Star Wars Rebels: Wings of the Master
November 12, 2015 8:40 AM - Season 2, Episode 5 - Subscribe

With the Rebels in desperate need of help in breaking a blockade, Hera travels to a dangerous planet to meet an old Mon Calamari engineer and test out a new prototype fighter: the B-Wing.

Trivia to come, browsers not cooperating with the page. Meh.

Off the Top of the Head Trivia!

The B-Wing made its initial debut in Return of the Jedi, being one of the last star fighter additions to the Original trilogy, the other was the A-wing. Previously, only X-Wings and Y-wings were depicted in the other two movies.
posted by Atreides (12 comments total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
One thing this episode did a great job of was reintroducing us to something we have already seen but showing why it was important. In the attack on the blockade, it was easy to tell what set the B wing apart.
posted by drezdn at 10:36 AM on November 12, 2015 [2 favorites]


I played the Strike Force: Shantipole mission of the Star Wars RPG back in the early 90s. This episode was super fun. My wife was pleased that the women were the heroes of this episode. Loved the Rocketeer-ish music when Hera was test flying.
posted by Fleebnork at 3:46 PM on November 12, 2015 [3 favorites]


The first appearance of the B-wing and it's first use in battle made my kid bouce on the sofa and squeal. This was a fun episode.
posted by Seamus at 8:05 PM on November 12, 2015 [2 favorites]


He has now spent every waking moment creating mini-B-wings out of random Legos and flying them all over the house. This episode might have made the best impression on him yet.

One thing I do love about this is that they are starting to develop strong female characters. The women carried this episode. I hope they develop them more fully as they go along.

There was also a passing glimpse and mention of Ketsu, Sabine's old partner (which I know because he spent a good 10 minutes trying to figure out variations of spelling on the name he heard so we could look her up. If only he would be so dedicated while looking up spellings in the dictionary. Damn 21st Century Digital Boy I'm raising here.). He thought her armor looked cool as fuck (my words, not his).
posted by Seamus at 6:05 AM on November 13, 2015 [3 favorites]


This was a good episode, and any episode which pairs Sabine and Hera together promises to be a good one for developing female characters. I wish we could have explored a bit more into Hera's past outside of her just being a small child staring up at the sky (There's a Clone Wars episode or two that takes place on a planet of Twi'leks, I wonder if there's a little girl in that episode that gazes up - that would be fantastical!). The music was absolutely another character in this episode, more so than usual. The animation and directing was pretty spot on, and the directing. S

o long as we avoid the idea of a blockade around a planet consisting of five ships, there isn't a lot to complain about. The only way this makes sense is if there's some space physics related reason that approaches must be made the way they're made. I know in Star Wars there's "hyperspace lanes" and I suppose one could create a "blockade" if they position themselves at a distance of where such a lane would exit and force anyone who wants to travel beyond that exit point to pass through their position.

Perhaps the one thing that troubled me was the lack of reflection that an entire rebel ship, a Corellian blockade runner, was lost in the initial attempt. I need to re-watch the episode, but I don't recall Hera really having much regret over her insistence that the ship continue forward when it was broadcasting it was in danger. I would have liked to have seen the loss of those lives having some kind of affect on her.

There's some fanboys out there complaining how Disney has altered the background of the B-wing. Eh. It was always supposed to be a Mon Calamari developed fighter, so they stayed true enough to that (I think Ackbar was supposed to have originally played a role in its creation). Incidentally, I've never been a major fan of the B-Wing, finding its cockpit position in relation to its main body and wings just awkward. Give me more A-Wing action!

And unfortunately, the Star Wars episode guide for "Wings of the Master" is still refusing to give up the Trivia Gallery.
posted by Atreides at 7:01 AM on November 13, 2015 [2 favorites]


I liked how the cranky Mon Calamari aerospace engineer had the Mainer accent of a Stephen King background character. It gave me the sense that it was a reference to something but I couldn't place it. Does anyone know?
posted by chrchr at 8:26 AM on November 13, 2015 [2 favorites]


Did anyone expect the cranky Mon Calamari aerospace engineer "Quarrie" (SUBTLE) to talk about "all the damned vampires"?.

(I think Ackbar was supposed to have originally played a role in its creation
That was clearly ...a ....tr......ap.
Also, he's in the new advert. 48 seconds in.
posted by Mezentian at 5:15 AM on November 14, 2015 [2 favorites]


I don't get the vampire reference.
posted by bq at 10:14 AM on November 15, 2015


Maine
Vampires

How can it be anything but a Steven King reference?
posted by Seamus at 12:30 PM on November 15, 2015


The trivia gallery is finally working!

The Official Trivia for the Episode
  • Quarrie's astromech droid, BG-81, is named for ILM veteran Bill George, who designed the B-wing for Return of the Jedi, and the droid's color scheme is based off a t-shirt that George is seen wearing in a photograph during production.
  • The first notion that the Mon Calamari were behind the design of the B-wing goes back to the 1989 RPG game by West End Games, called Star Wars: Shantipole.
  • Quarrie was named after Ralph McQuarrie.
  • The smaller quonset-like huts were made from wings of ARC fighters from the Clone Wars.
  • The aurabesh writing next to the cockpit reads, "Prototype B6."
  • Quarrie's weathervane is a stylized dactillion, one of the creatures flying on Shantipole.
  • The starving rebel on the blockaded planet has the punning name of Fahm Esh.
  • The redesigned Phantom has hyperdrive, but requires an astromech to operate it - which is why it now has an astromech socket.

posted by Atreides at 5:30 PM on November 15, 2015 [2 favorites]


It bugged me a little bit that the B-Wing had some sort of super-laser (previously, canon was just that it had like 3 laser cannons, a blaster cannon, 2 ion cannons, and torpedo launchers - so basically just lots of guns, not one massive one). Maybe they switch to more conventional weaponry for mass-production though, and/or the super-laser is too hard to maintain.
But aside from that, seeing the A-Wings and a B-wing get more screen-time is cool, after X-Wings hogging the limelight previously.

Quarrie was named after Ralph McQuarrie.

Ahaha, I was thinking "why does that name sound so familiar???".
posted by EndsOfInvention at 2:35 AM on December 1, 2015


Yeah, the B-wing's super laser doesn't make a lot of sense, especially since once it's fired, it pretty much knocks out the hyperdrive system and renders the regular armaments useless. I think we'll have to go with it's a largely impractical tool that isn't used commonly or Quarrie never figured out how to fix the problem the super laser caused by its firing.
posted by Atreides at 7:26 AM on December 1, 2015


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