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The Book of Boba Fett Starts a Turf War in “The Tribes of Tatooine”

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The Book of Boba Fett Starts a Turf War in “The Tribes of Tatooine”

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The Book of Boba Fett Starts a Turf War in “The Tribes of Tatooine”

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Published on January 5, 2022

Screenshot: Lucasfilm
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The Book of Boba Fett, chapter two, The Tribes of Tatooine
Screenshot: Lucasfilm

We’re back with threats! The mayor! A train job! Let’s get to it.

Recap

The Book of Boba Fett, chapter two, The Tribes of Tatooine
Screenshot: Lucasfilm

Fennec Shand drags the assassin back to the palace for questioning. They learn that he’s a member of the Order of the Night Wind assassin group (which she claims is overpriced for the work they do because she’s very salty and good). When he won’t answer their questions about who hired him, Fennec drops him into the rancor pit. The fear of death-by-rancor is enough to get the man shouting that the mayor hired him. Boba and Fennec take the man into Mos Espa and demand to speak to the mayor, Mok Shaiz. When they’re brushed off, they force their way into his office.

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Mok Shaiz has the assassin killed instantly because Night Wind are not permitted to operate outside “Hutt space.” He offers a reward for turning him in, which Boba says he will accept as the tribute they never offered. Shaiz insists that he didn’t try to have Fett killed, and that this is more complicated than they realize, suggesting that they head back to the Sanctuary and ask Garsa about it. Fett takes the advice and asks her what’s going on. She admits that “the twins” have arrived to dispute his claim as Daimyo of Tatooine. There’s a drum beat and two hutts are brought through the streets on a litter. Fett walks out to meet them and stakes his claim. They insist that this is still Jabba’s territory and threaten him with a Wookiee enforcer. Fett tells them that he is the Daimyo, and that if they want Jabba’s territory back, they’ll have to kill him. The brother says that bloodshed is bad for business and they can settle this later, advising Boba to “sleep light.”

Fett goes back into his tank and another flashback begins: He is being trained to fight by the Tusken’s best warrior, and she shows him how to properly hold his gaderffii. As they’re training, a train comes through the Dune Sea and begins shooting indiscriminately at the group. Many are killed. Fett sees some speeders go by in the night, and tells the leader of the Tuskens that he can help them stop the train for good. He goes to a remote cantina where the owners of said speeders are abusing local folks. Fett battles them out, then ties the speeders together and brings them back to the Tuskens, explaining that this is how they will stop the train.

The Book of Boba Fett, chapter two, The Tribes of Tatooine
Screenshot: Lucasfilm

Boba shows the group how to use the speeders, and gives them instruction on how they will handle the next train passage. When the next one comes through, they attack the train and manage to stop it. The route is being managed by the Pyke Syndicate, who are using it to transport many goods, including spice. Boba explains that these are the ancestral lands of the Tuskens, and in order to pass through, they will now need to pay a toll. They leave the Pykes alive and let them walk back to Anchorhead to let people know.

That night, the leader of the Tuskens explains how the different tribes operate on Tatooine; when the “oceans dried up,” his people took to hiding, but some tribes kill to survive. Boba doesn’t believe they should have to hide, and promises that the new machines (weapons) they have taken from the Pykes will help to that end. The leader gives him a lizard as a gift, which jumps down his nose—it’s meant to guide him. Boba has a vision of his past, and of a great tree in a desert. He breaks off a branch from that tree to get free of its grip. The next morning, he comes back with that branch, and they outfit him as one of their own. The tribe’s warrior brings him to a forge where he carves and outfits that branch into his own gaderffii. The tribe sit around their fire and Boba and the warrior begin to dance with their weapons. Soon, the rest of the tribe joins in.

Commentary

Didn’t I say we were gonna do flashback for every episode?

And not just a little, they’re basically taking up the majority share every episode—this was over two-thirds of plot. Which is sad because I want more of Boba and Fennec together and they keep cutting things off right when they’re getting good. Just her snark about Night Wind alone, or tricking that guy into thinking he was going to get eaten by the rancor? Give us more, this isn’t fair, she’s too good to only get ten minutes an episode.

The Book of Boba Fett, chapter two, The Tribes of Tatooine
Screenshot: Lucasfilm

Still not sure how I feel about how the Tuskens are being used in all this. There’s a weird tension at play because the use of Temuera Morrison eases some of the issues here—it means something different for him to tell the Pykes that they’re passing through Tusken ancestral land because Morrison is Maori. Ancestral land, and the ways in which colonizing forces disrespect it, is something he’s intimately familiar with. This helpfully sidesteps the oft-employed white savior trope in his partnership with the Tuskens; via his own Maori heritage, and the Mandalorian clan affiliations on the fictional level, he’s put on even footing with these people. He is offering aid, not marking himself as their salvation.

But this cannot change the fact that science fiction and fantasy love to create cultures and races out of the trappings of real-life ones, and typically without any input from or deference to cultures being cannibalized. The Tuskens are not Native American or Bedouin, but they wind up being framed as both and neither, and there’s no way to stop that from being awkward. It means a lot that they’re being treated with respect in this narrative, but that doesn’t make the othering of indigenous cultures any less evident here. (If you want a more detailed look at how Native American cultures are embedded throughout Star Wars, I recommend checking out this piece.) It may be a hard thing for Star Wars to get away from, given how the franchise has always taken elements from around the world and blended them into something else, but part of the problem comes from the fact that it’s… nearly always a white guy writing it.

The Book of Boba Fett, chapter two, The Tribes of Tatooine
Screenshot: Lucasfilm

I’ve also got some plot irritation by way of gee, Boba was sure lucky that the guys on those speeder bikes turned out to be jerks. It’s just the most transparent set up when he sees those speeders and goes after them, but then the next scene is all the guys who own those speeders harassing a poor couple and sticking their hands in everyone’s drinks and probably not tipping the bartender. So we know that Boba Fett should absolutely beat the shit out of them and take their stuff. What would he have done if they were one of those nice biker gangs? What if these guys rode for charity?

Also, the mayor was like “go back to Garsa’s to see what’s going on,” and literally all she does is say “go outside to see who’s coming” like, why did we come back to the Sanctuary, did they just want to prove to me that Max Rebo wrote some new space music (since I complained about it) because, I appreciate that, but that seemed like an entirely unnecessary aside.

I’ve got some practical questions about the Hutt twins as well because they clearly took their sweet time coming to lay claim over Jabba’s territory. Maybe they just figured they could step in whenever Bib’s operation got too annoying? And then he had to go die and ruin everything. On the upside, they keep great company; when that Wookiee stepped up to glower, I blurted at the screen “Who’s this handsome fellow?”

The Book of Boba Fett, chapter two, The Tribes of Tatooine
Screenshot: Lucasfilm

Thankfully, my partner cackled in agreement, so that wasn’t too weird.

And then we get a very standard “train job” Western sequence, which is fun, if a little confusing when it comes to the train’s mechanics. (Props to the train-driver droid for jumping ship when it did, though.) As usual, there’s one (1!) emergency break that can totally stop this high speed chase, if only you can pull it with your heroic strength of will. The aliens they’re fighting should be familiar to anyone who has watched The Clone Wars or Solo: This is the Pyke Syndicate, who deal primarily in spice, and hail from the planet of Oba Diah (yes, really—it’s Star Wars, you know the answer to that by now). I think this might be the first time we’ve seen one with their masks off? But I could be forgetting on that.

The Book of Boba Fett, chapter two, The Tribes of Tatooine
Screenshot: Lucasfilm

By the way, the Pykes are responsible for the death of Sifo-Dyas, the Jedi Master who Palpatine used to further confuse the Jedi into starting up the Clone War. They are a genuinely dangerous group, even if they look a little bit like armored Goa’uld crossed with Miyazaki’s reject pile.

And then we get a “vision quest” section, which is, again, mostly just memories! To my personal (and obviously very deep) psychological understanding, dreams and visions are usually not just you flipping through your rolodex of home brain movies. What’s going on, show.

The Book of Boba Fett, chapter two, The Tribes of Tatooine
Screenshot: Lucasfilm

Aside from getting to watch Boba Fett apologize for nose-swallowing a lizard, which did genuinely make my day.

Bits and Beskar:

  • Okay, but I’ve got a question about Tusken sign language, which is… Is this their own sign language, or was it brought to them? Because Din Djarin knew how to use it, and it occurred to me that perhaps this was the only feasible way they could communicate with colonizers on Tatooine because their language is kind of impossible for most alien vocal cords and vice versa? Maybe Din knew it because it’s a sort of “galactic standard” for sign language—sort of like Galactic Basic for spoken language.
  • How much did the whole galaxy fear that rancor pit that people are still worried about it, and have no idea that Luke killed the poor thing? (That rancor was very loved, fyi.)
  • No idea what the “death pits of Duur” are, but they sure sound like a good time.
  • Max Rebo’s new band has a droid drummer, and I just need to know if they’re using said droid like a drum machine, or if that droid truly wants to be a drummer. I need it to be the latter.
The Book of Boba Fett, chapter two, The Tribes of Tatooine
Screenshot: Lucasfilm
  • The brother of the Hutt twins is mopping his sweat up with a live rodent? That’s… a new kind of gross. Their facial tattoos harken back to Ziro the Hutt’s full body tattoos, though. *sniff* I miss Ziro.
  • We now have a name for the cactus fruit liquid pals (which, it’s still wild that they’re just all over the place under a few inches of sand, but I guess I’ve gotta let that one go). Boba calls them “black melon.” Which is probably not what they’re called by the Tuskens, but you know, he’s doing his best.
The Book of Boba Fett, chapter two, The Tribes of Tatooine
Screenshot: Lucasfilm
  • I’m just saying that those Tuskens opened a giant trunk of sansanna spice and it went everywhere, so they were high as the ISS for the remainder of the day, I’m guessing.

Next week! Maybe more stuff will happen in the present!

Emmet Asher-Perrin really wants that that rancor fake-out to become Fennec’s running gag for the series. You can bug them on Twitter, and read more of their work here and elsewhere.

About the Author

Emmet Asher-Perrin

Author

Emmet Asher-Perrin is the News & Entertainment Editor of Reactor. Their words can also be perused in tomes like Queers Dig Time Lords, Lost Transmissions: The Secret History of Science Fiction and Fantasy, and Uneven Futures: Strategies for Community Survival from Speculative Fiction. They cannot ride a bike or bend their wrists. You can find them on Bluesky and other social media platforms where they are mostly quiet because they'd rather talk to you face-to-face.
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Len
3 years ago

 That handsome fellow would be:

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Black_Krrsantan

ChristopherLBennett
3 years ago

I do like how the two live-action series have fleshed out and deepened the Tusken, who started out as just a stand-in for one-dimensional “Indian” baddies from old Westerns but are now being approached from a more modern, sympathetic perspective as a colonized, displaced people trying to defend their homeland.

I was hoping we’d get to see what they look like under the wrappings. I thought that once Boba was fully initiated at the end, they’d finally show their faces to him (or else give him wrappings like theirs). But I checked Wookieepedia, and it says they have a taboo against showing their faces even to each other, which feels like kind of a copout. I’ve always been curious about what they really look like. (By the same token, I appreciate the clarification that the Pykes’ rigid, angular “heads” are helmets and masks rather than some kind of carapace. That was never clear to me before.)

Conversely, it’s not a good idea for Boba to spend all that time bare-headed in the desert sun. Those wrappings exist for a reason. Even when they finally gave him a hood, the first thing he did was to throw it back, which makes little sense. You’d think he’d be grateful for the sun protection. After all, this is Boba Fett. He’s not a guy historically known to be reluctant to cover his head.

It’s surprising how little time is being devoted to the present-day story. I wonder if that will change now that Boba’s completed his journey in the flashbacks, or if the balance will continue that way throughout. I hope we get more present-day stuff, so that Ming-Na Wen gets more to do. (Or maybe they’ll switch to giving her flashbacks?)

I hope someone teaches Morrison how to pronounce “Daimyo.” He left out the “y” and said “Dye-mo,” even though everyone else in the show gets it basically right. (Although it’s not as bad as in the early-2000s Ninja Turtles animated series, where they always said it like “Damiyo.”) Question, though — in feudal Japan, the daimyo were subordinate to the shogun and/or the emperor. But Boba is acting as though the title makes him an independent ruler, answerable to no one but himself. So is he misusing the term in-universe, or are the writers misusing it?

 

“I’ve got some practical questions about the Hutt twins as well because they clearly took their sweet time coming to lay claim over Jabba’s territory. Maybe they just figured they could step in whenever Bib’s operation got too annoying?”

I would conjecture that Bib Fortuna paid them tribute in exchange for permission to run Jabba’s organization, and Boba hasn’t kept up the tributes.

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Mr. Magic
3 years ago

@1,

Yeah, and Krrsantan’s apperances gives me immense hope we’ll be seeing Dr. Aphra make her live-action debut (or at least it opens the door).

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Frederic
3 years ago

• Fett states plainly he’s no longer a bounty hunter. Apparently, taking a Three Stooges tumble into the sarlacc was enough to convince him to seek a new line of work. Well reasoned, I’d say.

• Coupled with that, I’m beginning to wonder if his experience with the Tuskens is what causes him to take over Jabba’s operation. By that I mean it would give him the power and organization to change life for the better for all Tatooiners, particularly its natives.
 
• More of the giant Wookiee, please.

Avatar
3 years ago

Boba Fett had already witnessed the biker gang being jerks – they were raiding the settlement that Boba was taken to in the first episode to dig up black melons.

ChristopherLBennett
3 years ago

@5/Kalvin: Right, though I didn’t make that connection until I recognized that the symbol they spray-painted on the farmhouse — their gang tag, I guess — was also on one of the speeder bikes.

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While the Rancor misdirection was a fun scene, I’m not yet fully invested on the present day stuff – even though I do enjoy Fennec quite a bit, and the Hutts had a nice western parade reveal.

Personally, I’m way more invested on the flashbacks. Mandalorian had spent some time with the Tuskens, but it’s a real privilege to be able to soak in the daily culture of the Sand People. This is world-building at its best. I’ll take this over the sequel trilogy any day.

Also, notice the shot where Boba carries the body of the fallen Tusken. Remember the shot of Anakin carrying the body of Shmi Skywalker after rescuing her from the Tuskens on Attack of the Clones? It’s clearly meant to evoke that scene. A very solid effort from director Steph Green, who’s clearly adept at the visual language of Star Wars while also bringing her own sensibility to the project.

ChristopherLBennett
3 years ago

I wonder, should we stop calling them Sand People? It sounds like a disrespectful nickname given to them by outsiders. So does “Tusken Raiders,” for that matter — no doubt it was the victims of their raids who gave them that epithet, not seeing anything more to them than their aggression.

Come to think of it, I remember now that I’ve always assumed since childhood that “Tusken” was a nickname too, descriptive of their appearance, because some of the protruding metal bits on their masks look kind of like tusks. I’d say that it couldn’t possibly be their name for themselves, since their speech is a set of yelps and groans that doesn’t include consonant sounds as we know them — but then, the same goes for Wookiees, yet somehow they have names like “Chewbacca” that they can’t possibly pronounce.

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Frederic
3 years ago

“Tuskens,” as Fett refers to them in this episode, sounds good enough to me. “Raiders” isn’t that bad, either. I never thought less of Indiana Jones for it.

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3 years ago

Actually, I wish the leaned more into Fett as a marginalized person (clone, hm?) allying himself with the Tuskens as an act of solidarity between marginalized peoples. That has real world parallels and is a more wholesome theme to pursue.

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3 years ago

@passim: The subtitles consistently use ‘Tusken’, so we could do worse. 

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3 years ago

I loved this episode as much as the first one. Maybe more, because it took more time in showing some things that bothered me since I was 6, eg why do they fight with ‘sticks’.

I frankly don’t get the point on the supposed difference Temuera’s heritage brings to the story. Is it disrespectful how the Tusken are helped by a human? Is it disrespectful but manageable because he isn’t white, or is not disrespectful at all? Isn’t this nitpicking going too far? I only notice this kind of commentary on US websites, and they are getting in the way of the fun.

I guess Sand People is the way moist farmers are used to call them, and I bet the Skywalker clan are great fans of that moniker.

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Austin
3 years ago

@8:

I’d say that it couldn’t possibly be their name for themselves, since their speech is a set of yelps and groans that doesn’t include consonant sounds as we know them — but then, the same goes for Wookiees, yet somehow they have names like “Chewbacca” that they can’t possibly pronounce.

That…is a good point. Kind of like the Star Trek OS episode with the Horta. Maybe in Chewbacca’s case, that is the English (or whatever language English is supposed to be in Star Wars) translation of whatever his name means in Wookiee…nese?

ChristopherLBennett
3 years ago

By the way, I found out elsewhere that the diner where Boba fights the Nikto biker gang is Tosche Station from the deleted scene in the original film, and the human couple that get harassed by the bikers are identified in the credits as Camie and Fixer, Luke and Biggs’s friends from that deleted scene, although played by different actors, obviously. As if there weren’t enough small-universe syndrome in these shows already.

 

@9/Frederic: The problem isn’t the word, it’s how it’s used. Raiders of the Lost Ark was a description of the specific individuals who were engaged in that specific activity. Specific Tusken (stipulating that that’s their real name, though I’m still not convinced) have clearly engaged in raids when they’ve had a reason to, but the problem is when the entire species is referred to as “Tusken Raiders,” as if raiding were the only thing they ever did. And apparently that has been done quite a lot, since the Wookieepedia article for the species is titled “Tusken Raider” rather than “Tusken.”

ViewerB
ViewerB
3 years ago

Am I the only one who got serious Lawrence of Arabia vibes during the shots of the Tuskens running towards the train after it crashed? It really amped up when the credits showed the painting of that scene.

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David Pirtle
3 years ago

Yeah, Fett already knew those bikers were baddies, because he saw them attack a settlement. Anyway, I thought it was a fine episode apart from the montage where the Tuskens learn to ride speeder bikes. It made them look as silly as Ewoks, and nobody deserves that. Overall though, I thought this was a big step up from the first episode. Perhaps they should have released both episodes together. 

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Frederic
3 years ago

The activity of being a raider isn’t a problem, nor is being known primarily for it. Deep down we all have places we’d like to raid. For me, it’s Area 51, the Pentagon, the vault where they keep the Coca-Cola formula. Those are places I’d like to see. So, it’s downright inspirational to watch an entire people fulfilling their dreams of raiding space trains and the like.

Besides, I happen to know the Tuskens are part owners of the football team in Las Vegas. How else can you explain the move to the desert?

Stop raid-shaming, people.

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3 years ago

If I recall, the old lore had “Tusken Raider” being used as a reference to the raid on Fort Tusken when Tatooine was first being settled. Indeed, the word “Tusken” is never spoken on screen until the prequels.

Anyway, I am totally here for the backstory plot, and am viewing it as the main story with the present-day stuff as just the framing story. That stuff is very interesting and I like a lot of the things they’ve been introducing and the visual style. But I’m not sure people should get their hopes up about the present-day plot getting much more sophisticated. 

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3 years ago

I agree this one was paced a bit oddly, but in a way that happened to me to my liking. I’m not really that invested in the present day plot, although part of that IS because the series has somewhat neglected it. I am so far giving the benefit of the doubt that the flashbacks are going to bear some type of fruit.

I don’t really care that much about the dreams/flashback as a plot device, but it does make me wonder if it might have made more sense to just tell the story in chronological order. Interspersed flashbacks can be cool if there’s some type of thematic resonance going on, or something in the plot that is relevant to or triggering the flashback, but so far it just kinda seems like every now and then it’s like, oop, time to go into the bacta tank. The only real similarity I seee is that I guess his time with the Tuskens and their dog-eat-dog kind of world has its parallels (and maybe is even more civilized, in a sense) than the criminal underworld, where you have to be strong to survive?

Also, the vision quest was flashbacks within a flashback :D. Although to be fair, I though they were a bit to murky to be straight up memories. I actually thought the lizard thing was going to be like a Babel fish! Instead it seemed to be some kind of spirit quest thing – good thing it works with human anatomy! It was definitely one of the weirder things I’ve seen in Star Wars, lol. But I do kind of like how it hearken’s back to Tatooine’s history as once having water – I am assuming that tree is sacred in some way.

All that said, I did really dig the time spent with the Tuskens. I also was wondering if it was going to end up a bit White Savior-y, but I also had the thought that at least with Temuera himself being Maori (and in story, he is a Mandalorian which puts a high emphasis on foundlings being part of a family/tribe) it mitigates that a bit, especially as they are both mutually helping each other. I do wonder if some of this is going to lead into his eventual motivations because I still have no idea why he wants to be daimyo at all, or what he hopes to accomplish. I fear that the tribe is going to come to a bad end.

Also, this was somewhat spoiled by a YouTube comment that did some very keen analysis on a scene from the trailer, but that wasn’t just some couple, it was Camie and Fixer (as confirmed by the subtitles and credits). Somebody on YouTube analyized some of the light panels and apparently they are the same as the deleted Tosche Station scene, and so then hypothesized that the couple (who show up briefly in the trailer) were Camie and Fixer. And it was!

I am also wondering if he knew it was the same gang he’d seen robbing the moisture farmer? (I assumed it was – well, actually I thought somehow they were involved with the train and that is what Fixer was saying wasn’t right…)

@1 – hah, I thought the same thing about him having a head covering and then pushing it back as soon as he got one!

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3 years ago

@14 – I wouldn’t actually call Camie/Fixer small universe syndrome here. We know Tosche Station is canonically close to Anchorhead, which we also know the events here take place by.  There probably aren’t a ton of bars/outposts in the area, so it makes sense that Tosche Station would be there; at any rate, it’s not a huge stretch that Boba would encounter it.

Also, it was intended that Fixer actually worked at/ran the place, so again, it makes sense that he might still be there with his wife (I know there were some old EU stories that established they had married).

To me the most egregious use of ‘small universe’ is Ponda Baba/Dr Evazon showing up in Rogue One which was the one point where the Easter Eggs/references took me right out of the movie.

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3 years ago

 @1 I admit I when I saw Boba Fett get his hood, I thought “it’s about time”. Then he took it off and I had to backtrack to “Well I guess he likes being sun burnt and getting skin cancer”. Also black seems like the wrong color for a hot desert, but maybe not?

As to calling them Tuskan Raiders, I think identifying all Tuskan’s that way is a slur. The leader did explain that all Tuskan’s aren’t alike, some groups live like the one we watch, other kill. Interestingly on a different site a commentator suggested the Tuskans were an insular group like the (slur name for the Romani people), which unwittingly, brings the whole idea of identifying the entire Tuskan people by one act as being truly problematic.

ChristopherLBennett
3 years ago

@17/Fredric: “The activity of being a raider isn’t a problem, nor is being known primarily for it.”

You’re still missing the point. It’s not about an individual’s activity, it’s about literally naming an entire species based on a single stereotyped activity. Remember, the Tusken were created as an analogy for “Indians” in a Western. In that context, their entire existence was defined by the violent threat they posed to the human characters, who were analogous to the white settlers in a Western. Outsiders defining an entire civilization purely as a violent threat to themselves, seeing nothing in them beyond that threat, is absolutely a problem.

And it’s the problem that The Mandalorian and this show have been actively solving by finally letting us see the Tusken as people, as more than just “raiders.” The shows themselves are encouraging us to realize that we can’t reduce them to that label anymore, which is what inspired my thought.

 

@19/Lisamarie: “I don’t really care that much about the dreams/flashback as a plot device, but it does make me wonder if it might have made more sense to just tell the story in chronological order.”

But then we’d have to wait a long time to get to Ming-Na Wen, and I wouldn’t want that.

Besides, Boba’s Mandalorian appearances come between the flashback and present-day scenes here, so the narrative is already out of linear order. A linear telling would have to skip over how he got his armor back, teamed up with Fennec, and killed Bib Fortuna, since that all happened in TM season 2. So it makes sense to carry forward from that while also filling in the gap between ROTJ and TM. Although I’m surprised the balance has been so heavily in favor of the flashbacks.

 

“Interspersed flashbacks can be cool if there’s some type of thematic resonance going on, or something in the plot that is relevant to or triggering the flashback”

I think it’s relevant on a larger scale, showing how Boba learned that being part of a unified community with mutual respect is better than being a lone wolf out for personal gain, which is why he’s trying to apply that thinking as the daimyo.

 

“I am also wondering if he knew it was the same gang he’d seen robbing the moisture farmer?”

Yes, because the symbol they spray-painted on the farmhouse was also on their bikes. Even I noticed that, and I’m often bad with such details, so I’m sure Boba would’ve caught it.

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3 years ago

@21: I think actual studies have shown that the color of the garment does not matter at all. But you actually see in some arid areas cultures wearing black because they believe it works better. 

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3 years ago

@22 – hah, I totally missed the symbol.  

Anyway, yeah, you make good points (especially about Ming-Na Wen :D) – like I said, I don’t actually mind the flashbacks (or the device used for them) but I can see how (especially if somebody went into this show really wanting the underworld element) the pacing might feel off.  I’m also thinking it will come together in some similar type of thematic statement about earning respect/being in a community.  I also wonder if something in the flashback will reveal why he has this aim in the first place, but I kinda hope not since I don’t want to see the tribe fridged.

A few random nitpicks (unrelated) – in the train fight, I couldn’t really follow all the action or where the train was going – was it looping around? Because otherwsie, shouldn’t be they SUPER far from their tribe?

Also, I was cringing when they punctured the water car and just capturing some of it in containers, haha.  Maybe they realistically couldn’t store or transport all that water but stilllllll.  Although it seemed like it was more about making a statement as well.

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3 years ago

Many shout outs in this episode to The Great Train Robbery, Dance with Wolves, Lawrence of Arabia and Dune. Not to mention Star Wars lore, like the pikes, Black Krssantan, etc. Nice episode. Lots of maori culture in the Tuskans as well.

ChristopherLBennett
3 years ago

@24/Lisamarie: “where the train was going – was it looping around? Because otherwsie, shouldn’t be they SUPER far from their tribe?”

My impression was that it’s a regular, repeating transport run, not a one-time thing. So it would’ve gone over the same route repeatedly, probably at a set interval (e.g. once a week or the Tatooine equivalent, maybe). After all, it probably took Boba a week or two to train the Tusken in using the bikes and to practice their attack plan.

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3 years ago

@19 Lisamarie: good thing it works with human anatomy!

That was my first thought when I saw it! The Tuskens seemed to be developing a respect for Boba Fett, so how would they dare? Unless we could imagine that the little lizard itself knew that it could work and it “told” one of them?

@23 crzydroid: I think actual studies have shown that the color of the garment does not matter at all.

Really? That seems surprising, doesn’t it? Besides—in addition to the question of how much energy/heat is absorbed by different colors—wouldn’t the Tuskens want the colors of their robes to blend better with the colors found in the sea of sand?

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Austin
3 years ago

@23 – What studies? It’s a scientific fact that black absorbs the most heat/light and white reflects the most light. In fact, I just read something recently that the whitest paint color ever was invented and it left whatever it coated cool. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2021/09/17/whitest-paint-created-global-warming/8378579002/

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Frederic
3 years ago

(22)

Well, we might want to consider that I’m not quite taking this seriously. I mean, I’ll take actual tribal issues seriously; I come from that world. Star Wars though? Nah, not really. Not to this extent. So please, sir, take your finger off the think-piece thermal detonator. We’re all good here. That Indiana Jones line was only a wisecrack, and I apologize for taking us down this path.

Go Raiders.

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3 years ago

The show is a bit too flashbacky for me, but I am still enjoying it.

I loved seeing Black Krrsantan showing up, a nice Eater Egg for comic book readers.

Eveyone in town is treating Boba and Fennic like, “Who the heck do you think you are? What makes you think you can tell us what to do?” Which makes me think, at some point, his Tusken allies are going to ride into town and change the balance of power big time.

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Steven Hedge
3 years ago

About the Tusken thing; this is going to be old lore, so who knows if this is canon anymore; but: the name Tusken Raider is actaully a name given to them by the settlers. At one point, the tuskens invaded a fort, called Fort Tusken, and the brutatliy and battle was so famous, that every single group has been given that name; its to show how dangerous they are. Before, shown in medium like Knights of the Old republic, they were only called Sand People. Now, the disney writers may have just decided, like the fan base, that tuskens are a better name for them than Sand People, and are now are always going to call them Tuskens. Now what were they called by their own race, well the old eu at one point called themselves Ghorfa. So  there’s the pointless history lesson for star wars today.

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3 years ago

@28: I don’t know if I could ever remember the original thing I read. Here are a couple of non-primary source articles talking about it that I found very quickly on Google:

What is the Best Color to Wear in the Desert? The Answer May Surprise You. – NOMOON (nomoontravel.com)

Should You Wear White or Black on Hot Days? Here’s the Data | WIRED

Summer Science: Clothes Keep You Cool, More Or Less : NPR

The black robes worn by the Bedouin do protect heat, but mainly because of the thickness and the airflow. The extra heat absorbed by the black stays in the outer garment and doesn’t reach the skin. It sounds like the consensus is that for thin clothing, white is better.

In any case, I think for the Tuskens, in theory if the loose black robes are thick enough, then it is adequate for keeping cool and not at all a bad choice, which is what the debate was.

krad
3 years ago

I too wondered how bloody far from their settlement the Tuskens were by the time they “derailed” the train……….

Also I found the imbalance between present-day and flashback to be awkward this week. Like watching two completely separate episodes.

—Keith R.A. DeCandido

 

ChristopherLBennett
3 years ago

@33/krad: I’m not sure “episodes” is even the right word here. This feels less like an episodic series than like a 6-hour movie that’s getting doled out one piece at a time. I wonder if it would’ve worked better with the Netflix model where the whole thing comes out at once.

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Seeing I
3 years ago

The CGI on those Hutts was shockingly poor. Hard to believe Lucasfilm has spent 25 years trying and failing to make a digital creation look even half as convincing as a puppet from 40 years ago!

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Cybersnark
3 years ago

Regarding names, I can imagine “Sand People” being an acceptable translation of what they call themselves, in the same way that “Seneca” means “Great Hill People,” or “Oneida” means “People of the Upright Stone,” or “Haudenosaunee” means “People of the Longhouse.”

As Fett pointed out here, they have an ancestral claim to the sands.

ChristopherLBennett
3 years ago

@36/Cybersnark: That’s possible. On the other hand, didn’t they tell Boba that they became desert nomads when the oceans dried up? So they didn’t start out that way. It’s possible they adopted a new name to reflect their changed lifestyle, but there’s no way to know for sure.

If the transcript I found is right, they’re only ever called “Sandpeople” (one word in the script) in dialogue, while “Tusken Raiders” only appears in description (which is an odd way to write a script). It’s mostly Luke who calls them that, and Obi-Wan once (I always want to call him Ben, like in the script, but I’m bending to convention). It seems to me that a farmboy like Luke would be more likely to use a settler nickname for them.

If anything, I get the impression from the Disney+ shows that few people have ever bothered to learn the Tuskens’ language or communicate much with them. That would imply that the human and other offworld settlers might not even know what they call themselves, or care.

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Ellynne
3 years ago

I like the little bit of world building that they’re addressing how the Tuskens stay extremely covered up. They don’t dress like a species that evolved on the Tatooine we see. However, if Tatooine was once a greener world that changed, that explains it. Most of the surviving species either were already better fits for a desert or have adapted. The Tuskens, from the way they dress, may be a worse fit for desert worlds than humans but they’ve managed to survive.  

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Charles Oppenheimer
3 years ago

Did Fett come back to Tatooine and become daimyo to help his tribe and adopted family the Tuskens? Who else did he have after his father died? Could he be using the money he receives as daimyo to arm and equip the Tuskens? I can see an army of Tuskens on speeders with blasters swooping in at the end as the Arabs did in “Lawrence of Arabia” culminating with the chief of Fett’s tribe becoming the Faisal of Tatooine.