Ricky Church reviews the eleventh episode of Star Wars Resistance, ‘Station Theta Black’…
With Star Wars Resistance taking a break for the holidays, the series delivered its most First Order-centric episode as Poe and Kaz came face-to-face with Captain Phasma herself. ‘Station Theta Black’ was a pretty solid and entertaining episode that again highlighted Kaz’s growing strengths as a Resistance spy/soldier while featuring some cool ground and space fights. A couple issues kept it from being a truly great episode, but it was was still good nonetheless.
Much like ‘Signal from Sector Six‘, the episode again saw Kaz link up with Poe on an assignment from General Leia Organa herself to investigate a First Order flight and a supposedly abandoned ship/station. The plot was a little unoriginal since we just so recently saw that type of situation, but it quickly became more on an intriguing mystery rather than a slapstick jaunt as Poe and Kaz tried figuring out what the First Order wanted with this mining station. It made for an eerie atmosphere as they strode down empty halls and came across some security droids.
Of course, the big thing surrounding ‘Station Theta Black’ was Captain Phasma. Up till now, she’s only appeared in very brief roles in the series, but here she took a leading role to destroy the station and kill Poe and Kaz. Phasma was both one of the best and worst aspects of the story. It was great to see her in action (with Gwendoline Christie reprising her role from the films) and she gave a very intimidating presence to the pair of rebels and her own troops. However, while her depiction was fairly imposing, it was rather annoying that even though Poe and Kaz was pretty much in point blank range of her, she still missed the shot and continued to miss wide of the mark throughout the foot chase. It stretches the point of believability for a character like Phasma, based off what we’ve seen of her skills in The Last Jedi and Phasma, that she would aim so poorly (even if it does follow the tradition of most Stormtroopers).
While Phasma’s lack of accuracy is enough to detract from the episode’s enjoyment, it is similar to how the Stormtroopers were presented at the start of Star Wars Rebels (or even the Battle Droids at the beginning of The Clone Wars). It’s more about setting the kid-friendly tone at this point and hopefully, with more time, Phasma and the other First Order Stormtroopers will be depicted in a more threatening and accurate that will present a true challenge to the heroes.
Kaz was developed nicely throughout the story, though was again used at times in a comedic manner while Poe was, for obvious reasons, the straight man. By the end of the episode, however, Kaz seemed to grow a little more serious as he began to really grasp the coming conflict between the galaxy and the First Order after discovering just how much weaponry they’re amassing. It brought up some interesting points from him and Leia regarding the Republic and how they won’t recognize the threat until its too late due to their greed and preference to pretend everything is alright. It was a little intriguing to learn a bit more information regarding the Republic, but it also stood out just how little we really know about this point in time, especially with Leia’s standing with the Republic. Viewers who haven’t read Bloodline or some of the other extended Star Wars material might be a bit lost as to why there’s such friction between the Republic and Resistance so hopefully the show will dive further into that soon, especially as we get closer to the actual events of The Force Awakens.
While ‘Station Theta Black’ delivered an engrossing mystery and some nice action, its depiction of Phasma was a bit of a downer since it caused the stakes for Poe and Kaz to feel fairly low. The action was still mostly entertaining, especially the dogfight and their escape from the station’s destruction, and the animation was well displayed. Hopefully as the new year comes we’ll see Resistance dive more into the First Order and get a little more info on the state of the galaxy.
Rating: 8/10
Ricky Church
