The Death Star Human Resources Department Newsletter: April 5, 2024
Old games, new shows, old books, and new Bad Batch episodes
Hello there
Good morning and happy less than 30 days until May the 4th. Welcome to this week’s edition of the Death Star Human Resources Department Newsletter. It’s a full one. Last week was short one, and I threatened promised that I was going to type a lot of words at you this week. And oh boy, did I ever. This week we’ve got a trailer for a brand new animated series coming on May the 4th. We had not one but two episodes of The Bad Batch as we head to the series finale. I finished the fourth book in the New Jedi Order series. We get what passes for an update in the KOTOR remake. Plus all the rest of the usual nonsense you’ve come to expect here at Death Star HR.
As always, I appreciate you reading this. If you’re not a subscriber, you should be. It’s free and you get Star Wars hot takes delivered to your inbox every Friday morning. Just hit the button below. Now, let’s get to it.
This Is Where The Fun Begins
Unboxing videos are not something that interest me. I know you can do big numbers on YouTube or whatever by sitting in front of the camera and opening the new iPhone that you camped out to get. I’m not going to say you’re wrong if you like those, people like what they like. Some unboxing video person might be thinking to themselves “who takes the time to write a newsletter every week about space wizards with laser swords.” But it’s not my jam.
And then I found Star Wars CCG pack opening videos
I was doing some research on the Decipher Star Wars CCG for an upcoming Death Star HR post. I played the game when it came out but cannot really recall the gameplay, so I went looking for some videos of people playing. I found YouTuber “WastedWookiee” (what a great screenname) who just opens up old packs of Star Wars CCG cards.
Nostalgia is a toxic impulse, something else I’m going to write about soon. But watching these videos and seeing the cards is an instant nostalgia kick of being back in high school and sitting in someone’s basement playing the game or going to the card store to buy some packs. Everyone would open them up and compare what they got. If you pulled a main character, you won the day. Then the trading started.
I texted long time real-life friend, Death Star HR friend, and CCG buddy Darth Vo and told him I was watching Star Wars CCG pack opening videos and am a true sicko. He just replied “that’s a special kind of broken.” He’s not wrong. Now, back to cheering on Wasted Wookiee as he opens Hoth packs looking for Blizzard 1.
The Bad Guys Are More Fun
How’s this for a Thursday afternoon news dump? We’re getting a new animated series on May (the) 4th of this year. Tales of the Empire. Just watch.
OK, are you as excited as I am? No? Watch it again, I’ll wait. Now that we’re on the same page, how good does this look?
It looks like Tales of the Empire is going to follow the same format as Tales of the Jedi, released in 2022. Tales of the Jedi focused on two Jedi, Ahsoka and Count Dooku, and told their stories over six episodes. Both the “tales” do a good job filling in some backstory for Dooku, why he left the Jedi and the start of the Clone Army. Ahsoka’s tale shows where she learned the moves to survive Order 66 and gives us a condensed version of the Ahsoka novel from E.K. Johnston. If you haven’t seen Tales of the Jedi, it’s worth watching and only takes about 90 minutes, tops, for all the episodes.
Tales of the Empire is going to give us the stories of Morgan Eslbeth, from The Mandalorian and Ahsoka, and Bariss Offee from Attack of the Clones and The Clone Wars. Before I do a quick rundown on what it looks like each tale will…entail, I just want to note how many awesome Dark Siders we see in just two minutes. By my count we’ve got:
Morgan Elsbeth
Thawn (not a Grand Admiral yet)
The Fourth Sister
Barriss Offee
The Grand Inquisitor
General Grievous
Darth Vader
Marrock (pre-Nightsister Magick)
An Inquisitor who looks like Darth Nihilus??? Although I think that’s the Inquisitor from Tales of the Jedi who fights Ahsoka.
First off, that opening shot from Thrawn meeting with Morgan Elsbeth on what is probably Dathomir is just fantastic. That might just the absolute perfect way to start a Star Wars trailer.
Just based on the trailer, I think we’re going to see Morgan Elsbeth’s story at three different points in the Star Wars timeline. We’re going to see Clone Wars era Elsbeth, that will be the fall of Dathomir and decent chance that’s when we see her in Nightsister form. We’ll see her during the Empire, that’s where she’s talking to Thrawn and probably where she becomes the magistrate of Calodan. My initial thought was the last section of her story will take place in the New Republic era because she’s talking to the people wearing the dorky blue New Republic uniforms. But the voiceover in that section is talking about the Empire. I guess we’ll see. The fall of Dathomir and the scene with Grievous look so good. We also see that she’s got her Beskar spear, first seen in The Mandalorian. I think there’s a decent chance we see how she acquires it. The Mandalorians don’t exactly like to share their Beskar.
As far as I know, this is going to be the first explanation of what happened to Barriss Offee. She was a Jedi, first seen in Attack of the Clones. She had a big story arc in The Clone Wars where she became disillusioned with the Jedi and planted a bomb in the Jedi Temple. I certainly do not think the Jedi are the paragons of virtual they claim to be. But that was a bit extreme. She also tried to frame Ahsoka for the bombing. Anakin captured her and cleared Ahsoka’s name. Barriss was shipped off to Republic prison and that was the last we had heard from her. Until now.
It looks like she will get the same three-episode treatment that Morgan Elsbeth gets. Just by what’s in the trailer, I’d say the first episode will be her joining the Inquisitors and her training with the Grand Inquisitor. The second will be her meeting Vader. Will she sense that Anakin is now Vader? The last one will be her on a mission as an Inquisitor. It looks like we’ve got The Fourth Sister fighting a Jedi who survived Order 66 and another Inquisitor running towards them that can only be Barriss.
I’m enjoying Disney’s random news dumps. No hype, no teasers, no countdowns. Just releasing a trailer on a Thursday afternoon to send everyone into a frenzy. I like it. I also like anything that is going to focus on the bad guys.
The Bad Batch Rounds the Bases
If The Bad Batch were a baseball game, I’d say we’re in the top of the 8th. The week we had the 10th and 11th episodes. Only four more to go. A couple weeks ago I talked about that we hit the filler episodes. I think filler episodes kind of get a bad rap. It’s that our brains have been rewired due to streaming. Not to sound like an old man yelling at the youths to get off my lawn, but back in my day we’d watch 24 episodes of a show one week at a time. And if we missed an episode or it was a bit of clunker, well there’s nothing you could do about it. I think I used one of my other favorite shows, The X-Files, as an example. There are some not great episodes simply because Chris Carter has 24 episodes to fill and sometimes you just picked the best of the not so great episodes. The only show exempt from this are golden years Simpsons. But now we’ve been conditioned to watch all the episodes as quickly as possible, and if we’re watching them as quick as possible, we don’t have any time for anything that doesn’t move the plot forward as quickly as possible. Sometimes, we need just need to slow and with an episode of Omega and Crosshair doing yoga.
Anyway, back to this week’s episodes. We’ve moved past the filler episodes and now we’re into the set-up episodes. We always knew, or could safely guess, that the season and the show was going to end with a big battle at the Mount Tantiss cloning facility. Captain Rex and Echo want to free the Clones being held there. And now, once again, Omega is going to be trapped on Tantiss. Only Dr. Hemlock knows she’s important and Nala Se can’t protect her.
Thoughts on this week’s two parter:
Emerie being completely awkward and unsure how to interact with the kids is me every time I have to talk to a child.
As someone who thinks the idea of a Death Star Human Resources Department is funny, I love the idea of Tarkin as both a penny-pinching bureaucrat and a guy who will blow up a planet to prove a point.
I always enjoy a Cad Bane sighting. I think we’ve now seen everyone that the initial trailers showed us.
I’m glad we finally got an explanation as why Omega’s blood is important and that it does not appear, at least for now, she’s going to be a Force user.
Are all the Disney TV projects just them trying to justify Palpatine’s return as a clone1 in Rise of Skywalker?
We have a reference to Cid but she hasn’t shown up yet. I wonder if Rhea Pearlman was just not available for the season.
Finally, can we just go ahead and confirm Clone-X2 is Tech? It seems like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. Tech is evil, but he’ll be saved through the power of friendship.
On the other hand, no one (as far as I could tell) thought Marrok was going to be a reanimated Nightbrother. So what do I know?
The Bad Batch has been a show that is better than it probably has any business being. And we’ve only got four more episodes left. Buckle up.
The Death Star Human Resources Department Book Club: New Jedi Order #4
We’re now a full 1/5th through the New Jedi Order books. I really need to pick it up if I’m going to get this project done in a year.
Title: Agents of Chaos I: Hero’s Trial
Series: New Jedi Order. Book #4
Author: James Luceno
Date published: August, 2000
Pages: 352
Status: Legends
Summary in less than 20 words: Han Solo’s emotional intelligence and coping mechanisms are not very well developed. Until they are.
One of the better parts of The Force Awakens is that Han and Leia weren’t together. It’s been a while since I’ve watched The Force Awakens but I’m pretty sure it implied, or maybe said outright, that Leia doesn’t even know where he is at the start of the movie and hasn’t for a while. Just like they don’t know where Luke is. Part of this of course you need the New Republic to be failing to, I guess, show that people would have been more like to embrace The First Order if they couldn’t count on their government. If things are bad, people are more open to embracing an authoritarian solution.
At least that’s my theory for the movie. It’s a good thing there’s absolutely nothing going on in the USA or the world where we could see if this is true. Nope. Not at all.
Han also, as we’ve repeatedly seen on the big screen, isn’t big on sticking around when things get tough and/or touchy/feely. If the sabacc chips are down, Han’s first instinct is to fire up the Falcon and get as far away from the problem as he can. He left after escaping the Death Star. He was ready to leave Hoth. Sure he did the right thing, coming back to help Luke and the Rebellion and show that he’s still a scoundrel with a heart of gold but his first instinct is to run. That’s just how he is, owing Jabba was just a convenient excuse to take off before feelings developed.
You can’t really blame the guy. Just watch Solo, he’s got a lot of unresolved childhood trauma. It’s not very likely the Empire offered much in the way of metal health counseling. Being an independent shipping contractor probably didn’t leave a lot of time to see a therapist, especially when you’re constantly short of credits. The New Republic probably had some better options, especially if you’re the guy who’s married to Princess Leia. But let’s be honest, Han is your emotionally detached anti-hero type anyway.
Back to the New Jedi Order, we haven’t seen Han really since the first book when the Yuuzhan Vong killed Chewie by dropping a moon on him. The last couple books, if someone was wondering where Han was, the answer was usually ‘at the bottom of a bottle of Corellian ale.”
Grief is a funny thing, everyone reacts differently. It’s not often something explored a whole lot in Star Wars. The usual explanation is there’s no time for it. Sure, Leia had to witness Alderaan get blown up, but she has a couple more pressing matters she immediately had to deal with, escaping the Death Star and getting the plans to the Rebellion. Luke gets a few minutes to mourn Obi-Wan but he’s got to blow up some TIE fighters so they can escape. There’s more room for it in the books, just because there’s more room for everything.
As a side note, I’ve thought some of the new canon books, specifically the Alphabet Squadron trilogy and to a lesser extent the Aftermath trilogy do a good job of allowing the characters to reflect on the fact they were in a galactic civil war and lost people close to them and how it changed them.
Anyway, back to Han Solo. He does what we expect Han to do. Skips out on his family to follow an old on a half-baked rescue/revenge mission. Things go wrong, then then go right, then they go wrong again. Then the Vong show up. And in the end, Han, the crafty old scoundrel that he is, realizes what the Vong’s plan is and saves the day. Putting the New Republic in its now familiar position of having won the battle but still losing the war. He doesn’t quite make up with Leia, but he does manage to give Anakin some comfort. And then he’s off on his next adventure in the next book.
What works:
The books have been slow playing the reveal of how the Yuuzhan Vong society works. We are starting to see the different factions and how they’re both working together and scheming to undermine each other. It’s an improvement from their introduction.
This might be as good of an examination how emotionally stunted men handle tough situations. Speaking as an emotionally stunted man, I get where Han is coming from.
What didn’t:
The book structure of the New Republic looking like they’re in trouble but pulling out a victory even though things are getting worse is stale after four books. And we’ve got 15 more to go.
Keeping all your emotions bottled up. Guys, it’s OK to talk about your feelings. It doesn’t matter if you’re just having a bad day or an extra-galactic race of technology-hating aliens dropped a moon on your best friend. Don’t keep it in, it’s not healthy. Talk to someone.
Wildcard:
Dealing with your health insurance sucks, it doesn’t matter what galaxy you’re in.
Like I said: four down, 15 to go. Up next is the second book in the Agents of Chaos pair, Jedi Eclipse.
KOTOR Remake Update: Part…who knows…
Last week I shared two articles about the best Star Wars games ever released (this is a scientific fact) Knights of the Old Republic I and II. Or KOTOR for short. The games were released in 2003 and 2004, respectively. I had both of them on my original Xbox. The timing of the games was, not great, to say the least. Both of them were released when I was in law school. And not saying it’s the fault of the games I didn’t do as well as I could have, I certainly accept responsibility for the situation I’ve found myself in. But I wonder if there’s an alternate timeline where I never buy an Xbox and I’m the youngest Supreme Court Justice. It could have happened.
At some point I will do another play-through of both the games and write about it here. Like everything else that came out before Disney bought Star Wars, it had its status changed from Canon2 to Legends. Little bits of the KOTOR universe have made their way back into Canon. Revan, the main character from KOTOR I is back in Canon status although Disney hasn’t done anything with him. HK-47, everyone’s favorite homicidal droid, has been brought back in the comics. Which is the right place for him, because the Star Wars comics are BANANAS.
The games, being 20 years old have not necessarily held up well from a technology standpoint, even if the games themselves are still great. In 2021, Aspyr Media announced they were remaking KOTOR and dropped this one us.
I watched it once. Then again and again and thought about where in my office the PS5 was going to go. And wondered what kind of new TV I should get for playing this. I mean how can you not. You’ve got the shadowy figure…the voiceover talking about the Sith…the red lightsaber…and then Revan!
Unfortunately, as far as I can tell those 56 seconds are all we’ve seen of the KOTOR remake, and those don’t even really count as the video is quite clear that’s not gameplay footage.
Since that footage was released, there really hasn’t been any other news. The game was shifted from Aspyr Media to Saber Interactive. Back in November, there were news stories that the remake was dead, only to have other news stories a couple days later say that wasn’t the case. Now, we’re getting something closer to confirmation.
Speaking to IGN in an interview today, Saber Interactive CEO Matthew Karch confirmed that the company took KOTOR with it during its split from Embracer Group, and that the game is still in active development.
"It's clear and it's obvious that we're working on this," he said. "It's been in the press numerous times. What I will say is that the game is alive and well, and we're dedicated to making sure we exceed consumer expectations."
Then yesterday there was reporting that it won’t even be a PlayStation exclusive.
As HK-47 would say, Question: Dare I dream that a KOTOR remake can run on my MacBook Air? Assuming it does actually get released.
From the Depths of Wookieepedia
This week we’re heading to the planet of Xochtl. A rocky world in the Outer Rim populated by the Bagmim, Xochtl is known for…well…that’s about it. The planet’s first and only reference was in 2009’s The Essential Atlas. Which is exactly what it sounds like. A book of the Star Wars planets.
When hitting the randomizer button on Wookieepedia and saw Xochtl, my mind immediately went to Xochitl, a brand of chips and salsa made right here in Dallas. Honestly, they’re one of the best tortilla chips you’re going to find at the grocery store.
Side note. The Death Star Human Resources Department Newsletter is not sponsored by Xochitl, but we’re certainly open to it.
I like the idea of one of the authors for The Essential Atlas stuck trying to think of the name for a new planet. He’s munching on chips and salsa, just aimlessly staring at the bag when it hits him. “What if we called the planet…Xochtl.” And let’s be honest, if that’s how it happened it wouldn’t be the worst piece of writing in Star Wars.
News From the HoloNet
Ewan McGregor Is "Pretty Sure" He'll Get to Play Obi-Wan Kenobi Again
I’ve tried to get cast in a Star Wars project by manifesting it too. Hasn’t worked for me.
Will There Be a The Book of Boba Fett Season 2 Release Date & Is It Coming Out?
No. That answered that.
Star Wars: Who Is Luke Skywalker's Wife? Mara Jade Explained
Make Mara canon!
Star Wars Actor Says They Are Too Old To Ever Reprise Their Role Again
De-aging tech means you’re never too old.
Star Wars Was Barely A Year Old When Someone Used It To Sell Cars
Wonder if they had to quit when George demanded a cut. Or at least a new Subaru.
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.
Something they should have actually stated in the movie.
It’s probably debatable just how much of the KOTOR games were canon. Lucasfilm had tiers of canon. All Star Wars properties are equal. Some were just more equal than others.
I stan Bariss Ofee ✊. Wrote a fan fiction a while back that referenced her arrest as kicking off an internal purge within the Order for suspected Sith sympathizers, which antagonized the younger knights into leading impromptu clone uprisings which Anakin eventually joined and led against the Council. Makes a lot more sense imo than a microchip somehow instantly brainwashing millions of people across hundreds of parsecs all at once (or working at all, lmfao technology).
Animal Farm reference FTW