A More Civilized Age: A Star Wars Podcast - 11: The Blue Shadow Virus Arc (Clone Wars 17 & 18)

Episode Date: May 5, 2021

After the highs and lows of Revenge of the Sith, it felt like we were due to even back out with some mid-tier content. And hey, good news, the Blue Shadow Virus is nothing if not mid. One one hand, it spends some solid time characterizing nearly every one of our leads. On the other, its combination of mad scientist stock villain, half-developed Bermuda Triangle planet, and bio-terror plot just don't mesh together into anything especially elevated or memorable. But with just one more arc to go in the season, and with some clear signs that the production team is perfecting their technical processes, it does feel like maybe we're nearing the light at the end of the tunnel of mediocrity... Next Time: The Ryloth Arc (The Clone Wars: Episodes 19-21) Show Notes Not a clone, but still: RIP to Taquito.  Padme Holding Knives: Hosted by Rob Zacny (@RobZacny) Featuring Alicia Acampora (@ali_west), Austin Walker (@austin_walker), and Natalie Watson (@nataliewatson) Produced by Austin Walker Music by Jack de Quidt (@notquitereal) Cover art by Xeecee (@xeeceevevo)  

Let us return once more to a more civilized age, a Clone Wars podcast. I'm Rob Zakeney, joined by Ali Akampura, Austin Walker, and Natalie Watson. Austin, start us off because you said you had some old business you wanted to clear up at the start of the show here. This is another one of those things where I'm going to reference our Patreon episode, our Q&A, episode for April that dropped the day that we're recording this. In that episode, I made a pickup. I added a little two-minute section, and none of y'all have heard. Because during one of our questions, we were hypothesized.

I mean, in all of our questions, we hypothesized. This last episode of the patron Q&A was a lot of spitballing the way things could have gone differently. And in one of those questions, I suggested something. and then unrelatedly, someone showed me that a thing I suggested was almost true or in another world it would have been true. And so I had to ask our audience not to hear me say that and then rush to tell us that it was true because about when I read this thing that this thing was true, I immediately said to all of y'all, I have to at the top of this next podcast, share something with you.

So in 2017, Ian McCag, I believe that's how you pronounce it. seen it written McCraig a bunch because people didn't know how to read McCaig and let it lie as that. And maybe I'm mispronouncing it, but it's MCC-A-I-G, who is an artist and a concept artist on the prequels, had an interview with the Academy of Art University, which is gone there. I guess it was October 2016. And I'm just going to read this. This I'm now reading from Comicbook.com, because one of the questions that someone wrote in was, how could they have basically done right by Padmae, or how can the Clone Wars show do right by Padmae? And I made a suggestion.

And so I'm just going to read this from, and I'm going to provide some images also, and they'll be in the show notes also. While speaking in an event in the Academy of Art University in October 2016, McKay revealed the original plan had Padmae conspiring with the separatists to kickstart what would become the rebellion. This, of course, would lead to her eventual demise, but not before she had an even more heartbreaking moment than what actually occurred. Quote, Anakin leaves.

Moments later, in come the separatist, and right behind his back, Padmei is starting the rebellion to overthrow him. Because Padma can see he is becoming a monster, at the end, on Mustafa, when she goes to see Anakin, she has a knife in her hands. She gets off the ship with the knife. She runs up, throws her arms around him, and he lets her. She's got the knife to the back of his neck, and she's going to kill him. Again, he lets her.

But she can't do it. it. She loves him too much to stop him, even when he becomes the monster. And we, like, this got far enough in that, like, you can see specific, there's an art book that has him saying this. For me, this was the saddest moment in the prequels when Anakin turns on the woman he loves. Early on, we proposed that she'd actually brought a knife with her intending to kill him, then drops the knife during the kiss, knowing she can't kill the man he loves. And then there is literally, I have to, oh, God, did I lose the good art? I may have lost that. No, here it is. Here it is. It's literally a, it's literally.

image of her holding the holding the knife while he is holding his lightsaber out like done up in like color it fucking rules and it's heartbreaking and we propose this on our Patreon as like a potential thing is like she joins the separatists and the fact

that that was on the table but like of course it was on the table everything is on the table in an early writer's room right but like damn it we almost got separatist Padme I can't believe they didn't give us that I cannot believe that would have been so fucking good. Also would have made the separatists less just complete rubes and, like, created a sense

of like, no, they're not just foils who are like puppets of Palpatine. They legitimately want out of this thing. Yep. The fact that also, I just want to say, oh, I mean, here's the other thing. It's like, this got out, which of course means there is like fan art out there of this moment, obviously, of just like other people drawing Padmae with the fucking knife, which like, God bless. Padme with a knife, also great Twitter account name.

But I also want to say, incredible work to our fans who were not narcs. I said, I made this request. And in some ways, this request was like a poison pill, right? Because anyone could have reached out to y'all and told you that shit after I said, please don't do it. And they would have revealed themselves to be narcs. And you know what? This episode doesn't go out for two weeks.

So there's this two-week period where anyone could try, could reveal their true selves. I'm just going to ban them from the account. I'm going to ban them from Patreon. Anyone who does that shit, goodbye. Snitches are fucking out of here. That's right. So anyway, thank you for... I thought that what I had posted in our chat about George Lucas.

This is a fucking cameo on the OC was the thing because I don't know why. After I posted, I was like, wait, was this what Austin wanted to show us? And have I just ruined the whole surprise? But this is so much better than George Lucas talking to Seth Cohen on the OC. That's very funny, though. It's very funny. I mean, the whole scene is him being like, the prom is an American institution. And it's like, all right, dude, just whatever.

This is, this is so weird. But the fact that this happened is very funny. Is boomer Lucas? What are you going to do? Yeah. I think you said boomerlicious. Boomerlicious. It's like weird out, done it again.

Also a great Twitter name. Boomerlicious. God. What if George Lucas? I think also that that ending might have been just a little better than her dying of sadness. It would have been. Yeah. Just a little.

While a robot made inscrutable noises. I think that would have made Revenge of the Sith from a good movie to like a really good movie. You're not wrong. You're just not wrong. There's other art I just found that's also sick. Here is Padme with dagger in the top right. Padme with a sick outfit on that's like, this is like pregnancy rebellion chic. with a quote from McCaig that says

They're red in her hair Because it's the end of the film And I thought she might be going after the bull Anakin, which is great The one on the right if you zoom in it says Dark Padmay This is so fucking inspired Mekheg says

The moment Padme realizes Anakin can't be saved She should do the thing that she needs to do Out of love She should kill him Let's fucking go Which is what Obi-Wan should have done

As well True, true Two people fail Well, I mean, the Padmae thing didn't happen But that was absolutely in my head cannon And did happen, so Two people who loved Anakin failed to kill him Anyway, for more on this

You should go listen to that Patreon episode if you haven't yet It's a good cureday. Where can people listen to Patreon stuff, Austin? Patreon.com slash civilized. All right. It's the best URL on the internet. And let me tell you, I've had some fucking URLs. All right.

So with that out of the way, it's time for a bio-weapons plot. Okay. I admit I'm being a little arch with these two episodes, the Blue Shadow Virus and Mystery of the Thousand Moons. But I'm also just stating facts when I say that this episode is basically like they tossed the rock and outbreak into a blender and then sprinkled an analog for episode one Anakin on top of the entire thing. Yeah. Structurally, the two episodes are weird.

The first episode has a definitive ending. And then for some reason, it's like they decided to go into overtime with an episode that is extra in every sense of the word. I'm going to sketch them out as a unit here, though, before we dig in. But just know that it does feel like, you know how like when you're watching a soccer match and the time runs out and you're like, it's done, right? but it's not done and there's like so much more soccer left

for some reason that's how this feels I remember halfway through this episode I was like damn this episode the first episode I'm like damn

this episode's almost over I remember this being way more drawn out I remember all these other B plots about this

underground base why do I remember that oh because they're yet to come the episode the episode's so nice they made it twice so Padmey

returns to Navu with 3PO and Jarjar because the security force is there, just captured a droid patrol, and they quickly learned that there's some kind of secret lab that has been installed on the planet. Padmey asks the Jedi consul to send Anakin and Obi-Wan, and then she and Jar Jar go and investigate. Turns out the bioweapon is already loose on the planet. They encounter a Gungan Shepherd with a dead flock along a river, and that leads them

to the entrance to this base, and of course they're immediately captured by a bunch of battle droids and taken to meet a very heightened take on a Germanic mad scientist who is straight out of old movie serials, Nouveau Vindy. To me, just the way the entire scene is lit, it's got skycapped in the world tomorrow vibes. Like, it's just, it's all weird. He explains that he's working with the separatists to advance his cause of microbe supremacy. Yeah. Yeah.

So he explains that he's working with the separatist. And he has resurrected the most deadly disease in the galaxy's history and made it airborne by, let me check on my notes here, electrocuting the shit out of it. His plan, he's a scientist. And also to see it throughout the galaxy. But then Team Atticant shows up with a platoon of clones and we get a race against time battle in the subterranean base as they try and deactivate all the virus bombs before they go off and prevent Vindy from escaping with his own safety. samples. They do. They win on all counts. Everyone is safe. Job done. And then, with the next episode, it turns out a dose went missing. A droid releases it in the base, and Asoka, the clones, and eventually Padme, this comes later, but eventually Padme, all get infected and trapped inside

this base. And so it turns out this deadly disease has only one cure, and it's our old friend, the Mandaric root. They call it something different here, but I know a Mandaric root when I see and they got to go get a mandric root. Anakin and Obi-1 race to get it from the planet Yego. Yego's become kind of... Huh, where do I know that name, Rob? Where have I ever heard someone refer to that? Oh, you don't...

I'm stuck on Yego, so... No, no. The first episode one. This is what... This is the place. This is... Anakin says, you look like an angel. And he is talking about the moons of Iago Riago

that's what that line is well then the angels thing does come up it pays off sort of sort of has baby Anakin been Diego no he heard it

from like space traders or whatever yeah who were talking about angels in his lobby right I guess like you know actually that scene kind of rules because that scene is like

a bunch of space truckers hanging out waiting for their engine to be fixed or whatever And they're like, yep, I did a run over Eago way. I ran into what I would rightly call an angel, beautiful face. Hey, Frank, there's a kid here. We don't need to talk about what goes on in Eago. Young fella, they get, there's just lovely angelic ladies out of Diego.

And we just are respectful of them and nothing happens. Put me on that flight, ASEP. A lot seems to have changed, though, since those days. Well, ever since the fireworks moon blew up next door, you can't, you can't just get to Diego. So it's become this beach town, basically, because it's got a hotel California situation where, like, you can go to Diego, but you can't leave. But it turns out it's got to be pretty easy for Obi-Wan and Anakin to leave. They discover, they totally wax this Zelda monster that's guarding the Mandric route. And then they fly into this defense grid.

Turns out the moon isn't haunted. It just got like a abandoned weapons platform. And they use this little kid on the planet who's created his own little droid army. And it's basically just like Anakin version 2.0. And they take out this defense grid. They fly back to Nebu, deliver the cure. Riving the time, everyone is fine. So I remember liking these episodes quite a bit.

the first time I watched them, and I think they remain. I think visually, the first one's really, really good. John Carlo Volpe was the director on that one, I think. That's right. I found the planes to be very empty. Like, the planes, when they are like panning over the grassy wastelands, quote unquote. With the dead animals or just flying over. It looks like the windows.

Yeah. It looks like the fucking. It was like, I was waiting for, I don't know, it just felt unfinished in a weird way. I can actually give a little bit of insight into where their attention went for that first episode. Because in the featurette for this, Faloni says, like, this is a really exciting episode for us. This is the most new character models we've ever put in a show. When we were first starting the series, we could put maybe one new person in per episode. And when we got here, he says, like, we had seven new ones.

characters, which is, which includes, to be clear, it includes Padme and Jar Jar in the, in the suit, in the special suit, but like the new Gungan, the shepherdess, or whatever her name is, or isn't it, Pippo? Is it, wait, is not Pee, it's Pee, Pepe, Pepe. Pepe. Pepe. Pepe. Pepe. Pepe. Pepe. The new queen. The new queen, Typho, her bodyguard. The dude, the like a scientist guy um and the did I already say the queen oh yeah end of the nabu guards which there's like the three of them who are like

up on a hill looking and that's one model they just hide the face of the other models um and to explain that like also in the next episode there are aliens they'd never had before they have like um it's on them on calmari it's the other fish guy right it's the corin maybe yeah whatever um And they'd specifically say that, yeah, Thorians and Korans. And they specifically say that previously, whenever they needed Athorans or Korians, they were like kit-bashed together. In Jabba's palace, the Athurians were made of a crudely modeled head stuck on a Palpatine body. And the Koran was a simple head stuck on Obi-Wan's body.

And so finally, they got to have hands that were real alien hands. I think that's what you saw definitely in these episodes is like, we're going to focus on making the characters. new distinct character models because that's like an investment that will pay off down the road in some ways, right? I will say that the Padme's new costuming, I will say that there is a lot visually that is really, really strong, which I think is why the pan over the grassy wastelands feels so incongruous to, like, even the hangar where they land or like the interiors. the queen's costuming everything feels really really polished and beautiful but then the wastelands are just like there's like there's nothing going on in this there's just like no dynamic anything that's happening there so i think that's why it feels so out of place

in what's otherwise very strong what do we make of the big head of buddha that's just out there droid budd you know i i don't know that you can just put that there There's a lot of mechanical parts To that statue Like it's like a It's like a mix of like Frankenstein head And like Tin Man had It's so weird

It's very bizarre I very bizarre Oh this is a recurring thing This is a thing They're the elders Who are the original Nope Go on

This is an ancient space race Some High Republic shit? No, this predates that. This completely predates it. The statues show up. Oh, apparently the statue showed up in Phantom Menace and we just missed it. Hmm. Wild.

Anyway, they seem to be, um, they seem to be an elder race that arrived on Naboo before humans did, but it seems like post-Gungens because Gungens are native to the, to the, to the planet. Anyway, you can go to Wikipedia if you want to read more about the elders. I haven't done this work yet, so I'm not going to. I wanted to ask you all, though. Natalie, I agree. Like, the planes kind of sucked. The creatures weren't great, the little herd animals.

That was kind of half-assed the way it was like to cute. You know it was very sad, all these little animals getting killed at this watering hole. But the thing that jumped out at me early, I think, there's two things in this episode that standout visually. One, I think the lighting is, again, this is becoming much more, like, atmosphericly lit show that it was in the other episodes. But two, I feel like with this one, these broad landscape shots over Navu, it feels like they're getting a little more aggressive about leaving like hand-painted type backdrop aesthetics. And so you see that mixed really together in the hangar where like the foregrounded hanger part is a really slick rendition of that familiar Nabu palace, a fighter hangar.

And then beyond it looks like an impressionist, impressionism via whackum tablet. but an impressionist painting of the Naboo landscape. And I feel like I haven't noticed that as much. Maybe it was in trespass a little bit, but trespass is a sort of grayscale. It didn't jump out of me. Yeah. Yeah.

I think that's like that's, I had not made that connection, but I think you're totally on point. Yeah. It stands out here in this episode for sure. And I hope to see more of that. Because I think it works really well. And I think the characters just move.

and engage really naturally within that space visually. You love that little robot droid, the little robot rabbit droid also. It's a great addition. We've seen those around but I'm glad that we had like focus on one for an episode.

Yes. And that yep, they're evil. Also the thing about the models is interesting because I feel like the thing that stood out to me with these episodes especially coming off of Revenge of the Sith is that like I think this is first time we've seen the Clone Wars writers room, like try to characterize Anakin and

Obi-Wan and Asoka and Padmae in the same episode rather than just trying to spread them out. And I was like, you can do it. I'm glad to see this. And it mostly works. They mostly all get characterization. They all, like, feel like they have personalities that are distinct and they all get to do something. I think coming off of, coming off of the Sith, it was nice to immediately get Padma, who is, like,

jumping into action and, like, being the person who's going to put herself in harm's way to do her people, do right by her people. And, like, that was cool. And they even introduce this new, this new Gungan, who's, like, a pink lady, because some things are, they're just, they're just going to do the stereotypical. We got a, we got a lady gungan. How do we mark that she's a lady? All pink everything. That's just that, though, I think, though. She's like, I got a sort of a, a hippie vibe from that young good. She's the lady who shows up like in the pink sweaters and like um just like shows up at all local like author gatherings or like any political town hall meeting like I got a vibe like

she's that gungin where she's like everyone else is hanging out indeed and she's like I'm sorry I got into shepherding these giant hamsters I'm the hamster lady now this is my life all the the witch talk teens love her she's like an elder elder elder crystal lady, you know what I mean? She, like, she knows her, her shit. She has a beautiful collection of shawls. A thousand percent. Stunning shawls that she's accumulated over the years.

Nothing wrong. Last, last visual detail that I really love is the biohazard logo that they came up with, which is on the... I didn't note this at all. It's all over the place. It's on the, the most, the easiest place to find it really quick is any shot of the yellow, like, Hazard suits that Padmae and Jar Jar Jar wear. It's that red almost like, it's not like sort of like a sun. It's sort of like a, in any case, it's just like a really great little visual piece of

language to be like, hey, in the world building, they would need a symbol for this is stuff that's dangerous and that's universalized because that's like whatever the standard would be. And that was just cool to see them invent that. And like, again, like there's an attention to detail and attention to world. building there that's just really nice. You know, they could have just defaulted to our own. And someone, some artist was like, no, absolutely not. Let me invent

some new shit. I was very pleased by that. So you all know I'm a big droid respecter. Yeah. I'm, uh, I kind of admire that 3PO just went straight in on the sciop, uh, interrogation

direction. Oh, I forgot about that. That's so good. Yeah. So they've got the, they've got the severed head of this tactical droid um and it's getting pretty gnarly right they're like we're just going to cut this thing's brain open um and they're like three p o you're going to help and three was like i don't want to and they're like no you're going to help and three p o's instantly like congratulations your mission was a smashing success we must honor you and immediately just drops fully into that like guy wakes up at hospital he doesn't know where he is and just like starts like feeding him like yeah tell us yeah tell us more

about uh how you how you did that thing with the lab where was it again And the droids were kind of out of it, but it starts to, like, I don't think would it have caught on if Jar Jar Jar wasn't fucking around in the background? No, this is another Jar Jar Fuck Up. And I, like, I want my episodes to do well by Jar Jar, and these did not really. He was, he was classic getting into trouble, Jar Jar Jar. Yeah. I mean, I feel like anyone, they did not require Jar Jar Jar to do all that to find the bug. Like, they were going to get to the swamp conclusion.

That was, it was going to, it was coming. There was mud on the, on the droids. Yep. The bug probably would have flown around at some point. You know, they think about where's mud, Gungentown. Like, it would have, they would have gotten there. Yes. We don't need Gajar to do this.

The Gungan was already going to report that like, oh shit, bad news, everybody. All my animals are dying from some sort of poison. Yeah. That was going to get back. Maybe it would have been too long. but yeah maybe we needed jar jar to accelerate the jarger big chief accelerationalist the real Darth jarger hours is all I'm saying I'm a little bit convinced he might have pulled the ventilator thing on

pan may suit I'm just I'm just saying I'm with you there honestly that was that was like where he's basically fast bender's character in prometheus where it's just like whoops oh oh gee damn But I also like that when he really gives the game up, I feel like they hadn't totally established the space they were in. And so to me, it just felt like this comical row of storage shells just materialized so that he could domino them all over and just like crush the tactical droid under them. And so it's like just the pratfalls just materialized from the ether.

You know, that's more Darth Jarja evidence. He was just trying to shut that droid up before he could say, say shit. The bug happened to fall out, and Padma is the one who notices it. And she's like, oh, is that what you're after? Yeah, he was trying to get rid of it. That's evidence. He was trying to destroy the evidence. That's true.

It's all right there in front of you. Open your eyes. Wake up, people. I want to bring this up because this is something that I noticed, that there's, like, some weird, like, droid humanity's shit happening here. Because I thought that it was really interesting that, Like, the Nabu Guard guy, like, threatens the droid's life. And it's like, if you don't tell me this, I'm going to kill you.

And it's like, that's a droid. You know, what do you? But that droid wants to live. I guess so. You think that? You think that enough that you're going to point a gun at this droid? It was surprised. I think it's definitely a new way of treating.

Most people aren't treating droids like that. Most people are just downloading the fucking data without trying to, like, interrogate the droid and, you know, promise them a better life if they just give you the answers you need. But, yeah, that was surprising that, like, to think, okay, what does this droid getting to live even mean for that droid?

It's going to be at least a memory wipe, at the very least, a repurposing. Sure. What, that's not, your, your carcass continues on, but your sentience is lost. You're, you've born a new sentience. Yeah. What do we think of, um, Nouveau, Nouveauvindy, Nazi scientists? Don't like his vibes.

I really hated it when he said, um, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I hate it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I loved it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It made me want to eject out of my seat and fly to the moon and live there forever and never look at Star Wars again. That's how it made me feel.

He's voiced by like a golden age Hollywood actor. I guess golden age is wrong. It's post-gold. It's more like 1960s, 70s, right? But like of a cut that was not. the then breaking, you know, a new style of film. He was like a traditional actor's actor comes from England, comes from that history. But like he was in like Roman and Juliet in 68 as Tybalt. He was in Logan's run. Very different films. But yeah, he was in Logan's run. He was in

both three months and I was thinking of Tibble actually. I know that I know that production. Right. Totally. He's great. Yeah, he's fantastic in it. Anyway, now now he's this weird space Nazi. he's also Basil from the Austin Power's series That's probably where people In our generation know him most Is Austin Powers's Oh, he's actually him

He voiced some characters And animated series Batman Oh yeah Wait who was he in that? He played two characters One Vertigo and one the evil magician guy Oh who you talked about On the recent waypoint

Yeah Kane, yeah Great Fantastic Yeah I'm scrolling through some other stuff yeah he's been in a bunch he he he does it all apparently this felt like a little soon for me for clone wars to introduce to us a new type of guy um the guy being the eco-fascist guy like i just felt like in terms of pacing i he because like the thing that you're referring to

is there's a point in which he says um maybe the disease of war is what he refers to, right? He says, I said, new type of Star Wars guy, everyone, and he says, meanwhile, as we speak, thousands and thousands of so-called superior life forms are spreading their disease of war throughout the galaxy. Perhaps they are the ones who should be eradicated. And then he refers a little bit later to his crew as my soulless automaton friends so i feel like i mean the way he talks about how he's gotten involved in the in this project is basically like this was his thing making this virus come back is his whole vibe that's his whole thing that's all he wants to do and i don't know who like gave it gave the

referral to fucking ducu or palpatine or whoever was like yo you got to meet this guy he's doing some interesting things i think you get it's worth a chat just you know at least you know always take the meeting always take the meeting um and i guess they were just like yeah here's some funding like go make your fucking plague virus that will kill everyone uh but i think he i think he genuinely does believe i don't think the rest of the cause really matters to him i think he just sees, like, death and destruction happening by the hands of, like, you know, human beings and other humanoid-ish aliens, you know, the separatists in the Republic. And he just wants to vibe with his robots, I guess.

He's such like a, he's such a cartoon character of a model we have not seen in Clone Wars that's pulled from, like, the thing that he reminds me of is, like, mad scientist, Superman's cartoon serials from the 50s, that style of like classic, barely, barely anything to him. And then there's nothing to him. There's just nothing to him. There is no deeper. They referenced that he's part of the, the, the perma, he used to be the senior medic of

the perma families in passing. And I'm like, who the fuck is that? So I went on Wikipedia and I clicked on Canon and it said the perma families hired the Faust doctor, I guess Faust is his species, I know, the Faust doctor, Nuvivendi to be their senior medic a decade before. the Clone Wars. And I was like, well, that's not, that's it. That's the whole page. And I was like, well, then we click on Legends and see, there must be a whole big thing on legends. And I clicked on that. And it said, the Perma Families was a criminal organization

located on the core world of Perma. That is it. There's less. So, like, I don't... This is extremely bad guy of the week to me. Yes, totally. A hundred percent. I was... But I don't hate it. I don't hate it in the, like, it doesn't do anything. There's nothing happening here. I guess you're right there's an eco-fascist read. There could be. That's the thing. I think, when I wrote down the perma family thing

and I actually wanted to raise it because I was like all right what's the deal behind this like this guy disappeared for 10 years like what does he been doing like I feel like there's a you know there's a what's his name

from Rogue 1 Ergo Jin what's his name? Yeah or so Gin or so Gin Erso Gen Erso Mentor

yes there's like there's a version of this where he's one of those types of guys that is just like employed by the separatists is one path you know one plan of complete galaxy domination so that's kind of the back story I was hoping for but I yeah it falls very much which isn't a bad thing but I think it could have been a lot more yeah yeah fair jen or so is the main character in rogue one I don't remember the name of like the other guy

anyway it's fine we don't we don't we we know who you're talking about I know but oh Galen Galen oh that's a great Star Wars man Galen it's a great one you're right I like this one. Vindy also has an old timey bandit mask

just as part of like his facial pigmentation like he is wearing a like black Bart mask from a Christmas story where like he's just that's just his face. It just looks like that. And it took

me a while because the lighting is low in the lab so I was like wow like there's just weird shadows on his face. No, he's just got like a bandit mask that he's just rocking. So everything about him is just like ridiculous old movie serials. A hundred percent.

I feel... I was just going to say I feel like just the calling his race the Faust race is just it's a lot to me like I get being you know you want to be wink wing nod nod but that's a little heavy handed IMO the thing is it doesn't even come up in these episodes that's a thing that shows up in you know an art book basically and that's easily one of those things that gets written on a whiteboard and someone then writes it down but they're like, well, we're not going to fucking say it. Like, that's just like what we call it, you know? But it's, like, the bridge of why he's a disappointing character design, right? Like, you can do the mad scientist thing without, like, also doing the German accent. And, like, the vibes that are assigned to him by the writing room are the things that I don't like.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it does make it, I think it creates a problem for later because a lot of the rest of this is going to be like, oh, no, we're sealed inside this weapons lab with this escaped virus. This is serious, scary times. And I'm like, Dr. Vindy made that virus, though. I can only take this so seriously.

Like, I'm like, come on. Like, we know the vibes of this episode. There ain't nothing going to happen. And maybe that's the other issue is that this character just drains the tension on the entire scenario because basically he's more comic than anything. He's not threatening. Like, that goes out the window the minute he's like, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. which I liked

but it just doesn't like there's just no sense of yeah these characters are being in mortal peril right for our first for our first bioterror episode to go this camp is not what I would have you know it's a hard

it's a hard line to walk here's a question about Vindy someone to tell me what he's wearing I think he's wearing a lab coat yeah what else anything else because the image I'm looking at

is just a lab coat. You can see his chest. He got a V-neck lab coat on. I don't know that there's anything else in there. For me? I think he's just, I think he's just, he's just kind of showing off. You know, maybe it's warm down there.

That's true. You know what? There's a lot of plants. They probably have to keep it pretty humid. You know, there are those plants. They do roll into that, you know, the hydro lab. Yeah, yeah, the chronic lab. this is what I'm saying why couldn't he just get into Spice new or Mindy you could

well that was actually I mean spice gets brought up in the next episode I was it's I I feel like spice is on the periphery and it's kind of just like this tool that gets slotted in but it what is it real what is its real role like spice is obviously a huge black market commodity in this world. And it's always like mentioned in passing and it's never really confronted. But it clearly has like a big space or big influence in the black market and in, you know, various nefarious dealings. But I'm wondering when we're going to get like the spice deep dive.

Yeah. Yeah, that's a good question. checking there's a bunch of episodes where spice will show up i don't know if any of them are spice episodes do you know what i mean like we already obviously hit the one with hondo wanting to be paid in spice but it'll it'll continue to pop up i just don't know if we'll ever get like fingers crossed the bad batch gets into typical bad boy behavior like hey man they don't want you to have this but let me tell you uh we'll just we'll just go 24 hours let's let's let's go squad mount up. Let's have her opium cocaine.

She was like now on Disney Plus. Kevin J. Anderson, who is a Star Wars author. He wrote the Jedi Academy series. Yeah, I have thoughts about his take on Spike. Vice would go ahead. Well, so he apparently once ran into some Lucasfilm folks who he described as politically correct

because they wanted him to describe Spice in one of his books as a food additive because they didn't want Han Solo to seem like a drug dealer because Han, of course, famously smuggled Spice. And apparently it eventually worked its way up to George Lucas. For the Hans. Uh-huh. Yeah, they're just into food. They're just into like, you know, he's big. He's big. Yeah, he is big. It's true. It's a big fat phobic joke already. They ate those frogs without a little spice on them? With a little spice.

The matter is brought up to George Lucas, who confirmed that spice is a drunk. Anderson compromised by adding positive qualities to the substance instead of categorizing it as a damaging substance. It's good for you. It's a good drug. Well, so, okay, so in Anderson's book, the spice is created by this giant spider that lives down in the mines of Kessel. Right. Yeah, because the entire first. part of the first book is like Han gets busted and thrown to for no reason he's thrown into the

hole at Kessel and nobody can come rescue him despite him being like the third or fourth most important person in the new republic anyway he meets Kip Durin down there who has been a prisoner in these mines for ages but yeah like it's just a big spice spider here comes the spice spider coming to weave its little spice veins but turns out it hates spice miners and so it's chasing them around. It kills a bunch of them. It's gross. But the warden dude, yeah, he's all about that spice. He's like, ah, time to bliss out and really like meditate and reflect using the concentrating powers of the spice. And then Kip Duren helps them all escape. But of course, that blows up in all their faces because Kip sucks. I feel bad for him, but fuck that guy.

But it is what it is. Yeah. I think there's, um, A point you mentioned earlier, Rob, about this not feeling, about the tension of this episode, never really landing. And I think that there's a, the point at which that really solidified for me, because I think I was still kind of bought in for the first episode. I think I was like, okay, this could have some, I was kind of all. the way in, I wasn't really thinking about the fact that this is the two-episode arc that we were playing a podcast for. I was just like, okay, this could really destroy the entire galaxy.

Like, this seems like a pretty powerful weapon of mass destruction we have here. This could be the rest of the season. The rest of the season can be trying to track down the blue shadow virus. Absolutely. I think the point at which Anakin and Obi-Wan leave to go to the other planet, I was like, okay, this is going to get resolved instantly because the fact that they were on a whole other planet to get the cure for like Asoka and Padme

who are actively dying and they're like fucking climbing rocks and shit. The cuts between those scenes are wild. Because it's like they're treating the Asoka and Padme slowly and on the clums. slowly dying, like, in a very serious tenor, right? Like, they are... It's fucked up.

Asoka looks terrifying. Yeah, she's next to death. Like, 100%. If you just saw her, you'd be like, oh, damn, that's a course. And then it cuts from that to be like, wee, we, woo, we, woo, look at all my droids. I'm living like a king out here. I'm a little boy, and I reprogram these combat droids to be my slaves. Ha ha ha ha.

And it's wild. It's just such dissonance. It's like they stumbled in to Calvin and Hobbs. Like literally the stand is happening in one frame and the next is Calvin and Hobbs. Like it is so fucking weird. It's so, it's so bizarre. I think it's, I think even from, to a degree, I don't want to hold this too much against it because I think the rest of the episode is pretty well executed.

I think the. Clone Assault is really fun. It feels like a fun, we have to run the table real fast down here. And like it's cool. They don't do, I feel like they don't do this that often. And it's good because it's like you want to make it special when they do this. Where everyone sort of breaks and goes off to handle shit along a different axis. And you see the well-oiled machine that is,

Anakin, Padmae, Asoka, Obi-Wan, the clones, like, they wreck house. Like, they are just massacring the droid garrison. They run into a terrifying, like, room full of virus bombs, and the clones just like, well, guess we got to disarm them. And then just do, you're like, there's no way the clones can get this done. It turns out the clones are really good at just, like, rolling up their sleeves and just, like, deactivating a ton of ordnance.

there's just a lot of good ass kicking here and it doesn't feel tense but I think in this part of the two episodes it kind of works because it's just kind of fun watching them clean up an incredibly good clone moment is when three of them just tackle one of the big battle droids onto the ground

that shit ruled they're ready to go the clones go unnamed but they are named in script their names and their names are distinct is what I would say. One of them is named Wildfire. Nice.

One of them is named Snow Wolves, plural. A lot. And the third one is named Calm Tree. That's definitely the one that died. I have to double check that for the records,

but you know what? You're probably right. I think... You're probably right. Before Anakin Obie enter the lab, They have a conversation between each other, which I think really set the tone for me to take this episode seriously, which is Obi-Wan mentions to Anakin, they're about to like dispatch or whatever, and he says, you seem a bit on edge. And Anakin says, there's a good chance we're about to destroy all life on this planet, including ours and the senators. so yes I'm a bit on edge

why aren't you and Obi-1 responds I'm better at hiding it that's real Jedi shit it's real Jedi shit I was just like yes thank you thank you like coming from coming from Rise of

fucking Raises Skywalker coming from Revent of the Sith to this moment like this moment has so much more weight for me and like I just I was clinging on to it. And then there's another, you know, moment a couple minutes later where he says to him,

Obi-Wan says to Anakin, Padme may be lost Anakin, don't risk the mission trying to rescue her, I'll take care of the bombs, you focus on the doctor, and Anakin says, I know what's at stake here. And Anakin's delivering this much more aggressively. Like, he is under an incredible amount of stress. Which then carries over into that next episode. And those are in some ways the real stakes of this are, can Anakin continue to hide his fondness for Padmei when she's at stake in such a dramatic way? How does he navigate his feelings for someone he loves being put in danger with the knowledge that he's or the belief that he can't possibly tell Obi-Wan this?

And it really fucks him up. He's really fucked up over it, you know? And Obi-1 knows. Again, like, this is an episode where it feels like the choice they've made is that at this stage, Obi-1 basically already knows. And he doesn't know-no because he doesn't want to ask. Like, he doesn't want to ask. Yeah.

But if we have the conversation, we can't unhave it. Right. And so there are moments that it feels more like he is saying, when he's asking, like, hey, man, what is up with you? It's more you need to get it under control. because if you force us to deal with this directly, like there's a bit of, like, I get that you're concerned, but we need to just get this done without complications.

Right. So I think it's basically like, they win. They run the table. That's the episode. Any last thoughts? We moved to part two? Let's just roll through it, you know? So part two, turns out we're not done.

As they're searching through the detritus of, of this base, they noticed that one of the little bombs is missing its viral load. And so they start searching, one of the droids must have it. And it's that little rabbit-eared fucker, that little mystery science theater shithead. It's true. That's been running around down here. And this is the first time maybe you feel that there's also droid fanatics in the separatist army, because this little guy relishes.

blowing that up and taking down that facility. That's an independent action. Yeah. You know what I mean? Do you think if he does it and it works or if they do it and it works, that gets reported as something that Vindy did? Or do you think people, do you think that they can even conceive of the idea that there was a little pissed off droid who decided to kill the universe?

Is that, was it an independent action? I thought it was like a fail, like a fail safe. however you call it like a maybe maybe that's right like if everything goes wrong this is your you know this is the order 66 worth this one fucking yeah maybe that's right that might be right but i'd like the other version better i think that's way more interesting well also imagine the droids with a dim awareness that if they killed all organic life who who inherits the droids right in that situation I guarantee you they can make more droids. This droid puts the virus in the bomb and then it's like, boop, just like hits the button.

Like there's such a smoothness in the action that's just very fun and funny. Looks at the clones, hits the button. It's great. I think coming from this, I really anticipated when landing on the I ego and what's his name? What's the kid's name? Poodoo. Jibo? J-Boh.

Yeah, J-Boh-Hood. When they arrived there and it's just droids, I fully thought it was going to be like a droid-run planet. Like, it was like just like the droids that had expected. That's because they all had like, you know, some markers of individuality of like, you know, different inscriptions and things on their face. And I was like, is this a fucking like the droids who got away planet? Or the other thing of what if?

the Blue Shadow virus had gone off there and killed everybody and there were just droids left. That's, that's, it writes itself. It's like the, you know? Anyway, that's not what happens. Instead, Annikin draws his lightsaber and immediately kills like 13 people. I had the same exact thought as Natalie there of being like, are these

independent droids? And then the worst kid just showed up. And like, I, this is a nitpick, but like I was so annoyed by that kid because like the rhythm that he's swinging on his little space droid hammock is like so off-putting to me

I was like I'd not and this isn't I don't like the scene I don't like this kid I thought this kid was gonna betray them at any point like I was just

I 100% I in my memory he did and my memory was like oh right and this is when he activates the laser grid and tries to kill them I dead ass thought that

that was gonna happen same well he's holding the walkie talkie so I thought he was like gonna be like activate or whatever but instead he's you know just chilling on the planet with a bunch of twilight pinup posters all over

all over the place yeah you think that those came before after this place went to shit you think like this place went to shit and people like well now that it's only us 12 we can put up our porn everyone's cool with it we all like this porn together do you just like special order all those posters and then the like delivery person comes and you're like well you got to hang out with us sorry about that you can't actually lose for people who didn't watch this episode the premise is this is a haunted like like rob said there's a haunted planet no one who shows up can ever leave but that's just turned into it's it's it's weird because they don't do they're not doing lord of the flies right they're not really doing any noticeable one of these like it's not a cargo cult

vibe. It's just... Also, it doesn't even feel like... At first the hammock, all of it, it's like, oh, it's a deserted island in the middle... But no, nobody's starving. Nobody's, like, they've got to market,

everything's set up. Like, they're independent. Like, they just can't... They just can't leave their planet, which, hey, I know that reality. I'm fine with it. You're chilling. A lot of people probably can't leave their planet is the thing. Like, Anyway, right.

Yeah. Just in general. Like, most people probably aren't traveling from planet to planet. The fucking mere cats, they're sticking around there. They're not going anywhere. Like most... Well, they are now. Yeah, well, they did it once.

And now they... Also, shout-outs to the 80% of the people who wrote in to tell us they were lemurs. We know. We're sorry. It's fine. We apologize for this mistake. They're probably in the same fucking animal family anyway, whatever. You just invited more people to email.

No one at me about this. I wanted to say that the last line we get at the end of the episode is you're under arrest, Dr. Vindy. And so the beginning of this episode is Anakin, by the way, saying that to Dr. Vindy. And coming off of Revenge of the Sith, I was just like, yeah, man, all right, we're back in trials now. okay um but the beginning of this episode they're going to transport vindi to the capital um to put him on trial but also their reason they're reasoning for going to get the route or whatever they take them back they say this in the episode but they take him back to the capital and they're like we're going to get vindy to give us the antidote now she's like no you're fucking not why

the fuck would he give you the antidote for any reason? I just and then some other guys like actually I know how to fix it. You need the route or whatever. Yeah, Typho's like yeah, you've got to go to this other planet. Don't worry. Good news. Yeah, we figured it out. Space doesn't exist. We just jump there real quick and come back.

There's a number of these little things that are like very cinema sense complaints, but I'm going to make one anyway. In the previous episode they send Asoka to go like go out and try to scout and try to find the thing. Like 25 seconds later, like, oh, we have the coordinates for where the base is. Why the fuck do you send her forward?

Just wait 30 seconds. You're about to get the coordinates. Anyway. I have another nitpig that I just remembered because they show the base, and they're like, there's three entrances to this base. It's like this multi-level thing with all of these orbs or whatever. And then there's an entrance on the left side, and then there's an entrance on the right side. And then those two rooms lead into the third entrance.

I was like, who designed this shit? It's bad design. Does it make sense? Also, when they're down there, it's flat. Jay, don't worry about it. And, like, the thing is, none of this shit really matters. This is why we can kind of poke fun at it. And I think that there's stuff here that is genuinely evocative and cool.

Like, Iago doesn't get a great showing here, but the idea of this huge scrapyard around this planet and, like, all of these different little moons and asteroids, like, looks pretty sick. I wish it would, I wish it had been given its own, right. I wish it had been given its own. its own episode, honestly, separate from the blue shadow virus stuff because you could have developed anything from this instead of this like, you know, oh, there's the shipwreck, it's not even a shipwreck culture. It's not even a shipwreck culture. It's just a culture that's been cut off from the galaxy. But no one seems to care about it. Yeah. And I just don't, I don't know. No one's investigated it. Like, yeah, it's ridiculous because it's like,

there's even the scene where you can see like the population of the planet who think that this is this ghost or whatever looking up at the sky seeing it happen but it's clearly lasers they live at a star wars universe they know what lasers are they could set someone up there with like a an empe or whatever but instead they're like go go go ghost it's like no it's a laser it's a laser you all got laser guns you all got laser cutters this is not a you know it's and yeah i don't know if i was like maybe i feel like especially sensitive about like airborne respiratory diseases right now but like I don't know that this arc needed

like a cool bird or like them climbing around like I really fighting some plant life I was good it's so weird it's just it's just not scary

like it's scary what's what's going down down in the lab is scary when they don't make it to the safe room in time and the door seals and you can see the gas billowing in like that's an oh shit moment and the rapid decline these people are undergoing.

The fact that as they are visibly dying down there, they are racing around just murking these droids right and left because the droids are just trying to get out so that they can release the virus. Right. And all that's cool, all that's scary. But the fact that the top Google result for Blue Shadow virus was the cure of the Blue Shadow virus,

which is basically just unsynthesized root. like yeah what that's a cure that's not even a vaccine that's just like yeah just take this you're good and he only takes like a gram of it back

like they see a diagram of like a two inches of it and he's just like and end that scene pisses me off because he doesn't even force grab it he takes a long time

to use like a fucking shovel you're a Jedi and your wife is dying yeah and he takes so like I would like I'm sorry this isn't Ginger, it's not like, oh, I always end up with too much of this stuff

kicking around the house. Like, you can grab a second or third route, maybe one if one falls out of your pocket. Just in case, ideally, you better send some back for some seeds. Also, why is this the only planet that guise on? This is a, you know it's a pure. The deadliest virus in history. In history. Put every planet could have a little. Yeah, right? A hundred percent. There should be at least one of these on every fucking planet I will say this

it's easy for us to say this right now but I'm pretty sure the state of like smallpox like vaccine stores is alarming if like that ever returned so like it would be one of the it would be a similar situation where like wait the most deadly disease you had a cure but you didn't have enough

of it well we should learn from the problems of clone wars is out here teaching us but it's teaching the wrong lesson which is that there will be there will always be a day of ex machina in American life or something analogous to it. We're saying, we'll get out of this, right? If I can go to another sequence here, there is, I think so much of this episode or this arc

can be summed up in the angel sequence where they go up in space. Anakin and Obi-Wan have the route. Like, we're time to get out of here. A kid is like, good luck getting past the ghost. everyone sees the skylights and they manage to escape the laser grid and come back.

Also, just fly through the fucking lasers. Like, what are you doing? Yeah, they had it. They come back down. They just needed to commit. They come back down and they're like, okay, we shouldn't skip over this. There is one important sequence,

which is this is where they call back, and I'll get to the angel thing in a second. They call back and Padmay and Asoka are really fucked up or like they look like deathly ill. they look like they've done all the evil things you can do in a in a Star Wars video game and their faces have lost all color and they're vainy and evil and Obi-Wan is like slow down and Anakin is like slow down slow down they're dying and there's this

exchange in which Obi-Wan says a great leap forward often requires first taking two steps back and Anakin says and sometimes all it requires is the will to jump and that is them there they are that's that's Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker love to see them rendered in perfect detail in a single exchange I love them they're great so like that does happen and if we want to talk on that before I talk about the angel thing we should talk about yeah the two steps back are the two bodies that you walk over which are your wife and your adopted daughter oh my wife like fuck off oh my god shooting I mean yeah like I'm dying.

You don't have that many Jedi out there. You gotta get them. Yeah. And the fact that Call cuts off just as she's about to, she thinks, tell, like, send her last match to Anakin, which is, I love you. And again, that is clearly what she's about to say.

And Obi-Wan is just like that dude in the town, right? We're just, like, looks the other way. Uh-huh. Well, not what I guess I'm talking about it? I didn't get most of that. Huh. Yeah, she seems really, uh, she seems really upset. Damn.

She really misses us, doesn't she? As a unit. Uh-huh. Anyway, the next sequence then is the one where Obi-Wan and Anakin are talking to, like, the people of Iago or Yeago. I keep saying Yago, it's Eago. Um, and they're trying to figure out where is this mechanism located, basically. and everyone was like, the ghost is going to kill you. And Obi-Won's fine, like,

was there anyone on the moons before the separatists showed up? And someone says, oh, yeah, the angels. And everyone goes, angels. And then enter stage right. Here comes a single angel who shows up. Wasn't in the room before. It was like waiting to be called on stage. And she says, we were a peaceful people before the separatist drove us from our homes and stole our moon.

And like, which moon was that? And then she's, oh, yeah, it's this one. It's on the map. It's right here. Millius Prime and then leaves And that's it We got we needed one sequence

With the angel To show up and be like Oh right Iago that's from Phantom Menace Is where the angel You look like an angel And then disappears Like that's it

Okay That really we needed Y'all are showing off You were telling me last episode You were excited about having seven new models And this time you added This angel motherfucker for like Nothing

Yeah I mean That was such a cool fucking reveal and then for then she just walks right out of the fucking council meeting. Never shows up again. That includes a child for some reason.

I don't know why the kid is on the fucking council but he's on it, I guess. He's good with droids. He's good with droids, you know? Oh, do you think that's why Anakin was like the fucking on Diego, there's a fucking nine-year-old on the council? What's wrong with me?

Oh, Is it just being like, listen. Remember fucking J-Boh? J-bo? Yeah. Are you really saying J-bo's too young to be on the council? That kid's a hero. I can't have a program joined just as good as J-bo. They had a moment.

J-bo, by the way, played by the voice actor of Danny Phantom, which feels like stunt casting somehow to me. Yeah. I, uh, they have a moment where, And it's like, oh, did you put the Bibu Bopip in it? And Jabo's like, oh, you know your Bibu Bops or whatever the fuck they say. That is exactly it. Anyway, let's cut back to Asoka passing out and looking like she's dead as everyone is like in a red mist atmosphere down in this base.

It's brutal there. Yeah, there is a fucked up exchange that happens. when they're just this is I think they're just waiting out the right I think they've gotten all the droids by now and they're just kind of waiting out the rest of it and they're all like taking care of each other Jar Jar Jar's already like sabotaged

and tried to assassinate Padme where Padme looks over at a clone who is dead I guess and says what a waste and one of the clones responds to her and says with all due respect senator it's what these men were born to do and uh she says i hope that their sacrifice brings us closer to peace and then asoka jumps in and

says it will padmay you must believe that and then passes out and is in a coma now i guess um holy shit they just fucking said that shit yeah well hold on I totally, like, I like the clone being like, you don't get to define the terms of this. A hundred percent. Like, that is not, and honestly, the guy died entoming himself inside a base with the deadliest virus in the galaxy. Like, there are tragic deaths and there are heroic ones. That one's pretty firmly on the heroic side of the scale. Yeah, we'd rather die doing this than at the eighth battle of Christophis or what the fuck ever.

The Jedi have decided to, like, entertain themselves with this week. Right. Most clones are there to flood the zone for a Jedi. And these guys, like, did the thing that they have been trained from birth to do, which is, like, preserve the Republic, preserve lives, depending on which side of the war those lives are on. But normally a senator doesn't see it firsthand, and there's this degree of, like, the thing I like about his response is,

I very much read it as him being like, for real, like, you know you send us to do this all the time. This is the thing we were, that you decided we were made to do, or that your institution decided to make us for was to die in situations like this. You can't call us a waste because you literally, our bodies are what you're, or what you trade in. That's their function. That is their function in purpose. Confront that shit and own it or change it. And it just doesn't land on Padmae at all. I mean, the response- Or Asoka.

Or Asoka. I mean, Asoka's just fucking, I don't even, she's gone off. She's not here anymore. But- Right, to be fair, she is dying. She's dying. But she also has never been, but she's never been about that, like, clone individuality or empowerment or whatever.

But Padmay just gives the most fucking lib-ass response of, like, I hope. This is fucking, it's just, I hope that their sacrifice brings us closer to peace. Like, just the most, just zero, zero, she has no, even though she is on her fucking deathbed in this scenario with them, she cannot engage with what it means to die for something in any real way at all. it's it's absurd to me like this is just the most like placating response well and very very evocative of who she very in line with some of her previous uh oh yeah liners after uh you know uncle oh no and and the rest but this is so i think this is this is maybe to the heart of the strain of liberalism that Padme at her worst moments in the series kind of exhibits

which is again this is all Iraq era all of this is about this there is this strain of liberalism at this time which is like well we'd have just done it with more diplomacy remember the 2004 election

was all about we'll get the UN in and we'll get the US out as if the UN would be like yeah we'll absolutely put together this country you've destroyed like well yeah let us drink from the poison chalice um but this notion that well no we do things multilaterally with with more diplomacy but in the meantime you sort you do end up sort of lining up behind the mailed fist and you just say oh i wouldn't have done that oh i wouldn't have bombed those people i wouldn't have invaded those people and padmay's been

kind of like running this play a lot where she like she doesn't think and I will, like, she thinks this entire war is on the wrong track. Like, genuinely, multiple points, she's like, this is all a mistake. Like, this is, the theory of the war is wrong. The, we are basically fighting symptoms, not causes. And so, I think to an extent, she does look at this newfangled Republican military. And she does see the entire thing as all of this is a distraction. from what we need to be doing, which is re-establishing the bonds that exist in the

Republic. But I think what she always misses is that the bell can't be unwrung. Like, the Republic now is united by this army. Like, this has become the sort of proverbial army in possession of a state. Like, the entire thing runs on the clone and the clones and the clone fleet. And even if they went in the, like, okay, Padmae, you know, you're up, we're executing your strategy, it will still be backed by those cruisers and those clone armies. They will just be in the back pocket, rev and tip

of the spear. And so I think this is kind of like, this is very much too Padmaid, like genuinely I think she looks at all of this as somehow apart from her, or not of her and politics as she defines them. And I think that's somewhat defensible, but I think it is also, like, critical to her blind spots as a character. That's a good read. I agree with this. And it's super interesting since she was so core to the beginning of this era of history. She's, it's, I think it's worth thinking about the fact that Padme was queen of a planet, Padmae was queen of a culture on a planet, that was invaded by the proto-separatist fleet, right? The clone wars did not begin on Nibu,

but it would be easy to tell a history in which Nibu is where this kind of begins, and that's the history that Star Wars tells by starting episode one there. So it's not like she hasn't seen it firsthand. It doesn't care about that, but it's almost as if that perspective has spiraled back around to justify her like tunnel vision on this in some way. Well, it's sort of, think about how that played out from her perspective. She went to the Republic and yes, it's sclerotic, it couldn't help her. So what did she do?

She went back with no plan. She didn't go with a fleet her to back. She went back with a couple Jedi. But she was going to face the music. But first, she was like, no, we are going to talk to the Gungans, which we never do. Like this is, this is the root problem on Nabu, which is that we have two nations that just simply do not talk to each other and don't have any sense of like a shared destiny. And so her first, like the way she saves the day is she humbles herself sort of to the gung and leader and together united, but with like their army and their cultural strengths, which was like a traditional militarism. Yeah.

But like they get it done. They didn't need a Republican Army They needed to stand up for their homes And they're shared So like, you know You think about If I were a 16 year old queen And

My favorite Japanese light novel But yeah If I were a 16 year old queen And like my political The first major political crisis I faced And the thing that made my reputation Was I didn't go get an army I went and talked to my neighbors who had one

And I buried generations of like strife and then together we kicked out the invader I would probably have a bit of a Pollyannaish vision for like you know everyone could do that like we could just do everyone in a room right we're just gonna get everyone in a room

and have them hammer it out as soon as I get on the phone with Uncle Ano I will you know I'll just once I call him back I'll get to this we know she knows it's not that simple because of the authoritarian in, you know, conversation in the planes of Nibu in Attack of the Clones, which has already

happened. But we know she's already said, listen, we already try to talk it out and it doesn't, people just don't agree. So she doesn't know that. But I do think that she thinks she can be the person to make it happen in many cases and that she can like, she can, she can, totally, right? You put the right person in there in the room. You put someone in who can, who can bring people together.

And listen, I'm extremely guilty of being that motherfucker. I do not, like, if there were a better record of my thoughts and views in 2008, 2009, they would not be flattering. I meant in my personal life more than in global politics. I don't think you could put me in many global political rooms and make things happen. I do, but I have been the person who's like, sure, my good friends are going through a terrible breakup. But if I was there, I could help them continue to be friends with me. We could all still go get dinner together, and it wouldn't be a problem. Don't worry about it.

That was more of college, Austin, than contemporary Austin. But, you know, I've still tried to play that role. And so I get that part of Padmay, who is like, I see the, the, the, I guess maybe the, the, the, uh, optimistic perspective on, on her is that she recognizes that people have needs and have different perspectives, but are fundamentally people. and we can come to a table and if we treat each other in good faith and engage in an open discussion of what we need we can arrive at something that is a compromise for everybody and like that is like you said Rob that is a hundred percent a certain two thousand as a very liberal 2008 yes we can perspective that does not that that fails to account for the fact that one there are a lot of bad actors out there two there are some material differences that require

structural change of the sort that often the person who wants to play compromise or negotiator is not prepared to make. And that three, if those structural changes were put into effect, would dramatically change the entire foundation and structure of things in such a large degree that you would end up with other parties who suddenly you either have to say to yourself, fuck them, or you're left trying to pick up the pieces and make those relationships work. and it's like you have to at a certain point commit to not caring what the landlords think and Padmae is not going to be that person right I think what's

maybe it's not maybe it's surprising is not the right word but the fact that Padmay is as close to the action as she could be in this scenario like she's being confronted with the very real devastation of war and the situation that she's in and sacrifice and people dying like this isn't her in the capital like you know speaking to a crowd of thousands and thousands of senators like the fact that she maintains this in these sort of active environments is really something like i just i don't understand how you you are physically in those spaces and you refuse to recognize that you are I don't know that that that you're going to be taken out too like I don't know like this is just

you're this isn't you know you speaking for your people or you speaking for the world or the republic or whatever like you are in this and like you can't vote your way out of this situation right now like you need it just it's really it's really something to me ideology is a hell of a drug it's really something to me that she maintains it i i wonder if as she continues to like end up in more direct conflict scenarios if that changes it all but it's really surprising in in this moment that she maintains that it's especially surprising when you think about the specifics of the situation that she's in right now, because the reason she even goes to Nabu the first place, and she has a conversation with the queen in the beginning

where the queen is like, listen, I need you to tell the Senate or the Jedi or whoever's running this war, we have active combatants on Nabu. And Padme has to be the one to say, like, well, you only found three, so we have to find some more before they're willing to help you out. And like, Padmae is a doer here being willing to go to her homeland and be like, okay, let's find this evidence. Let's Let's figure it out ourselves, but, like, isn't willing on her deathbed to, like, skew her opinions there is a disappointment, I guess. That's the thing is she is an act, like, she's taking action here. I think even if that's the case, she should just, like, take the next action and just, like, fucking become a revolutionary. Like, just don't fucking be a live.

God damn it. I don't even if that's the next action, though. Like, Yeah, we need a character arc, you know. Well, it's just like, it's a lot to expect from someone because our examples of revolutionaries rarely come from the liberal political class. You know what I mean? Like, she is just not that person.

She just hasn't had those experiences for the same reason that our own kind of centrist, you know, milk toast, uh, democratic leaders. don't. Like that's a perspective. They're often very scared of because there is a great deal of safety for them in the current, in the current structure. I would love for her to develop a radical ideology. But radicalism hasn't been introduced yet to the world in what we've seen so far. We know it will. I can't wait to one day see Saul Guerrera be positioned as a rebel leader who goes too far and for all of us to be upset about the ways in which that character is treated like a villain even though he has the right of it. So we know that at some point

we will get that stuff. I'm sure we'll get some of it before then through other arcs and clone wars. But right now it's like we would need her to be the person who introduces a more radical ideology because we just don't know anything about the. The separatists don't have a voice yet in this show. That is an ideological voice. the sort of like strange paternalism of Count Duku and the chaos energy of Palpatine. We don't have like a, like, I think maybe the closest we've gotten is the grievous backstory that we talked about on a Patreon episode based on some of the books in which he literally comes from a planet that was fucked over by Jedi acting effectively as World Bank agents coming in to say, actually this colonization is all, is good and clear by us. go ahead and build your oil fields on the homeland of the of the of grievous's people like that's the sort of uh that's the closest we've gotten but that's not our clone wars grievous unfortunately so i would love i hope we get exactly i hope we get something where we can at least um i don't know i feel like we need there's steps there's stepping stones that we need before even for me at least believing padmay could go down that route definitely uh you know what i mean like I don't know.

She's not, I think it's just that. It's not just that she needs to read theory. Theory needs to be written, you know? Right. It's not just that she needs to commit to praxis, is that we need to see praxis exist on screen at all. Right. I think she's one of the few characters we have politicking at all.

So we, like, I think naturally we latch on to her and want her to do more with that and be really engaged with it on a deep level, rather than on this like neolib fucking surface level we need peace or whatever um as you said that the lights and rob's home went off and he appeared to us like emperor palpity for a moment it was incredible oh my god here we fucking go heel turn yep um but yeah padmay's not going to do that right now and you know maybe there maybe i i If there's like an extended Saw Guerrera arc, I'm really looking forward to that. But yeah, that sort of, I talked about it in the Revenge of the Sith episode.

This like third party ideology that we're missing, this resistance revolutionary ideology that's like missing from these two facts, like this fucking bipartisan politics that we have is, it's just. Well, I think something else. the like just the world building i don't think allows real fertile soil for that either because like i don't think i have a good sense for who the winners and losers are in star war society i like i can tell you some people who have lost like bad things happen but in terms of like what are the structural issues in the republic i know that some people don't get government services i know that some people don't get help when they need it but that doesn't relate to there's so little interest in like every time we see ordinary people in this universe

it's a real pastoral pre-capitalist agrarian model of what ordinary people do in the galaxy and so we don't get a sense of there being many classes or class interests that exist because it's so sketchy it's like a bunch of small freeholding farmers crime lords this is the Lerman this is peppy bow You're right This is again and again

And so I am curious If they ever do start building up that sense Of like Well kind of what Ryan Johnson Started to do In The Last Jedi Where he's like No no no

Somebody builds weapons Like Like there's obviously a class That's profiting A great deal From the fact that the galaxy Has been at war for like a century And it does try to tie in

This fact that like all these sad little waifs that you see wandering around in Star Wars movies they probably are dispossessed and like have really low ceilings for their opportunities and then all that's

scrapped as soon as it is surfaced so yeah I'm like I want it I badly want it I'm just not sure how we get there I could also see a different route to it being like man the clones have all the earmarks of a force that would begin mutinying

and identify a class interest like this war is early it's not going well but like this goes not much longer real 1917 vibes I think from from this army you know like Russian mutinies French army mutinies that sort of thing

but for now the route gets there in time and all is forgiven I have to say you know as as I want to ask how the fuck

they got Padme and Asoka and the rest of the clones out of the bunker without releasing the virus well they got the root now yeah but then it goes to the sky

it's in the water too what are they going to do with the whole water supply of the whole fucking planet for the Gunkins Gunkins live in water their whole fucking they're all going to die

the Gungons literally are underwater I just realized The Gungans are literally underwater. Maybe it's the water. It's a different water source. Maybe it's like a claim. Yeah, they lock off that river. It's fine.

It's a different river. You know, yeah, no one used this river. This could be no one of this huge where the Gungens just don't have a problem because they got those awesome shield generators. So they're just like, oh, something bad in the water. Badoop. Yeah, let's filter it or whatever. Like, it's fine. Don't worry about it.

Yeah, I, my gut is, if I have. to write something in here because they do not is there's some sort of button you hit inside to filter out the shit but they'd already gotten hit with it and so they're sick already they could like you know turn the vents on to vent the interior or whatever yeah sure or someone else has one of those suits and you have them go in there and then extract but once you open the door to the outside no it's an airlock it's an airlock right you got to and the airlock can vent or something okay now I'm buying it that's my that's my read There's an airlock.

You go in there, it vents all the gross shit out. There's like a laser cleaner. It goes like, but it's already in your body if you don't have the cure. Okay, so now answer this. You're on your deathbed. You're being taken out of the place you were thought you were going to die. And Jar Jar Jar is fine. Jar Jar is completely fine, unaffected.

Curious. Kept his suit completely intact. Someone approaches Jar Jar and says, Jar Jar, you know, you were great down there. And I think that what would be really good is if maybe this person on the deathbed that is dying right now could train you in how to use a blaster. Jar Jar Jar?

Jarder, yay. Misa, yay. Mesa, yeah. It's great because this is Obi-Wan expressing Padmae's suggestion, which is like, heard you were a brave guy, maybe you should teach you

how to shoot a gun. Not like the forefront of anyone's mind right now, I wouldn't think. No. I actually think he's dragging him. I don't think any of this is. No, no, he's definitely dragging him, and he's like,

we need to train you on a blaster because you're a fucking liability. You're a menace. I'm just imagining like I'm dying and I'm about to be saved and the one fucking guy

Hey, uh, what do you think of a jar jar? Can you help him? I'm thinking of Yoda telling Obi-Wan to like head to Tatooine with ash on his body type vibes. Like, hey, fucking clone man. want to train this fucking jackass that almost got y'all killed here you go feel better get well soon it's very funny it's very funny um anyway i have a final question which is what i was thinking when the credits rolled on this one but does anybody think that maybe padmay died from late stage

of blue virus complications instead of sadness. Could be. Long blue virus. Long blue virus, yeah. Her blue shadow virus. She was really putting herself out there. Like, again, we can talk a lot of shit,

but she really went in that base. She is a senator. Yeah, she, that's the thing. She was holding it down in that way. I wanted her to hold it down intellectually as well, but she was not meeting me on that plane and that's where my disappointment came from because I was really impressed by how she put herself on the line

but it wasn't connecting on the intellectual level. Thank you for speaking to the culture, Natalie. I also cannot walk away from this podcast without talking about Jay Bow Hood's friend Takedo. I don't know if anyone else caught that, but, you know, when, when, Jaybo is like, yeah, the place dried up, the spice, spice convoy stopped running, we're just a little million of little backwaters that nobody cares about, you know, I guess he like, I forget what happens, he looks up in the sky or like he sees something and he was like, that was Takedo, he was a friend of. of mine and I was just like you did not just drop a fucking tequito in

a Star Wars fucking franchise like you can't drop tequito you can't that's a thing that is a full thing from a that's no

like where's burrito where's taco where's everyone else where the fuck is fajitas there's somewhere else is that all I'll say. Takedo is not a Star Wars word. That is, it's, I, there's no Star Wars logic that gets,

you get glubshito, you get J-Bo Hood, you get Pee-P-P-P-P-Po-Po-Po-P-P-P-Po. If you have those names, it's the reason you can't have, like, pizza roll. Yeah. I just, I could not believe, my ears when that came out.

I almost drop-kicked this kid through the screen. That's Takedo's name, you know. You got to drop-kick the writer. You can't drop-kick J-Bo. J-bo's speaking true. J-bo's got bad vibes. That kid has, fuck that kid. He does.

Terrible vibes. Also- Can't hold on much. Someone help me. Argue, Tequito's last words. Great. I've, great. I can link you to a sound clip of Takedo saying this.

I'm good. I'd rather Takedo die with dignity than for me to hear that. Also, why do the lasers only work when you go in but not of when you go out? Why do they call it? Because they want, I don't know. Literally why. Think about it. What was the plan?

Why did the, why did the separatists want to lock down Diego? He, come here. What's the goal? Get your route. Maha, you can't leave. Why did they do that? Some things aren't real well concepted out of this show. That's what I'm saying.

This needs to be its own episode, right? Because then you could have done a whole thing of like, oh, they were trapping so-and-so here. Yeah. What's so important about this plant? I mean, unless this was a part of the blue virus plot where... Oh, they knew what the cure was. Mad scientists do. I'm saying. Yeah, that would be great. But they didn't do that. They didn't do that arc.

No. They should have done that art. They were just like, it's haunted and there's lasers. And again, what if it's like, okay, here's my counterpitch. This is the planet where the blue, the blue shadow risers originally created. It got out and killed a bunch of people. The separate, I mean, originally, but this new batch. The separatists were like, listen, we don't want it to kill us right now. So we're going to laser grid it and lock it. In fact, what if it wasn't even the Confederacy? what if the Republic's set up this ancient laser grid what if we had learned that the blue shadow virus had gone airborne on this planet

decades ago and they let's say the cure wasn't on this planet also let's just say that for the sake of this the Republic locks them down

so that they can't leave and spread the virus and everyone's just stuck there with the virus I don't know why they live don't get past it I guess it's a droid planet in this version

J-MO doesn't exist Takedo doesn't exist droid world blue shadow virus killed everyone there but the but the maybe the the cure is there but you have to get there but to make sure it doesn't get out they laser gritted it anyway this is my counter version of this episode i definitely thought that when the blue shadow virus is being introduced that it was going to be some zombie shit sure maybe it could have been we didn't see it go through all the way with the whole mad sciences thing like i just felt like that was the vibe Like maybe... Instead of just killing people. Instead of just robots forever, I guess, and him. I don't even buy that he actually cares about robots like that. Or that he cares about...

I think he just likes making, like, viruses a lot. I don't even buy his shit. I don't know. Maybe it's because of the laughing and, like, the who he is. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that shit. Yeah, it's not very... Sorry, Allie. I don't know.

I was just going to say, you know, he has a respect for science, and this is, you know, a scientific development that was squandered. And why lose that? He knows that electricity can make air out of water. No one's talking about this. He knows it. Here's my last thing about this episode. Very important. early on in Mystery of a Thousand Moons

Anakin calls what's his name? What's the scientist's name? Dr. Vindy. Vindy. Nouveau Vindy. A Sleimo. What the fuck was that?

What's a Slemo? It's a Huttie's word. It's a Houtis word. He says in episode one. He does. He says, well, in this he says, let's take the Slemo back to feed. It's Houtes for slime ball.

Great word. Love to call some, love to call someone to Slemo. I loved that. Allie was shaking her head. I just feel like, and this was an Asoka thing, a couple episodes back. I think that Star Wars characters are a little fast and loose with what could be slurs. It just happens. You know what?

You know what? You're not wrong. You're not wrong. You're right. If I had looked it up and they're going, oh, yeah, we just had him say a thing that sounded funny. I bet you that was a slur for sure. Oh, yeah. That was a slur about the, the noble Faust P.

People, Faust people. I think you're, yeah, yeah. Anyway. Anyway. That's those episodes, I guess. Oh, also I wanted to say that the epithet for the first episode, fear is the disease, hope is its only cure. I really internalize that as a jealousy is a disease bitch, get help.

I just wanted to share that with you all. Thank you. That's good. I internalized the whole bit with everyone else's dying and the Anakin and Obi-one of the first one of the first ones leaving as ripped a rip-to-your-grandma, but I'm different. And with that, we've solved the mystery of the thousand moons and cured the blue shadow virus. So coming up next, we are finally getting to something that in my head, we've been doing next for like two months where I'm like we're about we're going to do the ryloth arc next right and there keep being different episodes like before that but now at last it's time for the ryloth arc um Rob can I tell you the truth I don't remember this arc at all and that's a that's a failure of my memory well it's not a it's not a it's not much of an arc it is more like okay three military sci-fi shorts around different Jedi

Oh, interesting. Yeah. Okay. Three different ways of looking at the Jedi at war and the relationship with the clones. I know one of these is a Mace Windu episode, right? Episode of the third one, Mace is the closer. All right. Yeah, it turns out that, like, Mace has gears we have not seen in terms of Jedi shit. And this is for a fact the end of our first season of the show, not the end of our first season,

but this is the way we're treating these episodes is that this is, we're going to wrap the next episode we do is going to get us into season two of the show, right? Is this the end of season one? It's weird. Okay.

Season one has a finale that introduces a new character, a real scoundrel, a real, a real Slemo, who's fed in a hive of villainy.

but it's also cool as hell and it's like you know what we need is a competent villain and so we get that it also centers on the Senate and it centers on the action on Corrassan in general and it's a good episode

it's tight but then the opening of season two is like revisiting this guy immediately a three episode arc basically built around this one dude so even though thematically the last episode

of this season doesn't really connect to the first three of next season, I would say. In terms of who is involved in the tenor of these episodes, they're all like crime caper stories. They are best dealt with his unit. So we can't talk about him one

week by himself especially. And then immediately spend the whole next episode of our show talking about him again, especially because it's like imagine talking about him in a way that's like, well, I hope in the future, blah, blah, blah. It's like, well, the next episode is more him.

Like, we'll know immediately how we feel about this motherfucker if we just watch all four of those episodes together. Word. So that'll be. I'm looking forward to that. But first, Ryloth. But first, Ryloth. Ryloth's good times.

Well, I think we'll enjoy it. Okay. So it's 19, 20, and 21? Yeah. Yep. And if you've been enjoying our show and want to hear our Patreon episodes, you can back us at patreon.com slash civilized. a lot of people have signed up again

I think because the huge thanks thank you so much there's clearly chaotic energy in Patreon Q&As that is like billowing out and people are just sort of like following their nose like to Can Sam

to figure out like what is this what is this weird episode that is informing everything in the main feed also it's a less I'm not I'm not a I had to be a hard at it on the the Revenge of the Sith episode. Otherwise, it would have been too long to...

We already had to spend more money to put that episode up on the podcast, on our podcast host, because it was so big. We had to call Apple and get more servers. Thank you. Thank you, DJ Khalid. But the... I'm not a harsh edit in general, but we still somehow managed to get material in the Q&A episodes. That is stuff that I would probably cut in a real episode because it's too chaotic. But I leave in the Patreon, because...

it's us, you know what, if there's going to be a place where we talk about our bad Catholic Mass experiences, that's going to go on the Patreon. Wait, did that make it in the episode? Oh, that made it in the episode, right? The tabernacle from hell? Yeah, that's in the episode. It had to be because we then wrap back around to the shittiest Jedi of all time. If we need to cut it, you let me know. But that was not, that was not, we finished the podcast and then we have a talk about our problems with Catholic funerals. We're too engaged. Yeah. We were, it was, it was, like, interwoven with our, it always comes back to Star Wars. It always comes back to Star Wars.

It always comes back. In this case, if you want to hear us talk about how there is a secret true Jedi code that was overwritten by an absolute asshole. The one-man council of Nicaea type of character. Uh-huh, absolutely. A hundred percent. Uh, if you want that, then, then you can go listen to patreon.com slash civilized. Uh, we have a bunch of Q&A episodes up at this point. point and there's more at it every month.

So, well, no, they're fun. All right. So you can enjoy that. Oh, and you can send questions for it to a more civilized age at gmail.com. And that is the only place. Please send them there because, yeah, that's, a lot of people like will comment questions or send questions to the Patreon, but put them all in one place so that it's easy to gather them all.

We get a lot of them, and the easiest way to make sure we see them is to email them. So, subject question. That is a bucket we treat with respect. Correct. Don't be discouraged by some other buckets of questions you may have heard about. I think we've been good on the Waypoint question bucket lately. Also, if you've been listening to Waypoint lately, we've been doing some good questions. That's all I'll say.

Yeah. All right. So, yeah, so again, you can learn more about that and get access to those podcasts at patreon. Patreon.com slash Civilized. We'll be back in two weeks with the Ryloth Ark, and then we are closing out. season one, uh, so stick with us. Until then, um, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No! Oh my God. We're going to be able to be.

I'm going to be. I'm going to be. I don't know.