Star Wars Rebels: Out of Darkness
November 17, 2014 12:40 PM - Season 1, Episode 6 - Subscribe

Sabine and Hera set off on a supply run that quickly spirals out of control. While a shuttle fuel leak strands the two women on a planet surrounded by deadly creatures, they are forced to come to terms with their own issues while awaiting rescue from the rest of the team aboard the Ghost.

Star Wars Rebels can be viewed on DisneyXD and onDemand suppliers.
posted by Atreides (13 comments total)
 
Sorry for the delay, I still haven't actually seen this episode, hence the subpar post description and lack of trivai in the fold. I will get the next episode up in a couple days to allow for discussion on this episode, unless someone wants to bite the bullet and put it up sooner. MTFBWY.
posted by Atreides at 12:41 PM on November 17, 2014


This episode put to bed any fears about Sabine just being there to be Ezra's girlfriend for me.
posted by ob1quixote at 5:43 PM on November 17, 2014


man, that asteroid base must be one of the COOLEST space places i've seen in a while! The bit picture shot when they were landing... huge asteroid, tiny hole that expands and opens and is a huge door... SO massive!
posted by rebent at 7:38 PM on November 17, 2014


I would do the next one, but I'm already several weeks behind on Wednesday Who, so I probably ought to do that first :).

My main complaint about this episode is that it (along with the stormtrooper training episode) feels like a setup for a computer game, which kinda distracted me from the action a bit.

I was also reading speculation that the secretive Fulcrum is Ashoka from Clone Wars. This was apparently backed up by obsessive nerds slowing down the (uncredited) voice and finding that is sounds like Ashoka.
Also markings on the crate matching Ashoka's face markings.

(I haven't seen Clone wars, so a) should I? and b) I have no idea of the relevance of this info)
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 3:49 AM on November 18, 2014 [1 favorite]


fact is, ashoka's on the picture at the top there so she's gotta be around here somewhere. But I think that the markings on the crate are a bit of a stretch.

Uh, yeah, video game is right. "Fifth wave"? Why would they think they came in waves? It really took me out of the episode. It seemed to me like something that was made for kids to re-play on playgrounds after watching - I know I would have!
posted by rebent at 4:42 AM on November 18, 2014


The creatures in this episode appeared to be animals were living there rather than imperials or other "baddies". As such once the crew had made their escape, continuing to shoot at the creatures, who were no threat at that point, seemed a shitty thing to do.
posted by devon at 9:58 AM on November 18, 2014 [1 favorite]


My reaction was basically, hey, Pitch Black in Star Wars! I generally liked the episode, but I'm getting kind of tired of the whole family dynamic they've built. It reminds me too much of decades old heartwarming shows about phony TV families. You've got Kanan and Hera as the wise and responsible parents. Sabine as the older teenage daughter who would get the more serious storylines in a family show (boyfriend problems, going to college, eventually she'd get married and they'd add the handsome groom to the cast). And then Zeb and Ezra as the big and little brother (with Chopper somewhere between third brother and family dog) who are endlessly roughhousing and getting in funny trouble that usually drives the plot. (Indeed in this episode the whole story happens because they're too busy fucking around to do their jobs and could very easily have gotten Hera and Sabine killed.)

I get that making them a de-facto family plays into Ezra's character and gives the writers a set of relationships to drive (lazy) stories. And again, it provides the audience with easy hooks to get more quickly into the story because we've only got 22 minutes. But they're not a family hanging out in suburbia in the 50s. They're rebelling against the Empire. I'm not saying they should be all grimdark, but they are a gang of criminals engaged in very dangerous pursuits, and that dynamic seems to be forcing some of the characters out of line with that. Especially Zeb, who really, really needs to be more than just someone for Ezra to play with. He probably should be the closest to a real dark character they have - he should feel dangerous, and he just doesn't very often. Indeed in this episode he gets totally dragged down to Ezra's level and is just flat-out incompetent. Wrong choice.

Mostly, I think I really wish this was an hour-long show. I know there are all kinds of reasons why it can't be, but from a creative standpoint I think it would be vastly better if it were.
posted by Naberius at 12:10 PM on November 18, 2014 [2 favorites]


Chopper would be the annoying neighbor kid who likes to cause trouble. Just... ugh.

The farcical tone of the show is just odd. Ezra literally jumps on to Chopper to beat him up. If Lucas were involved in the show, he'd get the blame, but hey, he's not. I'm literally just realizing that Rebels seems like a reaction to Clone Wars the same way Jedi was to Empire.

Even the level-headed Sabine seemed bratty here just for the sake of character conflict. I don't really see her as an inevitable partner for Ezra, because there seems to be some age difference. But they'll probably keep playing up Ezra's crush as long as they can. His thanking her at the end when she wasn't in the mood made it seem corner than usual.

As such once the crew had made their escape, continuing to shoot at the creatures, who were no threat at that point, seemed a shitty thing to do.

She was so irritated that once she got in the ship she knew what she was gonna do, though it's vague as to whether she was just trying to scare them. But yeah, it just seemed so callous it was kind of comical.
posted by TheSecretDecoderRing at 11:55 PM on November 18, 2014


i feel like the show was made by/for people who have no concept of time. And it's ruining any sort of dramatic tension.

Like, if it literally takes less than 10 minutes for the freighter to show up and rescue the girls... then why didn't the freighter just go in the first place? They tried to shoehorn in an excuse, but again and again in this show, they deus ex machina the escape by having the freighter pop out of hyperspace or show up at just the right moment.
posted by rebent at 5:17 AM on November 19, 2014


I enjoyed the episode, but I think some of the complaints so far are valid, and perhaps most important one being the actual length of the show. They are following the three part story structure, which unless the danger and drama flows into both part 2 and 3, kind of weakens the impact of either.

The family dynamic, which I'm not opposed to, has been thrust upon the characters a bit faster than it could have been. I think they are definitely inspired by Firefly and the family dynamic that developed on that show. I'm also finding the Zeb, Ezra, and Chopper dynamic growing kind of stale. Chopper is basically R2 gone insane.

The use of the Specter instead of the Ghost, I saw, due to Hera's desire to keep the cargo pick up as low key as possible. The asteroid base was pretty magnificent as a setting and I had a few hoots noting all the broken down Clone Army vehicles and gear scattered about it. It helped define for me that the Clone Wars were indeed years ago, rather than a show that went off the air earlier this year (counting the release of the Lost Missions). I also got the Pitch Black vibe and it had to have been an influence on the writers.

There's definitely an okay case for Fulcrum being Asokha. We can't go off the image attached above as it was a fake one that was created in the build up to the show and well, ah, no one has pestered the Mods to kick it out. Erm. Fulcrum is an interesting name to give one's self, as it's the resting point between two balancing points. In this case, what is Fulcrum, the person, balancing or what is balancing on what they do? The formation of the Rebel Alliance?

I have to admit to loving the silhouettes of Hera and Sabine on top of the Spectre fighting off the creatures. I thought it a pretty awesome moment of animation and a decision to take the moment deliberately dark. One aspect of the animation developed by the Clone Wars series is a strong preference for working with light and the environment and it has definitely carried over into Rebels. I doubt you can find many any other animated series that are willing to cloak their main characters in so much darkness in the middle of a tense action scene. It was also reminiscent of the end of the first Hunger Games movie when we had our two surviving protagonists on top of a building or something in the dark fighting off the suped up puppies.

Also, this episode blew the Bechdel Test away.

We were provided with more background on Sabine, who obviously a Mandalarian, attended an Imperial Academy on her home planet (it should be notied that during the Clone Wars - Mandalar had turned pacifist and neutral in the Clone Wars - that's obviously changed). I also liked how they left it up in the air whether Sabine was truly satisfied with Hera's exclusion of her from the knowledge of Fulcrum.
posted by Atreides at 7:32 AM on November 19, 2014


(I haven't seen Clone wars, so a) should I? and b) I have no idea of the relevance of this info)

Yes, you should. It starts out a bit rough but increasingly, minus the occasional episode, grows stronger and actually darker, as the show progresses. Is it relevant to Rebels? Not immensely, but offers up nice little easter eggs from time to time.
posted by Atreides at 7:34 AM on November 19, 2014


P.S. I will put up the post for the latest episode later today!
posted by Atreides at 7:35 AM on November 19, 2014


Well there's family dynamics, and then there's family dynamics. If this group felt more like Firefly, I'd be all over that. But this is more like the lost Donna Reed Show season where they became Communist saboteurs and tried to fight the government and stay one step ahead of the FBI. I mean yeah, the characters in Firefly cared for each other like family, but this is so on the nose with it that they've decided to shoehorn the characters into the roles that making them a nuclear family suggests, and that part is disastrous. Contrast Zeb in this episode with Zeb in the episode where Captain Insensitive or whatever his on the nose name is nearly kills Zeb with his own culturally specific weapon. That was a much more complex and interesting Zeb.

As for the timing thing - that's actually also very Star Wars. You tell me: how much time passes during the original movie? We see night fall and the next morning come at one point, but otherwise, the whole movie seems to take place very nearly in real time.


Have the new episode on the Tivo but haven't watched it yet. Busy week. Have to do that.
posted by Naberius at 1:31 PM on November 20, 2014 [1 favorite]


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