Happy New Year everyone! In case anyone was worried, I have NOT forgotten about the Star Wars timeline marathon. A lot has happened in the last few months; I moved states in October! Right after that, holiday work got INCREDIBLY busy and I had almost no time afterwards with work and unpacking.
I have been watching a lot of shows though! I’m finally able to get to writing again so keep an eye out for a bunch of different posts while I catch up on writing!
With that little update out of the way, let’s get on to talking about Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi
Episode Two: Justice
Episode 2 is actually the earliest episode in the timeline, so I watched that first when we got to it. It takes place years before The Phantom Menace and features Qui-Gon Jinn and Dooku, as student and jedi teacher. The two visit a small village where a senator’s son was being held captive, and they were tasked on negotiations to free him.
While meeting with the farmers, Dooku sees the status of their lives and understands the reason why they kidnapped the senator’s son to be heard and receive help.
The color tone is fantastic in this episode because it’s all dull browns and greys, making the mood grim throughout. Unfortunately, the political system the Jedi are in made this complicated. The senator’s son is released and promises to help the farmers, and the senator himself is promising “justice”. This signifies the start of Dooku’s disappointment with the current political system.
Episode Three: Choices
Another Dooku episode taking place a few years later. Qui-Gon is now longer a student, and is now teaching Obi Wan according to some dialogue in this episode.
This time, Dooku is visiting a planet with fellow Jedi Mace Windu. A Jedi Master was killed on this planet while escorting a senator. Windu wants to take the body and head back because that is what they were told to do, but Dooku wants to investigate how they were killed. It turns out, there’s another corrupt senator on this planet! He’s been selling land to outside parties and the people living on the land are upset. The senator’s guards killed the Jedi and were going to force the senator to go with their demands to take back their planet.
Dooku sympathies with them and is upset with the system as well, while Windu is someone who follows the rules. They capture the rebels and head back to their temple, where Windu is offered a promotion to a council lead, while Dooku is left thinking about what he wants within the Jedi order
Episode One: Life and Death
Opposite of Dooku’s storyline, here we see the introduction of Ahsoka’s. The colors are all vibrant and the mood is hopeful instead of dire. This episode isn’t as character driven as the other episodes, but it shows the early days of baby Ahsoka before she became a Jedi padawan. She was with her family and a large wild cat had captured her after hunting with her mother. Ahsoka was not harmed, however, because she used the force to calm the cat, and the cat took her home.
Episode Four: The Sith Lord
This is the last of Dooku’s story, which takes place just after The Phantom Menace. Qui Gon has died, and Dooku is distraught. There’s a female Yoda called Yaddle in The Phantom Menace, and she is never seen after that movie. This episode shows what happens to her. She follows Dooku to a hidden location in the city, where she finds him and a mysterious cloaked figure speaking with him. This is the evil Sith Darth Sidious, and he is convincing Dooku to leave the Jedi and join him because the politics have become corrupt and Dooku is tired of fighting the system within the system. Yaddle tries to plead for him to come back, but Dooku ends up killing her and joining the dark side.
Episode Five: Practice Makes Perfect
Back with Ahsoka this time and this episode is showing her training and Anakin’s teaching methods. She was displaying her lightsaber skills in a dojo against robots. Anakin was not impressed by it, thinking that it’s too predictable. He took her to a warehouse where some of his clone troopers were waiting, and he set up a test for her to block shots that they fired at her.
It didn’t last very long. The clones used stun and got her in just a few seconds.
After she recovered, she tried again.
And again.
And again.
She kept trying, getting knocked out, and then back up and eventually she lasted about 5 minutes or so. The episode ends with a scene from the final episode of The Clone Wars, where Order 66 was occurring and she had to actually use the training of avoiding clone fire to survive. It’s a neat callback to the Clone Wars show and helps explain how she survived.
Episode Six: Resolve
The final episode of this show takes place years after The Clone Wars and Order 66. Ahsoka is in hiding because the Jedi are being hunted. She’s on a planet as a farmhand and at one point, a stack of hay bales get knocked over and almost crush someone. She secretly uses the force to move them out of harm and tries to avoid being seen helping.
One person does notice and contacts the empire, and an Inquisitor arrives.
Inquisitors are trained by Darth Vader to hunt down Jedi in hiding and kill them. This one is looking for Ahsoka and is not aware of who the Jedi they’re looking for is. The Inquisitor is no match for Ahsoka because she was also trained by Vader before he became a Sith. She easily defeats him and decides that she doesn’t want to hide anymore and joins a growing rebellion against the Empire.
And that concludes the Tales of the Jedi series! The first post of the year. I have some more series and writing to catch up on, and then we’ll finally be into the original trilogy. Keep an eye on the Star Wars post hub page for the next update where I’ll be talking about The Bad Batch.
Kristopher K. Online 