Star Wars: Visions Presents - The Ninth Jedi : 3 : Voice from the Past
What is it ? : The blast from the Kyber Cannon missed Kwana's Asteroid Ship, and missed the habitable planet which is in the asteroid belt around the gas giant, but the blast disturbs the orbit of the asteroids and they begin raining down onto the planet, Bibin.
The leader of Bibin, Tafflah, another student of the same master that taught Lah Kara's father and Margrave, calls for help evacuating the population from the incoming disaster.
Margrave and his crew take their ship down to the planet along with Kwana's Asteroid Ship, and they dump all the ore they've gathered but still don't have enough room aboard to get everyone out of danger as Asteroids rain down on the planet.
Back at the Kyber Weapon, Nawaan orders it fired again, but it overloads, causing a flare that Nawaan stops with the force, and one of the engineers falls, and Ethan saves them by catching them with the force. Lah Zhima tells them that even if he repairs the crystal the same will happen again.
Tafflah has gone to the hangar of the Royal Palace where there is a hidden ship that can be used, but an Asteroid causes the roof to fall in and she is left hanging over a pit.
Kwana calls for more Asteroid miners to help, and they readily come to the rescue, and Margrave wonders where Tafflah is, and is told she went to the hangar, so Margrave, Lah Kara, Homen and Kwana all go to help her. They find her about to fall, and Kara fires a grapple hook and catches her, but they fall beneath the ship as it gets blocked in and they are cut off from the others.
As Kwana works to unblock the ship, Kara and Tafflah speak, Tafflah realises that Kara has a lightsaber and asks if she is a Jedi, and is surprised when she finds out she is the daughter of Lah Zhima. She tells Kara of her fathers betrayal, how their master got involved in government and was bringing planets together in trade deals, by Zhima didn't think the Jedi should be involved with that and an argument broke out leading to Zhima killing their master in front of everyone, which caused the Jedi Order to collapse.
Kwana manages to free them, and they take the ship to the spaceport and gather the last of the survivors and flee into space as the planet continues to be pounded by the asteroids.
As they fly Kara explores the ship, and instantly finds a hidden hold, inside which are carbon frozen people, Margrave, Tafflah and Kwana arrive and recognise the frozen figures as the people their master had supposedly made bargains with, and they wonder if he just disposed of them to gain influence. They then find a security recording of the beginning of Zhima's encounter with their master, where he spoke to the master and when he walked away, the master ignites his lightsaber and attacks from behind.
They decide they need to rescue Zhima, and destroy the Kyber Cannon so plan an attack with the Asteroid ships distracting the defenders allowing them to strike . . .
High Points : An interesting way of filling in the backstory by having Tafflah and Kara trapped together, letting us hear of her fathers crime, and then almost instantly turning that around when evidence is found which shows he never attacked but was defending himself.
And while not done as well as the episode of Loki set on a planet being destroyed by asteroids, it's a lovely visual as the asteroids drop from space and crash onto the planet, destroying the spaceport and landscape around the evacuees. As the episode progresses the surface of the planet goes from being a green pleasant landscape getting bombarded, to eventually being a rocky almost volcanic landscape as more and more of it gets destroyed, the sky going from clear blue to filled with smoke, showing as this planet is destroyed in an unconventional manner.
Low Points : The storytelling seems compressed, instead of telling us the backstory one episode and subverting that backstory at some point later, it all happens in the same episode and while that makes sure we see everything while it's fresh in our minds, it does feel rushed, especially as the episode doesn't even finish there, instead having the planning for their attack packed on the end.
But the biggest annoyance for me was how easily that Kara finds the hidden hold aboard the ship, the rest of the Jedi have been on this ship many times over the years, especially when it was their masters ship, but Kara just happens to find the button which opens the stairs to the hold, and rather than just killing people, their master keeps them carbon frozen in the hold, along with a convenient piece of security footage showing he is the bad guy and Zhima appears to be innocent, even though he died in the fight with Zhima, so couldn't have left the recording here.
So what do you really think ? : An enjoyable episode, the backdrop of rescuing the population of Bibin is exciting, and that Tafflah needs rescuing as part of that keeps the tension up, visuals in the series continue to be excellent, and we're getting more revealed of the backstory which does seem to be interesting. Not everything the main characters believed seems to be true, and there might be more to come.
Final Words : It looks as if my speculation that Nawaan might not be a total bad guy makes more sense, calling Zhima his master, when Zhima actually fought against his own master who seems to have been fairly Dark Side. Could Nawaan actually be trying to forge his own version of the Jedi, because he saw the evil in the Jedi Master Reno Tsutara and sees that as being evidence of the Jedi Order being corrupt? Whatever he's doing, Zhima doesn't seem dead set against it, and Zhima doesn't seem to be Dark Side. It's interesting, and the mystery might carry me through the rest of the series.
Score : 8/10
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