13.2 Planet of Evil

The Doctor and Sarah are strapped onto slabs in a morgue. Salamar, the deranged space captain pushes a button, and they slide off into space.

The story has gone to some trouble to set this up. Earlier in the episode, crewmen Morelli was gruesomely killed by one of the red glowing anti-matter ghosts that has infested the space ship. He was given a decent, if perfunctory, funeral. His body was placed on one of the mortuary conveyor belts; a tape recording of the last rites ("Morestran Orthodox") was played, and his body slid out into space. So we know what the conveyor belt is for and what is going to happen when the button is pressed.

Quite why Captain Salamar is going to all this trouble is not clear. Even if he sincerely believes that the Doctor and Sarah are killing off his crew, he hasn't bothered with anything like a court martial or a trial, so why we would he follow the protocols of an execution? (I could never figure out why pirates made captives walk the plank rather than just chucking them overboard.) It is, however, a stonking excuse for a cliffhanger; morbid and sadistic, putting our heroes in mortal danger at the end of Episode 3, but giving them a sporting chance of escaping at the beginning of episode 4.

It is like one of those elaborate death traps that villains used to leave Adam West in on alternate Saturdays. No, no, no: you can't leave Blast Off Basil like that! 

*

Planet of Evil is different from Terror of the Zygons. If you half close your eyes and squint, you could almost mistake it for science fiction. 

I sometimes talk about "conceptual" fiction, particularly when trying to justify a liking for badly written sci fi. It can certainly be enjoyable to have big ideas presented to us, even if the story in which those big ideas turn up is very weak indeed. But in truth, an idea has to be very big indeed to justify a bad story; or else the bad story has to be so overflowing with big ideas that it makes you dizzy. If you are Philip K. Dick or Clifford D. Simak you might be able to pull it off. If you are Louis Marx, not so much. 

But still: Planet of Evil has got ideas in it, in a way that Terror of the Zygons really didn't. The Zygons and the Loch Ness Monster were plot devices. No-one was remotely interested in how a semi-organic spaceship was meant to work; or what it would feel like if respected members of your community kept turning out to be big orange space aliens. The spaceship, the dinosaur, and the shape changers were only there to provide a pretext for the Doctor and Sarah to get captured and escape over and over again. The Anti-Matter Universe and the Anti-Matter Ghost, on the other hand, are what Planet of Evil is about. The idea of their being such a monster is supposed to be exciting and interesting enough to carry the story. There's certainly no other reason to be interested in it.

People sometimes compare Planet of Evil with Forbidden Planet. And certainly it is about a mad or maddish scientist who is the sole survivor of a previous expedition; and certainly it is about the military expedition which comes to rescue him; and certainly everyone is menaced by an incorporeal entity; and certainly they both have the word "planet" in the title. On the other hand, Professor Sorenson shows no sign of having a beautiful daughter or a robot companion. And the core psychological dynamic from the movie -- that the monster is a projection of the scientist's psyche -- is entirely absent in the Doctor Who version. The Planet is simply Evil and very much not a part of Sorenson's Id. 

Doctor Who villains are very often jumped up tax-men and civil servants; would-be fascists or school-yard bullies. Rarely do we get this kind of antagonist: one who is simply evil; simply alien; simply Other. 

We are supposedly on the very last planet in the universe. But it looks like every other planet the Doctor has ever visited. As a matter of fact, it looks very much like Skaro; a dense alien jungle full of trees and creepers. For those of us with long memories, Sarah's trek back to the TARDIS to retrieve the "spectromix" recalls Susan's race across the petrified forest to get the anti-radiation gloves.

It may be thirty thousand years in the future; but the science base looks very like a Portakabin, and Prof Sorenson's room looks like a study bedroom in a provincial university. The crew of the rescue ship from Morestran look like every other spaceman we have ever encountered. With their tunics and their futuristic shoulder pads, they could perfectly well be mistaken for Thals. None of them is called Tarrant. 

When we say that Zeta Major looks like an alien jungle; we mean, of course, that it looks like a BBC mock up of an alien jungle. Terror of the Zygons was filmed in Sussex and in London and in a quarry; Planet of Evil is completely studio-bound. But that artificiality tends to work in the story's favour. We know from the very beginning that what we are watching is a play; so we accept it as such. The stage set represents the jungle, rather well. We aren't inclined to say "it's only a back drop" any more than we would say that Danger Mouse is "only a drawing" or Virgil Tracey is "only a puppet." 

In Episode 2, the Doctor is chased through the jungle by a remote-controlled spy-drone. It is perfectly clear that the drone is "only" a model: it is obviously being moved across a back-projection of Tom Baker running through the jungle set, and rarely leaves the bottom left hand corner of the screen. But it never draws attention to its own ridiculousness. It conveys what it needs to convey and we accept it as such. Technically it isn't that much better than the Skarasen; but our imagination accepts a model drone moving in front of a back-projected jungle more easily than it accepts a glove puppet dinosaur moving across a London street scene. 

This is a science fiction story which is completely uninterested in science. It appears that if you travel a sufficient distance, the universe has a literal edge; and that if you travel beyond that point -- which you can do, but shouldn't -- you end up in a different universe. Space is like a flat earth you could theoretically sail over the edge of. But on the planet Zeta Minor there is a great big pit; and in that pit lives a monster made and that monster comes from the Anti-Matter universe and is made of Anti-Matter. So the other universe is more like a parallel world, entered through a dimensional portal. But what Sorenson is taking from the planet are lumps of crystal which contain sufficient energy to reboot the Sun and solve the energy crisis. This is much more like anti-matter in a classic scientific or science fictional sense: a limitless, but very dangerous, source of energy. The edge of space; a parallel universe; dilithium crystals: the term "anti-matter" does for all three.

Of course, Doctor Who is a show that can't always remember that "galaxies", "solar systems" and "constellations" are three different things. So the writer could just be throwing vaguely sciencey terms at us with no particular interest in what they mean. But the ambiguity seems to be a part of the poetics of the story. "From the beginning of time, the other universe has existed side by side with the known universe" explains the Doctor. "Each is the antithesis of the other. You call it nothing, a word to cover ignorance, then centuries ago scientists invented another word for it. Antimatter, they called it". 

Anti-matter crystals are scientifically dangerous. They might blow up. But they are also taboo: one of those pesky secrets that man was not meant to know. The creature from the pit will not let the scientists leave with his crystals. It drags the ship back to the planet's surface when they try to go home. It starts to kill the human interlopers -- rather gruesomely by Doctor Who standards; draining their moisture and leaving them as pre-decayed corpses. 

This plot doesn't leave much space for anything very interesting to happen. The Anti-Matter ghost manifests and scares everyone; Sorenson ingests anti-matter and turns into a monster; crew members get freeze-dried. There is none of the revelation and escalation which characterized Ark in Space, and none of the B movie sugar coating which helps Terror of the Zygons slip down easily.  

The rescue spaceship is unfortunately commanded by Inspector Javert. When the Doctor and Sarah arrive, they are found standing over the bodies of one of the dead crewmen. The Captain spends the rest of the story convinced that they are responsible for all the deaths. There is no suggestion that the Anti-Matter is making the captain unhinged; the Morestrans are apparently in the habit of putting out-and-out psychopaths in charge of their ships. Whenever the story flags, Salamar orders the Doctor and Sarah to be arrested, imprisoned or executed. 

Tom Baker is still playing "the serious Doctor" and "the Shakespearean Doctor". He quotes Hamlet at Sarah and claims to have known the Bard personally. He has not yet fallen into silliness and clowning; he takes his hat and his scarf off  allowing him to look less crazy and more Bohemian and boyish and heroic. 

At the end of episode 2 he falls into the pit where the monster lives. Or rather; we see him begin to fall; and then the picture freezes. Some cliffhanger shows used to use freeze-frame a lot, but it was quite rare in Doctor Who. I don't know why it is used here. Are we being allowed to hope that the Doctor might somehow learn to fly before episode 3? Or is the moment he cross the threshold into the other universe best left to our imaginations?

Sarah spends several minutes at the beginning of the next episode assuming that the Doctor is dead and feeling quite put-out about it; but after a few scenes he bounds back in. We never see him fall down the hole and we never see him climb out of it. There is a cryptic exchange with Sarah 

"What happened?"

"It's difficult to explain." 

"Well try. What did you do? Enter another universe and have a chat with it?" 

"I communicated." 

"I communicated". The mythical heart of the story takes place off stage. The Doctor makes a promise to the anti-matter creature; and he keeps it. He returns the anti-matter crystals to the pit. A foolish scientist has stolen the forbidden fruit and been punished; a wise scientist makes a promise to return it; and the monster's rage is placated.

"You and I are scientists" says the Doctor "We buy our right to experiment at the cost of total responsibility." 

Tom Baker's Doctor is a different being from Jon Pertwee's. He's an alien; but more than an alien, he's a middle point between the familiar and the wholly Other: a person who can talk to the forces of darkness on their own terms. A kind of space deity. There is going to be a lot more of this as the season progresses.

I'm Andrew. I like God, Doctor Who, Star Wars, Wagner, folk-music and Spider-Man, not necessarily in that order. I have no political opinions of any kind.

If you are enjoying my essays, please consider supporting me on Patreon (by pledging $1 for each essay)

I know it is a bit late, but I thought it was about time I reviewed the new Doctor's second season.

13.1 "Terror of the Zygons"

Beginnings 

Literally the first line of the story is: "Can you no send a couple of haggises over? The chef disnay ken anything aboot food..." The cast convene in a pub; the Brigadier is wearing a kilt; the landlord won't stop playing the bagpipes. Tom Baker comes on wearing a tartan scarf and a tam-o-shanter. Harry and Sarah are, rather charmingly, wearing his normal scarf and hat.  

The story was, of course, filmed in Sussex. 

If one wanted to defend certain other stories of this era -- stories, for the sake of argument, which make fun of Chinese people -- then this is the context in which to put them. No-one is trying to make a point about Scotland or whip up hatred against the Celts. But we are in a world where TV is made out of stock situations and stock characters. If this is Scotland, then there must be moors, haggis, pipes, mist, lairds and kilts. And Lochs. 

An oil rig is mysteriously destroyed. The local Laird doesn't hold with the idea of drilling for oil, d'ye'ken? The bag-piping landlord holds forth about how naught but bad luck comes to those who venture onto the Moors. A survivor from the oil rig is washed ashore; he is about to tell Harry that the rig was destroyed by a... by a... when he is shot by a man named Caber. In full highland dress. 

Set up, set up, set up: not all of it will pay off as the story proceeds. But this is part of a game we play; every year at this time, when the nights start to draw in. There are first episodes, and there are middle episodes, and there are last episodes. Each has its own unique pleasures.

We think of Doctor Who as being entry-level sci-fi, in direct competition with Space: 1999. But this has more in common with the spooky, "hauntalogical" children's shows of the era; Children of the Stones and Tom's Midnight Garden. Pubs and moors and dark mutterings about the environment and pointed conversations between grown-ups in pubs. No-one drinks. In Children of the Stones, everyone drinks, all the time. It's the language of gothic horror. It starts with a scene from a disaster movie. But it's really about Aliens. It's always really about Aliens. 

Sarah-Jane is interviewing the landlord who talks about his clan chief and not going out on ye moors after dark...and we cut away, and there is a rubbery reptilian claw, and we are watching from the viewpoint of something orange and rubbery with scary eyes. The orange rubbery thing is spying on Sarah and Angus. Through the eyes of the stags-head mounted on the pub wall. 

Was Doctor Who always this weird? Could we tell how silly it was, or were we willfully not looking? When Terror of the Zygons was shown in Australia, a baffled broadcaster dubbed in laugh tracks.

The script is still not really being written with Tom Baker in mind. He is still mostly a Boffin, pouring plaster of paris into the wreckage of the oil rig to establish that it was destroyed by something with giant teeth. The characterization still comes mainly from Baker's facial expressions and from his physical presence. In the offices of the energy company in glowers against a wall; looking incongruous and sinister; like the cover of an annual or a BBC icon. He lies on his back and pretends to be asleep while the Brigadier briefs him about the attacks on the oil rigs. Only when the Brig talks about men being killed does he take the hat away from his face and grin. "When do we start?" 

He's only playing at being a cynic and the Brigadier knows he's only playing. But then Angus is only playing at being Scottish and the Aliens are only playing at being Aliens. Doctor Who, almost for the last time, is a great big silly game. 

Middles

There are Aliens. The Aliens want to conquer the earth. The Aliens have bred a gigantic lizard which lives on the moors and eats oil rigs. And the Aliens can shape shift into exact facsimiles of any human captive. This is why the sinister Laird is so sinister.

They are proper Aliens. They find human beings disgusting. They look like giant rubber sea horses with suckers. Their space ship interior is as globuley and rubbery and organic as they are, although the doors are literally made of tin foil. They talk English among themselves and measure distances in earth miles. (This is 1975 and earth miles are increasingly being replaced by earth kilometers.) You might think that the idea of organic technology would be developed in the story; but the designer and the writer don't seem to have talked to each other. The outside of the space ship is just a spaceship. 

Still; the writer cares enough to put in some hand-waves. The giant lizard was transported to earth in embryonic form; the Aliens feed off its "lactic fluid". So: milk eating aliens who's ultimate weapon is a giant reptilian cow. Harry expresses surprise that they are mammals -- one wonders if that was a late ad lib to lampshade an obvious absurdity in the script. It doesn't matter. The Aliens are the point. 

There are cliffhangers. Gas -- Scotch mist, very possibly -- seeps under the doors of the tavern and knocks everyone out. The Doctor and Sarah-Jane are stuck in a decompression chamber while the evil nurse sucks their air away. Sarah-Jane is menaced by an Alien in Harry's form, wielding a pitchfork in a barn. The solutions are uniformly weak. Everyone just kind of wakes up after the nerve gas attack. The Doctor hypnotizes Sarah-Jane so she doesn't need to breathe. Harry somehow breaks his connection with the Alien, which turns back into its original form. And melts. It doesn't matter: the cliffhangers are the point.

By the end of episode 2 a stunt man in a Tom Baker costume is tripping gaily through the heather, pursued by a giant lactating alien lizard. He runs through the moor. He jumps, rather dramatically, off a bank. He stumbles. And we cut away to the monster; part dragon, part dinosaur, part, admittedly, glove puppet. 

The actual physical monster isn't quite as bad as you may have heard. The design is okay; the animation entirely absent. The director avoids putting the model and the actor in a single shot; so we see Tom running away from an unseen monster; and we cut away to close-ups of a giant reptilian head. Last episode was mock Gothic. This episode, while not remotely scary, manages to feel quite nightmarish. A nurse who is not a nurse. A friend trying to kill you with a pitchfork. Running headlong away from a monster you can't see. 

And so we see the point of the Caledonian setting. The Aliens' spaceship is at the bottom of a lake. The glove puppet embryonic milk secreting plesiosaur is the Loch Ness Monster. The aliens have been marooned on earth for hundreds of years. Their own planet has been destroyed. More of them are on the way. That is why they want to conquer the earth. Their giant lizard has been around for hundreds of years too. That is why legends about the monster of Loch Ness go back to medieval times. At least someone cares enough to wave their hands a bit.

There could very well have been a Doctor Who story about the Loch Ness monster. A science team is studying the Loch in an old boat; the boat is attacked by a monster; the monster is chased back to its lair; the lair turns out to be a crashed flying saucer, and then -- surprise reveal -- it's an alien beastie who was brought to earth to give the invading forces a source of dairy produce. And that may, in fact, have been the jumping off point for Terror of the Zygons. But it isn't the story we ended up with. The story we have is not about the Loch Ness Monster. It's a story about some shape-shifting Aliens and their ultimate weapon. Loch Ness is just some tartan window dressing. 

Endings

If the BBC was doing, say, the Mayor of Casterbridge or Pride and Prejudice, you kind of needed to see every episode in order for it to make sense. There were no videos or DVDs although admittedly Austen and Hardy's novelizations were pretty good. So there were usually two chances to see each episode: a prime time showing on BBC 1 and a late night repeat on BBC 2. And each week an announcer read out a summary of last week's episode in a posh voice. Doctor Who had no repeats and no "previously..." voice-over. The best you could hope for was a ten word listing in the Radio Times. ("The Doctor is a Zygon captive. Can he avert the terrible threat that faces London?") 

So the episodes have to stand alone: and on the whole they do. 

EPISODE 1: Mysterious Scottish stuff happening in Scotland. Final shot provides solution to mystery: it's aliens!

EPISODE 2: There are Aliens in Scotland! Aliens chase and are chased by the Brigadier around Scottish town. People are captured, fall into death traps, and escape.

EPISODE 3: There are still Aliens in Scotland! Aliens continue to chase and be chased by the Brigadier around Scottish town. People continue to be captured, fall into death traps, and escape. 

EPISODE 4: Big science fiction climax, explosions, soldiers. Alien plot to destroy London. Alien plot to destroy London thwarted. 

They certainly hoped that if you watched the Doctor being chased by a glove puppet in Episode 2, you'd want to come back for Episode 3 and find out how he escaped. (Harry gets out of his cell on the Alien spaceship and switches off the glove puppet by remote control.) But if you missed it and came back a week later, you could pick up the thread perfectly well. The Aliens are still being Alien but now the Doctor is their hostage. The vagueness and the perfunctoriness of the Aliens' plan is less a bug than a feature. What is the solution to the mysteries in episode 1? Aliens. Why are the aliens swimming up the Thames towards London? To conquer the world. Why do they want to conquer the world? Because they are Aliens. If you've ever seen Doctor Who before, you don't need a catch-up.

And the Alien plan is really very vague and very perfunctory indeed. They are destroying oil rigs because the employees of the energy company might see the Monster crossing the moor. No, wait a minute, they are actually destroying the oil rigs as a dry run for conquering the world, and as a show of strength. The real plan is to use the Monster to destroy an energy conference in London. Once the Monster destroys the conference than everyone will hand control of the Earth over to the Aliens, and the Aliens will terraform the Earth to suit their requirements. Using humans as slave labour. Obviously. 

The final episode is a 1950s flying saucer B movie run at double speed. Spaceships blow up; soldiers run backwards and forwards and bark urgent messages into field telephones. Bystanders scream; police sirens whine; giant dinosaurs rampage unconvincingly around the city. The Doctor and the chief Alien fight, quite dramatically, in a cellar: the Doctor gets hold of the doohickey which controls the Nessie and she swims peaceably back to Inverness. 

Cleverer people than me have argued that this is an anti-Who story; a repudiation of what has gone before; affectionately putting an end to alien invasions and noble UNIT soldier boys once and for all. I don't believe this for one second. This is just what Doctor Who was like. Tom Baker's hints at self-deprecation don't amount to a full-on deconstruction of the series.

But it is true that Terror of the Zygons is almost the last traditional Doctor Who story. You could have imagined Jon Pertwee or Patrick Troughton or at a pinch William Hartnell playing Invasion of the Body Snatchers in a wee Scotch glen. But next week the Hinchcliff Era will begin in earnest. Doctor Who will start to turn into a new thing; a different thing. Younger fans will scarcely believe the sense of betrayal that the old guard felt at the time; the extent to which Robert Holmes became every fan's bogeyman. But in a sense they were not wrong. This is where the series they grew up with ended. This is where the series most of us grew up with began.

I'm Andrew. I like God, Doctor Who, Star Wars, Wagner, folk-music and Spider-Man, not necessarily in that order. I have no hardly any political opinions of any kind.

If you are enjoying my essays, please consider supporting me on Patreon (by pledging $1 for each essay)

I wouldn't join any political party which would accept me as a member

If I asked arkela why she wants to keep the Cubs going, she would say "Because it gets kids away from the TV and playing in the open air. Because Baden Powell's ideas are still relevant in the modern world. Because the boys who still come seem to enjoy it."

If I ask the vicar why he wants to save the Church, he would say "Because the word of God is still the word of God whether we are getting congregations of six or six hundred."

If you asked me "Why do you want to save the Labour Party" I would reply "Because I still believe in socialism, because I think socialism is the fairest way of running the country, because I want someone to put the case for socialism at every election."

And you would reply "You are part of the problem, not part of the solution." And you would not be wrong.

I gather there are two main contenders in the current round of displacement activity: a leftie one, who is popular with the people who prefer leftie ones, and a centrist one, who is popular with the people who prefer centrist ones. I understand the centrist one looks more male and white and therefore electable; but that he used to be a human rights lawyer, which is a bomb waiting to go off in the popular press. I understand they are both Zionists; I don't know if anyone has asked them if they are Catholic Jewish Atheists or Protestant Jewish Atheists.

Any talk about which of them is potential prime ministerial material is about as meaningful as discussing who will host the victory party when Bristol Rovers win the F.A Cup. The next Labour leader is never going to be prime minister; nor is the one after that. The next Labour leader with a shot at becoming P.M. is currently revising for his politics GCSE.

The purpose of the Labour Party is to form a Labour government. The purpose of forming a Labour Government is that if there are no Labour government then the Labour Party has no purpose. All talk of socialism and ideals and principles is meaningless flim flam if you aren't in government. Tony Blair has made that very clear: the question is not "is it right to support the rights of trans people"; the question is "will supporting the rights of trans people help or hinder the long march to a Labour Government." And he is not wrong.

If people think your fizzy drink is too sweet; then you have two options. Either you make it less sweet; or you fill the airwaves with subliminal advertising for sweet things; and advertising spots that say that sweet things are what the cool kids drink; and blind taste tests to show that people prefer sweet soda when they actually try it.

If people think your newspaper is too hard to read, then you have two options. Either you dumb it down, or you have an advertising campaign that tells people that all the girls prefer smart guys; and that in this day and age you need to read a serious paper to be informed; and that influences and opinion-formers prefer broadsheets over tabloids.

If people won't vote for your party, then you must either change and become the sort of party people will vote for; or else stay the same and persuade people that they ought to want to vote for the kind of party you already are.

But trying to persuade people to vote for your party is patronizing and insulting and suggests that you think you know better than them. It is tantamount to saying "If the people voted for the wrong Prime Minister then we should elect a new people." It is that kind of thinking that leads to walls along the Mexico boarder and sea bridges over ammunition dumps. In the real world, you have to find out what kind of political party people want to elect; and become that kind of political party.

We know the kind of political party people want to elect. They told us that very, very clearly in December. They want to elect right-wing, racist, nationalist, populist party, led by a rich, posh, white male. In order to form a government in 2029, Labour needs a posh, white, populist, racist leader: ideally someone even posher, even whiter, even more populist and even more racist than Boris Johnson.

Some people will not find such a leader to their personal taste: but there is an easy answer to that. Would you rather have a leader who you personally find congenial; or would you rather win an election?

So: whether the Leftist One or the Centrist One ends up as leader of the opposition, they will have only one job. They will need to do what Kinnock did and indeed what Momentum tried to do from the other direction. They need to rebuild the party machinery to ensure that they are succeeded by the kind of person that the people would vote for. An electable leader. A Labour Johnson or even a Labour Trump.

They will need, at all costs, to keep people like me  out of the party.  This could be achieved by a series of internal purges and loyalty oaths; or simply by becoming the kind of party that people like me would never, ever join. They need to change the rules so that party members are never again allowed to choose the party leader. They need to make a great big symbolic gesture to show the world that this is no longer Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party, or even Red Ed's. Tony Blair famously tore up clause 4. Enthusiastically supporting the "Yes" side in Priti Patel's 2022 referendum to restore capital punishment would go a very long way to drive undesirables out of the party, while speaking to the legitimate concerns of ordinary working class voters in constituencies where there hasn't been a murder in decades. Of course, there would need to be a few sops so that old fashioned reformists can persuade themselves that a Labour populist racist is better than a Tory populist racist. Nursery school places often hit the spot, I am told.

"But why would you want to save the Labour party on those terms?"

Peace, child. You don't understand.

I'm Andrew. I like God, Doctor Who, Star Wars, Wagner, folk-music and Spider-Man, not necessarily in that order. I have no hardly any political opinions of any kind.

If you are enjoying my essays, please consider supporting me on Patreon (by pledging $1 for each essay)

Teaser

The Skywalker Saga IV

There was a moment, the third time I saw the Rise of Skywalker. The Dark Side Jedi and the Light Side Jedi were standing on the wreckage of the second Death Star on Endor fighting with lightsabers. And a little voice in my head says "This is not a Star Wars movie any more."

This is, of course, absurd. The film -- the whole sequel trilogy -- is very much like a Star Wars movie. If anything, too much like one.

A list of references and call backs to the original trilogy would be longer than the actual movie.In Episode IV we saw Luke practicing his lightsaber: trying to hit something called a remote; wearing a helmet with a blast shield which obscures his vision. It is made pretty clear that the helmet and the remote are things which Ben found on the Millennium Falcon and re-purposed for Jedi Training. The radio version says explicitly that Han used the remote for target practice. Certainly, Ben didn't bring them with him from Tatooine. In Episode IX, we see Rey running through a Jedi training programme, wearing that exact same helmet; being zapped in the leg by the exact same remote. (Jedi Knights are clearly related to English P.E teachers, not averse to using little zaps and stings to make sure you are doing your best. Luke even raps Rey's knuckles in the Last Jedi.) Luke and Leia are wearing the same helmets in the flashback to her training. This is not very logical; but it works artistically. It draws a mental line from the rec room on the Millennium Falcon to the Resistance Base on Ajan Kloss.

When Rey crashes her stolen TIE Fighter on Ahch-To, Luke kindly lends her his old X-Wing; which is referred to as Red One. It has been underwater for the past decade. Luke levitates it out of the sea, just like Yoda did on Dagobah, with the same serene expression on his face. (There is no rust in the Star Wars universe.) Rey flies off wearing Luke's helmet from A New Hope, which in turn looked a lot like Anakin's helmet from Phantom Menace.

The trilogy is held together by recurrent themes and leitmotifs, just as surely as John Williams score is.

But.

*

During the first half of the movie, our heroes visit Kijimi, a cyberpunk planet where Poe Dameron used to hang out. He meets up with a lady called, and if there's any giggling there'll be trouble, Zorii Bliss. During a pause in the action, they have a chat. They are sitting on the edge of a building. They don't say all that much. They were evidently lovers at one time. Poe wants Zorii to join the Resistance; and Zorri wants Poe to come away and be a scoundrel with her. In the end she gives him a stolen First Order Plot Device which will unlock the next level for him. But the tone of it -- just two characters having quite a long conversation -- is different from anything we have seen before.

It happens again on Endor. This time it is Finn who has made friends with Jannah, who turns out to be one of a group of Stormtroopers who deserted from the First Order when they were ordered to open fire on civilians. It is insinuated that the Force made this happen; and that it was the Force which made Finn run away from the First Order in Episode VII.

Perhaps that is what the title meant. Perhaps the Force had "awakened" in the sense that it was moving goodies all over the galaxy to stop working for the bad guys. Perhaps that's the underlying theme of the trilogy: Poe in the first movie; the boy with the mop in the second; thousands and thousands of ships in this one. A terrible piece of editing means that we hear Finn telling Rey that he has something very important to tell her; but we never find out what he was going to say. The easy answer is "Rey, I love you, but we literally have only sixteen hours to save the universe." But the more interesting suggestion is "I, like you, have Force powers. Will you teach me?"

Jannah and Zorrii are fairly marginal characters. They don't turn the wheels of the plot any more than Admiral Ackbar or Wedge Antilles did. And yet they get to talk, at length. They come across far more as characters than Rose Tico, who had a much more important role in Last Jedi.

The Prequels happen in a world where nobles and queens perform arias. The Trilogy is a world of comic strip heroes who shout cliches with exclamation marks on the end. Bu the Sequels take place in a world of human beings -- or at any rate, believable movie characters -- who have a past and a future and an off stage existence.

It has been said that the Trilogy is constructed like a silent movie. You could easily look at the pictures and infer: "Luke hesitates. He wants to go with Ben but also feels responsible to his uncle" without actually hearing the words. The Prequels would, of course, be greatly improved if you couldn't hear any of the dialogue. Rise of Skywalker moves directly away from this: quite pointedly so in the opening scenes where everyone keeps talking at once. The speech bubbles have been replaced by dialogue. The comic book characters have morphed into people.

*

George Lucas originally planned to make a series of twelve Star Wars movies. And they were going to be set over hundreds of years; but they would all have been focused on the Skywalker Clan.

That makes a certain amount of sense, given that part of the original premise (back when the project was still called The Star Wars) was that Luke was from the Starkiller family, one of twelve different Jedi Clans. Lucas may not have known the identity of Darth Vader while working on the first film; but he always envisaged a generational story. The Skywalkers were always going to be very important people.

Some people find the whole idea of a story about a clan or a family distinctly problematic. The idea that heroes become heroes because of their heritage smacks of royalty, nobility and privilege. You could even draw racial conclusions from the idea that you are a goodie because your daddy was a goodie and your daddy is a goodie because his father was... That is why the boy-with-the-mop scene was so radical in the Last Jedi.

Then Lucas changed his mind, and started to talk in terms of a trilogy of trilogies; three films about Anakin Skywalker; three films about Luke Skywalker; and three films about the next generation of Skywalkers. The dashing young heroes from one trilogy could become the ageing mentors of the next.

Then Lucas changed his mind, and said that the original trilogy told the whole saga of the redemption of Darth Vader. And once you have bought into the Joseph Campbell refit which occurred between episode four and five then I think he was right. The unmasking of the father is a very beautiful thing. Once Luke and Anakin were reconciled the story was over. It was a nice joke to say that the first film was the fourth episode, but there was no need for episodes one, two and three to exist.

Then Lucas changed his mind, kind of. Star Wars was a six part story after all. His three prequels didn't change the central premise; but they rehearsed the established back-story on the screen. We learned more about the Republic and the Emperor and the Jedi and the Clone Wars and how Vader fell into darkness. But that only made Return of the Jedi more definitively the end of the story. Six parts, two trilogies, all the extended universe novels you could eat, but no more movies.

Then Lucas changed his mind and authorized Walt Disney to create three further installments of the Saga, with minimal input from him. The story which started with Phantom Menace would end in the Rise of Skywalker; but that is only one story in the universe. We already have two floating chapters, the very good Rogue One and the really not at all bad Solo; but other movies will follow. Possibly a new trilogy or a new trilogy of trilogies.

"Where will it all end?" asked Threepio in the 1977 Making of Star Wars TV documentary. "Perhaps, Artoo" he replied "It will never end."

So the sacred Trilogy is now only one third of a nine part saga; and that nine part saga is only one element in a saga that that includes cartoon shows, comic books, novels and a theme park. And that saga is only one small thread in the history of the Galaxy. It is one tale; a big one, certainly, one that takes forty years to play out and ends in the most apocalyptic of apocalyptic wars. But it is not all that is happening.

The epilogue tells us very clearly where the Sequels stand in relation to the Prequels. The final seconds of Rise of Skywalker take us back to the beginning. If we really believed that Star Wars was a nine part story beginning with Phantom menace, then Rey would have gone back to Threed and laid a flower on the grave of Amidala; or else she would have gone back to Tatooine and found the slave hovel where Anakin was born. But we all know that Star Wars really begins in the Lars moisture farm; with Aunt Beru calling out "Luke! Luke!" The final scene doffs a cap, not to the multi-part saga, but to our Trilogy.

Rey buries Luke's lightsaber on Tatooine. She buries Leia's as well, in a place she never visited and which had no particular significance for her. (She did go to Tatooine briefly to rescue Han from Jabba.) I will lay you to rest in the place your grandpa lived for a while, and where your brother was fostered. Well, okay. Leia's childhood home exploded a long time ago.

Going back to Tatooine means going back to the beginning...to where the films started...and crucially, conceptually, to the image of two suns. Twin suns. Luke looking to the horizon; Rey walking off into the sunset.

Rey takes on the name Skywalker. After Luke, and I suppose Leia; identifying them as her parents. Anakin was lost when he took on the name Vader; I suppose Rey taking on the name Skywalker somehow reverses his fall. And although Rey buries the lightsabers, she now has one of her own. Making your own lightsaber is the mark of completing Jedi training. Rey is totally a Jedi, and so...

...and so what? The idea that the Jedi would end and be replaced by something different has been overwritten. The hints of a Jedi Reformation, in which everything comes down to your personal relationship with the Force, seems to have gone away as well. There has to be a Jedi Order with Jedi Books and Jedi Temples. Is Rey going to start the whole thing up again? Will she avoid the mistakes that Luke made; or will one of her students fall to the Dark Side? Does Palpatine have other living descendants?

Cinema audiences are more savvy then they used to be. Cinema audiences grew up with Star Wars. Cinema audiences read Wikipedia. When the prequels came out, serious movie critics found the idea that Episode One came out after Episode Four so esoteric as to be almost impenetrable. But everyone understands that Rogue One takes place "just before Star Wars" and Solo takes place "after episode III but before episode IV" and that even the theme park has a place in the official chronology. Not that weird an idea, truthfully. If you were making a Wild West visitor attraction, then "which state are we meant to be in?" and "what year is this?" would be perfectly good questions. 

Do you know what I would like?

I would like Disney to decide that Rise of Skywalker is the terminal point in the Star Wars saga. New films and cartoons can take place anywhere within the I - IX timeline; but nothing canonical will take place outside it. The Star Wars universe will get thicker: we will see more and more of the Old Republic, the Rebellion Era and the Resistance. But it will never get longer. We will never see the New Republic. We will never see Rey's students fall to the Dark Side. We will never see the return of the return of the Sith.

That is what I would like.

I'm Andrew. I like God, Doctor Who, Star Wars, Wagner, folk-music and Spider-Man, not necessarily in that order. I have no political opinions of any kind.

If you are enjoying my essays, please consider supporting me on Patreon (by pledging $1 for each essay)

The Skywalker Saga - III

Star Wars fans can never forgive the prequels. 

Everyone agrees that they were disappointing. But they were always going to be disappointing. We didn't really want to know what the Old Republic looked like. 

But we have made disliking the prequels into a bit of a fetish. We have turned Phantom Menace into a code-word for a bad film; hounding, we now know, at least one of the actors almost to the point of suicide. It's hardly possible now to go and watch the film and perceive its good points and bad points. It wasn't that great. But it was never as bad as all that. 

We can never forgive them. But we have, strangely, accepted the prequels. And the bigger fans we are, the more accepting of them we tend to be. 

If you're a casual movie goer, then the Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith are movies you saw nearly twenty years ago. You may even own the DVDs. But if you are a proper Star Wars fan; then you have also seen and enjoyed the Clone Wars cartoon. You are looking forward to Ewan McGreggor (as opposed to Alec Guiness) reprising the role of Ben Kenobi. And you can hardly deny then when Darth Maul appeared in the the penultimate scene  of Solo, you knew who he was. 

We take it for granted that the Emperor was called Palpatine; that the center of the Empire was called Coruscant; that trainee Jedi were called padwan; that the headquarters of the Jedi Knights was known as the temple; that the Emperor and Darth Vader were part of a secret organisation of Dark Side enthusiasts called "the Sith" and that all Sith take the title Darth. None of that was in the Trilogy. It comes out of the prequels that we all hate so much. 

Wiseacres tell us that the prequels do not form part of their "head canon" and that they are hardly more than "fan fic". But they define our understanding of Star Wars in a way that Caravan of Courage simply does not. You are free to say "I don't care about the Star Wars Universe; I only care about the original movies, or indeed the original movie." But if you are interested in the Star Wars Universe than you are interested in the prequels. 

Since the prequels were created by George Lucas, and since they represent his own long-cherished back-story they are the very opposite of fan-fiction. But if you accept the metric I proposed in my previous essay, they are Stories of the Second Kind: generated from within an established narrative; meaningful only if you are already familiar with the milieu. "How did Obi-Wan first meet Anakin Skywalker?" and "How did Palpatine turn Anakin to the Dark Side?" are without meaning to anyone without a passing knowledge of Star Wars. There will always be a small number of mainstream critics who claim not to understand them.

Episodes VII, VIII and IX are, in that sense, much less fannish that episode I, II and III. They are pitched at people who know who the Star Wars characters are, but who don't care all that much. Finn, Rey and Poe are new characters -- a hot young pilot, a reformed Storm Trooper, a scavenger with Force Powers. Only Kylo Renn really emerges from the matrix of the previous movies: he is Han Solo and Princess Leia's son, named after Obi-Wan Kenobi, trained in the Force by Luke Skywalker. But that back story only emerges gradually: he is introduced to us merely as a Sinister Bad Guy in Black Armour. By the time his identity is revealed, even a complete newbie can understand that "the guy in the scary armour is the son of the old guy who used to own the spaceship." For two films, Snoke was pointedly not "the Emperor's Son" or "a new Sith Apprentice": he was just "the big hologram bad guy." In the third film we find that he was in some sense created by the Emperor; but by that stage it no longer matters. 

What some fans wanted; and what Marvel Comics continues to serve up in an endlessly diminishing monthly cycle, was simply "What Luke and Han did next." And what fans wanted Luke and Han to have done next is same old same old: flying lightsabers down trenches and smuggling Ewoks for Jabba the Hutt, for ever and ever, may the Force be with you. 

The Last Jedi decided that "what Luke did next" was something unexpected and surprising. He ran away to Craggy Island and denounced the Jedi. Some of us regard this as an unexpected development. Some of us regard it as a personal betrayal. 

*

How should we watch the Rise of Skywalker? 

Does it still occupy that center ground between movie serials and fairy tales that Lucas laid claim to in 1976? Or is it primarily a new chapter in the history of the Galaxy? 

When we staggered out of the multiplex at 3AM, what did we think he had seen? Rey doing a back-flip into the path of an oncoming TIE-Fighter? Finn leading an actual cavalry charge on the back of a Star Destroyer? More lightsaber duels than you can shake a pink glowy stick at? Or the conclusion of the big war that began with the Naboo trade dispute? The end of the thousand year Sith conspiracy? A hint as to the future of the Jedi Knights? 

Well, all of the above, obviously. But which did you care about? Were you one of those who was thinking "Enough with all this silly Indiana Jones stuff: tell us the big secret of the Sith"? Or were you one of those who thought "Can we please get away from this second rate Harry Potter end of level guardian and have some more spaceships, please"? 

Star Wars is poly-vocal, and always has been. The iconic Cantina in A New Hope is logically a seaman's tavern; a place to hire a ship or sign on for a voyage; but it is manifestly also a cowboy Saloon and Han Solo is clearly a cowboy. But it's a cowboy tavern where the mysterious of Knight feel quite at home. The Rise of Skywalker understands this. The scene in which Finn and Poe tease Chewbacca about cheating at chess does not quite belong in the same movie as the scene where a shriveled old Dark Lord asks his young victim to perform a human sacrifice. The intense psychological relationship between Rey and Kylo is tonally different from the action scenes that Poe and Finn wise crack their way through. ("Is this a bad time?" asks Poe, as the two of them are up before a military firing squad.) 

Poe Dameron is no Han Solo, and Oscar Isaac is no Harrison Ford. But Kijimi -- more than anything in Solo -- is the kind of world that Han Solo would have swaggered through; dark and mechanical and poor and yet at the same time, very, very cool. In Blade Runner or Neuromancer it's the whole universe; in Star Wars, it's just a place the heroes pass through. Babu Frik -- the pint-sized mechanic who rewires Threepio's brain -- is not a Jawa; but his droid shop is in the same visual space as their Sandcrawler.

Star Wars is space ships and lightsabers and Freudian father figures; but it's also greasy droid foundries and sleazy spice runners. And Rise of Skywalker has, belatedly, remembered this. 

*

Does Rise of Skywalker make sense? Is Rise of Skywalker supposed to make sense? Does it matter whether Rise of Skywalker makes sense or not? 

Where did all those thousands and thousands of Sith on the planet Exegis come from? I thought Sithism was a secret teaching; passed from one single master to one single apprentice for thousands of years? 

It can be explained. Anything can be explained. Yoda lied. Yoda was mistaken. The crowd are not Sith, but Sith supporters. The death of Vader ended the rule of Two. Palpatine has spent the years since his death on a recruiting drive. But it isn't explained. No-one says "But I thought only two there were, a master and apprentice..." Are we supposed to remember? To care? 

Vader thought that technology was relatively unimportant compared with the Dark Side of the Force, but the Emperor appears to have spent the last thirty years doing nothing but amassing technology. Now he has invented from nowhere a rule which says that if, and only if, Rey kills him, then his spirit will jump into her. Mind-body transfer has never been hinted at as a Sith-power before. (Surviving physical death seems to be a specific Jedi power; we were once told it was an esoteric teaching of the Whills.) Suddenly, without warning or foreshadowing, Rey and Kylo are something called a dyad in the Force. They are especially powerful and the Emperor especially needs them, or especially fears them...because I say so. That's why. 

Are we supposed to listen to all this stuff, take notes and resolve to make sense of it further down the line? Or do we listen to it, note that it makes very little sense, and conclude that "this is not my Star Wars" and that Disney have destroyed our childhoods? If we are an entirely different kind of person, do we say that all this kerr-razy science fiction is nonsense and always has been? Or do we half-listen, and hear "mystical waffle; plot device; McGuffin; cool sounding Forcey Stuff" and just kind of accept that the Force will work as the Force will work and there's no doing anything about it? 

It is incredibly cool that nine movies and a thousand generations come down to one girl representing all the Jedi and one wizened old man representing all the Sith, facing off in a cave. It's as good a way of ending the saga as I can think of. If the plot-scaffolding required to bring us to this point is a little shaky, maybe I can live with that. 

"You mean Palpatine could have brought down the Rebel Fleet with Force Lightening at any time?" 

"No, not at any time. Only when it was funny." 

*

There are nagging questions, and they nag a bit harder than they used to. It is necessary for the Plot that there should be a traitor in the First Order. If there is a traitor, then it has to be someone; and if it has to be someone, then it is pretty cool for it to be Hux. But it is hard to work out a process by which he could have become a traitor. The animosity between Hux and his Stormtroopers and Renn and his Dark Side could have become a rift that split the First Order. I could see Hux attempting a coup or Renn having him assassinated. But the idea that Hux would betray the First Order to the Resistance just to spite Renn fits in with nothing we have been told about his personality up to this point. 

I am sure that this kind of thing would have been a problem in Star Wars and the Empire Strikes Back if we had thought about it. But we didn't. The Empire was never more than and endless succession of Storm Troopers for Han Solo to shoot and and endless succession of admirals for Darth Vader to strangle. So we didn't do a lot of thinking. Once the characters start having names you start expecting their actions to make more sense.

But not too much. The moment when Hux identifies himself as the mole is cool; as is the moment when Withnail shoots him in cold blood. It's only after we've left the cinema that we think "Wait a minute..." Can First Order officers really just execute each other on the spur of the moment? The idea that Withnail was a follower of Palpatine in the days of Empire comes from nowhere, stays around for exactly one scene, and then goes away again. It doesn't seem to make any difference to anything. 

*

Don't mention the Jedi books. 

They are quite a big deal in the Last Jedi. Luke is going to destroy them; Yoda steps in an actually does the deed; but then it turns out that Rey has preserved them. Luke thinks that burning the books would end the Jedi order once and for all: they are that important. Yoda seems to think that getting rid of them allows the Jedi to move forward into a new phase. But at the end of the film it turns out that Rey preserved them. This is implied to be quite a significant twist. The Resistance has everything it needs: the Jedi can continue. 

I suppose I expected Rey to use the books to become a Jedi. "Teach Yourself How To Be a Guardian of Peace and Justice"; "The Dummies Guide to Force Mastery". One could have imagined a film in which Rey is trying to learn how to be a Jedi from the dry old texts while some other Jedi -- Luke's ghost, perhaps -- seeks to move beyond the written words and create a new, more vibrant tradition. The fourth trilogy could then have been about the theological struggle between Orthodox and Reformed Jedism. 

But the books turn out to be of no significance whatsoever. Rey is seen reading them, briefly, and they contain a clue as to the whereabouts of the Sith Mcguffin. But any other plot device would have served just as well. It is painfully obvious that "Rey saves the books" was a very, very late addition to the Last Jedi and Abrams has had to think up something to do with it. 

Rey doesn't need the books to learn how to be a Jedi. Leia teaches her. 

Ah, Leia. This is very sad. Obviously, Carrie Fisher was meant to have a much bigger part in the movie. The various bits of hi-tech jiggery-pokery with unused footage and voice-overs enables them to fake her presence fairly well. If you didn't know the circumstances you would easily believe that Carrie was present, but with a reduced role. Knowing what we do, it is painfully obvious that Abrams was left with a few out-takes of Carrie Fisher saying "Yes, I think that is the case" and "No, we are not going to do it like that" and had to build complete scenes around them. (Do actors film "noddies" -- out of context reaction shots -- in the way that TV talk-show hosts do?) 

The core plot idea survives. Leia, Kylo Renn's mum, calls him back from the Dark Side; but she exhausts her strength and dies in the process. It is not a bad resolution: Luke saved Anakin; Leia saves Ben; family love is more powerful than the Dark Side. But the revelation that Leia was a Jedi all along is painfully underdeveloped. 

This isn't just because of Fisher's absence. I can't help thinking that if Leia was a fully trained Jedi who had nipped off to Ilum and created her own lightsaber; and if she had then rejected her calling, like Ahsoka... I can't help feeling that it would have been foreshadowed. Some talk about whether she would go back to her former calling when Luke dies; some moments of introspection; some flashbacks. Or, else, the revelation that Leia was a Jedi would have been presented as a big secret that is dramatically revealed. But it is presented as something to be taken for granted; something we already knew. When Luke hands Leia's lightsaber to Rey, I didn't think "Aha!" I thought "Whoah...did I miss a bit?" 

Leia as an actual Jedi with an actual lightsaber is another of those things which is just a bit too obvious. A bit too much what I would have put into a Star Wars role-playing game. Yes, in Return of the Jedi Luke says that she will one day learn to use the Force like he can: but the idea that she positively decided that she would be more use as a politician is more interesting. And more like Leia. 

And anyway: isn't it a rather major plot-point that Jedi have to be celibate? 

*

Lando Carlrission was interesting for exactly fourty five minutes in 1980: an ex-friend and an ex-enemy of Han Solo, gone straight, turned traitor. "I'm sorry. I had no choice, they arrived right before you did."He doesn't get any actual scenes in Return of the Jedi; he's just a warm body; a generic rebel keeping the Falcon's command seat warm while Han is being cooked by the Ewoks. The younger version we meet in Solo is quite a bit more interesting; and I deeply enjoyed the Marvel Comics version who is perpetually rushing into adventures while dictating the text of his own autobiography. 

He pops up in the second act of Rise of Skywalker, shoots a storm trooper with a bow and arrow, passes on the next clue in the treasure hunt, and is gone. He comes back for the final final final battle, taking the Falcon and impressively recruiting a fleet of some thousands of ships from all round the universe in a matter of minutes. 

Even if hyper-drive is now conceived of as instantaneous cross-universe teleportation -- and if it does work like that it's hard to see why anyone would kill time playing chess during voyages -- surely it doesn't take no time at all to launch one of those big ships? And how did Lando come up with a million billion trillion volunteers in three minutes, when Leia couldn't muster a single one at the battle of Crait? 

But I was very happy with Lando's remarks about having helped Luke when he was chasing a "Jedi Hunter" across the universe. I don't know what a Jedi Hunter is, or what he was hunting decades after the last Jedi was dead. But I do like the idea that, as well as running a Jedi school and hanging out with puffins and amphibious nuns, Luke found some time to hook up with old mates and go on adventures with them. 

And that's the real trick, isn't it? All the stuff which fans wanted turns out to have happened. Han Solo spend time zipping about the universe doing dodgy deals in the Millennium Falcon. Luke took his lightsaber on as many Jedi missions as your heart desires. Leia was a padwan and then a Jedi. But all that obvious stuff happened between the movies and we can fill in the details as we wish. 

Lucas arguably spoiled The Old Republic by putting it on screen. Disney has very wisely left What Luke Did Next where it belongs; in our collective imagination.

We may eventually be able to forgive them.

I'm Andrew. I like God, Doctor Who, Star Wars, Wagner, folk-music and Spider-Man, not necessarily in that order. I have no political opinions of any kind.

If you are enjoying my essays, please consider supporting me on Patreon (by pledging $1 for each essay)

The Skywalker Saga - II

If Star Wars Episodes I - IX made up a single story, whose story would it be? 

*

Back in the day, George Lucas said that when the Saga was complete, it would be clear that the story had been told from the droids point of view. 

This could certainly be said to have been true of A New Hope. We start in the middle of a big battle between two spaceships; we focus down on two robots that the human combatants hardly notice. We keep focused on them was they end up with the SECRET PLANS of the EMPIRE'S ULTIMATE WEAPON and as they precipitate Luke's encounter with Ben Kenobi. Threepio saves everyone's life when they are trapped in the garbage masher; Artoo accompanies Luke on his final X-Wing mission. 

The droids defined Star Wars. Having robots as main characters was one of the film's unique selling points. People talked about "Star Wars robots" long before they knew what a Jedi Knight was. I remember being surprised every time I saw Threepio on the big screen He looked like a living,  walking toy; an image on a bubble gum card; a full sized Mickey Mouse at Disney World. He's a stooge, but he's a wonderful stooge, a straight man who keeps on stealing the scene. 

The droids have less and less to do in Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. They are present, but awkwardly present, in the prequels: shoe-horned in to fulfill a contractual commitment. Threepio feels like a series of cameos; Artoo like a cute, bleeping sonic screwdriver. 

But one of the nicest things about Rise of Skywalker is that Threepio gets some time in the spotlight. It feels like we've got our old buddy back, for the first time since Return of the Jedi. His presence affects the whole tone of the first half of the movie; puncturing every pompous or melodramatic exchange with a self-deprecating one-liner. And for the first time, he has agency and subjectivity. When he has to sacrifice his own life -- or at any rate his memories -- to save the Rebellion, he is allowed to volunteer; to form an opinion of his own; to say goodbye to his friends. No-one says "He is our toaster and we can take him apart if we want to." He still defers to "Master Luke" and "Mistress Rey", rather in the way Basil Brush used to talk about Mr Roy and Mr Derek. But Rey and Finn and Poe appear to treat him as a person. A person with his own foibles and weaknesses, but a member of the gang. 

Some people were very annoyed with Solo because it included a droid -- a lady droid at that -- who was actively campaigning for droid rights. I never pay any attention to anyone who uses words like "PC" and "SJW". But I did think that the L3-37 plotline risked releasing some political worms that ought really to have stayed in the can. 

I never had too much difficulty accepting a world where Luke Skywalker's farm machines had personalities and could answer him back. That's a fait accompli from the beginning. The Millennium Falcon's engine talks to Threepio; it is entirely likely that Aunt Beru's blue milk jug talks back at her. That's how this world works. You can't laugh at the Flintstones and also wonder if the American Humane association has okayed the working conditions of Wilma's vacuum cleaner. Yes, the sale of Threepio and Artoo looks a little like a slave auction; but it looks a little like a used car dealership as well. But a character like L3-37 forces us to think of droids not as "machines that can talk" but as "people who happen to have metal bodies." At which point it is hard not to say "Waa...Luke Skywalker, to a goodie, is a slave owner!" And then the whole saga falls to pieces. 

"But Artoo Deetoo and See Threepio positively want Luke to buy them" Well yes: but "a caste of slaves who by their nature want to be slaves" is a politically problematic idea in itself. Ask J.K. Rowling. And Douglas Adams demonstrated that "we have bred an animal which positively wants to be eaten" does not necessarily solve the moral difficulties about meat eating. 

Threepio's story arc addresses the question much more subtly. When we met him, he was more or less a willing slave. There was no big moment when anyone said "This is wrong!"  No story in which Threepio became radicalized. Threepio campaigning for Droid Rights is impossible to imagine; like Jeeves joining a trades union. But by the end of the series, Threepio is regarded as a person. By the audience; by the other characters; and most importantly, by himself. 

*

So: if the Skywalker Saga isn't about the droids, then whose story is it? At one time, when he was most under the influence of Joseph Campbell, George Lucas would certainly have said that it was the story of Darth Vader. For a decade he felt that the Trilogy satisfactorily told the story of the Redemption of Anakin and couldn't be expanded on. Then he -- unwisely, in some people's eyes -- decided that the older story, of the Fall of Anakin could be told as well. 

Anakin Skywalker is the one who will bring balance to the Force. Palpatine is the Sith Master who takes him as his apprentice and turns him to the Dark Side. The first trilogy ends with the birth of Anakin's son; and each of the three films of the second trilogy drive Luke and Darth Vader into confrontations: in the Death Star trench, on Cloud City, and in the Emperor's Throne room over Endor. At the end of the trilogy, Vader comes back to the light and gives his life to destroy the Emperor. He saves Luke; but he says that Luke has also saved him. In the Force Awakens, Luke says that as a result of Palpatine's fall the Force was indeed balanced for many years. A widespread fan interpretation said that Anakin's role as the Chosen One was precisely to kill the Emperor. Only by becoming a Sith Apprentice could he get close enough to the Sith Master to slay him; by turning Anakin to the Dark, Palpatine was ensuring his own destruction. (Gosh! How ironic!) This was the plot of the Dark Empire comic book, incidentally: Luke goes over to the Dark Side, or pretends to go over to the Dark Side, in order to destroy a resurgent Palpatine. 

So; where is Anakin-Vader in Episode IX? Kylo still has his melted mask, a holy relic. The third trilogy is full of the twisted remains of the second; wrecked Star Destroyers and Walkers in Episode VII; a wrecked Death Star in Episode IX - to say nothing of old lightsabers, old X-Wings and old droids. But the message of the movie appears to be that Anakin's sacrifice made no difference. He didn't defeat the Emperor. He didn't end the Sith. Palpatine got knocked down, but he got up again, a hundred times more powerful than before.

Vader is present in episodes VII - IX only as a memory, a reputation, the reputation that Ben Solo is trying and failing to live up to. In Galactic terms the main upshot of the original trilogy is to facilitate the unlikely liaison that produced Kylo Ren. If Leia hadn't put the plans into Artoo Deetoo, she would certainly have never met Han Solo. 

I suppose we could say that the Star Wars saga is the story of how a child was conceived by the midichlorians and of all the implications that single event had on the Galaxy, even unto the third generation. But that's unsatisfying; because the significance of Anakin is taken for granted and not explained. We never find out, really, what bringing balance to the Force means; we never find out who made the Prophecy and when. The Phantom Menace stepped back from the story of the Empire and the Rebellion and asks us to look at in the context of a wider struggle between Jedi and Sith. It's a very different proposition to the original trilogy, but it is an intriguing, evocative space opera in its own right. But the prequel trilogy is full of set-ups that never pay off. Return of the Jedi can't tell us what it means for Darth Vader to be the Chosen One because Lucas didn't know there was such a thing as the Chosen One when he made that movie. The Rise of Skywalker could have pulled the two trilogies together; but it chose not to. There is a broad hint in Revenge of the Sith that Anakin was created, not by microscopic Force pixies, but as the result of evil Dark Side magic carried out by Palpatine's very-nearly canonical master, Darth Plageus. If the Skywalker Saga were a single story, then don't you think that the reborn Emperor, facing Vader's grandkid in a Sith arena, might have mentioned it? "I made Snoke just as my master made Vader" But he doesn't. And now we will never know. 

Lucas reportedly wanted the third trilogy to be set in the microverse of the midichlorians, so we dodged a bullet there. 

*

So, then. The Skywalker Saga is about Luke Skywalker. Isn't that obvious? Episode I shows how his parents met; Episode II shows how he was conceived; Episode III ends with his birth and his fostering with Mime the Dwarf. (Check this - ed.) Episodes IV, V and VI shows how he learned his true identity and became a Jedi. Episodes VII, VIII and IX show him as an old man, passing the baton on to the next generation. A baby, a hero, the object of a quest, a mentor and a very active ghost. The saga ends in his childhood home; he appears with Leia as a Force Ghost in almost the final shot. Star Wars, the Skywalker Saga is Luke's tale. 

But Luke's Tale is an oddly unsatisfactory narrative: neither a story of great victory nor of terrible, tragic defeat. It's a sequence of apparent victories that turn out not to amount to anything. 

Luke is never as crucial to Rey as Ben Kenobi was to Luke. Pretty much Obi-Wan's life work was as Luke's guardian; saving him from Anakin and watching over him for two decades on Tatooine. Until he met Ben, Luke knew nothing of the Jedi or the Force; we can be pretty certain that if he hadn't met Ben that day he would have lived and died a moisture farmer, or been drafted into the Imperial navy, or murdered by Vader. Rey can use the Force before she knows what it is. Much of the advice that Luke gives her is bad. Old Ben remains the archetypal Jedi, the Jedi that Luke and everyone else aspire to be. Old Luke, is if anything, the Jedi that Rey has to avoid becoming. True, if not for Luke, Kylo Ren might have turned her to the Dark Side; but then, if not for Luke, Kylo Ren might not have existed. The best we can say is that, on several  crucial occasions, Anakin's family held back the tide of the Dark Side, in preparation for the moment when Palpatine's own bloodline would end it. If Luke hadn't been there at the battle of Yavin, the Rebellion would have ended there and then. Luke's presence on the second Death Star held up the Emperor's schemes by twenty years. Luke's self-sacrifice prevents the First Order from destroying the remnant of the Resistance on Crait.

We are told that for two thousand years the Sith preserved themselves by passing their teaching down the generations: from master to apprentice, master to apprentice. Luke's Jedi school is an abject failure. Ben Solo turns to the Dark Side; and all Luke's students are killed. But it achieves one thing: Luke passes Yoda's teaching on to Leia; and Leia is able to pass it on to Rey. Luke is the conduit by which Palpatine's granddaughter becomes the Last Jedi. Master to apprentice. Qui-Gon to Ben, Ben to Luke, Luke to Leia, Leia to Rey. 

That's sometimes all you can do. Take it, feel it, and pass it on. Not for me, not for you, but for someone, somewhere, one day.

*

For a thousand generations the Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic. And then they all died. And for forty years, the Jedi ceased to exist. The Jedi teaching was preserved by just one individual: she will always be remembered as the founder of the New Jedi Order.

"How did the founder come by the name of Skywalker, Master?"

"That is a very long and very strange story, youngling."

"Please tell it to me again."

"Very well. A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, there was a slave, and her name was Shmi..."

The Empire Strikes Back changed Star Wars. The Return of the Jedi changed the Empire Strikes Back. The prequels changed the trilogy. The sequels changed the prequels. And the final scene of Episode IX changes the nine part saga. It's called the Rise of Skywalker because it's the story of how Rey chose her name. The trilogy of trilogies is now the story of why the last and first Jedi Knight came to be called Skywalker. "The Skywalker Saga". It's Rey's story now.

I'm Andrew. I like God, Doctor Who, Star Wars, Wagner, folk-music and Spider-Man, not necessarily in that order. I have no political opinions of any kind.

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