Bad Batch (Spoilers)

General Discussion
#1

The Bad Batch is out!

My thoughts:

Excellent. Very very good. And the first episode is quite long, about 75 minutes.

I am rather peeved that they decided to bring in Kanan Jarrus in the opening scene, however. “It’s a small world, after all” is not the kind of Star Wars I like, especially when it violates previously established official canon, or at least skates unnecessarily close to the line. I would have preferred it if they introduced new Jedi, or Jedi we didn’t see get deep (sixty-)sixed yet. Also, Kanan had a very deep voice. Too deep, methinks.

Aside from that… I liked the episode. A lot.
Darker, more serious, and the animation is phenomenal. Especially when compared to the Clone Wars movie, which was only 20 minutes longer. The jump in quality (story, acting, animation) is tremendous. Filoni knocked it out of the park again.

Points I like:
Wrecker has a Tooka doll. This seriously cracked me up.
Omega is a fun character, and still something of an enigma at this point. Hoping she continues to be as interesting as she has been so far.
The mess fight (pardon the pun): Isn’t this the most RPG thing to have happened? One character successfully defuses the situation, and then one of the players decides to screw it all up.
Lots of good intrigue in this as well. I’m hoping we get to see much more of the icky fish-heads, because as much as I don’t like them (for in-universe reasons), this is a very interesting facet of the story.
Seeing Saw slowly changing over time was also quite appealing.


Thoughts for the future:
Will Crosshair be redeemed? Can he even be? If he is, how? They’ll need to remove the inhibitor chip, which means they’ll need to find out about that. Can Tech do it on his own/with Omega’s help, or will they have to learn from someone? If so, who? Ahsoka? Rex? Will we see three free trio, or Rex in the process of freeing Wolffe and Gregor?
I’m a bit disappointed with how Rex’s inhibitor chip was handled in CW season 7. Based on Rebels, I was under the impression that he’d already removed his chip when order 66 came about, and so didn’t turn on Ahsoka because of that. I think that makes more sense and would have been a better way to handle it, but it’s not how they did it. However, it does open the window a bit more now, as it means Rex is probably still in the process of freeing Wolffe and Gregor and has probably not noped out entirely yet.

1 Like
#2

Lol I didn’t realize who it was. To my defense, my 10 year old daughter was constantly making statements and speculations during the episode. :blush: I’m ok with it as long as we don’t keep seeing Kanan. I don’t want him to be a major character in this at all. If it was a one-off, then it’s cool seeing this moment in Kanan’s back story “on the screen”. But, I hope that was the end of it.

The Omega enigma. My first thought is force-sensitive clone. If this turns out to be the case, I’m conflicted of whether I like it. I don’t think the series needed yet another “Jedi” to be the hero. But, if there is somehow a tie-in to the future Baby Yoda /Cloning the Emperor project, then I might like that. Some background and further explanation on clones being infused with the force perhaps? Omega was an early experiment? I don’t know if it’s a clue or not, but Omega often represents “The End” or “The Last”, since it’s the last letter of the Greek alphabet. :man_shrugging:

1 Like
#3

Yes, loved the mess fight.

Can’t help while watching to map every action in the show to “what Difficulty would that have been?” or “how may Triumphs would have been necessary to make that shot?” (shooting the knife to ricochet into the target’s head, or shooting the rifle out of target’s hands ).

Yep, Omega is a force-sensitive clone.

Really great animation. Love the hyperspace stars in the eyes, even if it was a little cheesy. My daughter just rewatched entire TCW series, and was exclaiming at the rain, shadows, all the details in this.

3 Likes
#4

Any sort of backup for that, or are you just saying it?

The knife thing was really dumb in my opinion. The other would just cost 3 Advantage/1 Triumph per the standard combat charts.

#5

I’m avoiding this chat, youtube and facebook until it’s all done so I can binge watch it…

#6

Omega thought is my theory, agreeing with @Sturn , and backed up by observations. She seemed to know that bad guys were coming through that door. She made 2 great blaster shots the first time she ever picked up a blaster. She seemed to know how Crosshair was feeling.

Agree that I loved the intrigue, in-group conflict. Voice acting is also great. My wife didn’t believe it was the same actor doing all the Batch voices, at first.

1 Like
#7

All good observations, but at the same time “you’re angry” is not exactly an astute deduction (as Crosshair mentioned), and the others could be explained though heightened senses.
The Force-sensitive thing definitely crossed my mind, but I’m not convinced. Part of it is that I hope she isn’t, and that’s there’s a more interesting bio-engineering reason for it. Like maybe she has some of the abilities of the Bad Batch, and we’ll slowly get to start seeing that she’s superhuman as time goes on. Mostly I’m just hoping she isn’t Force-sensitive because I think we’ve seen enough of that.

1 Like
#8

I enjoyed seeing Kanan in the beginning. I was a little annoyed that they used the same voice as they used in Rebels because it makes a 15-17-year-old sound 34 but other than that was an excellent episode.
I’m not going to lie I hate Crosshair so I’m kind of glad that they made him bad (no pun intended), as it really suits his character.
Omega is another thing. I’m thinking that her only genetic mutation is that she is female and an awesome medic. A cool idea for a character, we shall see how she plays out.

2 Likes
#9

Being female isn’t necessarily a mutation, being a “clone” doesn’t mean she’s a Jango clone. I’m hoping she isn’t (and I doubt she is), because she looks so dramatically different. Plus, I’ve had the idea of a rogue Kaminoan scientist creating a female clone of Jango flitting around in my robo-brain for a while now, and finally decided to put it on (digi-)paper yesterday, so I don’t want it to look like I stole the idea from a Disney show…

#10

CUT LAWQUANE IS BACK!!
Sorry, too loud. Cut Lawquane is back!
This is the best episode of… well, anything that I’ve seen in a long while, but I may be a bit biased since this is the sort of story that really strikes the right chords for me.
Absolutely zero complaints about this one, except possibly that the Nexu’s head was too narrow, but that can be chalked up to the animation style.

I greatly enjoy Hunter as a father. That’s going to be very interesting to see develop. There aren’t enough shows with good fathers, I’m hoping this is one of them. Interesting how Filoni went from Mando becoming a dad to Baby Yoda to now Hunter becoming a dad to Omega. I also like how in The Mandalorian, Mando had to give up Baby Yoda for his own good, and in The Bad Batch Hunter had to make the same choice, although Omega showed up at the end anyway.

Everything in this episode was great, from the updated ages for Shaeeah and Jek to the updated outfits for Suu and Cut. Oh, and they name-dropped Rex.
I’m also incredibly relieved they didn’t kill off Cut.

That brings up an interesting tool for creating suspense. I was pretty certain that Omega and the Bad Batch were in no real danger because they’re the main characters, but introducing NPCs (yeah, I said it) alongside them opens the possibility that something could happen to them, and that becomes very suspenseful.

One other thing: I absolutely love the chain codes. I don’t know who came up with that idea, but they deserve a raise and a medal. I imagine the Empire has something like the Chinese social credit system, which introduces all sorts of interesting stories. I actually started using chain codes in one of my games (in the proper time period) as soon as I heard of them, and it’s been a great opportunity.

I’m really fascinated to see the show develop from here. It’s been great so far, and there are so many things to look forward to.

Post-post script: Poor Echo. He had about a 50% chance of beating that boot with his Computers check, but failed seven rounds in a row. :(

1 Like
#11

Loved the parenting scenes, and that the mom’s the crack shot and the dad’s the comforting one. Both my daughter and I said to one another, “Have we ever seen good parenting in Star Wars?” It was refreshing!

Agreed I was never afraid for the mains, but the side chars I was concerned about. Thought they were going to arrest them, or worse, kill them off to force Omega to go with the Batch, but I like the way they went by giving Omega the choice.

I so expected her to do something with her head amulet. Thought it was going to be a crystal, or a computer chip, or something. That may come later.

Was this the first time we’ve see human-Twilek cross-breeds?

1 Like
#12

Was this the first time ships had to be registered? Or is that just a local thing on that planet? Wasn’t BOSS around before then?

#13

No, and we still haven’t. Shaeeah and Jek were in the original Cut Lawquane episode, and they aren’t his biological children, they’re far too old for that. They’d have to be roughly two years old for that to be the case.

That dichotomy isn’t quite true. Cut is also a crack shot (seeing as he is a clone trooper after all). In the original episode (The Deserter), Cut fends off waves of malfunctioning commando droids. As for “the comforting one,” that’s a responsibility shared by both parents, as it should be. That side of Cut was just highlighted for Hunter’s benefit as it wouldn’t have the same impact if it were Suu. I suggest you watch The Deserter if you haven’t (or just rewatch it), it’s a really good episode and one of my favorites.

It probably isn’t local. I’d guess it’s the Empire overhauling the system, but it could be Disney changing the canon.

1 Like
#14

Last two episodes weren’t great, but I really liked this one. I’ll talk about episode five first, since I’m a bit negative about the previous two.

Episode five: Whoo! That was fun. I loved seeing Ord Mantell. One of my favorite locations. The animation was breathtaking, as always, and they did a fantastic job with the animals.
I’m still really holding out hope that Omega isn’t Force sensitive, but my hope is diminishing with every passing episode. I just want new stories disconnected from Palpatine (except as a distant factor for being the government) and the Jedi, and I thought that was where Bad Batch was going. It also seems like it may be skating too close to a repackaging of The Mandalorian.

As soon as I saw the bottom half of a Twi’lek’s head, I realized that it was Jabba’s rancor. Or at least a rancor belonging to Jabba.*

Wrecker boxing a rancor was fun, though seeing him get up from being thrown headfirst into a rockpile after what we saw in episode four seemed a bit incongruous.



Episode three: Very meh. Felt like filler, and they didn’t do a good job with the stormtroopers. “First of our elite troopers”? Really? Have they had any training yet? Where’d you get them from? What conditioning did they go through before sending them into a “loyalty testing” scenario? If you send them straight into “kill civilians” mode before any indoctrination or conditioning, you’re going to lose a lot of potentially useful recruits, and may end up training people who have already developed significant resistance to your propaganda (since they already see how evil you are), even if fear keeps them in line for now. Down the line, there’s a decent chance they desert or have mental problems (potentially including suicide) from having been forced to gun down civilians while not yet indoctrinated.
Add that fire is a terrible way to go, and to be the one flamethrowing civilians is definitely going to be terribly scarring experience unless you’re an unhinged sadist.

It’s been what, a few weeks at most? I can buy that they passed boot camp, but Navy SEAL training takes a year to graduate, and there’s still about a year and a half of training before deployment. That’s elite. A private fresh out of boot camp? Not elite. So many problems.
It wouldn’t be too hard to correct that with mention of them being farmed from PDF special forces or something, even then, you still have to train with the squad, learn SOPs, the new organization’s culture and methodology, etc. Felt very lazy, half-baked, and poorly executed.
Plus eye rolls at boxcheck squad.

Episode four: I enjoyed it, but it was mediocre. One of my largest issues was just how easily everybody got knocked out, especially Wrecker (who then had a boxing match with an adolescent rancor in the next episode).
Also, shouldn’t there have been more Pantorans on Pantora? You aren’t even restricted by makeup costs for only having human actors.
I noticed they recycled models for New Mandalorian civilians. I was quite amused. It’s perfectly reasonable to do so, but it tickled me (honestly, that’s probably why there were few Pantorans. They didn’t have many Pantoran models to grab from, or the budget/willingness to invest in making more).



*It’s a small world, after all… From Jabba’s rancor to Fennec Shand, it’s a small world, after all.

I really wish they’d do more to introduce new characters. It’s a big galaxy, we don’t need to have the same small roster of characters. Seeing Derrown in the background of a random cantina, sure that’s a fun Easter egg. But splicing around characters like this seems unnecessary and excessive. In Clone Wars, there were many new characters introduced, or one-timers who appeared for just one episode and then scampered off to parts unknown.

Now, this is not to say that you can’t write more stories about a particular character, but merely an objection to how all of these characters’ paths intersect so easily and frequently. If it happened occasionally, I’d go “Oh, that’s so cool!” but when it becomes predictable and happens constantly, it becomes less of a “They met someone I know!” than a “I wonder which characters they’re going to meet?”

Also, sometimes they stretch the timeline a bit in order to accommodate the small world. With Bo Katan in The Mandalorian, she’d be about sixty (old enough to be her actress’s mother, and actresses usually look even younger than they are anyway). Fennec Shand looks about 40 or so in The Mandalorian, which is probably a few years younger than Ming-Na Wen given Hollywood’s Faustian bargains of agelessness…
*Does a quick Google.* SHE’S FIFTY-EIGHT!?!

Okay. Well. She aged quite gracefully. That’s Hollywood for ya.
Still, it seems a bit of a stretch that Shand would still be that fit and active as a field operative at fifty.

[Edit: I think I may have overdone it. Oh, well. Enjoy. :P]

1 Like
#15

Oh, and I forgot to mention, but Wrecker totally nailed his inhibitor chip when he whacked his head into the wall in episode 3. That’s why he was acting weird in episode 5.
That’ll be interesting to see develop, I hope they handle it well. Perhaps we see Rex…?
That would be a cameo with an actual good reason beyond “small galaxy syndrome.”

2 Likes
#16

To be fair, it’s my understanding that, despite the release of her appearances being reversed, Fennec Shand was being developed for The Bad Batch before The Mandalorian was a thing, and they then opted to bring her into The Mandalorian. Still a bit of Small World, but it does lend a little credence to the idea that the abandoned Clone Wars Cad Bane/Boba Fett storyline might be adapted into The Bad Batch, establishing the Fett/Shand connection that’s getting paid off in The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett.

1 Like
#17

I tend to think that, if the speculation about Omega being Force sensitive turns out to be the case, Wrecker’s chip will activate upon her first overt display of power. Their quickly growing bond is too good to pass up in such a situation, dramatically speaking.

3 Likes
#18

Oh, interesting, I was unaware of that. I’m still curmudgeonly though. :P

Just one more reason to mourn for the lost seasons of Clone Wars and the arcs we never got to see… Particularly the Boba arc.
But hey, we got a season 7 and we’re getting a sequel to the Clone Wars show in Bad Batch, so I’m not going to complain that much.

1 Like
#19

This episode was great! Until Trace and Rafa showed up. I cannot stand those characters.

Worth pointing out that they are responsible for literally EVERYTHING that went wrong there.

Ugh, I hate them so much.


First, the positives. Namely, everything that happened before they showed up. >_<
The art for Ord Mantell. Looks great. I loved how they stylized the alley, the lighting, everything. Omega training with the bow at Echo’s instruction was a fun scene. Echo bein’ Echo. :)

The art for Corellia was great, and I loved seeing the cargo ship that was introduced in Rebels. One thing that bugged me a little bit was when Tech said that “now that the clones work for the Empire, that information [a tactical droid’s data] is even more valuable.”
If anything, it would be less valuable, right? It would’ve been more valuable during the war, when the clones were actively fighting against a whole other army and there were more resistance forces etc. Now maybe it’s that the Seppies are gone, so forces who might have been able to get tactical support from the CIS are no longer able to, and have to procure it themselves. On the other hand, the clones are also being phased out. Not sure about the suppply/demand curve there, but at the very least, it’s a strange way of saying it.

The atmosphere inside the facility was also quite good.


Now the negatives: Trace and Rafa showing up is the biggest one. Not only are they insufferable, but it’s another incident of small-world syndrome, which is seriously becoming a pet-peeve of mine.
Individual points: Just stun Trace and take the droid head. It isn’t that hard a decision. Stun first, ask questions later. She’s not your problem, and she’s got your target. Then go get Omega and nope out before Rafa screws it all up.
Hunter only almost killed Rafa. More’s the pity.
Rafa giving the clones a lecture on morality. RAFA of all people.
Finally, you couldn’t have made a copy of the data before giving it to her?!? Maybe you did and we just didn’t get a chance to see it this episode, but seesh. You could have had your cake and eaten it too.

1 Like
#20

Why the hell were the security droids referred to as “police” droids? They never even try to arrest/detain/stun the intruders, so if they were going for unnecessarily violent police to make a statement, then they did. Also, why were the “police” not looking for intruders outside of the facility afterwards? The idea that you just leave the immediate crime scene and the “police” just let everything go is stupid.

For that matter, how the hell does the BB ship not get noticed right away when they break off the freighter to come in for a landing? Were they not detected in atmosphere? Are Corellian sensors that bad? Did nobody notice that they landed on somebody’s bay? Was it just “free parking” for random, uncleared starships?