In this week’s episode, the Star Wars ranking team is discussing The Bad Batch Season 1 Episode 6: Decommissioned and Episode 7: Battle Scars. We’re finally getting some better quality storytelling! Though, is this the best it’s going to get for the series? Is the batch most interesting when they’re fighting each other? Is Brody’s claim that Star Wars overall produces crappy stories true? Tune in; you don’t want to miss this debate!
Is the bad batch finally becoming a decent batch? With episodes like Decommissioned and Battle Scars, we found ourselves more entertained and invested in the characters. Moreso with the characters in Battle Scars. For Decommissioned, we have to mention Rafa and Trace. They’re great for a kids show, but they can seem tiresome to certain adults (mainly Brody). Brody likens Rafa to Cid; they’re both cynical and have chips on their shoulders. Rafa serves as banter for Hunter, and she helps facilitate some good fight scenes along with Hunter’s tactical move to take out the support rail. The technical aspects of this episode weren’t bad at all.
“There was some good comedy in this one.” - Christian
We also agree this joke: “Is there an echo in here?” made us all laugh out loud. The punchline landed well. One of the B1 battle droids asked: “Did we win?” which was another successful stab at comic relief. It was cool having the B1 and B2 super battle droids back. This whole conveyer belt scrummy on Corellia felt like another homage to Attack of the Clones and the droid manufacturing plant on Geonosis. With familiar sites and sounds, I’m glad we had another prequel callback. I personally liked learning that Cid is a badass. Near the beginning she suggests Omega build up her arm strength if she truly wants to become a sharpshooter with the energy bow. Then Cid nails three shots on the bullseye. What else can she do?
“Wrecker was by far the most interesting character in that episode.” - Brody
To get someone like Brody now interested in Wrecker is an achievement (considering his earlier sentiments on the musclehead). Wrecker is struggling more with his headaches and it’s clearly affecting their missions. Tim noticed while watching with subtitles that Wrecker’s line ‘good soldiers follow orders’ was actually captioned as Crosshair’s voice. Despite our interest in Wrecker, Amanda still has no interest in Echo. She says he’s basically useless and without a personality now. That may be true, but is he supposed to be that way? Having a past only to have it erased and replaced with machinery? Is there more to Echo that we’re missing? Along those same lines, we did get to talking about The Bad Batch possibly having more success strictly as an arc in The Clone Wars, or maybe even having its own season within The Clone Wars. Would we have been just as bored? Or would we have missed out too much concerning Omega?
“The bad batch are at their best when they’re battling each other.” - Amanda
Amanda said it best, Episode 7: Battle Scars is our highest ranking episode of The Bad Batch because we’re more interested in a great story involving members of the actual batch; or as Omega says, “a batcher.” We care about what happens to each character, not how the batch as a whole handles a slightly different situation in a slightly different location. I’ll agree, it’s good to have them problem-solve together every once in a while, but if it’s not focused on one of their own, this is where the show seems pointless to us. Seeing them all fight Wrecker, not to kill but rather to save, was a cryptic and scary part of this episode. It certainly felt like the horror film Alien with smoke and suspense in the corridors. Getting to the surgery room also had its obstacles. The Dianoga, or as we like to call it, the aquatic sarlacc pit felt very similar to the Watcher in the Water scene from The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. Brody thought because of this, it was too distracting and felt like an overt copy of the idea. The rest of us disagree, but he did draw on some more similarities with the batch and the fellowship. Is Hunter or Rex serving as an Aragorn or Strider? Rex certainly had his cloak in the bar moment just as Strider did. Is Omega and her energy bow like Legolas? Both keeping cool, problem solving whilst rocking the blonde hair? I’m sure there are some similarities with many tropes out there, but it wasn’t distracting for us like it was Brody.
“I’d watch it again.” - Tim
We all loved the music playing once Wrecker was out of surgery. It was like an erie sci-fi dream, getting the group back to reality. I was getting some serious Blade Runner vibes, hearing its famous Tears in the Rain within this episode of Battle Scars. A much welcomed surprise for seeing this in Star Wars. The music really taps into our emotions because they were all scared, and now that they’ve gone through this traumatizing event, they’re closer because of it. This whole episode was a much welcomed surprise, and we hope we get more like it.
“I think it helped that all of the characters had to feel big emotions.” - Amanda
Hot Takes:
We’re missing a Crosshair storyline in this show.
Battle Scars will be the best episode of The Bad Batch.
Most of Star Wars is just not that good, critically speaking.
At this point, the audience does not care about getting Crosshair back to the group. We’re not connected to him, because we haven’t seen much good of him. We want to know what’s going on in his head. Is he really that bad? How much of him is still there? The stakes would be much higher if they were trying harder to reunite him with the batch. We want to see more episodes like this though, showing a struggle within the group. We fear we won’t get much more so that’s why this may end up being the best episode of the series. This brings us to a much broader topic: Is most of Star Wars crappy material? Yes there are grand moments, but a lot of the storytelling is getting filled up with mediocre episodes of tv series like this. Thus bringing down the average of high-ranking material. It’s Star Wars; we can’t take it too seriously. However, A New Hope changed everything, critically speaking. And don’t even get me started on The Empire Strikes Back. Industrial Light and Magic has pioneered movie magic. So much of what we have in today’s entertainment is because of the original trilogy. It’s just entertainment, and we can’t take it too seriously, but it can get us to ponder the bigger and more meaningful things in life. As long as we keep getting it, we’ll discuss and rank it.
