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Star Wars: Visions: Season 3: Episode 4: The Bounty Hunters

What is it ? : A renegade member of a bounty hunting syndicate, Sevn, is being hunted by her syndicate, whose ships open fire on hers, she fights them off with the help of her droid, IV-A4, a medical droid who has assassin droid protocols installed. These protocols are conflicting with his medical programming, but Sevn has promised that she is looking for a way to get them removed.
They use seismic charges to defeat the pursuing vessel, but their ship is damaged, so they set down at a nearby planet, but are caught in a tractor beam as they land. They are met by a droid who takes them to the owner of a corporation, Jin-Sim Canbelon, who wants to hire her for a mission to catch saboteurs against his corporation, offering a full repair of their ship, hefty payment, and the offer of a permanent job.
As they are served drinks, Sevn notices that the attendant is wearing a collar, but Jin-Sim tells her it is just issued to employees to grant them access to secure areas and monitor their health.
Sevn and IV-A4 take a speeder out into the countryside, and track down a meeting of the targets that Jin-Sim wants, and they capture the target. But as they take the target away she speaks to them, explaining that the employees are all slaves and they just managed to escape, but the main targets sister is still there. Sevn realises it was the attendant that served them, and remembers being freed from a slave collar by a Jedi in her past.
But IV-A4 wants them to complete their mission, as it will give them enough money to get the assassin protocols removed, but abandons Sevn as she is swayed by the targets words.
Sevn takes the targets back to Jin-Sim, as IV-A4 boards their fully repaired ship, and finds recorded messages to Sevn concerning the removal of his assassin protocols, and how she is spending so much money to get it done.
Jin-Sim is pleased to be presented with the prisoners, and Sevn demands he frees the slaves, and when he refuses she frees her prisoners who are armed. Jin-Sim is defended by a couple of Super Battle Droids, and enters combat himself in a massive droideka modified to be a battle suit.
They fight, but she cannot breach the shields of the droideka, and even the weapons of her ship cannot do it when IV-A4 returns to help her. He jumps out of the ship to distract Jin-Sim, allowing Sevn to slide an explosive through the shield and disable the droideka.
Jin-Sim pulls out a controller, which he tells Sevn he has activated the explosive charges in all the slave collars, unless she shoots IV-A4, which she does when IV-A4 urges her to do it. Jin-Sim goes to kill Sevn, but IV-A4 leaps up, revealing she only shot his medical personality, and he's now using his assassination one, capturing Jin-Sim, and they take his controller to free all the slaves, and the targets are reunited with their families.
Later, Sevn and IV-A4 are flying away from the planet to go get him repaired, when they are ambushed by more syndicate vessels, alerted to their presence by Jin-Sim. . . .

High Points : Again a really solid episode, the story of an ex-slave, who recognises exactly what is going on with Jin-Sim's corporation, so is easily swayed by her target when confronted with the truth. In a galaxy with extensive slavery, you can't expect everyone to be fine with slavery, as many will have very personal relationships with it. I've always liked the idea that despite everything else he did, Darth Vader is responsible for the reason we don't see any slaves in the original movies or sequels, as freeing the slaves was a major point to him in justifying everything else.
Also IV-A4 being a medical droid with assassination protocols really works, when they disable their targets, he then reports on their injuries, recommending bed rest. It's a lovely dual personality thing, and his transformation between the two personalities as he extends extra arms and his face becomes aggressive, is brilliant.

Low Points : My main problem with the episode, I've almost totally ignored in my summary. There's a repeated subplot about Sevn being angry with the Jedi, and as the episode goes on, we see a young injured Sevn in a burning building with dead bounty hunters as a Jedi fights their way through. Then Sevn trying to shoot the Jedi, except she pulls their blaster away using the force. And then the Jedi handing them back their blaster, and freeing Sevn from a slave collar.
While this does provide the motivation for Sevn wanting to free slaves and recognising the evil of slavery. The fact that Sevn continually blames the Jedi for something, until we finally discover that Sevn blames the Jedi for her being hunted by the Syndicate . . . which is only happening as she freed her from slavery? So Sevn would have preferred to remain a slave, just so the syndicate wouldn't be hunting her to make her a slave again? So why not just let them capture her and make her a slave again?
There's a solid idea in there somewhere, but I just feel it doesn't really work the way it's portrayed.

So what do you really think ? : A really enjoyable episode, and it's definitely set up for a sequel, although that said the obvious next step is to remove IV-A4's assassination protocols, which provides one of the high points of the story.

Final Words : Of all the subjects that I thought that Visions would confront, slavery definitely wasn't one of them, and bravo to them for doing it. It's a part of the Star Wars universe (at least in the prequels), and needs some exploring. Excellent stuff.

Score : 9/10

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