Star Wars: The Bad Batch: Season 2 Episode 6: Tribe
What is it ? : The Batch are on a space station trading with a group of criminal droids, they are selling the droids a sequence of Chain Codes which Tech has faked. While Tech, Hunter and Wrecker are dealing with the droids, Echo and Omega feel something is wrong about the place so Omega explores, discovering a Wookiee youth being shocked by some of the droids, so she helps free him.
As combat begins, the Batch join in the rescue as the droids are threatening Omega, and the Wookiee doesn't trust the clones, before revealing that this is Gungi, the Jedi Padawan who once travelled to Ilum under the tutorage of Ahsoka Tano and Professor Huyang. Omega calms him down, and after retrieving his lightsaber he sees no other option so joined them aboard the Havok Marauder.
With no Jedi left, Gungi has no place in the galaxy, so the Batch decide to take him back to Kashyyyk to speak with a tribe of Wookiees they know to try to find out where Gungi was from originally.
They land on the planet, and discover that the village they know has been destroyed by Imperial Tanks, so follow the tracks to find out if there are any survivors, encountering some Trandoshan slavers working for the Empire. They rescue a Wookiee after a fight with the Trandoshans, and he leads them to a nearby settelment.
However Imperial forces discover the site of the fight against the Trandoshans and notice marks on one of the tanks from a lightsaber, so the remaining Trandoshans decide to act quickly as the bounty will be massive.
The Wookiees discover there is an attack coming, so they commune with the trees and come up with a plan to ambush the Trandoshans with the aid of various jungle creatures.
The battle breaks out, and the Wookiees and Batch are easily defeating the Trandoshans, however the leader chases down Omega and Gungi with a Flamethrower (which cannot be lightsaber parried), but before he can catch them, he is surrounded by Kinrath, who web him and drag him up into the trees to consume.
In the aftermath, the leader of the Wookiees and Hunter watch Gungi and Omega sitting together, and discuss how they are not getting the chance to be children, and that perhaps sometime they will find a safe place, a long way away from war. . . .
High Points : The droids at the beginning were interesting, a group of gangster droids were something I thought was going to prove pretty fun, but they're not really the focus of the episode. It was also fairly nice to see the return of Gungi, although another surviving Jedi seems like the last thing we need, also nice to see the Kinrath from the Knights of the Old Republic game become canon once more with their introduction into an animated series.
But perhaps my favourite moment was the death of the Trandoshan leader, which for a kids series I thought was pretty brave, as he is dragged off covered in webs by the spiderlike Kinrath, obviously to be consumed, perhaps even alive. His screams as he is carried away are pretty haunting when you think about his presumed fate.
Low Points : Well, apart from yet another of the large group of surviving Jedi, one of the super confusing bits for me was when the Batch reach the village of the Wookiees they were friends with. The village is destroyed, so they examine the ground and spot marks of the Imperial Tanks that destroyed it. The REPULSORLIFT tanks have left marks on the ground, but worse than that (because lets assume they crushed what was beneath them with their weight, showing they weren't simple speeders), the IMPERIAL Tanks which have been given to the Trandoshans are just Trade Federation AAT's with Imperial markings on them.
So the Empire is using captured Confederacy equipment now? When was this introduced? Or is it just a matter that the animators didn't want to create a new asset for the show, so just reused models they'd already got. It smells of laziness to me.
So what do you really think ? : Unless this is the start of the Batch looking for a refuge for Omega (and other children) far away from the war, this episode is pretty pointless, with the message, War is Bad, being the main takeaway from it.
And I really have to question, the Empire knows there's a Jedi on Kashyyyk now. And the Trandoshans dispatched to capture him are now missing presumed dead. How long before Vader or an Inquisitor (if they yet exist) turns up to deal with this Jedi? I would assume, since Yoda was free about "Good relations with the Wookiees, I have.", that Palpatine or Vader might assume that the Jedi who destroyed a bunch of Trandoshans in Tanks might well be one of their major targets to eliminate so turn quite a bit of their energy towards Kashyyyk. (Hats off the writers if this indeed is to be a later plot point).
Final Words : The episode was fine, far better than the previous one, but there wasn't much interesting going on, everything really felt on autopilot.
Score : 7.5/10
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