The High Republic: Children of the Storm: Chapter 4: Into The Occlusion Zone
What is it ? : Keeve Trennis remembers her first space walk, the feeling of loneliness, of being small and insignificant, but she remembers that her master, Sskeer was there and got her through it and made her feel safe.
In the current day she is in a space suit fighting Nihil sabotage droids attempting to destroy the Ataraxia which has arrived in Nihil space. Inside Ceret is reactivating one of Lourna Dee's droids, and sends a signal to the droids outside, telling them a flotilla of Jedi Cruisers have arrived, so the droids leave to deal with this greater threat.
Keeve boards the ship, but they don't know where to look for Sskeer, so Ceret uses the force to compell Dee to speak, but Terec and Keeve object to this as it's torture, so Keeve physically stops Ceret from doing it.
Terec accesses the ships communication system, and finds a distress call logged from a Nihil colony under attack from a Trandoshan, so they set off for that location.
Landing, Dee comes under attack from wildlife, and the Jedi sense that the animals are afraid. As they move through the forest, Keeve comes under attack from a blob wielding a lightsaber, and she curses, only to be scolded by the blob, which turns out to be Ugor Jedi Archivist OrbaLin. Dee comments that she thought she killed the sanctimonious blob in the head, only for OrbaLin to point out she is an ignoramus, as she didn't realise he doesn't have a head to shoot him in, and he slithered away from the enviroment suit he used to occupy to rescue other Jedi at the fall of the Starlight Beacon.
He takes them to another Jedi, the Latero, Goonral Monshi, who is heavily wounded tells them that they only survived because of Sskeer, but also that he was the one that wounded him. He currently is at the temple in the middle of the forest, but there are Nihil Jedi hunters and Nameless here as well searching for Sskeer.
Keeve and Dee head for the temple to get Sskeer, while Ceret and Terec take OrbaLin and Goonral Monshi back to the ship, which they discover has been sabotaged in their absence.
Entering the temple, they find Sskeer standing inside, but the way he looks causes Keeve to exclaim "stars no" as she sees him. . . .
High Points : We were left at the end of Phase One with the impression that OrbaLin had died, we saw him shot in the head by Lourna Dee, and he collapsed to the floor unmoving. But I really like this way of bringing him back, he's a Ugor, and amorphous blob, and as he points out to Lourna Dee, he's got no head to be shot in.
A really solid and clever way of bringing the character back from the dead, by point out to us he really is a weird alien creature which isn't affected the same way as most other species.
Low Points : But they've done it, and brought Sskeer back from the dead, the character who had a fulfilling and interesting character arc through Phase 1, has had the end of that Arc destroyed. He was progressively getting more and more sick, becoming cut off from the force as time went on. Only for the Jedi to face off against the Nameless, a weaponised species who attack through your sensitivity to the Force, making Jedi totally vulnerable to them. Well all Jedi except one, the one who is cut off from the Force, and is free to save the other Jedi from these creatures which are hunting them. And he dies in that effort, a Jedi who can't use the force any more, turns out to be the most important Jedi of them all at that moment, and he makes the ultimate sacrifice to save his comrades, showing that he still upholds the values of heroism and sacrifice that the Jedi uphold.
A fantastic conclusion to the character arc, but now he's still alive, so he's back as a crippled Jedi. Or at least until they find a cure, and he's just another Jedi again.
I'm also not keen on the way they're treating Ceret and Terec, a pair of Jedi who basically share the same mind, which has been useful, and dangerous across the series. But now we see that they don't share the same mind, as one has become much darker than the other, the fear of the Nameless has shaped his actions, in a way that his identical twin's actions aren't shaped.
But they weren't just twins, they had the same mind, and could finish each others sentences, as they were thinking the same thoughts. If they explore this a bit more it has potential for being interesting, the idea that they're being driven apart by different experiences. But we're not getting that, we're just getting them treated like telepathic twins.
So what do you really think ? : The story is moving on, and we're getting glimpses of some interesting ideas, the concept that Keeve is learning that Jedi do feel fear, and that it's not feeling fear which drives you to the dark side, but acting on that fear. But unless the story slows down, and explores these ideas, instead of just throwing Sskeer back into the mix, and Jedi hunters and more Nameless, we're not going to get any value out of some genuinely great ideas they've introduced.
Final Words : So Sskeer is back, and Dee and Keeve are going to face off against him to try to bring some sense into the rampaging monster he has become, while the others face off against the Nameless and Nihil Jedi Hunters, which Ceret is having PTSD from his previous encounter with the Nameless, which could be interesting. Lets see where the series goes.
Score : 8.5/10
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