In the Flesh: Ahsoka s1e06: Far, Far Away

It’s stark how much better this (still bad) show is when it gets away from its ostensible protagonists. Even with sets that wouldn’t be out of place in 2000s-era Doctor Who? and a script that reads like a protracted attempt to do the least funny ‘Who’s on first?’ riff in history, Ahsoka’s sixth episode is far and away its breeziest and most entertaining. A planetary ring of space whale bones? A village of nomadic crab people brought to life as adorable puppets enhanced with judiciously applied CGI? A fun little crocodile/hyena creature straight out of classic Star Wars? Check, check, check. Enjoyable stuff pulled off well enough that the seams don’t matter too much. If every episode had anything even close to this amount of genuine creativity invested in it, even Ahsoka’s most glaring and consistent flaws might feel a little less grating. Spend two minutes listening to the complete lack of chemistry between David Tenant as Huyang and Rosario Dawson in the title role, though, and there’s just no getting away from it. The show’s leading woman is a millstone around its already frail and trembling neck.

Sabine doesn’t exactly help. Natasha Liu Bordizzo just doesn’t have it, and given the thinness of the role there’s no salvaging most of her screen time. Her underwritten early scenes, which mostly consist of saying “you promised!” to the villains she agreed to help out in order to find her friend Ezra, segue into a half-decent travel sequence before running aground on her inert reunion with Ezra himself, played here by Eman Esfandi. “Let’s not talk about that now,” Sabine responds to Ezra asking how she found him. The two heroes proceed to act as though they have all the time in the world, helping the little hermit crab guys pack up their caravans to move on to the next campsite. Maybe they’re right, given that the galaxy’s greatest strategist’s master plan was to ignore his mortal enemy for years while the guy was a brisk jog away and totally without allies or supplies, only to offer a half-assed twist in the form of sending Baylan and Shin to ice him, along with Sabine, after the two find each other. It’s sloppy writing, and it undercuts even the show’s best performances, to say nothing of Bordizzo and Esfandi. Upon reuniting the two exchange an extremely tame and low-energy hug, then go into Filoni mode and swat the dialog ball lazily back and forth until it’s time to move on.

Contrast it with the incredible work Ray Stevenson does here as ex-Jedi Baylan Skoll, who reveals to his apprentice that his motives for seeking out the ancient planet on which Thrawn (Lars Mikkelsen) and his legions have been exiled extend beyond the grand admiral’s return to the bosom of the Imperial Remnant. Skoll sounds both deeply weary and oddly hopeful, relieved to get his ambitions off his chest and soberly aware of the magnitude of the task he’s set himself: ending the eternal tug of war between the Jedi and the Sith, the Empire and the Republic. His warm, careworn affect (his delivery of the shopworn line “there’s no need for bloodshed” is a thing of beauty) is a great contrast to Mikkelsen’s mild-mannered, calculating Thrawn, whose creepy number two Captain Enoch (Wes Chatham) sports a modified Stormtrooper helmet that looks like something Mordred would wear in Excalibur. These are good actors finding a lot to like in stock villains and a thin script. It’s a pity the rest of the show can’t meet them where they’re at.

This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the show being covered here wouldn't exist.