The Death Star Human Resources Department Newsletter: April 26, 2024
The Dark Lord of the Swift returns, podcasts, Bad Batch, dream jobs, and much more
Hello there
Good morning and welcome to this week’s edition of the Death Star Human Resources Department Newsletter. Two quick notes before we get started. First, this is going to be a shorter than normal newsletter. I know Death Star HR has been a little scattered the last couple months. Some weeks it’s just some short pieces. Some weeks I’m writing so much you’re begging me to stop, and begging me for the love of all that is good to get an editor. This week has been crazier than trying to catch the last transport out of Echo Base while the wampas are on the loose. Which is a nice way of saying it’s been a little nuts.
And second, I am going to try to do two newsletters next week. Key word there is try. I’m shooting for the usual Friday Death Star HR and then follow it up with an extra-special Saturday May the 4th newsletter If I have to explain to you why there’s an extra special news newsletter is coming out on May the 4th, this may not be the newsletter for you.
Anyway, this week we’ve got the penultimate episode of The Bad Batch, some lead up to the re-release of The Phantom Menace, our favorite four-armed General is back, dream jobs exist, and maybe just maybe we’ll get a return of Dark Helmet.
As always, if you like what I’m doing, please tell the Star Wars lover in your life. Word of mouth is the only advertising budget we have here. Now, let’s get to it.
This Is Where The Fun Begins
So I had an idea for this section where I was going to do a Taylor Swift/Star Wars parody called “The Tortured Jedi Department” but as I was trying to come up with lyrics, I realized I should just leave the parody songs to the professionals, like Weird Al. Thankfully, there are people on Substack who are far more clever than I am.
Then I thought I would go through the songs on her new album and match each one up with a Star Wars character. I did a bit like this last year in the weekly fantasy football1 email I write for the league I run.2
As I listened to “The Tortured Poets Department” I tried to analyze each song like, well, a Swiftie, and came to the following conclusion. Every single song of heartbreak and loss and longing and pain and confusion can only be assigned to one character.
Anakin Skywalker.
So yeah, I had a promising bit. And thanks to emo-Anakin, it didn’t work. But it does give me an excuse to bring back Darth TayTay, Dark Lord of the Swift.
Death Star HR: Now With Audio & Video
On Wednesday, I got to fulfill my dream of having a captive audience who had to listen to me ramble about the Darth Jar Jar theory. That’s right, I went on a podcast. I was invited to be on The Brian Lennon Show for their May the 4th episode to talk about Death Star HR and all sorts of Star Wars stuff. It was great, Brian and Gary were awesome hosts who let me word vomit at them for an hour about my favorite galaxy far, far away.
I believe they’ll release the pod sometime next week. Full link and more info will be in next week’s Death Star HR. This is what we in the biz call a teaser.
The Bad Batch: Stuff is Going to Happen
I hate to beat a dead bantha here, but our favorite defective clones are kinda stuck in the mud of the Tantiss jungle. This is not exactly a surprise, most of the Star Wars shows, especially ones with 15ish episode season, operate the same way. There are the individual episodes and then then last handful of them focus on the overarching story. In this case, we moved every so slightly closer to the final showdown at Mount Tantiss. We checked all the boxes for the series finale next week.
The Bad Batch get to Tantiss but run into unexpected trouble.
Rampart given the chance to betray the Bad Batch to make good with the Empire.
Omega coming up with a plan.
Dr. Karr having a crisis of conscious and (probably) deciding to help Echo.
The only thing we really didn’t get a hint at this week was the fate of CX-2, the really bad clone. I know we’ve all convinced ourselves that CX-2 is Tech. It would be a little strange to just drop him back into the series finale with no buildup over the last couple episodes. It could be a Dave Filoni fakeout and we don’t even see CX-2 next week. I’ll be honest, if I was the showrunner, I might do something like that. Tease a character for weeks and then just forget the character even existed or just write him off as a nobody. Call it “pulling a Marrok.”
I know the last few weeks have seemed like I’m a little down on The Bad Batch. That’s not the case. Lots of loose ends to wrap up. I’ll be here next week with a full wrap-up of the series finale.
The Circle is Now Complete
As I said in the intro, there’s going to be a lot of Episode I talk next week when it comes back to the theater. But for now, Star Wars has given us a new trailer for The Phantom Menace re-release. For reasons I cannot fathom, the trailer is available on the rotting corpse of Twitter but not on YouTube. Go figure. And of course you cannot embed tweets in Substack.
You have to click and go to the Birdsite hellscape to watch
It’s a nice mix of behinds the scenes footage and the two scenes that even TPM’s haters can grudgingly agree are pretty good. The pod-racing scene and of course, the final lightsaber duel with Obi-Wan Kenobi, Qui-Gon Jinn, and Darth Maul. Pretty smart on Disney’s part to cut the trailer with mostly those two scenes as opposed to Jar Jar stepping in poo or negotiating with Boss Nass. It’s a good hype video, I already had my ticket to see the movie, but now I’m really hyped for some pod-racing. It’s gonna be wizard!
General Grevious is Ready For His Closeup
I was browsing YouTube hoping that the new trailer for The Phantom Menace was up so I could embed it instead of making you, my loyal reader visit Elon’s $44 billion blunder of a site just to get look at John Williams saying “what about a chorus” as Maul ignites his lightsaber. And while there wasn’t a new trailer for TPM, there was a new teaser for Tales of the Empire.
One thing I can’t get past is how great everything looks here. The lightsabers and Zygerrian energy bows pop against the dark backgrounds. The clip itself doesn’t really give us any new info that we didn’t already know/could safely assume from the first trailer. We’re probably going to see that Morgan Elsbeth was at the Battle of Dathomir.
Also, while looking up General Grevious and Dathomir3, I got this and I am not sure what to make of it.
I have no idea what’s going on here, but I really want to see the Match.com profile for General Grevious.
Likes - lightsabers, cybernetic enhancements.
Dislikes - Obi-Wan Kenobi
Dream Jobs Do Exist After All
It’s called work, not fun. But what if the perfect dream job was actually out there. And there is, at least for a day. That’s right, you can get paid to binge watch Star Wars. According to something called “FinanceBuzz” they’re looking to pay one person $1000.00 to watch the Skywalker Saga, that’s episodes I - IX4 in the “Star Wars Side Hustle.” What’s the catch? You have to never have seen Star Wars. Any Star Wars.
To be eligible for this assignment, you must be a first-timer to the Star Wars franchise: no movies, no shows (including The Mandalorian), or video games. Starting in chronological order (by release date), you’ll make your way from Episode IV: A New Hope all the way to Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker. And if you’re wondering why we didn’t start with Episode I, you’re probably the right person for our job.
So my immediate thought was that if you’re a n00bie, you should watch the movies in the Machete Order. Which is IV, V, then II, III, back to VI, and then VII, VIII, IX. The Machete Order skips The Phantom Menace. I don’t agree with doing that, even with the problems of TPM you get the origin of Anakin’s relationships with Obi-Wan and Padme. You should watch it.
No details how they verify you haven’t seen any Star Wars media before. Do they hook you up to a polygraph machine? Or maybe send in an interrogation droid.
I know I am looking at this from a very Star Wars-centric perspective, but it’s such a part of pop culture and has been for so long that I can’t imagine someone who’s never seen even one of the movies. I want to meet this person. And talk to them about Darth Jar Jar.
Lone Star Returns For the First Time For the Last Time
A while back I wrote about how I got sucked into some Spaceballs clickbait. There wasn’t really any new info about the long-rumored Spaceballs sequel, Spaceballs 2: The Search for More Money. But I clicked it anyway because I’m a sucker. What do you know, they got me again. I was doomscrolling my news app, seeing what the latest in the galaxy far, far away is and I saw this headline:
Mel Brooks Talks His Love of Star Wars and Teases a Spaceballs Sequel
I mean, how was I not going to click that? I admit it, I’m a weak man. And a fool as there was no real info about a Spaceballs sequel. It is worth watching before it a nice clip of Brooks talking about his love of Star Wars.
In the clip, you’ll see Brooks confirms the story we’ve always heard about his work with George Lucas. Lucas was fine with the parody, as long as Brooks didn’t make any of his own merchandise, which he never has. But, Brooks wondered, is that still true? What if there was ever a Spaceballs 2? Rumors have been circling for decades and now with the film’s original distributor MGM owned by Amazon, those rumors may be bubbling up again, especially with Brooks still floating it as a possibility after all these years. (Was he joking? Almost certainly. But let us dare to dream.)
Like I said back in November, it seems pretty unlikely we’re getting another Spaceballs. At least in live-action form. Too much time has passed. Many of the original actors have passed away. Mel Brooks honestly sounds pretty good in the video clip from the linked article, but he’s 97 years old, almost 98. This might be one of those movies best left to our imaginations.
From the Depths of Wookieepedia
While Star Wars food is my current favorite Wookieepedia category, for reasons I can’t explain institutions of higher education might be my second favorite. And this week we have the Lorrd Academy for Aquatic Studies. You’ll be surprised to learn that the Aquatic Studies center had “huge aquariums.” No word on how good the Lorrd Acadmey Fightin’ Gooberfish Grav-ball team is doing this year.
News From the HoloNet
Star Wars Outlaws Release Date, Gameplay, Trailers
It was brought to my attention that last week I forgot to mention the “Star Wars Outlaws” release date of August 30, 2024. You still have time to get call your bank and up your credit limit for the $129.99 Ultimate Edition.
Darth Revan joins Hot Toys’ Star Wars Legends sixth scale collection
My Star Wars action figure collecting days are behind me, but I could make an exception for Revan.
Truff Debuts Its Hottest Hot Sauce Ever With A Star Wars Dark Side Theme
I’m not sure paying $40 for something that will turn my guts into a Mustafar lava river is a good idea.
El Paso community milks the Force with Star Wars blue milk launch at Food City
Blue Milk has hit the shelves. May the Force be with us. Side note, El Paso is low-key a great city.
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.
The song for my team was “Death By A Thousands Cuts” because that’s what my disaster of a season felt like.
Shout out to all the WPE FFL’ers that read this.
Mostly to make sure I spelled everything right.
Or 1 through 9 if you only speak American.
Thoughts on Omega being Rey's "grandmother" or "mom"?
I think the most disappointing part of the Bad Batch Season 3 has been checking to see if the finale runtime will ever change to longer than a half hour. In a pre-streaming world, series finales were treated with the respect of a two-hour wrap up. Get off my lawn, etc.