Season 3 Episode 6 has dropped.

This one is another curve ball, though in the end it serves the story arc. See what you think.

Spoilers on Saturday, please.

Quote from: Lurkndog on April 05, 2023, 07:47:01 AM
Season 3 Episode 6 has dropped.

This one is another curve ball, though in the end it serves the story arc. See what you think.

Spoilers on Saturday, please.

I got some choice words about this episode.....

Liked it. Waiting on spoiler window.

 I liked it too, but I can see how some might have reasonable issues with it.

Saw the episode with my teenage goddaughters. I had no idea who one of the guest stars was, but they could stop chattering about them.

I liked the general thrust of the episode... it finally felt like the earlier seasons where Mando would go someplace and then have to deal with a sidequest to obtain the next stage in his main quest... but at the same time the two (three if you're a teenage girl) guest stars were so recognizable as themselves they almost pulled me out of the episode (Katie Sackholf and Rosario Dawson by contrast are known for working in the general genre and were taking over established roles... not guest roles created specifically to cater to a specific actor's presence).

More once the spoiler window opens.

First, I thought it was unoriginal for them to reintroduce another death star... but then I realized it was just a guest star...

I can't give the guest stars much shit here - who doesn't want to get to play around in Star Wars? Yes, they stick out like sore thumbs, but hey good for them.

Enjoyable episode, I rolled my eyes a few times but yeah more later.

For me it continues to meander and lack any kind of emotional pull.  It's okay but it's just not drawing me in.

Quote from: Eirikrautha on April 06, 2023, 10:24:50 AM
First, I thought it was unoriginal for them to reintroduce another death star... but then I realized it was just a guest star...

Seems a lot of online commentators are flipping out over the fat black woman. I dunno what's going on. Hopefully tomorrow people can let me know what the outrage is all about.

WE ARE NOW GO FOR SPOILERS ON MANDALORIAN SEASON 3 EPISODE 06
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The Mandalorian Season 3 Episode 06

Chapter 22 - Guns for Hire

***

A Quarren freighter cruises into view.

On board the Imperial Command Cruiser taken from Moff Gideon, Axe Woves and Koska Reeves intercept the Quarren freighter carrying a Mon Calamari prince, who has run off to be with his lover, the captain of the freighter. They are under contract to bring the wayward prince back to his family.

Accomplishing this task without incident, they proceed to their next job on Plazir-15.

Notable bits:

• The female Quarren captain has a water tank installed on the her bridge, surrounding the traditional command chair. The tank drains and retracts into the floor when not in use. At one point, an underling dumps a small fish into the tank for her to snack on.


• The Mon Calamari costume, which appears to be practical, has a distinct Hanna Barbera quality to it.


• The Quarren captain's makeup seems to be a blend of CGI and prosthetics, and it works rather well. At one point, when her romantic entanglements come to light, the female captain gives a rather fetching found-out gaze that shows through the makeup to excellent result.

***

Bo-Katan's ship exits hyperspace above Plazir-15, and swoops down over a stately pleasure dome. She and Mando are here to meet with the other Mandalorians, whose ships are parked on a landing field outside the city. But before they can get in touch with the Mandalorian mercenaries, local air traffic control overrides their flight controls and reroutes them to a different landing pad.

They land, and two Imperial droids usher them into a hyperloop train car that, over their objections, takes them to the leaders of the place. They are ushered into an elaborate banquet hall, where they are immediately invited to join the festivities. They are introduced to the leaders, Captain Bombardier and The Duchess.

After a bit of chitchat and Grogu aegyo, Captain Bombardier invites them out on the patio to see the view, so they can get down to brass tacks. Plazir-15 is having problems with droids going haywire, it seems to be coordinated, and they want Mando and Bo-Katan to handle it. In return Plazir-15 will formally recognize Mandalore as an sovereign system, and petition the New Republic to accept it as such.

"You had me at battle droids," quips Mando.

They meet with the head of security, played by Christopher Lloyd, who shows them security footage of some incidents. There is a master kill switch for the droids, but it they use it, their society will basically collapse. The head of security tells them they can get a list of the problem droids from the Ugnauts.

Bo-Katan and Mando go down to the lower levels and speak to the Ugnauts. Mando breaks out his knowledge of Ugnaut protocol and sweet-talks them into providing them with the list. "I have spoken."

The Ugnauts' lead takes our heroes to the loading docks, where battle droids have been repurposed as cargo loaders. Mando proceeds to kick the battle droids until one of them fights back. They proceed to run it down through the back alleys and "Blade Runner" it.

They find a "spark pad" on the battle droid with the name and address of a robot bar called The Resistor.

They show up at the droid bar and immediately make a scene. Apparently their kind isn't welcome there. Speaking to the bartender, Mando goes into bad cop mode. The bartender tells him that the droids are afraid that if the incidents continue, they will be replaced, and they don't have anywhere else to go. The bartender cooperates, and finds out that the malfunctioning droids were all served the same batch of of Nepenthé, a lubricant that also delivers "program refreshing sub-particles."

Later, in the droid morgue, they take a sample of the lubricant from the destroyed battle droid. The programming particles are still active, and cause a surgery droid to attack them. Bad idea. Investigating with a technician, they discover that the particles are actually nanobots, and the blockchain indicates that they were brought in illegally by the head of security.

They arrest the head of security, who turns out to have been a Separatist holdover, a follower of Count Dooku.

The Duchess exiles the head of security to the moon of Paraqaat. She then grandts our heroes access to the mercs, gives them the key to the planet, and makes Grogu a knight in the Ancient Order of Independent Regencies.

Notable bits:

• Star Wars air traffic control can override your controls?


• Plazir-15 claims to be "the outer rim's only remaining direct democracy." I'm not sure what to make of that. Is that "everybody votes on what to do, all the time?"


• Talk about railroading, with a literal railroad!


• Note that the royal guards are wearing stormtrooper armor decorated with tabards and capes. Note also that one of them is Bryce Dallas Howard.


• Captain Bombardier is a product of the New Republic Amnesty Program? I guess Doctor Pershing should have stuck with the program.


• Aegyo is K-Pop slang for when a pop idol does a quick smile, cute gesture, flourish or pose, often in a closeup shot, as a one second bit of fanservice.


• I'm not sure how The Captain and Tennille knew that Mando and Bo-Katan were coming. It's possible that a flight plan was filed, and the Plazir-15 crowd got their names from that.


• Note that the Captain and the Duchess address Bo-Katan as Princess.


• I love how the Ugnauts ignore them and lie to their faces until Mando addresses them in their own manner. It's their defense against annoying eloi.


• I cynically suspect that Grogu's knighthood is about as prestigious as being the Burger King.

***

Mando and Bo-Katan travel to the landing field where the mercenary fleet is parked, and meet with Axe Woves. When he refuses to turn the fleet back over to her, she challenges him to a duel. It's a tough fight, but she ekes out a win, but even then, they aren't going to follow her without the Darksaber.

Mando then gives the Darksaber to Bo-Katan, arguing that since the ghoul on Mandalore defeated him and took the saber, and she defeated the Ghoul, she has won it in combat. Axe Woves is forced to admit that this is legit.

Bo-Katan stands tall with the Darksaber in her hand.

Note: It's a bit odd that they didn't put their helmets on to fight the duel.

***

On the surface, this episode is kind of an odd duck. But there is a whole lot of world building on display here. I'll post more in the morning.

OK, was I the only one who felt like Plazir-15 looked like The City from Logan's Run?

NO FIGHTING SHIP IN IT'S RIGHT MIND WOULD LET TRAFFIC CONTROL OVERRIDE THE PILOT LIKE THAT. That jarred me right out of my suspension of disbelief.

The number of cameos was disturbing. Lizzo can't act for shit and was thrown in there for woke cred only.

This was the first episode of the Mandalorian that I thought was bad. Actually, I think the show may have jumped the shark with the guest star appearances. The game of "toss the critter" was too obviously a parody of the Red Queen's croquet game from Alice in Wonderland. Overall, this episode felt like a poorly written Scooby-Doo episode to me.

Possible reason why. The season end of Bad Batch was just a couple of days before and it was awesomely gut-wrenchingly dramatic, so this Mandalorian episode maybe meant to balance that out. Plus, a bad episode still generates a lot of buzz and Star Wars Celebration is this weekend (which has already shown the trailer for Ahsoka and its hints of the Thrawn Trilogy).

Yep. Quite a few bits in this episode that don't quite work.

Overriding the Gauntlet's flight controls, I guess we can write that up to allowing the flight control to happen if they want to land, and Bo-Katan could have aborted the landing manually. Like the "rules" behind how the Tracking Fobs work, it's fuzzy and plot-ty.

I didn't mind fat black lady and fat white guy. They kinda fit the role of silly, spoiled governors.
But one has to wonder what this planet is gonna do if anything even remotely out of scope happens. They're reliant on droids to do everything for them. Really, I got a strong Wall-E vibe from the place. Except, yknow, ugnaughts toiling away to make the droids for them.
An elected monarchy that's a direct democracy. Bwhuh?
PS a direct democracy would scare the shit out of me.

I was slightly concerned that this was gonna go into the whole "Are droids people" argument. I really hate that because Star Wars is intentionally vague on that point. I'm glad they didn't.

I can accept that the seperatist guy was old and frustrated and enacted his plan simply because he wanted to do something, but I'm wondering how the ugnaughts knew where the next droid malfunction would occur? Were they in on the plan? (I don't find that likely) Was there some clue that their droid expertise picked up on? Why didn't they warn someone? Do they just build and maintain droids and a battle droid going crazy and ripping some school children's arms off is none of their concern?

I got a strong impression that Din and Bo-Katan were only slightly serious about humoring the governor. Going through the motions because they needed their help, and play along with the whole "M'lady, M'Lord" stuff.

I did like the episode. I'd give it a C. A fun watch with some Huh? Moments. Pretty standard for The Mandalorian.

Quote from: jeff37923 on April 08, 2023, 01:35:23 AM
OK, was I the only one who felt like Plazir-15 looked like The City from Logan's Run?

The domed city is a long-running trope in sci fi. Personally, it made me think of EPCOT Center at Disney World.

If you want to see a cynical take on domed cities, read William Gibson's Johnny Mnemonic in the collection Burning Chrome.

Quote from: jeff37923 on April 08, 2023, 01:35:23 AM
NO FIGHTING SHIP IN IT'S RIGHT MIND WOULD LET TRAFFIC CONTROL OVERRIDE THE PILOT LIKE THAT. That jarred me right out of my suspension of disbelief.

I agree with you on that. My immediate reaction is "that's the first thing Han Solo disabled on the Millennium Falcon."

I'm not surprised that Bo-Katan still has hers enabled. She's kind of Lawful Good to a fault.

Quote from: jeff37923 on April 08, 2023, 01:35:23 AM
This was the first episode of the Mandalorian that I thought was bad.

I wouldn't go that far, especially since there was a lot in this episode that I really liked. More on that in a later post.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on April 08, 2023, 06:29:20 AM
I didn't mind fat black lady and fat white guy. They kinda fit the role of silly, spoiled governors.
But one has to wonder what this planet is gonna do if anything even remotely out of scope happens. They're reliant on droids to do everything for them. Really, I got a strong Wall-E vibe from the place. Except, yknow, ugnaughts toiling away to make the droids for them.

I didn't mind Lizzo, and I liked the floating antigravity train on her gown. It made more sense than Padme's weird space queen getups in the prequel trilogy.
I liked Jack Black a lot, I thought he had the perfect handle on that part. Seemingly a popinjay, but at times you can see the realpolitik showing through.

As for what Plazir-15 would do if things get ugly, well, there's a big red button on the Head of Security's console that reactivates all the battle droids. Their guards are wearing stormtrooper armor. I'm sure that somewhere there are blasters to go with that armor, though they are probably locked up in an armory, or in vaults in the guard stations, like riot gear in a modern day police station. There would probably have to be a declaration of martial law for them to get that stuff out. 

Mainly, though, Plazir-15 seems like a tourist destination. Disney World on steroids. And they have the mercs to deal with pirates and other external threats.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on April 08, 2023, 06:29:20 AM
I can accept that the seperatist guy was old and frustrated and enacted his plan simply because he wanted to do something, but I'm wondering how the ugnaughts knew where the next droid malfunction would occur? Were they in on the plan? (I don't find that likely) Was there some clue that their droid expertise picked up on? Why didn't they warn someone? Do they just build and maintain droids and a battle droid going crazy and ripping some school children's arms off is none of their concern?

What if the Ugnauts are too low-caste to bring charges against a human, particularly one at the top of the pecking order?

Quote from: Lurkndog on April 08, 2023, 07:45:51 AM
I agree with you on that. My immediate reaction is "that's the first thing Han Solo disabled on the Millennium Falcon."

  "We don't slave this ship to anything. Ever."--Han Solo, Heir to the Empire, when asked if the Falcon had a 'slave circuit', and when Leia suggested the possibility of setting up a temporary one to speed up their approach to Nkllon.