The Death Star Human Resources Department Newsletter: July 3, 2026
Lightsabers and fireworks will take off your hand
Hello there
Welcome back to the Death Star Human Resources Department Newsletter. If you’re one of my American readers, I hope you had a happy and safe 4th of July and that all your fingers are still attached to your hand. Just last week I was lamenting the lack of anything new and that we’re in the dog days of summer. How spoiled are we as Star Wars fans that getting a new show and movie earlier this year along with a new show and movie next year and I’m still saying “but why isn’t there anything new this month?” Well, the Mortis Gods have answered my prayers because we got the trailer for The Ninth Jedi, which comes in a month. Plus, Boba Fett and Anakin Skywalker are hanging out again, and a beach town celebrates its Stormtroopers.
As always, thanks for reading Death Star HR. If you’re reading this and you’re not a subscriber, I’d love it if you entered your email below and smashed that subscribe button. There’s also an official Death Star HR Instagram and an official Death Star HR YouTube page as well and I’d love it if you subscribed there as well.
This Is Where The Fun Begins
Your occasional reminder that Carrie Fisher was a real one.
Still miss ya, Princess.
The FORCE of July Has Arrived
The boys are back! Friend of Death Star HR Shane Elliott over at Feats N’ Faults is running the Force of July in…July. All month long, Shane will be looking at different Star Wars movies or TV shows and running them through the proprietary Feats N’ Faults algorithms (patents pending) to determine just who the highest scorer in the galaxy far, far away is. And DSHR is along for the ride. First up, we talk about The Mandalorian and Grogu.
If you’re not already, make sure you’re subscribed to Feats N’ Faults as it’s a fun read.
Ignore Jedis 1-8. The Ninth Jedi is Here
Just as I’ve been saying we’re in a bit of a slow period, we finally got something new. On July 2nd, Star Wars dropped the trailer for The Ninth Jedi.
If you haven’t watched all three seasons of Star Wars: Visions, you’ve been sleeping on one of the more interesting projects Disney has done. Each of the three seasons are a collection of animated shorts. Seasons 1 and 3 featured Japanese animation studios while season 2 opened it up worldwide, including Aardman Studios from the United Kingdom, best known for the Wallace and Gromit series.
The fun with Visions is they are not really constrained by the rules of Star Wars. I often joke that the reason Star Wars has all those potential movies out there is that any screenwriter or director who bumps into Dave Filoni at the grocery store and says they have an idea for a Star Wars movie gets a green light. Then that idea runs into the reality of time, money, and the fact that Star Wars has rules. If you want to do a live-action Star Wars show or movie, the Mouse is going to tell you what you can and can’t do. That isn’t to say writers and directors don’t have creative freedom, I mean we got a Darth Plaguis cameo in The Acolyte, but if you want a Star Wars movie or something, you can say, turn Han Solo to the Dark Side and turn him into a Sith Lord or something like that. But in Visions, you can let your freak flag fly. Remember “Black,” the psychedelic meditation on death from season 3?
That would never happen in an “official” for lack of a better word, Star Wars show. Or maybe there is a better word. That would never happen in a canon Star Wars show. As friend of Death Star HR, Matthew Freeman writes while discussing The Ninth Jedi trailer:
The other good news is that there’s so much mysterious about this series. Star Wars is rife with filling-in-the-blanks out-of-order storytelling that can strain to create a sense of mystery. We often know where any given character is on timeline, in which era they live, and how much of the galaxy they can really impact with their actions. Colonel Ward may not know what the Imperial Remnant is planning, but we do: The First Order will emerge and eventually decimate the New Republic. The clones in the Clone Wars may not know that they’re fighting for what will eventually be the Empire, but we do: we see the train coming down the tracks before Commando Cody. Anakin Skywalker might not suspect Palpatine is up to something, but we know for certain he’s a villain. That has its own dramatic tension - we get to see how things play out, and sometimes that surprises us (Anakin was a VIRGIN BIRTH?) but mostly we’re along for the ride that’s on rails, confirming theories or dispelling them.
Stories like The Ninth Jedi have the potential to solve that dramatic problem: the thrust us into the unknown. It’s why I’m more excited to watch this than I was the excellent Maul - Shadow Lord. I’ve spent a lot of time with Maul, I’ve seen his birth and I’ve seen his death. Not so much with Kara, whose story remains a Hidden Fortress.
If you’re a reasonably well-informed Star Wars fan, it’s not that difficult to make a guess about how a new Star Wars show will go just because you know the patterns of Star Wars. Especially when you’re dealing with established characters. Maul was never in any real danger in Shadow Lord because we know he needs to live so he can die in Rebels. I suppose they could have had Darth Vader kill Maul and find another way to bring him back so he’s around for Solo and Rebels. But that seems like a stretch, even by Star Wars standards.
The Ninth Jedi comes out of episodes in seasons 1 and 3. The “hook” as it is, is treating the kyber crystal as “mood rings” as Freeman describes them. I rewatched both episodes of The Ninth Jedi. The scene in the first one when you have a group of what you think are Jedi turn on their lightsabers and the blades are red? Great moment and unexpected. It looks like we’ll see more of this.
As the poster says, The Ninth Jedi premiers on August 5th, 2026. Right before Rebel Scum Con kicks off. All eight-episodes will drop, as opposed to Disney’s usual weekly releases.
The Anakin/Boba Bromance Continues
I wrote about this a little while ago about how Daniel Logan and Jake Lloyd are bros. Jake Lloyd of course was Anakin Skywalker in The Phantom Menace while Daniel Logan played a young Boba Fett in Attack of the Clones and voiced him in The Clone Wars and LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga. Lloyd was 9 years old when he filmed The Phantom Menace but basically quit acting in 2001. Over the years he’s struggled with mental health issues and schizophrenia including some well publicized incidents and legal problems. Logan has also talked in the past about his attempts to befriend Lloyd and support him.
“To be able to stick up for my friend, he’s an amazing guy. People will be like, ‘Oh, I walked by him, and he didn’t look happy.’ I think it wasn’t that he wasn’t happy, he’s just afraid a lot of the time. It just put that wall up between him and the fanbase, because of what he went through at a young age. I wish I could’ve been there to say, ‘Hey, we’ll beat them up together! Come on!’ But I wasn’t in the franchise yet.”
“It is hard being a child actor. I’ve been grateful and thankful to Star Wars and Lucasfilm to continue to use me because you have this high at such a young age, and then you’re just dropped, and put back into the world to live your life. Where do you go from having this amazing high to then going to some of the deep dark lows? That’s why I sympathize with Jake a lot. I still love him and I miss him.”
Given how the Prequel kids have grown up and that there has been a re-evaluation of the Prequels in the last 10-15 years, I do hope that Lloyd, if he wants to, rejoins the Star Wars universe. I truly do believe he’d get a warm welcome. But even if he’s not up for it, at least he and Boba Fett are friends.
He also posted a video of himself and Lloyd hanging out. Times are rough out there. A lot of people are just doing whatever they can to get by. So if you have someone in your life that you know is struggling, might not be bad idea to occasionally check on them. Or even if they aren’t struggling, it doesn’t hurt to check in. This is the way.
“Come See Where Cassian Went to Jail!”
I would imagine having your small town or your house used as a filming location is probably a blessing and a curse. I’ve read the people who own the Goonies house in Astoria, Oregon didn’t really like the attention and disruption. Although it does appear there are newer owners who are more on board. While the people who recently bought the Home Alone house in Winnetka, Illinois are renovating it to bring back the 1990’s look. There are whole tours set up in Tunisia where you can visit the filming locations for A New Hope. Or just Star Wars as it was then known.
And now, the English seaside town of Cleveleys has embraced its roll as the planet Niamos in Andor. Per the BBC:
Since the film crews left, the location has become a magnet for fans thanks to Monger and her fellow Blackpool-based fan Neil Trickett.
Trickett, 41, said the pair teamed up on a social media after realising they live near each other and agreed to meet at the filming location in Cleveleys.
He added: “We very quickly put a plan together for some kind of free public event.”
By the time you read this, the event has probably already happened. But make sure you watch for it next year, because you too can recreate getting choked by a KX Security Droid.
There are a few other famous Star Wars locations that if you spend enough time on Star Wars social media, you’ll see people traveling too. Lake Como in Lombardy, Italy is a pretty common one you see. The location for Padme’s country house and where she and Anakin got married, you can visit if you’re in the area. Just make sure you perfect your sand monologue first.
This Day in Star Wars History
Couple births, a death, and a bunch of trailers to talk about for July 5th in the Star Wars universe.
Actor William Hootkins was born 1948 in my city of Dallas, Texas. Hootkins played Jek Porkins, pilot of Red Six in A New Hope and had a pretty lenghty career as a character actor. He appeared in Raiders of the Lost Ark, Tim Burton’s Batman, and A River Runs Through It. Hootkins was also (I would assume) the only person in Star Wars with a connection to the JFK assassination. A 15 year old Hootkins was interviewed by the FBI due to his teacher, Ruth Paine, being the landlord for Marina Oswald and her kids. Hootkins also went to school with Tommy Lee Jones and was fluent at Mandarin Chinese.
Digital effects artist Pablo Helman was born in 1959. Working for ILM, Helman was a digital effects artist on The Phantom Menace and a visual effects supervisor on Attack of the Clones. He also worked on Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, The Irishman, Killers of the Flower Moon, and Wicked.
Actor Claude Woolman died in 1989 in Los Angeles. Woolman only had one roll in the Star Wars universe, the Imperial Officer on the wallscreen in The Star Wars Holiday Special. I’m guessing he was cast because they could get him to look enough like Grand Moff Tarkin people might think it was Peter Cushing.
The Diet Coke version of Tarkin. For reasons I’m not entire sure of, Star Wars released the trailers for Episodes I, III, IV, V, and VI on YouTube today in 2012. Why didn’t they also reason the trailer for Attack of the Clones at the same time? No idea. I did at least check the ROTS trailer to confirm that it was released today in 2012.
Since I posted a DSHR podcast with Shane Elliott, it’s only appropriate that the “Nubs Gardens” episode of Star Wars: Fun With Nubs was dropped on YouTube in 2024. Oh Nubs, you rascal.
From the Depths of Wookieepedia
This week, the Wookieepedia randomizer turned up an entry from our galaxy, the New London Children’s Choir.
The New London Children's Choir is the children's choir that performed during the score for Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace. They were featured during the parade scene at the end of the movie.
I’m not actually sure where they are in the Episode I score. Increasingly unreliable search results say they were actually part of the choir for “Duel of the Fates.” I know the London Voices were on the track. I supposes it’s not unreasonable to think the Children’s Choir were as well.
News From the HoloNet
Lego reveals new massive set that ‘Star Wars’ fans will love
He’s no good to me…built?
Celebrity Guests Confirmed for Star Wars Celebration Los Angeles 2027 - Update
Look for me getting kicked out after demanding Ahmed Best come clean about Darth Jar Jar.
Anakin and Padmé’s awkward love story is the best part of the Star Wars prequels
I don’t know if it’s the best part…but it’s not as bad as you think it is.
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.
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A bit of aggravation about location shots: we just passed the 50th anniversary of the premiere of “Logan’s Run” last week, and a lot of the film was shot at the Apparel Mart next to Children’s Hospital on I-35 in Dallas. This led to a couple of friends from well out of town asking if I could show them around the space, and I had to tell them that the Apparel Mart was demolished years ago. The last time I was there was in 1995 for a big fundraiser tied to the “Star Trek: Federation Science” museum tour that was opening at the Science Place in Fair Park: I was working for the long-defunct weekly “The Met” at the time, and the photographer covering the event with me stopped me for a second and asked “Did they do up this place to look like ‘Logan’s Run’ or something?”
I am looking forward to a video of Jake Lloyd pointing to Daniel Logan and saying, "No disintegrations." Daniel will repond, "As you wish." 😁