The Death Star Human Resources Department Newsletter: July 12, 2024
Wookiee Jedi is the best Jedi
Hello there
Good morning or whenever you’re reading this and welcome to this week’s edition of the Death Star Human Resources Department Newsletter. There’s a lot to get into today. This week had the penultimate episode of The Acolyte. We got a certain point of view about what happened all those years ago on Brendok. I make a few predictions about what we’re going to see in next week’s season finale. I’m powering through the New Jedi Orders Books. Plus all the usual fun you’ve got to expect at Death Star HR.
As always, thanks for reading. If you haven’t subscribed you should think about it. Just enter your email below and smash that subscribe button. Now, let’s get to it.
This Is Where The Fun Begins
Your reminder that Star Wars is inherently both political and anti-fascist.
Sent to me by long time real-life friend and Death Star HR reader, Darth Vo. The meme has a bit of a “how do you do fellow kids” vibe. But it still lands.
The “Irish Arguments Weekly” line might be in my Top 10 30 Rock throwaway lines. But I say this as seriously as I say you should live every week like it’s Shark Week: if you don’t know what Project 2025 is, you should look it up. Best not to be caught off guard like the Jedi were with Order 66.
The Acolyte: There Are No Heroes On Brendok…
… but there are no villains either.
After seven episodes we’ve finally solved the mystery of the fire and just what happened on Brendok sixteen years ago. It was everybody’s fault and it was nobody’s fault. You don’t really want to call it a comedy of errors because nothing was funny, other than maybe Torbin whining about the food, so call it a tragic comedy of errors. And we got the story of the fire told by a different point of view.
In Episode 3, the story we got was Mae was angry Osha was going to leave so she set the Witches’ fortress on fire. Basically if she couldn’t have Osha, then neither could the Jedi. The story was Mae was defiant of the Jedi while Osha really wanted to go. The Jedi were acting in the best interest of Osha because she wanted to be a Jedi. Let’s review the players.
Sol - he kicks the whole thing off by spying on Mae and Osha. He immediately thinks he has a connection to Osha. Although he sees Mae and Osha with the Coven and interviews Mae and Osha and there’s no evidence the girls are in any danger, he decides they are. Sure, Mae and Osha practicing their Thread technique with Mother Aniseya could look violent but no different than teaching the younglings to use a lightsaber. Sol, possibly desperate for a Padawan, assumes danger where there is none. Especially when he shoves his lightsaber blade into Mother Aniseya. One, more generous, interpretation of his interactions with Osha is he’s helping her get what she wants, to be a Jedi. The less charitable interpretation is he’s manipulating Osha. Even if he’s not using a Jedi mind trick, he’s still telling her what she wants to hear. And finally, when faced with the choice of which twin to save, he chooses Osha. Mae’s grudge seems pretty reasonable.
Torbin - the bored and whiny Padawan. He probably figures this isn’t what he signed up for as a Jedi. He should be hanging around the Temple on Coruscant or going on great adventures. Instead he’s stuck on some backwater planet where he’s picking plants or waving a metal detector around. Plus the chef has the temper of Gordon Ramsey but can rip your arms off as easily as roasting a Nurna leg. When the idea that Osha and Mae are the product of a vergence in the Force, he can’t see anything other than this is his ticket off of Brendok. He set everything in motion, it’s no wonder he took the Barash Vow and never spoke of Brendok again.
Kelnacca - arguably the least culpable, and apparently the best chef, out of any of the Jedi. It’s tough to tell exactly what he thought of Sol’s plan and of the Witches, he is hard to understand. But when he fell under the spell of Mother Aniseya and almost killed two Jedi, you can understand why he headed off to Khofar for some off-grid living and why the Witches symbol was all over his home. Was doing art therapy a way to work through his guilt? Or was he trying to learn how the Witches used the Force?
Also, Holy Wookiee Jedi! Seeing Kelnacca in action was action was just fantastic. I’m just said it took seven episodes to get to this. His lightsaber duel with Sol and Torbin isn’t going to be mentioned as an all-time great like the Sol/Jecki/Qimir duel will be. But as far as someone you’d never want to get in a fight with, a Wookiee Jedi has to be the top of the list.
Indara - she knows this is a bad idea. She knows Mae and Osha aren’t in any danger. She seems to agree with the Jedi Council that Osha is too old to start training. Her issue is what every college football coach who looked the other way when their running back got a DWI knows. The coverup is always worse than the crime. She knows that while Mae starting the fire is technically correct, that’s not the story she and the other Jedi settle on to tell Osha and the Council.
That’s just from the Jedi. The Witches aren’t to blame here, but they also aren’t blameless.
Mae - I guess Smokey the Bear never was a thing on Brendok. While Episode 3 made it look like Mae set the fire in the fortress deliberately, we saw this week she was just burning Osha’s book and the fire spread. Don’t play with fire. Yes, she lied to the Jedi about what she saw on the screen. But it wasn’t due to the Dark Side. She just wanted to stay with the Coven.
Mother Aniseya - she put it in Torbin’s head that he could go home, the one thing he really wanted. He just had to make it happen. She probably figured he’d just hijack the spaceship, not cause the death of everyone. While she wasn’t pleased to see the Jedi, she didn’t view them as an enemy. But she still ended up with a lightsaber blade in her chest.
Mother Koril - Arguably the closest we had to a “bad” Witch. But really she wanted the same thing that Mother Aniseya and Mae wanted, just to stay with their Coven and be left alone. Sure, she attacked Sol but that was after he killed Mother Aniseya. Yes, she told Mae (in not so many words) to lock Osha in her room and to prepare the Witches for combat. But again, she was just going Mama Bear and protecting her kids.
There’s no other way to describe the events of Brendok as a series of unfortunate events. No one had any ill intent. Everything just spiraled out of control. In a galaxy where most of the stories are classic tales of good and evil told on a massive scale, maybe the story about some Jedi and Witches who collectively managed to just screw everything up without really intended to might actually be the most realistic story they’ve told.
Mother Koril Returns Next Week?
No, this isn’t some inside information I have. But at this point there aren’t many survivors of Brendok left. Mae is with Sol on the ship. Osha is wearing the Darth Smiley helmet with Qimir on the unknown island. The only person left is Mother Koril. I mentioned this in the June 28th Death Star HR and I’m still sure of it.
Prediction time. The big reveal in the season finale is going to be Mother Koril is Qimir’s Master.
The other big reveal will be that Vernestra was Qimir’s Master when he was a Jedi.
If Qimir was just some random Sith or Sith-adjacent type of guy, it wouldn’t make any sense for him to have a grudge against four specific Jedi. Sure, maybe he somehow found Mae and she said “hey, let’s kill some Jedi. I’ve got a list.” But it would make more sense for Mother Koril to seek out a former Jedi to use for her revenge. She blames the Jedi for the death of the Coven and taking away Osha. More specifically she blames Sol, Indara, Kelnacca, and Torbin.
One more theory. Vernestra sets up Sol to be the fall guy. Vernestra is both a Jedi and a politician. We don’t know why the Senate is asking questions about the Jedi. But we know that she’s not thrilled about any investigation and she knows that a Sith running around and a planet full of dead Jedi is bad.
I’ll even throw out a really wild theory and say that Venestra is still Qimir’s master and she’s an undercover Sith like Palpatine was. But she’s a character in the High Republic books and I’m pretty sure Disney wouldn’t let a TV show make a change like that. Of course, they changed Ki-Adi-Mundi’s birthday - the worst sin the history of Star Wars according to some hysterical “fans” - so maybe the show could pull that off. To be clear, I don’t think this is going to happen. But on the off chance next Tuesday we get Sith Lord Vernestra Rwoh, you heard it hear first at Death Star HR.
The Death Star Human Resources Department Book Club: New Jedi Order #7
We’re cruising now. Over the 4th of July I managed to get two more books read, so we’ve got part 1 of the Edge of Victory duology this week and we’ll have part two next week.
Title: Edge of Victory I: Conquest
Series: New Jedi Order. Book #7
Author: Greg Keyes
Date published: April 3, 2001
Pages: 304
Status: Legends
Summary in less than 20 words: Anakin Skywalker stans, your book has arrived.
I hear the baby’s of the family have it easy. I’m the first born so maybe the topic would be better addressed by my younger sister, errr Sithter, and she’d probably disagree. But I think most first borns would say they had all the rules when the youngest got to do whatever they wanted. I wonder if Jania and Jacen Solo would say the same thing about Anakin. Seems likely. So far in the books, Anakin is really the least defined character. The Solo twins are each coded to one of their parents. Jania the X-Wing pilot with some snark is Han. Jacen is Leia. The more sensitive type. Anakin is a little more of a mixed bag. And also like everyone else, Anakin is having a bit of a rough go. He still blames himself for Chewie getting killed and for fellow Jedi Daeshara'cor getting killed. He could have filed Centerpoint and blown up the Vong fleet but didn’t because he listened to Jacen. And in this case, he defies orders and heads to Yavin 4 because he’s worried the Jedi Padawans, and his friend Tahiri Veila, are in danger.
Side note, I get the idea but why on earth would Han and Luke name their youngest after one of the galaxy’s worst monsters? Yes yes, I know that Vader turned back to the Light Side at the very end. But still. There’s a lot of beings in the galaxy who are going to have a grudge against anyone named Anakin.
So currently the war between the Yuuzhan Vong and the rest of the galaxy is not going well for either party. The Vong continue to conquer planets in the main galaxy, but it’s not going as well as they’d like. The rest of the galaxy is sort of holding the line, but everyone knows they’re fighting a losing battle. It’s only a matter of time before the Vong launch and attack on Coruscant and the Core Worlds. The Vong offer an olive branch. All the rest of the galaxy has to do turn over the Jedi. No big deal.
This has been a running theme in the last few books. Tsavong Lah, basically a Vong general has a grudge against Jacen Solo after Jacen punked him in a fight. So Tsavong says give us the Jedi and we’ll go away. A lot of the galaxy is more than willing to take the Vong up their offer. We have the Peace Brigade (talk about a wrongly named group) roaming around the galaxy trying to round up as many Jedi as they can to hand over to the Vong.
As a second side note, because this is how my internet brain thinks, I’ve always liked how Jedi are either as weak or as powerful as they need to be, depending on the situation. Same as lightsabers. Sometimes a Jedi can take out a room full of baddies without even breaking a sweat, even having time to throw in a witty quip a la James Bond. Other times all it takes are a couple random Peace Brigade morons to overpower a Jedi.
Anyway, the Vong demanding that all the Jedi be turned over is just a ploy on their part to weaken the New Republic. It’s something that while I won’t say I think about a lot, it did make me wonder what might happen if aliens invaded here in the real world and said “give us all the Dutch people and we’ll go away.” I think it would take all of humanity collectively about 4 minutes to decide that while yes, windmills and tulips are nice, we can get along with out them and terribly sorry to everyone with a “Van” in their last name. But you need to go with the aliens now. Because while humanity is pretty good at coming together when we need to, we’re even better at finding scapegoats.
The Good:
While all the other players showed up, the majority of this book was focused just on Anakin’s adventure. A lot of the books have tried to cram too many plots into a single book, disregarding there are 19 of these books and maybe there’s no need for 5 separate plot lines per book.
Much like the last book, Balance Point, did a good job with Jacen Solo’s struggles; I thought this one did a good job with Anakin’s psyche. He’s named after a war criminal, his dad’s Wookiee life-partner dies for him, Anakin feels that Han blames him for Chewie (because Han does, again, scapegoats), his first and last name are some of most famous in the galaxy. Add in being a teenager and a Jedi, it’s tough.
I really liked Anakin teaming up with a Yuuzhan Vong to rescue Tahiri. I’ve mentioned this before but the series has done a good job slowly revealing the Yuuzhan Vong society. The first couple books they were just your mindless kill-everything-in-their-path warriors. I still think their reason for invasion, their gods tell them that droids are bad, is a little weak but maybe more will get revealed along the way.
Along those lines, the Yuuzhan Vong heretics are fun. They’ve been the most interesting Vong characters so far, because all the rest of them are on “must destroy the galaxy” auto-pilot while the heretics area a little more “yes, the infidels are bad but I’m still going to ask some questions.” I guess in every group of religious fanatics, you’re going to get some people who just aren’t buying what the gods are selling.
Tahiri getting “shaped” into a Vong was a cool idea. The Yuuzhan Vong shapers want to implant memories into Tahiri and make her thing she’s a Vong corrupted by the Jedi. And presumably use her against the Jedi. I like it.
The Bad:
Honestly, no real complaints with this one. The plot was tight, the book was a good length, the pacing was good. I don’t even really have any criticisms, constructive or snarky.
Wild Card:
Anakin Skywalker, boy band member.
Since I’m actually ahead on my reading, next week will have the second book in the Edge of Victory duology. Stay tuned!
Things Wives Say About Star Wars
Note the subtle change in the headline. No, I’m not into polygamy. The Force knows it was tough enough to find one woman to go out with me, let alone multiple. I’ve mentioned before that we try to watch the Star Wars shows with our next door neighbors. The husband and I are Star Wars nerds. The wives…not so much.
We finished up episode 7 of The Acolyte and hung out for a bit. Chatting about pets and home improvement and all things you talk about when you’re doing couple things. As Emperor Palpatine’s #1 Fan and I are getting ready to leave, she looks at Darth Bee and they both say to each other, at the same time.
“There’s just one more episode.”
I’m not sure I’m a good enough writer to accurately convey the sense of relief in both their voices. The closest I can compare it to was someone in prison getting the news they’re getting paroled in a week.
On This Day In Star Wars History
Three births in the Star Wars universe that should be mentioned on today, July 12th.
Walter Murch was born in 1943. He was an OG Lucas guy who worked on pre-Star Wars films like THX 1138 and the movie that made George a star, American Graffiti. He also directed a single Clone Wars episode, “The General.”
Second on the list a big name, Ben Burtt. Born in 1948, Burtt is a sound designer and is probably best known the humming sound of the lightsabers and the clashing sound when two lightsaber blades hit each other. He’s also credited with Vader’s breathing, Chewie’s “voice”, and many of the spoken alien languages.
And on this day in 1979, Omid Abtahi was born. He voiced a Mandalorian cadet in two episodes of The Clone Wars. He also tried to experiment on Grogu, that jerk, as Dr. Pershing in The Mandalorian.
From the Depths of Wookieepedia
Given all the weird quasi-Sith stuff we’ve had going on in The Acolyte, the Dark Side smiled upon me and the randomizer brought up the Trial of Ascendancy.
[The] trial required the sacrifice of a loved one to unlock newfound depths of dark power. In 34 ABY, unbeknownst to him, the dark warrior Kylo Ren carried out the trial by killing his father, Han Solo. Instead of making him more powerful, though, the act of patricide weakened Ren on a spiritual level, and he became haunted by what he had done.
It haunted Kylo so much, all he could do was go back to his room at First Order headquarters and listen to Dashboard Confessional on repeat until Hux told him to turn the volume down.
News From the HoloNet
Kathryn Hahn Teases 'Inadvisable' One-Woman Star Wars Show
I know she’s doing a bit, but I actually have seen the One Man Star Wars show. It was a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. More specifically it was 11 years ago, and was in Austin.
You can’t have a Mando movie without The Armorer. Everyone repeat after me, “this is the way.”
The Acolyte enters the song of the summer race with the help of Victoria Monét
I’m more of a Red Dirt and Americana guy, but it was still a jam.
Lucasfilm Reportedly Starts Looking For New Actor To Play Baylan Skoll in STAR WARS: AHSOKA Season 2
Ray Stevenson set the bar really high for Baylan, but I’d rather see them recast the roll that some CGI abomination.
Stole…or made way better?
That’s it for this week. If you like what I’m doing, please subscribe. I’ll catch you next week, and may the Force be with you.
I love the idea of Kylo Ren listening to Dashboard Confessional.