couple of still photos taken from various episodes, but very much as a background character. She barely features on the cards with pictures from the episode where she is introduced and first teams up with the Mandalorian. She is notably absent from the shiny ‘character cards’ that are in the set, although other characters who appear in just a few episodes are included.

While I understand the decision to not continue with the character in future projects, I feel ambivalent about the retroactive redaction of media to remove the character completely. Maybe there are contractual issues, although I would imagine the contracts for merchandise were signed a long time ago. Shiny character cards featuring Cara were included in the original trading card releases in the USA. So this is a decision made after the controversy.

I’m not keen on the phrase ‘cancel culture’, because it feels to me that the people who object the most to ‘cancel culture’ are, ironically, the people who think we should ban or boycott anything they don’t like. But this redaction is really noticeable. Because of how prominent a character Cara Dune was in the show, removing her is really obvious, and, weirdly, the removal of the character acts as a reminder by omission of the toxic comments that prompted the controversy. It’s almost as if Cara Dune – the character – made those comments and has been removed from the follow-up media.

I don’t know what the best way forward for the various companies involved would have been. They might have attracted negative attention if Cara Dune appeared in the trading card set from people who can’t distinguish between a character and an actor. Or maybe I am being naïve in thinking that it is possible to watch and enjoy a show without endorsing the views and opinions of the actors playing the characters. These things become intertwined and are hard to differentiate.

Some final notes

The Cara Dune action figure at the top of this post was released as part of a range of ‘retro’ looking figures that copy the style of the original Stars Wars figures that were released over 40 years ago. Because of the controversy, it is very unlikely there will be future action figures of this character. So, I bought one, as a future curiosity more than anything else.

The box of trading cards was a Christmas gift. I now have a complete set of the base cards and most of the insert series. The highlight of the box was a “parallel card”, with a purple tint. 

Only 50 of these were released and I got the very first one as noted on the back!

The character, Moff Gideon, is the Imperial warlord who captured the Child for his wicked plans at the end of the second season of the show. He's not my favourite character but at least he is in several episodes and has a speaking part!

December 2021 - End of month review

This is my final monthly round up for 2021 and my final blog post for the year, taking me up to an annual total of 92 posts.

December for us is dominated by Christmas. We wrote about 120 Christmas cards. Cathy took a picture of me posting a load of them outside our local post office, where the postbox has been decorated by someone with excellent crocheting skills!

There will be a series of posts in January about the 2021 Annual Christmas Card Audit. As cards have arrived, it's been fun seeing who has been trying to get a mention in the ACCA this year!

On the first weekend in December we put up the Christmas tree and decorations. (You can see some of them here.) We also had five advent calendars this year. Last year we didn't bother with the Lego Star Wars one, but this year we did, mainly to get the Christmassy version of the Child star of The Mandalorian, Grogu.

Life has gone on inbetween all the Christmassy stuff. I had an appointment to go and get my booster jab. This time it was in Splott instead of the big centre in the old Toys R Us building. 

There were signs up when I went in saying they were offering the Moderna vaccination, but the leaflet used the brand name, Spikevax. I asked the lady doing the jabs why they weren't using the brand name and was told "because it sounds like something you'd make up!" Technically, all brand names are 'made up', I suppose, but I know what she meant. It's a really silly sounding brand name.

Being boosterised means I should be protected against the omicron variant of the Sar-Cov2 coronavirus. However, as we have been seeing people, we have been doing lateral flow tests to make sure we haven't picked it up anywhere. It occurred to me as I binned yet another baggie of used tests and swabs that there is going to be a 'covid layer' in the landfill sites excavated by future archeologists that will help them accurately date the rubbish they are sifting through.

I had an early surprise present off Cathy when she bought me a box of Captain Crunch cereal. It's the proper American stuff complete with neon bits and that wonderful artificial "fruit" scent that comes with it.

At the start of Christmas week, the Welsh Government announced a ban on spectators at sporting events. The FAW responded by putting football on hiatus until January. At that point, I had only been to one game in December, because of other commitments and Barry Town having to postpone a game. However, that one game, which was between Caerau Ely and Cardiff Draconians, was a landmark game on my Futbology App. 

I was in work right up to Christmas Eve, then Cathy and I had a quiet Christmas Day. Two days later we went up to Shrewsbury and had some days with family before heading home to ring in the New Year. While in Shrewsbury I went to a football match at the Meadow for the first time since March 2020. It was an evening game that ended in a 0-0 draw, but it was so good to be back there! Here is a photo of the team warming up.

I haven't been to many evening games at the Meadow. It always feels a bit special. That was my final game of the year, giving me the following totals on Futbology.

This also doubles as a summary of my season so far as I didn't see any games before July. I'm quite pleased that I've been to a dozen new grounds. 

On the way home from Shrewsbury we stopped and called in at the Hereford Model Centre. I bought myself a present with some Christmas money. This will be the subject of at least one future blog post!

And if the thought of reading about Dungeon Bowl in the New Year doesn't fill you with excitement, then how about this reminder of the next holy holiday that I spotted in a Co-op in Shrewsbury?

That's right! Easter is on its way....

Star Wars Day 2021 - disturbed by the Force

When Star Wars was first released (as Star Wars - the A New Hope title came later), it was a standalone movie. It's well known that George Lucas borrowed heavily from storytelling theory and other sucessful movies to craft a self-contained story about a hero plucked from obscurity to rescue a damsel in distress, aided by a magical mentor and two bumbling servants, to triumph against all the odds over the forces of evil. 

In that sense, Star Wars is a perfect film. With ground-breaking special effects and enough fantastical aspects to the plot to keep things interesting, the movie was a massive success. That meant there was a hunger for more Star Wars stories and soon comic books, novels and a now-legendary Holiday Special filled the gaps until the first official sequel movie came out. 

One problem this has caused is the development of a lot of extra material. Sometimes known as 'lore', the extra details found in the books and comics, like the make and model of the spaceship the heroes travel in, and new characters introduced add to the complexity. In addition to the three movies of the "Original Trilogy" were some cartoon series and two spin-off movies featuring the Ewoks who were the cutesy, gutsy additions to the Star Wars universe in Return of the Jedi. These extra creations are now available on Disney Plus. 

Every so often new movies have come out and these have caused problems with various aspects of the 'lore' so that leads discussions about what events and people are 'canon' or not. When Disney bought the rights to Star Wars they ruled that the timeline that had been established after Return of the Jedi was now non-canon, and rebranded it as 'Legends'. They have subsequently relocated established characters, like Grand Admiral Thrawn, in the 'canon'  as characters in TV series.

Some of the books that I really enjoyed reading, like the X-Wing series by Michael A Stackpole, and the stories found in the comic books like Dark Empire, are now in the grey zone of Star Wars Legends, rather than being canon. I have mixed feelings about this. In one respect it doesn't matter. However, it does mean I don't take anything for granted. There are rumours that the most recent sequels are going to get rebooted soon.

But, I have started to grow ambivalent about Star Wars. It stems from working my way through the canon, particularly watching the Clone Wars cartoon series. There are lots of unanswered questions in that series, set 20 years or so before the events of A New Hope, revolving around the Jedi, their role in the Star Wars universe, and whether they are the righteous warriors I was led to believe.

One of the questions I have regarding the Clone Wars, is why are the Jedi automatically generals? Who decided they were equipped to lead? Generally speaking they are terrible at it. Huge numbers of clone troopers die in almost every episode. Too many decisions are made in defiance of orders, which in turn seem to be made for the sake of being made. 

The Jedi are committed to saving the Galactic Republic. So that leads to a deeper question - was the Republic worth saving? Presumably it is meant to be a good thing, but it's a huge bureaucracy and the taxation levels must have been off the charts. The Separatist mistake was having an army of conquest. They would have been better off using their army to protect worlds that joined them and enforce trade routes and so on, because these seem to be the main issues in the Star Wars glaaxy.

Which leads to another question, why are all these planets dependent on outside trade anyway? Planet after planet is under threat during the Clone Wars from blockades. The people of the Republic are routinely shown to be running out of food and medical supplies, and dependent on the hero Jedis turning up and rescuing them. How can people live on these planets without having their own means of production? Presumably at some point each planet was reasonably self-sufficient.

Most of this could just be explained as bad storytelling. But it's the wider arc of the story that has the biggest problems. Specifically, are the Jedi good? Many of the defining features of the Jedi focus on their deliberate attempt to be detached and emotionless. That's a fairly common element in the Clone Wars cartoon series. They are supposed to be peacekeepers and protectors but almost gleefully accepted their roles as generals in the army of the Republic. We never see a big debate about this, or a schism between Jedis who don't see their role as warriors.

I'm not the only person who has started to question the character of the Jedi as presented in the Star Wars films. In this article, 'Hang the Jedi', Jay Allen points out something quite chilling about the introduction of the Jedi in Star Wars.

The first time we ever see the power of the "light side" of the Force is to psychically dominate a security guard. The first time we see a lightsaber in use, it's to maim someone in a bar brawl. It's the "elegant weapon" of a man so feared that his battle cry sends the local people scattering.

Small wonder, given that his apprentice slaughtered those same people indiscriminately and without repercussion.

This man, Obi-Wan Kenobi, pines for a time when he and his brothers roamed the galaxy, meting out their unaccountable rulings as emotionless judges and executioners— when not using their powers to cheat at dice.

That post goes on to point out that the Jedi don't do anything to challenge slavery because it would be 'interfering', or to challenge the domination of sentient machines by organic beings (which is one of the most interesting subplots in the recent film, Solo). There is a good discussion to be had about exactly why the galactic population appears to be illiterate and there is no functioning media. Whose interests does that serve? Why aren't the Jedi champions of education? 

As an aside - there is a school scene in the recent series The Mandalorian and it would appear that schooling is something that has been reintroduced for children following the Galactic Civil War.

Another aspect of the original Star Wars film that deserves a second look is something that is written in a slightly tongue-in-cheek way in this article: The radicalization of Luke Skywalker. There are some good points made in there - particularly about Obi Wan Kenobi telling a version of the truth about his father that is later revealed to be a lie. Kenobi doesn't tell Luke everything he needs to know about the Force, and neither does Yoda, which later in Luke's life and the Star Wars Saga has disastrous consequences when Luke tries to train his nephew as a Jedi. 

So, where does this leave me, as a long term fan of Star Wars? It was a story that brought me hope through wonder when I was a dislocated seven year old, a film that seemed to be imbued with deeper, more spiritual meaning, and ultimately being Star-Wars-without-the-Force was one of the many, many things I found defective about the film Rogue One.

Maybe I've gotten older and more sceptical. I'm not taking as much on faith these days. It seems sensible to question the motivations of those who claim some kind of leadership role, which they might not be suited for, and who claim some kind of deeper knowledge, that comes with its own dark side of deception and desire for power. 

Or maybe I haven't grown up, and I can write a lengthy blog post analysing areas of doubt in something as if it were real and important, because to me it is real and important; it's a certain point of view.

The Mandalorian recycles a critique of religion

The Mandalorian was my favourite TV show of 2020 and the second series was even stronger than the first. But a conversation in the penultimate episode brought up some philosophical challenges to religious belief that surprised me. There are SPOILERS ahead - so stop reading now if that bothers you.

This is the way

The episode was titled "The Believer". The basic premise is that the Mandalorian and his team spring a prisoner called Mayfield to help them steal information from an Imperial base. Mayfield and the Mandalorian had crossed paths in the first series, and Mayfield ended up in a New Republic prison after trying to double-cross the Mandalorian, so there was an element of reconciliation and redemption about this episode; two big themes ripe for exploration.

Mayfield and the Mandalorian end up riding in an Imperial transport together. They have both put on stolen Imperial armour, which meant the Mandalorian had taken off his helmet and replaced it with a trooper's helmet. 

Then comes the interesting conversation. Mayfield comments that to the indigenous people on this particular planet the Empire and the New Republic are very similar. Both are external occupiers fighting their own war and the people are collateral damage in the middle. I've cribbed the dialogue from IMDb.

Mayfeld: Yeah. Empire, New Republic. It's all the same to these people. Invaders on their land is all we are. I'm just sayin', somewhere someone in this galaxy is ruling and others are being ruled. I mean, look at your race. Do you think all those people that died in wars fought by Mandalorians actually had a choice? So how are they any different than the Empire. If you were born on Mandalore, you believe one thing, if you're born on Alderaan, you believe something' else. But guess what? Neither one of them exist anymore. Hey, I'm just a realist. I'm a survivor, just like you.

The Mandalorian: Let's get one thing straight. You and I are nothing alike.

Mayfeld: I don't know. Seems to me like your rules start to change when you get desperate. I mean, look at ya. You said you couldn't take off your helmet off, and now you got a stormtrooper one on, so what's the rule? Is it you can't take off your Mando helmet, or you can't show your face? 'Cause there is a difference. Look, I'm just sayin', we're all the same. Everybody's got their line they don't cross until things get messy. As far as I'm concerned, if you can make it through your day and still sleep at night, you're doin' better than most.

Mayfield's questions about the Mandalorian's helmet relate to how, previously, the Mandalorian had insisted that removing his helmet was against his creed. He points out that the Mandalorian seems to be changing the requirements of his religion. That's an interesting thing to discuss in itself and maybe I will in a future blog post.

It's the previous dialogue that surprised me though. "If you were born on Mandalore, you believe one thing, if you're born on Alderaan, you believe something' else."

This is a criticism made of religious belief that is made currently in this galaxy as well as a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. I think I first read it in The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins - the idea that for most people their religious affiliation is linked to where they were born and the culture they were raised in. 

Accordingly, the fervent evangelical Christians raised in the American Deep South and the fervent Muslims raised in Islamic theocracies, and the fervent Hindus raised in India, and the fervent Roman Catholics raised in Ireland, Italy or Spain, and the fervent Mormons raised in Utah, are just the products of their time and place. In other words, any believer's religion is most likely to be the product of circumstances than anything else. Most people retain the religion they were raised in, even if they don't actively practise, which is why the number of people who gave their religion as "Christian" on the last UK census is over ten times as many as the number of regular churchgoers.

The challenge to believers from people pointing this out is, broadly, how do you know that you believe what you believe because it's true or do you just believe it because you've always been told that it's true? That's quite a question to reflect on.

For me, I'm just interested that this discussion is being had using Mandalore and Alderaan as proxies for names of religions. It's not the first time the philosophy of religion has crept into mainstream media. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 posited that the moral response to a god that caused suffering and pain was to seek to kill it. (I blogged about that here.) More recently the TV show The Good Place asked whether being 'good' to avoid punishment was genuinely being 'good'.

In the second series as a whole, the Mandalorian is confronted with several challenges to his beliefs, and this is one of them. I suspect for many people this dialogue would hardly have registered as making an important philosophical point. And yet the potential depth of this discussion, which didn't go on for long in the episode, adds something to The Mandalorian as a TV show, giving it some relevance to the world we inhabit.

This is the Way to my 2020 TV review

Here's a review of the telly I watched in 2020. (The picture is relevant!)

The only 'reality TV' series I watched was The Great British Bake Off. Kudos to the team for being able to film it during a pandemic, but really it followed the same format as it ever does. It was nice escapism to watch something where the only dreadful crisis is if someone has burned their biscuits or dropped their doughnuts on the floor. My main criticism is that Sandi Toksvig was a big loss on the presenting front. 

Back in the summer we started paying for BT Sport so that I could watch baseball on ESPN. I ended up getting up in the middle of the night on a couple of occasions to watch my team, the Padres. That included the post-season play-off games, all of which were shown across BT Sport. I've since taken up a special offer and we now have Sky Sports as well. So I've been watching a lot of football. 

Cathy and I have been having lunch together almost every day in lockdown. We tend to watch an episode of a comedy with lunch and have worked through all 11 seasons of Frasier, starting from season 1, and other American comedies, Man With a Plan, Superstore, and Single Parents.

Man With a Plan stars Matt LeBlanc as Adam and his on-screen wife, Linda, is played by Liza Snyder, who we used to watch years ago in a sitcom called Jesse where she was the sparky best friend of Christina Applegate's titular character. Given the twenty or so year gap between watching her in Jesse, it's quite funny to imagine that Joey from Friends married Linda from Jesse, and they both changed their names and moved to Pittsburgh. We watch a lot of American comedies and the connections via actors is quite funny. For example, Swoosie Kurtz plays Adam's mom. But she was also in Mike and Molly, playing Molly's mom. Again, it would be quite feasible for Adam and Molly to be estranged siblings with the same mom.

Superstore is set in a Walmart-style big box store populated by a mix of eccentric staff-members. What I like about it as a show is that none of the characters are just out-and-out stupid. Some are naive, and others are weird, but unlike in many British sitcoms where you tend to have one smart character surrounded by idiots, all these characters have depth. Single Parents is about a group of single parents whose children are all in the same school, and who have grouped together for mutual support. The cast is lifted by Brad Garrett, who I rate as one of the most overlooked comic actors at work today, and some really cool kid actors. The twin girls to whom Brad is a single dad, are perfectly cast as malevolent evil geniuses in waiting and yet manage to be adorable at the same time.

It was weird going back to Frasier after so long. It was well worth second look and it has held up much better than Friends, some 20-25 years on. Some plotlines jar, particularly around discussions of homosexuality, which were probably quite progressive when the show was written in the 90s, but feel a little bit old-fashioned now. One episode where Frasier is erroneously outed as gay doesn't have the same edge to it as it may have done originally, because who would really care now about that sort of thing?

One British sitcom we have discovered and quickly watched through on iPlayer is Upstart Crow, written by Ben Elton and starring David Mitchell as Will Shakespeare. There are a lot of laughs in this as it shows Will as a shameless plagiarist who is also adept at turning everyday life into scenes for his plays. There are running gags about terrible coach journeys between Stratford and London, and knowing nods to issues like immigration, European unity, and a country run by rich posh boys. There are a few rude bits, but they are placed in mock-Shakespearean language, and are quite funny. There are some jokes where it helps to have a bit of knowledge of Shakespeare and some of the controversial conspiracy theories about his writing, but overall I don't think you absolutely need to know what's going on to enjoy it.

And so on to my absolute TV highlight of the year - The Mandalorian on Disney Plus. This show was the reason we bought a year's subscription to the streaming service, and it was worth it. I reviewed the first season back on Star Wars Day. The second season was even better.

#####SPOILERS FOLLOW#####

The second season follows the Mandalorian as he embarks on a quest given to him by his cult leader to deliver The Child (aka Baby Yoda) safely to the Jedi, who can train The Child to use the Force. It's a straight 'quest' narrative. Along the way the Mandalorian has to fight monsters like the Krayt Dragon and giant ice spiders, deal with treachery, strike up new alliances, and keep The Child out of the hands of the sinister Moff Gideon who wants to exploit The Child's abilities to help relaunch the Galactic Empire. 

I would quite like to know what people who aren't steeped in Star Wars make of The Mandalorian, because this series really felt like it was aimed squarely at fans. We see some characters return from the first series, but also live action debuts from two characters who were well-established in the Star Wars cartoon series. These are Bo-Katan Kryze (played by Katie Sackhoff), the exiled ruler of Mandalore, and the apostate Jedi, Ahsoka Tano (played by Rosario Dawson). Both these characters featured in The Clone Wars cartoon series and Star Wars Rebels. 

The episode with Ahsoka seemed to lay the groundwork for a future series about her, as she is seeking the whereabouts of Grand Admiral Thrawn. The last episode of Star Wars Rebels shows Ahsoka setting off on a quest to find Ezra Bridger, another Jedi survivor, who has disappeared along with Thrawn and Thrawn's fleet into hyperspace as part of a plan to liberate the planet Lothal. But I don't think you would need to know any of that to appreciate the episode.

This is something that the Mandalorian does very well. It throws in all these references to Star Wars lore, like the Krayt Dragon, or Operation Cinder, but in a way that doesn't bog down the storytelling or rely on you knowing what any of these things are before watching it. 

And then there were two big characters from the movies that returned - Boba Fett, and Luke Skywalker (three if you count R2-D2, which we probably should). It is now Star Wars canon that Boba Fett survived his encounter with the Sarlacc in Return of the Jedi and lives on to hunt bounties for another day. Meanwhile, we got to see Luke Skywalker in the early days of the New Republic when he was trying to create a new Jedi Academy. We know how that panned out from the events relayed in Star Wars Episode VIII - The Last Jedi. 

That leads on to a source of real concern for fans of the show. We now know The Child's name is Grogu, and he was entrusted to the care of Luke Skywalker. But we also know from The Last Jedi that Ben Solo went beserk and massacred the other Academy students. Grogu was once apparently in the Jedi Temple on Coruscant, where the child Jedi were massacred by Anakin Skywalker.Will Grogu survive a second massacre of Force-attuned children? Let's hope so. 

There is going to be a third series of The Mandalorian, which I think will focus on the Mandalorian helping Bo-Katan's efforts to liberate the planet Mandalore. Given that this series ends with the Mandalorian fulfilling his quest, aided by Bo-Katan, it makes sense for the next series to pick up from there. Katie Sackhoff played the part of Bo-Katan very well, and I would be happy to watch a series where she had a main role. 

The big reveal at the end of Season 2, however, was that there is going to be a Boba Fett series called The Book of Boba Fett. As a fan of Boba Fett, this is excellent news and I am beyond excited about it.

I think the future for Star Wars is probably going to be these short-form series. Both series of The Mandalorian are only eight episodes long and yet they have been much more satisfying than some of the recent movies, which haven't performed as well as hoped at the box office. At one point Disney were planning to release a movie a year, but I think they have backtracked on that now.

And why would they invest in movies that might not work when TV shows like The Mandalorian can generate as much interest. The merchandise available for the show seems to have been very popular. It is also going to drive subscriptions for Disney Plus, and they don't have to split their costs with distribution companies or cinemas. And overall the shows are cheaper to make. They are filmed almost entirely on virtual sets with a small cast. The return on investment must be incredible. The executives must be thinking this is the way forward.

So that's my review of TV in 2020. In a year when I needed some escapism I got to travel to a galaxy far, far away, and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Star Wars Day 2020 - a long review of The Mandalorian

As it’s Star Wars Day I feel this is as good a day as any to review The Mandalorian, the newish series set in the Star Wars universe. 

THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS so I'm posting a picture of my lockdown workstation buddies to break up the text. Read on at your own risk!

Yep, they're Lego!

The Mandalorian is the flagship series on the new Disney Plus streaming service. I’m not saying it’s the only reason we bothered buying Disney Plus, but the way the service launch coincided with the lockdown combined with this series that it feels like half of the geekier end of the Internet has been raving about, made the purchase almost inevitable.

(A sidebar on Disney Plus. Is it worth the money? Kind of. Except we already own most Disney and Pixar films on other formats, along with Star Wars and the better Marvel movies. The rest of the programming isn’t hugely exciting. The Star Wars animated series Clone Wars and Rebels are probably next on my watch list. Despite them saying its all of Disney’s back catalogue there are a couple of omissions – the film ‘Song of the South’, which has a fairly relaxed attitude to slave plantations implying how life as a slave was okay really, isn’t on there. Neither is that famous nature documentary where off-scene riggers literally threw lemmings off a cliff. Maybe that’s for the best.)

Disney have been adding a new episode of The Mandalorian every Friday for the past six weeks, with two available straight away. The eight episode run is now concluded. It was ace. I have to say that right from the start. It had humour. It had believable characters. It kept me hooked week to week.

It’s not a kid’s TV series. That’s not to say it’s hugely gritty or anything. Characters aren't using the f-word and nobody’s injecting narcotics into their eyeballs. There’s no nudity, or even hints at sex. But there is violence and even blood, which you don’t get a lot of in the Star Wars universe. Bad guys die some pretty horrible deaths, including getting tipped headfirst into a smelter, although they do tend to die their horrible deaths mercifully quickly.

The series is set in the aftermath of the Empire’s collapse. There are traces all around. Some Imperial generals have set up as warlords. Some high-calibre weaponry has got into the hands of thugs and thieves. It all feels quite believable – the power vacuum when the dictatorship collapses is something we’ve seen a few times. Ordinary people are trapped by it. The new regime doesn’t really care, or have the means to sort the problem out. There are New Republic X-Wings in one episode. They turn up for their plot point and then disappear. One character is a disillusioned former Rebel Alliance soldier. Even the good guys get jaded.

We learn more about the Mandalorian Warriors. The Clone Wars cartoon series has filled in quite a bit of back story, and this series adds to it. I liked the way it was considered as a creed rather than a race, with its own lore, and honour code. Most of all the Mandalorians were recast as ambiguous, neither good, nor evil, but following their rules. “This is the way,” being their affirmation of a course of action, and signalling agreement with it. The Armourer, who is sort of the sect leader, is a combination of smith and priest, and had some real gravitas.

The lead protagonist is the Mandalorian, a bounty hunter. Other members of the bounty hunter Guild just call him "Mando". We learn a bit about his back story as the series progresses, and his real name in the last episode. But overall he manages to remain a mystery man. He is the character the story follows without the story ever really being about him. I appreciated that. Too many shows rely on character exposition rather than letting you learn about them through observation. 

The main other character is “Baby Yoda”, although that is the name ascribed to the creature by fans rather than in the show. In the script the creature is just ‘the child’ and its origins, race and purpose are a mystery to everyone, except, presumably, the Imperials who are hunting it. I knew about Baby Yoda before watching the show because, like I said, the Internet went nuts about it. I didn’t realise Baby Yoda was going to provide the main story arc of the show. I’m not complaining at all. I love a good mystery, and maybe we will learn something about Yoda along the way.

Other characters are good too. I liked Kuiil (pronounced Queel) the Ugnaught. His way of ending arguments by just saying “I have spoken” has already passed into our household vernacular. They managed to give him a backstory – enslavement by the Empire and earning his freedom – in a few short lines that made him real.

Cara Dune, the jaded former rebel soldier, was a bit less three-dimensional. There’s definitely more in her back story that could be explored, and I’d like to know more about her. IG-11, the assassin droid hunting Baby Yoda, was a character in its own right by the end of the show. I’ve noticed that Droids tend to be expendable in Star Wars spin offs now (Rogue One and Solo spring to mind). Sadly, The Mandalorian continues this theme. 

The Imperial generals are a bit cookie-cutter villains, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing – often a villain trades menace for screen time. It’s the Jaws effect – the less you see of the shark the scarier it is.

There a lot of little background details that probably need several rewatches to get. I thought it as funny seeing the Salacious Crumb creatures being sold for food in the street market. And if you ever wondered what the Cloud City refugee carrying what looked like an ice cream maker was actually carrying, then that was resolved as well. But those details are for the fans and aren’t obtrusive. 

The only thing it would be helpful to know is that the robots in a flashback scene are Super Battle Droids from the Separatist Army in the Clone Wars. But you don’t really need to know that to get what is happening, or why the titular Mandalorian became a Mandalorian Warrior. I also really liked seeing Mos Eisley again.

There wasn’t much I didn’t like about the series. One episode was a bit duff, when the Mandalorian is forced to track down a wild beast. But even that episode has a very important plot point regarding Baby Yoda. The writers have run through a number of tropes though. We’ve had the ‘village in peril needs a gunslinger’ episode, the prison break episode, the ‘blackmailed into a feat of derring do’ episode, and the ‘helping a rookie’ episode. It feels like every science fiction series has the same stock story elements for episodes.

Overall though, despite being set in a well-known and well-worn fictional universe, I felt The Mandalorian had enough new elements and introduced plenty of innovative concepts to seem like it was breaking new ground, rather than rehashing the same old thing. That contrasted a lot with Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker, which I saw around Christmas, which really didn’t offer anything new at all and felt totally bound by the conventions of Star Wars script-writing. (After The Last Jedi had controversially ripped up the blueprint for a Star Wars movie, Episode IX felt like a real let down.)

I feel The Mandalorian benefitted from not revisiting the same old scenes and from showing us something new, or showing us those things in a new way. (Mos Eisley is a big enough place to go back to.) The callbacks to the massive Star Wars back catalogue were subtle and evidence of the care shown by the creative team, but they weren’t included by people trying to show off their fanboy credentials. Blink and you’ll miss them. Those knowing nods are much more satisfying than in some of the cinematic releases, where it often feels they are trying a bit too hard.

So, overall, I really enjoyed The Mandalorian. And I’m a hard guy to please when it comes to modern Star Wars stuff. I know it’s entitlement, but I have been into Star Wars since 1983 so I have high expectations. The Mandalorian met those expectations, and I would say it’s probably worth signing up to Disney Plus even if that’s the only thing you watch on it.