Ricky Church reviews the sixteenth episode of Star Wars Resistance, ‘The New Trooper’…
With the First Order becoming more of a presence both on the Colossus and on Star Wars Resistance overall, ‘The New Trooper’ was a good bounce back from ‘The First Order Occupation’ and a step in the right direction for the season. Several of the series’ elements are starting to come together in meaningful ways while ‘The New Trooper’ had a nice balance to the story and slapstick comedy the show has utilized. By the end of the episode, it feels like we’ve reached a turning point in the series’ direction.
The episode’s inclusion of Kel and Eila was a good one as they acted as the catalyst to the story by knocking out a Stormtrooper who had discovered them. It created a pretty unique situation for Kaz to go undercover and discover some of the First Order’s secrets while maintaining his guise as a lowly mechanic as he told Neeku and Tam he was just going to erase the kid’s information from the system. Kaz’s proactiveness has really grown over the last few weeks and he showed some good skills here, though he was obviously out of his depth when it came to impersonating a Stormtrooper.
One aspect that made ‘The New Trooper’ standout was Tam’s involvement. Its too often that she is put to the side while the story revolves around Kaz and Neeku, but Tam directly called out Yeager for giving Kaz more things to do than her as well as Kaz and Neeku for going off on their own. It was also a good opportunity to pick up from last week’s revelation that Tam feels safer with the First Order around and put her faith in them into question. Hearing from Kel and Eila themselves how the organization destroyed their home was the first chip for her, but it was clear she doesn’t seem fully convinced yet as she rationalized that they must have had a reason to. While I speculated last week (mostly for fun) that Neeku was the First Order spy, it wouldn’t surprise me too much if Tam ends up being the spy since she’s a sympathizer at this point. It will be interesting to see at just what it will take for her to see them for what they are.
Kaz’s undercover mission was fun to watch as he mostly followed a group of Stormtroopers around trying to glean as much information as he could. Unlike last week, there was a fine balance between the seriousness of the mission and the comedic moments. As funny as Kaz’s awkwardness in the armour was, it was nice that most of the Stormtroopers knew right away something was off and later assigned Kaz – or the trooper he was impersonating – to reconditioning. The only two comedic moments that felt a little off because of their length was Kaz’s struggle with the BB-9 droid and Neeku’s screaming escape. Aside from those instances, the balance in tone was very good.
The heavy presence of the First Order in the story was a good reminder of the threat they pose even at this point in the canon. Commander Pyre is quickly becoming an intriguing villain of his own as he’s able to switch between a somewhat charismatic and reasonable leader to downright threatening with ease. His rocky relationship with Captain Doza is getting even more interesting, especially as Pyre bluntly asked why Doza left the Empire. This seems to indicate Doza left of his own accord rather than simply being defeated and while there is clearly more to the story than Doza’s personal reasons, it begs the question why he’s kept his uniform all this time. The only element of the First Order’s story that felt a little weak was how so many people on the Colossus seem to be against the Order’s security now. Given that it was just the last episode when they arrived and people were glad to see them, it would have been nice to see a little more that helped sour their opinion of the Stormtroopers.
Now that we seemingly know what the First Order wants with the Colossus and the pieces that were placed with Tam and Doza, ‘The New Trooper’ was a nice improvement from the last couple of weeks with a good story, nice character development and steady balance in the tone. It feels like everything is starting to come together and since we’re already a few episodes away from the finale, Star Wars Resistance should get more exciting in the coming weeks.
Rating: 9/10
Ricky Church
