Star Wars: Young Jedi Adventures: Season 1: Story 12: Forest Defenders
What is it ? : The Young Jedi head to the world of Federian to see the trees there which are among the strongest woods in the galaxy, arriving they find that a large section of the forest has been cut down.
As they try to work out what has happened they meet some small animals called skriffle, which live in the trees so many have lost their homes.
The Jedi spot tracks leading away from the area and follow them to a massive machine which is cutting the trees down. Knocking at the door they are met by a droid who tells them that Raxlo of the Raxlo Corporation is too busy to meet with them, so they distract the droid with RJ-83 telling him a story. Inside they locate Raxlo and tell him that his actions are destroying the homes of the skriffle. He doesn't care and using a machine for tying logs together to tie the Young Jedi together and throws them out of his machine.
They race back to the home of the skriffle and mount a defence of their trees by knocking rocks in front of Raxlo's machine, but it just smashes through them. So the Jedi work together, using the force to cause the machines cutting arms to smash into one another destroying them.
Raxlo admits defeat and agrees to leave Federian, and the Young Jedi realise that Forests aren't just made of trees, they're made up of the many animals that live within them . . . .
High Points : I really liked the look of this one, Raxlo's Machine looks pretty darn cool, and I enjoyed the kids using their droid to distract the other droid by having "droid" chat.
Low Points : I know having adults fight kids wouldn't seem right, especially in a kids show. But having kids be more aware of the environment and caring more about animals I think would work pretty well, we adults can become pretty callous sometimes. So the use of child characters for everything isn't working for me particularly well. I could get away with the pirate, Taborr, being the same age as the young Jedi, but the fact that Raxlo who runs a corporation is apparently a kid as well just seems silly.
Having him as the kid of the owner of the company, having to prove something to his dad by making a profit from logging on Federian, would work, having him be an adult that learns a lesson from the kids about the innate value of the enviroment would work. But a 6 year old CEO is just silly, and I'd guess kids would find it odd too.
So what do you really think ? : Again for a series aimed at young kids, this works, there's action, a bit of story and a moral. The save the environment message was a bit simplified, but it's a young audience and the episodes aren't that long, so I'll let that slide. It's ending up to be a pretty fun little show.
Final Words : Even though the wood is supposed to be extremely hard, and an excellent building material. I did wonder on how economical it would be to move thousands tonnes of lumber between worlds, as wood could be valuable, but interstellar transport valuable?
Score : 8/10
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