Getting a TEENY bit off topic, but back to the Smurfs: Welker plays Azrael and Dee Bradley Baker plays the bird Monty. I swear it was like seeing Sinatra and Crosby in High Society or Deniro and Pacino in Heat. Back on topic: Nice to see that the thread about the Empire's nefarious plans for Lothal haven't been forgotten. And just when I thought they were going to. Yeah, I was pretty happy about The Kiss. Too bad it all ends in tears. You know, one of the original endings of The Saga (or the OT as we call it now) was that The Other was Luke's lost sister, NOT THE WOMAN HE FELL IN LOVE WITH AND KISSED, who was hiding on the far side of the galaxy. The end of the OT would be Luke leaving Han and Leia to go find her and Leia would have been the Leader of the New Republic or whatever the winning side would have been. (This was all from Gary Kurtz IIRC.) I'm wondering if there might be an echo of that to Kanan (and Ezra's?) story. The Jedi will leave on a Quest while Hera and Chopper stay and fight the war. That's a current guess, since we now know that the Ghost and Hera will be at Endor after Return of the Jedi. And Filloni loves pulling back old Star Wars lore. Like Lucas said, Star Wars doesn't repeat so much as it rhymes.
Steven Blum voiced stormtroopers in Empire At War and Force Unleashed 2, so when he voices a random trooper in Rebels or the movies (I think he did in Rogue One) it's great. Huh, he voiced Galak Fyyar in Jedi Outcast.
I think it's a safe bet Rey's story is the closest we're likely to get to the old "there is another" concept. A more likely thread for them to pick up would be the fate of the various force sensitive children popping up all over the galaxy. I'm thinking Kanan is killed off and Ezra ends up forming some hidden sanctuary for orphans and refugees from whatever is left of the Inquisitorious.
So, I noticed the other pilots in the X-Wing squadron were calling Hera "General." Looks like she's been promoted.
This was the episode I enjoyed the most this season so far. Nice that it was named "Rebel Assault." Something's been off for me this season so far. Most of the episodes in season four so far haven't clicked with me. Seems like Kanan might have to Obi-Wan himself to rescue Hera. I'm gonna assume that Hera and the pilot (Mart) made sure that R3's memory was wiped (even though it looked like an R4 unit; there's no good reason why the troopers would have fried it). From http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/R3-A3: R3 had a conical head, like those of the R4 astromech line, and was equipped with a rocket booster.
It was fun seeing the X-Wings and you could tell they went to pains to make them look authentic, both in the way they looked and in the way they moved. I know some might complain that we never saw how the rebellion got them, but really, how contrived would it be if Hera et al had been involved in getting the B-Wings, at lest some of the Y-Wings AND the X-Wings? Also, seems as though they're sticking with the notion that these are late Clone Wars relics and not a new design as in the EU. I'm glad since that was always the intent from ANH. I note how Ezra seems to have matured quite drastically of late, being the one to comfort Kanan and not raising some emotional protest when he chose to go back. Still no real clue what's going on with the wolves. I think I read a comment somewhere (probably Pablo, but I can't be bothered to go digging) that they've given up on the idea that a droid's "name" necessarily refers to it's model. The quite reasonable justification being that you'd very quickly run out of permutations if that were the case where there could be millions, even billions of a given model in the galaxy (eg: R2-** would only yield 260 unique combinations.) Instead the notion is that droids have a *very* long alphanumeric serial number and their "name" is just a fragment of that, chosen for ease of reference. As for R3-A3: if one must justify such things, consider that he's old and been repaired at least as much as Chopper so that head may not be his original one, but something salvaged from another model.
I was hoping we'd get an episode of them liberating some X-wings and U-wings, but instead they just have them at Yavin IV already.
Also worth considering that differentiating droid models may not be a simple matter of cosmetics. After all, the actual droid is what's in the casing, not the casing itself. For all we know the R3 series model-05A (yes I'm making this up) used the same head casing as the R4's to accommodate their long range transceiver that simply wouldn't fit inside the standard model dome. Also consider that unlike any R4 or indeed and R-series model we've ever seen, R3-A3's chassis looks more like a C-series than anything else and is noticeably wider than it's head. Even that's not a reliable metric since it's clear that both Chopper and R3 have been repaired and modified with mismatched parts over the years, so we don't actually know what their respective models looked like when they rolled out of the factory. Personally, I've never been much of a fan of the somewhat dogmatic approach to identifying & naming astromechs (especially the R1's because that makes no sense to me at all!) It's clear these things are meant to be highly customisable and modular in design to the point where you'd need to read the id number on the logic core to be really sure what model it was originally. So I'm all for Lucasfilm intentionally going against those preconceived notions. Star Wars is after all a lived in universe and all the better for it. Side note: People often forget that in ANH, Luke (and the script!) refers to R5-D4 as an "R2 Unit" so the notion that he and R2-D2 are significantly different models seems to have been an EU invention we've inherited. Indeed, flipping through the scripts it seems other astromechs are pretty consistently just referred to as "R-2 units." There are three others mentioned in ANH alone, besides R2-D2.
I have a feeling the wolves want Caleb Dume to save Lothal. And it's going to come at a cost. And we're going to be the ones paying.
Arrrrrgh! January?!? We're waiting until January? I know they have a lot of balls in the air right now, but I hope Kallus gets a slightly bigger role in the last few episodes. I loved how they struck the balance between screen x-wings but giving them the more Joe Johnston wing spacing. So where do Ezra and the gang have to be that they didn't go with Kanan. It did a nice job of showing Ezra's maturity, but OTOH, why?
I'm surprised to see the X-Wings introduced without fanfare. I seem to recall people speculating that we'd see an episode about how the Rebellion acquired them. I also would've thought Hera's promotion to general would be something we'd get to see onscreen. A refreshing bit of credible space physics in a franchise that usually ignores it: Hera rotating her X-Wing around its center of mass to fire backward at the TIE while still moving forward. Since spacecraft don't have to worry about lift or drag or gravity, they can coast and orient themselves in any direction, in contrast to the usual Star Wars assumption that they need to thrust forward and turn by banking like aerial fighters. Of course, that happened during a scene where crippled Star Destroyers in weightless space sank downward and billowed smoke upward, like they always do on this show... So they can continue helping Ryder and the Lothal resistance, I guess.
Were X-wings seen in the background of previous episodes this season? I don't mind their introduction to NOT involve our Rebel heroes, but at least a throwaway line like "These new X-wings are so much more maneuverable than our old bombers! Garven and Wedge did a great job stealing them from the Incom factory last month!" or something to that effect. As it stands, I was wondering why none of our familiar fighter pilots were part of the assault, but that reason became abundantly clear before long. And, bombad General Syndula? THAT should have received a bit of fanfare, I'd say. Star Wars has never been big on ranks, but General or Admiral is generally (sic) the catch-all rank for "military person in charge of stuff". Nevermind that Generals on our planet are generally (sic) not expected to get their hands dirty in a fight, but this happens all the time here. Mark
Anyone kept track of the number of Star Destroyers that have been lost at the hands of Hera and her compadres? Think its at least 3 for this season (one last night, one when the kybter crystal exploded and one other).
It seems to be just Tarkin's Star Destroyer in the season 01 finale and two Star Destroyers in "Heroes of Mandalore Part 2" and "In the Name of the Rebellion Part 2" Most of the other larger ships that were destroyed or heavily damaged were cruisers and Interdictors.
Yeah, these guys have more capital ships destroyed than any other great from any other movie. It's possible even Annakin and Obi Wan had fewer big ones killed over six seasons... And I'm nursing this theory that the Empire withdrew all their awesome-looking Arquitens and Gozanti class ships by the time of Episode IV given how easily the Rebels gang can take them out. :P In any case, the one they popped this week MAY have survived, it just had its command tower removed a la Rodger Young in Starship Troopers. Arguably a survivable hit. I"m sure they'll use this as a cause to refit every other star destroyer with a shorter neck by the time of Rogue One so this would never happen again. Mark
Heh. Maybe they'll also narrow the spread of the X-wings s-foils because of the loss of Phoenix squadron?