Star Wars: Visions Presents - The Ninth Jedi : 8 : The Ninth Jedi
What is it ? : The Jedi use one of Nawaams Troop Transports to land on his ship, and we see that Gennoh's body is aboard hooked up to a support system.
The Giant Kyber Crystal is loaded into the Kyber Cannon, and the Jedi begin fighting their way through Nawaams droids, but Zhima says he is going for Nawaam so the others should stop the Kyber Cannon from firing. The time it takes them is going to be too long, so they order Kwana's asteroid ships to smash into the engines to disable the vessel, which they do with the pilots ejecting just in time in lifepods.
With its engines disabled it begins to fall out of orbit, and is ordered to make an emergency landing on the surface of the planet. Once landed Nawaam orders the Kyber Cannon to be prepared for firing to take out the enemy fleet, he is warned that it will also take out his fleet, but he decides he doesn't care and when he hears the Jedi have arrived at the Kyber Cannon he leaves the bridge to deal with the intruders himself.
On his way he is intercepted by Zhima and the two fight, and as Zhima's blade flares, Nawaam demands that he show him all he is capable of.
The Jedi hear footsteps approaching through a blast door and when the force is used to push it open, Nawaam enters the chamber. Kara says she will deal with him, sobbing at the loss of her father as Nawaam boasts he will kill them all just as he killed Zhima.
Kara and Nawaam fight at incredible speed, with Nawaam attacking Ethan and Kara sprinting and blocking his blow before their fight leads them back to the corridor and Kara uses the force to close the door behind them.
As the other Jedi try to disable the Kyber Cannon, Kara and Nawaam fight on the surface of the vessel, Kara tells Nawaam she is sorry he was just a child when he took this path with no one to guide him, she tells him that he has been trying to empty his heart but inside it was the child he was, and that is not nothing.
The Jedi decide to destroy the Kyber Crystal as it's the only way to stop the cannon from firing, even though it is something Margrave devoted his life to protecting. The hunter fires his blaster at it, and the crystal magnifies the blast into one that smashes into the fleet above and destroys an asteroid.
As they fight, Kara slices through Nawaam, but both are confused as he doesn't seem to be hurt. Kara hears her fathers voice telling her that she didn't want to kill anyone ever again, and her lightsaber changes colour to green.
The Jedi discover than hitting the Kyber Crystal with their lightsabers causes it to chip, and they begin smashing it as it begins its final charging and we see the hyperspace hole being generated into front of it and at the fleet.
Nawaam questions why Kara would abandon her nothingness for the way of the Jedi, that the Jedi cannot even protect their own cause, but she says the saber is just showing what is in her heart. She explains that his path of destruction is evil, but he says unless you embrace both you are lost, and his saber changes colour to red.
In rage he attacks her, but she hits him with a flurry of blows and he collapses dropping his lightsaber as Kara sheds tears for her father.
Despite all the damage they've done, the Kyber Crystal is mainly intact and 99-99 shows them that the weapon is nearly ready to fire.
Nawaam sees a red force ghost of himself, and he asks it what happened, and it shows him that Kara's desire for not killing meant she was instinctively de-activating her lightsaber before it hit him every time which is why he still lives, but his eyes close and he lays still.
With the ready to fire, Ethan strikes it one last time and the crystal shatters and is fired out into space, igniting the ring around the planet and destroying the weapon. Nawaams crew hear the weapon is destroyed and Nawaam presumably killed by the Jedi so they flee.
As Kara looks up at the ring glowing like a lightsaber, her comlink crackles and her father congratulates her, and he explains that Nawaams heart wasn't as empty as he believed as he did the same thing as Kara, instinctively deactivating his lightsaber and not hurting Zhima.
As some point later we see the various Jedi, Ethan, The Hunter, Homen, Kwana, Tafflah, and Dundai all wearing spiffy new Jedi Robes as they are joined by Kara, and the force ghost of Margrave around a table, making 8 Jedi.
In a holding cell, Zhima approaches Nawaam giving him a lightsaber and the screen fades to black as we hear it's blade ignite. . .
High Points : I don't even know. It still looks pretty, the Kyber Cannon firing crystals into the ring of the planet and it becoming like a giant lightsaber is pretty even if it doesn't make any sense. While the story is mainly Kara's, at least the other Jedi get a part to play (except for Tafflah and Dundai who aren't more than glimpsed this episode.
The early tactic to beat Nawaams ship is also well done, using the asteroid ships to crash into Nawaams ship and disable its engines, even though the Kyber Cannon can fire from anywhere, so it landing on the surface is no problem for Nawaam, it's a good idea and works out.
Low Points : Lets start off with something very minor, how do they hear Nawaams footsteps through a blast door as he approaches the Kyber Cannon chamber? It's an air tight blast door weighing many tonnes, but still they hear him walking down the corridor.
But more than that, none of this really makes sense, especially the whole deactivating the blades when striking someone because they don't want to kill their opponent. If the blade is off then it does no damage, so why does Zhima fall down? And more importantly why does he decide to lay there while his daughter fights Nawaam pretending to be dead? Why does Nawaam fall down and play dead as well? Why does he see a force ghost of himself, a red version? Did Kara beat the evil out of him, killing only the evil? Is that an option now?
And the colour changing Lightsabers seem to make little sense, it was dramatic for Kara's blade to turn red previously to allow her to see how far she has fallen, but why only now does it change to green? Is Nawaam so dumb that he really needs a lecture from Kara to realise that firing a cannon which will destroy a massive wedge out of the galaxy is actually evil? Is his belief in nothingness so weak that it just takes her pointing that out to shatter his ideals and change his heart?
I'm also very confused by the super nothingness powers, we see Zhima's saber flaring as Nawaan asks him to show him everything he's got, but what does this actually do? Nawaan and Kara move so fast they blur across the screen, Nawaan catches up with Ethan in seconds when Ethan has been running across the room for around half a minute, and then Kara not only catches up, but parries Nawaan's blade. How does nothingness do this, the Dark Side is supposed to be quicker and more easy, the Light Side you can centre yourself and defend yourself from attacks instinctively, but nothingness gives you super speed?
So what do you really think ? : This episode is a mess, it's so desperate to keep everyone alive that everything crumbles into nonsense. Zhima plays dead for no reason, Nawaam plays dead for no reason, we even see that Gennoh is on life support on board their shuttle his shatter body hooked up and his single eye still staring out helplessly.
And the final moment, where we're being led to believe that Nawaam is actually the Ninth Jedi, because Margraves force ghost counts, and Zhima is still staying only a sabersmith, it's just silly, although I do like their funky new Jedi Robes, white with red trim.
Final Words : I was tempted above to ask why the lightsabers being used (not ignited) to hammer the giant Kyber Crystal caused it to crack, when the Hunter Blaster Pistol did not. But I'm guessing something about the Kyber Crystals within the sabers caused it to happen, crystal effecting crystal.
I'm also disappointed by the lack of resolution of the Zhima storyline. We see him kill his master Tsutara and everyone assumes he's gone evil. We then see it from a different angle as we see him confronting Tsutara and his master attacking him from behind, so he defends himself and kills his master, and all the other Jedi forgive him. Kara also finds a load of people in Carbon Freeze, people Tsutara put there. But the people still remain in Carbon Freeze, no one has put any effort at all into setting them free (Han Solo was set free at the push of a button, so presumably it's that easy), and they've been forgotten about since, and we've never had any storyline as to what Tsutara was actually up to and why he felt it necessary to attack his own student from behind apart from the danger of discovery, but it would help us if we knew discovery of what? What about this made Zhima think he wasn't a Jedi anymore, or what made him full of nothingness, to make his saber go silver?
The Ninth Jedi had an interesting story going on, which it put aside for a very conventional Jedi vs Dark Sider story, which is even supported by the lightsabers of Kara and Nawaam going Green and Red.
And final thought after I've written all of the above. In episode 7 we see Margrave playing with Kara when she is a child while Zhima works on lightsabers. So when did Margrave come to terms with Zhima? When did he discover that he hadn't murdered their master, that it had been in self defence? When did he trust him enough to make the lightsabers for the new Jedi Order? Why didn't he tell anyone else leaving them to believe that Zhima had gone Dark Side? And why did he tell Kara none of this, "By the way, everyone else thinks your dad murdered our Jedi Master leading to the collapse of the Jedi Order, and I know differently but haven't told anyone because shucks who has the time for all that!"
The one flashback in episode 7 throws a massive hole in the entire plot.
Score : 5.5/10
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