The Bearded Trio

STAR WARS: THE BAD BATCH VOLUME 2  (EPISODES 9-16) AVAILABLE TODAY     Star Wars: The Bad Batch, Volume 2  (Episodes 9-16)   is available today from Walt Disney Records. “Star Wars: The Bad Batch” debuted on May 4, with all Season One episodes now streaming exclusively on Disney+.   Award-winning composer Kevin Kiner composed and produced all 37 and 38 tracks respectively on  Volume 1  and  Volume 2 .   Kiner said, "We’re proud to be completing the first season soundtrack of The Bad Batch with Volume 2! There are so many high points in here as the season builds to its finale that it’s impossible to mention all of them, but we’ve got the climax of the Cad Bane arc, the chilling turn of the Clones theme from heroic to villainous as the Empire uses the clones to tighten its grip on Separatist worlds. We’ve got Hera and Howzer, Gregor and Cid! Early Stormtroopers! Kamino!!! Of course, there’s the emotional climax of the season with...

"They escaped." That's the cynic's version of recapping what happened in Friday's Season 1 finale of Star Wars: The Bad Batch . And, well, it's not a meritless summary. But as there typically is with Star Wars, the cynic's point of view often ignores subtle nuance that gives the story and characters the guts required to resonate with an audience. The season's penultimate episode, airing last week, left our heroes running for their lives as Imperial Star Destroyers were brutally laying waste to Kamino's Tipoca City, birthplace of all Clonetroopers over the past 13 years. Omega, the helpful hovering droid AZ-3 and all five original members of the batch escape one perilous situation only to get into a worse one as Tipoca City crumbles under the Empire's orbital bombardment. They eventually find temporary relief in the lab they were created in. They climb into tall cylinder tubes in hopes they can bob up to the planet's watery surface.  Much of...

Star Wars: The Bad Batch reached a new high point for me in the penultimate episode of season 1 ( yes, there will be a season 2 ), released Friday morning. Return to Kamino is a heavy episode packed with action, emotion, story and character. It also leans more heavily into the show's overall theme - free will and choice - more than any other single episode to date. We open with Hunter, captive on an Imperial shuttle, being taken to Kamino by Crosshair. Crosshair activates Hunter's comm device, which alerts the Bad Batch to Hunter's location. The group naturally follows the device, intent on executing a rescue of its leader. Kevin Kiner smartly utilizes John Williams's musical themes for Kamino during back-to-back landing sequences early in this episode. The music played for the landing of both the Imperial shuttle and the batch's Havoc Marauder are slight variants on the music heard as Obi-Wan Kenobi lands on Kamino in Star Wars: Attack of the Clones . I adore this...

Friday's episode of Star Wars: The Bad Batch , War-Mantle, is, at worst, my second-favorite of the season so far. Simply a thrilling, tense and engaging episode from the very first frame to the last frame. The stakes are considerably higher for Clone Force 99 throughout this action-packed episode, and all is not well with our favorite group of defective clones by the episode's end. We open with a wayward clone being pursued by uniformed troopers through a forest at night. The whole scene is strongly reminiscent of the opening of E.T. The Extra Terrestrial (1982) when government agents chase the aliens through a suburban California forest, only to leave E.T. behind when the ship escapes.  The clone is being chased by troops and Massifs, vicious dog-like creatures seen on Tatooine during Star Wars: Attack of the Clones (2002). He is eventually stunned and taken into custody, but not before leaving behind a distress call, eventually being answered by Captain Rex. Rex contacts th...

We are in the final quarter of the first season of Star Wars: The Bad Batch , and the 13th episode, Infested, opened that final quarter with a much smaller, more localized story. The group returns to Ord Mantell to find Cid's bar has been taken over by a Devaronian named Roland Durand. His guards seem belligerent and he appears to have a soft spot for his pet named Ruby, who can only be described as a cross between an armadillo and a parrot.  Cid awaits the Batch on their ship the Havoc Marauder, and she requests their help in retaking her establishment. She reveals Roland is in the spice smuggling business with the Pykes, and reasons that if they take his spice, he will be neutralized. The group reluctantly agrees to help, and it was nice to see Cid, to this point a detached deliverer of orders, get in the middle of the action and do some of her own work for a change. They use secret underground tunnels to access her back office to steal back six large containers of spice.  I...

What if there was an episode of Star Wars: The Bad Batch where the Bad Batch was on screen for...one minute? Such was the case in the 11th episode of this season, Devil's Deal, which premiered on Friday, July 9. Several of this season's episodes have fallen into a pattern of one member of the group needing rescue by another on a mission from Cid. Devil's Deal breaks up that pattern in a fascinating way, with 98 percent of the episode focused away from the members of the Bad Batch themselves. Similar to last week, we open on a planet featured in The Clone Wars, Ryloth, which unlike last week, was a planet that stayed loyal to the Republic throughout the three-year conflict. We see Cham Syndulla - father of Hera and considered a charismatic leader on the planet - addressing a restless crowd, assuring it that peace will be in the future with the conclusion of The Clone Wars. Ryloth senator Orn Free Taa is also prominently featured, and his assurances are met with much more sk...

The latest episode of Star Wars: The Bad Batch saw the crew return to the mission-of-the-week format, taking a break from the overall grander story involving Kamino, Crosshair and the like. We open with a sequence I was really happy to see. Imperial bureaucrat Captain Bragg is addressing a crowd gathered on the Separatist capital world of Raxus. She brings forward the world's senator, Avi Singh, to address the crowd and encourage loyalty to the new Empire. Singh is clearly conflicted and ultimately decides to encourage his people to reject the empire. He is then whisked away by the contingent of clonetroopers while AT-TE Walkers intimidate the crowd into complying. He instructs his droid to follow instructions. Those instructions bring us to the Bad Batch. A message is dispatched to Cid to start a rescue operation. She instructs the group to go to Raxus to extract Singh from Imperial custody. Hunter decides this mission is too dangerous to bring Omega along, and has Cid watch over...

The first episode of the second half of the first season of Star Wars: The Bad Batch quickly resolves a cliffhanger from the last episode of the first half of the season. This episode, titled Bounty Lost, centers on Omega more than any other of the season, and creates some intriguing storylines for the show moving forward. It is also a direct continuation of last week's episode, perhaps more than any two sets of episodes in the season to date. The episode opens in space with a chase between Crosshair, still sporting bandages from damage he took last week, and the Batch's ship the Havoc Marauder. The group escapes a frustrated Crosshair as it intensifies its search for the abducted Omega. Omega is in the custody of notorious bounty hunter Cad Bane with his droid sidekick TODO-360, voiced by Seth Green. We discover Bane was under the employ of Kamino's prime minster Lama Su, who intends to get Omega back to Kamino so more of her DNA can be harvested before she is terminated. ...

We are now at the halfway mark of the first season of Star Wars: The Bad Batch , and Friday's episode, Reunion, plotted a whole new course for the season going forward. Up until now, we followed the five members of the Bad Batch - Hunter, Wrecker, Tech, Echo and Omega - on their path from Republic soldiers to struggling mercenaries who work for very little in order to just get by. The overriding plot point of the first seven episodes of the season was the group - clonetroopers from the Republic - breaking free of their inhibitor chips while staying off the radar of the newly formed Empire.  Reunion introduces an impactful new but old character, and raises the stakes for the group in a new and compelling way. We open by returning to Kamino, a place we haven't seen since episode 3. Imperial Admiral Rampart directs Crosshair, now an agent of the Empire, to take out the Bad Batch after their location was reported by Bracca's Scrapper Guild. Back on Bracca, Echo, Wrecker and Ome...

Friday's episode of Star Wars: The Bad Batch, "Battle Scars," to me, is the strongest episode since the season premier last month. We are reintroduced to an old friend, visit a new but familiar location and a long-simmering plot line finds resolution. The episode opens with the group flying the Havoc Marauder on the run from attacking ships, having just completed an off-screen mission to obtain an alien lizard. Echo fixes the hyperdrive and the ship escapes back to its home base and Cid. They deliver the lizard to Cid, who pays Hunter a fraction of what he believes Cid owes them. Hunter expresses frustration over how small their payment is while Wrecker and Omega escape to indulge in their end-of-mission tradition - enjoying what can only be described as "space popcorn."  While in Cid's cantina, the group is spied upon by a mysterious figure in a hood. It is revealed to be none other than Captain Rex, who tracked the group down via the Martez sisters, seen i...

We are now one-third of the way through the first season of Star Wars: The Bad Batch, and the sixth episode, Decommissioned, continues to expand the scope of familiar characters in this universe the Bad Batch encounter, for better or worse. The episode opens as the group is given another job by Cid, the Trandoshian we met in last week's episode. She has them traveling to Corellia to retrieve a tactical droid, a droid featured prominently throughout The Clone Wars. Tactical droids were used by the Separatists to devise war theater strategy against the Republic army throughout the duration of the war. Their droid brains still contained valuable information. Turns out, the Bad Batch aren't the only ones after this tactical droid. They travel to a factory on Corellia where Separatist droids are being melted down for scrap, carrying out Emperor Palpatine's command shortly after the implementation of Order 66. The factory is populated with police droids, but two others, dressed s...

It's all connected. That's been a popular phrase among large-scale franchises like Star Wars and the Marvel Cinematic Universe in recent years. And in the latest episode of The Bad Batch, it is 100 percent true. Very direct call-backs and call-aheads are found throughout this fun romp of an episode.  The season's fifth episode, Rampage, hit Disney Plus Friday morning and was a welcomed tangible step forward in the story, especially relative to last week's episode, Cornered. Omega is presented with her own comlink device as the episode opens, while we return to the story thread of Wrecker complaining about headaches. This comes in just one small part of a scene, but it's a reminder of something potentially tragic happening with Wrecker relative to his inhibitor chip down the road. Still short on resources, but curious about who hired Fennec Shand to hunt them down, the group travels to Ord Mantell, on Echo's recommendation, to locate an old Jedi contact Cid, who ...

We are now at the quarter pole of season one of Star Wars: The Bad Batch, with Friday's premier of the fourth episode, Cornered. This was basically a chase episode that served one primary function: the introduction of Fennec Shand into the series. We first met Shand, played by Ming-Na Wen, back in the fifth episode of season 1 of The Mandalorian, when she was hunting down The Child and Din Djarin on Tatooine.  Here, we meet a version of Shand that is around 28 years younger than the one we see in The Mandalorian. She is introduced fairly early on, when the Bad Batch have to stop for a supply run. They head to the planet Pantora, referenced early in The Clone Wars and home world of Baron Papanoidia, the on-screen character played by George Lucas in Revenge of the Sith . I do like the premise of the group now having to scrounge around for basics like food and money, because they are now outlaws of the ruling government of the galaxy. Their supplies don't just materialize out of n...

Friday saw the third episode of Star Wars: The Bad Batch roll out on Disney Plus. The characters we meet expands a bit from the first two episodes. As the episode opens, the group's shuttle, the Havoc Marauder, is malfunctioning in hyperspace. The shuttle gets knocked out of hyperspace, and has to crash land on a remote moon.  Omega takes center stage again, as she pesters the group to be a bigger part of the action, another consistent theme established in the first two episodes. They discover an essential part of the ship, a capacitor, needs replacing. Omega and Hunter venture out into the moon's darkness to fix the capacitor, but naturally, they are not alone, Meanwhile, we pick up the story on Kamino, where Crosshair is continuing to undergo medical procedures to enhance his inhibitor chip. The effects have clearly made him a more brutal soldier, something we see throughout the episode. Admiral Tarkin reappears, continuing his campaign to replace the clone army with conscrip...

The latest Star Wars project to hit Disney Plus is The Bad Batch, bowing on, of course, May the 4th. The show is slated for 16 episodes in its first season and comes from the same Lucasfilm Animation creative team that created The Clone Wars and Star Wars: Rebels .  The Bad Batch centers on the adventures of five genetically enhanced clonetroopers we first met in the final season of The Clone Wars: Hunter, Crosshair, Wrecker, Tech and Echo. The only familiar character in the bunch is Echo, who was presumed killed at The Citadel back in Season 3 of The Clone Wars, He was captured by Separatist forces and hard-wired into a computer. He was rescued by Anakin Skywalker and the Bad Batch during Season 7, and later joined the other four clones in this unusual group. The show's first episode opens in the final moments before Order 66 is issued, crossing over exact territory covered in S tar Wars: Revenge of the Sith as well as the Season 7 Clone Wars episode Shattered.  Jedi Master...