The Death Star Human Resources Department Newsletter: June 14, 2024

It's the Death Star HR One Year Extravaganza!

Hello there

Good morning and welcome to this week’s edition of the Death Star Human Resources Department Newsletter. Hard to believe, but it’s the one year anniversary of Death Star HR. So I do a little naval gazing, speculate if there’s a previously undiscovered connection between Star Wars and 30 Rock, and try to solve the mysteries of The Acolyte with a very brief detour pondering if the Jedi suck.

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This Is Where The Fun Begins

Here at Death Star HR HQ, we’re two seasons into a rewatch of 30 Rock. Because it’s summer in Texas and while we haven’t quite reached Tatooinee temperatures yet, 100+ degrees is stalking us like Sand People in Beggar’s Canyon. So might as well stay inside. Tina Fey is pretty open about what a huge Star Wars fan she is and there are plenty of references in the show.

But has Liz Lemon been referencing a Star Wars deep cut for a long time? For a while I figured that her exasperated utterance “blerg” was just a funny word along the lines of “doh!”

But as we were sitting on the couch, discussing what 30 Rock characters each of us were¹, something tripped in the dark recesses of my brain where I store things random Star Wars facts and Simpsons trivia. I remembered that there’s a creature in Star Wars called a Blurgg. They have a much longer history than I thought. I’d guess most people know them from the first season of The Mandalorian.

Blerg, the blurrg!

The Blurrg has a long history going back to 1985’s made-for-TV-movie Ewoks: The Battle For Endor. I’m not sure if blurrgs are identified by name or they’re just a creature that got a name later on. Before checking Wookieepedia, I thought maybe the Jon Favaru and Dave Filoni named the creature a blurrg as a nod to 30 Rock and the Star Wars fans on the show. But given the history and how long the blurrg has been around, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if Tina Fey heard the name of the creature years ago, realized it was a funny word, and tucked it away to use later.

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365 Days of Death Star Human Resources Department

If you guys will permit me to be a little self-indulgent, exactly one year ago today, the Death Star Human Resources Department Newsletter was unleashed and the internet has never been the same. Too presumptuous? Probably. But as luck would have it, the dates lined up pretty nicely for the Death Star HR first anniversary.

It’s fun to go back and take a look at it. I guess it was good timing on my part that I started Death Star HR right when the hype of Ahsoka was starting, so there was always something to write about. The very first thing I wrote about was all the fan theories about just who was Marrok. Spoiler alert. he’s a nobody. Of course, that didn’t stop us all from getting hyped up about who Clone Trooper CX-2 was a year later. Star Wars fans, we’re a predictable bunch. The first newsletter also has what is still one of my favorite things I’ve written, a proposed mashup of Star Wars and What We Do in the Shadows, where the WWDITS vampires somehow end of on Tatooine and have wacky adventures.

I started Death Star HR because I was bored and needed a hobby. I’ve always had a hobby of some sorts. Collecting baseball cards and then collectible card games like Magic: The Gathering or the Star Wars: CCG when I was a little bit older. There was always videogames. I did beer league hockey and softball for a while. For about 12 years up until COVID hit, my hobby was craft beer and homebrewing. I was really into it. I have several friends that own or have worked in breweries. I was president of my homebrew club for almost three years. I’ve been to the Great American Beer Festival in Denver six times, most of those times we would do two sessions. I couldn’t even count the number of breweries across America I’ve been to, if we were on vacation, Emperor Palpatine’s #1 Fan knew we were stopping at least one. I can do a more informative brewery tour than a lot of brewery employees. In short, I know a lot about beer. Then I stopped². And had nothing to do.

Sick of me complaining I had nothing to do, my wife AKA Emperor Palpatine’s #1 Fan, suggested I work on my writing. And I did. There’s a note book on my bookshelf next to my ever-growing collection of Star Wars Legends paperbacks that has the outline of a screenplay. There’s a few chapters of a murder mystery written and sitting my Google Docs. The problem was, because I have Internet Brain, none of these provided the instant results that my rewired brain requires. Delayed gratification is for suckers, I need that dopamine hit right away.

Then perhaps I was guided by the Force, I decided a Star Wars email newsletter was the solution to my ennui. I was already familiar with Substack since I subscribed to a baseball writer on the platform. So after a couple weeks of kicking around names and what I wanted to focus on³, the Death Star Human Resources Department Newsletter was born. Possibly it was even conceived through the Midi-chorians⁴. Who can say?

What has been great about the last year, besides the chance to tell Normies about the Darth Jar Jar theory, is the community. When I hit “publish” on the first Death Star HR a year ago, I truly had no idea if anyone would read this besides some families members and friends who I basically told they might as well subscribe because I wasn’t going to leave them alone until they did. Over the year I’ve talked with Star Wars fans all across the country and even was on a podcast for May the 4th in which I got to introduce Brian and Gary to Darth Jar Jar.

So what’s year 2 of Death Star HR hold? I should probably stick with what I know, ie grammatically questionable Star Wars hot-takes, AI pictures of Taylor Swift as a Sith, wild speculation about any new character wearing a mask, and getting trolled by Emperor Palpatine’s #1 Fan.

The Dark Lord of the Swift returns

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The Flashbacolyte

We were promised a Jedi Murder Mystery, and we’ve got a Jedi Murder Mystery! This week’s episode, “Destiny,” is the flashback episode where we get to see what happened on Brendok and why Mae has a grudge against the Jedi. While we got some answers, like a good mystery, for all the answers we got, we were still left with even more questions.

Let’s start with the obvious one. Where did Ohsa and Mae come from. Mother Koril states she carried the twins while Mother Aniseya says she created them. That was a bit of a shock. There is one other virgin birth we know of Star Wars. And Anakin Skywalker is kinda a big deal. The obvious question is, are we finally going to get some Darth Plagueis action?

Darth Plagueis, for those of you who have not dedicated your lives to memorizing side characters in a fictional universe, was Palpatine’s Sith Master who was obsessed with cheating death and he could create life out of nothing. Ol’ Palpy eventually killed him, as the Sith tend to do. There were some versions of the Prequels drafts were it was explicitly stated that Palpatine used the Force to knock up Shmi Skywalker. Characters like Darth Plagueis occupy an interesting space. He’s a canon character since he’s mentioned in Revenge of the Sith. But most of the information we know about the character came from the novel “Darth Plagueis” by James Luceno which is in Legends status.

The ability to create life is not a Jedi Power. Or at least it’s not according to Palpatine and I don’t know if any Jedi that has done it. Does this mean the Brendok Coven is aligned with the Dark Side? I don’t think so. The Jedi and the Sith are almost always coded as Good and Bad. The witches are something different, they occupy much more of a gray area.

The second mystery is what happened to the Witches. The camera pans over them and we see everyone is dead except for Osha and Mae. Despite a fortress made out of stone being set ablaze, it doesn’t appear the bodies are burned. Nor does to appear they have anything resembling lightsaber wounds. And there’s only 1 Jedi (at least that we see) at the fortress, Sol. And he seems to be a pretty good Jedi but probably not someone who can hold of 20+ Force Thread wielding witches. Let’s go over the options.

• Killed by the Jedi. Not likely for reasons listed above. Even if all four of the Jedi were there, we still don’t see any indications that they were killed by a lightsaber on the admittedly quick shot of the Witches.

• Killed by the fire. The bodies didn’t appear to be burned. I suppose smoke inhalation is a thing but that doesn’t seem very interesting.

• Killed by the Sith. We have seen a Sith in the show. Also doesn’t seem likely but hey, it’s Star Wars.

• Killed by poison. This is what I’m going with. The show opened with Osha at the Bunta tree. We’ve already learned in the 2nd episode that the leafs are used to make a poison and they tell us again that it’s poisonous. When Torbin took the poison, he just slumped over and died. Similar to the witches.

  

  Fruit of the poisonous tree. That’s a lawyer joke.

So who passed out the bunta tree cocktails? I’m going with Mother Koril. She was completely opposed to Osha and Mae even talking to the Jedi. I think her rationale was once the Jedi discovered the Coven, it would only be a matter of time before something bad happened to them. Early in the episode she and Mother Aniseya referenced their kind being hunted and persecuted. Was it the Jedi doing the hunting? The show has established the Jedi as Space Cops. They clearly view that regulating Force users is part of their jurisdiction. In Mother Koril’s mind, turning Brendok into Jonestown would be a better outcome than letting the Jedi take the kids and, I don’t know, arrest the witches

Too much Bunta-Aide

The Good:

• I like when Star Wars operates in shades of gray and The Acolyte has done a great job at that so far. We don’t know where the Brendok Coven falls on the Light Side/Dark Side continuum. Mother Aniseya clearly has powers associated with the Dark Side. But they don’t appear to have any designs on galactic domination like the Sith. It seems like they just want to be left alone, nothing wrong with that.

• I’ve mentioned before that saying the Jedi suck is a bold movie in a show that Disney wants the Normies to watch. And while it would be very easy for the show to paint the Jedi as bad, so far it hasn’t. Sol clearly cares for Osha. Torbin feels guilt for whatever his role is. Maybe you can say that Indara is bad. Sure she says she’ll only test Osha and Mae with permission, but it seemed pretty clear to me that there wasn’t actually a choice. Does that make her bad, or just being a Jedi?

• Speaking of, it was nice to see more of Carrie-Anne Moss. I really thought it would have been a waste to bump her off so quickly. Even if there was some shock value. I would expect this won’t be the only flashback we get.

The Bad:

• Not a lot. This episode established Mae more as a evil Dark Side character than someone who falls to the Dark Side due to some trauma. I wonder if they are setting something up where the Light Side and the Dark Side was…imbued, I guess that word will work, in Osha and Mae respectively when the were created.

Wild Card:

• Do you think Kelnacca had a Padawan braid? This is the first Wookiee we’ve seen (as far as I know) with any kind of shaved head.

  

• When Osha told everyone that she wanted to leave the Coven and be a Jedi, Emperor Palpatine’s #1 Fan and I looked at each other and both said, in our worst Texas accent, “I don’t want yer life.” Oh, Dawson.

  

An interesting way to look at the Force, the Thread, whatever you want to call it is instead of thinking of it as a blood disease that gives you telekinetic powers, think of it as a religion. There’s a line in (I think) Knights of the Old Republic II where Atton Rand basically says the Jedi and the Sith are two sides of the same religion fighting with each other while the rest of the galaxy suffers. It stands to reason that there are plenty of people who can use the Force but don’t view it through the Jedi/Sith lense. Mother Koril calls them “deranged monks” and she might be onto something. The Jedi remove kids from their families and indoctrinate them with the idea that there’s only one way to use the Force. If the Jedi had been the ones to persecute the Witches, to say their religion is the right one. The Force is the way, not the Thread, you can see why Mother Koril doesn’t want Osha and Mae to go with a bunch of robed weirdos.

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Things My Wife Has Said About Star Wars

Not sure how this one never made it into the newsletter. But set your time machine for earlier this year with the season premiere of The Bad Batch.

Me: So are you excited for The Bad Batch tonight?

Her: Are they going to kill Omega?

Such a hater…

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This Day in Star Wars History

Not a lot of interesting things happened on June 14th. Two births of note though.

• Burl Ives was born in 1909. When I saw this, I had no idea what his Star Wars connection was. He narrated the made-for-TV-movie Caravan of Court: An Ewok Adventure⁵. I mostly knew his name for being a singer who testified for the House Un-America Activities Committee.

• Legendary Star Wars collector Stephen Sansweet was born in 1945. Sansweet has the world’s largest private collection of Star Wars memorabilia. Talk about life goals.

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From the Depths of Wookieepedia

This one seems appropriate as there’s a big construction project kicking off soon at Death Star HR HQ, this week we’ve got Permacrete. Not only do random characters seen for less than a second on one episode of The Clone Wars get a Wookieepedia entry; we’re now doing building materials.

In case you were wondering, two-metre thick permacrete cannot stand up to a lightsaber. Good to know. I’ll ask my contractor about it.

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News From the HoloNet

Will Natalie Portman Return to Star Wars?

[insert prayer hands emoji here]

‘The Acolyte’ Witches Explained: A History of Witchcraft in the ‘Star Wars’ Universe

Space Witches: a primer.

The Acolyte actor behind some of the best Star Wars memes is all in on the Yord Horde

Yord Horde, unite!

Star Wars Filmmaker Dave Filoni Addresses Possibility of R-Rated Stories

Seems unlikely, but Palpatine did manage to return. So who knows.

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That’s it for this week. If you like what I’m doing, please subscribe. I’ll catch you next week, and may the Force be with you.

1. Emperor Palpatine’s #1 Fan: A combo of Liz and Jack. Darth Taco: The Tracy Jordan of cats. Me: Wants to be Frank but is really Pete.

2. Just in case anyone is wondering, I did not quit beer because of a problem with alcohol.

3. There’s an alternate universe where Death Star HR is a podcast about Legends books.

4. Anakin’s virgin birth was one of the times Lucas needed someone to tell him “no.”

5. It’s a weird Death Star HR when both Ewok movies are mentioned.