Star Wars: Young Jedi Adventures: Season 1: Story 47: The Starship Show
What is it ? : The Young Jedi are attending a Starship Show with Nash Durango, where different starships are shown off. While admiring the various vessels, Nash's voice is recognised by her Uncle, Luggs Neelo, who is showing off his own ship, a XD-7 Speedster, the fastest ship in the galaxy.
Nash wants to fly it, but Luggs won't let anyone even sit in it keeping it locked, as it is to be admired rather than flown. Watching from a distance is Draiven Bosh, the Moldwarp thief who likes adding things to his collection, and he wants the XD-7.
He performs a gambling distraction which the Young Jedi, Nash and Luggs watch while Draiven's droids steal the ship, loading it onto their ship, before Draiven ends the show and they fly off.
Lugg's realises his ship is missing, and reveals that it has a tracking beacon on it, so they board the Firehawk and give chase, tracking Draiven down to a hangar on an asteroid. Inside he is making a deal with Eunice Ino, an Ugnaught who will unlock the ship for him.
But the Young Jedi sneak into the hangar, with plans to hook up the XD-7 and tow it away. Lugg's knocks a container with the cable, alerting everyone to their presence and a fight breaks out, and the tow cable gets bitten in half by one of Eunice's Massiffs.
With no other choice, Lugg's board the ship to fly it out of the hangar, but Draiven tries to close the doors, and although the ship gets out, it scraps through the doors.
Later back at the Starship show, Lugg's boastfully shows off the scraps as showing that ships should be flown and not just be looked at, and he allows Nash to take a test flight, looping the ship through the skies above the show. . . .
High Points : While the episode is absolutely fine, there's not much I can really rave about in this one, I suppose there's some starships in it of designs we've not really seen before and that's quite nice. But everything else is just servicable, there's no great moments of characterisation, no sparky dialogue, no interesting revelations.
It's perfectly fine, but there's not much more to it than that.
Low Points : Nash's Uncle, Luggs Neelo, is really quite annoying. He is portrayed as kind of stupid, a bumbling clumsy person who is constantly the source of problems. He knocks the container which alerts Draiven, he refuses to fly his ship for much of the episode as he thinks it's too precious, etc.
If you need the people around your heroes to be absolute buffoons to make them look good in comparison, then your heroes just aren't that good.
So what do you really think ? : I was looking forward to this one, as a Starship show offers new ships to stat out, good times. But there's really only a couple of ships mentioned and there's nothing much to the plot or action to entertain.
The message of this episode seems to be aimed at toy collectors (Uncle Luggs learning that the Starfighter is to be used not just looked at), the people who buy up Star Wars toys and keep them pristine in their boxes, that "things are bought to be used or played with, not just kept and admired". Which seems like a bit of a disparaging way of looking at the people who buy a lot of your stuff. But maybe I'm looking too deeply for a kids show.
Final Words : I've been unsure throughout Young Jedi Adventures if the kids have real lightsabers, or some kind of weaker version so they don't hurt one another (Training Lightsabers?). Most of the time they seem as if they're just normal lightsabers, but in this episode the Young Jedi fight against Draiven and his allies who are armed with bits of metal pipe they just pick up, and the lightsabers are parried effectively with them. So I'm leaning back towards them being weak training lightsabers.
Score : 8/10
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