A Recipe for Bad

The Bad Batch released two episodes for its finale on Wednesday, the first a bit better written than the second, though both fell short of their aims.

Once again, the influence of Andor is apparent. The Batch infiltrates an Imperial base to get intel on the Empire's secret cloning project. Unfortunately for them, young Saw Gerrera is there and ruins everything. The morally grey character who was part of one of the best scenes on Andor is here just an obstacle, spouting dialogue about how the ends justify the means. But the ends, it turns out, are that Gerrera doesn't assassinate his targets and the Batch don't get their intel--and Tech gets killed, too.

Tech was part of the focus of "Crossing", one of the two best episodes of the season (along with "Faster"), yet I still didn't feel a strong enough connexion with him for his death to have an impact. A lot of the problem may have stemmed from the awkward flirting scene between Tech and Phee.

She asks if he was just going to leave without saying goodbye and he says, yes, like he saw absolutely no reason why he should say goodbye to her. A couple episodes earlier, one of the other clones, I forget which, remarked on how Tech had "competition" when it seemed Phee had her eyes on the mayor of Pabu. That was the only time I can remember romance being hinted at between the two. "Crossing" made an attempt to explore how Tech doesn't express his emotions so I think we're meant to take his non-responsive reaction to Phee as a sign of that weak capacity for expression but it came off more like he simply had no particular interest in her. It made the scene unintentionally funny and slightly creepy. It kind of reminded me of Lara Flynn Boyle's character in Wayne's World except Wanda Sykes is still giving a slow, stilted performance.

I liked some of the business with the Batch infiltrating the base and writer Matt Michnovetz knows how to construct sequences like that. He gives some dialogue to Tarkin about "uniting" the galaxy under the Empire, a gesture towards some of the political, philosophical drama on Andor and in Anakin's story in the prequels. But it's only a moment before the Imperials go back to being cartoon villains. Tarkin orders an air strike on the Batch trapped on the rail car despite protests that Imperial troops might be caught "in the crossfire". For one thing, it's not crossfire when the firing is coming from only one direction, and for another, the Imperial troops are clearly a good distance from the Batch, so the line, obviously designed to show Tarkin being ruthless, just didn't make any sense.

Echo is back with the group because "Rex is on a separate mission." Why Echo didn't go with Rex is never explained.

Also not explained is why the Batch go to Cid to recuperate even though a couple episodes earlier we'd learned the Batch had turned against Cid, making her their enemy for no apparent reason. Possibly they couldn't trust medical care from any other source in range of Tarkin's base but it would've helped if there'd been one line in which the characters referenced this fact, maybe even a shot of Hunter and Echo discussing it. "Can we trust Cid?" "We have no other choice!" Then, when Cid betrays them, it wouldn't have seemed quite as stupid.

Ultimately, this two episode finale, though filled with moments clearly intended to have a deep emotional impact, was too sloppily conceived and written to succeed in its goals.

The Bad Batch is available on Disney+.

The Weekly Batch

Wednesday's Bad Batch wasn't so bad, it had some good points. It was written by Jennifer Corbett and Matt Michnovetz and directed by Saul Ruiz.

The action sequences were highlights. The story begins with Rex and his crew rescuing some imprisoned clones. It's a decent, exciting scene, though I find it a bit silly that the clones have their blasters on a stun setting all the time. The one time we see that setting in the movies, it's used against Leia, who's not wearing any armour, which might explain why we never see it again. It really feels like Disney tampering that it's used all the time now.

I also liked Crosshair's escape attempt. There was real tension as he manages to grab a blaster and stumble out into the corridors, drugged up.

Meanwhile, back on Pabu. the rest of the Batch are still cooling their heels. It was nice seeing Omega reunite with Echo but mostly the scene felt like setup for next week's finale.

The Bad Batch is available on Disney+.

The Batch Drips

Wednesday also brought an exceptionally bland episode of The Bad Batch. It had kind of an interesting concept but it never got off the ground.

The episode begins with Phee Genoa (Wanda Sykes) once again referencing Indiana Jones, in this case the opening of Temple of Doom. But Phee is able to spot the poisoned drink and several other traps. That makes us like her more, right? I seriously think some writers think of these things as a kind of competition, forgetting viewers aren't necessarily more attracted to prowess than they are to vulnerability.

Sykes' delivery is still weirdly slow, like she's reading a book to two year olds. And maybe that's on purpose, maybe she thinks that's her audience. It doesn't stop other voice actors from speaking at a normal pace, though.

From the Indiana Jones scene, the episode moves to another kind of blandness, imitating Star Trek: The Next Generation.

I'm a fan of TNG but one of the problems that show had, stemming from a low budget, was a constant series of "alien" planets and peoples that looked like Earth and humans. We get one of those with Pabu, where the people wear the same kinds of generic tunics and trousers that humanoid civilisations tended always to wear on TNG.

We're a long way from the cantina scene now.

The people of Pabu exhibit a bland friendliness that complements their wardrobe. Things start to get interesting when there's a sea surge and there's a sudden need to evacuate to higher ground. But no-one's killed or injured. So, gentle viewer, you may yawn and blissfully drop into slumber.

The Bad Batch is available on Disney+.

Cross Out

Wednesday's new Bad Batch felt like it followed on from the episode "The Solitary Clone" earlier in the season. It has the same tone and focuses on the same character, offering a resolution that I found a little disappointing.

Crosshair (Dee Bradley Baker) has been ordered to a remote outpost where a few clone troopers are barely getting by. Their supplies are running low and the outpost faces regular attacks from unknown assailants. The episode scrupulously avoids providing any motivations for these assailants, not even showing their faces. This is all to shore up sympathy for the clones, reminding me of the early days of Clone Wars in which the propaganda style, manipulative tone was interesting in the way of Starship Troopers.

In this case, though, it's to make us sympathise with the clones against the two dimensional evil Imperial officer called Nolan (Crispin Freeman). In the end, it's Nolan who finally shakes Crosshair's loyalty to the Empire. Which was really disappointing. Crosshair had been one of the more intriguing characters on the show and for his story to be resolved so cheaply was a real letdown.

The poor, bearded clone commander introduced in the episode is very sympathetic. But is he really more important to Crosshair than his former comrades or anyone else he failed to side with against the Empire? Oh, well. I do like the continued development of the clones as embittered war veterans.

The Bad Batch is available on Disney+.

Twitter Sonnet #1676

A solar turtle robbed the tortoise mine.
If having questions tipped a brain it's strange.
Along the ridge the faeries burned a sign.
A million hornets glowed across the range.
The nose was high upon the mountain school.
Another train was stopped before the snow.
A clock reflects the absent, timeless fool.
A frozen egg creates a baby show.
Afraid of eggs, the buttless chick departs.
Another dawn dissolves angelic night.
Sir Dum to Dee a timely fact imparts.
There's naught to wring from merry maiden's right.
Decisive storms would break the icy sky.
Incisive shards'll puncture ev'ry pie.

Be Afraid, Please

Wednesday's Bad Batch was a sequel to one of my very least favourite stories of The Clone Wars. So I didn't enjoy it very much, though some of the setup at the beginning of the episode was an Alien pastiche that conjured some genuine dread.

Of course, Clone Wars has also done an Alien pastiche, the effective season one episode, "Lair of Grievous". Wednesday's Bad Batch more directly copied the Nostromo and some of the opening shots of the empty cockpit from Ridley Scott's movie.

But then it became that stupid Godzilla pastiche again with the Zillo beast. I can remember the profound disappointment at seeing lightsabres were ineffective against the giant sock puppet. But Dave Filoni is a kaiju stan and I think those folks must exist in a pretty airtight fantasy that thoroughly convinces them that anything remotely resembling Godzilla will strike awe into the viewer.

Unfortunately, for the rest of us, it's just lame. And I liked the first Godzilla.

The ongoing plot about the Emperor's cloning projects is interesting. I guess they're going the long way to finally explain Palpatine showing up in Rise of Skywalker. Though I heard this might be leading up to the revelation that Grogu is a clone of Yoda.

The troopers in this episode wear some really daring necklines.

The Bad Batch is available on Disney+.

The Ghost of Bill Sikes Strikes Again

Last night's Bad Batch was okay. Not quite as interesting as last week's but a nice enough retelling of a pretty standard adventure story. It was written by Moises Zamora, creator of Selena: The Series.

It's really Oliver Twist, or at least, the thieves' plot from that book, with Bill Sikes/Fagin this time being a threatening enough big alien called Mokko. This is an often used story formula and we even saw it in one of the Star Wars movies, at the beginning of Solo, in which Han himself was an Artful Dodger.

The Bad Batch's Artful Dodger is Benni Baro (Yuri Lowenthal), who stole the Batch's ship in the previous episode. Can the Batch win over this little rogue who's never had anyone he could trust his whole life? Yep. I'd have recommended Zamora read Dickens' Hard Times.

This is is another visually nice episode, with all the backgrounds looking like paintings and all the characters well animated. The action scenes weren't very well conceived but were good enough.

The Bad Batch is available on Disney+.

Twitter Sonnet #1672

The drinkers divvy up the street for blood.
To choke the city, velvet cinched the throat.
A row of teeth emerged from crimson mud.
Beneath the altar bleats a snoozing goat.
Ferengi fingers fix the liquor air.
Assembled houses shade the slapping hand.
Aggressive waters move the salmon's care.
His startled face is shoved in river sand.
Her flimsy arms were straw and golden dust.
Another morning marks the field for grain.
Between the sun and sky accrues a rust.
A man in charge divides the wet from sane.
With crimson straps the ankles carry on.
Her arm conveyed the nameless, careless fawn.

A Good Mine

Last night's Bad Batch was really satisfying. It was solidly written by Brooke Roberts, a woman with a long career in television writing including Boston Legal, Family Guy, and The Flash. Before that, she was a linguist for the US Army specialising in Arabic. So she would seem eminently qualified to write for a show about a former military squad.

The episode was also notably better looking than other episodes. The Batch land on a planet that looks like Monument Valley in order to extract some valuable ore from a mine Cid purchased. They find the mine with less ore then expected and, meanwhile, their ship gets stolen. And that's just the start of their problems.

I loved how logical everything felt. Every problem felt credible and the steps the Batch take to deal with each obstacle felt plausible, good ideas or bad. The fact that Wrecker didn't think to keep the ship in sight when he was on watch seemed like a plausible mistake for him to make, especially considering he couldn't keep the mine and the ship in sight at the same time. Simply put, the episode wasn't stupid, which made me happy.

Also good was the ongoing tension between Omega and Tech. I've known plenty of people like Tech who can't understand why a logical explanation doesn't "fix" the emotional reaction someone else is having.

The only part I didn't like was when Tech told Omega at the end that his way of dealing with things doesn't mean he feels them less than she does. The show should have simply acknowledged that some people have stronger emotional reactions than others. It bothered me because that's a big problem in modern culture--people who simply can't believe that other people have different internal emotional landscapes to themselves.

But, on the whole, this was a great episode, certainly one of the best in the series.

The Bad Batch is available on Disney+.

Think of the Clones

We were treated to a double dose of The Bad Batch last night. Two episodes of political intrigue premiered. I enjoyed both episodes but found the first, written by Manifest writer Ezra Nachman, much better than the second, written by Star Trek: Picard writer Damani Johnson.

The first episode, "The Clone Conspiracy", seems like it may have been influenced by Andor though it reminded me more of the arc on Clone Wars when someone was assassinating senators. I kind of wish there'd been some kind of visual distinction between the senate chambers between then and now, though obviously the U.S. senate hasn't changed that much in the past hundred years.

Beginning with a nice hook in which one clone trooper (Dee Bradley Baker) is shot for daring to question the massacre on Kamino, the episode shifts to following Senator Chuchi (Jennifer Hale), another returning character from Clone Wars. Now she's the lone voice supporting clone rights. One wonders where Mon Mothma is in all this.

It's not until the second episode, "Truth and Consequences", that the Batch themselves finally show up. I didn't get caught up in their effort to steal footage of the Kamino massacre and I thought it was silly for Omega (Michelle Ang) to tag along with the senator. It felt kind of like Ezra witnessing the duel between Obi-Wan and Maul on Rebels--there was no reason for her to be there other than some vague worry that children wouldn't be interested unless there were a point of view character closer to their own age.

Phil LaMarr returns to voice Bail Organa. Normally I like LaMarr but for some reason he gives the character a thick Spanish accent which Jimmy Smits doesn't have.

But it was all worth it to get an appearance by the Emperor voiced by Ian McDiarmid. It was satisfying that he'd twisted our heroes actions to suit his own ends. McDiarmid's voice made it all seem twenty times cleverer than it was. It's nice he seems willing to play the character so often. I hope he shows up on Andor next season, I really want a scene between him and Mon Mothma.

The Bad Batch is available on Disney+.

The Uninvited Wookiee

Normally I like episodes of The Bad Batch written by Matt Michnovetz. But while elements of Wednesday's episode, "Tribe", felt like a classic Clone Wars episode, I was mostly underwhelmed.

The episode was directed by Steward Lee, who also teamed with Michnovetz for the "riot racing" episode, "Faster", so I am a little surprised to find myself disappointed by this one.

I do like how things start out with a deal going sour when the Batch meet with a group of droid smugglers. It's a little moment that expands the world a little more, but I wish the smugglers hadn't been droids. It's the kind of thing that feels like it was necessitated by budget or moral codes. It turns out the droids are taking in a young Jedi for a bounty, the wookiee Gungi, who was among the young Jedi in the fifth season Clone Wars story arc starting with "The Gathering". Ahsoka chaperoned Gungi and the other younglings in their quest to build lightsabres.

There are far too many Jedi shown having survived Order 66 at this point. Let's see, there's Ahsoka (yeah, she left the Order, but let's not split hairs), Kanan, Yoda, Obi-Wan, Grogu. Whoever's in the video games. Now they've brought back another one and it's this annoying wookiee kid. What a waste. The episode felt uncomfortably close to the Star Wars: Holiday Special. Lumpy would not have seemed out of place.

The Bad Batch is available on Disney+.

Raiders of the Lost Brick

Last night's Bad Batch started from a premise with a lot of potential but it never quite got off the ground. Written by Christopher Yost and directed by Nathaniel Villanueva, it also seemed like it had an especially low budget.

It's basically an Indiana Jones homage (some younger viewers might say it was an Avatar: The Last Airbender homage) and I really appreciated the attempt to have a score that at least tried to emulate the grandeur of John Williams. Of course, I wouldn't expect it to equal any of the great moments from Raiders of the Lost Ark, but I found myself thinking about some more tips the makers of The Bad Batch could've taken from that other Lucasfilm franchise.

Why does the beginning of Raiders of the Lost Ark work so well? It's hard to think back at this point, for many people, to seeing it for the first time. Even most people who haven't have probably at least heard something about the character. But a big part of the first sequence is being introduced to Indiana Jones. Who is this guy? What is he doing? Is he dangerous? What motivates him? In place of Dr. Jones, "Entombed", last night's Bad Batch, gives us Phee Genoa, voiced by Wanda Sykes.

She's not served well by the animation. Last night's episode reminded me of Tales of the Jedi with its slow, stiffly moving characters. Sykes is a funny comedienne, and she comes off as very natural when doing her stand-up, but she's one of those stand-ups whose talents somehow didn't lend themselves to making her a good actress. She sounds very wooden. Coupled with the stiff animation, altogether she's a pretty lifeless character, and placed at the centre, she sucks a lot of life out of the story.

There's not much mystery to her character, either. She's clearly established as a kind of generic tomb raider. The target of her tomb raiding in the episode, the "Heart of the Mountain", doesn't have a lot of lustre, literally and figuratively. We know it's something from before the time of the Republic, we know it's on a planet in an uncharted system. But why is it legendary? We find out it serves a function, but what do people believe it does? A legendary artefact ought to have legendary powers. The idol in Raiders of the Lost Ark was clearly a religious symbol, representative of a god. The sort of Incan trappings of the Idol and temple carry associations for the audience, mixing the known and the unknown.

"Entombed" mainly gives us a lot of simple geometric shapes.

Overall, this episode needed more.

The Bad Batch is available on Disney+.

The Racing Batch

Wednesday brought another good episode of The Bad Batch, this one written by script editor Matt Michnovetz, the best writer from the first season.

A variant on pod racing called "riot racing" is the focus of the episode. With the various aliens among the spectators and the paraphernalia around the stands, it's one of those things that helps the Star Wars universe feel complex. The characters race through tunnels instead of through open environments, though, which I suspect was due to budget constraints.

Ernie Hudson guest stars as Millegi, a gang boss and rival for Cid (Rhea Perlman). Both have pilots in the race.

This was a really good role for Hudson and he makes the character menacing and intriguing. I really hope we see him again. Comedian Ben Schwartz also guest stars as a droid, Cid's pilot, TAY-O. He's funny.

I also really liked how Disney Star Wars has loosened up on showing people dying. Someone even gets killed in the crowd and everyone just carries on, just like the patrons at the cantina bar in A New Hope.

The Bad Batch is available on Disney+.

Batchless

Ah, yes, I did catch the third episode of the new Bad Bad season. I liked it a bit better than the first two episodes. Written by Amanda Rose Munoz, it felt a lot like a classic Clone Wars episode. It was very predictable but there were a few clever tactical moments.

We catch up with Crosshair (Dee Bradley Baker), still serving the Empire, and now demoted. He has to go on a mission under the command of none other than Obi-Wan's former number one, Commander Cody.

They're tasked with saving an Imperial officer held hostage by a former Separatist governor, Tawni Ames (Tasia Valenza), which sounds a lot like a porn name. But she's not especially sexy and she's reactivated a bunch of battle droids, so we get a good old fashioned droids-versus-clones battle.

Some of the tactics used by Cody and Crosshair feel satisfyingly clever. It helps create a sense of the two bonding, even if it is obvious what's going to happen in the end.

It seems as though the writers might have long-term plans for Cody, which makes me wonder if they're setting up an appearance from him on Obi-Wan Kenobi season two. It's an idea with potential.

The score in this episode oddly resembles Vangelis' score to Blade Runner. I like Blade Runner and I like Star Wars but the pairing didn't sit well with me. It certainly didn't seem right for the episode's simplistic moral content. Maybe they're trying to fashion Crosshair on Ryan Gosling's character in Blade Runner 2049? I don't know. He doesn't quite seem complex enough though I do think he's more interesting than some of the other characters on the show.

The Bad Batch is available on Disney+.

Twitter Sonnet #1660

The pachyderm's shadow cleared the rig.
Calamitous, the fated sheet descends.
A patch of drunken lids concealed the pig.
A child's thought above the cloud ascends.
A chilly tea would keep the weasels warm.
Misplacing rides disturbed amusement parks.
Tomato sauce requires special parm.
A cake is cut to please the lights and darks.
With changing weather nothing swapped a hand.
Accusing pines revoked December pokes.
Across the space we sought a soppy land.
Reforming duels results in cranky folks.
Galactic stocks were sold at twenty bids.
The oldest face was evergreen to kids.

The Batch Wants In on the Action

The second season of The Bad Batch premiered on Disney+ on Wednesday with two episodes. They weren't bad, though maybe they'd have been more enjoyable if I hadn't seen Andor, from which it seems these new episodes are borrowing a couple plot elements. But they were written by Jennifer Corbett, one of the "developers" of The Bad Batch, and newcomer Gina Lucita Monreal.

We find Omega (Michelle Ang) has aged up a bit since we last saw her--I'm guessing she's 15 or 16 now. Which is good because hopefully the writers won't have to bend logic so much when she saves the day.

Like the famous second arc on Andor, this two parter follows our heroes staging a heist to acquire Imperial funds. The second episode even features a guy getting partially crushed by a cargo container of cash. The invitation to compare the show to Andor does it no favours as it mainly highlights the weaker character development and lower stakes action sequences in Bad Batch.

I do still like Omega, though, and if you can forget about Andor, the business of the heist is at least fairly logical. Omega and a couple of the Batch (Dee Bradley Baker) meet a native with an impressive voice--the actor is Hector Elizondo. I don't know him from anything (though I've evidently seen some movies in which he had bit parts) but he sure sounded like a celebrity.

He talks a little about how his culture was abused by Dooku, whose war chest the Batch is robbing. I wondered for a moment if he belonged to the same people Cassian Andor did and I realised it was impossible to tell from his generic clothes. If this show's going to make a big deal about cultural identity, they might want to think about creating some.

The Bad Batch is available on Disney+.

It was a Dark and Stormy Night . . .

What a big nothing sandwich. Last night's Bad Batch finale reminded me of the last few episodes of Clone Wars--it had a weak script covered up by expensive animation and decent direction. To be fair, though, director Saul Ruiz created more tension than the last few episodes of Clone Wars had and Jennifer Corbett's script for the Bad Batch finale was much emptier than those fairly lifeless Clone Wars teleplays.

It was a two part finale--last week's nice part one by Matt Michnovetz ended with a cliffhanger--the Kamino city had been destroyed, Crosshair (Dee Bradley Baker) was knocked out, and the Batch were in the middle of escaping the destruction. Corbett, seemingly terrified of making decisions or perhaps totally insecure about writing characters, gives us an entire episode of the Batch . . . escaping Kamino in which nothing changes. If you skipped this final episode, it completely wouldn't matter. Even the end scene, where the Kamino scientist shows up at an Imperial base, was already something we were told was going to happen in a previous episode. It looks like she meets a new Imperial character but all that character basically does is say, "Welcome to the base." If she shows up next season or on The Mandalorian, you would have missed nothing significant by skipping this episode.

Crosshair does wake up and they do have a discussion but everyone stays in exactly the same position they were in in the previous episode. Crosshair doesn't offer any arguments about why it was better to stick with the Empire, and the Batch and Omega (Michelle Ang) have nothing to say about why it's important to fight the Empire. Every exchange is variations on, "You should go with us!" "No, you're wrong!"

Even the revelation that Omega had been around to watch the Batch's birth was mentioned in a previous episode. It sounds like Omega doesn't have the accelerated aging the other clones have so if she shows up in one of the live action shows she should be around the same age as Han Solo. Michelle Ang is 37 so that's close enough.

It's funny how people keep saying Omega's an unmodified clone of Jango Fett. I'm pretty sure Jango Fett was male.

I did like the sea monster attacking the underwater tunnel. Again, though, since no-one died and no actions were taken based on any especially dramatic dialogue, you don't need to see this scene to follow the story going forward. It's weird, it's like they assumed no-one was going to watch this finale.

I want to see season two but I sure hope Jennifer Corbett hands the reins over completely to Matt Michnovetz. It's likely she'll get all the accolades for this season, though, like Dave Filoni now seems to get all the credit for Clone Wars. Maybe the best case scenario would be for her to be "too big" for Bad Batch season two, the way Dave Filoni was apparently too big to direct any episodes of this show he supposedly created.

The Bad Batch is available on Disney+