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Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month for June 2022

It’s that time of the month again, time for “Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month”.

So what is “Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month”? It’s a round-up of speculative fiction by indie and small press authors newly published this month, though some May books I missed the last time around snuck in as well. The books are arranged in alphabetical order by author. So far, most links only go to Amazon.com, though I may add other retailers for future editions.

Once again, we have new releases covering the whole broad spectrum of speculative fiction. This month, we have urban fantasy, epic fantasy, YA fantasy, fantasy romance, paranormal romance, paranormal mystery, paranormal historical mystery, science fiction romance, space opera, military science fiction, YA science fiction, horror, non-fiction, wizards, dragons, fae, final girls, super soldiers, space marines, magical heists, crime-busting witches, haunted hotels and much more.

Don’t forget that Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month is also crossposted to the Speculative Fiction Showcase, a group blog run by Jessica Rydill and myself, which features new release spotlights, guest posts, interviews and link round-ups regarding all things speculative fiction several times per week.

As always, I know the authors at least vaguely, but I haven’t read all of the books, so Caveat emptor.

And now on to the books without further ado:

The Final Women by Pardeep Aujla:

The mass murdering Phantom of Haven Cove is dead. For the one who killed him, however, life has never been the same.

How do you return to normality after facing such a monster? How do you live when consumed by guilt, anger, fear, and denial? How do you connect with others when no one understands what you’ve been through?

But there are others. Final Girls of their own Haven Cove massacres. And now, thirty years later, they must all face a new question…

What do you do when the killer returns?

Entangled by Odette C. Bell:

Some are born with a plan. Some are born into someone else’s plan.

Bruce Tan is the best soldier the Coalition has seen in decades. With a cold, efficient will and a hardened fist, he forces his way through every obstacle.

But the universe has another plan for him. When an alien artifact entangles his body and mind with the weak, panic-prone Cadet Emma Hawk, he must learn a new way.

And quickly.

The Coalition’s enemies soon kidnap them, and Bruce and Emma are thrust head-first into a fight for the universe. They have two options: stay together, as close as two entangled particles – or break apart and take everyone else with them.

The Book of Shadow was found, but the quest continues…

Llyris Fildarae is still reeling with the news of her heritage imparted by an old man claiming to be the great mage Amnayel Prisma—doubtful, though he’s proven able to perform unusual wonders even a magik couldn’t. He cured a boy, yet now demands a stave to aid in healing a fallen knight.

The quest she and her companions embark on requires them to travel to the Obsidian Fields, a place no one has visited since time immemorial. Even Prisma himself—if that is who he is—cannot tell them what it may look like or what to expect once there.

What dangers will they face? Magic? Deadly curses? The undead again?

No one knows. Not even a Shadow Scarred.

First Kill by Jonathan P. Brazee and J.N. Chaney:

A routine reconnaissance mission. Find out where the enemy Mad Dogs are, and report back.

Simple.

But Tomiko Reiser is a staff sergeant, a combat Marine, and Marines don’t run from a fight. When her patrol spots the enemy, she realizes the opportunity is there, and she maneuvers closer for a better look.

Combat never goes as planned, and Tomiko might have bit off more than she could chew. Faced with a powerful foe and a sergeant she doesn’t trust, she might have made a fatal mistake.

Dive into this brand new short story from Staff Sergeant Tomiko Reiser’s point of view from the Dragon Award nominated Sentenced to War series.

Gods of War by Jonathan P. Brazee and J.N. Chaney:

As the flames of the Human/Naxli war are fanned into a blaze, the Second Combined Assault Brigade is thrown into the conflict.

But with troopers from throughout humanity, including former enemies, Gunnery Sergeant Reverent Pelletier struggles to mold his platoon into an effective fighting force, all while butting heads with his Mad Dog commander.

Under water, in the vacuum of space, and leading local forces, the platoon puts their stamp on history. But there is a limit to any fighting force. Will and discipline alone can’t defeat overwhelming firepower. When faced with insurmountable odds, can Rev and his troopers survive, much less accomplish their mission?

Join Rev, Tomiko, Kelly, and the rest of the Marines and soldiers as they fight the Naxli aggression that threatens humankind’s very existence.

Magic Alias by Fatima Fayez:

What if the past two years of your life were a lie?

Yesterday, I believed I was the smartest witch at the supernatural agency. My magic and power made me their most effective agent, reclaiming stolen artifacts and tracking down dangerous rogues.

Today, I know the organization I work for is actually a front for a sprawling criminal network that threatens to upend the paranormal world. It only took a serial killer to break the news to me and turn my world upside down.

All this time, I believed the agency didn’t know about my dark secret but it turns out I was the mark all along. Now I have to figure out how deep I’m in.

Tomorrow, I’m taking them down.

I’m having a bad day and I have a feeling it’s about to get

By Your Side: The First 100 Years of Yuri Anime and Manga by Erica Friedman:

The Untold Story of Lesbian Love in Japanese Anime and Comics

“By Your Side is the complete Yuri resource I only ever dreamed could exist. Decades in the making, this glorious collection surveys, analyzes, and contextualizes Yuri with unparalleled detail and enthusiasm. Friedman graces readers with illuminating insights as they follow her through a century of the genre’s evolution and revolution. By sharing her extraordinary knowledge, she provides inquirers, scholars, and aficionados alike with a deeper appreciation and understanding of lesbian anime and manga while galvanizing them towards the next era of Yuri.”

-Nicki Bauman, Yurimother

“The first in-depth study of Yuri in English.”

-James Welker, Professor of Cross-Cultural and Japanese Studies, Kanagawa University

For a Few Witches More by Lily Harper Hart:

Casper Creek is a town in flux. Contractors are on the scene making plans for the new restaurant, owner Hannah Hickok is plotting ridiculous couple’s costumes for the Halloween party, and there’s a new demon in town.

Instead of coming after Hannah directly, the demon does an end-run around the witch and starts possessing the area children … and sending them into a frenzy. Through a fluke, Hannah manages to put an end to the first attack. Unfortunately, a wave of them are set to follow.

Hannah’s boyfriend Cooper Wyatt believes she can handle almost anything, but a threat against children puts her in a tough position … especially since the demon seems to be demanding something that’s impossible for Hannah to give him. He wants to be there for her, but this fight is one he’s not certain they can win.

Demons are nothing new for Hannah, but this one has a particular agenda, and nobody will survive if it comes to fruition. Because she has no other options, Hannah is forced to join forces with an enemy who can provide an exponential power boost. Will it be a mistake?

Hannah is determined to protect those she loves. This time, the foe might be too strong for her to defeat.

Wicked Graves by Lily Harper Hart:

Maddie Graves-Winters should be preparing for the biggest day of her life – she’s going to become a mother in three months after all – but that’s impossible without the right crib. That means an outing to nearby Shadow Lake with her husband Nick, which turns into a nightmare she wasn’t expecting when a local author is struck in the middle of the road and left for dead.

Ivy Morgan-Harker didn’t even know they had a famous author in town until she was already dead. When helping her husband Jack and his new partner search the dead woman’s house, she finds an entire wall of grievances, which seems to indicate the victim had more than one enemy.

When Maddie and Ivy cross paths, sparks fly … in a magical way. It isn’t long before the truth comes out and they join forces to solve a mystery.
Apparently, the author world is full of kooks, or at least that’s what the women manage to uncover. There are too many suspects and not enough motive. Still, they dig … but the answers they seek are elusive.

There’s a killer running around northern Lower Michigan, and Ivy and Maddie are determined to find out who it is … even if they put themselves in danger to uncover the truth. Their husbands, however frustrated, stand back to watch the show.

They say truth is stranger than fiction, and in this case, that truth will cast a pall over multiple lives.

Buckle up and enjoy the ride because some friendships are destined to become legendary. This is one of them.

Rune of Secrets by Kelly N. Jane:

She craves vengeance. He requires justice. Fate demands both.

Without enchanted powers and struck with a curse, Princess Rowena could not prevent her family’s murder or save herself from the fallout.

Vulnerable but determined, she dares to conquer her enemies and free her people. But secret deals force her into a betrothal, tempting her into a bold decision that could cost her life.

Rowena has nothing left but to avenge her family before she dies. Until the most terrifying, yet hauntingly handsome fae arrives, demanding she follows her destiny.

Rowena has the power to lead her people or destroy them.

Kwelengsen Dawn by David M. Kelly:

When you lose everything you love, the whole world becomes the enemy.

After his planet was invaded by ruthless Corporate forces, engineer Logan Twofeathers is trapped on Earth by the authorities, who are more afraid of starting a war than helping their people. He may be safe, but many others are still missing.

When security tries to arrest him on trumped-up charges, he must find his own way to return to Kwelengsen. His only option is to seek out someone from his past–a borderline psychotic, who might just be crazy enough to help.

Now, he must draw on all his strength and resilience as he undertakes a precarious and violent journey into the unknown, with enemies lurking in every shadow. The outlook is bleak, and all he has is his grit and sense of honor. Will that be enough?

The battle is over. But the war is about to begin.

Daggers and Destiny by Ryver Knight:

A strange stone. A pursuit for power. A new beginning.

An orphan with no job, no home, and no last name, sixteen-year-old Mala scrapes along day by day with her younger brother, Baz, in their small village.

But when she discovers a mysterious stone, her whole world comes crashing down.

Suddenly, she faces massive adversity, a quest for bloody revenge, and a power so great she fears it.

Will she find peace amidst the chaos?

Or is her world fated to burn?

The Haunted Hotel Hoopla by Amanda M. Lee:

Charlie Rhodes is struggling. She thought finding her family would fix everything. It hasn’t, and the threat that’s cast a long shadow over her life is only getting larger. Still, when an opportunity arises to go to Savannah – one of her bucket list cities – she jumps at the chance.

Savannah was made famous by ghosts, but five missing women – and the return of only one body – seems to point to a different sort of culprit. Whatever is going on, it’s weird … and it’s only getting weirder.

Charlie’s mind keeps wandering to the friend she lost, who keeps haunting her dreams, but her determination never wavers. That’s why she hits the ground hot and hard … and the answers that start unspooling do so at a fantastic rate.

There’s just one problem: Whatever evil is haunting Savannah, it’s more than ghosts. Actually, there might be two problems, because the ghosts in Savannah are multiplying exponentially and nobody knows if it’s tied to the missing women.

Charlie has enemies coming out of the woodwork, although the big one is elusive. The answers she seeks are close, and they might just be provided by an unlikely source. It will take all of them working together, every faction in town, to beat back a terrific foe.

Don’t skip to the end in this one, because the ultimate twist is about to descend. Prepare yourself because it’s going to be a heckuva ride.

More Modern Mythmakers: 25 Interviews with Horror and Science Fiction Writers and Filmmakers by Michael McCarty

More Modern Mythmakers features Horror, Science Fiction and Dark Fantasy’s most influential writers and filmmakers interviewed about the art and craft of their genres.

The 25 interviews include:
Steve Alten, Reggie Bannister, Terry Brooks, Charles de Lint, Dennis Etchison, John Everson, Alan Dean Foster, Ray Garton, Sephera Giron, Owl Goingback, Charles Grant, Nancy Holder, Paul Kane, Ronald Kelly, Joe Lansdale, Bentley Little, Jeff Long, Jonathan Maberry, Elizabeth Massie, Larry Niven, William Stout, Jeff Strand, Harry Turtledove, J.N. Williamson, Connie Willis

Foreword by Gerard Houarner
Afterword by Jeffrey Thomas

If you’re interested in books on writing, the horror genre, science fiction, famous authors, or even becoming a full time author, this book is a must-have.

More Modern Mythmakers is the sequel to 2015’s Modern Mythmakers by Michael McCarty, published by Crystal Lake Publishing.

Proudly represented by Crystal Lake Publishing—Tales from the Darkest Depths.

An Unforgiving Desert by S.J. Pajonas:

A ship hijacked. An arrogant and handsome classmate. A relentless desert.

Skylar Kawabata is so close to having her Class Three pilot’s license, she can taste it. She’s worked two years in isolation to get to the final exam, and nothing is going to stop her now, not even Kalvin, the class pretty boy high flyer who can’t stop calling her Princess. She’s going to kill him if he calls her that one more time…

When their class ship is hijacked during the final exam, and Skylar and Kalvin are marooned in the desert, they’ll need more than patience and a supply of water to stay alive until rescue comes.

Will Skylar and Kalvin make it out of the unforgiving desert in one piece? Or will they kill each other before the desert kills them?

An Unforgiving Desert is the prequel novella to The Amagi science fiction romance series. If you like talented heroines, cocky, self-assured men, and a hot desert gamble, then you’ll devour S. J. Pajonas’s gutsy action-adventure. Be sure to read An Unexpected Debt after!

Shackles of Guilt by Kris Ruhler:

He’s the boy next door. She’s a princess. But when blood and war reach their doorstep, will they unite or be forever pushed apart?

Young and ambitious Earmon has climbed up the ladder in Levitor city to become the Queen’s topmost advisor. He seems to have everything he’s dreamt of but for one thing: Princess Zenithia’s love.

When he witnesses an intruder inside the city and decides to keep it quiet, he unwittingly unleashes a terrifying chain of events. His friend, Turak, has an episode that results in a fracture in Levitor’s shield, and the horde of Reavers prowling outside the city advances.

In a world of intrigue, blood, and war, Earmon must battle for survival against savages and beasts.

His hardest trial is yet to come, and he will have to face a choice no one should ever have to make: protect the life of the one he loves the most at the risk of losing his own.

In the end, will he be enough to save her and the city?

Stung by the Cobra by Aurora Springer:

Shan Zennia, Senior Curator of the Archives of Galactic Culture on Lumos, plays a dangerous double role as a researcher and a spy for Solarian Intelligence. She embarks on a new mission to observe the spring festival on Harappi, a planet recently conquered by the ambitious Emperor and now governed by his niece, Domina Allia.

Zennia finds unexpected mysteries on the planet, including the enigmatic Nagari. Once a victorious commander in the Emperor’s space fleet and nicknamed the Cobra, he was forced to abandon his military career when Allia claimed him as her consort. Her abusive treatment has driven him to the brink of madness.

Intrigued by the ex-commander and aware of his value as a source of information on the enemy, Zennia agrees to meet him during the festival of rebirth. Opposing forces clash at the height of the celebrations, catalyzing deadly violence. Can Nagari and Zennia survive the chaos and win a new and happier life?

Wilde Magic by Jenn Stark:

Off the grid and on the run since she was a teen, Sara Wilde has made a name for herself as an artifact hunter with an edge—finding the most magical treasures on the planet with the flip of a Tarot card.

But when she’s hired to steal a powerful fertility idol on the last night of Carnival, Sara discovers her rough-and-tumble skills are no match for the new, mysterious buyer she’s attracted. Rich, demanding, and sexy as sin, this Magician promises to be nothing but trouble. Yet, for what he’s willing to shell out for her services, Sara can afford the risk.

Or so she thinks.

As the danger—and the payoffs—mount, the power of Tarot leads Sara from the rollicking party of Rio de Janeiro to the grand historical cemeteries of Savannah, then on to the ostentatious museum halls of New York City. Meanwhile, the relentless Magician weaves an ever more seductive spell, hinting at a world she’s barely glimpsed.

To keep from getting burned by passion, power, or betrayal, Sara’s going to need some Wilde Magic.

The Ghostly Tower by A.F. Stewart:

Meet Heyward and Andersen, consulting detectives in a paranormal London you never imagined…

Elspeth Heyward has never met a puzzle she didn’t want to solve, or an adventure she didn’t relish. Taking Sherlock Homes as her benchmark, she is determined to be the best detective and monster hunter in London.

Lars Andersen’s ambitions aren’t nearly as demanding. He just wants to stay alive, out of trouble, and out of jail. But when your partner likes guns and dynamite, that could be a challenge. Can he survive his new employment?

The Case: Discover if a stone tower on their client’s estate is haunted. It should be straightforward, but ghosts aren’t all they find. When they dig up a body, they also unearth a murder and a tangle of secrets. Secrets they’d better unravel quickly before someone else dies.

Alien Pursuit by James David Victor:

They held off the initial alien assault but humanity is far from safe as the full force of the alien invasion is unleashed on mankind.

The initial attack by the Vhast alien armada was repulsed, in large part by the heroic deeds of the Tin Man. Unfortunately, the jump gate back to Earth was destroyed and it’s a long journey home for the small crew of the gigantic mining ship turned warship. They must get back to Earth to help save humanity, but an elite alien warship is determined to prevent that from happening. Can the crew of the Tin Man outsmart, and out fight, an elite alien warrior and return home or has the gigantic space mech met it’s match?

Alien Pursuit is the second book in the Tin Man Space Opera Adventure. If you like fast-paced sci-fi adventures, make Tin Man your next epic space adventure.

Download Alien Pursuit and see if the giant space mech known as Tin Man can save humanity!

Women of Wonder by Danielle Williams:

Looking for magic-wielding women with brave hearts, amazing abilities, and a sense of humor? You’ve come to the right place.

Danielle Williams, fantasy fan extraordinaire and author of the inimitable sci-fi epic Steel City, Veiled Kingdom, brings together three of her favorite heroines in this special value collection that’s sure to leave you smiling.

Women of Wonder contains the following stories:

The Capramancer Next Door – Down-to-earth mage Will Schafer has her hands full moving into a new house while keeping her mischievous herd of magical goats in line. Meeting handsome gardener Rickert Nash takes the sting out of moving…until his shadowy past comes roaring back to bite him in the butt. Now Will and the herd must step in to save their neighbor from getting mulched—but can a girl and her goats defeat a formidable hunter, or are they all about to buy the farm?

The Witching License – Mavis Burnsides is on her deathbed when her best friend brings her a Witching License. Now she’s got magical powers—and one last night to make up for a lifetime of regrets. By turns sassy and touching, The Witching License is a gentle tale of regret, romance, and righting wrongs.

Debuts and Dragons – Though she’s not much to look at, dragon Sellafield Terrormouth never worried about snagging a mate for herself. But now that her little sister is about to debut in dragon society, Sella’s got one night to go from drab to fab. If she fails, she’ll lose her entire dowry—and quite possibly doom herself to eternal spinsterhood! Can this plain dragon get herself a date, or is her future about to go up in flames?

Escape doesn’t have to cost big bucks!

Indie Crime Fiction of the Month for June 2022

Welcome to the latest edition of “Indie Crime Fiction of the Month”.

So what is “Indie Crime Fiction of the Month”? It’s a round-up of crime fiction by indie authors newly published this month, though some May books I missed the last time around snuck in as well. The books are arranged in alphabetical order by author. So far, most links only go to Amazon.com, though I may add other retailers for future editions.

Our new releases cover the broad spectrum of crime fiction. We have cozy mysteries, animal mysteries, historical mysteries, Jazz Age mysteries, paranormal mysteries, paranormal historical mysteries, crime thrillers, action thrillers, adventure thrillers, horror thrillers, detective novels, true crime, police officers, private investigators, FBI agents, amateur sleuths, bank robbers, serial killers, heists, missing girls, final girls, crime-busting witches, crime-busting socialites, crime-busting cats, crime-busting dogs, vigilante priests, murder and mayhem in London, New York City, the French Riviera, Savannah, Michigan, Florida, Hawaii and much more.

Don’t forget that Indie Crime Fiction of the Month is also crossposted to the Indie Crime Scene, a group blog which features new release spotlights, guest posts, interviews and link round-ups regarding all things crime fiction several times per week.

As always, I know the authors at least vaguely, but I haven’t read all of the books, so Caveat emptor.

And now on to the books without further ado:

The Final Women by Pardeep Aujla:

The mass murdering Phantom of Haven Cove is dead. For the one who killed him, however, life has never been the same.

How do you return to normality after facing such a monster? How do you live when consumed by guilt, anger, fear, and denial? How do you connect with others when no one understands what you’ve been through?

But there are others. Final Girls of their own Haven Cove massacres. And now, thirty years later, they must all face a new question…

What do you do when the killer returns?

The French for Murder by Verity Bright:

A grand villa, croissants for breakfast and a dead body in the wine cellar… Lady Swift can’t seem to take a vacation from murder!

Summer 1923. Lady Eleanor Swift is finally persuaded by her butler, Clifford, to take a villa in the south of France for the season. She plans to do what a glamorous lady abroad should: long lunches on the balcony followed by lazy afternoons lounging by the pool. Even Gladstone the bulldog is looking forward to a daily paddle in the ocean.

But when Clifford examines the wine cellar, he discovers there are no decent reds but there is a very dead body. The victim is famous American movie star Rex Armstrong. Poor Rex seems to have been stabbed with a sword from the film set. So how did he end up in Eleanor’s villa?

Before Eleanor even has time to change out of her travelling suit, her beloved butler is arrested for the crime. At sea without her right-hand man, Eleanor must gather her wits if she’s to outsmart a murderer and save Clifford.

Attending a glitzy party at the luxurious Hotel Azure with the film’s cast and crew so she can question her main suspects, Eleanor overhears the director having a most unsettling telephone call that throws all her theories out of the water. Can Eleanor unmask the true killer before her time abroad is cut murderously short?

The Curious Case of the Templeton-Swifts by Benjamin Brown:

A manor house full of secrets, a recluse who fears for his life, and four warring heirs out to claim their inheritance. There’s murder afoot in the country this summer.

England, 1926. When Lord Edgington receives a letter from Hugo Templeton-Swift, a famously rich magnate who believes he’s being poisoned, the renowned detective fetches his assistant, his golden retriever, and a full staff of servants and heads off to the countryside to investigate. But when the bodies start falling in the extraordinary estate of Riverside Keep, anyone could be guilty.

Though all fingers point to Hugo’s much younger wife, his three estranged children have their own reasons for wanting their father out of the picture, and even the servants are acting suspiciously. With the aid of his loyal grandson, Lord Edgington must pick through the mysterious manor in order to catch the killer and solve “The Curious Case of the Templeton-Swifts”.

Shadow of Evil by Beth Byers:

It turns out that Smith’s one-time lover has returned. She’s beautiful and talented. She has big eyes and a trembling lip, and she’s turned those on Smith. Who is, in fact, unmoved.

It is Beatrice who is drawn in, and she’s the one who agrees to the case. Bea’s support doesn’t change when his lover shows her true colors.

Instead, Beatrice dives in and pulls Smith—and Vi—after. Now they’ll have to work together to help the only other woman Smith might have loved.

Murder in the Gardens by Colette Clark:

You are cordially invited to the grand opening of the Japanese Tea Gardens on the rooftop of the Grand Opal Hotel…

New York 1925

To celebrate its official opening, the Grand Opal Hotel is hosting an exclusive party for the crème de la crème of New York society, to be held in its newly completed rooftop Japanese Tea Gardens.

Jiro Ishida, the gardens’ designer is l’homme du moment. Everyone is clamoring for his services to recreate the latest trend in garden aesthetic.

Which is why it’s a surprise when he turns up dead in the koi pond.

Once again, Penelope “Pen” Banks is on the case, if only to solve a murder the owner of the hotel and several of its wealthy guests would rather see buried beneath the bonsai trees.

Rook by Stephgen G. Eannou:

Rook is based on the true story of Al Nussbaum. To his unsuspecting wife, Lolly, Al is a loving, chess playing, family man. To J. Edgar Hoover, he is the most cunning fugitive alive. Al is the mastermind behind a string of east coast robberies that has stumped law enforcement. After his partner, one-eyed Bobby Wilcoxson, kills a bank guard and wounds a New York City patrolman, Al is identified as one of the robbers and lands on top of the FBI’s most wanted list. He is forced to flee his hometown of Buffalo, New York as the FBI closes in and Lolly learns of her husband’s secret life.

While Al assumes another identity and attempts to elude the police, Lolly is left alone to care for their infant daughter and adjust to her new life as ‘The Bank Robber’s Wife’. Friends, family, and federal agents all pressure Lolly to betray Al. While Lolly struggles at home financially, with unrelenting FBI agents, and her conscious, Al and Bobby continue to rob banks, even as Bobby grows more mentally unstable and dangerous.

Al has only two goals: avoid capture and steal enough money to start a new life with his family. Returning to gather his wife and baby is suicidal, but as Al said, he’d only stick his neck in the Buffalo noose for Lolly.

Ashes to Ashes by Rachel Ford:

A private eye and a vigilante priest face off to bring down a corrupt band of evildoers—by the book, or off the books. Her way, or his.

Years ago, Aubrey Blake joined the police force to make a difference. She almost lost everything in the pursuit of justice. Now she’s about to do it again.

Disillusioned with her former career, she makes a living as a private detective. A living, but not a life.

Then the killings start. The police are on it. But Blake can’t let it be. She can’t walk away. She’s not wired that way.

Then again, neither are the killers…

Die by the Sword by Rachel Ford:

‘I think they’re going to kill me…’

When Former Army intelligence analyst Owen Day gets a cryptic call from a man who used to be a brother to him, he drops everything without a second thought to head to the remote Montana wilderness.

He finds a web of lies and corruption waiting – and a bullet, with his name on it.

With no idea if his friend is still alive, no one left to trust, and a brutal storm moving in, Owen will need to act fast – or he’ll disappear too.

The Missing Girls by Elle Grey:

There are monsters among us.
They live in disguise, prowling in the shadows.
They commit unimaginable atrocities.
They target the innocent and the most vulnerable.
Regardless, the victims will eventually find peace and the evil-doers will forever be condemned to a fiery inferno…

To many that know her, FBI agent Blake Wilder is a pillar for truth and the dealer of justice.

When faced with threats and adversity, you can count on her to continue to fight for what is right. With her sister Kit clinging to life after being attacked, Blake and her team are called away to solve a case in North Dakota.

Teenage girls from prominent families are going missing and the local Sheriff is at a loss to understand who’s taking them—or why. As Blake and her team start investigating, they find themselves caught up in a power struggle between the town’s locals and a community of indigenous people.

But when the girls start turning up dead and the pressure to find the killer starts ramping up, Blake finds herself peeling back the layers of a monstrous series of murders. And the deeper they go down that rabbit hole, the more incomprehensible it gets.

As heroes are unmasked and they’re proven to be the monsters that lurk in the shadows hunting children, a small town is left horrified and shocked. It’s a case that will leave scars on everybody involved and will change them all.

Who is the monster behind the lost children?
And who is the culprit behind Kit’s attack?
Evil converges and the truth finds itself trying to escape its buried darkness to come into the light.

For a Few Witches More by Lily Harper Hart:

Casper Creek is a town in flux. Contractors are on the scene making plans for the new restaurant, owner Hannah Hickok is plotting ridiculous couple’s costumes for the Halloween party, and there’s a new demon in town.

Instead of coming after Hannah directly, the demon does an end-run around the witch and starts possessing the area children … and sending them into a frenzy. Through a fluke, Hannah manages to put an end to the first attack. Unfortunately, a wave of them are set to follow.

Hannah’s boyfriend Cooper Wyatt believes she can handle almost anything, but a threat against children puts her in a tough position … especially since the demon seems to be demanding something that’s impossible for Hannah to give him. He wants to be there for her, but this fight is one he’s not certain they can win.

Demons are nothing new for Hannah, but this one has a particular agenda, and nobody will survive if it comes to fruition. Because she has no other options, Hannah is forced to join forces with an enemy who can provide an exponential power boost. Will it be a mistake?

Hannah is determined to protect those she loves. This time, the foe might be too strong for her to defeat.

Wicked Graves by Lily Harper Hart:

Maddie Graves-Winters should be preparing for the biggest day of her life – she’s going to become a mother in three months after all – but that’s impossible without the right crib. That means an outing to nearby Shadow Lake with her husband Nick, which turns into a nightmare she wasn’t expecting when a local author is struck in the middle of the road and left for dead.

Ivy Morgan-Harker didn’t even know they had a famous author in town until she was already dead. When helping her husband Jack and his new partner search the dead woman’s house, she finds an entire wall of grievances, which seems to indicate the victim had more than one enemy.

When Maddie and Ivy cross paths, sparks fly … in a magical way. It isn’t long before the truth comes out and they join forces to solve a mystery.

Apparently, the author world is full of kooks, or at least that’s what the women manage to uncover. There are too many suspects and not enough motive. Still, they dig … but the answers they seek are elusive.

There’s a killer running around northern Lower Michigan, and Ivy and Maddie are determined to find out who it is … even if they put themselves in danger to uncover the truth. Their husbands, however frustrated, stand back to watch the show.

They say truth is stranger than fiction, and in this case, that truth will cast a pall over multiple lives.

Buckle up and enjoy the ride because some friendships are destined to become legendary. This is one of them.

Wrecks of Key Largo by Nicholas Harvey:

Hidden clues. Deadly wrecks. A ticking clock.

When AJ Bailey heads to the Florida Keys for a scuba diving conference, she’s looking forward to a relaxing trip. But when an old friend goes missing and his wife is in trouble, the holiday is over.

Amid a sea of threats and lies, AJ has 24 hours to find her friend and the mysterious package he took, before payback will be taken in lives.

With no idea where to start, and time running out, AJ soon discovers the answers may lie deep inside the infamous shipwrecks of Key Largo.

Book Twelve in this best-selling series dives into the waters of the Florida Keys with fast-paced, edge-of-your-seat suspense, and a guest appearance by the marvellous Emily Durand from Nick Sullivan’s ‘The Deep Series’.

The Haunted Hotel Hoopla by Amanda M. Lee:

Charlie Rhodes is struggling. She thought finding her family would fix everything. It hasn’t, and the threat that’s cast a long shadow over her life is only getting larger. Still, when an opportunity arises to go to Savannah – one of her bucket list cities – she jumps at the chance.

Savannah was made famous by ghosts, but five missing women – and the return of only one body – seems to point to a different sort of culprit. Whatever is going on, it’s weird … and it’s only getting weirder.

Charlie’s mind keeps wandering to the friend she lost, who keeps haunting her dreams, but her determination never wavers. That’s why she hits the ground hot and hard … and the answers that start unspooling do so at a fantastic rate.

There’s just one problem: Whatever evil is haunting Savannah, it’s more than ghosts. Actually, there might be two problems, because the ghosts in Savannah are multiplying exponentially and nobody knows if it’s tied to the missing women.

Charlie has enemies coming out of the woodwork, although the big one is elusive. The answers she seeks are close, and they might just be provided by an unlikely source. It will take all of them working together, every faction in town, to beat back a terrific foe.

Don’t skip to the end in this one, because the ultimate twist is about to descend. Prepare yourself because it’s going to be a heckuva ride.

Wired Target by Toby Neal:

What would you do if the crime you were hired to solve tugged at your heartstrings?

Private investigator Sophie’s latest case weighs heavy: someone has desecrated the nesting grounds of the majestic Laysan Albatross on Oahu, the murder of a generation of endangered birds—and the outrageous crime appears to be spreading to other islands. Sophie teams up with Sergeant Lei Texeira on Maui to search for killer whose brutal activities outrage the public.

Meanwhile, deadly assassin grandma Pim Wat continues to threaten the fragile peace Sophie is building with her family.

Will Sophie be able to find the answers she seeks in time?

You Better Run by Willow Rose:

When 19-year-old Meg Briggs wakes up after having a crazy party with her friends, she finds a girl in the pool.

Dead.

Who is this girl?

How did she end up in the pool?

Was she even at the party?

Even more strange is when they pull her out of the water, Meg realizes the girl looks very familiar. As a matter of fact, she looks just like her.

Like an identical twin.

But Meg has no twin, at least none that she knows of, and no one at the party knows this girl or can say where she is from.

What is Meg’s mom hiding from her?

FBI profiler Eva Rae Thomas is caught in distress at home with her children and between the two men in her life when she is asked to help out on the case.

Who killed Meg’s identical twin and why? And where did she come from?

As Eva Rae Thomas digs deeper into the story, she can barely believe the revealed secrets, secrets so cruel that someone is ready to go to great lengths to keep them hidden.

Purrfect Game by Nic Saint:

Game, Set and Murder

For some reason I find hard to understand, humans like to play a game called tennis. Basically it involves hitting a ball with something called a racket and inducing it to fly across a net. The person on the other side then proceeds to hit the ball back across that same net. And so on and so forth, ad infinitum. Or at least until someone strikes out, and the other person wins the set, or even the game, and eventually the match.

It’s all very complicated, and not all that interesting, not to say utterly boring, and so when Marge and Tex went on their annual tennis retreat with some of their friends from the tennis club, I mainly saw this as an opportunity to catch up on my naptime, which had suffered greatly since my humans had decided to produce a new human in the form of a baby. Unfortunately for them, before long a murder was committed, and suspicion fell on all those present—Marge and Tex included!

And then of course there was Gran acting strange—which isn’t all that exceptional, considering strange is that eccentric old lady’s middle name—and Harriet acting even stranger, with Brutus convinced she was having an affair. In other words: I had my work cut out for me, trying to unravel everyone’s secrets and their most blatant lies.

The Ghostly Tower by A.F. Stewart:

Meet Heyward and Andersen, consulting detectives in a paranormal London you never imagined…

Elspeth Heyward has never met a puzzle she didn’t want to solve, or an adventure she didn’t relish. Taking Sherlock Homes as her benchmark, she is determined to be the best detective and monster hunter in London.

Lars Andersen’s ambitions aren’t nearly as demanding. He just wants to stay alive, out of trouble, and out of jail. But when your partner likes guns and dynamite, that could be a challenge. Can he survive his new employment?

The Case: Discover if a stone tower on their client’s estate is haunted. It should be straightforward, but ghosts aren’t all they find. When they dig up a body, they also unearth a murder and a tangle of secrets. Secrets they’d better unravel quickly before someone else dies.

Savannah Savior by E.H. Vick:

HE HUNTS WOMEN. SHE HUNTS HIM.

FBI Agent Meredeth Connelly tracks The Savannah Strangler by day. At night, she mimics his prey. She has little to go on. He’s crafty and smart – he dumps bodies in the Savannah River after stoning his victims to death. But he won’t escape. She won’t let him. She will do anything to make Savannah safe again. She will do anything to stop him.

The dead pile up. Pressure, a hellish headache, desperate secrets. Heat, stiletto heels, fear. She won’t let anything stop her.

Not the detective who thinks she’s a drunk.
Not the good old boys club.
Not the mystery man cyberstalking her.

She will get the killer. One way or another.

Her pounding head is going to kill her – unless he gets to her first…

Obi-Wan Kenobi Deals with Sieges and Double-Crosses in Part V

Here are my thoughts on the fifth episode of the Disney Plus Obi-Wan Kenobi series. For my thoughts on previous episodes, go here.

Warning! Spoilers under the cut!

When we last left our favourite down and out Jedi Knight, he had just managed to save little Leia from the clutches of Third Sister a.k.a. Reva with the help of Tala and the Path, though at the cost of the life of a redshirt named Wade. However, Reva (I’m going with her birth name from now on, since Third Sister is a title and also quite long to type over and over again) added a tracker to Leia’s droid Lola, so the Empire knows exactly where the fugitives are headed.

However, the episode opens not with Obi-Wan, Leia and the surviving members of the Path on the run, but with a flashback to Coruscant around the time of Attack of the Clones, where Obi-Wan and Anakin are engaging in a practice duel. When it was announced that Hayden Christensen would return as Anakin/Darth Vader in Obi-Wan Kenobi, I assumed he would wear the Darth Vader suit. I certainly did not expect to see him as Anakin again, showing his face. And while Disney era Star Wars hasn’t been shy about using that creepy digital de-aging technology, it’s amazingly not used in this scene, which I for one liked a lot. Close-ups show that Hayden Christensen has of course aged in the almost twenty years since Revenge of the Sith, both he and Ewan McGregor do a good job playing their younger selves.

The flashbacks to the practice duel are interspersed with the main storyline, but they’re short enough that they do not get annoying, unlike the endless bacta-tank induced flashbacks in The Book of Boba Fett. Basically, the practice duel goes like you’d expect. Anakin is hot-headed and presses Obi-Wan and even seems poised to win at times, but Obi-Wan still has an ace up his sleeve and there is a reason he is a Jedi Master and Anakin is still a padawan at this point.

Anakin, who’s the one having the flashbacks, snaps back to the present where he’s on the bridge of his Star Destroyer, pursuing Obi-Wan, Leia and the Path thanks to the tracker Reva planted on Leia’s droid. Reva is there as well and Darth Vader promotes her to Grand Inquisitor for her success, as promised.

Meanwhile, Obi-Wan, Leia, Tala as well as The Path members Roken and Sully land on Jabiim, which turns out to be a rocky red and orange world of little use for anything except hiding fugitives (though according to James Whitbrook at io9, Jabiim looked quite different, when it appeared in a Star Wars comic in the early 2000s). Come to think of it, the Star Wars universe has more inhospitable than hospitable planet or at any rate, we see more inhospitable worlds than hospitable ones. It’s definitely in keeping with the fact that the Star Wars universe is a terrible place for most of the people who live in it, regardless of who is in charge.

On Jabiim, they are met by a group of Force sensitives, most of them children with parents and grandparents, hoping to be flown to safety. The cargo loader droid from Mapuzo as well as Haja Estree are there as well. He survived his encounter with Reva on Daiyu, but is now on the Empire’s Most Wanted list, so his little fake Jedi racket is gone. Haja doesn’t seem to mind though, now he’s met a real Jedi. And even though Haja started out as a con artist, he genuinely did help people. Talking of which, the woman with a Force sensitive son Haja was meeting, when Obi-Wan found him is on Jabiim as well. Apparently, her son will grow up to become the main character in Michael Stackpole’s Rogue Squadron Expanded Universe novels, which is a nice Easter Egg.

Roken tells Obi-Wan that he can’t take Leia directly to Alderaan, but that he will fly out Obi-Wan and Leia along with the rest of the refugees. Like the safehouse on Mapuzo from episode 3, the walls of the hideout on Jabiim are covered with graffiti carved into the walls, which is full of Easter eggs and references to characters from the cartoons and Expanded Universe media. There’s also a box with discarded lightsabres and Jedi robes.

However, the respite is short-lived, for the Empire in the form of Darth Vader and Reva aboard a Star Destroyer is bearing down on the hideout on Jabiim. And in order to make sure that the Force sensitives can’t escape before the Empire gets there, Reva orders the droid Lola to sabotage the sliding cargo bay doors, making it impossible for Roken to launch his ship. The fugitives are stuck.

Obi-Wan gives a stirring speech, telling the Fugitives that they only need to hold off the Empire until the bay doors are fixed, then they can all escape on Roken’s transport vessel. Stirring speeches are more of a Star Trek (where holding stirring speeches is the basic qualification for a Starfleet captain) than a Star Wars thing, but it works well here, since it shows that Obi-Wan is increasingly turning back into the man he once was, the Jedi Master and Clone Wars General.

Fixing the cargo bay doors has its own share of problems, since it requires crawling into a very small space. Roken and Haja are arguing that both of them are too big to fit in, when Leia says, “I’ll do it.” Roken won’t hear anything about it, but Obi-Wan tells him to let Leia try. He also tells Haja to keep an eye on her and goes to organise the defence. And so the siege of Jabiim begins.

Obi-Wan is distracted when his holo-communicator beeps and finds a message from Bail Organa who is worried that he hasn’t heard from Obi-Wan and declares that he will go to Tatooine to help Owen and Beru protect Luke, since the Empire will be coming after him next. We’re sure Owen Lars will be thrilled to welcome an Imperial senator to his humble moisture farm, especially considering he was trying to keep a low profile. Never mind that even if Bail is half-frantic with fear for his daughter, sending this message and given both the name of the planet as well as the target is incredibly stupid and will of course come back to bite him and everybody else in the arse.

Tala tells Obi-Wan about the experience that turned her against the Empire. She was sent to round-up some people who were not paying taxes. But those people turned out to be not tax evaders, but families with Force-sensitive members. They were all killed and Tala could do nothing, which is why she turned against the Empire and started working for the Path. She also shows Obi-Wan the notches on her blaster that symbolise the people she saved.

Coincidentally, the fact that the Empire is actively hunting Force sensitive children also provides another reason for why Owen Lars is so determined to keep Luke on the farm and away from Jedi or other troublemakers and doesn’t want him to go to the Academy either. After all, Owen knows that Luke is Force sensitive. If Owen had allowed Luke to go to the Academy, it’s very likely that he would have been found out and killed.

Once the Empire arrives on Jabiim, we get a nice Leni Riefenstahl inspired shot of Reva marching along rows of lined up Stormtroopers, which is somewhat marred by the fact that one Stormtrooper is standing out of line. If Vader rather than the very single-minded Reva had been the one to march along that row of Stormtrooper, the one fellow who stands out of line might well have found himself Force-choked.

Since the doors to the hideout are closed, the Stormtroopers bring in some heavy weaponry to blast them open. Once the doors can’t hold much longer, Obi-Wan declares that he’ll talk to Reva to stall her. So Obi-Wan and Reva talk through the barricaded door and we finally get Reva’s backstory.

Obi-Wan realises that there is no way Reva would know that Darth Vader’s real name is Anakin Skywalker, unless she knew him before.  Initially, I suspected that the reason Reva knew Darth Vader was Anakin was because they were having a clandestine relationship and Anakin told her during a session of pillow talk. However, in Disney era Star Wars no one is allowed to have sex, let alone a romantic relationship ever.

Instead, the reason Reva knows that Anakin is Vader is because she was one of the young padawans who got slaughtered by Anakin on the night of Order 66, which also explains why the series opens with a flashback to that terrible night. Only that Reva was not slaughtered. She survived by playing dead, buried under a pile of bodies slowly growing cold. Once Obi-Wan realises all this, he also realises that Reva is not in fact serving Vader or trying to impress him. She’s hunting him, trying to avenge her murdered friends. And she’ll do anything to achieve that goal. It’s a neat, if not entirely unexpected twist, as Daily Dot reviewer Gavia Baker-Whitelaw points out, and should shut up the Reva haters. Though knowing toxic fanboys, they’ll find another reason to complain that a black woman managed to invade their all-white-boy fantasy Star Wars universe.

Obi-Wan offers Reva an alliance – work together to stop Vader. However, Reva will have none of that. She’s not a team player anyway and she doesn’t trust Obi-Wan. After all, Anakin was his padawan and Obi-Wan failed to see what was happening to him. Besides, Reva also doesn’t trust Obi-Wan to actually kill Anakin, if he has the chance. Worse, she’s probably right. After all, Obi-Wan did not kill Anakin on Mustafar (which would not have prevented the rise of the Empire, but would have prevented the birth of Darth Vader and all the crimes he personally committed) and it’s questionable if he would do so now.

Which brings me to my main problem with the Obi-Wan Kenobi series, namely the lack of tension. We know that no matter what she does, Reva won’t kill Darth Vader and neither will Obi-Wan, because he won’t die until Return of the Jedi. We also know Obi-Wan won’t die, because he dies in A New Hope. We also know that Luke and Leia, Owen and Beru Lars or Bail and Breha Organa won’t die here, because we know what will happen to them and where and when they’ll die. Of course, we have no idea what will happen to the characters we haven’t seen before, characters like Reva, Tala or Roken. And the show does try to milk some tension out of this, with mixed success.

Reva’s and Obi-Wan’s heart to heart is cut short, when Reva decides there’s been enough talking and uses her lightsabre to cut through the barricaded door. Reva and the Stormtroopers storm the base and there is a pitched close quarters blaster fight. Obi-Wan uses his lightsabre to deflect blaster shots, but even he can only do so much. Several of the refugees and Path members are wounded, including the mother whom Haja Estree helped escpae Daiyu.

Tala takes a shot in the abdomen and her mute cargo loader droid (apparently his name is NED-B) shields her with his own body, taking a lot of damage in turn. Obi-Wan wants to rescue Tala, but the mortally wounded Tala pulls a detonator out of her pocket and blows up herself, NED-B and a bunch of Stormtroopers, heroically sacrificing herself for the Rebellion the Path.

The deaths of Tala and NED-B affected me more than I expected, considering we haven’t seen all that much of either of them. I also certainly would have liked to see more of Tala (and NED-B), maybe in the upcoming Cassian Andor series, which should be set a few years after Obi-Wan Kenobi. io9 reviewer Germain Lussier is also sad to see Tala go so early.

Though come to think of it, like her former Torchwood co-star Burn Gorman (who should be a much bigger star than he is, because he’s a fantastic actor, but not conventionally handsome), Indira Varma rarely survives till the end of the movie/TV show. Indira Varma dies in Torchwood (twice actually, since she comes back after the first time), Luther, Game of Thrones and now in Obi-Wan Kenobi, though she did survive a guest role on an episode of Bones. Burn Gorman dies in Torchwood (twice – what was it with that show and killing off the best actors? They also killed off Gareth David-Lloyd, another actor who never had the career he deserved), Game of Thrones, The Expanse, Forever (where he plays an immortal, so I thought they can’t possibly kill him and then they do) and Enola Holmes, though amazingly, he does survive both Pacific Rim movies as well as narrowly an episode of The Inspector Lynley Mysteries (where he first caught my eye). Though a show killing off Indira Varma isn’t a dealbreaker for me, whereas killing off Burn Gorman usually is. At any rate, I stopped watching Torchwood, The Expanse and Game of Thrones around the time they killed Burn Gorman. And when he was still alive at the end of Pacific Rim (both movies) I audibly cheered.

Obi-Wan and the other refugees fall back into the inner docking bay, but the Stormtroopers are still trying to get in and Leia still hasn’t managed to repair the bay doors. So Obi-Wan comes up with the brilliant plan to surrender to the Empire to give the others time to escape. He also gives Haja Estress his lightsabre, blaster and the communicator via which he can reach Bail Organa. Haja and the other surviving Path members are not at all happy about Obi-Wan’s plan, probably because – as Tor.com reviewer Emmet Asher-Perrin points out – it’s not much of a plan at all. Of course, Obi-Wan knows Anakin and knows how impatient and consumed by the desire to win he is. Indeed, this is the moment where we get the last part of the flashback to that long ago duel, where Anakin had already disarmed Obi-Wan, but Obi-Wan won anyway – even sans lightsabre. Of course, there always is the chance that Anakin has matured and grown more patient since that long ago duel. On the other hand, it’s Anakin we’re talking about here and he never really changes.

So Obi-Wan surrenders to Reva and whispers to her that he is bringing Anakin to her, as she slaps him in handcuffs. But instead of waiting for Darth Vader to finally land on Jabiim (and what’s taking him so long anyway?), with Obi-Wan under strong guard and constantly in sight, Reva sends him back into the antechamber of the cargo bay with only two Stormtroopers to guard him, even though Reva of all people should know how dangerous Obi-Wan can be. So of course the inevitable happens: Obi-Wan easily takes out the two Stormtroopers (we know Stormtroopers are not particularly smart) and escapes.

Now this would have made some kind of sense if Obi-Wan and Reva were working together to bring down Darth Vader, but Reva explicitly wants nothing to do with Obi-Wan and will not collaborate with him. Which makes the whole thing even more puzzling, because sending the extremely dangerous Jedi Knight inside with only two guards is the sort of mistake that would make me roll my eyes, if Skeletor or Hordak were to do it in an episode of a He-Man or She-Ra cartoon.  It’s not that I expect meticulously plotted heists and escape plans from Star Wars – that’s not what you watch it for.  But I expect a plan that is more thought out than an evil genius plan from a kids’ cartoon. And frankly, even Skeletor, Hordak, Dr. Claw, Ming the Merciless, the Purple Pie Man, Gargamel, Pinky and the Brain and their ilk do have better plans at least part of the time.

Meanwhile, Leia is still struggling to figure out which of the many, many cables she needs to reattach to fix the cargo bay doors, when she suddenly finds Lola inside the same duct. “What are you doing here?” Leia asks and realises that Lola’s eyes are glowing an evil red. Leia also notes that there’s something on Lola that doesn’t belong there, Reva’s tracker, and removes it, so Lola promptly becomes her friendly, helpful self again and even shows Leia which cable to reattach. The cargo bay doors finally open and everybody rushes to board the ship. In the rush, Haja Estree drops Obi-Wan’s communicator, the one with a message from Bail Organa, which will tell the bad guys exactly where to find the other kid who’s vitally important to the fate of the galaxy. Oops.

The cargo bay doors open just as Darth Vader finally lands on Jabiim. The camera follows Vader as he struts throught the base on Jabiim in a sequence that is very similar to Vader strutting through the Rebel base on Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back. Guardian reviewer Andy Welch points out that every episode of Obi-Wan Kenobi so far has mirrored the Star Wars movie with the same episode number, i.e. episode 1 mirrored The Phantom Menace, episode 2 was Attack of the Clones, episode 3 was Revenge of the Sith, episode 4 was A New Hope, which would make episode 5 The Empire Strikes Back. There’s a lot of merit to this theories and the parallels are really notable, particularly in this and the previous episodes.

Like the Millennium Falcon in The Empire Strikes Back, the transporter with the fugitives lifts off just as Darth Vader struts into the docking bay. Vader raises his hand… not to rage but to grab the transport with the Force in order to keep it from taking off. He succeeds, too, and manages to pull the transport back into the docking bay and rip it apart in a display of Force powers that’s stronger than anything we’ve ever seen in Star Wars before. This is truly Darth Vader at the height of his powers.

However, Vader still hasn’t learned the lesson Obi-Wan tried to teach him during that pivotal duel so long ago and so a second transporter launches, just as Vader is busily ripping apart the first. The first transporter was just a decoy and Vader no longer has enough Force juice to stop his real quarry. Though, as Emmet Asher-Perrin points out, there is still a Star Destroyer waiting in orbit and Roken’s old transport is no match for it.

However, first we get the great showdown between Darth Vader and Reva, which mirrors that long ago duel between Obi-Wan and Anakin in another way. For here, the hot-headed Reva is in the Anakin role (and Reva is a lot like Anakin in many ways, a parallel also pointed out by AV-Club reviewer Manuel Betancourt), while Darth Vader takes the prescient and patient Obi-Wan part. For not only did Darth Vader know all along what Reva was up to, but left her pursue her goals, because she was useful, he also faces her unarmed and still beats her by taking her own lightsabre from her and running her through with it. The outcome is not unexpected – after all, we knew that Reva would not kill Darth Vader, because he survives until Return of the Jedi – but it’s still a blow.

To twist the knife – or lightsabre – even further, the Grand Inquisitor, supposedly killed by Reva with a lightsabre to the abdomen in part II, shows up again as well to take back his badge and tell Reva that they’ll leave her where they found her, in the gutter. I guess certain people who were very upset that the Grand Inquisitor dies here, even though he is alive in the animated Star Wars: Rebels show, will be pleased now. Though personally, I wonder how it comes that no one dies from lightsabre wounds anymore, a point also made by Emmet Asher-Perrin. Because the Grand Inquisitor just survived a lightsabre through the abdomen, while Darth Maul survived getting cut in half by Obi-Wan in The Phantom Menace, only to reappear in Solo. And – surprised – Reva is not dead either. She crawls across the floor of the docking bay, only to find something gleaming in the dust. It’s the communicator Haja Estree dropped. Reva activates it and receives Bail Organa’s message, which tells her exactly where to go next and who to look for.

The episode ends with a shot of little Luke lying peaceful in his bed and dreaming of grand adventures, while the dark clouds of the Empire gather above.

All in all, this was a good episode with plenty of twists, some of them not entirely unexpected (it was clear that Reva was hiding something) and some genuinely surprising such as a decoy transporter. It was also nice seeing Hayden Christensen sans mask once again, especially since Christensen got a lot of crap for the many problems with the prequels, though very little of it was his fault.

However, my biggest problem here is that the plot only works, because everybody – Obi-Wan, Reva, Bail, Darth Vader – behaves like a complete and utter idiot. I mean, honestly, if your plans make the likes of Hordak and Skeletor look smart by comparison, you have a problem. This episode was the textbooki example of an idiot plot.

Now I don’t expect intricately plotted heists and rescue plans from Star Wars, because the franchise has always relied on coincidences and improvised on-the-spot plans, which somehow work out. But while I’m willing to suspend my disbelief a lot – see the (excellent) Mandalorian episode “The Believer”, whose premise makes very little sense – Obi-Wan Kenobi really stretches my suspension of disbelief past the breaking point.

Crappy plans thrown together on the spot may be a Star Wars trope, but if your plan wouldn’t pass muster in a Saturday morning cartoon aimed at kids, maybe it needs to go back to the drawing board.

Non-Fiction Spotlight: By Your Side: The First 100 Years of Yuri Anime and Manga by Erica Friedman

After the Hugos is before the next Hugos, so I’m continuing my Non-Fiction Spotlight project, where I interview the authors/editors of SFF-related non-fiction books that come out in 2022 and are eligible for the 2023 Hugo Awards. For more about the Non-Fiction Spotlight project, go here. To check out the spotlights I already posted, go here.

For more recommendations for SFF-related non-fiction, also check out this Facebook group set up by the always excellent Farah Mendlesohn, who is a champion (and author) of SFF-related non-fiction.

Some people claim that the reason that SFF-related non-fiction books have increasingly been crowded out of the Best Related Work category at the Hugos is that there are not enough non-fiction books published every year to fill the Hugo ballot. This is wrong, since there is a wide spectrum of non-fiction books covering every SFF-related subject imaginable released every year. Today’s featured non-fiction book proves how wide that spectrum truly is, because it is a book about the history of lesbian relationships as portrayed in manga and anime.

Therfore I’m thrilled to welcome Erica Friedman, author of By Your Side: The First 100 Years of Yuri Anime and Manga to my blog today.

Tell us about your book.

My book is By Your Side: The First 100 Years of Yuri Anime and Manga.

Lesbian-themed animation and comics (and related media), known as “Yuri,” is the newest genre of Japanese pop culture. Even though it’s only been acknowledged as a separate genre for a little over a decade, Yuri has a literary and artistic history that can be traced back to the early 20th century. My book is a series of interlocking lectures and essays that trace that history and bring the story of Yuri to the present. I cover key series and creators, as well as the efforts by creators and fans to carve out a space for ourselves in the larger Japanese pop culture fandom.

Tell us a little bit about yourself.

My name is Erica Friedman. I have lectured at dozens of conventions and presented at film festivals. I have edited manga, most recently Riyoko Ikeda’s epic historical classic, The Rose of Versailles. I have read, watched, thought about, written and spoken about Yuri for more than 20 years now. My blog, Okazu, is about to turn 20 years old, in fact.

What prompted you to write this book?

Yuri has passed that tipping point where it’s no longer fighting to be recognized as a genre. More Yuri manga, anime and games are coming out than I can keep up with – a very good problem to have, honestly. But as new series bring in new fans, I wanted to capture all the history up to this point, so it wouldn’t be lost in the crush. Fandom did a lot of heavy lifting in Yuri and other queer fandoms.

Yuri’s roots are also different than any other genre in Japanese pop culture, since Yuri was a feature included in all the other genres, with their own tropes. I wanted to capture the complexities of the genre’s origins in hope that other people would use this as a springboard to jump off for further research.

Plus, I just really like writing about Sailor Moon. ^_^

Why should SFF fans in general and Hugo voters in particular read this book?

That’s a great question!  I think By Your Side is a truly unique book, because it  is a story of a brand new fandom that was born only a quarter of a century ago. If you’re part of any fan community, it’s sometimes hard to remember that  everything in fandom is changing all the time. But it is. The rise of queer content and queer fandom is shaping multiple media even as we speak. And, of course, folks who have worked in fan culture are likewise shaping their own genres in new and exciting ways.

Secondly, Japanese pop culture has had an indelible imprint on western pop culture at this point. I hope that Hugo readers are interested in that phenomenon and would like to learn about this particular piece, which was driven by fans on both sides of the globe to become something new. I also hope the LGBTQ+ folks will take a look at this book and learn that if it feels like there’s no space for them in a fandom, it should not stop them from creating that space. It’s not just possible – it’s critical to do so.

Do you have any cool facts or tidbits that you unearthed during your research, but that did not make it into the final book?

The Yuri genre is growing so fast – and so much new content  is being created that even as we went to press, there were new works I was scrambling to squeeze in. Yuri creators are more likely to be openly queer than they were even a few years ago. I wanted to capture that.  As we were going to press, I was rewriting my look at the future of Yuri furiously!

SFF-related non-fiction is somewhat sidelined by the big genre awards, since the Nebulas have no non-fiction category and the Best Related Work Hugo category has become something of a grab bag of anything that doesn’t fit elsewhere. So why do you think SFF-related non-fiction is important?

If fiction is us, as a species, sitting around a fire, sharing our hopes, fears, aspirations and legends; then non-fiction is us passing along our skills, our lessons and our history. Non-fiction is stories, too— stories told of what was and what is…stories that shape what might be. Non-fiction gives us shoulders to stand upon.

Most importantly, non-fiction is the chronicle of us. SFF fandom is not just those who create stories. For instance, we know how many people were and still are inspired by Star Trek to seek out new worlds and new civilizations.  Non-fiction allows fans to explore spaces where we take to the stars in other ways.

Are there any other great SFF-related non-fiction works or indeed anything else (books, stories, essays, writers, magazines, films, TV shows, etc…) you’d like to recommend?

While I’m here repping queer Japanese culture, I want to take a moment to shout out Queer Transfigurations: Boys Love Media in Asia ed. by James Welker.  Boy’s Love as a genre in Japan has a different trajectory than Yuri, but it’s gone global in a big way since the 1990s. Now that it is a global phenomenon, embedded into everything from anime and manga to Korean pop music. This is a collection of writing by 21 scholars, looking at the explosion of BL across Asian countries and their pop cultures.

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

I’m really excited about all the Yuri – and Yuri research — yet to come. What series, people and tropes will we be discussing in the next 20 years? I don’t know – and I can’t wait to find out.

Where can people buy your book?

I’ve got links to all the major online and several niche booksellers – plenty of non-Amazon options – for both print and digital on my site:

https://www.yuricon.com/product/bys/

(Direct links if you prefer: )

Amazon: https://amzn.to/39PTF8i
Bookshop.org: https://bookshop.org/a/12445/9781951320201
RightStuf: https://www.shareasale.com/m-pr.cfm?merchantID=65886&userID=2780977&productID=1247596382
Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/by-your-side-erica-friedman/1141367217?ean=9781951320201
Cheapmanga.com: https://www.cheapmanga.com/product/by-your-side-the-first-100-years-of-yuri-anime-and-manga/2124?cs=true&cst=custom
Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/by-your-side-16
Ebook Direct from Publisher: https://journeypress.e-junkie.com/product/1741866/By-Your-Side3A-The-First-100-Years-of-Yuri-Anime-and-Manga

Where can people find you?

Okazu: https://okazu.yuricon.com
Twitter; http://www.twitter.com/OkazuYuri
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Okazu
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/yuristudio
Discord: https://discord.gg/4NPHGH7Vc4
For all my links: https://www.yuricon.com/links/

Thank you, Erica, for stopping by and answering my question.

About By Your Side: The First 100 Years of Yuri Anime and Manga:

The Untold Story of Lesbian Love in Japanese Anime and Comics

“The first in-depth study of Yuri in English.”

James Welker, Professor of Cross-Cultural and
Japanese Studies, Kanagawa University

Two decades in the making, By Your Side is a collection of essays, scholarly and approachable, by the Western Hemisphere’s authority on the subject. This landmark work should be in the library of any fan of anime, manga, lesbian relationships in media–or any combination of the three!

“By Your Side is the complete Yuri resource I only ever dreamed could exist…Friedman graces readers with illuminating insights as they follow her through a century of the genre’s evolution and revolution.”

Nicki Bauman, Yurimother

About Erica Friedman:

Erica Friedman is the founder of Yuricon community, and was the first publisher of Yuri manga in English, with ALC Publishing. She holds a Masters Degree in Library Science and a B.A. in Comparative Literature, and is a full-time researcher for a Fortune 100 company.

She has lectured at dozens of conventions, presented at film festivals, and participated in academic lecture series in the United States in Japan. A Manga editor, she most recently worked on Riyoko Ikeda’s epic historical classic, The Rose of Versailles.

Erica has written about Yuri for a host of prestigious Japanese and American outlets. She has written news and event reports, interviews Yuri creators and reviews Yuri anime, manga and related media on her blog Okazu since 2002.

***

Are you publishing a work of SFF-related longform non-fiction in 2022 and want it featured? Contact me or leave a comment.

Masters-of-the-Universe-Piece Theatre: “Siblings”

The next Star Trek Strange New Worlds and Obi-Wan Kenobi reviews are coming, but I had another stressful day, relieved by the mailman (and it is a man) bringing me that elusive Masters of the Universe Origins Roboto figure, so here is another  Master-of-the-Universe-Piece Theatre photo story. I already posted a version of this story on Twitter, but this one has more dialogue. The name “Masters-of-the-Universe-Piece Theatre” was coined by Kevin Beckett at the Whetstone Discord server.

Now Roboto has a bit of a strange history. He was an action figure in the 1980s, but he only had a handful of appearances in the original Filmation cartoon, where he was an alien explorer from a planet of robots who crashlanded on Eternia, was repaired by Man-at-Arms and wound up staying and fighting alongside He-Man and his friends.

The 2002 cartoon retconned his origin and made him a sentient and intelligent robot built by Man-at-Arms originally as a chess partner for Man-e-Faces. However, Roboto wanted to be a warrior, upgraded himself and heroically sacrificed himself in order to save He-Man and all of Eternia from a plague of multiplying skeletons. Luckily, Man-at-Arms was able to repair him and so Roboto was frequently seen fighting alongside the other heroic warriors.

Masters of the Universe: Revelation tweaked Roboto’s backstory yet again. He’s still a sentient and intelligent robot who was built by Man-at-Arms, but in Revelation Roboto considers Duncan his father and Teela his sister and refers to them as such. He also heroically sacrifices his life yet again (heroically sacrificing himself seems to be what Roboto does) to reforge the Sword of Power in a scene that made me misty-eyed about a character I barely remembered from the original. And this time, Roboto isn’t repaired either, but permanently destroyed by the immense power discharge resulting from reforging the sword.

Proud papa: Duncan with Roboto and Teela

I probably wouldn’t have been all that keen on buying a Roboto action figure, if not for Masters of the Universe: Revelation. However, I liked him a lot in Revelation and besides, Roboto was the one member of the Man-at-Arms extended family I was still missing (except for Andra, of whom there is no figure at the right scale at the moment), so once I found one at a decent price (he’s quite difficult to find due to production and distribution issues), I of course snapped him up.

When I posed Roboto next to his family, I couldn’t help but wonder how Teela reacted, when her father decided to build himself a son. I imagine she wasn’t particularly happy about that, at least not at first. And indeed, in the 2002 cartoon Teela (who like Adam is younger and brattier in the 2002 version) repeatedly sends Roboto away when he wants to join her palace guards (cause for some reason, bratty sixteen-year-old Teela is still Captain of the Guard) and defend the palace and only comes to appreciate him, after he has heroically sacrificed himself to save Eternia.

So enjoy “Siblings”, a Masters-of-the-Universe-Piece Theatre story about Teela meeting her mechanical brother for the first time:

In Man-at-Arms’ workshop:

“Roboto is my greatest invention yet, Malcolm. I created him as a training robot for Adam and Teela and then upgraded him into a chess opponent for Man-a-Faces. But now he has gained sentience and become a fully sentient and intelligent cybernetic lifeform.”

“First the Attak Trak, then Stridor and now Roboto. Do all of your inventions gain sentience, Duncan? And does this mean my first will start arguing with me eventually?”

“Maybe it will even punch you in the face, Malcolm. Cause you sure have it coming at times. There, Roboto. You should be able to get up now.”

“Thank you, Father. I seem to be working perfectly. You built me well.”

“He calls you ‘Father’? Cause that’s not creepy at all.”

“He simply started calling me ‘Father’ and I guess technically, it’s not wrong, because I did build him. Besides, part of me always wanted a son. As a young man I always assumed that if I had ever children, they’d be boys. When I first held Teela, I didn’t even know what to do with a baby girl…”

“There. One last adjustment and you’re finished.”

“I am alive. Father, I am alive.”

“Yes, not creepy at all.”

“Roboto, meet my brother Malcolm.”

“Hello, Uncle Malcolm. It is such a pleasure to meet you. I have never had an uncle before.”

“Good having another warrior with a steel fist… ahem, axe in the family. Nope, this is not creepy at all.”

Meanwhile…

“Great. I knew I’m not what Father wanted and that he would have preferred a boy, but that he’d go as far as build himself a perfect metal son, because I’m not good enough…”

“Ah, Teela. Come and meet your new brother.”

“Hello Sister. It is so great to finally meet you. Father has told me so much about you.”

“Let me get one thing straight: You are not my brother. And Father, if you wanted a son, could you at least have picked one from the gutter like you picked me. Or better yet, picked a boy from the gutter in the first place? But no, you had to build this… this thing.”

“Well done, Duncan, well done.”

“Teela, what on Eternia…?”

“I’m done, Father. Be happy with your perfect robot son!”

“Hi, Duncan, I… Teela, what’s wrong?”

“Ask my father… sniff.”

“Teela, wait… Oh no, she heard everything I said about wanting a son, didn’t she?”

“Every word, Brother, every word.”

“Wait, it’s not what you think. What you heard was…”

“I’ve heard enough, Father.”

“I do not understand. Why does my sister not like me?”

“Don’t worry, Roboto, it’s got nothing to do with you and everything with my idiot of a brother.”

“Duncan, what’s wrong with Teela?”

“Sigh, she thinks I don’t love her and built Roboto to replace her.”

“But that’s not true… is it?”

“Of course not. I’ll go after her and try to explain.”

“No, I’ll go after Teela. After all, I have some experience with parents who think I’m a disappointment.”

In the palace garden…

“It’s not fair. I tried so hard to become the child my father wanted and then he builds that… that thing to replace me.”

“Hey, Teela…”

“Adam, can you just… sniff… go away, please? I… I think I’d like to be alone…”

“Not a chance. I’m not leaving my best friend alone, when she needs a shoulder to cry on.”

“I’m not crying.”

“Yes, you are.”

“Listen, Teela, I know how you feel. After all, my Dad and I don’t always get along either and I know that I’m very much not the son he wanted.”

“But your father never tried to replace you with a robot.”

“Sometimes I wish he would. A robot double to stand beside the throne and look regal during all those boring state functions would be great. Especially since I don’t even get a chair. I just have to stand there and look regal. A mannequin could do that job.”

“How is it that you always make me smile?”

“It’s my top secret superpower. But anyway, as someone who suddenly had a sister show up out of the blue, I know a thing or two about surprise siblings. And I know that you haven’t lost your father, but gained a brother.”

“Yes, but Adora is great. She’s amazing. I would be happy, if she were my sister. But Roboto…”

“Give him a chance. He may surprise you.”

“It’s not even Roboto I’m mad at. I mean, he’s a bunch of rivets and gears, so how could I be mad at him? It’s Dad I’m mad at – for making Roboto, because I couldn’t be the son he wanted.”

“You know that’s not true, Teela. Your Dad loves you… very much. Even if he wanted a son originally.”

“Could you just hold me, Adam?”

“Of course.”

“You know, sometimes I just want to get away from all of this madness.”

“That’s a great idea. Let’s away. Even if it’s only for a few hours.”

“Lieutenant, you’re in charge of palace security. Prince Adam and I are going to patrol the outer perimeter.”

“Again? I mean, yes, Captain.”

“Sister…”

“Oh no, not him.”

“I am sorry if I offended you. I want to be the best brother and the best warrior I can be.”

“Listen, Roboto, I really don’t want to talk to you right now.”

“I heard you are going to patrol the outer perimeter. I can come along and help. I am fully equipped for battle and my sensors…”

“No!”

“But I want to help.”

“Go away!”

“Look, pal, no offence, but this is not a good time. Teela and I want to be alone, if you know what I mean.”

“I do not understand. Why does no one like me? All I want to do is help, but my sister hates me, Prince Adam hates me, everybody hates me.”

“Don’t mind me. I’m just standing here, guarding the palace garden and soaking up some juicy gossip I’ll share in the guard barracks later on.”

Yes, I know it’s She-Ra, but there is no Adora figure of the right scale and type, so She-Ra must play both roles.

“Hi there! I don’t think we’ve met. You must be Roboto, Duncan’s newest invention. I’m Adora.”

“Prince Adam’s twin sister. It is a pleasure to meet you, Princess Adora.”

“Just Adora. After all, we’re friends by proxy, since my brother and your sister are… ahem… best friends.”

“Do you mind if I ask you a question? Why does your brother not like me?”

“Adam not like you? Don’t be silly! Adam likes everybody. Well, maybe not Skeletor and Hordak, but everybody who’s not a supervillain. He’s the friendliest person I know.”

“But Prince Adam does not like me and my sister does not like me either. I offered to come along on their patrol of the outer perimeter, but Prince Adam and Teela sent me away.”

“Well, of course they did. You see, Adam and Teela are not really patrolling the outer perimeter. That’s just an excuse to sneak away and spend some alone time together to cuddle and… well, you know.”

“Oh, I understand. My Uncle Malcolm said that Prince Adam and Teela like to exchange physical intimacies.”

“Yes, they’re sneaking off to have sex. The entire palace knows. Well, I mean my parents don’t know and I’m not sure about Duncan, but everybody else knows. There even is a betting pool when we’ll have a royal wedding.”

“Adora, can I ask you another question? Did your brother always like you?”

“Well, maybe not from the very start. After all, I shot him in the back the first time we met, back when I was still Force Captain Adora of the Evil Horde. But Adam always believed in me and told me that I didn’t need to be like Hordak and Shadow Weaver, that I could be better. And he always loved me and I love him.”

“Then why does my sister not like me?”

“Listen, Roboto, when I first came to Eternia, your sister did not like me either. Not because of anything I did, but because she was afraid that I would stand between her and Adam. But once she realised that I wasn’t going to take Adam away from her, we became good friends, almost like sisters.”

“I am not planning to exchange physical intimacies with Prince Adam, if that is what my sister is worried about. I am not even sure if that is physically possible.”

“Oh, I’m sure there’s an attachment for that. But this isn’t about Adam. It’s about your father.”

“Father? I don’t understand.”

“Teela is afraid that your father will love her less, now that he has you.”

“But that is not true. Father always talks about Teela, how much he loves her and how proud he is of her.”

“I know, but Teela doesn’t. Give her time, Roboto, and she’ll see that she hasn’t lost a father, but gained a brother.”

“Thank you, Adora. It is good to have at least one friend.”

Meanwhile, at the outer perimeter:

“You were right, it was a great idea to get away from it all. No Prince Adam, no Captain of the Guard, no He-Man, just you and me.”

“You talk too much. Just kiss me again.”

“As you wish, my lady.”

“Looks like the Prince has his hands full.”

“And his pants down, snicker.”

“I wouldn’t mind some of that myself. That Teela is one hot babe.”

“Evil-Lyn is prettier. And now come on, let’s get them, boys.”

“Hands up and lay down your weapons! You are now prisoners of Skeletor, Supreme Lord of Destruction.”

“We’re under attack. Adam, get behind me.”

“Not a chance. I can take care of myself. And I’m not leaving you to face them alone.”

“Shit, two of these guys are a bit much for Prince Adam to handle. Must become He-Man. But I can’t transform here and I can’t leave Teela to face them alone.”

“Stand back, Beast-Man! Ahhhh!”

“Teela, no! Okay, that’s it. By the Power of…”

TWAP!

“Not so tough now, are they?”

“Shut up and help me get them back to Shake Mountain. Skeletor will be pleased.”

“Listen, Randor, I’ve got your useless son and Duncan’s annoying daughter, too. If you, Duncan and He-Man don’t surrender to me, I will kill them both. And before I kills them, I’ll torture them until they beg for death.”

“This isn’t going to work Skeletor. My father thinks I’m a failure and he’s not going to negotiate with terrorists, least of all because of me. And He-Man isn’t going to show up either. I can assure you that.”

“And my father replaced me with a robot, so he’s not going to give in to your demands either.”

“Boss, can we play with them, just a little bit?”

“Yeah, and check if the Prince really has blue blood.”

“And what Teela is wearing under that outfit?”

“Enough. All right, where was I? Ah yes, torture. So who’s going to go first? The Prince or his plaything?”

“Take me and leave her alone.”

“Take me and leave him alone.”

“Such eagerness. Well, I’ll leave you to contemplate your fate amongst yourselves.”

“Looks like we’re screwed. My father can’t give in to Skeletor, even if he wanted to.”

“And my father replaced me with a robot.”

“And He-Man’s out of the picture, so it’s up to you and me.”

“Okay, I’ll create a diversion and you make a run for it.”

“No, I’m not leaving you here.”

“My sister and Prince Adam captured and in the hands of Skeletor. This is all my fault.”

“No, it’s mine. But we’ll get them out.”

“Damn right, it is your fault, Duncan.”

“Do you have any helpful ideas, Malcolm? No? Then just shut the hell up!”

“If we go on a rescue mission, I want to come, too. I will rescue my sister.”

“No, Roboto, we will rescue our siblings. So what’s the plan, Duncan?”

“Good to have you on board, She-Ra. What about you, Malcolm? You in?”

“You have to ask?”

“She-Ra, Roboto? Am I glad to see you guys.”

“Father, you came to rescue us?”

“Of course. I’d descend into Subternia itself to save my daughter.”

“Roboto, would you do the honours?”

“Of course, Father. Have no fear, Sister, I shall have you free in a minute.”

“Hurry up, cause here comes Skeletor.”

“All right, battle positions, everyone.”

“Catch, brother. Looks like it’s time for He-Man.”

“Can’t. Too crowded. Adam will have to do.”

“So we meet again, Fisto.”

“Indeed we do, Jitsu, and you’ll get another arse whopping.”

“Put your filthy hands on my daughter again, Keldor, and I swear that this time I will kill you.”

“Pah, you don’t have the guts, Duncan. You never did and neither does Prince Useless here.”

“Leave my sister alone, you hairy horror!”

“Get out of my way, rust bucket!”

“Mer-Man, honestly? Of all the Evil Warriors, I get Mer-Man? Was Evil-Lyn busy or what?”

“Shut up and feel the kiss of my blade, She-Ra.”

“Eat steel knuckles, shithead!”

“Get out of my way, Beast-Man. It’s your boss I want, not you.”

“So much for the great Mer-Man. Ugh, he stinks. Now who’s next?”

“Say good-bye to your daughter and Prince Adam, Duncan.”

“Leave my sister alone, fiend!”

BLAST! BOOM!

“Roboto, no!”

“No, Roboto. He… he jumped in fronht of Adam and me and shielded us from Skeletor’s blast. And now he’s…”

“I’m sorry, Teela, but we should get out of here, before Skeletor comes back.”

Later, in Duncan’s workshop:

“Can you fix him, Dad?”

“I don’t know. He absorbed the full power of Skeletor’s havoc staff.”

“Oh Adam, Roboto saved us both and I was so mean to him. And now he’ll never know… sniff… that I’m sorry and that it’s an honour to be his sister.”

“You can tell him yourself, Teela.”

“Roboto, you’re alive!”

“Yes, Sister, I am alive. And I am glad that you like me now. You do like me, do you not?”

“Of course, I love you, Roboto. You’re my brother, after all. And I’m sorry that I was so mean to you.”

“That is all right, Sister. Princess Adora explained everything.”

“She did`?”

“And you do not have to worry. I do not intend to take our father’s love away from you nor do I intend to exchange physical intimacies with Prince Adam.”

“Uhm, that’s comforting, I guess.”

“Well, that went better than expected, Duncan. But now you’ll have to excuse me, cause I need a drink after all that excitement.”

“I can prepare tea for us. Father has a very nice tea set.”

“Sorry, Roboto, but I think I need something a bit stronger this time.”

***

I hope you enjoyed this Masters-of-the-Universe-Piece Theatre Photo Story. There’ll be more stories, including the promised She-Ra story, since the Evil Horde is actually beginning to resemble its name by now.

Disclaimer: I don’t own any of these characters, I just bought some toys, took photos of them and wrote little scenes to go with those photos. All characters are copyright and trademark their respective owners.

Obi-Wan Kenobi Goes On a Rescue Mission in Part IV

Here are my thoughts on the fourth episode of the Disney Plus Obi-Wan Kenobi series. For my thoughts on previous episodes, go here.

Warning! Spoilers under the cut!

When we last left our favourite down and out Jedi knight, Obi-Wan had just gotten his arse kicked by his former pupil Anakin Skywalker a.k.a. Darth Vader and sustained severe burn injuries. And Leia had been kidnapped by Third Sister – again.

Part IV (I guess they’re not calling them episodes in order to avoid confusion with the movies) opens with Obi-Wan in a bacta tank. And since bacta seems to have the previously unknown effect of generating flashbacks, Obi-Wan sees snatches of his fight with Anakin Skywalker a.k.a. Darth Vader. Worse, the Force also connects him to Vader, who is soaking in a bacta tank of his own. It appears the psychoactive properties of bacta have been severely underestimated until now.

The combination of flashbacks and unwanted mindlinks with Darth Vader cause Obi-Wan to prematurely emerge from the bacta tank, before he is fully healed. Does this mean that the Obi-Wan we saw in A New Hope has heavy burn scars on his shoulder and arm? I guess it’s possible, since his robe would cover up the scars.

Tala is not happy that Obi-Wan emerges from the bacta tank before he is fully healed, but Obi-Wan is determined to rescue Leia and tries to enlist the aid of The Path, all four members of it. The leader Roken doesn’t want to help and would prefer not to have Obi-Wan on his planet (Is this Jabiim? Or still Mapuzo? Or some other planet, cause I don’t think it’s ever named and all we see is a cave) at all, because Obi-Wan is too high profile a fugitive Jedi. Obi-Wan tries to tell Roken that he doesn’t know what the Empire is capable of – a line that got an eyeroll from me, because dude, these people are part of an underground railroad type network that smuggles former Jedi and other Force sensitives to safety, so you can bet they know exactly what the Empire is capable of. And indeed, Roken cuts Obi-Wan down by saying that his wife was a former Jedi, that he always knew what she was and that they did their best to hide from the Empire, but the Empire found and killed her anyway. Touché.

Luckily, The Path does have some information on the Fortress Inquisitorius (Ah, the joys of bad Latin in SFF), the pyramid-shaped stronghold of the Inquisitors, where Leia is being held. The Fortress is located on a water-logged planet in the Mustafar system. The Path also have handy schematics of the place rendered in the early CGI line-art style that has been associated with Star Wars since 1977. I guess many Bothans died to bring those plans to The Path. Sorry, if I sound a bit snarky here, but I only just realised that there is zero information given about how The Path came by what has to be top secret plans. io9 reviewer Germain Lussier makes the same point. How exactly does The Path, which literally seems to be four people in a cave, know all this, including that Darth Vader is still aboard his ship en route to Mustafar?

Obi-Wan is determined to infiltrate the Fortress and Tala is determined to go with him, using her security clearance as an Imperial officer to get in. Methinks Tala has taken a liking to our broken Jedi, even though we all know that this won’t go anywhere and not just because Disney era Star Wars does not do romance period. Though I hope they won’t kill off Tala, if only because this is probably my favourite Indira Varma role to date. Here is a nice interview with her at The Guardian BTW.

While Obi-Wan is trying to organise a rescue mission, little Leia is facing down Third Sister in an interrogation room (standard interrogation for now, not the enhanced sort) at the Fortress Inquisitorius. Leia may be only ten years old, but we see all the tactics she will use on Darth Vader and Grand Moff Tarkin ten years later on display here, starting with “I’m a princess and my father is a senator and you can’t hold me.” It’s the first of many callbacks to A New Hope, as Guardian reviewer Andy Welch points out.

Third Sister is a skilled interrogator, more skilled than Darth Vader who tends to resort to histrionics, Force-choking and torture, when things don’t go his way.  And so she tells Leia that Obi-Wan and that no one is coming for her and that The Path are not her friends, but Leia still refuses to neither believe nor budge and even asks how exactly Obi-Wan died.

Since her initial approach doesn’t work, Third Sister changes tactics, puts her hand on the side of Leia’s face Vulcan mind-meld style and tries to use the Force to dig what she wants to know out of Leia’s brain. However, this doesn’t work, since Leia blocks her. “Is this a staring contest?” Leia asks with feigned innocence. I know I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again. Little Leia is wonderful, particularly since you can already see the woman she’ll grow up to be one day in this little girl.

The battle of wills between Leia and Third Sister is highly compelling, even though it’s only two people in a barren room, but as AV-Club reviewer Manuel Betancourt points out, “sometimes all you need to make a solid SW scene sing is a great pair of characters sitting in a room with crackling dialogue.”  Betancourt also explains what it is that makes Third Sister such a compelling and chilling villain (though of course the usual racist fanboy arseholes have problems with the fact that she is played by a black actress, Moses Ingram), namely that she’s a different type of villain from the usual Star Wars villainy. She doesn’t have the histrionics or the casual cruelty of Darth Vader, the Emperor or Grand Moff Tarkin. Instead, Betancourt says that “Third Sister moves through the world like an immovable object who will bulldoze everything and anything in front of her until she gets what she wants”, which is a very accurate description of her character. What makes her even more intriguing is that she we still don’t know just why she does what she does and why she is so obsessed with Obi-Wan Kenobi.

When her questioning of Leia doesn’t yield results, Third Sister graduates to enhanced interrogation tactics and has Leia dragged to a torture chamber, which reminded me of the final scene in Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, which came out two years after Return of the Jedi.

Now we know that torturing prisoners is something the Empire does, since we’ve seen characters tortured in Star Wars before. Hell, we’ve even seen Leia tortured before – twice, once at the beginning of A New Hope and once near the end of The Empire Strikes Back. Nonetheless, the torture scene is disturbing, because here we have the Empire about the toture a ten-year-old girl. Of course, we also know that the Empire kills children – after all, we have seen the slaughter of the padawans at the Jedi Temple in Revenge of the Sith. However, while torture and child murder were always a thing in Star Wars, the torture scenes in the original trilogy were remarkably subdued. In both Leia’s torture in A New Hope and Han’s torture in The Empire Strikes Back, we see Leia or respectively Han strapped to a board and we see the torture droid with various instruments and syringes approaching, then the scene cuts away. Empire Strikes Back also gives us a few screams, but the rest is left to the imagination.  And while it’s been a while since I’ve seen Revenge of the Sith – I don’t always include the prequels in my annual Star Wars rewatch – I don’t recall the murder of the padawans being actually shown on screen either. Obi-Wan Kenobi does go further in actually showing Imperial cruelty than the Star Wars films, so it feels more disturbing.

While all this is happening, Obi-Wan and Tala are executing their rescue mission. Tala lands her shuttle in the main hangar and walks in through the front door, pretending to be on a secret mission and pulling rank on a suspicious officer at the access gate. Over the course of the episode, we will see Tala pulling rank and pretending to be on a secret mission a lot.

Meanwhile, Obi-Wan goes in through the backdoor. Since the Fortress Inquisitorius (stupid name, that) is surrounded by water, we see him swimming under the sea in his regular Jedi robes (I guess Neoprene wetsuits are one of the inventions that exist in our world, but not in the Star Wars universe), using the same breathing device he used on Naboo way back in The Phantom Menace. Obi-Wan then enters the Fortress through the moon pool (no, not this one). Why does an Imperial fortress have a moon pool and why is it not better secured and not even equipped with an alarm system? This is one of the many questions the episode never really answers.

Though the moon pool is guarded by a lone Stormtrooper, who quickly winds up taking a plunge into the moon pool, while Obi-Wan sneaks into the Fortress proper, his Jedi robes mysteriously dry. Maybe quick drying clothes is a Force power we haven’t yet seen, though it’s more likely just a continuity error. Not that blatant continuity errors don’t happen, but they normally don’t happen in a production of the size and scale and budget of a Star Wars series. Throwing the Stormtrooper into the moon pool is not a bad way to dispose of an inconvenient body, but I still wonder why Obi-Wan didn’t just borrow the Stormtrooper’s armour as a disguise, like Luke and Han did in A New Hope and Din Djarin did in season 2 of The Mandalorian. Of course, Obi-Wan also sneaks around the Death Star in his Jedi robes in A New Hope, but that Obi-Wan is a lot more confident in his Force abilities than the down and out version from this series.

The bulk of this comparatively short (only about 35 minutes runtime) episode is given over to Obi-Wan sneaking through the corridors of the Fortress Inquisitorius, dodging seeker droids and Stormtroopers, using his patented “Make a noise somewhere else to distract them” technique, while Tala access a computer terminal and directs Obi-Wan via one of those handheld com-links we saw C-3PO use in A New Hope.

It’s all very thrilling stuff, however, it’s also highly familiar, because we’ve seen it all before. Rescuing someone from an Imperial detention facility is a stock Star Wars plot along with infiltrating a secured location or trying to escape a planet under siege. And so we’ve seen daring rescues like the one in this episode pulled off in The Mandalorian, The Force Awakens, Return of the Jedi and most famously in A New Hope, where the subject to be rescued is even the same one as here, namely Princess Leia, albeit ten years later.

The parallels to A New Hope are really glaring, as many reviewers including The Guardian‘s Andy Welch, io9‘s Germain Lussier and The Daily Dot‘s Gavia Baker-Whitelaw all point out. At one point, a suspicious officer even questions Tala what she is doing there and forces her to abandon the terminal, leaving Obi-Wan’s voice echoing out of the com-link lying on the desk in a scene very reminiscent of the scene in A New Hope, where C-3PO and R2-D2 have to bluff their way out of an encounter with some Stormtroopers and almost get Luke, Han, Leia and Chewie squashed in a garbage press in the process. Thankfully, Obi-Wan avoids garbage chutes and presses, while Tala doesn’t bluff her way out of the situation, but takes out the Imperial officer maybe five meters from two other officers who fail to notice anything at all amiss.

Which brings me to another issue: The rescue mission may be thrilling, but it’s also incredibly badly planned or rather there is no real plan at all, as Tor.com reviewer Emmet Asher-Perrin points out. Not that Star Wars in general isn’t known for its meticulously planned rescue mission and indeed most of the daring rescues we’ve seen in Star Wars over the years only succeeded due to a combination of luck and glaring security oversights on the side of the Empire. However, it is a bit depressing that Luke Skywalker, an untrained farm boy from Tatooine, could come up with a better rescue plan than Obi-Wan and Tala, a Jedi master and former general and an Imperial officer turned proto-rebel.

At one point, Obi-Wan wanders into a corridor which is lined with glass-fronted cabinets holding the bodies of Jedi and other Force sensitives pickled in formaldehyde. I immediately assumed that we were probably expected to recognise some of those pickled Jedi and indeed, one is a minor supporting character from an episode of the Clone Wars cartoon, while another is a kid, obviously one of the padawans from the Jedi Temple. “This isn’t a fortress, it’s a tomb,” Obi-Wan mutters and indeed I wonder just why the Empire is keeping pickled Jedi in some underwater corridor deep inside the Fortress Inquisitorius? Is is just a macabre trophy gallery?  Or are they conducting cloning experiments like the one for which Moff Gideon and Werner Herzog wanted capture poor Baby Grogu?

Obi-Wan finally located Leia, when he hears her screaming. Yes really, he locates the very person he’s looking for in a giant fortress by chancing to hear her scream, which makes just as much sense as everything else about this whole rescue.

However, the torture chamber is guarded by Stormtroopers and Third Sister is there as well, so Obi-Wan calls Tala and asks her to create a diversion, which Tala promptly does. Tala demands to speak to Third Sister, claiming to be a double agent who has important information about the path. Third Sister is no fool and so she is sceptical of Tala and her motives. Interestingly, so is the viewer, because it is entirely possible that Tala is truly a double agent and working for the Empire after all. The fact that Indira Varma is mostly known for playing ambiguous and sometimes downright treacherous characters – remember Suzy Costello from Torchwood? – certainly helps to create that little seed of doubt.

But whoever she really is working for, Tala does interrupt the interrogation, giving Obi-Wan the chance to rescue Leia. The scene where the lights go out in the torture chamber and Obi-Wan’s lightsabre lights up the darkness, as he dispatches of the Stormtrooper guards is legitimately great.

Obi-Wan rescues Leia, but the corridors are still swarming with seeker droids and Stormtroopers. Obi-Wan does his best to dodge them, but he also has a terrified ten-year-old girl in tow and so eventually he and Leia are spotted. The alarm is raised and Third Sister sets off in pursuit, unwisely leaving Tala alone with only two Stormtroopers to guard her. The Stormtroopers are no more match for Tala than for anybody else and so Tala manages to escape and come to the aid of Obi-Wan and Leia.

Obi-Wan and Leia have been cornered in an underwater corridor and so Obi-Wan has to protect Leia, while blocking Stormtrooper shots with his lightsabre. Unfortunately, one of the blaster shots goes wide and cracks the glass walls on the corridor. Why do Stromtroopers use weapons that can crack walls in an underwater base? You’ll have to ask the Empire, cause I certainly have no idea. Though it makes for an impressive sequence, as Obi-Wan uses the Force to hold the glass together and the water back, while deflecting blaster shots with his lightsabre.

Luckily, Tala arrives in the nick of time and so Obi-Wan and Leia escape through a glass door, while the pursuing Stormtroopers are caught in the water break-in and presumably drown. Once again, one would expect the Stormtroopers to have some kind of breathing apparatus built into their helmets, but the scene of the dead Stormtroopers floating in the flooded is genuinely creepy.

Now, Obi-Wan does don an Imperial uniform as a disguise, though it’s not Stormtrooper armour, but an officer’s uniform consisting of a cap and an oversized trenchcoat. Have we seen Imperial officers wearing khaki trenchcoats before? I can’t recall any examples outside earlier in this episode, though the rebels do have khaki trenchcoats. But unlike the more tailored black long coats we’ve sometimes seen Imperial officers wear, the trenchcoat does offer the space to hide Leia underneath, since a ten-year-old girl will stick out like a sore thumb on an Imperial military base.

Not that Obi-Wan with Leia stuffed under his trenchcoat does not stick out like a sore thumb, because he does. For starters, Imperial officers are all clean-shaven – the only bearded officers we ever see in Star Wars are rebels – but Obi-Wan not only has a beard, his beard is also not very well kempt. Not to mention the fact that his trenchcoat is too big for him and has a child-sized lump on one side. And yes, I know that “disgusing yourself as your enemy” is a common trope, in Star Wars (in fact, A New Hope was where I first came across this trope and found it oh so clever) and elsewhere, even though the result often isn’t all that convincing, whether it’s Luke being too short for a Stormtrooper, Din Djarin literally not knowing what to do with his face, when he’s forced to take the helmet off, Indiana Jones borrowing an ill-fitting Nazi uniform without the shirt and getting caught, He-Man disguising himself as a Horde Trooper and getting caught because a lock of blonde hair sticks out of the helmet in The Secret of the Sword or He-Man disguising himself as a visiting Horde Inspector in an episode of She-Ra: Princess of Power and miraculously not getting caught, even though he looks nothing like the man he’s impersonating and his only disguise is a borrowed uniform and a fake beard. Obi-Wan’s Imperial officer disguise is about as convincing as He-Man with a fake beard or shirtless Indiana Jones in a Nazi uniform jacket, i.e. not convincing at all.

io9‘s James Whitbrook actually likes the trenchcoat disguise, because – as he points out – rescue missions in Star Wars are usually badly planned affairs and the suspense generated by the characters almost getting caught is a big part of the fun. But while I’m willing to accept Han and Luke dressing up in Stormtrooper armour and escorting Chewie to the detention block in order to rescue Leia or Din Djarin and Migs Mayfield infiltrating an Imperial mining outpost in order to get some vital information (and note that neither mission goes as planned and the characters have to improvise and are discovered), the rescue mission in Obi-Wan Kenobi is a bit too absurd for my taste.

Somehow, Tala and Obi-Wan with Leia stuck under his borrowed coat make it past the checkpoint at the entrance to the hangar deck and are halfway across the hangar, when Third Sister shows up with a whole lot of Stormtroopers in tow and all hell breaks loose. Obi-Wan, Leia and Tala try to make a run for it, but they’re cut off from the shuttles.

But just when it seems that all is lost, two Snow Speeders or rather the vehicles we know as Snow Speeders, since there obviously is no snow on the Inquisitors’ planet, show up, piloted by two of Tala’s pals of The Path. They fire at Stormtroopers and one Snow Speeder takes Tala, Obi-Wan and Leia aboard. It must be really crowded inside that thing, because the cockpit was barely big enough for two in The Empire Strikes Back.

Both Snow Speeders make a triumphant escape, but one – piloted by a redshirt named Wade – is shot down. Miraculously, there is no pursuit, because – as Emmet Asher-Perrin notes in their review at Tor.com – security at the Fortress Inquisitorius is abysmal with no gun turrets, TIE-fighters, force fields, tractor beams or any other kind of security measures.

The surviving Snow Speeder with Obi-Wan, Tala, Leia and pilot Sully on board makes it back to a spacecraft piloted by Roken, who clearly had a change of heart. He’s initially enthusiastic, too, until Tala tells him of Wade’s death, which clearly affects Roken and Sully deeply. I would have liked for the sacrifice of poor Wade to affect me, too – and note that deaths of underdeveloped or one-of characters can affect you, see Porkins for a Star Wars example or Zak from the original Battlestar Galactica for a non-Star Wars one. Alas, Wade is no Porkins and so his death is literally the death of a random redshirt.

Darth Vader finally arrives at the Fortress, just as Obi-Wan, Tala and Leia have made their escape. And since Darth Vader really does not like failure, he promptly proceeds to Force-choke Third Sister, leaving her hanging suspended in the air to the obvious delight of Fifth Brother. However, Third Sister is able to stave off her execution by informing Darth Vader that she placed a tracker on the escapees, which will lead them to Obi-Wan, The Path and all the escaped Jedi. So that’s where Darth Vader got the idea from.

Coincidentally, the tracker plan might also explain why there was no attempt at pursuit or shooting down the escapees – just like the half-hearted chase with four TIE-fighters in A New Hope. Indeed, this may also be via Leia saw through the ploy with the TIE-fighters at once, because she literally experienced this whole situation before.

The final scene shows Leia taking Obi-Wan’s hand in the hold of Roken’s spaceship, while Tala comforts Sully about the loss of the late lamented Wade. The camera pans open to reveal a sinister red light glowing in Leia’s pocket. It’s her little droid Lola, now equipped with an Imperial tracker.

I may sound overly critical, but don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed this episode, while I was watching it and there are some genuinely good moments. However, even by Star Wars standards, this was an ill thought out rescue plan. Hell, I’ve seen better thought out rescue plans in cartoons aimed at children.

But my biggest issue is that in spite of the thrilling action and great visuals, it also feels like something we’ve seen before, because the beats are borrowed almost one to one from A New Hope.

A large part of Marvel‘s success, which is keeping the franchise fresh even after more than twenty movies and TV shows, is that it tells a variety of very different stories that just happen to be set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and feature superheroes. Marvel movies and TV-shows can be action thrillers, epic fantasy, gonzo space operas, retro war movies, heist movies, teen dramas, X-Files type paranoia,multiverse spectaculars, family sitcoms, time travel adventures, Christmas movies and much more.

Meanwhile  Star Wars, the other big franchise Disney acquired in their bid to rule to universe, keeps telling the same story over and over again, even though their universe is as big, if not bigger than Marvel, and offers an unlimited potential for telling stories, so why do we always get the same story remixed and retold. And yes, we we all loved that story back in the day, but maybe it’s time to tell a different story. It’s certainly no accident that the best of the Disney era Star Wars stories – The Mandalorian, Rogue One, The Last Jedi (which was a good movie viewed in isolation, it just didn’t fit in with the other two) – are those which at least try to do something other than telling the same damned story over and over again.

So far, Obi-Wan Kenobi has offered a fine remix of the classic Star Wars story. I just wish it would do more.

Masters-of-the-Universe-Piece Theatre: “Dinosaurs and Fists of Steel”

The next Star Trek Strange New Worlds and Obi-Wan Kenobi reviews are coming, but I had a stressful day, somewhat relieved by the mail person bringing me toys, so here is another short Master-of-the-Universe-Piece Theatre photo story. The name “Masters-of-the-Universe-Piece Theatre” was coined by Kevin Beckett at the Whetstone Discord server.

The background is that in 1987, Mattel was planning to send He-Man back in time and produced three bionic dinosaurs for the Masters of the Universe figures to ride, including a triceratops called Bionatops. The dinosaurs were never made again in any of the later Masters of the Universe lines, but I had the idea that maybe a Schleich triceratops would work as well, so I ordered one and he (or she) arrived today. And even if the triceratops wouldn’t work for my Masters of the Universe figures, it’s still an awesome dinosaur and you can never have too many dinosaurs:

“Don’t mind me, I’m just grazing here and enjoying the grass and the flowers.”

The mail person also brought me Jitsu, a rather underdeveloped member of Skeletor’s Evil Warriors, who only appeared once in the 1980s Filmation cartoon and not at all in any of the subsequent cartoons, probably because he was portrayed very much as a racist stereotype in the Filmation cartoon, so no one wanted to tackle him in later incarnations. And yes, it’s depressing that the only Asian character in Masters of the Universe is an underdeveloped bad guy. Though come to think of it, there also was a ninja character who was even more underdeveloped.

That said, Jitsu does make a great action figure, so I put him next to my new triceratops.

“Ah, what a fearsome beast! I shall tame you and ride you to Snake Mountain to strike fear in the hearts of my enemies.”

“Eat shit and die, mammal.”

Jitsu is often considered Fisto’s archenemy, probably because they both have a prosthetic metal hand. So of course, I had to pit them against each other and this is what happened:

“So we finally meet again, Fisto, my old enemy. And this time I shall vanquish you with my deadly steel chop.”

“Well, I’ve got a steel fist of my own.”

“But mine is shinier.”

“And mine is bigger.”

“I have a dinosaur.”

“And I have Ram-Man.”

“Actually, mammal, you don’t have a dinosaur. I just happened to be passing by, minding my own business, when you showed up.”

“Eat steel knuckles, Gold Boy.”

“Feel my golden chop.”

“Hey, that’s my boyfriend you’re beating up there.”

“Ah, the sweet smell of testosterone. Mammals, so predictable.”

“Leave Fisto alone or I swear I’ll ram you into the ground.”

“Bring it on, Bucket Head!”

“Look, mammals, could you maybe do that somewhere else, cause I only wanted some peace and quiet in the sun?”

“Take that, Gold Hand Dude.” Rammm!

“Oww, my head. Krass, what happened?”

“He knocked you out and then I knocked him out, Malcolm. But we won.”

“That’s it. I’m leaving and finding a quiet place far away from all of those brawling mammals.”

I did put a Masters of the Universe figure on the Schleich triceratops and it does work, though Fisto looks a bit like Lee Marvin’s drunken cowboy from Cat Ballou when riding the triceratops. Though as these picture show, the original 1987 Bionatops wasn’t all that big either.

“I was born under a wand’rin’ star… la, la, la, la…”

“Shut up, mammal! Your voice is terrible and besides, that song isn’t even from Cat Ballou, but from Paint Your Wagon.”

“And what does a dinosaur know about music from movies released on another planet?”

“I’m a very culturally interested dinosaur. And besides, what does a grumpy and drunkard loser like you know about movies from another planet?”

“Queen Marlena holds regular movie nights at the royal palace. Krass and I always attend. Anyway, can’t you go any faster, boy. I’ll be late for dinner.”

“I’m not a boy, I’m a girl, idiot.”

“Well, can’t you go any faster, girl? I promise, I’ll give you a nice big lamb chop, when we get back to the palace.”

“I’m a herbivore, idiot.”

“Well, then I’ll give you a pot of potatoes. Or maybe carrots?”

“A big bowl of salad and we’re in business.”

“Okay, deal. I was born under a wand’rin’ star… la, la, la, la…”

“Oh, not again!”

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this Masters-of-the.Universe-Piece Theatre Photo Story. There’ll be more stories, including the already announced She-Ra story, since the Evil Horde has gained a few more members in the meantime.

Disclaimer: I don’t own any of these characters, I just bought some toys, took photos of them and wrote little scenes to go with those photos. All characters are copyright and trademark their respective owners.

A Masters-of-the-Universe-Piece Theatre Pride Month Special: “Fisto’s Significant Other”

I’m interrupting the steady stream of Star Trek Strange New Worlds and Obi-Wan Kenobi reviews for another Masters of the Universe action figure photo story. I was always planning to do more of these and I also posted a few on Twitter, but blog posts are less ephemeral.

The name “Masters-of-the-Universe-Piece Theatre” was coined by Kevin Beckett at the Whetstone Discord server, by the way, based on the Masterpiece Theatre series of random British TV dramas presented by PBS in the US. I like the name and adopted it with thanks to Kevin.

Initially, I was going to continue the Secrets of Eternia series with a look at the backstory of She-Ra, He-Man’s long lost twin sister, but that was somewhat stymied by the fact that though I have a great She-Ra figure, the Evil Horde was rather anaemic to the point that Hordak had to borrow henchpeople from Skeletor.

So instead, you get a different story today. My photo story about the origins of Teela and particularly who her biological parents are ended with Fisto (whom the people behind the 2002 Masters of the Universe cartoon planned to reveal as Teela’s biological father for reasons best known to themselves) coming out as gay to his estranged brother Man-at-Arms. The fact that Fisto and Man-at-Arms are brothers was established in the 2002 cartoon. However, Fisto being gay is purely my head canon, because with a name like that, how can he not be?

“The Origin of Teela” story ended with Duncan a.k.a. Man-at-Arms and Malcolm a.k.a. Fisto going for a drink. And here is a sequel, where we finally learn who Fisto’s significant other is:

“Well, Duncan, when you said, let’s have a drink, I expected a tavern and beer, not… Wait a minute, is that mother’s prized tea set? I had no idea that thing still existed.”

“I kept it. For Teela, for when she gets married.”

“If that idiot Prince Adam ever gets a move on and pops the question, you mean?”

“He’s not an idiot. He’s just… shy.”

“Well, I doubt that the future Queen of Eternia needs mother’s old tea set, considering she’ll inherit a palace full of fine china and silverware. Besides, I don’t think Teela is the type for fancy tea sets anyway.”

“You’re right. She’d only use it as target practice. Talking of which, I could have sworn there used to be more cups. Anyway, Malcolm, do you want tea? And some pastries maybe?”

“Actually, I want a beer, but since tea and pastries are all I get, I guess the answer is yes.”

“Anyway, you wanted to know if I have someone and the answer is yes and it’s…”

“Man-e-Faces.”

“What? No. Oh, hi Manny. Bad timing.”

“Am I interrupting anything?

“Yeah, you could say that.”

“I won’t be long. I just wanted to let you know that I’m off for a few days to play Hamlet in Avion. You know, my real job, before I got drafted into this whole saving Eternia thing.”

“Also, just because I’m an actor doesn’t mean I’m gay. Why do people always assume that? Does not compute. Anyway, I’m off. See you in five days. Nice tea set, by the way.”

“All right, so where were we? Oh yes, you wanted to know if I have someone and the answer is yes I do and it’s Ram-Man.”

“Hi boss. Yup, Malcolm and I are together. Hope you don’t mind. Nice tea set, by the way. Oh, pastries. Munch, munch.”

“Sure, help yourself. Why not? After all, you’re apparently part of the family now.”

“Hi, Dad, Uncle Malcolm, Rammy. Did we miss a tactics meeting? Anyway, Adam and I are going to borrow the Wind Raider, if you don’t mind, Dad. We’re going to… uhm… patrol the outer perimeter.”

“Hey, Teela, isn’t that the ugly tea set that we… mumble.”

“Shush! Dad is really weird about that tea set. If he finds out that we broke some of the cups…”

“Do you two have anything to say for yourselves? For example, why two cups of your grandmother’s prized tea set went missing?”

“Uhm…”

“I’m waiting, young lady.”

“Ahem, actually, I have something to say. I’m gay and Ram-Man and I are together.”

“Hey, that’s wonderful. I’m so happy for both of you.”

“Thanks for covering for us, Uncle.”

“No problem. I know how weird your father is about that tea set.”

“Anyway, Dad, we’re off to… ahem… patrol the outer perimeter.”

“See you later, Duncan. Oh pastries! You don’t mind, if we take some, do you? The outer perimeter is very far out.”

“Sure, take my pastries. Why not? It’s not as if I ever get any of my own cake.”

“Well, all things considered that didn’t go too badly. I mean, your brother wasn’t mad at us and that’s a good thing, isn’t it? Plus, we got pastries”

“Duncan only isn’t mad because he was too busy worrying about Mom’s old tea set. Though I have to say ‘patrolling the outer perimeter’ is a great excuse. I wish we would have thought of that one.”

“You mean, Adam and Teela are not…?”

“Trust me, the only perimeters those two are patrolling are each other’s bodies.”

Patrolling the outer perimeter.

“Hmm, those pastries are really good. And Fisto and Rammy are an item. That’s… unexpected. I mean I had no idea. Did you?”

“No, but I’m happy for them. Dad always says that Uncle Malcolm needs someone to look after him and now he has someone. Plus, they no longer have to hide, neither from Dad nor from anybody else.”

“So… uhm… do you think we should tell our parents? About us, I mean?”

“Oh dear, Dad would give me the birds and the bees lecture. The one he obviously ignored or I wouldn’t exist.”

“Come to think of it, Duncan would probably kill me. And I’m no match for him as Adam.”

“Dad would never kill you. He loves you. You’re the son I failed to be. But I suspect your parents wouldn’t be too happy. They probably wanted someone else for you. Someone with a royal title like those pink and pretty princesses your sister always hangs out with.”

“Don’t say that! My parents love you. Dad’s always going, ‘Why can’t you be more like Teela, son?’ But if we told them, Mom would start making wedding plans and Dad would drop hints about grandchildren and preserving the royal lineage.”

“That’s scary.”

“So we don’t tell them? At least not yet.”

“No, it’s wonderful as it is and I… well, I don’t want to jinx it.”

“You know, we could just elope. Find a priest and a temple in some village, get married and then tell our families. No pressure, no party, no big ceremony, just you and me.”

“Come on, Adam, you’re being silly. And now kiss me.”

***

As for how Ram-Man ended up becoming Fisto’s significant other, the initial spark was this tweet by John Chu

Wait, the He-Man universe had both a Fisto and a Ram-Man?

— John Chu (@john_chu) June 1, 2022

So I put the Fisto and Ram-Man figures next to each other and they made a cute couple. Besides in the 2002 He-Man cartoon (the same one which retconned Fisto into Man-at-Arms’ brother), Ram-Man is very protective of Teela, second only to Duncan and Adam. So it makes sense, if they were family of sorts.

The tea set was a lucky accident. For while I didn’t have a miniature mug or beer jug for Man-at-Arms and Fisto to share a drink, I remembered that I had a miniature tea set, which is exactly at the right scale. So I used the tea set and the story became much funnier as a result. The bit that Man-at-Arms doesn’t get to eat any of his own pastries is a reference to the time he won the 2021 Jonathan and Martha Kent Fictional Parent of the Year Award and didn’t get a single slice of Martha Kent’s famous apple pie, which serves as a trophy.

Unfortunately, the male figures are too bulky to get them to hug or kiss each other (and Ram-Man is extra bulky), but they can hold hands and look deep into each other’s eyes. Though it does work with Adam and Teela, as you can see.

The Adam and Teela coda wasn’t part of the original Twitter thread. However, I realised that “patrolling the outer perimeter” sounds an awful lot like an excuse to sneak away for some private time together. Especically since this episode of the original cartoon shows that the bedroom arrangements in the royal palace make nightly visits nigh impossible, because Adam or Teela would have to sneak past both their respective parents and Cringer, too (bonus Man-at-Arms without his helmet, Randor and Marlena in 1950s TV appropriate separate beds and Teela’s sexy pink nightgown). So if Adam and Teela want to spend some qaulity time together, they’d have to leave the palace. And yes, I do have a Wind Raider.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this Masters-of-the.Universe-Piece Theatre Pride Month Special. There’ll be more stories, including the already announced She-Ra story, since the Evil Horde has now gained a few more members.

As a bonus, here is Man-e-Faces, who has always been protrayed as an actor turned heroic defender of Eternia, performing Hamlet, specifically, act V, scene 1.

Alas, poor Keldor! I knew him, He-Man: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! My gorge rims at it.

Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar?

Not one now, to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen? Now get you to my lady’s chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come; make her laugh at that.

Disclaimer: I don’t own any of these characters, I just bought some toys, took photos of them and wrote little scenes to go with those photos. All characters are copyright and trademark their respective owners. Also, apologies to William Shakespeare.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds meets the “Ghosts of Illyria” and uncovers some dark secrets of the crew

It’s time for the next Star Trek: Strange New Worlds review. Reviews of previous episodes (well, just two so far) may be found here.

Warning: Spoilers under the cut!

The episode opens with the Enterprise exploring the remains of an Illyrian colony on a planet called Hetemit IX. The Illyrians, so the voiceover courtesy of Una Chin-Riley a.k.a. Number One informs us, are a humanoid race who genetically modify themselves. This brings them into conflict with the Federation, where genetic modifications are banned because Khan Noonien-Singh was a murderous arsehole who started a war. And yes, this literally is the explanation given. As a result, the Federation wants nothing to do with the Illyrians. They can’t join the Federation and individual Illyrians are not allowed to join Starfleet and probably not even to become Federation citizens.

Watching this episode, I had no idea if the Illyrians had ever been mentioned in Star Trek before. But luckily there are people like Tor.com reviewer Keith R.A. DeCandido who know more about these things than me. And Keith R.A. DeCandido reports that the Illyrians were first mentioned in a 1989 Star Trek novel named Vulcan’s Glory by D.C. Fontana, which is set before “The Cage” (and consequently before Strange New Worlds) and which mentioned that Number One a.ka. Una Chin-Riley is a genetically modified Illyrian. Until fairly recently, this was one of the very few things about the character that we knew. Considering that the Federation feels about genetically modified individuals much like ordinary humans in the Marvel Universe feel about mutants, it’s easy to see why the fact that Number One is Illyrian will become a problem.

Number One is a member of the away team exploring the ruins of the Illyrian colony on Hetemit IX along with Pike, Spock and a bunch of redshirt ensigns. Since Hetemit IX is battered by regular ion storms, the away team cannot stay on the surface for long, because another storm is approaching. Number One gathers the team together, including a floppy-haired ensign who seems overly interested in some test tubes and other chemical equipment – because touching chemical equipment of unknown origin is such a brilliant idea – to beam everybody up. This proves to be difficult, because the storm is interfering with the transporter – at least until Hemmer, the brilliant but grumpy Andorian chief engineer, works his engineering magic and provides an extra boost of power for the transporter. Hemmer was largely a cameo appearance in the first two episodes, but this episode finally gives him more to do as well as a personality. Unfortunately, that personality is Dr. House, only as a blind albino Andorian engineer.

But even though Hemmer and the young transporter operator Chief Kyle manage to beam up the away team, there’s still trouble, because Captain Pike and Spock are still stuck on the surface, because Spock found the colony’s library/archive and forgot the time over reading, which Keith R.A. DeCandido says is the most Spock thing ever. So the Enterprise has to wait for the ion storm to subside before they can beam up Spock and Pike, who need to find shelter in the abandoned colony in the meantime.

At this point, I assumed we would be in for a spooky survival thriller in the abandoned colony on Hetemit IX and we do get some of that. However, the bulk of the episode is set aboard the Enterprise, for it turns out that a biological contagion hitched a ride on the transporter. Which is not supposed to happen, because the transporter’s bio filters are supposed to filter out any contagions. Someone should tell Discovery this, which had an issue with bio filters in spacesuits not filtering out psychedelic alien dust in season 4.

The first indication that something is wrong is when the floppy-haired ensign who messed about with the test tubes in the ruined colony (I knew that was a bad idea) suddenly starts tearing off his clothes in a corridor, crying that he needs more light, and then breaks a light fixture, injuring himself in the process. Erica Ortegas, who finds him, takes him to Dr. M’benga, where it turns out that the floppy-haired ensign is not the only person desperate for light. And all of those affected were members of the away team on Hetemit IX.

Meanwhile, Number One is in her quarters and suddenly finds that it’s rather dark in there. She order the computer to turn up the light and even tears open her uniform to soak up more light. Then she suddenly begins to glow orange and seems to be normal again. Shortly thereafter, M’Benga calls her to inform her that the Enterprise has a problem. Several members of the away team have fallen ill, all are craving light and have abnormally, even dangerously low vitamin D levels. Dr. M’Benga and Christine Chapel suspect that an unknown alien virus is responsible for the problem. Number One asks M’Benga to check her out. He does, but her vitamin D levels are normal.

This was the first point in the episode where I thought, “Now wait a minute, this makes no sense.” For starters, while it’s true that the body needs light to generate vitamin D, it needs sunlight, specifically UV-B light. Artificial light from lamps, etc… won’t do, because lamps don’t normally give of ultraviolet light nor do you want them to, because too much ultraviolet light is harmful. Of course, there are specific ultraviolet lamps used in greenhouses and the like (and for indoor marihuana plantations), but I doubt that the regular Enterprise lights are ultraviolet lamps. Furthermore, while vitamin D deficiency can have serious health consequences (low bone density and immune system problems and low vitamin D levels are also associated with severe cases of covid), it is easily treated by vitamin D supplements which you can buy in any drugstore. My Mom takes them regularly, because she does not go out a lot and doesn’t get enough natural sunlight. I sometimes take them, too, when I haven’t been outdoors for a while. So when Dr. M’Benga started talking about dangerously low vitamin D levels, I thought, “I have an almost full pack of vitamin D pills in the cellar that I’d be happy to donate to the Enterprise crew.”

Number One goes to see Hemmer and asks him how the hell some kind of virus could get aboard the Enterprise with the away team. Hemmer insists that this is impossible, because the biological filters should have filtered out any unknown contagion. Number One insists that Hemmer run a full diagnostic anyway, which he reluctantly does.

Not long thereafter, security chief La’an Noonien-Singh begins to show the same symptoms as the members of the away team. However, La’an was never on Hetemit IX, suggesting that whatever causes the disease is spreading from person to person. As more and more crewmembers fall ill, Number One orders a shipwide lockdown with all non-essential personnel confined to their quarters.

As a cadet, Uhura is considered non-essential and so she’s sent to the quarters she shares with two other crewmembers. She goes to bed and when she wakes up, she finds her two roommates dancing around a sun simulation. Both of them have contracted the disease, but Uhura is perfectly fine. Number One believes this may be the key to finding out what triggers the disease and asks Uhura exactly what happened. It turns out that Uhura closed the sleeping compartment, when she went to bed, and was in complete darkness. This leads Number One and M’Benga to assume that the disease is transmitted via light. And yes, I know that lightwaves don’t normally transmit diseases, but I could have suspended my disbelief for this, if not for the other gross stupidities perpetrated in this episode.

In spite of the shipwide lockdown, crewmembers keep falling ill and M’Benga and Christine Chapel have their hands full, when Hemmer shows up and wants to check the emergency medical transporter as part of his general diagnostic. Dr. M’Benga is not at all happy about this and insists that the emergency medical transporter is not the source of the problem. Hemmer insists on checking it anyway, when the lights in the sickbay suddenly go off. “Hmm, this shouldn’t have happened”, Hemmer mutters and leaves. The camera pans in on M’Benga to show that he has clandestinely operated the master light switch in the infirmary. Looks like the good doctor has something to hide.

Now the crew knows that the disease is transmitted via light, Number One orders all lights aboard the Enterprise dimmed. Because this causes pain for those struck by the disease, Number One and M’Benga decide to sedate everybody. And still nobody even considers just giving the affected crewmembers vitamin D supplements, intravenously if necessary.

Number One receives a message about a problem with the transporter. She goes to investigate and finds Hemmer trying to beam a glowing piece of Hetemit IX’s mantle aboard Enterprise, so there will be enough light. Unfortunately, the manooeuvre would also seriously endanger or even destroy the ship and it would do nothing to help Hemmer, because planetary mantles do not emit ultraviolet rays, never mind that it’s not even sure if Hemmer, who is a completely different species with a different skin colour, synthesizes vitamin D from UV-B light, like humans do. Since Hemmer is endangering the ship, Number One stuns him and bodily carries him to sickbay, even though Hemmer is rather heavy, something that Christine Chapel comments upon.

Now Number One finally comes clean. She already caught the virus, but her immune system fought it off like it has been engineered to do, since she is one of the dreaded Illyrians. She tells M’Benga that the cure is in her blood and asks him to synthesize it. M’Benga says that he can’t, whereupon Number One tells him that she’s aware of Starfleet regulations forbidding the mixing of human with evil genetically engineered Illyrian blood, but there are lives at stake here. M’Benga replies that’s not the reason, he recognises the ban on genetic modification as the idiotic overreaction and prejudice that it is. However, Number One’s immune system has done such a good job at wiping out the virus that there’s nothing left for M’Benga to analyse.

While all this is going on, Pike and Spock are still stuck on Hetemit IX. Pike is pacing the archive, while Spock continues his study of the records left behind by the Illyrians. The storm closes in and in the storm, Spock and Pike see strange glowing energy creatures, the titular ghosts. And they truly are ghosts, because as Spock learns from the archive (Spock’s role in this episode is basically Mr. Exposition) this particular group of Illyrians was so desperate to join the Federation that they attempted to reverse their genetic modifications. As a result, they caught the same virus that strock down the Enterprise crew and since they had de-engineered their boosted immune system, they all died. Some of the colonists were affected so badly by the virus that they ran into the ion storms seeking light and were transformed into the friendly energy ghosts that protect Pike and Spock from the storm, when it breaches the compound.

Aboard the Enterprise, Number One – who is one of the last crewmembers left standing – receives a message that the Warp field containment is weakening. She goes to investigate and finds La’an, who has knocked out Christine Chapel, when she tried to sedate her and now decides that breaching the warp core will finally give her enough light. I suspect that a warp core breach might emit UV-B radiation along with a whole lot of other, far more deadly spectrums of radiation.

Number One tries to stop La’an, whereupon La’an, who was mercilessly bullied as a child (that would have been before she was abducted by the Gorn) for being the descendant of that noted mass murderer Khan Noonien-Singh, screams at Number One that she is a genetically engineered monster. Now La’an has not inherited Khan’s modifications, though she does prove that people named Noonien-Singh should be kept away from the Enterprise‘s warp core at all costs. Number One finally manages to subdue La’an when the warp containment field begins to fail, flooding engineering with radiation. Both Number One and La’an glow.

There is a cut and the episode continues with Dr. M’Benga being woken from sedation by Christine Chapel and Number One. It turns out that Number One’s augmented immune system saved her from a lethal dose of radiation. However, it saved not only her, but La’an as well and cured the disease in the process, too. And since La’an is not Illyrian, but a plain regular unmodified human, she developed antibodies, which Christine was able to synthesize to cure the crew. And if you’re screaming at the screen at this point, “This is not how immune systems work. None of this makes any sense,” then you’re not alone.

Number One also tells M’Benga point blank that they have found the cause of the problem, namely the emergency medical transporter, whose bio filters were not upgraded along with the regular transporter, because Dr. M’Benga refused the upgrade. Number One further reveals that she knows that M’Benga is storing something in the pattern buffer of the transporter and wants to know what the hell he was thinking. M’Benga reveals that what he’s keeping in the pattern buffer of the emergency medical transporter is not a something but a someone, his terminally ill daughter. Because M’Benga can’t cure her, he keeps her in the pattern buffer until a cure is found. Upgrading the emergency medical transporter would have interrupted the power supply and deleted the pattern buffer and his daughter. M’Benga fully expects that Number One will order him delete his daughter and only asks for some time with her, but Number One will do no such thing. Instead, she will arrange for the emergency medical supporter to get a permanent power supply to keep the daughter safe. Of course, the away team didn’t even use the emergency medical transporter, but the main transporter with the bio filter upgrades, but the episode is not concerned with such details.

Once Pike and Spock have safely returned from Hetemit IX, Number One goes to see him and offers to resign her commission, since she hid the fact that she was an Illyrian to join Starfleet. Pike, however, will have nothing of this and when Number One says that not turning her in might get him into trouble, Pike replies with, “Let them try.”

Finally, Number One goes to see La’an in the Enterprise mess hall to make up – the first episode revealed that they have a close connection. Number One says that the Illyrians were not like Khan, they genetically modify themselves in order to adapt to their environment rather than terraform planets, which reminds Paul Levinson of the 1950 science fiction story “Enchanted Village” by A.E. Van Vogt.

The Enterprise mess hall displays yet more of the glorious retro design that characterises Strange New Worlds so far, e.g. the sets look like something from the 1960s, only with a much higher budget. And so the Enterprise mess hall is reminiscent of Verner Panton’s Spiegel cafeteria from 1969 in all its psychedelic glory. Thr Illyrian archive is furnished with midcentury Knoll International sofas and the abandoned colony on Hetemit IX looks like an abandoned World Fair of the late 1960s or early 1970s, complete with Buckminster Fuller domes, glass bricks, walkways and brutalist architecture, which is very fitting, since science fiction films liked using abandoned World Fair sites for filming in the 1970s and beyond (large parts of Iron Man 2 were shot on the grounds of the 1964 World Fair in New York City).

But while the visuals and the acting of Strange New Worlds continue to be great and I really like the characters, plus everybody passes the “What would Commander McLane do?” test this episode, I still can’t look beyond the fact that the entire light virus plot is complete and utter nonsense that makes zero scientific sense. Ditto for the fact that Number One was somehow able to join Starfleet and serve for years without anybody ever scanning her to notice that a) she is not human, though she looks human, and b) she’s genetically modified.

But then, telling a science fiction story that makes sense is not what this episode is about. Instead, “Ghosts of Illyria” is another example of Star Trek using a science fiction story to deliver a moral message, in this case that blanket prejudices are wrong. And while the message is still rather blunt, “Ghosts of Illyria” manages to do a better job at delivering it than “Let This Be Your Last Battlefield”, not that that is a high mark. And indeed, this would have been a good episode, if not for the fact that the science makes so little sense that my suspension of disbelief was completely shattered. It also doesn’t help that while I may be able to except a lot of gobbledegook about transporters and pattern buffers, since there are no transporters and pattern buffers in the real world, I know how vitamin D works, how ultraviolet radiation works and how immune systems work and so the many mistakes just pulled me out of the story.

I’m actually surprised that most reviewers seem to have enjoyed this episode, for while it was enjoyable enough to watch and also has something to say (but then it’s Star Trek and Star Trek always has something to say), the abysmally bad science really ruined this one for me.

Road Trip with Jedi and Princess: Some Thoughts on Part III of Obi-Wan Kenobi

Here are my thoughts on the third episode of the Disney Plus Obi-Wan Kenobi series. For thoughts on previous episodes (well, there only are two), go here.

Warning! Spoilers under the cut!

When we last left our down and out ex-Jedi Master, he had just freed little Princess Leia from her kidnappers and escaped the planet Daiyu on an automated cargo ship.

Part III begins where part II left off, with Obi-Wan and Leia aboard the transport ship. Obi-Wan, who has just learned that his former padawan Anakin Skywalker is still alive, is obviously distraught and calls the Force ghost of his old master Qui-Gon Jinn for help. But once again, Qui-Gon does not answer. Instead, Obi-Wan gets a wrong Force connection (So the Force works like a telephone exchange now?) and connects with Anakin a.k.a. Darth Vader, which also gives us the “Darth Vader getting dressed/armoured up” scene no one particularly asked for, though it serves as a nice reminder for the extent of the injuries Anakin received at the hands of Obi-Wan.

Obi-Wan’s meditation is interrupted by Leia, who asks the time-honoured question all little kids on a road trip ask, namely “Are we there yet?” The answer is “not yet”, though Obi-Wan has used the journey to repair Leia’s beloved droid pal Lola. The automated transport takes them to the mining planet Mapuzo, which looks uncannily like the California desert. Because the cargo port (actually just a dusty mesa) is staffed only by droids and not the smarter kind of droids either, so Obi-Wan and Leia are able to sneak off.

The rendezvous point that Haja Estree had mentioned is some way off, so Obi-Wan and Leia have to walk. In the distance, they see Stormtroopers overseeing the locals doing mining work and Obi-Wan notes that the Empire has decimated Mapuzo and is exploiting the planet and its people. “But I thought the Empire were the good guys,” little Leia notes. Obi-Wan hedges that some people, like Leia’s (adoptive) father try to make things better, but that many others don’t, which certainly is one way of putting things.

When Obi-Wan and Leia finally reach the rendezvous point, no one is there. Leia assumes that their contact is just late and wants to wait, but Obi-Wan immediately assumes that they have been set up and wants to get away as soon as possible. Leia asks why and Obi-Wan replies that people are not always good. Throughout this episode, there is a nice contrast between Leia’s openess but also naivety and Obi-Wan’s being suspicious of everybody.

Leia also once again takes the initiative and flags down a transport driven by an alien named Freck (voiced by Zach Breff of Scrubs fame, who’s also down a lot of voice acting in his career). Freck has the Imperial crest painted onto his battered transport and generally is a big fan of the Empire, because “What’s wrong with a little order?” You’ll find people like Freck in any authoritarian state, people who don’t mind the lack of freedom, because order and safety are what they crave. So far, Star Wars hasn’t really shown us the presumably many, many people in the galaxy who don’t particularly object to the Empire, since at least it brought order and safety. Mostly, we see either Imperial true believers or rebels or outlaws who would be at odds with any system.

“Oh, we love the Empire”, Leia lies to Freck, as she climbs aboard the transport and Obi-Wan has no choice but to follow. Obi-Wan also gives Freck a story that they’re Orden and his daughter Luma, two farmers from Tawl who were visiting family on Mapuzo and get lost. Freck is a tad suspicious – why exactly did they got lost in an open field in the middle of nowhere? – but initially goes along with it.

But then Freck, the Imperial sympathiser, stops to pick up yet more passengers in the form of a squad of Stormtroopers whose transport is late. Obi-Wan is just about as uncomfortable in the presence of a whole squad of Stormtroopers as you can imagine, especially once the Stormtroopers start questioning him, who he is, what he’s doing on Mapuzo and if he’s seen any Jedi around and if he’s really sure that he hasn’t seen any Jedi. Obi-Wan also messes up and accidentally calls Leia by her real name, whereupon the Stormtroopers immediately demand to know why he’s called his daughter Leia, when he just said her name was Luma. Obi-Wan tells them that Leia was the name of the girl’s mother, who died, and that sometimes, when he looks at the girl, he sees her mother (though Tor.com reviewer Emmet Asher-Perrin notes that Leia as portrayed here shares as many traits with Anakin as with Padme). The Stormtroopers are satisfied with this explanation – for now – and get off when their stop comes up.

Leia, on the other hand, realises that not everything Obi-Wan told the Stormtroopers was a lie. And so she tells him point-blank that she knows that he knew her biological mother, which Obi-Wan neither confirms nor denies. But Leia isn’t finished yet and asks Obi-Wan if he is her biological father, which – to be fair – is a logical assumption to make when faced with someone who clearly knew her mother and gets misty-eyed, when looking at Leia. This time, Obi-Wan does reply and says, “No, I’m not, but I wish I were.”

Once again, this rings true, for even though I don’t think Obi-Wan ever had any romantic feelings for Padme, he certainly had platonic feelings for her. Plus, Obi-Wan was the one who held Padme’s hand as she gave birth to the twins and died and Obi-Wan was the first person to hold Luke and Leia after they were born. And at the end of Revenge of the Sith, when Obi-Wan delivers baby Luke to Owen and Beru Lars, it  always seems to me as if he would have loved to keep the baby, only that Luke will be much safer with Owen and Beru than with the galaxy’s most wanted Jedi.

Obi-Wan also opens up to Leia about his own family from whom we was taken as a small child like all padawans. He talks about fragmented memories of his mother and father and of a baby he believes was a younger brother, which may be a reference to the fact that Owen Lars was initially supposed to be Obi-Wan’s brother rather than Anakin’s stepbrother. I liked this quiet heart to heart between Obi-Wan and Leia a lot, especially since it is one of the very few times – in fact the only example not involving Anakin – that Star Wars acknowledges that the Jedi miss the families from which they were taken and also that separating children from their families and never letting them see them again is wrong.

Because Leia is an inquisitive little girl and permanently curious, she also asks Obi-Wan about the Force and what it feels like. Of course, Leia probably already knows what the Force feels like, though she doesn’t know what it is. Nonetheless, Obi-Wan answers that the Force is like turning on a light when you’re afraid of the dark. It’s a lovely explanation, probably the best explanation for the Force I’ve yet heard in Star Wars, to the point that I wonder why Obi-Wan didn’t use it with Anakin and Luke. Yeah, I know, because George Lucas, who is not the world’s most gifted writer of dialogue, never thought of it.

Interspersed with Obi-Wan and Leia’s adventures on Mapuzo are scenes of Darth Vader in his citadel on Mustafar. And yes, I get that Darth Vader really likes the Snake Mountain vibes of the place, but would he honestly stay on the planet where he was near fatally maimed? Especially since he has a whole galaxy to choose from?

Just as Obi-Wan can sense Anakin, Anakin can sense Obi-Wan now and is even more determined than ever to capture him. And luckily, he has a most devoted inquisitor at his command with Third Sister, who for as of yet undisclosed reasons of her own is just as obsessed with capturing Obi-Wan as Anakin himself. Darth Vader (still with the iconic voice of by now 91-year-old James Earl Jones, though the suit is now filled by Hayden Christensen, who played Anakin in Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith) promises Third Sister the position of Grand Inquisitor (which is currently vacant, since Third Sister killed the previous Grand Inquisitor), if she succeeds in bringing in Obi-Wan. Should she fail,  Darth Vader will kill her. In short, Third Sister faces the usual way of advancing through the ranks in the Imperial Forces.

Emboldened by this, Third Sister pulls rank on her fellow inquisitor Fifth Brother, who clearly hopes to take over the vacant position of Grand Inquisitor himself. She notes that the automated frighter on which Obi-Wan and Leia escaped was carrying mining equipment according to its manifest and has extrapolated a number of likely destinations where the freighter might be headed. Third Sister then orders probe droids dispatched to those likely destinations.

This is yet another example where the Star Wars universe is significantly less technologically advanced than our own (obstretic care is another – note how no one noticed that Padme was carrying twins literally until the moment she gave birth). Because in the real world, when two fugitives escape aboard a freighter, it takes a phone call to determine the destination and have someone waiting for the fugitives there. Nor is this new technology – Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen and his lover were arrested upon arrival in Canada after murdering Crippen’s wife and attempting to escape Europe way back in 1910. Furthermore, not only is it easy enough to tell the destination of any freighter – no, you can also track the vessel’s route via GPS, sometimes even online, and – if necessary, e.g. when dealing with a dangerous fugitive like a Jedi knight – airlift a special forces team in en route. In short, jumping aboard a random ship to escape prosecution hasn’t been a thing since 1910 and it certainly isn’t a thing in 2022. However, if a Star Destroyer has intercepted the automated freighter carrying Obi-Wan and Leia, it would have been a very short episode.

As it is, Obi-Wan and Leia dodged a bullet when Freck gave the Stormtroopers a lift, but their luck runs out, when Freck reaches a checkpoint manned by yet more Stormtroopers and pretty much sells out his suspicious passengers to the Stormtroopers. Worse, the Stormtroopers are accompanied by one of the probe droids Third Sister sent out. When the probe droid begins to scan Obi-Wan, Obi-Wan shoots it and the Stormtroopers, too. One Stormtrooper grabs Leia, but Obi-Wan shoots him, too. Of course, their cover is completely blown now and a transport with even more Stormtroopers, accompanied by an officer arrives. It looks as if Obi-Wan and Leia are screwed, but then the Imperial officer suddenly shoots her own troops.

The Imperial officer introduces herself as Tala and she is the person who was supposed to pick up Obi-Wan and Leia at the rendezvous point, only that she was late and they were already gone. So Haja Estree came through after all. Tala is played by Indira Varma, who has quite a sizeable list of genre and genre-related credits, including the lover of Mandalorian-to-be Pedro Pascal in Game of Thrones and John Luther’s ex-wife in Luther. But the role I will always associate her with is the murderous agent Suzy Costello in the first season of Torchwood, back when that show was actually good. The Guardian has an interview with Indira Varma about her role in Obi-Wan Kenobi here, by the way.

We learn that even though Tala apparently voluntarily joined the Imperial Forces, she has long been disillusioned by the Empire and so she is part of “The Path”, a sort of underground railroad to smuggle Jedi and Force-sensitive children to safety. Now a sort of underground railroad to smuggle Jedi, Force-sensitive children and others targeted by the Empire to safety is not really something I ever considered, though once again it makes complete sense that something like this exists, especially considering that clandestine networks trying to get endangered people to safety tend to exist in most totalitarian regimes, whether it’s the original underground railroad of the 19th century or networks hiding Jews in Nazi Germany and occupied territories and trying to get them to safety or networks organising escapes from Communist East Germany. There’s no mention that Tala’s group is affiliated with the Rebellion that we know, though it is likely.

Tala takes Obi-Wan and Leia to a safehouse behind a droid repair shop that is manned by a non-verbal loader droid. Once again, little Leia shows her affinity for droids and introduces not just herself but also her little pal Lola. Meanwhile, Obi-Wan notes messages scribbled on the walls of the safehouse, including one from an old acquaintance named Quinlan. According to io9 reviewer Germain Lussier, this is a reference to one Quinlan Vos, a character who appeared in the Clone Wars cartoon. Meanwhile, Jabiim (which I have to admit I misheard as Yavin), the planet that is the final destination of the Jedi underground railroad, is a reference to a Dark Horse Star Wars comic.

However, Obi-Wan and Leia’s respite at the safehouse is shortlived, for the probe droid managed to contact the Inquisitors before Obi-Wan shot it and now the Empire is closing in. And if the Jedi Inquisitors alone weren’t trouble enough, Darth Vader himself is along for the ride.

Obi-Wan senses this while Tala is leading him and Leia through an underground tunnel that leads to the spaceport, where a pilot will fly them out. That is he not just senses that Anakin is on Mapuzo, he receives a Force shock that almost knocks him out. Once he has recovered, Obi-Wan tells Tala to get Leia to safety and goes to confront or at least stall his former padawan and friend, because he cannot risk Anakin getting his hands on Leia and realising who she is.

Meanwhile, Darth Vader struts through the streets of this Mapuzo mining town, Force-choking, torturing and murdering random citizens in order to draw Obi-Wan out, while his iconic breathing echoes from the soundtrack. I was initially sceptical about including Darth Vader in the Obi-Wan series and not just because of the continuity issues with A New Hope, but also because I would prefer to see a new, never before seen villain than Darth Vader yet again.

Fact is that Darth Vader suffers from the same problem as many other iconic villains – e.g. Skeletor, Cthulhu, the Joker, Lex Luthor, Magneto, Dr. Doom, Blofeld, etc… – namely overexposure. You’ve seen these characters so often, both in films, TV shows and comics, as well as on all sorts of merchandise from t-shirts via action figures to Funko Pops and plush toys that it’s easy to forget why they were scary in the first place. Until a movie/TV episode/comic comes along and reminds you how fucking scary these villains can be.

Skeletor and to a lesser degree Hordak from Masters of the Universe are two excellent examples. We’ve seen both of them come up with increasingly silly plans to conquer Eternia/Ethiria/the Universe and inevitably fail so many times over umpteen episodes of the original He-Man and She-Ra cartoons, not to mention that we’ve seen them parodied, turned into memes, toys and t-shirts that it’s easy to forget that why used to be scary. However, Masters of the Universe Revelations gave us Skeletor stabbing He-Man/Adam in the back, murdering the Sorceress, zombifying half the population of Eternos, snuffing out the souls of Fisto and Clamp-Champ, torturing Man-at-Arms and exploiting and abusing his lover Evil-Lyn, while the 2002 Masters of the Universe cartoon gave us Skeletor throwing a vial of acid in his brother’s face, torturing King Randor and throwing him into a bottomless abyss, threatening to throw Prince Adam, who is only sixteen here, into a lava pit and torturing Man-at-Arms again and reminds us just why Skeletor can be damned scary and how he became such an iconic villain.

The scene near the end of Rogue One where Darth Vader cuts down scores of rebel troops reminded us just how scary and deadly he can be. And Darth Vader strutting through the streets of Mapuzo, Force-choking, torturing and murdering random people left, right and center, while his heavy breathing echoes from the soundtrack, once again reminds us how truly scary Darth Vader can be, even if Hayden Christensen, who wears the iconic costume, is more associated with whiny Anakin than with scary Vader. Andy Welch makes a similar point in his review at The Guardian.

Of course, we knew beforehand that Hayden Christensen would be returning as Darth Vader in Obi-Wan Kenobi, but most of us expected that a physical confrontation – if there would be one at all – would happen in the series finale, as io9 reviewer Germain Lussier points out. However, to mine and I guess everybody else’s surprise, the long awaited Darth Vader versus Obi-Wan Kenobi rematch happened at the half-way point of the series in a quarry of all places. Of course, we all know that thirty percent of all planets in the galaxy look just like quarries (of the remaining seventy percent, thirty percent look like the California desert, thirty percent like British Columbia and the remaining ten percent look like Tunisia, Iceland or are CGI), but quarries doubling as alien planets is a visual that is more connected to Doctor Who and low budget science fiction series from the UK and Canada (even British Columbia has quarries) than a multi-million dollar per episode property like Star Wars. It’s not that the quarry duel is not good, it’s just as if Obi-Wan and Darth Vader had wandered into an episode of Doctor Who by mistake. Both io9’s Germain Lussier and Daily Dot reviewer Gavia Baker-Whitelaw note that a quarry is maybe not the best location for such an iconic rematch. Gavia Baker-Whitelaw also points out that the sets of Obi-Wan Kenobi look oddly cheap in general, even though Disney has more money than God.

That said, the night time quarry lit up by Obi-Wan’s blue and Darth Vader’s red lightsabre does look suitably atmospheric and when they clash in the darkened quarry it’s everything you hoped it would be. As for the duel itself, it’s quite short. We’ve already seen in the first two episodes that Obi-Wan has become rusty in the Force and of course Darth Vader immediately notes that Obi-Wan is no longer the Jedi he was. “The years have made you weak”, Darth Vader notes, “You should have killed me while you had the chance.” He’s right, too, because a lot of drama and millions of deaths could have been averted, if Obi-Wan had just finished the job on Mustafar. Meanwhile, Obi-Wan is horrified to see what his padawan and friend has become, since this is the first time he actually sees Anakin as Darth Vader. “I am what you made me”, Darth Vader replies.

However, Darth Vader isn’t just satisfied with killing Obi-Wan, though he probably could have. No, he wants to torture him and explicitly tells Obi-Wan that he will now suffer like Vader has suffered. And so Darth Vader Force-chokes Obi-Wan, leaving him dangling in the air. Then he ignites the ground of the quarry – don’t ask how, maybe sand is flammable on Mapuzo – and drags Obi-Wan’s body through the flames, which like Obi-Wan abandoned the wounded Anakin to the lava and the flames on Mustafar. This was also the moment where I realised that the reminder early on of the extent of Anakin’s injuries was important after all. Because even with the advanced medical tech of the Star Wars universe, Darth Vader is probably in constant pain due to the burn injuries he sustained on Mustafar. And now he wants to give Obi-Wan a taste of that pain. Because – as io9 reviewer James Whitbrook points out – Anakin has always been a drama queen at heart.

Meanwhile, Tala and Leia are heading through a tunnel towards the spaceport and the ship that will get them out. However, Leia tells Tala that she’s a big girl and can go on alone and begs Tala to go back and help Obi-Wan. Tala agrees, gets a hug from Leia and returns to the town, just in time to fire at Darth Vader and the Stormtroopers and save Obi-Wan from getting burned to a crisp. However, Obi-Wan has sustained significant burn injuries and Tala declares that they must take him to Jabiim to heal.

While all this is happening, little Leia has reached the end of the tunnel and the spaceport, only to find Third Sister waiting for her. “Are you the pilot who’s going to fly us out?” Leia asks, unaware of who this woman is. “He couldn’t make it”, Third Sister says and the camera pans open to reveal the dead pilot lying on the ground.

As I said before, I’m not entirely sure what I had expected from an Obi-Wan Kenobi series, but an intergalactic roadtrip with a down and out Jedi and a pint-sized princess was not really it. And since the series only has six episodes and we’re at the midway point already, I suspect that “Obi-Wan rescues Leia, dodges Vader and Third Sister and returns Leia to her family” is exactly the plot we’re going to get. Which is fine, though not at all what I expected.

Furthermore, “grumpy loner rescues cute Force-sensitive child and is redeemed” is also exactly the plot of The Mandalorian and much as I enjoyed that series, I’m not sure if I want to see the same plot rehashed in every Star Wars series from now on. And indeed, AV-Club reviews Manuel Betancourt notes that Obi-Wan doesn’t really give us anything we haven’t seen in Star Wars before.

That said, I’m enjoying Obi-Wan Kenobi so far and the relationship between Obi-Wan and little Leia is the best thing about it. Though I still wish that a Star Wars series would take us into new territory for once, then perpetually sticking to the same well-worn grooves.