With episode six we finally return to some more flying an a  little less talking, meet an old friend and discover that wat seemed a minor side-plot so far is about to get a significant twist! Spoilers from the start!

A surprise mission

After bucket pulls a terrible wake-up call on Kazuda, we witness his extremely identifiable and sympathetic dependence on a solid cuppa coffee in the morning. Yeager is going to take him on what seems to be some kind of extended shopping run. At this point I was thinking the episode would probably dig a little deeper into Yeager’s backstory. Surely a welcome bit of content but not one necessarily high on my wish-list.

Fly-Boy

Instead however Yeager meets up with Sequel Trilogy hero, Poe Dameron, who has come out here to take Kazuda out on a training flight. What starts out as some nice flying time for two enthusiastic pilots, and some down time to discus spy-mission relevant matters, changes tack when a distress signal comes in.

What follows is partially a typical “pilots find stranded shipwreck” story-line, complete with threatening monsters and mystery-chase through a wrecked freighter. Although there is evidently a pirate-involvement that led to this state of the freighter, that seems to be mere background.  What we get is a some really funny buddy time between Kazuda and Poe.

A wingman

I really enjoyed this part of the episode because we don’t really see any interactions of this type in the theatrical films. Of course there is some of it between Finn and Poe, but let’s be honest: Poe has his head in his cockpit and Finn was initially mainly in thoughts about Rey and now Rose. I became aware watching this episode how nice it would be for Poe to have an actual wingman in the films, a Sam to his Frodo, a Sancho Pancha to his Don Quixotte.

I could very much imagine that they would give Poe a wingman in Episode IX and I would actually thoroughly enjoy it if it would Kazuda himself. Now I don’t think that it is very likely, although the human, non-alien, look of Kazuda will evidently make him easy to cast. As this series plays close to the start of The Force Awakens, it is not inconceivable that Kazuda is flying around somewhere in the Resistance fleet unless he was wiped out by the Starkiller Base blast at the New Republic fleet. But that would make the Star Wars: Resistance series extremely short.

A pirate plot

Poe and Kazuda find a survivor of what seems to have been a pirate attack on the freighter that set free the monsters now roaming inside. They take her on while unconscious and it takes a bit of action and a bit of slapstick to keep her out of the claws of the beasts. Their escape from the freighter is further complicated by the re-appearance of the pirates. What follows is a nice brief space battle in which Kazuda gets the chance to show off he learned from what Poe tried to show him earlier in the episode.

The episode looks to end on a high, mission completed, praise from Poe earned, the two fly back to be met by Yeager who will be bringing Kazuda and the rescued lady back to the base. I was wondering at that moment whether I just witnessed the introduction of a love interest for Kazuda? But an excellent final scene cliff-hanger proved that to be a fully erroneous reading of the episode.

Summary

It was a really nice episode, with some great flying, a chance to see some more of Poe Dameron, who looks to be an irregular regular on the show, and a cliff-hanger that propagates a side-plot into the centre of attention. In the last two episodes focussing on the dealings of the First Order, we could have forgotten that there is a not entirely unrelated pirate threat. This episodes sets the stage for a return of that story-line into the focus of the next few episodes. That is a welcome move, after all we don’t want to get to the start of The Force Awakens to soon.

Want to read more from Clone Corridor?

• We of course have reviews of the earlier episodes #1, #2, #3, #4 and #5;
• In the past we have also reviewed many episodes of Star Wars: Rebels, Solo and The Last Jedi and earlier Star Wars films.
• But we also have lots of interesting series such as Star Wars’ Forgotten Women, Scene-It, My Star Wars Moments and several Character Studies.