“Star Wars: The Bad Batch” Reinforces Palpatine’s Grand Plan
All along, the Sith Lord’s plan was to turn average people into droid-esque slaves. Where does that leave the clone troopers?
One of the oldest thematic motifs that can be found throughout all 44 years of Star Wars – indeed, one of the saga's very foundational principles – is the relationship between technology and the human spirit.
A quick survey of the original trilogy of films shows just how thoroughly this is embedded in creator George Lucas's storytelling worldview. At the climax of Episode IV: A New Hope (1977), the ultimate triumph of Luke Skywalker – and, thus, the ragtag band of Rebels he's teamed up with against the technologically superior Galactic Empire – is that he trusts the lifeform-powered Force as opposed to his fighter ship's targeting computer to destroy the first Death Star; in Episode VI: Return of the Jedi (1983), the Imperial forces garrisoned on Endor are overpowered by the primitive race of Ewoks to help destroy the second (a reflection, Lucas said, of the United States of America's humbling defeat at the hands of the Viet Cong's guerilla forces during the Vietnam War). And throughout all three installments, we come to learn that the villainous Darth Vader's tragic downfall is reflected in his biological status – that he's now more machine than man means his spirit has been subjugated by the technological impulses of Emperor Palpatine, whose apotheosis arrives in the form of all those Death Stars, superweapons of unimaginable scale (and a reflection of World War II's atomic bombs, a conflict whose influence on Lucas, generally, and his space-opera baby, specifically, cannot be overstated).
The Bad Batch, the latest Star Wars television series that just debuted this month on Disney+, has at its heart the continuing exploration of where the tyranny of technology ends and the liberation of the human spirit begins. But it also furthers the nuanced muddying of these thematic waters that George himself had started to introduce in his last two projects set in his galaxy far, far away: the prequel trilogy (1999-2005) and The Clone Wars (2008-2014, 2020), the property’s very first TV show. In these twin outings, we see how Darth Sidious engineered the creation of the Old Republic’s clone army, which would seem, at first glance, to invoke that familiar refrain about technology restraining humanity; however, what we see instead is that the individual clone troopers are mostly sound of heart, good and loyal and trustworthy friends of the Jedi, despite their genetic template being the nefarious bounty hunter Jango Fett. This is precisely why the Sith Lord installed yet another level of technological control, a failsafe to ensure the soldiers’ absolute obedience no matter what: inhibitor chips placed in their brains that are themselves a type of hybrid, a biological creation born of technical means.
Enter the latest episode of Bad Batch, “Replacements.” Former Clone Force 99 member Crosshair ends up training the very first recruits in what will ultimately become the long-lived stormtrooper initiative – a fitting reversal of the Grand Army of the Republic’s founding, when first Jango and then Bric and El-Les, all bounty hunters, oversaw the training of the clones. More than just complicating the nature-versus-nurture argument that Star Wars, as an overarching saga, has been making for the past four decades, it also simultaneously reinforces the dehumanizing elements of Palpatine’s New Order, a mandate that effectively seeks to render all organics into the soulless automatons that were seen powering the Separatists’ battle-droid armies on the battlefields of the Clone Wars (yet another irony and wrinkle on the theme, showing how the citizens of the former Republic are led to believe that they must sacrifice their humanity in order to prevent another mass uprising of would-be droid invaders – including by being chained to the brand-new Imperial chain codes, as seen in the previous Bad Batch chapter, “Cut and Run”).
There is also the fact that the Bad Batch first (largely) defies Order 66 and then refuses Admiral Wilhuff Tarkin’s instructions to execute the proto-rebel Saw Gerrera and his small clutch of followers – and it is Crosshair’s very first conscripts that listen to the command, indiscriminately slaughtering even unarmed civilians. It is a development that nicely extrapolates upon the transition from Republic to Imperial soldier, and what legacy that process leaves on the galaxy; we’ve already seen how the clones, who are assigned operating numbers upon their engineered births (such as, say, CT-7567), end up donning individualized names (Rex) over the course of their careers. And we have also seen that, after the Empire phases out the expensive clone troopers and replaces them with the more manageable stormtroopers, this process is reversed – recruits are reduced from having names and, therefore, individual identities to becoming just a number (with, perhaps, stormtrooper TK-421 being the most memorable example). It is as if Palpatine wishes to do to the whole galaxy what he has already done to Lord Vader – and it also underscores his desire to ultimately replace the Imperial Senate, a collection of living, breathing people, with the implacable technology of the Death Star(s).
It is bringing Star Wars back around, full circle, while also poking and prodding at some points of that circumference, teasing that the shape may not be quite as simplistic as what audiences had originally believed. This is the precise reason why the saga remains culturally resonant and mythologically imbued to this very day, and why viewers remained glued to their screens (and to their novels, comics, and audiodramas).