Dantooine Free Press

The cartoon series, "Star Wars: Resistance" tries to tell us how we got here, with respect to the state of the galaxy before the first of the Disney films, "The Force Awakens."  It is a children's cartoon, and certainly not as action-packed as "The Clone Wars."  The first season attempts to fill in some of the gaps left by "The Force Awakens," and give its audience a better understanding of the origins of the New Republic, the First Order, and the Resistance The cartoon follows the adventures of Kazuda Xiona, a young Hosnian pilot, sympathetic to the Resistance's cause, who happens to run into Poe Dameron in one of his missions.  Poe is impressed with Kaz's skills, and recruits him to act as a spy for the Resistance.  One problem is that Kaz's father is a Senator of the New Republic, which currently has its capital on Hosnia Prime. Kaz, deciding to be his own man, accepts the mission of trying to blend in on the Colosu...

I used to have this need to own, in one form or another, every chapter in the Star Wars movie universe.  Episodes four through six, I have on VHS.  I have the DVDs for episodes one through six.  I own online streaming versions of episodes four through eight.  I even own online digital versions of "Rogue One" and "Solo." Yet, for some reason, I was in no rush to own a version of episode nine, "The Rise of Skywalker."  Rather, I was very much content to wait until episode nine was available through Disney+ before I watched it again. This is not to say that I think episode nine is the worst in the series.  That honor goes to episode eight, "The Last Jedi."  It's just that I was in the hospital for an extended time recovering from surgery when "The Last Jedi" was released, and the fastest way for me to watch the movie was to purchase the online digital version.  If you could return a movie to get a refund, believe me, I'd want...

It is seems to be fashionable among current Star Wars fans to trash the final three installments of the Star Wars saga.  Some critics even take joy in proclaiming Disney's efforts to continue the narrative initially created by George Lucas to be a miserable failure.  It may go against what's trending, but I liked the first of Disney's instalments in the final Star Wars trilogy.  I found Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens an entertaining extension to the original storyline, one full of potential for what the tale could be.  Sure, looking back, the last two films failed to live up to that potential.  Moreover, the first of the Disney films had it's flaws and it's plot holes.  It certainly was not the best of the Star Wars movies.  But looking back on them all now, including the two movies dubbed "Star Wars Stories" by Disney, which address tangential plots, I can easily say that The Force Awakens is within the top five of the entir...

Because Disney+ released the seventh season of the Clone Wars, I decided to go back and watch the first six seasons before jumping into the newest one.  By episode nine, however, I found myself asking many questions raised by seemingly plot holes in the series.  Chief among these questions, what exactly is Anakin Skywalker's rank in the Jedi Order, and why is it that Ahsoka Tano was familiar with Asajj Ventress when the dark side villain made her first appearance in the series.  A quick web search showed that this was actually not Ventress' first appearance in the Star Wars universe, nor was this series the first to address the Clone Wars.  Rather, there had been a prior series addressing the Clone Wars that aired between 2003 and 2005 on the Cartoon Network, directed by Genndy Tartakovsky.  A quick look at internet images from the series sparked a vague recollection.  But, I did not remember the specifics.  So off I went on a quest to...