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New Escapist Column! On “The Bad Batch” as a Show About Veterans of a Forever War…

Posted on February 19, 2023 by Darren

I published a new piece at The Escapist last week. With the release of the second season of The Bad Batch, it seemed like a good opportunity to talk about one of the more interesting facets of the series.

The Star Wars franchise has always been intensely political. George Lucas tied the original films to the Vietnam War, and the prequels to the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars. The Bad Batch feels like a culmination of this trend, a follow-up to the prequel trilogy, released in the wake of the American withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan, that is very much engaged with the question of what happens to an army of soldiers at the end of an ostensible “forever war.” It’s a meaty theme for an animated series, and The Bad Batch is at its most interesting tapping into it.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: Television | Tagged: afghanistan war, forever war, george lucas, iraq war, metaphor, politics, star wars, the bad batch, veterans, vietnam, Vietnam War | Leave a comment »

The X-Files – The Walk (Review)

Posted on November 12, 2014 by Darren

This November (and a little of December), we’re taking a trip back in time to review the third season of The X-Files and the first (and only) season of Space: Above and Beyond.

The approach that The X-Files took during its third season was to hone what had worked during the first two seasons to a fine edge.

The second season had been quite playful and experimental – taking the time to figure out what did and didn’t work. Comedy episodes, like Die Hand Die Verletzt and Humbug, worked; making shows like Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose or Jose Chung’s “From Outer Space” logical choices. Mythology-driven two-parters during sweeps had paid off, so those returned for the third season. In contrast, the heavy science-fiction of shows like Fearful Symmetry, Død Kälm or Soft Light didn’t work, and were largely forgotten.

Let some light in…

The result is a third season that plays to the established strengths of The X-Files. Sure, there are still bold and experimental episodes – particularly those credited to writer Darin Morgan. However, the third season is markedly more conservative in tone than the second season – or even the fourth season. This conservatism can work very well. The third season has very few out-and-out bombs, and more than a few classics. However, it comes at a cost.

The Walk is a reasonably well-produced episode that feels a little bit overly familiar. This is the second “supernatural revenge” story that The X-Files has done in so many episodes. There’s a point where The Walk feels a lot less like a unique story than an archetypal “fill in the blanks” exercise, where a unique location and a new set of characters are caught up in an old-fashioned ghost story.