Why not both? The world was once nearly covered in oceans. Valuable mineral(s) were located and mining began. But, this was not easy since these ancient prospectors were mining below water or in marshes. Thus, we have a more plausible reason for the extreme climate change then just, “over mining”. In Star Wars style, terra-forming technology was brought it to dry up the planet a bit in what is now ancient times. The yet untested tech of course went way too far, resulting in an extremely arid world. The miners of course didn’t care that the local life was almost wiped out by this event. They brought in their mining crawlers and were able to more easily strip the world of its once prized minerals, doing even more damage.
I completely agree. They just didn’t fit in too me. I liked it, but they borrowed greatly from cyberpunk which would have been more appropriate on Coruscant or some other non-Frontier world. At least scuff up the bikes a bit, make the cybertech look old and used.
When the water tanks were knocked over by the speeders, I immediately thought of the Edge of Empire beginner adventure. It seemed almost copied from a scene in that adventure where the players are fleeing in a landspeeder, being chased, and there’s an option of a water tower being knocked over with a Triumph to slow down those chasing on speeder bikes. Am I recalling that correctly or is that just how it turned out when I ran it?.
Those are perfectly good answers to the additional questions the change (if it was, in fact, a change, and not a misunderstanding on my part) brings up.
I was thinking why Boba Fett is in so much pain. I’m wondering if he has a long term injury from the Saclacc pit. With the acid that will digest you over a thousand years. If the acid is in his system. It could take a long time to remove in a Bacta tank. Next possibility I see is he is feeling the effects of being a clone. Even though he was unaltered. Clones may have issues with old age vs normal humans. Lastly it could be a combination of both. It’s also interesting that he seems more in pain now after Mandolorian 2 season.
With bacta shown being able to cure such severe acid damage, I am wondering why Fennec had to get cybernetics stomach replacements. They could have grown her some new organs and let the bacta heal the rest.
This is probably just the divide between writers wanting to think ahead to what our forward technology will be and forgetting this show was a long time ago.
Cybernetics are faster and cheaper, I’d say. She was shot in the stomach, so there was probably some pretty extensive damage. I’m rather surprised she survived at all, and she likely needed immediate organ substitute/replacement.
Quite possibly, she was hooked up to a variety of machines to keep her alive and then offered a choice: speedy organ replacement via cybernetic organs, or a more lengthy wait for much more expensive organs to be custom-grown, with a chance that her body could reject them, leading to another wait and more credits.
Alex Damon of Star Wars Explained has suggested that it’s psychosomatic, that Boba’s feeling conflicted about being the person he was literally created to be - a carbon copy bounty hunter - and the person he was forging for himself with the Tuskens.
I liked the modder. While it is a bit jarring to see so much of this in Star Wars, I find this kind of world building cool, it adds to the world in a nice way. Cybernetics in Star Wars seems to be like tattoos and piercings are in our world, something the young and rebellious partake in. It also gives more dimensions to Tatooine and Mos Eisley and Mos Espa.
I do wonder what “riches” the Pykes are stealing from Tatooine, that Boba refers to in his meeting.
I’m sad that it seems the Tusken Warrior is gone…
The Sarlacc scene was fun, but poor decision-making on Boba’s part.
I enjoyed it, mostly, but this episode had some glaring flaws.
Glaring Flaws:
First, if they were going to have so many flashbacks I wish they had just frontloaded them. I’d prefer not to have them at all, or else to have them as more realistically the character’s dreams instead of “here’s an excuse for flashbacks, let’s go through his history in sequential order.”
Fennec Shand’s survival is something I find questionable. I know you can survive a gut shot, certainly, but with timely intervention. It doesn’t have to be immediate, but a long trek over miles of desert while on the back of a Bantha seems… unlikely.
Also, do Banthas really eat meat? They struck me as the vegetarian type.
As soon as I saw it, I thought it was odd that the door opened into the ground. I’m pretty sure we’ve seen that door before, and it always opened normally. You know, so that in the case of some mechanism failure it would keep marauding hordes out?
At the end of the scene, I realized why they made the change: Plot convenience. They changed how it opened (correct me if I’m wrong, but even from the previous episode) so that they could escape in a certain way, perhaps because the writers painted themselves into a corner they didn’t know how to get out of.
Anyway, I found that thoroughly disappointing.
Boba and the sarlacc also confused me. We see in the flashbacks that he had his armor on when he left the sarlacc. Of course we also see the Jawas strip his armor off of him, but there’s the rub: What of it is actually his flashbacks? That brings me back to my first problem. Does he have no memory of using his armor to fight his way out of the sarlacc?
Boba saying “The Tuskens took me in…”
You’re forgetting that they “took you in” as a slave they intended to work/torture to death. You only got “taken in” in a positive way because you saved the chief’s son. That seems a glaring omission.
Also, how did the baby rancor grab onto the grate? Did they give it a ladder?
Slave I’s gyroscopic system… I can’t remember if we saw it/it’s absence in The Mandalorian, but the cockpit is supposed to rotate to keep the pilot upright (and before you say Legends!, that’s from Attack of the Clones). I’d extend the benefit of the doubt since they reference it being “rusty,” but at this point I’m not sure they warrant any.
Also, how did Shan know what that button did? It certainly wasn’t labeled, and we have no reason to believe she’d been in that ship before.
And I’m particularly bothered by the swoop gangers just driving in a straight line as if nothing was wrong. Scatter, you idiots! When a bandit slips in behind your formation, you break so he can only focus on one of you, and the rest can- well, in this case, escape. But the point is, they’re either totally braindead and lacking in the natural instinct to run, or the writers overlooked that too.
As for what I did like…
The kitchen scene. From Chef Grievous to the LEP droid, it was nothing short of fantastic. I especially enjoyed the LEP droid rat catcher. It reminded me a great deal of not just the Clone Wars, but also the chase sequence in Lego’s Clone Wars game. They did a great job with it, and perfectly captured the character of those droids. Seeing it with the rat net was just hilarious. Send the slipperiest small droid in the stable after the slipperiest small pests.
Boba needs to be faster on the draw though. He had plenty of time to just beat it in the back of the head before it turned around.
Black Krrsantan was quite good as well. I enjoyed the Twi’lek attempting to calm him down, and I wondered why the Trandoshans would’ve stayed so close to an angry-looking Wookiee. I’d have quietly left… I saw the arm-rip coming from a mile away, but it’s fine. Just give him a month and there’s no harm done. I’m more concerned for the guy that got zap-knuckled into the wall.
Space opera. I mean, sure realism is one thing, but space opera plot necessity and stuff trumps boring realism any day Considering the medium and storyverse, I don’t find this an issue, but I completely understand.
Omnivores perhaps?
I think it’s a different door. This is the back door/hangar entry? It’s definitely a different door to the entrance C3PO entered at least. The outside area looks different.
Yeah, but perhaps he doesn’t remember that part - even if we saw it as a flashback in his “dream” … I think it works, but I get your annoyance (if that’s the right term).
Yeah, he’s a changed man? He appreciates the fact that they recognised his capabilities, and thus didn’t treat him as a prisoner anymore. Wouldn’t make sense in our world, but a space opera frontier past galaxy… sure. I do not think he forgot it, but I do think he forgave them, or chose to not share that part. Keep the good memories, forget the bad - try not to carry a grudge, at least an unnecessary one, and I’d say that would be an unnecessary one, as they did save him, and take him in as part of the tribe. We’re also talking years here, he spent years with them… this series is set at the same time as Mando, so 5 years post ROTJ…
It wasn’t a baby, it was young, but you could see that it was still large while lying down, and long arms could perhaps explain reach?
So, I thought about this too. However, I believe Boba, as a kid, climbed onto the seat in a similar position to how it was in this episode. He climbed up to see over the edge to look at Jango fight Obi … which could indicate a “correct” angle, but shortly before, the way it is filmed at least, seems to show Boba “lying” back in the seat when activating the guns to fire on Obi … but yeah… either way though, there’s no reason it can’t be in both positions. I wouldn’t call this “glaring”…
Master assassin and experience with ships? We have no reason to believe that she hasn’t been in a ship like that before…
I get it, but there’s a certain point where I have trouble suspending my disbelief. I can let it slide, it’s just something I need to not think to hard about.
Maybe. I still feel like I’ve seen that entrance before, but maybe not.
Yes, that’d be the right term. There are other applicable terms as well, but that one works.
Sure, it just seems very quick (in the series) to turn it to a “the Tuskens are friendly and charitable” vibe. Perhaps I’m reading too much into the meta in this case.
Compared to a full-size rancor, and the size of the pit? If I had another look at the inside of the pit compared to the size of the rancor, maybe I’d buy it. Right now it just seems like a stretch (pardon the pun).
Upon rewatching the scene, it looks like I misremembered the cockpit rotation in AotC. I’m sure I’ve actually seen it, not just read about it in a reference book, so I’m not sure…
Anyway, I mostly retract my complaint.
But I didn’t say that it specifically was a glaring flaw, I referred to the episode generally as having glaring flaws, and this flaw was lumped in with the others, some of which were more glaring than others.
When Disney keeps throwing out prior lore, sure. They could redo Slave I’s whole backstory as being Nubia Star Drive’s most popular model, armed to the teeth with auto-cannons, minelayers, etc. In fact, a Firespray was Fennec Shand’s first ship!
But you say we have no reason to believe that she hasn’t. Not specifically, no, but we have a whole heckuva lot less reason to think she has, considering the tremendous quantity of ship models. Additionally, it’s Jango/Boba’s heavily modified Firespray, which didn’t come sonic-mine standard given its role as prison patrol (Canon!). So far, what we know of its past in Canon is consistent with Legends, if you ignore the couple miniature sets (according to Wookieepedia) that included Firesprays. Given that those were for a miniature line that wants to sell miniatures and not for a story trying to sell a story, I’d tend to ignore it.
So what we have from Canon is that Jango stole a Firespray from Oovo IV, modified it (including the addition of sonic charges) and then passed it down to Boba. It may not be one of a kind, but it is certainly rare at the very least.
Having almost certainly never been in Slave I before, and without labels on the buttons, I ask you: How is she to know what button does what? And have the confidence to hit a random one she thinks might potentially get them out of the situation, without having any knowledge of the ship’s abilities or what button goes to what? That, I do consider a glaring flaw.
Well… We don’t know that, and arguably we don’t need to know - action and narrative are sacrosanct, not the warrants and justifications stemming from background lore establishing minute details about competencies and knowledge of characters … that’s at least one alternative perspective … also, there’s always the phenomenon of buttons doing what they need to do?
Yes, a phenomenon I distinctly despise. Sometimes (like in that clip), you can get away with it. In this situation, you can’t.
Action and narrative, yes. Are there alternatives actions/narratives that would have worked there? Yes. Does the narrative need to make sense? Yes. Does the character knowing what an unlabeled button does when there is no good reason that she should make sense? No.
Just because something can be explained doesn’t mean it’s a good narrative choice. They chose something that does not make sense without a lot of assumptions and background explanation.
Maybe you value “something cool” happening more than that “something cool” making sense, and if so, good for you. I don’t, and I can’t. I think it’s bad writing. There are plenty of ways to make that scene just as cool without that particular choice, which doesn’t make sense.
Also, something I forgot to mention was Slave I struggling to escape the sarlacc. That can make sense if the repulsors are weaker than the sarlacc’s pull. Sublight engines don’t do “reverse,” so even though they’d be plenty powerful, it’s quite possible that the repulsors simply aren’t.
Fair enough It makes sense to me that she would know about weapon buttons and knowing what to push, despite no cut-scene, background established elsewhere, dialogue, or extra cut “bomb chute butting be here” nonsense. It fits with the character, genre, universe, and this kind of storytelling. I don’t need the establishment of a CV or resume of what character can do and why. And who knows, there may have been a short part of the scene where Boba told her to push that button, but they (correctly) removed it because it would be utterly pointless and bad storytelling (and really bad writing). Trying to jam explanations and justifications in for every small detail is really bad writing, leaving out explanations and justifications for minor details is not (and this is by all measures a minor detail); it also allows establishing competencies, and perhaps an explanation at a later date where it makes more sense for the story (not that it’s necessary). They cannot - of course - overestimate nor underestimate viewers, which is a nigh impossible line to walk if they also want to attract viewers, entertain, and have episodes where something exciting happens. I’ll admit this though, it was an odd scene with her reaching for the button, how come it was hard to reach a button in front and above you, when you’re litterally leaning towards it? And why place the button so far away? That’s a rather weird way to create some “struggle” and “tension” in a scene we know isn’t going to harm them or the ship much… still, I liked the whole scene, I was just waiting for the beak and tentacles and was satisfied.
I agree. Sort of.
I do not believe they should cram in explanations and justifications. I’m saying if a “minor point” needs those explanations and justifications to make sense, a different approach should probably be taken, one that makes sense without said explanations and justifications. I’m not saying “they should improve this scene by explaining it,” I’m saying they should have taken a different approach from the get-go.
If this was after they had been on a couple adventures together, I wouldn’t bat an eye (beyond, as you mention, the button’s odd placement). But the “I just jumped in here and know exactly what to do” struck me as inappropriate to the situation.
I was too slow. It looks like they’ve gone with both front and back doors, due to a different door being seen in Battlefront. Compare the map in the first link showing a passage to the door Luke used to the Battlefront image in the second link. To retconn these two images not disagreeing with each, just assume there is a back door towards the bottom of the top image which we can’t see due to the cutaway. Cutaway Jabba Palace Battlefront’s Jabba Palace
Your cutaway link didn’t work. But, if it’s a copy of this particular cutaway, it’s got the main entry where Luke came in and where Fett and Fennic met the twins and Machete pretty dead center of the pic, but this episode (and Battlefront) I suspect were making use of what’s labeled here as the sail barge hangar door.
I agree. Based on both the rough layout and where there’d be space (I guess they moved it with the valet key? More practically, they probably used some kind of repulsor tug/tow truck?), it appears to be the case.
Which was what I expected. Have we seen that entrance before? It’s another thing where I’d swear I have, but can’t place where.
Considering the medium and storyverse, I don’t find this an issue, but I completely understand.
