– Spoiler Review –
Here there be dragons?!?! In desperate need for fuel, Flix takes a small crew to visit his family on Drahgor III. The mission becomes more complicated as greedy fuel miners may have uncovered the planet’s most dangerous secret! Join me as I review the most recent episode of Resistance, “From Beneath!”
If there was one major theme that you could point to in almost any Star Wars medium, it would be the idea of “family.” The OT has our heroes cope with the idea that one could be related to Darth Vader; in Rebels, Ezra found family in the crew of the Ghost; in Doctor Aphra, Aphra copes with the falling out of her family structure as she searches for a new one. In the most recent episode of Resistance, Flix is in desperate need for fuel, so he brings Kaz, Orka, CB-23, and Torra Doza to Drahgor III to meet his family and ask them for fuel. We’re told immediately that there is tension between them, but we don’t initially learn what caused the tension.
Interestingly, the tension is similar to Neeku’s situation as described in the past episode. Just like Neeku, who went in search of engineering, much to the confusion of his family, Flix left the family business in pursuit of something greater. Unfortunately, he does not receive the same support from his family that Neeku did. This episode explores some deep concepts like betrayal, broken family relationships, and reconciliation. Of course, these are not handled through traditional means – it’s still a Star Wars show! Instead of seeing Flix and his family chat over coffee and make amends, Flix and his family face dragons.
As Flix and the crew arrive on Drahgor III, he learns that his family has been drilling deep into the planet’s crust in an effort to find more fuel, and, for the most part, we see that they are finding plenty of success. This scares Flix pretty badly: legend has it that there were dragons beneath the surface, and this drilling might awaken them. This brings my mind back to the Zillo Beast duology in The Clone Wars. Both of these shows deal with the excesses of superpowers and how they can disrupt the natural world. The Clone Wars suggested that the Republic’s march toward super weapons and endless war would disrupt the natural world and push it to fight back. Resistance offers the suggestion that exploiting the natural world for profit would also bring repercussions. In both cases, the arrogance of the one holding the super weapon/super drill would almost be their undoing.
There’s a lot of layers to be unpacked in this comparison, but the series doesn’t concern itself with building too many concepts around these discussions. Because this show is so devoted to showing the effects of war on the general population, I think this episode would have been a great way to explore the effect of the First Order’s invasion on commerce. Why was Flix’s family pushed to mine so irresponsibly? Were they making up for a lack of business due to First Order interference? Were they capitalizing on the confusion after the Hosnian Cataclysm? If the show doesn’t want to involve itself much in the Skywalker Saga, I think these are questions it could explore to show how it’s still a great conversation partner with the Saga.
As for the rest of the episode, it is a familiar action-adventure story. As Flix and the crew take a lift into the bottom-most exposed layer of Drohgor’s crust, they are separated and attacked by a family of dragons. Quick and clever (but not necessarily mind blowing or original) thinking from Kaz helps the crew find safety, and bring the episode to a tidy end. The Resistance is, again, provided more fuel for the Colossus and invited to come back whenever necessary.
The first season didn’t really capture my attention until the end of the season, and while this season gripped me at the beginning, I am starting to lose steam for it. The pace is slowing a bit too much for my liking at this rate, as this is the second episode where the crew has suffered from a lack of fuel, and one of many where a mission is mounted to fetch supplies. I do have to admit that this repetition may feel more pronounced with the adjacent-canon material released now, where we are seeing the Resistance search for allies and supplies across the galaxy in Resistance Reborn, Spark of the Resistance, Choose Your Adventure: Finn and Poe, and Allegiance. I miss Tam’s storyline, and I fear that if we go too much longer without seeing her, the real tension and heartbreak that provides the emotional undercurrent beneath the series will vanish and will return too late to recapture the momentum it has been building.
As a side note: if you were curious how this episode would handle Flix and Orka’s relationship, you won’t find a lot of explicit commentary in this episode. Despite commentary from outside of the show that says that they are in a relationship, the episode doesn’t touch on it much. There are a few off-handed comments (like Flix’s family saying that Flix found a good one), but it doesn’t go very deep into exploring their relationship. Let me put it differently: if we never read the article linked above, we’d still be confused whether or not they’re in a relationship or simply a business partnership. An episode based around the concept of family would’ve been a great time to explore this concept as well!
+ A well-done exploration of a famous Star Wars theme
– Series is losing momentum with more supply runs
– The theme of family is under-explored
You can follow Chris on Twitter @ChrisWerms, and of course, you can follow the Manor on Twitter @MynockManor!
STAR WARS RESISTANCE REVIEWS:
Season Two (by Chris) – Ep. 2.1: “Into the Unknown” | Ep. 2.2: “A Quick Salvage Run” | Ep. 2.3: “Live Fire” | Ep. 2.4: “Hunt on Celsor 3” | Ep. 2.5: “The Engineer”
Season One (by Ryan) – Ep. 1.1/1.2: “The Recruit” | Ep. 1.3: “The Triple Dark” | Ep. 1.4 “Fuel for the Fire” | Ep. 1.5: “The High Tower” | Ep. 1.6: “The Children From Tehar” | Ep. 1.7: “Signal From Sector Six” | Ep. 1.8: “Synara’s Score” | Ep. 1.9: “The Platform Classic” | Ep. 1.10: “Secrets and Holograms” | Ep. 1.11: “Station Theta-Black” | Ep. 1.12: “Bibo” | Ep. 1.13 “Dangerous Business” | Ep. 1.14: “The Doza Dilemma” | Ep. 1.15: “The First Order Occupation” | Ep. 1.16: “The New Trooper” | Ep. 1.17: “The Core Problem” | Ep. 1.18: “The Disappeared” | Ep. 1.19: “Descent” | Ep. 1.20: “No Escape” – Part One | Ep. 1,21: “No Escape” – Part Two