Categories
Mandalorian, The Season 2

Chapter 10: The Passenger

Star Wars: The MandalorianReturning from Mos Pelgo, the Mandalorian gets a sharp reminder that the Child is still a hot commodity among other bounty hunters, and though they both survive the encounter, it leaves the Mandalorian on foot for the long trek back to Mos Eisley. When he arrives, Peli Motto has more work lined up for him, though he’s annoyed to find that it’s basically a taxi run for the Razor Crest. The passenger is a frog-like woman carrying the last of her eggs back to her home planet to be fertilized. But the Child sees the container of eggs as one big snack bowl – and the New Republic X-Wings that pull up alongside the Razor Crest see it as a possible security risk as they sweep the galaxy for remnants of the Empire.

The Mandalorianwritten by Jon Favreau
directed by Peyton Reed
music by Ludwig Goransson

Cast: Pedro Pascal (The Mandalorian), Amy Sedaris (Peli Motto), Misty Rosas (Frog Lady performance artist), Richard Ayoade (Zero), Paul Sun-Hyung Lee (Captain Carson Teva), Dave Filoni (Trapper Wolf), Dee Bradley Baker (Frog Lady voice performer)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Categories
Daleks!

The Archive Of Islos

Daleks!The Dalek fleet descends upon the planet of Islos, wiping out most of its orbital defenses within minutes. Their target: the Archive of Islos, containing information the Dalek Emperor needs for the ongoing Dalek war effort. The people of Islos go to ground, leaving their automated Archivians – artificially intelligent librarians of the archive – to deal with the Daleks. The Chief Archivian finally, after the planet has been heavily bombarded, offers the Archives to the Emperor Dalek, who orders his ship to land there to claim his prize. But what he discovers is that the Archivians have merely been stalling to cover their masters’ escape…with the contents of the now-empty Archive.

written by James Goss
directed by Peter Caddock and Jon Doyle
music by Steve Foxon

Cast: Ayesha Antoine (Chief Archivian), Nicholas Briggs (The Daleks)

Notes: Daleks! is set within the “Time Lord Victorious” alternate timeline transmedia event, and as such is not bound to some elements of Doctor Who continuity. (Other elements of Time Lord Victorious included novels, audio dramas, and comics, Daleks!all of them in a timeline somewhat removed from what is usually considered Doctor Who continuity.) Visually, there is a very strong influence from the Century 21 Dalek comics of the 1960s, including Dalek hoverbouts and an Emperor Dalek with a spherical head, as well as something of a video game aesthetic. The episodes were distributed via the BBC’s Doctor Who YouTube channel, and this episode has a running time of 13 minutes, 47 seconds.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Categories
Mandalorian, The Season 2

Chapter 11: The Heiress

Star Wars: The MandalorianThe Razor Crest arrives as the frog woman’s home world of Trask, but due to the damage it took on the ice planet, its landing at the local spaceport is less than elegant, and much of what the Mandalorian earns from ferrying the frog woman home will have to be spent on repairs. As a water planet, Trask also has healthy populations of Mon Calamari and Quarren, and while treating the Child to lunch, the Mandalorian resumes his search for others of his kind. A Quarren offers to take the Mandalorian to a Mandalorian covert on Trask, but the journey can only be made by sea – and naturally, it’s a trap, but one that is thwarted by other Mandalorians. When the leader of his rescuers removes her helmet, it offends him, until she explains that the ancient Mandalorian custom of never removing one’s helmet is considered a throwback observed only by a particularly zealous religious order of Mandalorians. The female Mandalorian, Bo Katan, is leading a few of her kind in an effort to overcome Imperial interference on Mandalore itself, and she seeks help in preventing an Imperial ship carrying weapons from taking off. But for all of Bo Katan’s claims that he’s a zealot, the Mandalorian discovers that she is just as driven to locate something of hers that was taken by a particular Imperial officer.

The Mandalorianwritten by Jon Favreau
directed by Bryce Dallas Howard
music by Ludwig Goransson

Cast: Pedro Pascal (The Mandalorian), Amy Sedaris (Peli Motto), Misty Rosas (Frog Lady performance artist), Mercedes Varnado (Koska Reeves), Katee Sackhoff (Bo-Katan Kryze), Simon Kassianides (Axe Woves), Titus Welliver (Imperial Captain), Giancarlo Esposito (Moff Gideon), John Cameron (Frog Man performance artist), Norwood Cheek (Mon Calamari Server), Kevin Dorff (Deck Officer), Alexander Wraith (Freighter Pilot), Philip Alexander (Security Officer)

The MandalorianNotes: Bo-Katan – voiced by Battlestar Galactica veteran Katee Sackhoff and played by her in live action for the first time here – was last seen, Darksaber in hand, in the Star Wars: Rebels episode Heroes Of Mandalore Part 2 (2017). She gives the Mandalorian a lead on where to find Ahsoka Tano, also last seen in Rebels (albeit in its final episode).

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Categories
Daleks!

The Sentinel Of The Fifth Galaxy

Daleks!In exchange for the safety of their organic masters, the Archivians of Islos have given a destructive noncorporeal entity free reign to destroy the Daleks. Heavy losses are suffered by the Emperor’s fleet, but when they attempt to flee to Skaro for reinforcements, the entity outruns them and destroys the Daleks’ stronghold on their own planet. An attempted evacuation also fails, leaving Dalek forces decimated. Reinforcements are summoned from a secret location in the Fifth Galaxy, tended to by a rickety robot who seems to have a tenuous grip on the details of who is in charge… or perhaps the robot, and the reinforcements it guarded, have been compromised.

written by James Goss
directed by Peter Caddock and Jon Doyle
music by Steve Foxon

Cast: Joe Sugg (R-41), Nicholas Briggs (The Daleks)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Categories
Mandalorian, The Season 2

Chapter 12: The Siege

Star Wars: The MandalorianUnable to remain in hyperspace due to the less-than-reliable repairs to the Razor Crest, the Mandalorian is forced to postpone his mission and limp to Nevarro, where he hopes Greef Karga is feeling generous enough to foot the Crest’s repair bill. He finds Nevarro a changed planet: the Child is left at a school full of children, while Karga and Cara Dune (now Karga’s marshal) enlist the Mandalorian’s help to dismantle a presumably abandoned Imperial base on the other side of the planet. They succeed in setting the base’s reactor to overload, but as they try to make their way out of the base, they stumble upon a lab – and evidence that its experiments will require the recapture of the Child. The base turns out to be anything but abandoned…and the Empire remains anything but defeated.

The Mandalorianwritten by Jon Favreau
directed by Carl Weathers
music by Ludwig Goransson

Cast: Pedro Pascal (The Mandalorian), Gina Carano (Cara Dune), Carl Weathers (Greef Karga), Horatio Sanz (Mythrol), Omid Abtahi (Dr. Pershing), Giancarlo Esposito (Moff Gideon), Ryan Powers (Alien Worker), Daniel Negrete (School Kid), Morgan Benoit (Imperial Security Officer), Paul Sun-Hyung Lee (Captain Carson Teva), Katy O’Brian (Comms Officer), Kathryn Elise Drexler (Teacher Droid voice), Chris Bartlett (Teacher Droid performer)

The MandalorianNotes: Mythrol has clearly never watched a single Star Wars movie in his life, since he’s surprised to find no guard rails around the reactor controls. Some of the cadaverous creatures in the Imperial lab bear a slight resemblance to Supreme Leader Snoke, which raises the possibility that the Child will be captured in the future, leading to the rise of Snoke in the sequel trilogy.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Categories
Daleks!

Planet Of The Mechanoids

Daleks!Having lost the entire Dalek army hidden away in the Fifth Galaxy, the Emperor Dalek travels to the heart of Mechanoid space to propose an alliance with the longtime enemy of the Daleks. On Mechanus, the Mechanoid leader is skeptical of the proposal for cooperation, especially when the Emperor tries to avoid revealing that the powerful entity that has decimated Dalek forces was unleashed through the Dalek attack on Islos. Even as the Emperor and the Dalek Strategist confer with their Mechanoid counterparts, the tenuous truce between their armies breaks down quickly…while the transdimensional entity follows the Daleks to Mechanus.

written by James Goss
directed by Peter Caddock and Jon Doyle
music by Steve Foxon

Cast: Anjli Mohindra (Mechanoid Queen), Ayesha Antoine (Mechanoid 2150), Nicholas Briggs (The Daleks / The Machanoids)

Daleks!Notes: This is the first on-screen appearance of the Mechanoids since the sixth episode of the 1965 Doctor Who story The Chase. The episode’s title, also shown on-screen, either settles or further complicates a long-running confusion over whether the Daleks’ enemies’ name is spelled “Mechanoid” or “Mechonoid”. The Mechanoids made only one prior TV appearance, but were frequent foils for the Daleks in the Century 21 Dalek comics of the 1960s, which continue to be a significant influence on this series’ visual style. Anjli Mohindra starred as Rani in The Sarah Jane Adventures’ second through fifth seasons, later reprising the role for Big Finish.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Categories
Mandalorian, The Season 2

Chapter 13: The Jedi

Star Wars: The MandalorianFinally following Bo-Katan’s lead on the whereabouts of a Jedi named Ahsoka Tano, the Mandalorian lands the Razor Crest and begins searching for Ahsoka. When he visits a fortified city, the Mandalorian is asked to help with a problem – namely, killing a Jedi who seems to have a grudge against the local magistrate. With the Child in tow, the Mandalorian sets out and finds Ahsoka, who reveals the Child’s name to him as well as his origins. But Ahsoka senses that a strong attachment has developed between the two, and that attachment makes the Child ill-suited for training in the Force, according to the Jedi code. Ahsoka does want the Mandalorian’s help, though – she has a question to ask of the local magistrate, who has enlisted an entire army to prevent Ahsoka from getting close enough to demand an answer.

The Mandalorianwritten by Dave Filoni
directed by Dave Filoni
music by Ludwig Goransson

Cast: Pedro Pascal (The Mandalorian), Michael Biehn (Lang), Rosario Dawson (Ahsoka Tano), Diana Lee Inosanto (Morgan Elsbeth), James Croak (Prisoner), Dylan Alvarado (Village Boy), Mai Brunelle (Village Girl), Wing Tao Chao (Governor Wing), Clark Schierle (Villager)

The MandalorianNotes: Grogu – the Child – was a youngling during the waning days of the Old Republic, trained in the ways of the Force, but was taken from the Jedi Temple by an unknown party prior to Anakin Skywalker’s slaughter of the younglings. Grogu is the only other member of Yoda’s species to have been encountered by Ahsoka, which would imply that Jedi Master Yaddle (Star Wars Episode I, 1999) died before Ahsoka joined the Jedi order as Anakin’s padawan (Star Wars: The Clone Wars, 2008). The fact that Ahsoka is still looking for Thrawn may be related to the search for Ezra Bridger (upon which she was seen embarking in the series finale of Star Wars: Rebels). This is the first appearance of Ahsoka in live action, but not the last, as a live action spinoff was announced near the end of The Mandalorian’s second season.

LogBook entry by Earl Green