FinFan

This is setting up a strong ending for the show. What I particularly got from this one was how Star Trekky it all felt. The giant flowers in space were such an Original Series concept. From the moment our crew arrived down on the planet it immediately felt like The Next Generation, from the rocky setting to the beautiful (and chintzy) android compound. Even the tone of the dialogue between everyone. I'm was very impressed with how good Isa Briones was here in multiple roles, and actually found her super creepy.

"That's unexpected," followed by the emergence of the Cube was a genuine WOW moment.

I found the emotional scene between Picard and Raffi particularly touching, and a great demonstration of the evolution of Picard's character from the heyday of TNG. He's still awkward but so much more open to expressing and feeling emotions. And again, I have to say that I have absolutely fallen in love with the crew of the La Sirena and I want much more of them.

The surprise appearance of Brent Spiner as another Soong relative (which was spoiled for me thanks to a website publishing articles before the episode has been broadcast worldwide) felt a little too contrived and yet was very welcome.

[7.9/10] A funny thing happens as you get older. Children stop being peers. They stop being those bratty things you have to put up with as a teenager. They’re no longer the little ones you see, but aren’t really responsible for as a young adult.

And somewhere along the line, they start becoming these small people that you need to protect, to look out for, to support, to nurture. You recognize, in a way that's hard when you’re younger, how vulnerable they are, how much they depend on the folks who’ve been through the wringer and know the perils of the world to make sure they’re okay.

Kids are not naive innocents. They have the same vibrance and diversity of thought and feeling and attitude their grown-up counterparts do. But they need help, your help, and that realization is humbling and more than a little scary.

Which is all to say that “Identity Crisis” hits harder when you realize you’re no longer a ten-year-old imagining what it’d be like to be Luke Skywalker hacking and slashing through stormtroopers, and instead, you’re a crusty old grown-up struck by what it’d be like to be the Luke Skywalker who’s been entrusted to look after his nephew and see that he goes down the right path.

I assumed that what lie behind the trooper-protected doors of “The Vault” was something expected: a bunch of jars of pickled Snokes, a few budding attempts at cloning Palpatine, maybe a few more deformed Clone Troopers or something. The last thing I expected was a small collection of imprisoned children, and it draws out the evil of the Empire in a way that few things could.

This is one of the more harrowing episodes of The Bad Batch. I can easily stand blaster fire and dogfights among commandos. I can readily handle life-or-death fights between good guys and bad guys, even if feisty Omega is in the fray. What’s harder to withstand is a toddler, who weeps without his plushy, being torn from his mother. What’s more difficult to stomach is seeing young force-sensitives imprisoned, who only want to return home, and are treated like indifferent property rather than people.

It’s devastating to watch, and The Bad Batch is counting on that. This is (I think?) the first episode of the show that doesn’t feature a single moment of Omega or Clone Force 99. This is all about Emerie Karr stepping into a bigger role and realizing the horrors it would require of her. It is seeing the depths of what she’s participating in, trying to suck it up and do her job, only for her to be moved by the plight of the young souls she’s supposed to treat like chattel.

There is great power in that. “Identity Crisis” has some cool moments for longtime fans. Tarkin’s appearances are always a pip. The back channel negotiations and rivalries of Imperial politics always intrigues. We learn that Omega isn’t necessarily a force-sensitive herself, but rather her genetic material can act as a “binder” for DNA from other force-sensitives, which is a welcome swerve. And The return of Cad Bane and Todo is always a plus. (I should have known Bane was in the offing once I heard Seth Green voice one of the random villagers.)

But for the most part, this is a more stark story, about someone recognizing the abject cruelty they’re a part of, and not being able to turn their heart away from it once they do. The callousness with which Dr. Hemlock encourages Dr. Karr not to become attached to tiny people asking for help and solace, the casual dispassion with how Cad Bane kidnaps a child and practically taunts Emerie for asking too many questions, all reveal a rot in the soul that must have taken hold for someone to be so unconcerned with the welfare of blameless children caught up in the machinery of the Empire.

Not for nothing, there’s a political charge to this story. It is hard to see children ripped from their parents, families ratted out by opportunistic neighbors, and most pointedly, kids in cages, without thinking about the current moment. The Bad Batch is not the first show to suggest a regime is evil by treating young ones this way, but it comes with extra bite in the wake of American policies that are not so different.

The message here is affecting -- that it’s hard for anyone with a heart not to be moved by such terrible things being visited upon little people who don’t deserve it. Dr. Karr wanting to step up, to replace Nala Se, only to see what the Kaminoan saw and realize why she did what she did, makes her change of heart palpable and meaningful.

Because she sees little Jax try desperately to escape and be harshly stopped and punished; she sees little Eva ask plaintively when she gets to go home; she sees a small infant torn from its mother whose tender age is treated like a boon to compliance, not a crime against an innocent, and cannot help but care.

I still love the stories of heroes choosing good with lightsabers and magic powers. I still love badasses leaping through the galaxy and fighting for the good. But the more real acts of evil, and more mundane acts of kindness move me more these days. And all the more, I understand how what could turn your heart, are these tiny beings who need your help, and witnessing an institution that would ignore their suffering, or worse yet, make it the point.

[8.0/10] Let’s get the easy stuff out of the way here first. The action in “The Believer” is great. There are two major set pieces in this one: the tanker run from the pirates into the Imperial base and our heroes’ escape from the very same base, and both work quite well.

With the former, there’s the coolness of locals leaping onto the top of the vehicle and Mando having to fight them off without his usual armor or weapons. We get to see his resourcefulness apart from his wonderful toys, and the narrative device that Mayfield can’t go too fast to get away or the rhydonium will explode creates challenges for both of them.

With the latter, it’s just good meat and potatoes Star Wars action. The narrow escape on the side of the building has thrills. Sending stormtroopers blasting into walls and falling into dams is true to the roots of the franchise. And Fennec and Dune picking off troopers so that Mando and Mayfield can make it onto Slave I is a great setup.

(Not for nothing, I gasped when Boba Fett used the same sonic charges his dad used in Attack of the Clones. But I was also perturbed that the rhydonium explosions were the wrong color!)

But what I really liked about this one, and what made it stand out among episodes this season, is its seemingly lean into moral relativism and shifting perspectives, before coming down on the side of some inviolable principles at the end of the day.

We get that through Mayfield, who paints himself as a “realist” and gives Mando a speech not unlike DJ’s to Finn in The Last Jedi. He talks about how somebody’s always ruling and someone’s always being ruled, and how the internecine conflicts of galactic powers don’t always matter much to the people on the ground.

There’s some truth to that, akin to a popular (albeit reductive) political cartoon making the rounds about how people being bombed by the United States likely don’t have strong feelings about which party wins the Presidency. It sounds like Mayfield just trying to handwave away his own prior service in the Empire, which makes it self-serving enough to write off as potentially accurate (albeit lacking in some nuance), but probably just something he tells himself to absolve him of his sins and help him “sleep at night.”

And yet, as it’s often done this season The Mandalorian plays with our perspective a bit. We see Mando don a stormtrooper outfit and fight off local “pirates.” But it doesn’t take much to conclude that these people aren’t raiders, but rather people trying to disrupt the Empire from destroying their home planet to extract its resources. Are their lives and their struggle worth less than Mando and Grogu’s? “The Believer” puts it at issue.

It becomes a particularly live concern with the uneasy imagery of a crop of tie-fighters, stormtroopers, and other imperial soldiers getting the Big Damn Heroes moment as they save Mando and Mayfield from their attackers. The salutes and whoops the pair get when they make it safely into the base and disembark are eerily reminiscent of the end of A New Hope, when Luke and Han received a similar reception, both underscoring Mayfield’s point about the futility of which side’s on top and, at the same time, making the audience uneasy about what Din and Mayfield are accomplishing, and for whom, to get what they want.

What they want are the coordinates to Moff Gideon’s ship, which can only be obtained from an Imperial Terminal inside that base, which conveniently requires a facial scan. Mayfield tries to call off the mission when he sees his old commanding officer in there, afraid of being recognized and punished. So Din does it himself.

In the process, he proves Mayfield’s point to a degree. For all Mando’s supposedly dogmatic principles (recently dented a little by Bo-Katan), he is, true to Mayfield’s pronouncements, willing to bend them when something truly matters to him. He’ll trade his Mandalorian helmet for a stormtrooper’s when it’s the only way to sneak into an Imperial Base. He’ll break his code and show his face to a living soul because it’s what’s necessary to save his surrogate son. For all his scumminess, Mayfield recognizes that practicality that most folks embrace at some level.

But he also breaks his own rules. Despite fearing what will happen to him if he’s recognized, Mayfield steps in to save Mando from being dressed down and exposed by his former commanding Imperial Officer, in a tense scene. More to the point, when the officer invites them for a drink, Mayfield can’t help recall his old division from Project Cinder (Hello Battlefront 2 fans!) and questions how a similarly mercenary, malleable “for the greater good” perspective in his commander led to the deaths of thousands of his comrades and others.

So he shoots the guy, in order to “sleep better at night.” Maybe it’s just personal for him. Maybe he just didn’t like the guy excusing the lost lives of thousands of people as the cost of doing business or part of some trumped up story about chaos vs. order (Hello to you too, Supreme Leader Snoke fans!) that Mayfield no longer buys. Or maybe he does believe in a few moral absolutes, ones that led to his disillusionment and cynicism about how this battle of civilizations in the first place.

Either way, it adds depth to the larger conflict that stretches across the Skywalker Saga, and depth to both Mando and Mayfield, exposing a little more of who they are deep down and what they’ll do when their backs are against the wall or something more than just the next bounty matters to them. It’s enough to earn Mayfield his freedom, for Cara Dune and for the audience.

The action is all a fun side dish to that, full of the sort of infiltration and extraction plans that good heist films are made of. But what gives The Mandalorian staying power is not just its exquisite textures or thrilling set pieces, but those exchanges and choices that complicate and widen the Galaxy Far Far Away, rather than make it seem smaller.

69/100 (Good, It Gets the Job Done, Slightly Flawed)

This is a promising start. I didn't come into the show with any preconceived notions. To be honest, I wasn't a huge fan of the movies, and this show looks to be more my speed, but I know some fans of The Lord of the Rings tend to despise it based on a brief teaser and some purportedly forced diversity insertions.

Even though it was a tall order to follow in the footsteps of Peter Jackson's trilogy, I think they did a fantastic job of laying the groundwork for this expansive universe. The scenery and visual effects work are some of the best I've ever seen, and that's on both the small and the big screen. The scale is huge, and it has all the hallmarks of a major production.

The episode wastes little time in laying out the history that leads up to the present day, which undoubtedly helps us connect with the characters and circumstances they find themselves in. There hasn't been anything truly mind-blowing about it up to this point, but it's done enough for me to be interested in seeing more of it.

The good news is that it doesn't appear to be trying to compete with Game of Thrones.. Rather than aiming to be a poor imitation of Game of Thrones, I think the show is adopting the approach of maintaining the tone of The Lord of the Rings while adding some mature themes.

[7.6/10] I’m always leery of how much the expectation game affects our experience of just about anything. Tell me that some movie is the greatest thing since sliced bread, and if it turns out to be merely very good, I may walk away disappointed. Tell me that some film is the worst garbage ever committed to celluloid, and it turns out to be simply a less-than-inspiring effort, and I may walk away deeming it underrated.

So who knows how much the reputation of Star Trek: Nemesis -- as the cinematic nadir of this franchise -- impacted my ability to appreciate its strengths and chastise its faults. This is the film that put the nail in the coffin for The Next Generation’s adventures. It’s the movie that put the entirety of Star Trek on the silver screen on hiatus for seven long years and ensured a reboot would follow. And despite all of that it is...pretty good?

Throw me out of the airlock, fellow Trekkies! I am a heretic, ready to throw myself upon the altar and plead forgiveness and nothing more than an android’s appreciation for culture and art. But whatever the reasons for my appreciation of this hated entry in Trek’s big screen canon, I cannot help but find it an imperfect but fitting farewell to the cast of heroes who all but defined my childhood conception of the just and the right and the stirring as conveyed in stories and speculative fiction.

Maybe it’s just the performers. Patrick Stewart gives arguably his best performance in any of the Next Generation films. Free from the obligation to play opposite William Shatner, or put on a brand of rage we rarely saw in the seasoned captain on the T.V. show, or to portray the generic action hero or romantic lead, Stewart’s take on Picard here is more in line with the officer we know and love. He is warm and gracious with his colleagues. He is hopeful but cautious with his enemies. And he is mournful but honoring of those he lost. Stewart is occasionally a bit too sanguine, but in the film’s high points, he more than delivers the shades of the bold but layered commander we saw in the series that birthed him.

And it must be said -- Tom Hardy gives it his all here. His take on Shinzon is a compelling one. Maybe I’m being forgiving of an early performance having seen his talents deployed elsewhere later in his career. But there is an intensity to Shinzon, a yearning and determination within him, which communicates the ways in which he has been scarred by his brutal upbringing and defined by his aspiration toward and opposition to the man whose blood and genes he shares. There’s shades of his turn as Bane in The Dark Knight Rises firmly present, from his “higher register, same cadence” vocal performance to flashes back to his upbringing in a dank pit. It’s true that Hardy chews the scenery in places, but Nemesis is an operatic film, and the young talent is up to the vigor and bombast the moment calls for.

The pair play well off of one another. Buoyed by a script which plays in the reflections on one’s past and attempt to define one’s future, there is an electricity when Stewart and Hardy share the soundstage. Shinzon’s anger, his desire to know and surpass the man in front of him, bleeds through the screen. And Picard’s curiosity, his chance to look back on the man he might have been had his life’s path forked elsewhere, adds depth to the interactions with his ersatz offspring.

That’s the cinch of this film. One of the defining traits of Jean Luc Picard from the earliest episodes of The Next Generation is that he did not want or even like children. And yet, he finds himself face to face with what might as well be his son. Shinzon shares his DNA. He wants to learn about his family’s history. He arguably (in one of the movie’s worst choices) has an Oedipal complex. In facing off against Shinzon, Picard isn’t just confronting is abandoned former self; he’s confronting a child he never had.

Therein lie Nemesis’s themes. In the best philosophical Star Trek tradition, the movie dives into the nature versus nurture debate. Picard is the star of Starfleet, a man who believes in altruism and justice at all costs. Shinzon is a butcher in training, one ready to unleash a galactic WMD to erase the legacy he has to follow. But Picard lived a comparatively charmed life, one where he caused a stir in his family by being the first to leave the solar system, but received the discipline and training that Starfleet offers.

Shinzon, meanwhile, lived under the bootheel of the worst of the Romulan Empire. That’s what makes him a compelling antagonist: both the fact that he is an alternate glimpse of what Picard might have been, but also the product of an oppressive system and a maligned caste with the wherewithal to rise against those who would hold him down. Shinzon is wrong to want to kill his erstwhile father, and to destroy Earth for reasons that mostly involve the need for stakes the audience can appreciate and understand. But he has legitimate grievances, motivations born of understandable resentments and challenges to a rotten system that allowed him to find common cause with brothers in arms oppressed by it.

Despite that, Nemesis zeros in on what differentiates Picard and Shinzon, and by extension their android counterparts -- a desire to better themselves. The film venerates the impulse to change, to grow, to evolve, rather than to stay stagnant or satisfied. It is, on the film’s account, what makes us the most laudable and human. Whether or not that’s true, it provides philosophical underpinnings to the contrast between hero and antagonist, a broader statement about identity and the nature of man that feels true to the spirit of the franchise.

That extends to the secondary story in the episode, one that sees Data and the rest of the crew of the Enterprise discovering B-4, a prototype Soong android who is not as sophisticated as Data, but who retains much of his basic structure. In the same way that Shinzon is a surrogate child to Picard, B-4 is a surrogate child to Data, one who is likewise, something of a clone, but more childlike, more grasping for meaning and purpose, than the more self-assured and self-actualized Starfleet officer. The parallels are as plain as the mirrored font used in the film’s (admittedly) title sequence, as Nemesis suggests that it is our experiences, and our choices, and our quest to improve ourselves, that define us, rather than our genetic (or positronic) structures.

Of course, this is still a big (or at least moderate) budget sci-fi film, so it can’t all be highfalutin navel-gazing, and is all but legally required to fill the frame with action. That tends to be where the movie falters. Picard’s four-wheeler sequence has become infamous and in the fandom and rightfully so. This set of scenes, where he all but pulls a Dukes of Hazzard on a pack of Tusken Raiders, is utterly gratuitous. Picard flying a miniature Reman shuttle through Shinzon’s ship is fine enough but unnecessary. And as seemingly befalls most Star Trek movies, the third act eventually starts to feel a bit like static with unavailing ship-to-ship combat, and eventual hand-to-hand combat, that seems designed more to meet a quota than to advance the story or wow the audience.

Despite that, a few of these moments stand out. While entirely extraneous, Riker’s Jeffries Tube fight with a Reman grunt has a touch of verve to it, and at least works to give a more personal touch to the semi-nonsensical battle going on around him. Data’s leap across the vacuum of space to reach Shinzon’s ship carries a certain tension and determination missing from many of the film’s more high-octane scenes. And while Picard’s pew-pew firefights with his adversaries go on too long, and his physical struggles with Shinzon and his men are a little silly, there’s an air of tragedy when he impales his young doppelganger, and the dying young man pulls the weapon through his own body to bring himself closer to the man he both resents and admires. This is a film that runs more on emotional logic than on...you know...actual logic, but in a few moments, that works well enough to make you forget its worst excesses.

What cannot be forgiven is the way it decides to finally give Counselor Troi something to do by making her a rape victim. This sort of “violation” as a character-defining moment was already a tired trope in 2002, and given how many times Troi ended up randomly pregnant or otherwise possessed by some random being on the series, it’s downright insulting to pull that nonsense once again in the group’s last silver screen outing.

This franchise has, unfortunately, proven time and again that’s not capable of handling this sort of thing with any grace or understanding of its devastating impact (see also: Enterprise’s god awful handling of a similar storyline with T’Pol), and it’s the element of Nemesis that is impossible to excuse. That’s particularly true given how Troi asks to be relieved of duty and Picard essentially responds, “Nah, I know you’ve been through horrific trauma, and there’s no telling whether it could happen again, but we might need you later, so just deal with it.”

Still, at least Nemesis finally gives Troi something meaningful to do! While the setup to get there is abhorrent, the film at least has the good sense to give the ship’s counselor a moment of triumph in response. The moment where she turns the tables and uses her Betazed powers to locate the Remans on Shinzon’s ship and thereby discover its location despite the cloak, is arguably her greatest triumph in the whole series. For however much Nemesis does inexcusably wrong by Troi in its first act, it at least uses that misstep to build to an outstanding victory for her in the third act.

That’s just one of many elements that makes Nemesis feel like a self-conscious goodbye from a chapter of the franchise that theoretically could have continued. Lord knows that from the very first movie starring the Original Series cast, the Star Trek films were meditating on whether our familiar heroes would be hanging up their spurs. It’s a proud tradition for Trek films to suggest that these brave spacemen the audience has been following for so long might be a few months away from retirement.

Despite that, Nemesis seems to know it’s a final outing. It’s chock full of pleasing fan service, whether it’s Picard ordering tea, saying “come” when his ready room alarm buzzes, or cheekily saying “make it so,” or fan-pleasing appearances from Guinan, Wesley, Janeway, and even Spot. Data dies. Riker and Troi finally marry and plan to move to another ship. And as always, we close with scenes of our heroes together, an image of the ship that’s sustained them, and the stirring fanfare of the sort that’s moved Trekkies since 1966. While far from flawless, Nemesis at least has the decency to feel like a farewell to this crew, albeit one not quite as potent or moving as “All Good Things”.

It’s worth noting, then, the possibly coincidental ways in which this resembles the final outing for the Original Series cast. There’s the same proposal of peace from an old enemy gone wrong. There’s a similar awkward but hopeful dinner scene. There’s a gesture toward a new, better relationship with a longstanding foe at the end of the picture. Nemesis even seems to borrowing a little bit from The Wrath of Khan with Data’s sacrifice for the good of the many.

In that, the film suggests something a little bit radical. Shinzon shares Picard’s DNA, but through his life experiences, he is more apt to commit genocide against a people to justify his own existence than to strain for the greater good. Data is made of gears and circuits, not even human, and yet he has learned from his mentor the value of the greater good, the drive to improve oneself and to protect those you care about. In the end, Nemesis posits that for a man who eschewed starting a family, Data is Picard’s true son, and the young man who shares his genetics is a veritable stranger.

That’s what gives the final moments of the movie weight. Picard adopts the thousand-yard stare when he sees that glimpse of the person he might have become die at his own hand, and sees the son he never quite acknowledge as such sacrifice himself to save his surrogate father’s life. There is palpable pain when the crew of the Enterprise toast to their absent friend (with Picard wine, no less). As Brent Spiner himself noted, the actor was beginning to look too different from his 1987 counterpart to portray an ageless android, and the presence of B-4 (and his Irving Berlin tune) feels like too easy an out. But there’s still force in Data giving his life, ending his quest to better himself, in the name of saving his friends, and humanity.

Sure, the plot mechanics and, well, actual mechanics, that lead to that point are more than a little thin. The critics of this film have reason to complain. There’s still unnecessary action. There’s still questionable plot developments. And craft-level details like the costumes and even the score leave something to be desired.

But Star Trek: Nemesis does not deserve its hate or its refuse-ridden reputation. Two great actors command the screen throughout. Notions of identity, of self, and what connects us and makes us who we are permeate the film in the best Star Trek tradition. And for all the films plot bungles and overextended action, it anchors the feature around the moral choices, and their impact, of the series’s best characters.

Whether it’s a product of expectations or not, Nemesis is a pleasant surprise that vindicates one of the core relationships of the series and reveals, with heartbreaking abandon, that for however much Picard sidestepped building a family, he built one anyone, and says goodbye to many children, as this generation fades into the next.

This is THE DEFINITIVE Superman movie. With truly spectacular cinematography, a heartwarming coming of age story, enthralling action and perhaps the best superhero movie soundtrack ever from Hans Zimmer, this movie hits every beat for Superman fans new and old.

As a DC comics fan growing up, the critical response to this movie prevented me going to watch it at the theatre. I mean who wants one of their favourite superheroes being "humourless", "too violent", and "not epic enough"??? Well, I can truly sit here now having said "lesson learned". Never again will I allow critical response to prevent me from experiencing something I had waited a lifetime for. I will never get to see Man of Steel in the theatre, and this movie was shot for the big screen. Some of the shots are truly beautiful, especially when he wakes up in the ocean with whales, and when he learns to fly in the snowy mountains.

The story is often criticised for not having the kookiness of the original four movies with Christopher Reeve - and don't misunderstand this for hating on the first few iterations, I have nothing but fond memories of growing up with those films - but I challenge anyone to watch those movies now and claim that they still hold up. A truly great movie as well as standing the test of time, has rewatch value, and Man of Steel is one of the few superhero movies that I have watched time and time again. This requires a great story.

The story of this movie focuses on a boys relationship with his fathers, and his coming of age through those guises. His cautious and protective Earth father who tought him the morality and goodness we expect from our Superman, who sacrificed himself in order to keep his sons secret; and his Kryptonian father who encouraged him to embrace his difference and be the man Earth needs him to be.

A bonus is that the relationship between Lois and Clark doesn't seem forced. You get to see how she is a great investigative reporter and through her reporting she discovers Superman's true identity. By protecting it, you can see Clark's appreciation and the weight of not being able to talk about it to anyone - something that bothers him throughout the great flashback scenes as wonderfully portrayed by Dylan Sprayberry and Cooper Timberline - being lifted.

The character development of the antagonist, General Zod is done in a way other superhero movies can only be envious of. The message that this character, like all other Kryptonians are born with a specific purpose, in this case to protect Krypton at all costs, comes across well. From his perspective he is the superhero of his own story, trying to save his planet and his people, and that is the truest of tests for supervillain development.

And this brings me to the epic and controversial (for some reason) third act. As mentioned earlier, Superman has a strong moral code instilled in him by Jonathan Kent, which is shown throughout the flashbacks. Any observer who doesn't see that Snyders portrayal of Superman has the most morality of any Superman in cinematic history is simply not paying attention. He doesn't spin the Earth backwards to rewind time just to save his girlfriend like in the original, and he doesnt go back to Smallville and hook up with Lana because the love of his life Lois is ignoring him a little bit like in Superman III. That Superman, despite all of his displayed morality (e.g. where he refrains from fighting the bullies) feels he must kill General Zod is one of the most powerful moments in superhero movie history. He repeatedly begs Zod to give up his quest to destroy Earth and humans now that his quest to return Krypton has failed. Zod makes it clear as day that he will NEVER give up, and that he will destroy humanity at all costs as an act of revenge. What was Clark supposed to do? He was left with no choice! Add to this the fact that Zod's laser beams were inches away from killing a whole family, Superman reluctantly had to break his neck. Yet unlike other superheroes he did not gloat in victory, the pain and anguish in that scream that follows is filled with the heartbreak of breaking both his moral code and killing one of the few other fellow Kryptonians in the universe.

Overall, this movie gets better every single time I watch it. If you haven't watched it since it came out and had mixed feelings the first time, please give this movie another try without the immediate negative reviews that were extensively covered in the media at the time of release. It truly deserves it. Man of Steel is THE DEFINITIVE Superman movie.

Almost the whole time I was watching this movie (including the bath-scene with Margot Robbie) I felt like the biggest idiot on the planet.
I'm not a numbers guy nor do I know all the terminology in American banking and mortgage systems and most of it looked like watching some kind of alien language. In the end though I knew what happened, I saw people warning us for what was about to happen and watched it all crumble down when it did happen.

All in all though it's an excellent portrayal of a system that is quite frankly a big con, stripping away money from those "below" with people at the help that don't really know what they are doing. An intricate web of rules, regulations, lingo, faces and characters who don't know the full picture. I think the movie quite nicely mimicks this chaos in the way it is set up, the catchy camera movements and often loud and noisy environments the scenes play out in. Here's a famous face that will teach you plebs what it's about, "let's simplify this for ya" so you're lured in.

Despite it's dry subject, the vast amout of stuff I personally didn't fully grasp it is a very enjoyable movie that will keep you hooked till the end.

Oh and it took me about at third the movie to realize Brad Pitt was that one guy.

I think it's important to preface this review with the following points. A. I know nothing about Lord of the Rings other what was presented in the movies and that Morgoth is the overarching villain of the entire 3 ages, with Sauron being a Lucifer like fallen figure, from the most beautiful angel into a cunning deceiver. B. I do not care about what lore is being contradicted and have decided to view this as fan fiction, and therefore review based on what I like and don't like.

That aside. I really enjoyed the first two episodes of this new series from Amazon. I was a little apprehensive as the trailers had not wowed me, and Peter Jackson's original trilogy comes with so much love, even 20 years on. It's not perfect, nor does it start as strong as other new recent fantasy arrival, House of the Dragon, but there's a lot of groundwork laid here that can become a great series later on. Most of this felt like Lord of the Rings and not a cheap imitation, which was good. And while both episode is generally enjoyable, there was an easy 10 minutes to cut off both episode - that would have made it tighter.

There's enough mystery, especially in the second episode, mainly around 3 specific characters, so there's a hook there. Despite my 8 rating for both episodes it's not a guaranteed win and a few poor episodes after this could see this falling into Wheel of Time territory, but a good enough start and I'll be here next week.

UGH. This was NOT a comedy of manners in any sense of the word. It could have been though. One thing that bugged me is the actress playing T'Pring. She delivers her lines like someone who has never seen any episode of Star Trek and was told to speak in whatever she thinks a Spock voice would be. She's too robotic and I really didn't like it. Maybe get someone who's interested in Star Trek and likes it to play these characters? The less I see of T'Pring, the better.
I have to say, I am loving Anson Mount's hair!!! I loved his shaggy dirty cowboy hair in "Hell on Wheels" and I am loving this grey gelled 1980s pompadour the MUA are rocking on him! I also really like the green uniform on him!
I am waiting to meet some new characters like maybe a cook...or a bartender...or even more of the young ensigns.
The Enterprise Bingo was a cute idea! I could totally see this happening on board navy ships of today!
All that being said, I am kind sad that this series is like Trek lite...Star Trek for 3rd graders. It's cute. I like cute sci-fi, but I not cute Trek.
I was hoping this would be funny like how Enterprise or DS9 were funny. This episode was MEH because it was like something you put on for the kids while the eat snacks before bed.

Hey! We finally got some answers to a lot of the season’s big questions! That is definitely worth something! The other side of the coin is that the answers come out really conveniently just as the show is heading into its (presumably) fireworks-filled final pair of episodes. I don’t know why the show waited this long to do the reveals, but hey, I’m glad we at least get them now.

Basically, this is another evil Admiral (or, in this case, commodore) situation. As we all suspected, Zhat Vash infiltrated Starfleet and used its surreptitious tendrils to influence things their way. Their big motivations is to stamp out AI, out of a fear that we’ll hit the technological singularity and eb destroyed, as the ancient civilization that built “The Admonition” did. That’s not bad! It didn’t need to be shrouded in mystery for so long, but it works as a rationale behind the baddies actions.

And yet there’s a real small universe problem that irks me, especially with Ramdha turning out to be Narissa’s aunt and Rios having already met one of Soji’s duplicates and all the other little unnecessary coincidence and family ties that make this seem like a vast conspiracy that only really affects twelve people who happen to be characters in this show.
Still, this one has some good scenes, particularly Picard’s conversations with Soji and Rios. The former is incredibly heartening for anyone who appreciated the Picard/Data relationship developed throughout TNG and the latter is an easy excuse to have Picard practically announce the viewpoint of the show, but it still works.

Granted, there’s a lot of exposition here, much of it pretty contrived, but at least the cards are all on the table now. I could have down without the weak attempts at comedy via Rios’s holograms, and things are coming together at a really convenient time, but the core material here is good, and the character work is solid, so I still enjoyed this one even if it’s easy to see the strings in places.

While I definitely liked the episode, it felt more like a Mandalorian episode rather than a Book of Boba Fett one. That's really my biggest complaint. The show is literally meant to be about Boba Fett, but we don't see him once this episode. Kinda weird and it disrupts the entire tone of the show.

Approaching this as more of a Mandalorian episode rather then a Boba Fett one, I really liked how Din doesn't seem to really fit in with the strict ideals and traditions of the Children of the Watch anymore. He's growing as a person and now that he's been cast out of the covert, he is free to live his life without feeling the constant fear of others seeing his face.

Seeing a Naboo Royal Starfighter was cool. Also Din training with the Darksaber gives me Rebels vibes.

Overall a very entertaining episode with some added bits of lore, like what happened on the Night of a Thousand Tears. It seemed to be hinting that Din will visit Grogu and Luke before he teams up with Boba and Fennec, but I don't want Din to become the main focus for the rest of the show, considering he'll have all the focus in season 3 of The Mandalorian.

[8.7/10] The natural inclination in an episode like this is to go big, to make it loud and exciting and epic. It is the Original Trilogy meeting the Prequel Trilogy meeting Rebels, and so the powers that be could be forgiven for turning that encounter into an epic confrontation, full of fireworks and piss and vinegar.

Instead, “Twin Suns” is a quiet, deliberate, almost melancholy episode. That is a bold choice, one that pays off for Rebels and delivers one of its most meditative, understated episodes in a way that does justice to the various major figures it invokes in the effort.

It opens on the holy site of Star Wars, the deserts of Tatooine. There in the swirling sands, Darth Maul wanders the arid wasteland, searching in vain for his mortal enemy. “Twin Suns” commits to the desolation of the planet. Many times, it frames its character in wide shots, often at a distance, showing how small and insignificant they are on that vast landscape between those dual radiating stars. While there are moments of action, most of the time is spent with the characters wandering through those miles of nothing, contemplating what’s calling them there.

Of course, it’s not enough to just have Maul stalking the specter of Obi Wan, so Ezra Bridger feels the call to Tatooine as well. The reasons for his being there are thin, but adequate. He is, essentially, bait. Maul uses the same visions and hallucinations to draw Ezra to the desert planet so as to put him in danger. If Obi Wan is there, Maul reasons, he’ll be unable to stop himself from emerging to save the day.

So foolhardy Ezra heeds the call, follows the visions, and gets both Chopper and himself lost and desperate amid the sands of Tatooine. Despite the half-plausible excuse, Ezra doesn’t have much of a place in this story. It gives the character a bit of nice material, with deliberately disorienting edits creating his sense of being at a loss and in peril as the amount of time he spends out there remains unclear. But on the whole, his arc, to the extent it exists, is merely a familiar epiphany that he’s turned his back on his newfound family and should return to them rather than taking things on his own.

But it’s the man who offers him that advice who matters. Rebels realizes the Ep. IV-era Obi Wan Kenobi well. The franchise has yet to address the awkward business of bridging the gap between the Ewan McGregor/James Arnold Taylor incarnation of the character, and the version that started it all. But Stephen Stanton (who also voices Tarkin and AP-5), does his best Alec Guiness and it scans as true to one of Star Wars’s founding performances.

The Obi Wan Ezra meets in the desert is of a piece with one Luke meets in A New Hope. The years have blunted the edges of the reserved but adventurous man who fought in the clone wars. In his place is this wise old monk, one who has the zen and worldly perspective that Guiness and George Lucas imbued in the role. Rebels attempts to revive characters who’ve gone unseen since Return of the Jedi have been hit or miss, but kudos belong to Stanton and writers Dave Filoni and Henry Gilroy for capturing the spirit and demeanor of the character we know from Star Wars’s first act.

It’s not, however, inter-generational crossovers and desert-worn wisdom. Obi Wan’s time with Ezra is mercifully short, just enough to give him the lesson he needs and send him on his way before Maul arrives. Maul explains his manipulation in a suitably villainous fashion, and trades insults with Obi Wan as he gears up for a confrontation greatly hyped and long in the making.

When Obi Wan faces Maul, the scene is tense. Maul is inquisitive, probing, challenging his wizened adversary. He sniffs out why Kenobi is on this backwater planet, and the Jedi Master’s eyes subtly react with concern and awareness of what he’s revealed. Only then does Obi Wan ready himself to fight. The two men hold the tension, stand their ground, letting the potential of this grand clash linger in the air before the first, tremendous blow is struck.

Instead, it simply ends before it barely began. A few swift moves is all Obi Wan needs to fell his opponent. He moves slowly but decisively. Anything more would be a betrayal of the warrior we saw in Episode IV. There is mercy in his blade and in the way he cradles Maul in his arms after the deed is done.

But the purpose of that anticlimax is not simply fidelity to the source that began it all. It is a reveal, a demonstration, that these are not the fiery young men who clashed on Naboo. They are not the hardened warriors who met in battle on Mandalore. They are broken down old men, the last of a generation, finishing the last vestiges of conflicts that were already lost before they’d even started.

These are the last gunfighters, drawing one last time, because what else is there to do? As Maul seemingly dies in Obi Wan’s arms, he asks Kenobi if his task is to protect the chosen one. Obi Wan admits it, and Maul says the most curious, revealing words as he leaves the living force – “He will avenge us.”

Maul and Kenobi have stood on opposite sides of the battle lines for decades. They have seen the fall of republics and the rise of empires. They have done this dance across the ages, each taking pounds of flesh from the other. And yet, when the final blow is struck, the clarity of the last light reveals a simple truth. They are both victims of the same tormentor, the same individual who took away all that they had and believed in.

As Star Wars has gone on, it has evolved, showing more shades of gray within the hero’s journey that started with A New Hope. Before that little boy running across the horizon could rise up and strike down the evil that took so much from so many, too many had to suffer, both the good and the bad. The distance between the two seems as small as the distance between Maul and Kenobi. They are the twin suns, intertwined, eternally circling ‘round these same events, pulled by the same force, until they are snuffed out, ready for a new light, a new beacon, to sweep the galaxy, and wipe away their shared regrets, mistakes, and pain.

A perfectly placed flashback.

An episode entirely dedicated to Karen was something I didn't know was needed until now. The episode begins with a 30 minute flashback, and it's just so damn good. It had my full attention from the opening scene. I had no idea she used to be a drug addict, and had no idea about her relationship with her family...and this was the perfect time to finally inform me. Then, when it flicks back to present day, Karen is receiving inspiring and wise words from father Lantom regarding her "troubled soul". Then that church scene happens, and even though it's all action and violence, the scene still feels very much about Karen rather than the action.

In so many TV shows, flashback episodes always feel like an outlier; like you could almost forget about the episode and the season would feel the same, but the polar opposite can be said with "Karen". She's a great character who gets a lot of undeserved hate, and Deborah Ann Woll absolutely gives us her best work on this show yet in this episode, and rightfully so.

The people giving this episode hate have very short attention span and have to see Daredevil fighting the villain over and over again, much like a children's superhero movie. This brilliant show is an 18 age certificate for a reason. It's a patient and dark programme that explores adult themes, and it's starting to feel more and more mature now, with season 3 being its most adult season yet.

R.I.P Father Lantom. So much wisdom and a kind heart. Such a good character.

8.2/10. This is the first time that TOS has really felt like Star Trek to me. There are no love interests for Kirk, no mysterious new arrivals who quickly start acting strangely, no dramatic hand-to-hand combat in the third act. Instead, there's a just a big problem, one that threatens the whole ship and which has no obvious solution available, forcing the Captain to think on his feet and show the best of humanity in the process.

To put the horse before the cart, it was almost a Picard-esque performance from Kirk, and I mean that as a complement. The introduction of Crewman Bailey, juxtaposed with Spock, created an interesting set of extremes for Kirk to set the midpoint of Bailey was impulsive, wanting to blast the alien ship with phasers almost immediately, and cracking under the pressure. Spock, meanwhile, remains stoic as ever, but also has no suggestions when they're backed into a corner with destruction on the horizon.

Kirk, meanwhile, finds a middle ground. He does everything in his power to avoid violence or the use of force until absolutely necessary. He finds an unorthodox solution (using the poker metaphor to explain his "bluffing" in a nice fashion) that manages to save the crew's skins and comes up with a clever way to escape the smaller ship's clutches. And he even shows the sort of mercy and kindness that characterizes the best of what humanity can be, attempting to aid the being that was threatening to destroy them moments before.

More than that, the "Corbomite Maneuver" reaffirms the animating spirit of Star Trek, both as a series and as a franchise -- the spirit of exploration. The goal of this crew, and to some extent, every Star Trek crew is to "seek out new life and new civilzations." Just like the cross-pollenation of peoples on Earth in real life, that is going to be a bumpy process sometimes, one that puts good people on both sides at risk, but by showing the sincerity, altruism, and trust that Kirk embodies here, amazing discoveries can be made and connections can be forged.

I've also talked a lot about this series's propensity to use ticking clocks as a crutch, some manufactured problem meant to create a sense of urgency about whatever the crisis of the week is. "The Corbomite Maneuver" makes that ticking clock literal, with the opposing alien giving The Enterprise a literal ten minute countdown. But while in other episodes, that sort of time pressure seems contrived, here it creates a sense of foreboding as the bridge crew is forced to just sit there, try to keep their cool, and find away out of this situation. It's too much for Bailey, and it leads to some brave "it's been a pleasure serving with you" moments (especially between Kirk and Bones), but for once it really adds something to the atmosphere of the episode, rather than feeling like a throw-in for T.V. drama.

And to the same end, I like the "solve the puzzle" aspect of this one. So much of Star Trek thus far has been sussing out a mystery -- there are some unknown facts or something weird, and the crew tries to get to the bottom of it. Despite the unknown nature of their attacker (and his giant rubiks cube), that's less the tack of "The Corbomite Maneuver" than that there is a known problem with no clear solution, forcing the crew and Kirk especially to think outside the box to get them out of such a tight spot. It's a formula I prefer and one that this episode executes well, even if it still drags a bit after the initial countdown is over.

Moreover, I love the sort of weirdness of the ending. I thought the alien on the viewscreen looked like a character from a Rankin Bass Christmas special, so the reveal that it's a puppet for a diminutive (overdubbed) alien was a pleasant and unexpected surprise. The idea of humanity being tested by superior, or at least more powerful beings is a recurring one in the Star Trek franchise, and the notion that Kirk & Co. passed the test, demonstrating their ability for unique thought and caring, with an "exchange program" being initiated to boot, is a nice illustration of those ideas of cultural exchange and humanistic principles brought to bear.

Overall, this was the kind of Star Trek I know and love, the one that shows good men and women in difficult situations finding creative solutions and proving their mettle and humanity in the process. The reveal of the strange and unexpected in that effort is a bonus, and a testament to the wealth of imagination Roddenberry and his lieutenants were ready to offer at the time. Let's hope the show keeps boldly going in this direction.

9.3/10. So much great, big time stuff in this one. As I've said in the past, there's something about these sort of operatic, mythology-heavy episodes that I really connect with. In a number of ways Star Wars has always been a franchise about big myths and spirituality made tangible. Leaning into that feels true to the core of the series. And it's hard not to be excited by things like prophecies and dire warnings and visits from old friends.

That starts with Kanan, who faces his own trials a la Luke on Dagobah to become a Jedi Knight. Admittedly, it's a bit of a cheat, but seeing The Grand Inquisitor (and learning that he used to be a Jedi) is a nice way to give impact and authority to the moment beyond the change in rank. I appreciated that, like Ezra, his trial had to do with accepting difficult truths, that no matter how hard he tried to protect and encourage Ezra, things could still go wrong; his pupil could still be tempted by the dark side, and he might perish in the effort. It's been Kanan's greatest insecurity for a while now -- that he's not a good enough teacher. But Kanan accepts that all he can do is train and guide Ezra as best he can and the rest is up to him. It's a nice form of acceptance and the key to his ascending to becoming a full Jedi, earning a bit of redemption from his wild and wooly days in the process.

It's also nice to see Yoda again. (I mean that figuratively -- literally his model looks off from both his Clone Wars model and the version of him from the films. It would be jarring if it weren't for Frank Oz's voice.) He follows up on his lesson with Ezra from last time, saying that one need not be without fear, but rather that even he, the wise and admired Jedi Master among masters, had to fight not to give into fear throughout his life. I loved Ahsoka's description of Yoda, as someone she spoke with but never really felt like she knew, that she wasn't sure if anyone knew. The way she speaks of him as carrying a certain sadness, of knowing what having been drawn into the fighting of the Clone Wars did to him and how he foresaw the end of one age and the start of another fits (albeit a little haphazardly) with what we saw from him in The Clone Wars series.

That ties into Ezra's conversation with him about whether to fight or not. The idea of finding Malachor works as a good story engine for the future, but more than anything, it's nice to see this philosophical side of Star Wars represented, with Yoda and Ezra debating the morality of this spiritual masters using their abilities to commit violence, even if they believe their cause is just. Sure, a lot of it is fairly rudimentary, but it's still surprisingly complex for a kids' show.

We even get some cool moments with The Inquisitors that hints at some greater depth for them too. The conversation between Kanan and the Seventh Sister suggests some kind of history. (That said, she's weirdly flirty with almost everyone, and I may be projecting based on the fact that the voice actors are married in real life.) The cold open with the two-on-two battle between Kanan and Ezra and The Inquisitors was nicely done. I appreciate how the Seventh Sister is portrayed as clever and unorthodox, with details like her using her droid in battle or being able to sniff out the rebels in the Jedi temple. There's a sense that she's a formidable opponent in a way that the Fifth Brother isn't, and it takes the ingenuity of Ezra connecting mentally with bat creatures (animal telepathy apparently becoming his specialty) to escape her.

They also have their own mystical experience inside the temple. The fact that they face the Inquisitor is interesting, though I'm not sure it really means anything short of a cool moment and an excuse for why our heroes escape. They also, of course, alert Vader to the existence of the temple, which leads to his first presence since the mini-film that opened the season. Hearing James Earl Jones in the role is still powerful, and makes the character's presence as chilling as ever.

But the absolute highlight for me, in an episode that had plenty of them, was Ahsoka’s part of it. “Shroud of Darkness” shows Ahsoka grappling with regret and self-questioning over leaving the order. The fact that she doesn’t want to participate in the ritual to open the door to the temple on Lothal, because since she’s not a Jedi it wouldn’t be right, hints at that from the show’s early going. At the same time, the fact that she’s watching a holocron of Anakin demonstrating forms and reminiscing about him hints at how her old master is still on her mind.

These little hints culminate in the most powerful moment in the episode, and possibly the series thus far. It hit me like a ton of bricks when a vision of Anakin appeared to chastise Ahsoka. In the Star Wars franchise, these temples have been about facing your greatest fears, the things that eat away at your soul and spirit in the hopes that you can overcome them. So hearing Anakin call Ahsoka selfish for leaving the order reveals her deepest insecurities – the question of whether leaving the Jedi was right.

That question is given greater power if you’ve seen the episodes of The Clone Wars where Ahsoka leaves the order, and you understand the circumstances under which she made that decision. It’s also given power by the show bringing back Matt Lanter to voice Anakin, giving his words more weight. And it’s especially affecting if you’ve watched the whole of The Clone Wars, and seen the connection between Ahsoka and Anakin grow and develop over the course of dozens of adventures and years of stories.

That’s why the most devastating moment comes when the vision of Anakin reprimands Ahsoka for leaving and asks if she knows what happened to him after she left, if she knows what he became. The ghostly image of Anakin is powerful on its own, but the camera focuses on Ahsoka’s eyes for a moment, showing the emotion of the moment for her, and then cuts back. In place of Anakin there is Vader, and the heartbreaking realization emerges – Ahsoka blames herself for Anakin’s descent.

After she made that connection with Vader, she hasn’t just been mourning what amounts to the loss of her friend or being in shock at the realization that the man she looked up to and learned from has become this monster. She’s been tearing herself up with the idea that she could have prevented this, that if she had stayed, been there to help and support Anakin during the events of Revenge of the Sith, that she could have saved him, prevented him from becoming this twisted creature, maybe prevented all of the Empire’s horrors from coming to pass.

That is a terrible weight to carry on one’s shoulders. Unlike with Ezra and Kanan, we don’t see Ahsoka overcoming this fear or accepting that she can’t control what will happen next. The closest we get is a brief reunion between her and the vision of Yoda, a gentle wave that suggests he’s looking out for her, and perhaps there is an answer
.
Guilt is one of those emotions that can be hard to reckon with. It is resistant to logic, more a feeling that cannot be escaped when a terrible thing happens, even if there’s nothing that could have been done to prevent it. The very fact that a terrible thing happens, especially to someone close to us, elicits that feeling within us. We lament the result and thus anoint ourself the causer of it, to our own misery and sometimes even ruin.

There’s a great pathos in Ahsoka blaming herself for her master’s turn to the dark side. When we see Kanan fight against the visions of the temple guards, we see his fears manifested – that he’s creating the next Vader, the next powerful being who will use the connection to the force to terrorize the galaxy and kill.

But in Ahsoka, we see that fear realized. She has to confront the idea that someone she cared for, someone she believed in, someone she loved as a parent and a brother, became something she doesn’t recognize, that horrifies her, and she cannot help but wonder if she might have been able to stop it. Ahsoka herself was betrayed by the Jedi, and managed, as far as we know, to stay good, to fight for the ideals she was taught even without the guidance of her former master.

Maybe, however, Anakin needed her more than she needed him, as a friend beyond Obi Wan to help keep him sane and steady. Neither she nor we can know if she might have helped. Instead, she is haunted by who Anakin was, who Darth Vader is, and the thought that perhaps, if she had made a different choice, she might have saved him.

An amazingly well constructed episode that deals with alternate timelines but manages to be a wonderful character piece. The return of Denise Crosby as Tasha is central to this, and I wish I could experience the original shock of seeing her that must have occurred back in 1990.

The episode manages to bring meaning to her senseless season 1 death, and her scenes with both Guinan and Picard are very layered and powerful. Additionally, the episode has a vividly different look from standard TNG; dramatic lighting and longer focal depth really stand out, giving the episode its own identity. I get a small thrill with the return of the original-era movie uniforms and even set design.

It's also nice the way that the main cast change their performances in only subtle ways. Mainly we see that Picard and Riker have a harder edge, they seem more battle weary and forceful in their decisions. But the old captain is still in there as we see in his discussions with Guinan. This is yet another demonstration of what an important addition Whoopi Goldberg was to the cast.

As for minor criticism, I find the last 5 minutes of the episode a little dull. The battle with the Klingons just isn't particularly exciting. It's also convenient that the Enterprise-C crew were so willing to go back to their time without much argument.

9.3/10. As became clear to me while watching Star Wars: The Clone Wars, I am a sucker for the occasions when the animated wing of Star Wars gets a little more spiritual and impressionistic (see also: the Mortis arc and Yoda's S6 arc in The Clone Wars). There's something about Star Wars embracing its mystical side, about dramatizing the internal journey its characters are embarking on with external, dream-like representations of those challenges that always grabs me.

"Path of the Jedi" is just that kind of episode. It features Ezra going on a spirit quest in an old Jedi temple (conveniently on Lothal) akin to the one Luke takes on Dagobah in The Empire Strikes Back. As part of that journey, Ezra has to face his worst fears: that Kanan will be killed by him, that Zeb and Chopper don't think he's useful and wouldn't mind if he didn't make it back, that Hera doesn't care for him but only wants to use him for his abilities, and that Sabine doesn't see him as a peer or an equal, let alone a romantic interest, but as a little kid whom she pities. I've mentioned before that Rebels feels influenced by Firefly, and as much as this episode is clearly taking its cues from Luke's visit to the cave in ESB, it also feels like it's borrowing from Firefly's objects in space and the way that River Tam imagines or perceives her erstwhile companions as viewing her as a liability and an albatross around their necks. For Ezra, that fear is rooted in feelings of abandonment, of loss, that he's struggling to overcome.

Kanan has fears as well. He worries about whether he will be a good enough teacher to Ezra, whether he can prevent him from veering to the dark side. We get hints at Kanan's past for the first time, and indication that he himself may have succumbed to the darker elements of the force, or simply lost in faith in the aftermath of the great Jedi purge. We don't know what Kanan's path was, but it makes his fear unique and full of perspective. We know it makes him worried about training another young man in the ways of the force who may hit the same speedbumps, go down the same dark roads, that he himself once did.

Any Star Wars fan (or mere watcher of trailers) knows that fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering, suffering leads to overpriced appetizers, etc. etc. etc. What's interesting about Ezra's journey here is that it feels like it's also taking a page out of Anakin's path. As I talked about a little bit in my write up of the prior episode, the two of them have a lot in common, and much of "Path of the Jedi" is about asking the same questions that were once asked of the boy who would become Darth Vader. Is he too full of fear? Is he too old to begin this journey? Will his desire to avenge the people he loves lead him to the dark side?

Of course, the voice asking these questions is a familiar and invigorating one. Nothing against the incredible Tom Kane, who did a great job as Yoda in The Clone Wars, but hearing Frank Oz return to the character, bringing his impish charms, his Socratic playfulness, his almost mischievous wisdom, gave me chills. Invoking Yoda to guide Ezra (and Kanan for that matter) gives this vision quest more weight. We see the twinkling lights that first appeared in Yoda's own journey in The Clone Wars. We hear him interrogate Ezra in his own unassuming way, and try to suss out if he has another Anakin on his hands.

But while Ezra speaks with the same angry tones Anakin once did, vows to avenge and protect the people he cares for, there's something different that Yoda recognizes. He is with a found family who have (admittedly quickly) taught him to protect everyone, to give away what he has, to make the galaxy better for all, not just for those he cares for. We knew where Anakin's journey was headed, which made his path haunting at times, but also short on intrigue. With Ezra, we don't know where the path will take him, and that makes these moments both exciting and scary. Yoda, for his part, is mollified enough to give Ezra a kyber crystal, the basis for a lightsaber, and as we learned in The Clone Wars, a rite of passage for young Jedi.

The import of that journey is bolstered by the quality design and animation work. While The Inquisitor still spouts some hacky bad guy dialogue here, the different hues that Rebels bathe its characters in, the different angles it uses to frame them, help convey the mystic atmosphere and pretzel logic of Ezra's journey. The design of the temple itself, with the skeletons of old masters and geometric designs on domes that fade into a view of the stars themselves, make the location of this rite feel appropriately sacred and distinct.

The temple on Lothal is the place where Ezra passes a test greater than one that Kanan can provide, a test not from Yoda, but from the power of the force itself. Ezra must find peace, must find concentration, must find the devotion to all life and the responsibility that comes with wielding that power before he may be allowed to progress, to be taught. We don't know whether he may one day stray from the path, like Anakin did, like Kanan did. Ezra's struggling with a great deal at this point in his life, with powerful attachments that still burn within him and seem contrary to the Jedi way. But this much is clear -- the young man who walks out of that cave, out of that temple, having faced down the things that worry him, that keep him up at night, that lurk in the corners of his mind threatening to lead him to the dark side, is a young man ready to take the next step.

Well, I kind of liked generally this episode because Burnam was much less on the screen, the visual are really nice, there is action, and less cringy scene (but still some) than the previous.

But honestly, the ending plot is really unimpressive, so obvious, and so flat. Nothing really happen at all.

Control that as reach so much power, knowledge and consciousness, is SO DUMB and 'die' in such a stupid way. I am impressed by how stupid the AI strategy was. When Leeland died, I really felt like "wow this is it? really ?".

Also, I don't know how strong are ships in Star Trek, but I am pretty sure that 2 sciences ships (Discovery and Enterprise are not battle ship right?) against 10+ section 31 ships that are made for combat + a lot of kamikaze drones... well, those 2 ships shield shouldn't last 1 hours+ and still be at over 30%.

And finally, Control is an AI, so it's literally everywhere. It kind of took control of Leeland with 'nanobot' but Control is not depended on Leeland to survive, Leeland is just part of control. I don't see how the show considered that Control is only Leeland, and without him the other ship can't be controlled (I remember they say that at some point). Also, while Leeland is on Discovery (with the stupidest reaction that stupid human would follow), how is it possible that the other ships with 10+ ships can't scan Burnam and target her. instead she just fly away in the most indiscreet way and be completely safe.

Anyway, the show ended, it was a decent time filler, but yes, I am not that moved by this Star Trek. I would resume this last episode as some kind of Star Wars TheForce Awaken, everybody knew the plot, nothing impressive happens, but the visual are good.

[7.7/10] I know that B:TAS made waves for being an animated show that was intended to be accessible for kids, while also not dumbing down its material of being able to delve into mature themes. But man, a mob boss seeing his son hooked on drugs and reforming thanks in part to his flashbacks about unintentionally maiming his little brother is pretty intense for a kids show!

But that’s the nice thing about this series. It doesn't shy away from those sorts of topics, but it does them tastefully. At times, this episode devolves a little into being a Chick tract. (Batman’s warning that this has to stop now when Arnold Stromwell sees his son hooked on junk starts to feel a little overly didactic). But for the most part, the episode shows a surprising amount of restraint.

This is a story of reform, one where Batman plays the Ghost of Christmas Future to a man who still has the capacity to change, and that’s a really cool idea. The show sets up the notion of a mob war between the already established Rupert Thorne and Stromwell as a good reason to have some action and tension injected into this. And it brings the aesthetic flair to help add suspense and impact to the story, whether it’s the billowing explosions after the attempt on Stromwell’s life, or the freight train bursting through a cloud of steam and bearing down on two young boys.

In the end, the show doesn't skimp on Stromwell’s change of heart. It takes a lot to move him, mainly that flashback to what his morally suspect ways did to his brother. The train sequence is really well staged and animated, replete with nice cuts to Arnold in the present day reacting to the painful memory. The reveal that the priest Batman speaks to is the little boy whose pain Arnold so regrets is a good one, and the sibling relationship goes a long way toward earning the shift in Stromwell’s principles.

At the same time, it’s another episode where Batman is a side character more than he is a main character, and yet does well in that role, using his detective skills to put this whole thing together, and having a larger goal that makes sense beyond just saving a man’s soul. Even beyond that, just him standing on gothic architecture and gazing into the night matches the show’s usual cool imagery.

Overall, this is an episode that feels like it could be done up as a Scorcese short or something along those lines, with a maturity in its subject matter and a tastefulness in its depiction that makes it seem adult without seeming grimdark or saccharine.

[7.1/10] So here’s the problem -- I don’t really care about Pabu. That's not necessarily The Bad Batch’s fault. I think the show has dutifully established what this town means to Omega, Hunter, and Wrecker, and what it represents for them as a safe haven. But the other side of the coin is that, given the passage of time between seasons, I’m not sure I could name a single one of the characters who resides there, or recall what exactly their significance is to our heroes. (I vaguely remember Omega being friends with Lyana and Wrecker having a moment of camaraderie with Mayor Shep, but that's about it.) That means it’s more of a generic setting than an important place to me as a viewer. So for me at least, the idea of “Pabu is home” works in theory, but not really in practice, lacking the impact that, say, watching the Empire destroy the Marauder has.

Which is all to say that I get what The Bad Batch is going for here. The Shadow Agent has arrived! He’s brought Stormtroopers to their safe and sacred place! They’re hurting innocent people! Omega has no choice but to go with them to stop the suffering!

But it doesn’t really land for me emotionally. Some of it’s just that the pacing of this one is all over the place There’s a long slow build, and even once the Empire arrives, it’s a bunch of muddy and indifferent action, without much to latch onto as a viewer. I can, in principle, appreciate Wrecker getting incapacitated in the explosion, Hunter getting sidelined trying to grab a transport, and the locals seeing their livelihood destroyed. But without a more personal connection, much of this feels like standard piece-moving and table-setting for the final stretch of the series. I understand why the show needs to do these things, and the violation it’s supposed to feel like, but the stakes don’t really land and neither do the emotions.

There’s a few points worth noting. For one, the fact that the Shadow Agent is able to snipe a stormtrooper from seemingly miles way strongly suggests he’s a clone of Crosshair, which portends interesting things. While I can see the seams a little too plainly, the best thing this episode does to establish Pabu as important is making it the home for Tech’s glasses and Omega/Wrecker’s plush, sacred objects in The Bad Batch’s corner of the universe.

Most of all, I appreciate that on Omega’s journey to maturity, she is now willing to give herself up, put herself in harm’s way, both to save the villagers of Pabu, but also in a bid to rescue the clones who are still trapped on Tantiss. There is a selflessness, a courage, a righteousness to Omega that bears out. The interplay between ehr perspective and Crosshair’s this season ahs been a particular highlight. The way he tells her this isn’t a viable plan, and she responds “It’s all we have” shows not only how Omega’s grown, not only the bravery she displays on a daily basis, but the sense of self-sacrifice she’s picked up from Tech.

The most tension “The Point of No Return” can offer comes in the plan to track Omega’s jaunt to Tantiss. Her giving up her comms to the Shadow Agent as a feint, only for Crosshair’s secondary tracker to miss comes freighted with expectation and disappointment. And Omega’s sigh when she’s on the Shadow Agent’s transport, suggests there’s another layer to the plan, but also perhaps just a sense of exhaustion, of resolve, of that franchise trademark hope within the young clone heading back to the site of her captivity.

I can't say I loved this one. It strikes me as a more functional episode than a purely riveting one. But it does leave me impressed with the show’s main character, and excited to see what happens next, so it must be doing something right.

[7.6/10] I appreciate that this one focused both on Crosshair’s recovery from his trauma, particularly when returning to the place where his heart fully moved, and on his tense reconnection with Hunter. Neither is easy.

For the latter, the show does some of its best work. There’s something very understated about Crosshair’s pain at returning to the location where he realized the Empire saw clones as disposable property. The way he’s tense even stepping onto the site comes through clearly to the audience. The way he looks around, the sense memory flooding back, is palpable. And my favorite moment in the episode is where he stacks the stormtrooper helmets on the storage container, a quiet tribute to his fallen comrades for no one but himself. Crosshair is taciturn, unemotional, but you can tell this place had an effect on him, one that he’s still reckoning with, and the show doesn’t flinch from that.

“The Return” doesn’t shy away from the lingering friction between him and Hunter either. In some places, the episode lays it on a bit thick, but there’s a core of truth that bears out. Hunter’s right in his reluctance to trust Crosshair after the way he turned on them and even helped hunt them down. And given that Crosshair went to work for the Empire, it’s not crazy for Hunter to wonder why Crosshair’s not telling them the whole story and harbor his suspicions.

Crosshair is equally justified in feeling like his onetime brother is giving him an unnecessarily hard time. He rightfully points out that, whatever the rest of the Bad Batch may think of him, Crosshair sent them the message about Omega. You can tell both that whatever his protestations, Crosshair still harbors plenty of affection for the young girl (who amusingly points out that she’s technically older than Crosshair), and that he blames his brothers for not acting to save her before she was captured.

Most importantly though, having seen Crosshair;s journey, we know that he’s not keeping details close to the vest because he’s trying to deceive his comrades. He’s holding things back because they hurt to talk about, because he’s as bred soldier who’s not equipped to express basic emotions, let alone complex ones like, “I thought I was being a good soldier, but I committed acts of evil and realized I was being used as a weapon to be used up and then discarded.” Both he and Hunter are sympathetic here in why they’re not on the same page.

Of course, what gets them on the same page is fighting a giant ice worm.

The defense and attack of the Dune-esque oversized wiggler is creditably done. The script sets up the threat subtly, lets it escalate, and gives our heroes goals both immediate and longer term that drive the action. The fights are generally well staged, with the worm looming over our heroes and causing a ruckus even when he’s not in frame. And Crosshair and HUnter having to work together, rebuilding their trust in the process, gives the action a point.

I’ll admit, after decades of watching Star Wars, and years of watching the animated series, I’m just inured to most of the action now unless it’s especially well done. The worm fight is the kind of interstitial battle where you know everyone’s going to make it out unscathed, and it’s just something action-packed to drive Hunter and Crosshair closer. So while I can appreciate the work, it’s easier for me to zone out during these moments.

Still, I like that through the work the pair come to trust each other a little more, and Omega, who’s still learning and growing, recognizes that it’ll take time, but that two people she loves are starting the rocky path to loving one another as brothers again. I’m more in it for the deep psychological examination of trauma and rebuilding of shattered relationships than I am fighting gigantic bugs at this point, but thankfully The Bad Batch has both.

(As an aside, I’d assumed that Crosshair’s shaky hand was a physical ailment or clone degradation he wasn’t allowing himself to treat out of some kind of penance. But now I’m beginning to suspect it’s psychosomatic, and a reflection of his internalized guilt over his past actions. I’m interested to find out!)

8.1/10. Let's get this out of the way -- this episode was really really on the nose. You couldn't have missed the message or the point of "The Last Battle" if you were merely making oatmeal for twenty minutes with the episode on in the background. It's message about Rex and the Supertactical Droid being Not So Different™ and The Empire being the really victor in The Clone Wars was so telegraphed so clearly and so loudly that the show basically gave up on subtlety entirely at some point.

Still, for a fan of The Clone Wars show, it was nice to tie a bow around that part of Star Wars history, and give us a delayed, shadow ending to the series as it would have been after the events of Revenge of the Sith. We get a lot of nods to the old series and that time period. For one thing, it was nice to see the garden variety battle droids again. They turned into slapstick machines rather than an actual threat along time ago, but the episode lampshades that and uses it for comedy (with the droids themselves responding in a mildly offended fashion to boot) in a very crowd-pleasing way.

There's also several meta nods to the formula and tropes of The Clone Wars, from the Tactical Droid noting that he referenced 132 incidents when preparing for battle (roughly corresponding to the number of episodes of the show + unfinished story reels + the movie), and other hints that this one was meant as a love letter to fans of TCW.

But as loudly as they were broadcasted, what makes this episode stand out are its themes. I doubt the show will pick up this strain of thought again, but I really appreciated that they showed Rex having PTSD, mistaking Kanan for Cody, and when surrounded by the visual reminders and symbols of The Clone Wars, reverting to his battle-tested days. Again, the parallel wasn't subtle at all, but the connection they drew between Rex and the Supertactical Droid, in how both of them were stuck in the old days, and hadn't been able to make peace with what happened, was a strong one.

And yes, Ezra's little speech being the key is silly as all get out, but I also appreciated the realization that that the Clones and the Droids were the victims, not the enemies, in the Clone Wars. We learn a little more about what happened after RotS here (we already knew that the Clones were decommissioned and that the Jedi were wiped out, but now we see that the droids were given a shutdown order), and that part of the mythos gains power from two emblems of the old conflict realizing that they were, if not pawns, than at least not truly one another's enemies, but rather tools of a fight they were programmed into, destined for neither side to be able to win. That's a powerful and horrifying idea, even when it's cushioned by having a precocious teenage kid lay it all out for them.

So seeing the most prominent Clone Commander and the droid army work together to defeat the Empire is cathartic (even if the whole "we need to shoot at you, and you'll deflect the blaster bolts for better accuracy" idea doesn't make much sense), and the detente between Rex and the Droid, who is as full of probability calculations as ever, is encouraging rather than cheesy. The whole episode is a nice tip of the cap to the Clone Wars days and offers an epilogue to the war-focused elements of the series in an impressive and meaningful, albeit particularly blunt fashion.

Here's a prime example of how good Voyager can be when it tells a story that's all about its characters rather than the plot-driven pieces that we're usually given. I'm also a big fan of strong continuity in my storytelling, so this ticks a lot of the right boxes.

I love that the emotion of receiving letters from home was allowed to be the main focus of this episode, and the Hirogen part was just a background plot that doesn't really take effect until the end. We see the characters reacting in all sorts of different ways and then having to deal with the contents of what their letters say. Both Chakotay and B'Elanna find out about the end of the Maquis (from the DS9 episode 'Blaze of Glory') and it gives their characters - especially Chakotay - something to actually motivate their choices and personalities for once.

It also lead to a quite excellent scene between B'Elanna and Tom as their differing views on receiving letters from home let them learn more about each other.

The Hirogen themselves are kind of cheesy but a far more intimidating and interesting villain than the show has given us so far. I look forward to seeing more of them. Seven handled them extremely well and got some great dialogue.

I'm reading the relaunch tie-in novels chronologically alongside watching these shows, and there's a short story from the Voyager book 'Distant Shores' which leads into this episode very nicely (as well as following up elements of the semi-canon novel 'Mosaic'). Having just read about Janeway's fiancé Mark and how he dealt with her disappearance, then finding out she's still alive and having to write her a letter, made this episode all the more powerful. I really hope there's going to be more Starfleet contact in the future.

This is a cool, but ultimately stupid episode.
1. What exactly was the plan down on the planet with the hostages? Just seemed like an excuse to give the other actors something to do. Why would the people stealing trilithium from the Enterprise care about what was going on down below with the senior staff? Plus there are 1000 other people normally onboard the Enterprise (including Worf who skipped the reception) so what good is holding a few of them hostage? And wouldn't they know
2. Why would a team of technicians be allowed onto the Enterprise while the baryon sweep was ongoing if it's deadly? What is their supposed role?
3. How did this team manage to infiltrate this Starfleet base in the first place?
4. Picard takes a pretty big risk going back onto the ship when it's about to be shut down and swept with deadly radiation. Shouldn't he at least arrange for someone to check to make sure he made it off ok?
5. Data seems to have no trouble imitating human mannerisms with the small talk bit, so why doesn't he do it more often?
6. Wouldn't the team stealing trilithium know who Picard was? Not only is he one of the most famous captains of the day, but they are stealing from his ship… shouldn't they do some basic research first?
7. Why didn't Troi sense something was wrong before the shooting started? She clearly can sense the aliens who held them hostage, since she says as much later on. Sure she didn't have any reason to be concerned, but it's a passive sense for her, she would have felt something.
8. Picard's phaser won't work but theirs do?
9. Why didn't Picard communicate down to his colleagues on the planet immediately instead of waiting until the last minute in Ten Forward?
10. Riker gets really up close to the hostage taker and knock him out… But then he lets himself get knocked out by the other guy. Even if the others had still stood there and done nothing for some reason, Riker could have easily taken out the other guy who was right there.
11. Data is stronger and faster than biological beings. It seems plausible that he should be able to predict where someone is planning to shoot and move out of the way long before that individual actually fires, so he could dodge and take out the attacker (he wasn't even that far from him).
12. Poor Hutch is murdered but fortunately Geordi, shot point blank in the chest is ok.
13. Picard doesn't want to kill the terrorists but then just kills them anyway.

Reading too much into it? Yes. So what?

The show says goodbye to Kes and brings Seven of Nine into the family. I have mixed feelings about both, but I like that they handled both events in one episode.

Kes was a character who never really contributed anything to Voyager, despite the intrigue surrounding her developing mental abilities. It's a shame that nothing came of her, because Jennifer Lien was one of the best actors on the show and always brought more to the stories than others would have. Her relationship with Neelix never worked, but her interactions with Tuvok and the Doctor promised that more could have been coming up. Anyway, her method of leaving the ship is very abrupt and denies her a a proper goodbye with anyone other than Janeway. It's a somewhat emotional finish that leaves open ended questions.

And then we have Seven of Nine. A problematic character, because as has been freely admitted she was brought onto the show for no other reason than to have an attractive woman to boost ratings. They stick her in a catsuit, get rid of all the ugly Borg implants and the whole thing is quite ridiculous. What nobody could have forseen is that Jeri Ryan is a fantastic actress who brought a huge amount of weight to all of her scenes and elevated the character far above whatever ambitions the producers had for her.

This episode is all about moving things around, so very little really happens in it. Janeway's ridiculously elastic morals/superiority show up again as she tells Seven that she will have no free will aboard Voyager - at least the script acknowledges how horrible this is by having Seven accuse her of being no different from the Borg.

As some have said, this was not what I expected. I expected a film that focused on the actual scientific undertaking and technological achievement as well as the psychological, emotional, and real world turmoil of creating man's worst invention. I expected to come out of this film impressed by the science, but also as horrified as Oppenheimer himself.

I thought this would be an actual biopic of Oppenheimer. I was curious to see what type of life he lived that would eventually lead him to the Manhattan project, its destructive aftermath, and his future work. And I expected to come out of this film with a better understanding of how they even built this crazy thing - which despite its obvious horrific application, is still a scientific marvel that only a small handful of countries have been able to reproduce even nearly 80 years later.

But instead, this stuff was glossed over to give us 3 hours of boring political dialogue outside the scope of anything that truly historically mattered. Oh, and they gave us occasional scenes about his sex life mixed in. Because of course, when it comes to the father of the atom bomb, the first thing people want to know about him is his sex life??

Remember, just because the film overwhelms viewers with intense, suspenseful music from beginning to end doesn't make the accompanying boring political squabble scenes any less boring. Just because it tells the story non-chronologically doesn't make the script more profound, it just makes it frustrating to watch. And just because it had the budget to fill even minor roles with A list actors doesn't mean it should have. Each time another big face popped up, it pulled me out of the film (which admittedly, was not hard to do since the film was so boring).

Ironically, the film multiple times hinted that certain aspects of the bomb and its story are actually important and should be seen by all. For example, they explicitly talked about the importance of actually seeing the bomb and its destruction to fully appreciate, and fear, its power. But then the film ignores its own insight and only shows us short clips of one test while completely ignoring its destruction. And Hiroshima and Nagasaki occurred off screen! Seriously This film could have used 2023 movie making skills to re-instill fear of nuclear apocalypse (which given current international conflict, wouldn't be the worst thing right now). But it didn't even attempt to. Further, the film even acknowledges in its conclusion that the political drama was almost entirely unimportant compared to the bigger picture of the technology and its impact on the world. So why couldn't they make the film focused on that instead??

They should have just called the film "Straus vs Oppenheimer" since that's really what this film was about. They built a device that killed hundreds of thousands of people in a single strike, and which changed the world forever, yet the film portrays the political stakes of Oppenheimer losing his security clearance and Straus not being confirmed to a cabinet position as the bigger deal worth caring about (and worth a 3 hour runtime).

This was a chore to watch and I had to rewind it multiple times because I kept falling asleep. I finished the film not entertained nor did I even learn anything of value. I feel like I got robbed out of what should have been a deeply impactful film.

'Fair Trade' managed to do something incredible, and that was to make me care about Neelix. I've often spoken about how he's my least favourite character on the show - maybe the whole Trek franchse - and that I generally think he brings things down. I've never thought that was the fault of the actor, Ethan Philips, but rather the horrendous writing of the terrible character he was given.

And yet here, Philips manages to show what he's capable of doing when paired up with good writing. This episode is a gripping tale that kept me engaged from start to finish. Seeing Neelix get dragged into more and more precarious situations was exciting not because of the peril he was in, but because of how we imagine it might affect his relationship with Voyager and its crew. I didn't want to see his worst fears realised, and that surprised me more than anybody. No surprises that his Talaxian friend Wix turned out to be a ciminal, though. Well, duh.

I like that it shows a different side to Neelix, he's so much more interesting when he has a serious story rather than being over the top comic relief. Janeway gets a good scene in which she's able to give him a bit of a talking to, too.

Interesting to see the introduction of the Vulcan Ensign Vorik, who bears a remarkable resemblence to the Vulcan character the same actor played previously on TNG (Taurik). Novels will establish that they are twin brothers, and I like that notion. I also like Neelix's conversation with Tom that kept things vague enough about his crime that we can still imagine he's actually the same character as Locarno from the TNG episode 'The First Duty'.

A surprisingly strong episode.

8.8/10. Lightsabers are one of those holy artifacts in the Star Wars universe, the kind that are specific to the Jedi and signify their oneness with the force. So it was always a little odd, albeit cool, that when Jedi would run into Mandalorean baddies, they would have this darksaber that seemed to allow them to go to toe-to-toe with the Jedi. “Trials of the Darksaber” rectifies that, making the darksaber an even holier object by making it one of a kind and, through an impressive if brief art shift, establishing it as a holy object for the Mandaloreans as well. It is the only such lightsaber, created by the first Mandalorean Jedi master, taken from the Jedi after his death, and passed down to storied leaders from the Vizla clan through the ages.

It’s a pretty big deal for the first and only black lightsaber in Star Wars. (As an aside, I am an old man who remembers when there were only blue, green, and red lightsabers. Now we have purple, yellow, black, and white. I think that just leaves orange and indago before we complete the Roy G. Biv lightsaber rainbow.) But more importantly, it makes the darksaber something more than just a cool new toy for Sabine to play with; it makes it a symbol of the birthright she’s rejected and the pressure of being both a Mandalorean and a Rebel.

That’s what I liked the most about “Darksaber Trial” – that it used something cool, flashy, and toyetic to expand the lore, provide character backstory, and most of all, develop one of its more underserved characters a little better. Getting more insight into the history of the darksaber and the Mandalorean mythos is cool; finally getting to know why Sabine left Mandalore is interesting, if a little trite, and getting insight into what’s driving her is a vital part of making her a more well-rounded and motivated character.

What gets the episode extra points is how well it uses Kanan and Hera on top of that main story. It’s not a high bar, but the pair have quickly become the best (pseudo) married couple in all of Star Wars, seeming like mature and caring partners who have their differences but know how to get through to one another. That gives the episode added weight and dimension too.

One of the recurring threads in Rebels has been Kanan’s insecurities about being a teacher. Despite the air of authority he puts on when in teacher mode, Kanan himself has admitted that he’s unsure of himself, inexperienced and not positive how to do this. So the fact that he is hard on Sabine, starting her off very slow and not giving her a chance to go big and commit to learning the darksaber works to show his reluctance and myopia as an instructor.

The episode does a nice job at suggesting that there is something uniquely Mandalorean about Sabine and about the darksaber, and that means that Kanan is trying to fit a square peg in a round hole by trying to be slavish in teaching her the Jedi methods of lightsaber wielding. There is a hesitance from him here, a bias even (with a nice but subtle subtext of gender bias in the comments about how he didn’t treat Ezra this way) in how he will not let Sabine test her limits because he doesn’t trust her uniquely Mandalorean nature.

That leads to two of the nicer elements of the episode. The first, and another toyetic element given weight, is how Fenn Rau gives Sabine Mandalorean vambraces that help her to replicate Jedi powers like a force push or a force grab in uniquely Mandalorean way. These make the difference, and lend toward the recognition that Sabine has to forge her own path, one that is not purely dictated by her Mandalorean history, but also not dictated by Jedi tradition either. She finds a healthy middle between the two, matching Mandalorean ingenuity with Jedi principles of the blade as extension of self.

And second, it dovetails nicely into Sabine’s epiphany that she can honor both her old family, the one that rejected her on Mandalore, and the new one, who bow down to her and say that they would follow her lead. That’s where Hera comes in. I love the fact that Rebels remembered its history here, invoking that Hera is uniquely position to know what it’s like to feel spurned by your own parents to give her insight and empathy for what Sabine’s going through that makes the difference. Her being the one to convince Kanan to change his tactics is a great choice, that builds on what we know about Hera and the pair’s relationship.

That change in tactics leads to a thrilling action sequence, made all the more notable by the fact that it is, essentially, a very intense sparring session. The cinematography and art direction are both superb, with the evening sky and the desert setting creating the right mood for the heightened moment where Sabine uses the darksaber for the first time and Kanan pushes her to confront her conflicted emotions about it. Much credit also goes to the perpetually underappreciated Kevin Kiner, whose score adds tremendously to the gravitas of the scene.

The only catch is that, heaven help her, voice actress Tiya Sircar, who typically does a great job with Sabine, isn’t quite up to those charged moments. Sabine’s emotional breakthrough doesn’t quite have the impact it needs to when Sircar comes off more overwrought than convincingly distressed. That’s a real difficulty in trying to sell Sabine’s big realization and triumph here (and in fairness, stretches of clunky dialogue don’t do SIrcar any favors), but thankfully the direction and music in the scene help to make up the difference.

The result is that we get to know Sabine much better. We know that what caused her to defect and to leave Mandalore is the fact that, with her creativity and tech skills, she was a weapons-maker, and reacted with horror after learning that the Empire used the weapons she made on her own people. We know that her clan and family name are sore spots because her own parents disowned her for seemingly abandoning her people for this reason. And we learn that, like many in Star Wars and Rebels specifically she has difficulty trusting in anyone or anything for this reason.

The darksaber is the prism through which all of this information is delivered. It is a symbol, both of Sabine’s connection to her people which she is reluctant to embrace because of the bad memories it conjures, and now also of her new family, the one that, whatever Kanan’s initial hesitancy (and let’s say it, prejudice) about training Mandaloreans, is the one that trusts her with the awesome responsibility of that weapon and all the significance it carries, and the one that would follow her into battle, whether she’s wielding it or not. Lightsabers are one of the most iconic parts of the Star Wars universe, and the best works within it use them not merely as cool futuristic swords to slice and dice, but as windows into the souls of those who carry them.

8.7/10. It was nice to see Ahsoka on her own a bit, struggling with her newfound autonomy and the visions of Aura. We haven't seen her and Padme interact much before, but they had a nice rapport, and I especially appreciated the way that Padme offered counsel and support based on her own experience as a young leader having to make tough decisions. I'd remiss if I didn't point out that this is an episode where the protagonist, the antagonist,, and the major supporting character were all women, and yet it wasn't a story about their gender, but rather a story about strength and finding your way in uncertain times. The show deserves a lot of credit for that.

From a pure storytelling perspective, Ahsoka's visions provided a nice bit of intrigue that propelled the story and kept the audience guessing right to the end. The double fakeout with the first assassination attempt, followed by Aura not falling for the decoy the second time around did a good job of keeping the plot interesting and throwing in twists even when we thought we knew the story. Again, it was nice to see Padme showing a certain amount of strength and determination on the political side, and on the whole it's nice to see things accomplished in the Star Wars universe without a blaster or a lightsaber. Despite that, I especially liked the maturity and growth Ahsoka showed here. Her first real solo mission was a nice way to spotlight her development as a Jedi, a warrior, and a person.

After 12 years of watching this fantastic comedy sitcom it has come to heartfelt ending.

It is genuinely one of the funniest shows on TV with a fantastic cast and great chemistry. Sheldon Cooper maybe arrogant, self centered and in capable of emotions or empathy but you are rooting for him in the show and he quickly rises to be the star of a fantastic group. They really do come together as family and you want to hang out with these people, after 12 years of watching this show you think of Howard, Rajesh, Penny, Leonard, Bernadette, Sheldon, and Amy as friends that you really do know. They all have their stories to play out but you just don't know what to expect and when it does you love it.

They kept it relatable and especially to us nerds and that of the comic kidding, and now that Marvel is king it only made us even cooler. And seeing how nuts these guys are about Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek made them relatable to us and through everything they have been through we can relate to them.

The ending was genuinely perfect, the gang back together over a meal. We just haven't had enough of them.