Episode 55: D-Squad Arc, Part 1

The lack of a reliable file-sharing system in Star Wars comes into play once again in the D-Squad Arc (The Clone Wars 5.10–11, “Secret Weapons” and “A Sunny Day in the Void”). 

It turns out that this critically-panned series of episodes is a fascinating meditation on inequality, oppression, meritocracy, the military-industrial complex, and why WAC units are indeed so wack. 

In our recap this week, we continue our conversation on droid rights and admit to all kinds of meatbag foibles (we’re just not suited to long marches across the desert, okay!!)

Next week, we’re finishing the D-Squad arc (The Clone Wars 5.12–13, “Missing in Action” and “Point of No Return”) so we can finally get to the Maul arc of Season 5!

Transcript

Sam: Welcome to Growing Up Skywalker. I'm Sam.

Anna: Hi, I'm Anna.

Sam: And today we're covering the D-Squad Arc.

Anna: I'm laughing already, because it is very fun. This is a very silly arc. And it’s pouring outside. So we apologize for a little bit of rain noise in the background.

Sam: It doesn't correspond with the second episode. But a little bit, I guess.

Anna: Anyway.

Sam: This is Season Five, episode ten, “Secret Weapons”, and Season Five, episode eleven, “A Sunny Day in the Void”.

Anna: This is The Clone Wars.

Sam: Yeah.

Anna: Still.

Sam: For the last year and a half.

Anna: And for the next year and a half. Our whole life is Clone Wars.

Sam: So importantly, on these, it is blue text.

Anna: Yeah. Okay. Bright blue Clone Wars logo first thing, which is foreshadowing for the star of this arc…R2-D2!

Sam: D-Squad! “Humility is the only defense against humiliation.”

Anna: That is deeply ominous, and I don't like it at all. I do not appreciate humiliation in my life.

Sam: Okay, yeah. So you need to have humility.

Anna: That is a hard thing to have, Sam. Okay, what happens in “Secret Weapon”?

Sam: If you say so. So, apparently, and this makes very little sense, but there is a secret message that the Republic has intercepted, and they know that there's a dreadnought somewhere. And if they can infiltrate the dreadnought and receive the USB key and use it to decrypt the message, they'll be totally good.

Anna: Okay, so we didn't actually get rid of General Grievous last episode, and it's his transmission that the Jedi Council has intercepted. And they need to decrypt some important message.

Sam: And there's a McGuffin on a ship. They need to grab the McGuffin. So the plan is that a whole bunch of Jedi and a clone captain are volunteering their astromech droids. And the clone captain does not have an astromech droid. He has a pit droid that might have been Anakin's, WAC-47. And this is the crew that shows up, and they are going to be part of this mission. And who is leading them, but noted person who's been around since the Battle of Geonosis, Meebur Gascon.

Anna: That’s Colonel Meebur Gascon to you.

Sam: This is true. There's a great introduction shot of him in that they open the door, he enters, they pan the camera down, down, down….Meebur is about six inches tall.

Anna: Six inches tall, rounding up.

Sam: He might or might not win a fight with the Big Hay-Zu.

Anna: He is green and bulgy and pouchy and polka-dotty. And he's got eyes on stalks, and that's all I can really say about him.

Sam: He's literally a frog.

Anna: He is a small person with a big attitude.

Sam: Yeah. He very much struts about, just like a barking buffoon military commander the whole time.

Anna: I think he is a Napoleon stand-in, and I'm just going to put it out there.

Sam: Maybe. Okay, so reporting for duty, we've got R-2, Q-T, C-4, and B-Z.

Sam: Right. So they go to a sketchy Parwan robo-doctor who upgrades each of them with special technology. R-2 gets, like, hyper focused rocket boots, Q-T-KT gets a megapowered magnet in her head, C-4 gets a super laser cutter, and B-Z gets his head lobotomized.

Anna: So they can make room so that Colonel Gascon can hang out inside of his brain cavity. And no upgrade for WAC-47. [laughs] And nothing for Gretchen Wieners.

Sam: For what?

Anna: That's a Mean Girls reference.

Sam: Okay, I haven't watched that movie in 25 years.

Anna: Not the target audience.

Sam: So, WAC is in charge of flying, and they get on their ship and they go and they're headed towards the Separatist fleet. And Meebur’s like, “Oh, I haven't told you my secret plan for getting aboard the Separatist fleet.” And WAC is like, “Oh, I took care of it. I just aimed us on a collision course, so they’ll capture us.”

Anna: For no discernible reason.

Sam: Anyway, it worked.

Anna: They get sucked into the tractor beam, they get deposited in the landing bay.

Sam: A bunch of droids are like, “Hey! Where's the pilots and the droids?” So the droids are going to get taken away, but they bust out their shock prods and escape, and now they are ready to do their heist.

Anna: They're actually exactly where they need to be. So everything is great. Everything is dandy. And then everything goes very sharply downhill. Because it turns out none of the mech droids are any good at their jobs.

Sam: Yeah, they are!

Anna: C-4…Okay, so let's walk through what happens.

Sam: Okay, so the plan is they have to cut the power twice and the first time they do it, C-4 uses their mega laser cutter, forgets to engage the emergency brake, and cuts several holes in the bulkhead. But it does get cut and everything works fine.

Anna: Okay. And then B-Z is the one who's supposed to get the vault door open, and fries his circuits and gets a double lobotomy.

Sam: So that might be Meebur's fault because he's driving B-Z, but he blames it on all the droids. He just blames everything on the droids.

Anna: That is true. The only one who actually does a good job is WAC-47, because his job was to distract these super battle droids guarding the vault door.

Sam: He fast-talks them and does a great job.

Anna: He does a great job.

Sam: So they get to the vault and right as they are, they've triggered the trip wire twice and these super tactical droid who's running this dreadnaught is like, “I will deal with this personally” and shows up just in time for R-2, who's on his little rocket boots, about to grab the USB key, to yank him down. And now it's a close-in fight.

Anna: It's a zero-gravity close-in fight, right?

Sam: Yes, because WAC turns off the gravity and then it's like, crazy. Everyone's flying around. Meebur is punching the super tactical droid and he is the size of a third of the tactical droid’s head.

Anna: Yeah, he goes bananas on this tactical droid.

Sam: But they turn the gravity back on and R-2 performs a mega droid-suplex, lands on the tactical droid, whose head pops off.

Anna: It's incredible. It's so cool.

Sam: It just flies off, and they make good their escape. They run right past some battle droids, and they also grab B-Z's body.

Anna: Never leave a droid behind.

Sam: Yeah, because R-2 and Q-T were like, [beep beep boop boop], “We can't leave a droid behind.” So they get in their ship, they make their escape, and they get to hyperspace. And you're like, “That's a wonderful ending…for the first quarter of a four part episode.”

Anna: Great ending. And then we have three more episodes. So we open immediately on “A Sunny Day in the Void”. Fortune cookie: “When all seems hopeless, a true hero gives hope.” Not the pithiest fortune cookie I've ever seen, but we're going to roll with it. Disaster strikes, Sam. That's what happens immediately when we open this episode. So, our crew of droids and Gascon get into hyperspace. They're heading back to the Jedi. Gascon is like, kissing this little decryptor, because he had a great first mission.

Sam: It's like the size of a pizza to him.

Anna: It's as big as he is. And then their course takes them right through a comet field — big, icy boulders shooting through space — and it knocks their power out. Fortunately, the entire crew is basically made out of astromech droids. This is their job.

Sam: “We're going outside!”

Anna: This is not a vacation. This is what they do every day.

Sam: “I feel like the first time I did this, I got a commendation from the Princess of Naboo.”

Anna: “The second time I did it, I got yelled at by a two-inch tall colonel.” So they crowd out onto the wings of the ship to get their spanners into the power system and try to bring the engines back online. They almost lose Q-T. C-4 has to suction-cup her with a grappling hook so she doesn't fly off into space. And then R-2 has to suction-cup C-4. And then they get B-Z back online just in time for him to suction-cup all of them.

Sam: And they're just outside. There's ice flying by the ship. It's, like, barely on. Meebur and WAC are flying it around crazily.

Anna: With like, no rudder, no engines, no power steering.

Sam: The astromechs are like, [screaming droid sound].

Anna: It is a daisy-chain of astromech droids. It is horrifying. Everyone is okay…The ship is not.

Sam: They're like, “We're done. We're coming back inside now.”

Anna: WAC has to put them down on the closest planet. So they're free falling, they punch through the atmosphere, and they crash-land onto this huge featureless plain of salt.

Sam: And the USB key, the encrypter, falls away, and R-2 grabs it and shoves it in his little pocket.

Anna: R-2 basically shoves it in his pocket and goes, “Heheh.” So they have landed on the planet of Abafar, and that is the only thing that's in the databanks. That's all they know. There is an orange creamsicle sky and a big field of salt. And that is the planet of Abafar, there is nothing on this planet. Colonel Gascon has his training, right? He's blathering on and on and on about what they should do next. And R-2 does the droid equivalent of rolling his eyes and waves the decryptor and takes off in the direction of his choice. And everyone follows him. So the droids very calmly make their way in a straight line across this featureless tundra.

Sam: As Gascon is losing his mind.

Anna: He really is. He gets dehydrated within the first four hours.

Sam: That's because his water bottle is something he can carry. So it's like, literally four drops of water.

Anna: And he embarks on the first of many monologues in this episode. He had a couple back in “Secret Weapons”. He has many more in this episode. The point is that he is superior to the droids because they're programmed, but he's trained, and they need to get back to the ship. And WAC is the only one who can talk back to him, and he's pointing out how the droids are actually better suited for this situation. They have navigation systems, they don't need water, they don't hallucinate. And WAC says, “When you die, Colonel Gascon, which may in fact be very soon, I think I should be the team leader.” And Gascon loses his mind further. And then they find a shipwreck and see what happens when you follow your training and stay with the ship. You die, and you decompose in the middle of the desert.

Sam: There's that wonderful trope of a skeleton wearing an astronaut suit with a bunch of broken astromech droids.

Anna: And pit droids too, like WAC.

Sam: Really? I didn't see a pit droid.

Anna: Oh yeah, it's crazy. Gascon hallucinates, of course, from the heat and the dehydration, and he's chasing mirages into the desert. And that's when R-2 and the astromechs decide to take off. “Later, taters!” They're like, we are not going down with this ship.

Sam: There's still a mission to complete.

Anna: So, WAC is the only one who stays, because they didn't vote him team leader and he's butthurt. So he stays with the colonel.

Sam: “You can't vote for R-2. He's just a mech.”

Anna: And everyone votes for R-2.

Sam: Yeah.

Anna: Gascon is quite close to losing it. He says something to the effect of, “Death is the only thing you can count on.” “Death is the only certainty,” I think is the line. So he is ready to throw in the towel and die. And WAC says, “Giving up is not in my programming. I'm surprised it's in yours,” which is a great moment. And in that moment of enlightenment for Gascon, he decides to open his mind to new possibilities and break out of his programming. And in that moment, a herd of of…Star Wars dinosaur-emu-ostriches appears.

Sam: I wrote “dino flamingos.”

Anna: Dino flamingos is so much better than what I wrote, let's go with that. The dino flamingos start stampeding by, and Colonel Gascon realizes that all they need to do is hitch your ride and hang on for dear life, and they're going to be fine. So the dino flamingos bring them to a lake, which is on the outskirts of a city, which is where all of the astromech droids have been waiting for them to catch up for, presumably, the last 12 hours.

Sam: But at that last moment, Meebur and WAC have become close enough friends that Meebur actually promotes WAC to Corporal.

Anna: Which is fun and important, because the entire episode, WAC has refused to call Colonel Meebur by the correct name. So it is very delightful. And that, Sam, was the episode.

Sam: So that's the first half of this one. And now we're stuck with, “How do these guys get this important information off of this featureless planet?”

Anna: I hope I gave you a sense of how wildly incongruous this episode is and how weird it is to plot, because I have some headcanons about why these episodes exist, and I want to hear yours, too.

Sam: Oh, man. Well, I don't know why they would exist, because obviously, it's a McGuffin. It's not like this is a major plot that needs to be resolved. Like, “Oh, there's a secret message. We need to decrypt it.” First of all, if, as a matter of operational security, if you have some magic device which contains all your passwords and someone steals it and you know that they stole it, then you have to change all your passwords immediately, and that magic device is worthless. So the fact that they know that this decryptor was stolen means that it's worthless. But it is Star Wars.

Anna: I had not thought about that. It reminds me a little bit about how apparently, there's no file-sharing system in Star Wars.

Sam: Yeah.

Anna: So maybe there's no IT guy pestering you to change your passwords. Like, maybe this will actually be okay.

Sam: I did read a very funny fan theory, which is that Star Wars is a universe where weapons technology is, like, 2,000 years ahead of information technology, because there's no paper in Star Wars, and, like, a star destroyer takes 37,000 people to run for something that's, like, a mile and a half long. So it's all just people doing abacus calculations or something to figure this stuff out. No, like, functional computers. Which, my theory there is that any sufficiently complex computer gets a mind of its own in the Star Wars universe and becomes a droid, and droids are frisky. Anyway, there's some really fun moments of seeing astromech droids in action versus a pit droid as the audience stand-in.

Anna: Yeah, there's a lot of good stuff in these episodes. I have a lot to discuss. There are some surprisingly dark themes with, like, a candy coating, which I think is really interesting. But the first thing I picked up on is just that these are some weird episodes, and they're different from some of the other weird Star Wars episodes.

Sam: Because we're going through a little bit of a spell of weird episodes. We start off this season with extremely heavy stuff with Maul. And then the last arc, with Ahsoka and the younglings…kind of weird.

Anna: Yeah. Every time R-2 is the focus of the episode, things are little screwy. Have you noticed that?

Sam: Now that you mention it, yeah.

Anna: So we had the R-2 and 3PO arc when they're wandering around fairyland. We had the R-2 and 3PO arc where they're running after the jogan fruit and getting tortured.

Sam: It's a funny arc.

Anna: I know. We have the Replacement Droid arc, which is a little screwy, back in Season One.

Sam: Yeah. I wonder if that's a reflection of the way an R-2 unit or an astromech unit, like, sees the world — in that they're thoroughly programmed to take in lots of information, but there's got to be some things in the wide galaxy that just seem like magic. Astromechs are just like, “It's magic. Ignore it. It'll be fine.” They don't have to understand it.

Anna: Maybe. I think mechs understand a lot more than they let on that they understand.

Sam: Oh, definitely. I really enjoy, like, watching a team of four astromechs is like, fan service in that R-2 is always the hero. And so having R-2 and three astromech buddies be the only ones who have a lick of sense between them…and then you recognize that the talky droids, the talky people, are running around with their own schemes and plans, and the astromechs are like, “Just go in a straight line.” When they crash the ship, Meebur is sitting there and he's like, “There's no sun. We can't see the sun. How are you navigating?”

Anna: “I programmed myself to go in a straight line, because I have GPS.”

Sam: Well, I mean, you just say “Go in a straight line” and Meebur’s like, “You have to have maps, you have to be able to see the sun. You have to figure stuff out.”

Anna: And R-2 is like, “We’re droids. We’re better than you.”

Sam: Yeah.

Anna: “We could take over your job in a heartbeat.”

Sam: “We don't, because we don't want to, basically.”

Anna: So that's one of the big tensions of the arc, is that Colonel Meebur Gascon is putting himself forward as this really amazing, efficient, qualified leader because he was in the battle of Geonosis, and then it turns out in “Secret Weapons” that he's a map analyst. And he's very small. And so this wasn't, like, a meritocracy decision. It was a strategic decision that they chose the small person to fit inside the droid head and go on this mission, and Meebur has to have this moment of reckoning where, in my mind, one of the points of the episode was Star Wars showing all of the different ways you can be a really bad boss.

Sam: Oh, gosh.

Anna: And why your workers are probably more qualified than you are. And Sam, that makes me think of you!

Sam: Yeah, well, I'm done casting shade today. But yeah, I did not get that read. It's only because the trope that Meebur personifies is very much the drill sergeant-y colonel who is ordering, like, stupid decisions.

Anna: He's Lieutenant Divo meets Pong Krell meets Napoleon.

Sam: No, he's not bad. But he will throw everyone under the bus and make himself seem good. All his mistakes he blames on the droids. And he's also pretty mean to them and gives them mean nicknames, until WAC is like, “I will call you by the correct title if you stop referring to us by nicknames.”

Anna: Right. So what part of that makes him not bad?

Sam: He does learn, and he does refer to them as their names. And it's a caricature. I guess he is definitely personifying like, the Vietnam-era drill sergeant voice. That is what he's trying to go with. And also the idea — this calls back to a Vietnam sense to me — of, you have some important person who you take with you on a military expedition and they're like “Oh yes, this person has been with the army for 20 years,” and it's like “You've never actually seen combat.”

Anna: Right. So one of my thoughts is that this arc was trying to show its point of view on what makes someone fit to be in charge, and it's doing the work. It's being able to do the work, but also have that sense of big picture and strategy. And so, Meebur has one of those, but he eminently does not have the other.

Sam: He doesn't. And that actually goes back to the Clone Wars movie, when Rex tells Ahsoka, “In my experience, experience trumps everything.” Or, “In my book, experience trumps everything.” So, this is one of those episodes where there's no Force. And I appreciate that the Force is not part of this episode. It's just droids and Meebur. And Meebur's plan actually mostly works.

Anna: It does mostly work. I would say Meebur himself got in the way of his plan working better.

Sam: He did. But there were other situations. And honestly, WAC is the one who started being the voice of wisdom throughout, because he's the one who's like wait, C-4, make sure to put on your brakes on. And C-4 did not. It just lasers the whole room. So it felt like the way this mission was put together was with WAC, who seems better at communicating with people just because they can speak, and then Meebur, who's got some sort of sense of instinct and ambition and drive, as a counter to the astromech droids, who might actually get into trouble, because they're kind of goofy. Even when astromech droids are most serious, they're still pretty goofy.

Anna: Maybe. I think that the level of micromanaging that Gascon was able to achieve by riding around in B-Z's head and taking over and ruining, like, phase three of the plan, for me, implied that the droids would have been okay if C-4 forgot to lock down his feet and messed up his little laser cutter maneuver. And they probably would not have messed up the vault maneuver. And they probably would not have had B-Z knocked out in the hallway to alert the tactical droid. So they would have done overall a better job. But either way, the job would have gotten done. But this way, Gascon got to learn some lessons along the way, on the back of our astromech friends.

Sam: And also have a severe existential breakdown over the course of the entirety of the second episode.

Anna: Oh, my God. Did you notice by the middle of the episode, when Gascon's hallucinating and dying of dehydration, the camera tilts, so we're looking at him sideways? In film study, that's called a Dutch angle. And it's supposed to imply that the person you're looking at is completely unhinged and divorced from reality.

Sam: He really was.

Anna: He really was!

Sam: He definitely lost touch with being in a combat situation, and then coming out of it and surviving. Because that is kind of what happened. He went from “This plan is working, but it's very dangerous,” to “I am punching a tactical droid in the face.” “We escaped and now we're crashing and we're about to die.” Because he’s inside the ship. As they're going through this comet field, there's cracks appearing on the window panes. And the droids are outside, because they're like, “Air is for suckers.” And WAC is like, “I can't drive. I really hope those guys fix it. But if these windows goes out, air is for suckers.” and Meebur’s like, “I need air! I need air to breathe!” And that's the same problem he ran into on the planet. He's like, “I need water to live, I need food.”

Anna: So, yeah, that's what makes it really interesting that he is convinced that he is superior to the droids, when they are better suited for this environment — for all of the environments. They're better suited for comet fields. They're better suited for outer space. They're better suited for a long march across a hot desert.

Sam: Yeah.

Anna: And it's interesting that…I'm just going to use sci-fi terminology…as an organic, he has this inherent sense that he is better than something that is machine-built. And truthfully, he was worse in every regard.

Sam: As a meatbag.

Anna: As a meat puppet.

Sam: Yeah. HK-47, who's a very fun droid from Knights of the Old Republic One and Two, refers to all organics as “meatbags.” And that is kind of what Meebur was.

Anna: I like it. I like it.

Sam: But being a fun little small frog person, I don't know. He was interesting on the first watch through. This is a pretty critically panned arc.

Anna: Is it?

Sam: Yeah, it's one of them that's everyone’s like, “Eh, you can skip it.” Because as far as character development, like, how much character development does R-2 need? And the rest of these are one-off characters. But I think it's fun because it is weird.

Anna: I have such a different read on it. I didn't think it was fun, but I thought it broached some really worthy themes.

Sam: Fascinating. Like the nature of droid rights?

Anna: Of droid rights…sentience…inequality. And we can get into all of this. But my read was, this is, on the nose, a really sparse arc that is bringing up, if you are watching carefully, some very deep themes of merit and justice.

Sam: Yeah.

Anna: And I can unpack that for you. I can show my work if you would like me to.

Sam: Please do.

Anna: Well, the first question I had was brought up because the mechs in “Secret Weapons” have to undergo this weird upgrade montage with a Parwan mad scientist.

Sam: He has the creepiest accent too. He sounds like an insane German Nazi doctor.

Anna: He reminds me of the plague doctor from the Blue Shadow Virus arc.

Sam: Yes, very much so.

Anna: And there's a moment when they rip out B-Z's memory banks, and the doctor’s trying to explain it to B-Z before they send him into the back room so the droids don't have to watch the lobotomy going on. And Meebur says, “No need to baby him, he's just a droid.” And the Parwan doctor says, “Well, fortunately, he won't remember any of this.”

Sam: Yeah.

Anna: And so I went down this thought-rabbit hole and I didn't even land anywhere. I just had thoughts ping-ponging through my head. And maybe you can help me make sense of it.

Sam: With regards to what it means to be a droid if your memory banks are destroyed or deleted?

Anna: Not even that. I was thinking about droids being part of the Republic political and military unit. So, these are Republic droids, and they may or may not be motivated by any kind of loyalty for being on the side of the Republic. And it really doesn't matter, because you could deprogram them and reprogram them to be Separatist droids, and they wouldn't know the difference. But we have kind of a different thing going on as human beings when we join the military. Some people are motivated by nationalism, or pride, or some kind of ambition or thirst to prove themselves. But no matter what motivates them, they get paid. We don't ask people to go out into service and risk their lives on the military front, or as spies, or as infiltrators, for no pay and no recognition.

Sam: Well, we don't these days. ‘Cause there is conscription.

Anna: Even if you're conscripted, they pay you a wage.

Sam: Generally. Not always. There's penal battalions where you go fight because you're in jail. It's a historical precedent. And then also, ancient armies often lived off their loot. But I see where you're coming from with regards to, what reason does a droid have to remain patriotic and remain on task? And maybe that's why they sent Meebur. That's also maybe why these droids in particular were chosen, because at the very beginning of the opening scene, all of the droids have a very strong relation with their master. Each one has a partner who is a meatbag, and they spend a lot of time with. One of the Jedi we see looks like a crazy triceratop. So we've never seen this Jedi before, but we assume that each droid has a relationship with their master similar to that of Anakin and R-2.

Anna: Yeah, sure. So they might have some kind of communal structure that brings them, I don't know, support while they're in the ranks. But you send droids out, you conscript them into service, you do whatever you want to them. You make weird modifications. You lobotomize them. They risk death or dismemberment by comet, or they rust in the middle of the desert because they ran out of battery. And we don't even know if they get paid — or if they get hardship pay for being out on the wings of a ship in the middle of a comet blitz! We don't know if they are compensated in any way. And because they're droids, they have no way to say no.

Sam: Yeah.

Anna: So I was thinking a lot about issues of…slavery.

Sam: Yeah. So that's a freaky thing about droids as well, is, it would make sense, and it seems to be, that droids are programmed to want to obey, but that is their primary purpose is to serve others, even to the expense of their own self-preservation. So I find that definitely very interesting in the relationship between, like, these astromech droids, which, it seems like every single person throughout all Star Wars looks down on astromech droids in the sense of like, “It's just a little droid.” And it's strange that someone has a very tight relationship with one, because to most other people, they're kind of a little chirpy dog with a calculator for a brain, and you can't figure out how to communicate with them. And also, sometimes the way they think seems kind of alien. I don't know if we see that as much in The Clone Wars as we do in some other things. As my side project recently, I've been watching the Star Wars Droids shorts, which are from the 80s.

Anna: Wow.

Sam: And are animated like The Smurfs. And it is real silly. And in those, C-3, B-Z and R-2 are wandering around looking for someone to be their master.

Anna: Oh, man.

Sam: Yeah. That part of it felt like it aged poorly. The rest of the story is pretty fun, but it felt very strange. But it also reminded me that because droids can't say no, they might be conditioned or programmed — which is the other theme that's important in this episode — to just want to find some orders to obey to the best of their abilities.

Anna: Yeah. I am not sure that we got a great answer on the difference between programming and training, because at the end of “A Sunny Day in the Void”, Meebur ends up saying to WAC, “You've got your programming and I've got my training. But these birds have something better, natural instinct.” So we don't actually get the screenwriters’ opinion on whether our training is also just programming. In many ways, I think it is.

Sam: That our training is better than programming?

Anna: No, that it is simply programming.

Sam: Oh, well, definitely. And WAC tears that argument apart, which helps break down Meebur to have his existential crisis and his eventual catharsis.

Anna: Right.

Sam: It’s that he does learn that the way he's been treating these droids is also the way he's been treating his presumably long career. And now that he's having to face life or death situations firsthand, that his way of moving through the world is incomplete. And maybe that's what he meant, is that the instinct is more important. Because the whole episode, both of them, he is continually talking about how great he is and how much of a military genius he is. And that is his superior training. His superior training is what makes him a tactical genius. Now he's recognizing that doesn't matter if you die.

Anna: Right.

Sam: And what matters if you're about to die is instinct. And that's even better than programming, because he is right that droids will just follow their programming. Because at the end of the first episode, as they're easily scooting past B-1s to their stolen ship, and the droids are like, “Hey, get out of the way!” He's like, “The droids would never suspect that one of their own was a traitor.” And I think he's right about that, too, that the droids would be programmed to not be suspicious of other droids, because otherwise they would have some sort of meltdown, because they'd be suspicious of each other.

Anna: So I think that is the fundamental plot armor of these episodes, which is that Meebur is just a regular person. If they had sent a Jedi with the droids, or if they'd been piloting the droids remotely through an intercom — which to me seems like the correct way to send droids on a terrifying mission — they would not have had this discussion, because the Jedi are always saying, “Trust your instincts.” Right? That is a fundamental teaching of the Jedi.

Sam: Yes, it is. And because Meebur is not a Jedi, he had to come to that conclusion differently. He had to follow a different path.

Anna: He took the scenic route.

[ad break]

Anna: The other big theme that I picked up on — so, beyond training versus programming and beyond droid rights — was a meditation on inequality.

Sam: Yes.

Anna: And systems of oppression. So, this arc is about a person in power assuming that he has inherent superiority: that he has characteristics that make him better than these lesser creatures that he's in charge of, when in reality, the “lesser creatures” — and I'm saying this with really heavy airquotes — are efficient and compassionate and good at their jobs and focused on the mission. And they don't have meatbag foibles, like passing out because they're dehydrated and they're tired. So they are well-suited for crisis, and superior to him in almost every way.

Sam: And I think that's really explicit because Meebur talks about that a lot. He's like, of course I'm superior to droids.

Anna: It’s one of his many monologues.

Sam: And the other trick of that is one of oppression — in that, when he tells WAC that WAC is in charge, or right even before that, when he says, “Who votes that we go off and leave Meebur to die?” and they all vote for R-2, and he says, “Well, you can't vote for R-2, R-2 is just a mech!” One of the very first things that WAC says is, “I'm not a mech. I'm a droid.” Actually, he says, “I'm a WAC.” So he has this classification of droids within him, and that shows the way that classism propagates.

Anna: Yes.

Sam: And this is how colonialism operates as well, is, you have a bunch of people, and you say, ‘This random one is better than the rest of them, and they're in charge.” And now your problems are classism, and I'm in charge of everything.

Anna: Yes. Systems of oppression take away all of your rights and then feed them back to people who help to keep the system going, so that those people are afraid to lose what small privileges they have, and turn against the people that they perceive to be lesser, who are really just more risky to the status quo.

Sam: And that's why it's so frustrating — but also in tune with the themes — for WAC to get promoted at the end of the episode. Because they're all peeking over…they get to the edge of the city. And so the city is actually super cool. It looks like it's a bunch of circles connected with little channels, like perfect circles that are dug into these salt flats, and they're surrounded by a small moat. And they're all stainless steel, and it's very empty, and it's very quiet, because it's presumably a brazillian degrees. But the dino flamingos are drinking and Meebur is like, “If you'll excuse me, I must quench myself.” I'm doing, like, five different voices for him.

Anna: Pick a lane!

Sam: And he goes, and he just dumps his head in the water and starts drinking flamingo water. And this is after he promotes WAC. The astromechs are, like, conferring with each other. And WAC starts frog marching down the ramp, talking about — he's like, “All right, ship out, straighten up, line up, form up. It's time for you to listen to me. I'm now newly promoted Colonel WAC-47!” And that trumped-up feeling of superiority now has the astromechs versus WAC instead of against Meebur.

Anna: Yes. Although WAC only wishes he was a colonel. He's a corporal. I know. I can't keep them straight either.

Sam: It got me mixed up.

Anna: I loved the malicious compliance throughout, especially “Secret Weapons”, where WAC won't call Meebur the right title until he starts being nice to the droids.

Sam: Yes.

Anna: He's like…What's lower than a colonel? A corporal?

Sam: A corporal is significantly lower. He also calls him captain, which is lower than a corporal.

Anna: Oh, my God. Amazing.

Sam: So, he’s pretty high up.

Anna: Yes. And the beginning of “Secret Weapons” Gascon is like, “All I have to do is finish this mission with you stupid droids so I can get back for my promotion ceremony to brigadier general.” Which is…

Sam: Like, presumably, as high as he's going.

Anna: Because that's a pretty serious promotion.

Sam: It is. It's Star Wars, but there's only a small handful of ranks above that. If we assume that all Jedi are generals, then a brigadier general would be working directly for Jedi.

Anna: It's pretty cool.

Sam: Yeah.

Anna: It is fascinating that he made it that far, considering that he's not seen any real action.

Sam: Well, I think there's something to that. One thing is that he has been serving since the Battle of Geonosis.

Anna: So, two years.

Sam: Yes. But, battlefield promotions.

Anna: True.

Sam: During a war, you're more likely to get promoted because your superiors get aced.

Anna: Case in point, WAC-47, newly minted field promotion corporal.

Sam: Yeah, exactly. So there's some cool stuff. I love watching this arc in aggregate because across all four episodes, it's really fun. It's got wonderful pacing. But watching just the first two, I'm like, “Oh boy.” That second episode, not a lot went on.

Anna: It was interesting, right? My little headcanon is that there's a lot going on in Season Five. There's a lot of very expensive animation coming up. And the screenwriters looked at each other and the animators looked at each other and they were like, “Where can we cut money in this budget?” And they thought “Maybe we'll spend an entire episode on a flat creamsicle planet and have most of the characters not being able to speak.”

Sam: Yes. Two voice actors and a soundboard.

Anna: And one screenwriter who's got a penchant for monologues. He's sitting in his little coffee shop and he's like, thinking about the nature of death. “Death is inevitable. Death is really the only certain thing.” And they sent it into the sound booth and the voice actors went ham in and out. In and out, 15-minute adventure.

Sam: “Take the rest of the week off.”

Anna: That's my headcanon.

Sam: I like that.

Anna: It's like the Breaking Bad episode where they have to save money, so they set the entire thing in the lab and have them trying to swat a fly.

Sam: Yeah. There's a bunch of episodes of Star Trek Next Generation that have that, because — we've talked about this in the past — nowadays, like, the budgets for things are super high, and they would never have these lulls because if they run out of episodes, they just wait a few extra weeks.

Anna: They do sneaky things. I remember that Game of Thrones was running out of budget so precipitously that they started putting all of their battle scenes at night, because it's so much less expensive to film a nighttime battle scene.

Sam: Because you only need a third as many extras.

Anna: That's why a lot of the later seasons, you're like, “Oh my God, my laptop won't go up any brighter. What's happening?”

Sam: Yeah. And so with animation as well. And we're not going to see crazy much going on in the next few episodes. And even these last two, it's like…it's not a crazy amount going on. It's not huge space battles or anything. There's not a lot of dialogue. Even despite the fact that WAC and Meebur are talking the whole time, that's just two actors.

Anna: Four episodes just seems like a really big chunk to sacrifice in a pretty important season.

Sam: Yes.

Anna: Especially because, as we know — because I looked this up, because I'm a nerd — the viewership for The Clone Wars once it hit Season Four dropped by, like 60 or 70%.

Sam: Wow.

Anna: So by the time you hit Season Five, they have to make a pretty strong case for their existence. And then they throw in two…interesting…episodes with droid heroes, but they're not the most compelling Clone Wars episodes I've ever seen.

Sam: No. Well, the foreshadowing is that you are correct. The sum of the budget for the season will be spent. Don't worry.

Anna: Okay.

Sam: There's crazy stuff after this.

Anna: I love it when I'm right. This is the best.

Sam: And we're getting a welcome reprieve from the heaviness of Maul, because that's coming up eventually. So, with two voice actors and four mechs and a few cameos and a super tactical droid, who is going to end up on this week's Bae Watch?

Anna: Are you saying it's time for Bae Watch?

Sam: Bae Watch!

Anna: It's time for Bae Watch. It's time for Bae Watch.

[Bae Watch stinger]

I am not throwing any curveballs for this Bae Watch. My bae is R2-D2 himself.

Sam: Yeah? He doesn't actually have a lot of lines.

Anna: He trash talks a little bit. Mostly what we get is him scoping out what needs to happen in the situation and then quietly doing it. So, in the midst of one of our first Meebur monologues in “Secret Weapons”, he's like, “My entire career hinges on this mission going well. And no matter what, dead or alive, I've got to get that vault door open.” And he turns his back to the droids, and R-2 kind of languidly gets out of formation, opens the vault door, gets back into formation. Meebur turns around. He's like, “Oh, my God, I did it! I opened the door!”

Sam: Yeah. R-2 does do that. I also love that he gets to be outside working on the ship. He's the one who volunteers he's like, “Oh, yeah, I got that. I know how to fix a busted power coupler from the outside.”

Anna: I love that he sees the decryptor in the shipwreck and just grabs it and shoves it in his mouth and is like, “Yes, this is mine now.”

Sam: Is that his mouth? It's like where his little front arms pop out from.

Anna: Okay. Like under his armpit. Secret armpit pocket.

Sam: It feels more like an armpit to me.

Anna: Okay.

Sam: It could be a mouth. Okay. I like it. I think R-2 is very much the one we are expected to be rooting for in this episode, because he's also…because one of the other themes here is that this is Meebur’s first combat assignment, whereas R2-D2 was literally at the Battle of Geonosis.

Anna: I know. And he did great.

Sam: Well, he was kind of screwing around.

Anna: I think we're actually supposed to root for WAC.

Sam: I don't know.

Anna: WAC is hard to root for.

Sam: WAC is hard to root for. He is annoying. He is a pit droid. And pit droids are the Jar-Jar Binks of droids.

Anna: Yes, I can see this. [laughing]

Sam: They're annoying and goofy looking and surprisingly sprightly and also surprisingly wise.

Anna: Yes. My sense is that WAC was supposed to be the wacky…lovable…

Sam: You don't say.

Anna: …protagonist of this arc. Because C-4 was the one with explosives. And Q-T actually is very much a cutie.

Sam: Q-T is an R-2 unit who's painted pink.

Anna: And she is delightful, and I love her.

Sam: I just find it really weird how gendered the droids are there actually.

Anna: There's a little side note. Q-T, I think, was a fan-designed droid in honor of one of the original Clone Wars animators’ daughters, and I think she had a chronic illness and died. So now they bring Q-T in real life to children's hospitals and stuff. So Q-T is actually the best. Honorary Bae Watch for Q-T. Who's your bae?

Sam: I'm going to go with….This is really tough. I'm going to go with R-2 as well.

Anna: Excellent. Okay. I was sitting here sweating, thinking you were going to pick Gascon, and I was going to have to find a nice thing to say about him.

Sam: I've already said all the nice things I need to say about him.

Anna: Okay, excellent. I didn't have anything nice to say.

Sam: I've already said all the nice things I need to say about WAC. And then C-4, Q-T, B-Z, are all kind of extraneous. I do appreciate how B-Z was — because presumably they had their memory cleaned out, and were just running on system memory, and then R-2 and the crew fixed B-Z and just plug in enough memory for B-Z to operate — and B-Z is now just a babe in the woods, just, like, following along.

Anna: And he has really great instincts.

Sam: Yeah. So they're doing all right. But R-2 is the leader and the combat veteran, and all the astromech droids are like, “Of course R-2 is in charge, do you have any idea who his master is? Do you have any idea how many times he's fought General Grievous?”

Anna: “Do you want to know how many commendations he has from the former Queen of Naboo? Because it is a lot. She like, really likes him.”

Sam: Yeah. So I think that's fun. It also shows how cool it is to be thinking about droid rights, thinking about all the memories that a droid would have. Because R-2 is arbitrarily old. We have no idea how old he is.

Anna: And he infamously has never had his memory erased. That was the whole thrust of the plot of the Replacement Droid Arc.

Sam: It is. I'm reminded of some other times that droids have had their memories partially erased, or had memory chunks hidden behind things. In Doctor Aphra, B-1, is it B-1? BT-1 has their memory banks stolen from them, but it's actually like, the memory banks are the droid and they put it inside a C-3PO chassis. There's all sorts of interesting ways to be a droid, and R-2’s way is just like, “Get the mission done. Meatbags are nice to have, but kind of secondary. And if they're doofuses, you kind of have to go on without them.” It's as if he's a parent with a tantrumming toddler.

Anna: “When things get rough, turn off the gravity. Get the thing done, even if no one says thank you.”

Sam: Always works for R-2. Although recently, watching Droids and thinking back to the movies, R-2 is more of a goofball in the movies. He's the serious version during the Clone Wars.

Anna: That's interesting.

Sam: Do you see that, during the movies? Because I was thinking of the Battle of Geonosis, which R-2 was at, and what was he doing during the Battle of Geonosis? He was welding C-3PO’s head back on and like, doing smokescreens.

Anna: And that was exactly what needed to be done. I think R-2 has his priorities straight.

Sam: Yeah, it makes me wonder if all these fantastical things are just representations. Maybe we're all living in the existential nightmare of R-2's mind.

Anna: Oh my God. The Matrix is just R-2's mind.

Sam: The Matrix is just R-2 thinking.

Anna: Are you going to take the red pill or the blue pill?

Sam: I'm going to take the [beepity splorch!] pill.

Anna: Good choice, good choice. You will be delighted to know that this launches R-2 above Anakin Skywalker and Padmé Amidala on the Bae Watch rankings.

Sam: Wow. He is now top five at least.

Anna: I would like a drum roll, please.

Sam: [drumroll]

Anna: He is now number three on Bae Watch.

Sam: He is likely to keep going up, because he doesn't age or breathe. And that means that he lasts a long time.

Anna: He is the fittest for this system. It is survival of the fittest on Bae Watch.

Sam: i think what we're coming to terms with is that we as meatbags are obsolete, and we should just upgrade to cyborg bodies.

Anna: Absolutely.

Sam: General Grievous had it right all along.

Anna: I agree with you 100%. Long live non-meatbag meatbags.

Sam: I think we're joining the Separatists now.

Anna: Okay. Catch you on the flip side.

Sam: Okay, bye.

[Bae Watch stinger]

Anna: Well, that was one of the wackier arcs we've done in a minute.

Sam: Yes, and it is likely to continue.

Anna: So next episode, we are covering the second half of the D-Squad Arc.

Sam: D-Squad!

Anna: The Clone Wars Season Five, episodes 12 and 13.

Sam: And remember, we're Separatists now.

Anna: After that, we will be beginning the Revenge Arc, which is the Clone Wars Season Five, episodes 1 and 14. And we are delighted to have special guests from none other than Wookieepedia on the show with us. So excited! If you want more Skywalker, as always, you can follow us on social media. You can find us at growingupskywalker.com and you can find us on Patreon, where we release bonus content every week.

Sam: Including “Leftovers” and a new feature, “Anna's Naval History Minute.”

Anna: Which is the one time ever that I talked about Star Wars ships.

Sam: And it was great, it was really great.

Anna: It was the best.

Sam: So if you too have come to terms with the fact that your feeble meat body needs replacement, and you want to share that message…

Anna: You know where to find us.

Sam: And send this podcast everywhere. Broadcast it using your new antenna.

Anna: And we’ll see you next Tuesday.

Sam: [beep boop!]