So what’s a Great Barrier look like anyway?
Recap
The kids’ parents are working in the woods at night on their communications device to contact the kids. They are discovered by security droids and form a relay race to pass off the device to each other as each of them is stunned in turn. Once the device is passed to Fara, it is powered up and ready to be released, and she gets it to launch. On the new Onyx Cinder, the kids are playing, but Wim is depressed—he knows their adventure is coming to an end and they’ll be right back where they started. His friends insist that they’re still glad they had this experience and that everything will be fine. In the meantime, the pirates arrive at the coordinates of At Attin and discover a planet of toxic gas storms. Jod insists this is all a trick, so they send out a scout and promptly lose contact.
As Jod is sent to the airlock, the new Onyx Cinder comes out of hyperspace, and Jod tells them this is how they’ll get to At Attin. The ship is caught in the pirates’ tractor beam, and the ramp to the ship lowers. Brutus tells the occupants to surrender and the kids use the cargo claw to grab him, using a voice-changing mechanism to tell the pirates to let them go or they’ll kill him. Jod does the job for them, shooting Brutus in the head, and telling the pirates that they obviously want to follow him. The crew agrees, and Jod tells them the ship is full of kids who can be easily subdued. The kids are taken hostage and the Onyx Cinder is under pirate control. Jod wants to find out why the Cinder can get through the storms to At Attin, and as his crew works to that end, the message from the kids’ parents makes it through the Barrier: They tell the children that they can’t reveal the location of At Attin to them directly, but that the children should be able to make it home if they find a Republic Emissary who knows the planet’s location. They weren’t supposed to find out about any of this until they graduated.
Wim decides they need to take control of the ship and tries to attack, but is quickly stopped. However, SM-33 points out that, according to the pirate code, you can only captain one ship at a time. Jod claims the ship, but Fern calls “unclaimsies” and claims the ship for kids only. That’s good enough for SM-33, who has clearly been looking for a glitch in the rules, and he throws the pirates off the ship, knocking Jod out. The kids and 33 escape the pirate freighter and begin to fly through the Barrier, pursued by pirate fighters. They realize that the reason the Onyx Cinder can get through the Barrier is because the ship is from At Attin. They make it through to find their planet, getting put on an autopilot sequence for landing. Jod got back on the ship, however, and means to take over again. SM-33 goes to fight him and Jod decapitates him with the lightsaber he pilfered from Rennod’s treasure room.
Jod tries to contact his ship, but can’t get through the Barrier interference and makes the kids get on the ground and not say a word, calling them spoiled and weak. He tells them that if they out him to anyone on At Attin, he’ll kill them or their families. The kids’ parents are currently being told off by a security droid, when there’s an interruption: An Emissary is arriving for a shipment. KB’s moms get the light back on their bracelet and know the kids are aboard. The Cinder lands on At Attin and Jod introduces himself as the Republic Emissary, and is told that he must proceed directly to the Mint to begin offloading procedures. He and the kids are taken underground, and the safety droids refuse his request to contact his ship outside, saying he must speak to the Supervisor about the Barrier.
They make it to the Vaults and Jod finds himself surrounded by Old Republic credits, more than anyone could ever imagine. He begins to laugh hysterically at the sight. The kids’ parents are brought down to the Vault and the children are reunited with their families… but Jod comes toward the group with his lightsaber.
Commentary
This was another short, sweet, fun episode, but we’ve gotta talk about how At Attin seems to work, now that we have some more information.
So, when you live on At Attin, you don’t find out what the planet is for until you’re essentially grown enough to be thinking of entering this society and getting one of your (extremely limited) possible jobs. Which means that right as you’re becoming an adult, you learn that you have only a couple of options for lifelong purpose and employment forever, and that if you choose to have a family, your kids will be given the exact same (lack of) choices.
Now, it’s possible that when the planet was in more consistent Republic contact, it was a bit easier to leave if that’s what you wanted. But leaving would mean that you might never really see your family again, since you can only enter the atmosphere on a special Republic ship designed for the planet. Essentially, if you’re a denizen of At Attin, you’re supposed to exist in service of the Mint and have children who exist in that same service and no one is really all that bothered by this? Because the planet does need these people to breed in order to have more workers for the Mint, right? That’s how you keep the system running. The brainwashing quotient on this population is so high that I’m forced to ask how it was achieved in the first place. Genuinely, I need someone to tell me how this system was put in place and when and who conceived it and why it was considered to be the best system at the time…
I’m not saying I don’t like the concept—it’s horrific and screwy and I’m fascinated—but I don’t imagine the show is gonna get into that before end? Like, we might end on a dismantling of this world as it functions since there is no Old Republic anymore, but that doesn’t mean that anyone is going to address how this very upsetting place came to be and continued for so long uninterrupted.
Having said that, Jod is really getting the chance to stretch his villain legs properly, and I’m enjoying it immensely. Killing Brutus was kind of a given—the guy was beyond useless and such a pushover—but the way he treats the kids in this episode is absolutely monstrous. He knows exactly what buttons to push after spending so much time with them, precisely what they’re all afraid of. He knows that Wim is the most sensitive and that Neel is the most frightened. He knows that Fern can’t stand not being able to do something. (The look on her face as she keeps quiet, the repressed rage, ugh. That one hit me right in the childhood.) And the fact that Jod uses the lightsaber, poisoning something that brought Wim so much comfort and joy… What a hideous piece of work he is.
A shoutout to SM-33 who was clearly looking for any possible loophole out of his programming and took the opportunity with both brawling hands. At least we know he’s not permanently dead, and we’ll hopefully see him restored next week.
We’ve got some fun Wizard of Oz-esque shenanigans at this point around the Supervisor and what is truly running the planet. Bets on who it’s going to be? Perhaps the biggest droid on At Attin? The planet’s a big computer? It’s Rennod himself? An Emperor clone? Jod’s former Jedi master? We’ll know soon enough…
Spanners and Sabers
- It’s important to note that the mechanisms that create the Great Barrier are the same sort of implements used to carry out Operation: Cinder at the end of the Empire’s reign—this was an orbital bombardment initiative against key worlds with great resources that the Emperor put in place to be executed in the event of his death. Undoubtedly, a planet like At Attin would have been high on that list had anyone still known of its location.
- Sorry, but when did Jod get the ligthsaber back? Why was the pirate crew just keeping all his effects on the ship, wouldn’t they have left his stuff back at the port?
- Again, why is this planet the Mint? What are the dataries made of that’s so valuable and can’t be made elsewhere? I just need someone to make it make sense.
- Really wanna know if KB’s moms are both her bio parents—it’s always a possibility within sci-fi premises and I want that to be an easy thing in Star Wars for queer couples, should they want their own kids.
Next week it’s the finale! Can’t wait to find the man/woman/being/droid behind the curtain…
Let’s say Jod succeeds in expropriating several billion Old Republic credits and goes on a wild, empire-scale spending spree. It seems like this would cause severe hyperinflation to the tune of “three deciduous forests buying on ship’s peanut.”
Well, he could just store it all in a large bin and dive around in it like a porpoise, burrow through it like a gopher, and toss it up and let it hit him on the head. It is a Disney production, after all…
“But it be close enough!” was a big cheer moment for me. That’s when I finally liked SM-33.
So the reason the Cinder had a false outer hull was to disguise its true identity as an Emissary ship from the Old Republic’s banking system. I don’t think the ship was from At Attin per se, just part of the overall OR treasury apparatus that spanned the whole set of At planets and wherever they delivered their minted currency to. It’s the equivalent of an armored car coming to pick up the next shipment of bills to be put into distribution.
As for why the planet is like this, the Old Republic fell more than a thousand years before, so presumably At Attin’s been isolated that long, with the droids keeping the system running on automatic in the absence of any outside authority to tell them otherwise. I suppose the planet was presumed destroyed in the Jedi-Sith War that ended the OR, or the classified records to its location were lost in the war, or both. That’s why they have over 1100 vaults stacked to the brim with credits — because nobody’s been coming to collect them for a millennium.
1139 vaults to be precise. I assume they’ll be down one vault by next week in order to achieve that magic Lucas number.
Nice catch!
“So, when you live on At Attin, you don’t find out what the planet is for until you’re essentially grown enough to be thinking of entering this society and getting one of your (extremely limited) possible jobs. Which means that right as you’re becoming an adult, you learn that you have only a couple of options for lifelong purpose and employment forever, and that if you choose to have a family, your kids will be given the exact same (lack of) choices.”
Nothing about this arrangement sounds outlandish or unusual or even alien to me…
I’m glad to learn that it’s important to know about something called Operation Cinder. What’s it from? Games, books, comics, cartoons?
Operation Cinder is from the first novels in the new canon, which cover the period between ROTJ and TFA. The operation is mentioned in the Aftermath trilogy, and also in the Alphabet Squadron trilogy. The Emperor left orders that upon his death, many worlds should be obliterated.
Now I’m glad I haven’t read these new canon novels. Operation Cinder sounds like a lazy writer’s soluton for coming up with new conflict. The Empire was built on the notion of enforcing order and control. The Death Star was a method for spreading fear of annihiliation rather than causing destruction – the Tarkin doctrine. Nuking was a last resort. Why in the world would any Imperial Officer even consider obliterating innocent worlds out of spite? Nobody cared for the Emperor personally or had that kind of loyalty. They feared him and wouldn’t do a thing in his name if he were killed in action. If anything, they would do what the Empire actually did in the old EU continuity – break apart into multiple warlords who would bicker and fight amongst themselves for the spoils.
“Operation Cinder sounds like a lazy writer’s soluton for coming up with new conflict.”
Sounds very like the First Order in The Force Awakens.
If I remember correctly, the vault, and currency storage racks, look similar to what was portrayed in the heist episodes of Andor. Anyone else notice that?
Very much a transitional episode leading to the finale. And we have a lot of unanswered questions regarding At Attin. It took seven episodes to even get a minor glimpse into the parents’ attempt at sending a beacon before being intercepted by the droids. While I’m glad we got something, the reveal that the kids were meant to be given the meat of their purpose in life after growing up raises even more questions – and I’m not sure the finale is going to be able to answer them all in a satisfying manner. As I previously pointed out, this is a borderline fascist state, and now we know it’s in service of being a galactic bank/money bin of sorts. I hope the finale is up to answering everything.
I’m not well versed in Old Republic EU material (other than a brief read of the comic-book The Sith War that chronicled Exar Kun’s war on the Republic), but I’m surprised a democratic regime would do business with a cluster of planets that are so at odds to the Republic’s values in regards to personal individual freedom.
Naturally, the show is leaning into the fiery chemistry between the kids and Jod. The way he assaulted them on episode 5 worked so well they kinda had to. Jude Law plays despicable villain well – way better than what we got with his MCU Kree character, I might add. Not much room for the character moments we got in eps 5 and 6, but I’m glad we got that bit of Wim being resentful that the ‘adventure’ was coming to an end and he was going to have to go back to his boring, go-nowhere life. It seems as if the show is setting up his eventual departure from At Attin going outwards to the rest of the galaxy – a life where he can choose anything.
“I’m not well versed in Old Republic EU material (other than a brief read of the comic-book The Sith War that chronicled Exar Kun’s war on the Republic), but I’m surprised a democratic regime would do business with a cluster of planets that are so at odds to the Republic’s values in regards to personal individual freedom.”
I doubt At Attin was like this during the Old Republic, when it was in regular contact with the rest of civilization. It’s been isolated for a thousand years, with the droids running the society on autopilot and without oversight. Naturally it’s become rigid and arbitrary as a result. In the old days, the people who lived and worked on the At planets were presumably free to come and go as they pleased, but now they’re cut off and have no choice but to live out their lives here.
It’s sort of like the space cruise ship in WALL-E. The automated systems there weren’t oppressive by design, they just became that way because they ran in isolation without oversight for far longer than intended.
I’d forgotten about WALL-E. That’s a good example. AUTO was a well-intentioned ship’s system that took the directive and ran with it until it became a danger to the inhabitants it was supposed to protect. If that’s indeed what’s happening, I’m beginning to realize I don’t recall many, if any prior instances of Star Wars actually dabbling with the concept of droids and A.I. becoming a major impediment to the living, breathing characters (other than Obi-Wan’s throwaway line about droids on Episode II).
The droids are not the problem. They’re just doing what their creators programmed them to do, and are doing it so amazingly well that the machine is still running smoothly a millennium later. The problem is that there’s been no outside management of the system to keep it on task, so it’s just been running on auto without stop and without purpose, and the residents no longer have the ability to leave if they so choose.
Jod doesn’t say anything bad about KB, of course, because KB’s perfect. No notes.
For much of human history, children have been assumed to follow in the professions of their parents. Current levels of career mobility are novel.
I believe that last week there was a question of why the OR credits would be so valuable. One assumes that the OR credit is based on a valuable metal of some kind. Compare that to the Clone Wars-era credit, which IIRC Palpatine eventually seized control over as a “temporary wartime measure” and which probably became the Imperial credit (likely in transition from a notionally metallic currency to a purely fiat one), as well as the New Republic credit (which the NR was a shaky government and who knows what the state of their money would have been). Considering that the modern credit has experience a long war followed by an even longer period of arbitrary rule, the OR credit probably has a far higher metallic content than the face value of a comparable Imperial or New Republic credit (or a digital credit’s notional value). It’d be like showing up to a Dollar Store with a sack of American Double Eagle $20 gold coins (worth far more than an equivalent number of 2025 $20 Federal Reserve Notes).
“For much of human history, children have been assumed to follow in the professions of their parents. Current levels of career mobility are novel.”
The Old Republic may have had plenty of career mobility. But At Attin has been a closed system for a thousand years and is dedicated entirely to one task, so the inhabitants have literally no other choice but to go into that business.
“One assumes that the OR credit is based on a valuable metal of some kind.”
Doesn’t that contradict the whole definition of a “credit,” though, which is that it’s virtual money or a representation of value, rather than physical currency with its own intrinsic value?
If At Attin has had no contact with the rest of the Galaxy for ~ 1000 years, as people above suggest, they can not have been importing anything from the wider galaxy to reward people working at the mint. So why are people still working at the mint? Are they still working at it? Why does anyone hire a human instead of buying or renting a droid?
Where else are they going to work, when the whole planet is devoted to the mint and there’s nowhere else to go? The droids run the show, and they do it according to how they were programmed a millennium ago, when humans were employees of the mint. The droids lack the imagination to change how the system has always worked.
If they are cut off from the Galaxy, there are no imports from the Galaxy, and the inhabitants are entirely dependent on what they make and do for themselves. Therefore they must make things for themselves. That means working on and for businesses that produce thing valuable on At Attin.
Working for the mint would be like working printing out dollar bills when you are trapped on a desert island with no contact with the rest of the world. There is no point in currency when it cannot buy you anything, and therefore no point in making it.
Yes, exactly. There’s no point in making the currency. That’s why there are 1,138 gigantic underground vaults piled full of it. It’s an automated system that’s been working with perfect efficiency for a thousand years without having any end goal — the ultimate dead end job. How are they going to change it? The droids run the system, and they have no imagination or initiative. They just do what they’re programmed to do, and the humans are trapped in that system.
Anyway, it’s a whole planet. What does it need to import? Earth gets by okay without imports from offworld.
I figure the more people working for the Mint the more jobs there are in the support economy, so it must have some career diversity. We know there are teachers. Even if this society isn’t big on entertainment or artisanal craft, you’d need food and sundry goods, especially with no imports from off-world.
This episode felt short and it leaves a lot for the finale — IMO, entirely apart from any explication of At Attin we might want.
Looks as though at this point we’re just not going to get any indication of how the pirates survived that acid trap or, I guess, reference to the fact that only some nameless grunts died rather than the credited, speaking-part members of the group we thought had been killed but turned up in the next episode. Not that I wasn’t happy to see Kelly Macdonald again, if too briefly.
If waiting for my bathtub to fill has taught me anything, I’d say it would’ve taken quite a while for such a large basin to fill up with acid even with a strong flow. So they could’ve had time to scramble up the steps to safety, though they’d probably have needed new boots and maybe a bacta foot bath.
It just came off so evidently as death cries in the moment. The bigger issue for me before that was how our protagonists walked down the steps right after the acid drained away without so much as the sort of damage to their shoes you reference, but, you know, science-fantasy handwave magical flushing agent or incredibly sturdy footwear or whatever.