Star Wars: Young Jedi Adventures: Season 3: Story 12: Harvester Madness
What is it ? : The Young Jedi are on Andraven visiting Raxlo who shows them his new harvester that he built himself. They ask what happened to his old harvester, he tells them that he sold it but becomes a little cagey, showing them the powerful music system he has installed on his new harvester.
Kai gets a message from Gumar on his comlink that a large vehicle is heading to the Wellagrin habitat and asks them to check it out, and when they ask Raxlo to help he makes an excuse.
At the Wellagrin habitat they discover Raxlo's old harvester being piloted by Bulcha the Hutt who is harvesting tenga rocks and doesn't care that he's harming the Wellagrin. They contact Raxlo who confirms he sold the Harvester to Bulcha because he was scared of him, but tells them how to disable the Harvester.
They climb on top and cut some wires which stop the harvester from moving, and when they confront Bulcha they mention Raxlo's new harvester, so uses a claw inside the harvester to wrap the Young Jedi and he leaves.
He confronts Raxlo asking him if he told the Young Jedi how to disable the Harvester, something Raxlo denies, but his droid reminds him of what he did catching him in his lie, so Bulcha takes the new harvester.
Kai manages to use his comlink to call Raxlo for help, and he arrives to cut them free. They ask him if his new harvester has a similar weakness, but he tells them no, and suggests repairing the old harvester to use against the new one.
Bulcha begins harvesting tenga rocks with the new harvester when the Young Jedi and Raxlo confront him in the old harvester, the two fire their mining lasers at each other, but the new harvester destroys the old ones laser leaving them without a way of attacking. But Raxlo remembers the old one can fly, so uses it to ram the new one from the side and distracts Bulcha by using his remote control for the music system, and topples the new harvester onto its side.
Bulcha storms off, telling Raxlo he'll never do business with him again, and Raxlo cuddles a young Wellagrin proclaiming he'll help defend Andraven from now on. . . .
High Points : The animators have done a fine job of showing Raxlo's Harvesters to be different designs across all three versions he's owned, the 2nd version didn't seem to last too long, we only really got to see Raxlo using it during the Battle of Tenoo.
They also do a fine job of making Raxlo behave in a suspicious fashion early in the story, glancing away from them, holding things out of sight behind his back, all to show he's worried about something, which turns out to be that he was bullied into selling his harvester to Bulcha. Although even then he manages to make enough money from the deal to quickly build an improved harvester.
Low Points : Really all Bulcha does wrong in the story is breaking environmental rules in harvesting in a proscribed zone, and for that the Young Jedi attack him and sabotage his vehicle. Is Young Jedi Adventures coming down on environmentalist groups who sabotage industrial equipment?
The Wellagrin seem to need a lot of different environments to live in, as in previous episodes the Young Jedi had to lead the Wellagrin over the mountains between seasonal grounds, and in had to defend the yatching grounds high in the mountains from Raxlo. Pretty much every time we see the Wellagrin, there's a new piece of land that is vital to their survival which needs protected.
So what do you really think ? : A nice little story with the return of Raxlo, who has been redeemed during the series, going from an adversary to an ally while retaining his love of profit, he's the good capitalist of the show.
Final Words : The moral of this episode is, protect the environment by any means possible, even by sabotage and destroying the equipment of corporate interests. Or at least that's what I got from the story.
Score : 8/10
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