A/V STAR WARS REBELS (show's over, spoilers allowed)

Not sure if already mentioned, but the Rebels visual guide says the Empire looks down upon aliens....
I also cannot remember if this was contentious in the new continuity.

 

Even better, he beat up Boba Fett.

 

So, caught up with it finally, and I really liked it. Some thoughts:

-I especially like the way the force has been portrayed.

-I originally thought that their underworld contact was going to be one of the charming rogue types, but given how often it was mentioned that they have no idea who he is selling the disrupters to, and his jerkishness in general, I get the feeling that he will eventually be a secondary villain.

Plus, his goons are droids, so they are extra blastible.

-I wonder why more fighters don't have rear firing guns. The Phantom's worked fine.

-I am most curious about Sabine's past at this point.

-When I suggested earlier that Fulcrum might be the senator in exile, the objection was that the senator's info lead them into a trap. Now that I have seen it, I would like to point out that Fulcrum's info has also often been bad in this show

-Speaking of Fulcrum's intel: I have to admit, I thought Sabine had a good point - why should she just "have faith" in the rebels when she had faith in the Empire and that faith was betrayed. Though I do understand how vital secrecy is for a small organization facing a much larger one.

-The Imperial troop transports are better at combat than the walkers.

-Why does an imperial minister need to take a public shuttle?

 

Just not qualifying as a Jedi because of doing the whole Sith thing.

 

Hmm, interesting note. I think the only Imperial shuttlecraft we've actually seen so far have been attached to Kallus or the Inquisitor. Nothing on Lothal itself.

 

True. Kind of odd - you think a basic cargo ship/passenger transport would be fairly standard for a garrison.

 

Well, the mission to gather the disruptors is presumably (at least nominally) illegal, so maybe it was a below-the-table dealing by the Minister, thus, she needed to keep a low profile and took civilian transport? Her Stormtroopers got there somehow as well, and they weren't aboard the transport, they met her on the planet.

 

The Imperial garrisons in Commander have both Lambdas, Sentinels with a cargo module and AT-AT barges with hover-engines. I assume none of those were needed for this underhanded assignment since the Imperial Senate had ruled the disruptors to be illegal.

 

A small aside: why did no one tell me about this?



Zebulon Dak? Thall Joben?? WHAT

 

"Kill yourselves, you need to. Only one New Hope can there be..."

 

And look at the armament, "Dusat," as in " Jord Dusat," another reference to that Droids arc.

There are a lot of subtle and obscure EU references in Rebels so far, I think they've been cool. Others have been references to the old RPG, and TCW, and all sorts of great, small and background call-backs and nods.

 

Well there are Assault Shuttles for everything military

 

Any other specific ones you can name? That's pretty cool!

 

Off of the top of my head, and some are well known enough I think they've probably been mentioned to some degree, but:

The look of Zeb's species is from not JUST Ralph McQuarrie designs for Chewbacca, but the design was also used for a NPC from an old West End Games RPG campaign book called "Tatooine Manhunt" from 1988 (I still have my brother's old copy from when I was a kid). Although the character is described as short and having a long tail, his face uses the old McQuarrie design that became Zeb/ the Lasat species' look. The character was called "Puggles Trodd." He was referenced in "Star Wars Adventure Journal # 11" and named as a Lasat, Zeb's species, in 1996.

The ISB, Imperial Security Bureau, also comes from the West End Games stuff too, mentioned as far back at the Star Wars the Roleplaying Game volume 1, as do the Inquisitors, who were first mentioned in the Star Wars Sourcebook.

The bar belonging to Ithorian "Old Jho" on Lothal in Rebels, in the episode Empire Day, has the gunship of Obi-Wan's battalion, the Crumb-Bomber, as a fixture/architectural feature coming out of the front of the bar. There is also graffiti of Cad Bane and Embo in Sabine's room in the Fighter Flight episode.

 

Illegal for civilians or the local planetary government, maybe, but if the Empire wants a shipment of disruptors what's to stop them from getting their way (besides Kanan)? The Empire is pretty much above the law...not that they'd ever create a law that would restrict what sort of weapons they themselves would have access to.

 

Its properly something left over from the days of the Old Republic, where the Senate had made them illegal, the Empire never changed the law, uses them, just does not want the galaxy at large knowing they do.

 

Mmm maybe, but considering all the Republic traditions that Palpatine completely ran roughshod over on this way to power, I would think that legalizing disruptors for Imperial use would barely noticeable by comparison.

 

There's definite real-world precedent for authoritarian regimes choosing to ignore their own laws instead of just alter them. Though one major reason for that - international opinion - is admittedly missing in Star Wars.

 

Though it of course still has to deal with internal public opinion.

 

According to Wookieepedia, some of the behind the scenes info from that episode states that the Empire's off-the-books mission to acquire illegal weaponry was deliberately designed to echo the statement in A New Hope that the Imperial Senate wouldn't approve of Vader boarding Leia's ship and arresting her. By showing the Empire having to go behind the Senate's back, it was apparently suggesting that the Senate still had some unspecified degree of oversight power that was worth the hassle of avoiding, and that the mention of their disapproval in ANH therefore wasn't an entirely meaningless threat. (At least, until the Senate was abolished, of course.)

I haven't actually seen the episode guide or any interviews that might be online, so I don't know for sure, but that's what I remember reading anyway.

 

As Emperor, Palpatine can just issue an executive order to bypass that law. As long as the Senate doesn't have the will to stop him, it stays in effect.

.....not unlike situations going on today.....


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Still, I get the impression that Palpatine doesn't want to do that too often...before the Death Star is ready anyway. Don't forget that the reaction in Episode 4 to the Senate's disbandment was an officer being stunned that Palpatine would do that, even with the Death Star. Besides, he probably doesn't have the time to go around giving executive orders for everything dodgy the Empire gets up to. I am not sure the matter of a few handheld weapons is enough for Palpatine to care or even know about.


In particular, in this case from what I understand the disruptors were developed as legal anti-vehicle weapons, Kallus got the idea to use them on people in the Lasat campaign, and the results were horrifying enough that the Imperial Senate banned them.

 

In one of the EU books, the Millennium Falcon book I believe, the Imperial Senate banned planet destroying baradium bombs. An effort lead by Senator Organa, but I am sure that wouldn't stop the Empire from stockpiling baradium weapons in the Legends universe.