Book Review | Star Wars: Dark Disciple by Christie Golden

Dark Disciple is a novel unique in Star Wars literature. Adapted by veteran genre novelist Christie Golden (Star Trek: Voyager) from the scripts and animatics for what would have been Star Wars: The Clone Wars’ longest-ever story arc, Dark Disciple is not a new story but the final piece in the unfinished jigsaw of Asajj Ventress; a vital organ in the franchise rather than the books’ usual connective tissue. The original scripts for the serial were written by Dave Filoni; Matt Michnovetz; and Katie Lucas in close conjunction with her father, whose involvement speaks volumes about this story’s larger significance. Yet Dark Disciple’s extraordinary genesis and unprecedented promise only account for part of its distinctiveness – what truly sets it apart is its subject matter, which explores the notion of balancing both sides of the Force with much greater success than the likes of The Phantom Menace or even The Last Jedi. With the pragmatic Asajj Ventress at the heart of the tale, Golden is able to explore the nuances of the Force unfettered by the dogmatic views of Jedi or Sith. 

Golden’s novel is possessed of a much more adult tone than The Clone Wars (or, indeed, any Star Wars production before or since), largely because its foundation is the sexual relationship that develops between Ventress and the Jedi master sent to exploit her, but otherwise it effortlessly replicates the fast-paced and action-packed style of the animated show. From the episode titles helpfully provided on the book’s title page (“Lethal Alliance”, “The Mission”, “Conspirators”, “Dark Disciple”, “Saving Vos, Part I”, “Saving Vos, Part II”, “Traitor” and “The Path”), I can even infer that Golden has stayed true to the original writers’ planned story structure – all that’s missing from this Clone Wars love letter is one of those fortune cookie-style pearls of wisdom, which the author eschews in favour of a scene-setting opening crawl. Something about right and wrong not being dictated by the side of the Force one draws upon would have been rather apt…

“The question before us now is - who will strike the killing blow?”

Dark Disciple’s storyline sees the gradual erosion of Jedi ethics accelerate in the face of Count Dooku’s escalating atrocities. Thwarted at every turn by the Separatist leader, Mace Windu suggests a drastic course of action to bring the war to an end: assassinate Dooku. It’s a proposal anathema to the Jedi code, and one given short shrift by Obi-Wan Kenobi and other members of the Jedi Council before ultimately being endorsed by Yoda. Not only does this foreshadow Mace’s tragically flawed actions in Revenge of the Sith (“He’s too dangerous to be left alive!”), but it suggests that Mace’s unilateral decision to execute Palpatine without trial in that film would have been sanctioned by his peers, making the Jedi Order’s destruction unavoidable, if not deserved. Brash undercover specialist Quinlan Vos is selected for the unthinkable task, and Yoda orders him to seek out Dooku’s former Sith acolyte Asajj Ventress as “a resource”. The Jedi might not trust Ventress (despite Obi-Wan’s practically fond reminiscences about their shared “banter”), but they know that her hatred for her former master dwarfs any ill feeling that she might still have towards the Jedi. The tragic die is cast.

Initially presenting himself as a business partner for Ventress, Vos is quick to impress the former Sith apprentice with his bounty-hunting aptitude – and all without overtly calling upon the Force. Almost a third of the novel wallows in their high-octane adventures together, some of which threaten to expose Ventress’s caring (not softer!) side, and all of which see Vos edge nearer towards the dark. Indeed, he becomes so wrapped up in their amoral life of adventure that it takes a tragedy for him to confess his identity and his mission. Whereas the predictable romance that follows cements the often-echoed idea that attachment is a path to the dark side, it also reveals that the opposite can be true. A forbidden love affair might see a Jedi master fall to the dark - just as it might draw a Nightsister out into the light. It’s a beautiful conceit; one so obvious that it’s hard to believe that it has never been done before. It’s executed so masterfully, though, and through a character that the intended audience is so heavily invested in, that it resonates magnificently.

Golden’s portrayal of Ventress is absolutely captivating. While the character retains the flighty, wicked disposition that endeared her to many a Clone Wars viewer, she’s largely devoid of malice. Her calls upon the dark side are practical necessities, no different from her use of the light, and she has a genuine sense of remorse whenever she forces Vos to court the dark side. Her unique background has enabled her to straddle both sides of the Force safely – she can instinctively feel where the invisible line between use and abuse lies, and operate within a protected sphere. Ventress doesn’t prophesise balance, she practises it. Unfortunately, her instincts are not so reliable when it comes to interpersonal matters, and her withholding of a terrible truth from her lover has devastating consequences when Dooku gleefully reveals it to him, turning him from Ventress’s dark disciple into his new Sith apprentice: Admiral Enigma.

The more interesting part of the narrative explores what happens next, and how the Jedi and (the now pardoned) Ventress deal with Vos’s turn. More so than even the Jedi, Ventress has a vested interest in saving Vos’s soul, yet she’s the only one who can sense that the darkness has taken him fully. When he returns, seemingly free from his master’s influence, she is the only one who continues to doubt him. Fascinatingly though, the truth isn’t straightforward, and to a degree the Jedi are as right to trust in Vos’s redemption and she is to doubt it. Dark Disciple introduces the intriguing idea that a person can be corrupted by the dark side without even realising it – they might even believe themselves to still be good, or at least working towards a greater good, despite in fact being an agent of evil. 

Accountability is an issue conveniently swerved in Star Wars movies – Anakin Skywalker, slaughterer of children and destroyer of worlds, is apparently absolved of any wrongdoing by his son at the end of Return of the Jedi; it’s as if Darth Vader were another person entirely. Similar could be said of Ben Solo in The Rise of Skywalker. However, as neither survived to face any sort of scrutiny, legal or otherwise, we can’t be sure of how they’d have been treated after returning to the light. Trials? Pardons? Executions? In having Vos survive these events, Dark Disciple doesn’t shy away from such difficult issues – we accompany Vos as he tries to make restitution for his crimes, culminating in a moving coda that reminds us why the Force is at its most interesting when it isn’t just black and white.

Since Dark Disciple was published in 2015, The Clone Wars Legacy multimedia initiative has blossomed into a full-blown revival of the show. Whilst neither this book nor the comic mini-series Darth Maul: Son of Dathomir will form part of the twelve-episode run, there’s always the chance that we may be reunited with Vos at some point along the way. If the show maintains its anthology style, we may not even have seen the last of Dathomir’s most famous daughter. If Dark Disciple teaches us anything, it’s that there is always hope.

Star Wars: Dark Disciple is available to download from the Apple Books Store or Amazon’s Kindle Store for £3.99. An unabridged audiobook read by Marc Thompson is also available to download from iTunes for £15.99 or Amazon for £25.28.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars returns for its revival season today on Disney+. The services launches here in the UK on 24th March 2020 and costs just £5.99 per month or £59.99 per year.

Audio Drama Review | Star Wars – Dooku: Jedi Lost by Cavan Scott

Today, audio drama is probably the most underappreciated medium. Unless you grew up beside the wireless or happen to be a fan of Doctor Who, your experiences of it are likely to be limited to a smattering of incomplete Radio 4 productions that you’ve inadvertently caught while driving somewhere. However, for half my life Big Finish Productions have been churning out full-cast audio dramas at an alarming rate, more than doubling the size of the Whoniverse while also delving into the worlds of many other classic television series and even literary classics. One of the earliest such productions to truly capture me had the name Cavan Scott on its by-line – a then-unknown who, along with his writing partner Mark Wright, pitted Colin Baker’s underrated sixth Doctor against modern-day vampires in a story that set the stall for several years’ worth of game-changing arcs. That same name is now proudly emblazoned on the cover image of the first Star Wars audio drama produced since the popular radio adaptation of the original trilogy came to an end in 1993. This will be a day long remembered…

However, unlike the franchise’s previously forays into audio drama, Dooku: Jedi Lost is both original and canonical. Scott’s story delves into a time period unexplored since the Disney reset, allowing him to shine a light on a potentially fascinating character incredibly short-changed by the movies and portrayed only as a megalomaniacal heel in Star Wars: The Clone Wars. The light shone by Scott casts a long shadow, and though it would not be accurate to say that this production is the story of Dooku’s turn to the dark side, it is nonetheless the apotheosis of a life of disillusionment – like it says on the tin, Jedi lost.

If you pay any attention to the Star Wars Timeline that opens each (written) book in the range, you will note that Dooku: Jedi Lost is its earliest entry, presumably as the preponderance of its plot takes place in the decades leading up to The Phantom Menace. Strictly speaking, though, it actually takes place during the Clone Wars and from the point of view of Asajj Ventress (superlatively recreated for the medium by Orlagh Cassidy), Dooku’s assassin and secret apprentice, who’s been tasked with the rescue of Dooku’s kidnapped sister, Jenza. With three or four times the running time that he’s accustomed to, Scott uses his freedom to fuse the dynamism of audio drama with insightful, first-person prose. Ventress pores through Dooku’s old letters, diaries and holos; the young Jedi’s words bleeding seamlessly into present-tense, full-cast action.

Furthermore, unlike the out-and-out audiobooks in the range, such as the recent Resistance Reborn, the production values here are superb. John Williams’ authentic music is still used to score the drama, but it’s used suitably sparingly, and edited with such precision that it often sounds as if it’s been composed specifically for this production. By necessity, a number existing leitmotifs have had to be reassigned – “Across the Stars”, which Williams wrote as Anakin and Padmé’s love theme for Attack of the Clones, jars the most as its strings often swell around Dooku here, but only if you’re as pedantic as I am with these things. In terms of tone, which is really all that matters, the musical selections can’t be faulted. The sound design is equal to the melodic side of the soundscape; lightsaber duels, swoop-bike races and even great Serennean Sith war beasts are brought graphically to life by Lucasfilm’s foley artists. At times, listening to Dooku: Jedi Lost is like watching a Star Wars movie with your eyes closed.

Scott’s story is a sweeping, snapshot affair that covers all of the formative events in Dooku’s life leading up to him leaving the Jedi Order to assume his ancestral throne as the Count of Serenno. Some of the best Star Wars stories in recent years have spun out of the crippling flaws in the franchise’s movies, and Count Dooku is the locus of many of the prequels’. With his unexplained – and unlikely – nobility and burning questions concerning how much he knows of Palpatine’s masterplan and why the Sidious-soundalike Sifo-Dyas decided to order the Republic a grand army of clones, even Christopher Lee’s stunningly sombre performance struggled to paper over the narrative cracks in Episodes II and III. Dooku: Jedi Lost at least begins to address these issues, taking what initially appeared to be gaping plot holes and weaving them into a truly magnificent back story that enriches Dooku to such a degree that you could almost believe the gaffes were deliberate.

The prequels were keen to emphasise the links between attachment and the gateway to the dark side of the Force, and here Scott reveals that Dooku has more common with his Clone Wars nemesis than we previously knew. Born into royalty on Serenno, baby “Doo” was handed over to the Jedi by his father who loathed his son’s unnatural abilities. Only years later, as a teenager, would Dooku learn of his pedigree through a chance meeting with his sister – a sister that he would then latch onto. Meanwhile, Dooku’s only real friend amongst his fellow Jedi initiates is Sifo-Dyas – a singularly anxious young man plagued by vivid premonitions, which, again, the prequels stressed were pathways to the dark side. From its very first act, Dooku’s dark fate and Sifo’s tragic descent into insanity seem inexorable - what’s so bloody good about this production is that Scott makes you not want them to be.

Clearly taking his cues from JK Rowling, Scott delights in exploring the intricacies of Jedi schooling, with Sifo-Dyas playing the amiable Ron Weasley to Dooku’s troubled Harry Potter. Scott even provides them with a Malfoy-like foil from another Jedi “clan” (Jedi for “house”), while and Marc Thompson’s uncannily accurate Yoda assumes a kindly, Dumbledorean role. Some of the story’s most charming moments see Doo and Sifo get into Ron-and-Harry-like scrapes as they think they’ve uncovered a secret Sith masquerading as a Jedi, only to find themselves a Lupin-like hero figure in her, or see them sweat over the lightsaber tournament that might just earn them their padawanships. Particularly in these parts of the production, Euan Morton really convinces as Dooku - he and Sean Kenin (Sifo) have such a great rapport that it pains when the two best friends are inevitably separated.

Even as Dooku grows older and starts to become Nigel Farage in space, he remains somewhat sympathetic, though admittedly Morton does struggle to channel Christopher Lee in his more stately performance. Dooku’s two knighted padawans, the headstrong Qui-Gon Jinn (stunningly played by Jonathan Davis) and space cowboy Rael Aveross, are still able to penetrate his cold veneer, often reminding him of what’s important and supporting him in even his most ill-conceived and frowned-upon endeavours. In keeping with Mace Windu’s comments about him at the start of Attack of the Clones, Dooku is always portrayed as an idealist here, and Scott does an exemplary job of showing that it’s political ideology that comes between Dooku and the Jedi, as opposed to his secret dalliances with the dark side.

However, whilst “Sheev”, the not-yet influential Naboo politician who drives the whole Star Wars ennealogy (“Skywalker Saga” my arse), may only have a walk-on part here, the seeds of Dooku’s turn are still sown. Dooku: Jedi Lost draws patent parallels between Dooku and Vader, Jenza and Padmé, even Serenno and Tatooine, but it’s far more than just a variation on a theme. Dooku’s descent into evil is far more complex than a snap-decision to try to save a loved one’s life - the dark side is with Dooku from his earliest days as an initiate; his family’s house was literally built on it. Unlike Anakin’s, Dooku’s seduction is the tale of a lifetime, and perhaps the best thing about this wonderful production is that it is only the start of a much larger story. 

If you’ve have told me fifteen years ago that Cavan Scott would be writing full-cast Star Wars audio dramas, I’d have been jumping up and down – and with just cause. Dooku: Jedi Lost breaks the mould that has contained Star Wars fiction since the Expanded Universe was first created, delivering a best-of-both worlds experience that possesses all the depth and complexity of a novel while retaining all of the immediacy and intimacy of audio drama. Buy it now, and they might make us some more…

Star Wars - Dooku: Jedi Lost is available to download from iTunes for £7.99 or Amazon for £19.24.

TV Review | Doctor Who: “The Haunting of Villa Diodati” by Maxine Alderton

There are certain points in space and time apparently designed to entice the Doctor like a moth to the flame. That famous night by Lake Geneva rumoured to have inspired Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is one such point; so attractive, so irresistible, so completely Doctor Who that the Time Lord has now gatecrashed it three times and in two different bodies, but never more exhilaratingly than in Maxine Alderton’s gorgeously gothic masterpiece, “The Haunting of Villa Diodati”.

This episode’s atmosphere is so rich and moody that it’s palpable. Emma Sullivan’s claustrophobic direction is nothing short of exquisite, and it’s difficult to believe that Alderton (Emmerdale, The Worst Witch) has never written for Who before. Her script sizzles with electric dialogue that’s redolent of Russell T Davies at the height of his powers (“Nobody mention Frankenstein. Nobody interfere. Nobody snog Byron…”), and, just like RTD, its superficial mirth often belies something much more profound. From an off-the-cuff “Tuesday” to an anguished tirade about her gang’s “mountainous team structure”, Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor has never sounded more thoroughly Doctorish than she does here. It’s Whittaker’s greatest performance in the role since “Resolution”, if not altogether, and that’s largely down to the quality of the material that she’s gifted. The synopsis’s promise of a “decision of earth-shattering proportions” wasn’t mere hyperbole, it seems, and Whittaker ekes every ounce of indignant fury that she can out of the Doctor’s impossible predicament. She’s staggering here.

Similar could be said of Bradley Walsh, Tosin Cole and Mandip Gill. Each of their characters is assigned a clear role within the plot, and they are roles that advance their ongoing personal stories. Pairing Yas with Claire Clairmont, for instance, offers Yas some distressing insight into her situation aboard the TARDIS, and it does so in a way that feels natural – at no point is Yas’s ear violated. Ryan, meanwhile, finds himself the subject of an exceedingly well-crafted cautionary tale in which his modern sense of mockery incenses Maxim Baldry’s pugilistic Polidori. His granddad fares even better still, the sole subject of a haunting that, rather beautifully, isn’t resolved or even explained by the episode’s dénouement.

Alderton’s masterful handling of the TARDIS crew extends to the distinguished occupants of the Villa Diodati too, one of whom many Doctor Who fans are already well-acquainted with: the soon-to-be Mary Shelley, who was introduced in Big Finish’s 2009 audio anthology The Company of Friends as a travelling companion of Paul McGann’s eighth Doctor. Originally played by Julie Cox (Broadchurch), Big Finish’s venturesome take on Mary was a delightful foil for McGann’s visually Byronic Doctor. “The Haunting of Villa Diodati”, however, sees newcomer Lili Miller present a very different version of Mary for TV. This Mary is altogether more grounded than her predecessor in the audio medium; she has that credible sense of weary mundanity that made her fellow literary greats like Charles Dickens and William Shakespeare so very convincing in Doctor Who. “The Haunting of Villa Diodati” focuses less on overt Frankenstein-esque set pieces and more on Mary’s worries for her infant son and “indisposed” not-quite husband, yet to exactly the same end.

“And the clouds perish’d; Darkness had no need
Of aid from them - She was the Universe.”

This episode’s portrayal of Lord Byron (Jacob Collins-Levy) is far more predictable than its Mary, but it’s even bit as entertaining nonetheless. Having the famous lothario besotted with the Doctor was an inspired move on Alderton’s part, allowing the writer to make a valid point in keeping with the era’s woke agenda yet in a much more understated – and much more humorous – way than is typically the case. What I especially like about Byron’s role here is that, despite having his advances spurned by the Doctor, which in turn leads directly to Miss Clairmont finally washing her hands of him, the episode culminates in his touching reading of “Darkness” - a poem that, if we didn’t know better, we’d swear he actually wrote about the Doc.

Perhaps Alderton’s greatest triumph is reserved for her narrative itself, which initially plays upon the expected haunted-house tropes only to completely subvert expectations at the half-way mark. Despite Captain Jack’s warning in “Fugitive of the Judoon”, the last thing that I expected was for the lone Cyberman he spoke of to show up this week, although in retrospect I probably should have done as it fits so very… excellently. I’d thought the series had utterly exhausted the Cybermen during Peter Capaldi’s time as the Doctor, but Patrick O'Kane’s “modern Prometheus” is something else entirely. His emotion, something usually anathema to his kind, lends him a violent, unstable quality that makes him a bona fide terror. There’s something horribly unsettling about being able to see part of his raging face; flesh merging with plastic and steel. I have no idea where Chris Chibnall is going with the Cyber race, but one thing’s for sure – it’s new and exciting territory.

In almost forty seasons of television, “The Haunting of Villa Diodati” stands out as one of just a handful of episodes that gets everything right. Its characterisation is superb, it balances humour and horror exquisitely and, whilst its twists and turns will probably floor you, they work so perfectly that you are left feeling the story couldn’t really have gone any other way. Light on laudanum and high on heart and horror, this episode is 2020’s instant classic. A must.

Doctor Who airs on Sunday evenings on BBC 1 and is available to stream for the foreseeable future on BBC iPlayer. A season pass comprising all ten episodes of the season in 1080p HD and bonus material is also available from iTunes for £20.99, with episodes typically becoming available the day after their transmission on BBC 1. A Blu-ray steelbook is also available to pre-order from Amazon for £49.99.

The events of “The Haunting of Villa Diodati” take place at the exact same time and in the exact same location as the two eighth Doctors’ first and last respective meetings with Mary Shelley in “Mary’s Story” (The Company of Friends, 2009). At the end of that story, Mary joined the younger of the eighth Doctors for at least a hat trick of adventures in the TARDIS, while the elder eighth Doctor returned to wherever and whenever he came from – very probably the early days of the Last Great Time War. However, Mary does not recognise the Doctor in this episode, and the Doctor does not appear to be familiar with Mary either. Neither is particularly surprising given the apparent state of the Doctor’s memory (she may have an entire lifetime missing, compared to which a forgotten companion is trivial), the Doctor’s change of appearance (and gender), and of course the crucial fact that “Mary’s Story” and “The Haunting of Villa Diodati” are apparently contemporaneous.

The simplest explanation is that “Mary’s Story” and “The Haunting of Villa Diodati” are not contemporaneous at all. One or both of these spatio-temporal locations may not be what it seems, or the two might exist in competing versions of reality. There’s a popular theory that the eighth Doctor’s life is split across a number of parallel universes, with his respective adventures in different media each taking place in completely separate continuities. Whilst this is certainly the cleanest solution to this particular continuity conundrum, I prefer to take a more holistic approach when it comes to interpreting the Doctor’s long and complicated life, and it seems that I’m not the only one. The Company of Friends collection, which introduced Mary, was the first official Doctor Who release to bring together the eighth Doctor’s friends from his previously unconnected appearances in the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip; the Virgin New Adventures; and the long-running BBC Books line.

Above: Breaking the media barrier... Continuity-confounding companions Bernice Summerfield,
Fitz Kreiner, Izzy Sinclair and Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin

For those with my passion for keeping the Doctor singular, a much more interesting idea presents itself when we consider that in taking her gang to a point in space and time that she had already visited before (twice and at the same time…), the Doctor created / exacerbated a vulnerable point. Moreover, if the elder eighth Doctor in “Mary’s Story” was indeed injured in the Last Great Time War, as is heavily implied by the dialogue, then the ensuing wibbly-wobbliness of events is only compounded. The more recent Eighth Doctor: Time War series from Big Finish has shown us time shifting around the Doctor and his friends as the war rages, erasing one companion and repeatedly rewriting the history of another, so such things have a clear precedent. It’s perfectly feasible that the moment the TARDIS materialised by Lake Geneva, the Doctor unravelled the events of not only “Mary’s Story”, but also all of her subsequent adventures with Mary.

Of course, this begs the obvious question as to why the Doctor would do such a thing simply to “soak up the atmos in the presence of some literary greats”, but from the Doc’s point of view, her travels with Mary were millennia ago, and as I’ve already mentioned, her memory is far from elephantine. This theory does leaves us with the poser of how the elder of the eighth Doctors recovered from his vitreous time infection without Shelley’s lightning bolt, though – unless of course he still did, and those events that now never happened still stand from the Doctor’s unique perspective as she’s a Time Lord, and resistant, if not immune, to shifts in her personal timeline. It’s hardly watertight, but it’ll do me.

 

 

Book Review | Star Wars: Thrawn, Thrawn: Alliances & Thrawn: Treason by Timothy Zahn

As Disney-era canon began to overwrite all pre-existing Star Wars’ literature, one of the losses felt most keenly by readers was that of Mitth’raw’nuruodo - better known in the Galactic Empire as Grand Admiral Thrawn. The eponymous Heir to the Empire was created in the early 1990s by acclaimed novelist Timothy Zahn to lead the remnants of the Imperial war machine against the heroes of the original trilogy in the years following Return of the Jedi. The character proved so popular amongst fans that an entire trilogy of books wasn’t enough to contain him – Thrawn would return later in the decade for the Hand of Thrawn duology, and by the time of Disney’s Lucasfilm acquisition he had touched almost every part of the multimedia Expanded Universe (“EU”).

Above: Luke Skywalker tackles the titular Heir to the Empire

The grand admiral’s absence from the franchise would last for almost two years, but the scale of his triumphant return took much of the sting out of his Disney deletion. In 2016, Disney XD’s Star Wars Rebels introduced the character to a new generation in a new medium. Lars Mikkelsen’s calm and silky tones combined with Lucasfilm’s stunning 3-D animation to create a staggeringly accurate embodiment of Zahn’s prose. Short of a live-action appearance, Thrawn’s resurgence couldn’t have been any more rewarding – particularly as Dave Filoni and his Rebels team were bold enough to play upon the character’s notoriety and mystique, treating the Imperial Navy’s master tactician with the same sort of veneration as they previously had its rankless enforcer. Whereas for two seasons the shadow of Darth Vader had loomed large, Thrawn became an ubiquitous thorn in the Ghost crew’s side – a role that he’d play right up until the series’ dramatic finale.

Above: Thrawn returns in Star Wars Rebels

By necessity, Thrawn’s appearances in Rebels take place much earlier than his stories in what is now the “Legends” continuity, and whilst Rebels leaves the character’s future tantalisingly open, in 2017 Zahn elected to explore the character’s past in his first canonical novel. Simply entitled Thrawn, the expansive tome takes us right back to Thrawn’s first contact with the Galactic Empire before going on to chronicle his gruelling rise to power alongside his unwitting - and initially unwilling – protégé, Eli Vanto.

Discovered on an unnamed planet in the Outer Rim in apparent exile, the Chiss warrior is quick to pledge his loyalty to Emperor Palpatine – so quick, in fact, that it betrays even to Palpatine that he harbours an agenda separate to, albeit potentially compatible with, the wellbeing of the Empire. From the outset, then, we are forced to view Thrawn from another perspective – is he really the pitiless villain that Rebels would have us believe? Or is the truth more complicated than that? Might he even be on a mission for a greater good?

“If I were to serve the Empire, you would command my allegiance.”

Like many of my favourite Star Wars books, Thrawn is an immersive and intimate piece of work, yet it’s one that somehow manages to maintain its central character’s inscrutability even if the face of such exposure. Even authorial omniscience can’t quite crack open that magnificent mind – instead, we marvel at it from Eli’s perspective. Our questions become his. His reluctant stirrings of sympathy become ours. Even more so than with the likes of Tarkin and Darth Vader: Dark Lord of the Sith, this book forces its reader to begrudgingly respect its audacious protagonist.

Such stirrings flow more naturally than one would expect in Thrawn as Zahn portrays him as the ultimate underdog – a blue face in a white sea. With the notable exceptions of Eli and the Emperor, almost every officer that Thrawn serves under or alongside in the Imperial Navy prejudges him because of his blue skin and red eyes, with many going on to be verbally or even physically abusive towards him. As has been observed many times, the Empire is largely comprised of white males with British accents – exotic aliens with ideas above their perceived station do not make perfect poster boys. It’s therefore impossible not to revel in Thrawn’s ever-growing string of little victories over these bigots – he might not take any obvious pleasure in them, but as a reader, it’s hard not to.

Thrawn’s meteoric rise through the ranks is slowed only by his political naïvety, which becomes a recurring problem when dealing with his superiors and even peers. They don’t like Thrawn because of what he is, and they fear him because of what he can do. This lack of finesse is accentuated by the novel’s secondary focus on Arihnda Pryce, the future governor of Lothal featured heavily Rebels, whose fate will eventually become entwined with Thrawn’s. Her own rise to power is the antithesis of Thrawn’s – she is everything that he is not, and vice-versa, which of course makes them extremely useful to one another.

Above: Thrawn alongside Arihnda Pryce in Star Wars Rebels

The new Thrawn trilogy’s central instalment is without a doubt its most alluring, though, as it sees the grand admiral, reeling from his failure to capture the rebels’ Phoenix cell at end of Rebels’ third season, sent with Darth Vader to explore a disturbance in the Force in the Unknown Regions. Seeing Thrawn and Vader sharing a cover will be promise enough for most potential readers, but Thrawn: Alliances’ ambitions extend far beyond exploring the inevitably difficult relationship between two of the Emperor’s most prized weapons. As the story unfolds in the present, Zahn takes us back further than even the preceding novel does, to a time in the Clone Wars when Thrawn encountered Anakin Skywalker on the remote planet where the Emperor’s disturbance now appears to be located. As these two parallel stories progress together, years apart, they unmask the threat now facing both the Galactic Empire and the Chiss Ascendancy – and with it, the identity of the man now buried beneath that famous black suit of armour and the true motivations of the grand admiral holding his leash.

In taking the action out into the Unknown Regions, Zahn also affords himself the opportunity to expound on what little we know of Thrawn’s oligarchical people and the wild space that their Ascendancy inhabits. For example, there is beautiful irony in Vader having to become what the Chiss call a “sky walker”, as he must use the Force to navigate the Chimaera through the labyrinth of solar storms and rogue magnetospheres that would otherwise make the Unknown Regions unpassable. Unfortunately such painstaking groundwork is all but undone by The Rise of Skywalker, which has not only Rey, but also just about every free ship in the galaxy, descend upon Exegol, all thanks to just one Sith wayfinder and a trail of breadcrumbs.

Above: Thrawn: Alliances sees Thrawn sent with Vader to explore a Force disturbance in the Unknown Regions

Far more action-packed than Thrawn, Thrawn: Alliances is still a solidly character-driven story, and one that, perhaps better than any other, showcases why Thrawn is the successful commander that he is. Placing Vader aboard Thrawn’s ship brutally contrasts the two men’s opposing command styles, with Vader inevitably looking to lead through fear and punishment while Thrawn quietly inspires. Some of the book’s most memorable passages feature Thrawn defending his outspoken officers against Vader’s wrath, or see the Sith Lord seethe as he watches the grand admiral encouraging his subordinates and openly valuing their contributions. Eli may be absent from this story, but through Karyn Faro and others like her, Zahn leaves us in no doubt that the crew of the Chimaera would jump into a Sarlacc pit if Thrawn ordered them to because he engenders such trust. Vader, on the other hand, would probably have to call upon the Force to push his lot in.

Thrawn: Alliances is also charged with properly establishing the trilogy’s overarching villains, the Grysks, who seem to be an unapologetic reimagining of the EU’s Yuuzhan Vong. The Grysks may not quite be the extra-galactic threat that the Yuuzhan Vong were, but hailing from the Unknown Regions imbues them with every bit as much mystery, and their presence on the fringes of what is now the Empire as long ago as during the Clone Wars proves that they make their invasion plans just as meticulously. However, whilst physically and tactically there is little to set this race apart from the scourge of the EU, the Grysks’ uncanny ability to subjugate hearts and minds makes them a potentially even more dangerous threat – one that could feasibly threaten both Palpatine’s Empire and the Chiss Ascendancy.

It is this idea that underpins the trilogy’s concluding instalment, Thrawn: Treason, which sees the Chiss grand admiral struggling to reconcile his loyalty to the Empire against his duty to his own people. With the Emperor’s secret Stardust project consuming more and more of the Empire’s resources, Thrawn finds himself drawn into a wager with Director Krennic that puts the funding of Thrawn’s TIE defender programme in jeopardy: either he solves the director’s pest problem within a week, or Thrawn’s TIE defender budget goes to Stardust. However, the grand admiral’s investigations soon reveal that Krennic’s problem isn’t pestilence, but piracy, and the trail leads ineluctably back to the Grysks.

Thrawn: Treason is by far the most engrossing book of the three, largely because it builds so well upon the previous two. Throughout the trilogy Thrawn’s opposition to the Death Star project has been quietly ticking over in the background, but it is only here that it becomes plain that the power to annihilate entire worlds would render Thrawn’s tactical acumen redundant. As such, when the Chiss arrive, Thrawn’s former protégé Eli Vanto now amongst their ranks, the grand admiral has never been more torn.

Above: Every saga has a beginning... Thrawn will return this summer in Thrawn Ascendancy: Chaos Rising

On one level, Thrawn: Treason is a bit of a cheat. Once again, Thrawn’s duty to the Chiss Ascendancy and fealty to the Empire prove to be compatible, and the treason of the book’s title is not his, but another’s. On another level, though, it’s incredibly satisfying as it sees Thrawn notch up one impressive victory after another, culminating in a masterful strategic display which sees him defeat his adversary from the bridge of the enemy ship and without costing the Empire a single life. Yet despite this, Thrawn’s political gaucherie sees him walk straight into Krennic’s semantic trap, reinforcing the building sense that, for all his prodigious talent, the grand admiral has no place in a navy backed up by a Death Star. Of course, shortly after the events of this book, he won’t have one – Ezra Bridger sees to that.

Above: The Last Command, or what might have been in The Rise of Skywalker...?

The only disappointing aspect of this trilogy is its failure – or, perhaps more accurately, the movies’ failure – to tie these stories into what we see in cinemas. How was Thrawn not cast in the Allegiant General Pryde role in The Rise of Skywalker, when he’s served as Palpatine’s sole advisor on the Unknown Regions? Why do these books not see Thrawn take an active role in Palpatine’s seeding of the Unknown Regions with shipyards? The missed opportunities and slaps in the face are incredibly frustrating, and seemingly miss the whole point of rebooting Star Wars canon.

Not one to let something like erasure from history get in his way, Thrawn’s successful return in Star Wars Rebels has now led to the creation of this new body of work that, in many respects, eclipses what came before in the EU. These three books rank amongst the finest Star Wars literature ever written, canonical or otherwise.

Star Wars: Thrawn is available to download from iTunes’ iBooks Store and Amazon for £1.99. iTunes also have an unabridged audiobook available to download for £15.99. Amazon ask £28.08 for the exact same product as they want you to subscribe to their Audible service rather than own your own media.

Star Wars: Thrawn - Alliances is available to download from iTunes’ iBooks Store and Amazon for £4.99. The audiobook is also available to download from iTunes for £7.99 or from Amazon for £20.99.

Star Wars: Thrawn - Treason is available to download from iTunes’ iBooks Store and Amazon for £9.99. Notably the audiobook is cheaper than the text version on iTunes - the download will cost you just £7.99. Amazon ask £22.74.

TV Review | Doctor Who: “Can You Hear Me?” by Charlene James & Chris Chibnall

Almost sixty years ago, when Doctor Who was on the drawing board, three story types were proposed: past, future and sideways. The second and third Doctors’ eras later brought a fourth into the mix, that of the present-day invasion, and now the Chris Chibnall era has added its own – the laughable. Penned by provocative playwright Charlene James, who shares her credit with the almost omnipresent showrunner, “Can You Hear Me?” is, without exception, the most peculiar Doctor Who story ever televised. It’s also the first outing for this particular TARDIS team that my daughter hasn’t liked, though whether this was because she genuinely thought it was rubbish or because it just scared the shit out of her, I really can’t say.

As its science-fiction plot is, at best, incomprehensible, “Can You Hear Me?” lives and dies on the strength of its nightmarish imagery – and there are few images in recent memory as vivid as that of the wraith-like Zellin (played by Ian Gelder, better known to Game of Thrones fans as Ser Kevan Lannister) detaching his fingers and sending them flying through the air to plug the ears of unwitting sleepers. However, as if ear rape is not enough of a nightmare in of itself, these detached digits then induce disturbing dreams, which they then videotape and transmit to Zellin’s fellow immortal, who’s a bit bored as she’s been trapped between two crashing planets for millennia – punishment, we’re told, for playing war games on a planetary scale. It’s here that most viewers would be forgiven for either losing the plot (such as it is) or see their mind’s willingness to suspend disbelief abscond. It’s an alarmingly weak and poorly executed premise, and no amount of namechecking the superbeings of the Whoniverse can save it from being otherwise.

Indeed, this episode’s central storyline is so utterly ludicrous that “Can You Hear Me?” would have been a contender for the series’ worst-ever episode were it not for its astonishingly proficient handling of the Doctor’s “extended fam”, who of late have found themselves sorely neglected. James’s theatrical credentials are apparent from how she has Yas and Graham open up about their most intimate personal struggles, as if they were in a play, while Ryan deals with his guilt over leaving behind his best friend, who himself is grappling with demons – and not just those of the baddie-BFG type.

The three companions’ threads are wonderfully written and tenderly played – the closing of a circle for Yas is the most poignant moment of the season to date, while Graham’s attempt to confide in the “socially awkward” Doctor is as touching as it is sad. The trust that Graham places in his alien friend and her subsequent, none-too-subtle removal of herself from the situation speak volumes about both characters while at the same time intensifying the mounting sense of unease that has been building in the Doctor’s friends ever since Spyfall. Whether this will culminate in a parting of ways or the forging of a stronger bond only time will tell, but for the first time since the start of the season I’m rooting for the latter – and all thanks to this episode.

Inescapably though, the series’ discussion of such worldly fears as cancer returning or those surrounding mental health won’t sit well with the growing number of vocal viewers who feel that the show doesn’t offer them the escapism that it once did. I’m not one of them, though, and in fact I applaud any light shone on mental health issues, particularly in young men - if they can do it at football matches, then why not in Doctor Who? Provided that it flows organically from the story’s subject matter, which it does here, then it’s all to the good. Of course, it might have be prudent not to tackle such a taboo topic in an episode destined to be remembered as nothing but mental, but ultimately having the programme deal with daily problems only makes its extraordinary adventures more relatable, not less so. Even for the many children in the audience, cancer and depression are things that they will or should be familiar with by the time that they’re old enough to watch – it’s not as if James is using the show to petrify youngsters with the particulars of female genital mutilation. Airborne fingers and auditory canal penetration are quite adequate for a Sunday evening, thank you.

Unfortunately though, no matter how noble your intentions or how graceful your handling of the TARDIS crew, if you make your villains of the week lazily generic god-like beings with a penchant for ear-poking and impermeable motives, then your episode is going to be synonymous with ridicule; its loveliest moments lost beneath memories of finger missiles and uproar over a helpline number that was about as warranted and as welcome as an explanatory note after a joke. There’s a lesson to be learned here, and it’s not just about wearing earplugs.

Doctor Who airs on Sunday evenings on BBC 1 and is available to stream for the foreseeable future on BBC iPlayer. A season pass comprising all ten episodes of the season in 1080p HD and bonus material is also available from iTunes for £20.99, with episodes typically becoming available the day after their transmission on BBC 1. A Blu-ray steelbook is also available to pre-order from Amazon for £49.99.

App / Streaming Service Review | Amazon’s Prime Video

“No, not really,” was the response that immediately leapt to mind when my mobile provider asked me if I’d like a six-month free trial of Prime Video. Having tried the service periodically before – whenever Amazon have pushed a free trial on me or the missus – I had always found it difficult to navigate; riddled with bugs; and, crucially, chock full of movies and shows that I either already owned or had no interesting in watching. This all changed when I heard that Prime had secured the rights to stream the then-upcoming Star Trek: Picard in the UK. “No, not really,” quickly became, “Yes please!”

Above: And here's me thinking that Star Trek: Picard is a CBS All Access original! Surely "Amazon Exclusive" would be a more honest slogan?

It’s telling, though, that in my five-month wait for Star Trek: Picard to drop, the only show that I watched on the platform was DC’s Swamp Thing (a bold and singularly scary series inexplicably cancelled by DC Universe as soon as its first episode aired), but even that could have been enjoyed elsewhere as it is now widely available for purchase digitally and on Blu-ray. One of my daughters has also watched a few Little Princesses, and together this accounts for the total sum of our household’s pre-Picard viewing. Admittedly, there is a plethora of content available on the platform that we love (the American version of The Office, Smallville, Arrow…) but why would we waste gigabytes of our monthly usage allowance streaming it over the Internet when we could just watch it on Apple TV using home sharing? Why to pay to rent what we’ve already purchased outright?

Above: Unless you're talking about Swamp Thing, which, even in this territory, is also available to purchase digitally. There's even a region-free Blu-ray knocking about for physical media enthusiasts. Hardly exclusive.

One such reason might be a better interface, which Prime Video does not have. In fact, Prime’s apps are even worse than NOW TV’s; ugly and laden with traps. Whilst the landing screen at least has the reserve to limit its offerings to those tagged with “Prime” in the top-left corner, if you search for a movie or programme you will often get a positive result even if the video in question isn’t available to stream as part of the subscription package. For adult subscribers watching alone, this is probably a bit annoying; for those of us with kids, it makes life impossible. “But it’s found it, Dad, look!” This mandatory store integration might be welcome for those heavily invested in the Amazon ecosystem, who also want to use the Prime Video app to stream the videos that they’ve bought from Amazon, but I’m sure that most subscribers to the streaming service would prefer a cleaner interface such as those offered by their main competitors. There’s nothing to prevent Amazon creating a separate app for consumers to make and stream their purchases or, better still, download them to PCs or home media servers to share within their homes along the lines of iTunes’ home sharing via the Apple TV’s Computers app.

Another reason would be simple convenience, but again Prime Video crashes and burns. The unpleasantness of the cheap-looking layout is indicative of the service’s rigid and clunky functionality – trying to skip backwards and forwards is a painful experience irrespective of which app or remote I’m using, while crucial functions like zoom are missing entirely. This was a particular problem for me as both shows that I watched during my free trial were letterboxed. For some elusive reason, the ability to blow up a picture is disabled entirely on my Samsung TV’s Prime app (the app actually goes to the trouble of overriding the TV’s built-in zoom feature, leaving it greyed out), while the tvOS app for Apple TV does not respond to the remote’s convenient double-tap zoom. Similarly, the iOS apps prevent you from blowing up an image, which is particularly preposterous on an iPad, where a 2.35:1 video fills only about half the available screen. The only way I could get Picard into 16:9 was by watching it on the Apple TV’s Prime app while using my Samsung TV to blow up the entire Apple TV input (controls and all) from 2.35:1 to 16:9. Losing a bit off the sides of an image may be heresy to some purists, but for me the opposite is true - at least when it comes to programmes supposedly made to be enjoyed on TVs. Whatever your view, though, if studios are going to deliberately make a TV programme the wrong shape, then viewers should at least retain the choice of how they want to view it. Amazon, in their dictatorial wisdom, take that decision away from you.

Above: Another red cross for Prime.

Above: Prime Video on an iPhone

Another key failing of Prime is the iOS apps’ download supposed download function. Even with the download quality set at “Best”, a forty-four-minute episode of Picard weighs in at a paltry 215.7MB. To put that in context, a 64-second Doctor Who trailer for that I recently downloaded from iTunes takes up 43.8MB disc space. On an iPhone 6s Plus’s 5.5” 1080p screen, trying to watch downloaded Prime content is scarcely any better than watching an old .avi file on a mid-’90s CD-ROM or dial-up Internet connection. I’d take a screengrab to illustrate my point but, true to form, none of the Prime Video apps support them – you can screengrab the menus all you like, but if media is playing, then you’ll either just get a blank screen or a blank screen with the interface on top. Another red cross for Prime.

A further irritation for me is my watchlist’s tendency to populate itself. It’s as if it’s incredulous that I’ve only got Picard on there; it can’t accept it, so it takes matters into its own hands and starts loading it up with whatever mass-market tripe Amazon Studios have recently farmed out. Having to suffer through unsolicited and irrelevant trailers half the time I try to watch anything is bad enough, but don’t go messing with my watchlist.

Above: Not X-Men, X-Ray...

Watching Picard, though, one unexpected feature has really impressed me – X-Ray. Exhaustive cast metadata is commonplace now; any half-decent media server (Plex, Emby, MediaPortal…) can readily extract information from IMDb or the TheTVDB and turn it into a prettier-than-Prime interface, but Prime Video is the first that I’ve come across to offer scene-specific cast information. I discovered the feature by accident when pausing the show, but have found it particularly enlightening ever since. I was convinced Marvel’s Clark Gregg was playing a Romulan in “Maps and Legends”, but thanks to X-ray, I could prove myself wrong without even having to reach for my phone. At last, Prime earns its first green tick.

Above: Prime Video on an iPad

Another welcome feature is how Prime deals with movies and programmes that will be leaving the service soon. These are all clearly identified and even promoted on the apps’ landing pages, encouraging viewers to get them watched while they can. Of course, the very need for this feature highlights Prime’s greatest failing: its continuing dependence on third-party content, the extent of which is diminishing as more and more studios claw back their own content to host on rival services. While Amazon offers a wide array of “Originals”, as they stand they are hardly comparable to Disney’s peerless archives, let alone the combined output of BBC and ITV. There’s not a single, Amazon-produced programme (i.e. a genuine “Original”, as opposed to licenced exclusives like Picard and Swamp Thing) currently on the service that appeals to me. That will change if the long-rumoured Lord of the Rings prequel series ever drops, of course, but that particular project is still without an expected date, two and a half years on from being announced.

Another coup for the service is its recently-acquired Premiership football, which for too long has been the exclusive preserve of BT and Sky. However, with only “up to” twenty games all season, it’s little more than a taster for viewers, as opposed to a viable means of following the competition. Again, Prime isn’t setting itself up as a workable alternative to the market leaders here – for now, it’s just a purveyor of a limited number of matches that other broadcasters can’t get or don’t want.

Above: The selling point.

For £7.99 per month or £79.00 per year, Prime Video offers its subscribers a random assortment of eclectic entertainment that’s quite capable of keeping any household entertained for a while, subject to personal tastes and the extent of people’s own media libraries. However, it lacks the easy-to-grasp focus of cheaper offerings such as Britbox and the upcoming Disney+, both of which offer near-exhaustive libraries of particular types of content for £2.00 per month less (£29.01 per year less, if you take Disney+ up on their pre-order offer). Prime can’t market itself as the home of Star Trek, for instance, or the exclusive home of Premiership football, because it’s not – it’s mostly just a rag-tag assemblage of smash-and-grabs, devoid of identity and permanence. Unless you simply can’t wait for Picard’s eventual home video release, Prime is a service best avoided – even when it’s offered for free.

You can start a 30-day free trial of Prime Video by signing up here. If you’re only planning to watch Star Trek: Picard, you might want to hold fire until at least 27th February 2020 to make sure you can watch the whole thing without having to become a paid subscriber.