After a slightly underwhelming start, we’re back in the desert again with Boba Fett, as episode 2, ‘The Tribes of Tattooine’ continues to explore his past. *Warning! Spoilers Ahead!*
There’s a scene early on in The Tribes of Tattooine which seems like a very apt metaphor for a lot of how this series is going so far. There’s a captured assassin, sent by a still unknown enemy, who is being interrogated very loosely by Boba (Temuera Morrison) and Fennec (Ming-Na Wen) who is thrown down into the Rancor pit. With the gate being raised there’s drama and tension as the assassin expects a Rancor to come steaming out at him, but ultimately there’s no big event. This is sort of what this show feels like so far.
This isn’t to say it hasn’t been entertaining though and there is something here. It’s just there’s something missing I can’t quite put my finger on that would make this a far more intriguing proposal. Last week, part of the main complaint was that not enough happened and again this seems to be the case. The likelihood is that maybe the biggest problem is the pacing, and how much detail there is in the story layers or lack thereof. There are some characters we’ve now met more than once that we really don’t know much about. Jennifer Beals character (Garsa Fwip) at the local Cantina for instance, has now appeared a couple of times, yet we have no information on who this person is or how they fit into the local community. While it’s interesting being out in the desert with the Tuscan Raiders we’re not really learning that much detail about them and it’s all pretty generic stuff. That might not be enough to sustain this series though.
With some trust now earned with the Raiders we see Boba continue to get a rapport with them and in an almost Rocky like montage, train himself in new forms of combat. There’s also a subplot of a train that goes through their territory, which he helps capture. This is partly done to curry favour, but also works as a way for us to learn who the different groups on Tatooine are. With a title like The Tribes of Tatooine we would have expected there to be more tribes represented, but this episode only really gives us an inkling about part of it. What you can see happening though is them laying the foundations for Boba to be able to takeover from Bib Fortuna in the future, and how he might be able to solidify his power base once there.
Back in the present day we see his claim to the territory being tested by Jabba’s cousins, who come into town atop their litter and it’s all pretty much as you would expect. The problem is, taking this episode at face value and not taking into account any other Star Wars lore we may know, there doesn’t seem to be enough scratching the surface to explain the local politics or how everyone’s power is derived. For the general viewer who isn’t steeped in a Star Wars background it must make this show seem very simplistic and essentially like an old western, where nothing is explained or has any depth. This is an issue as there is depth there, but it’s just not being explored in the correct way.
What really needs to happen with this series is for there to be more episodes released weekly or some elements to be sped up, so that we actually get some major plot points hitting more regularly. On the other hand, The Tribes of Tattooine does a tremendous amount of fan service with this sustained look at the smaller elements and may be exactly what a certain part of the audience wants. This is a difficult balance to find, but for some they will find this series is as empty as that Rancor cage.
