Every time an episode of Ahsoka lands, Fantha Tracks will be giving their responses, and here are our initial gut feelings, deep dives and thoughts on the third episode, ‘Time To Fly’. Beware of spoilerific elements in here.
Dan Lo
Mexican racing driver Sergio Perez started the 2023 Formula One season with a second place finish in Bahrain and a win in Saudi Arabia. However, a qualifying error in round three saw Perez take a trip through the gravel trap, forcing him to start the Australian Grand Prix from the back of the grid before recovering to a fifth place finish. In the grand scheme of things, fifth isn’t exactly bad. It still comes with a nice handful of world championship points and can keep a title challenge going. On the other hand, compared to a podium finish and a win, finishing fifth is certainly also a dip in form.
There are no gravel traps in Star Wars, but I would say that reasonably mirrors my overall impressions of the first trio of episodes. I thought the first two installments were pretty well done and while Time To Fly isn’t bad by any stretch, it also pales a bit in comparison. When Baylan Skoll deployed a search team into the forest, I thought “Great! The episode is about to get interesting!” Then to my surprise, the credits start to roll. Time flies when we’re having fun, right? Maybe, but it also demonstrates that not a whole lot happens in the latest episode of Ahsoka.
In a way, the only new bit of information we learn is that Ahsoka and Sabine will not be getting any backup. We find this out from a meeting between Hera and the Senate Committee which is later summarized in a hologram exchange, rendering the previous scene somewhat unnecessary. Aside from that, Sabine trains and is deemed to be mediocre, and generally fails at using the Force. Not news. Ahsoka, Sabine, and Huyang reach the Denab system to discover the giant hyperspace ring that we already know about. After a tense dogfight and taking fire from turbolasers, our heroes manage to escape from Shin Hati and Marrok after flying through a group of Purrgil. Search team gets deployed, and scene.
On the other hand, the show continues to maintain its general baseline of quality which I’m happy about. The visuals continue to look great, and the acting and direction still feel pretty solid to me for the most part. I haven’t looked up what sort of starfighters attacked Ahsoka and company, but my first impression is they remind me of World War II fighter planes as well as stubby versions of Naboo N-1 Starfighters. Even the sound design of their engines don’t sound terribly different. The subsequent dogfight is a fairly entertaining one, with callbacks to all previous Star Wars gunner scenes as well as a bit of character building between Ahsoka and Sabine. Perhaps the only questionable part of the sequence (and the episode) is Huyang requiring such a long, steady approach in order to complete a scan, precisely enough time to allow for their shields to be taken out. Visually though, while it isn’t a full on cinematic space battle, I also didn’t get the sense that the budget was being stretched to a breaking point either. Well done.
Apart from a vague familiarity with his general appearance, I admit I don’t remember anything about Huyang from The Clone Wars. However, he’s grown on me quite a bit since his live action debut. His blunt honesty reminds me of K-2SO, albeit a different brand of it. Bonus points for his Grievous-esque training mode, and the strike-recording hologram blades are a cool touch. Have we seen that before? Last but not least, the fact that Huyang’s eyes are programmed to “blink” tickles me to no end. I’d be hard pressed to think of a more unnecessary droid feature.
I mentioned in my last review that previous The Clone Wars and Rebels knowledge does not appear to be required. I wouldn’t necessarily take it back just yet, but I may have possibly found the space walk scene a bit jolting had I not already seen it in animated form. For the most part I feel the scene plays out okay, although I question the need to aim specifically at a spacewalking opponent when simply shooting at her ship would suffice. Doing so makes sense in the context of adding drama and suspense to the sequence, but not in real life. I’m probably taking this too seriously, I know.
As a side note, it’s interesting to see Mon Mothma “at work”. A large number of her appearances in Andor were very behind the scenes: Tense conversations with Luthen, speaking in code with Tay Kolma, arguing with her husband Perrin Fertha, etc. In Ahsoka, she is in a meeting with colleagues and her portrayal is, for lack of a more graceful way of putting it, more standard Star Wars fare. Very cool to see her character again all the same.
On the whole, I feel that Time To Fly would work far better as a random segment from a feature film than as its own installment in a series. There isn’t a whole lot wrong with what’s on screen, but it does far too little to move the plot forward in the context of a standalone episode. Still, the aforementioned closing scene is an interesting one. Just like the second episode, the final bits of dialog belong to Skoll. However, the two instances are apparently contradicting: he goes from expressing melancholy about the Jedi’s dwindling numbers to giving instructions to “hunt them down”. Wait, is he referring to Sabine as a Jedi too?
Paul Naylor
Okay, my opinion on this chapter might go against the flow of others – and it could just be because I am grumpy whilst recovering from ill health – but for me, this episode felt a bit too much like filler.
Sure, we got to meet Jacen Syndulla and there was the visual spectacle of the ‘space whales’ but I felt the pacing was a bit off.
The training scene at the beginning of the show felt overly long and in a series that has potential to contain so much significant content, I felt that overall the important elements could have been served in 15 minutes, allowing for further developments to unfold.
I still love this show, but the pedestrian style that works so well for Andor just doesn’t quite hit the mark in Ahsoka.
Jen Sopchockchai Bankard
Last week it was loth-cats. This week it’s….PURRGIL!
When the majestic space whales I fell in love with during Star Wars Rebels flew into view, making all the starships look like tiny flies buzzing around them, I pumped my fist in the air to rejoice. They looked amazing in live action. I loved how the starfight continued in and around them; it reminded me of the Millennium Falcon chase in The Empire Strikes Back, during which Han flies through an asteroid field and unknowingly lands inside an exogorth or space slug. This was only one of several times I thought of the Original Trilogy and classic Star Wars tropes — from Sabine wearing a zatochi helmet during training to the medium close-ups of Shin Hati in her cockpit (complete with Anakin-esque headset) to Sabine in the gunner seat.
When the purrgil first appear in Season 2 Episode 15 of Rebels, they are grossly misunderstood. Hera calls them a menace, saying she’s lost friends because purrgil have a bad habit of wandering into hyperspace lanes and crashing into ships. Her knee-jerk reaction is to scornfully fight them when they get in the way. Ezra, on the other hand, instantly connects with the purrgil. He’s fascinated by them, saying he never knew creatures lived out in space. He’s the only one who can hear them, and eventually he can communicate with them through the Force. Once he convinces the Ghost Crew to act with the purrgil rather than against them, they find them to be powerful allies. They save Ezra’s life and help escape an Imperial gas refinery in Season 2 and then, two seasons later in the series finale, they help Ezra capture Thrawn, clutching him in their tentacles as they jump with him through hyperspace to an unknown location, far away from the Rebel fleet. We now know that mysterious location was an entirely new galaxy.
I did a double take at the end of this episode of Ahsoka because our characters act so surprised, as if the existence of purrgil and their link to Morgan Elsbeth’s search for Thrawn is a total revelation. Huyang has a conspicuous piece of exposition when he says, “The Jedi archives speak of intergalactic hyperspace lanes between galaxies, which used to follow the migration paths of star whales, named purrgil.” That could be purely for the audience’s benefit. And he is a droid, after all — one who might deliver that information regardless of whether or not he thought his audience already knew. That would not explain, however, why Sabine doesn’t seem to know what purrgil really are. When Ahsoka inquires after her melancholic demeanor, Sabine says, “I haven’t seen those creatures since the day Ezra disappeared.” Why wouldn’t she say purrgil instead? Was it purely to preserve the dramatic reveal by Huyang towards the end of the episode?
Now, it is very possible that Ahsoka, who did not witness the purrgil-assisted disappearance featured in Rebels first hand, did not know about them. But if that were so, wouldn’t Sabine, who definitely saw them and called them purrgil in Rebels, feel the need to explain what “those creatures” were after they appeared in this episode? I’m not normally one to nitpick at the logic or realism in what I watch, especially Star Wars, but the way this series introduces purrgil made me acutely aware of my status as a viewer with above average knowledge of the story that this series continues. Even though I enjoyed the episode overall (very much so, in fact!), I still thought, “Well, duh!” when Ahsoka follows Huyang’s exposition with, “Like the ones we just saw.” Since I already knew that the purrgil had played a role in the defeat of Thrawn and the subsequent disappearance of him and Ezra in Rebels Season 4, it seemed obvious to me that they would be helpful in understanding how to get to Thrawn at the other end of the Pathway to Peridea, the route to another galaxy that Baylen references in Episode 2 of Ahsoka.
I realized that all this would not be obvious to viewers who have never seen Rebels. And suddenly all these choices made a lot more sense. Huyang’s exposition is clearly for those who saw the purrgil and said, “what in the world are those?” Could there have been a version of this episode that satisfied me without confusing them? At worst trying to anticipate a reader’s reaction is a shot in the dark, and at best it’s an educated guess, often informed by problematic generalizations. And then there’s the problem of different audiences with different needs. There are no easy answers there.
Ahsoka is trying to train Sabine and Huyang keeps reminding everyone that Sabine would not have been accepted by the Jedi Order. She would not have been deemed eligible to train. We don’t need to know more than that to follow the story. Their ongoing disagreement threaded throughout the episode, however, ends with Ahsoka saying, “I don’t need Sabine to be a Jedi. I need her to be herself.” Huyang’s response references a history outside of the show: “Well, you do come from a long line of non-traditional Jedi.” Outside of the immediate debate about non-Force sensitive people and their ability to train, nothing in this series, or even in The Mandalorian or The Book of Boba Fett, indicates in what way Ahsoka is non-traditional.
These conversations (and this last exchange, specifically) mean so much more if you’ve seen The Clone Wars animated series. More specifically, if you know that Ahsoka left the Jedi Order during one of the best story arcs in Star Wars. Ahsoka’s first appearance in live action was an episode of The Mandalorian titled “The Jedi.” One could misinterpret this and wonder if Ahsoka has changed her mind and returned to The Jedi Order, even though it no longer exists at this time, but that title reflects how other people see her. That title reflects the idea that even if she left the Order, she would still be considered a Jedi, because she wields a lightsaber and uses the Force. But that’s not how she sees herself. And this subtle distinction is barely noticeable if you don’t arrive at her live action appearances having done your homework. I realize I’d much rather find a way to be more like Ahsoka than Huyang, open to the idea that the Force – and Star Wars – is for everyone.
(This is condensed and edited – with permission – from Jen’s The Long Take review, which you can subscribe to here)
Eric Onkenhout
Ahsoka Part Three: Time to Fly came out this week and further cemented itself as essential storytelling in the Star Wars galaxy and beyond. I love the nods in this episode, especially to Japanese culture and movies. In the opening scene, the lightsaber style that Ahsoka mentions, Zatoichi, references the Japanese fictional samurai who is blind. Zatoichi also influenced Kanan’s character after he was blinded by Maul and Chirrut Îmwe in Rogue One.
Sabine repeats Luke’s line from A New Hope in a similar training scene, “I can’t see, how am I supposed to fight?” That was a nice callback. Sabine’s mask looks like a Kendo mask, and the sabers Ahsoka and Sabine use are Bokken sabers, a Japanese training sword. Even the music sounds Japanese-influenced.
Aboard Home One Hera meets with a half dozen Senators via hologram, including Mon Mothma and Hamato Xiono, who dismisses Hera’s warnings of Thrawns return. This is a future reference to how the New Republic ignored Leia’s warning of First Order threats and a growing Empire. It was great getting a Resistance reference. Resistance seems like the forgotten Star Wars series that was cut too short. It deserves more respect, and so do the actors who worked on it.
Jacen’s character finally returns as an older child, maybe around 9-10. I never understood why he has green hair since his first appearance in the Rebels series finale. Because his mother has green skin? Anyway, I’m glad he finally got some recognition.
Ahsoka and Sabine have a fascinating Master/trainee dynamic. Bordizzo has Sabine down to even her grunts while training, similar to Tiya Sircar when Sabine trained with Kanan.
On their journey to Seatos, Ahsoka, Sabine, and Huyang are confronted by six enemy fighters led by Shin Hati and Marrok. They fire at Ahsoka’s T-6 shuttle multiple times, but it doesn’t do any damage. In the rear gunner seat, Sabine manages to take out most of the fighters. The fighters are Belbullab-22 heavy starfighters, the same ship used by General Grievous in Revenge of the Sith.
Ahsoka purposely flies through a massive hyperspace ring called The Eye of Sion, named after Darth Sion from Knight of the Old Republic. Ahsoka’s ship makes it through, but her ship is severely damaged.
While Sabine begins repairs, Ahsoka goes outside the ship to face Hati, wearing a specialized spacesuit. Who knows how long it took her to get that thing on. Ahsoka takes out one fighter with her saber but needs Sabine to reign her back inside. The chase continues as they approach a planet below when purrgils appear out of the clouds!
The hyperspace ring had several massive hyperdrives from SSDs that could possibly allow it to travel to other galaxies. This is a wild possibility that Star Wars could actually leave the galaxy far, far away for one even further away, opening up countless future possible stories.
Ahsoka, Sabine, and Huyang land on Seatos, but Baylon Skoll sends out his droids to find her while Shin Hati lurks above in her fighter. Time to Fly was an exciting episode, albeit much shorter than the previous two, making it feel extra short. I hope they don’t get any shorter because just as I’m drawn in, the credits start rolling. Where’s Thrawn?
Ross Hollebon
Ahsoka Tano’s T-6 shuttle smoothly blasts through hyperspace as the opening shot launches a quick, sometimes hectic, episode 3. This space dimension appears to be the key to numerous characters achieving their goals. And, like so many stories and themes through Star Wars Rebels, we find our way back to nature and its sometimes unexplainable power. There are critical moments of human and humanoid interaction through the 31 minutes of the story, but the reintroduction of Purrgil, space whales, serves as a reminder there is more than one way to navigate hyperspace lanes—and that actions—or sometimes lack thereof—have consequences.
The most critical lack of action in this episode is that of the New Republic’s Senators and Chancellor Mon Mothma. Their unwillingness to hear what Hera Syndulla was presenting to them would ultimately lead to their deaths. Senator Xiono, father of Star Wars Resistance pilot Kazuda Xiono, may be the most important example. He is steadfast in his belief that Hera is merely looking for resources to look for Ezra Bridger, and joins his peers in demanding there is no threat to the New Republic. But we see during The Force Awakens and Resistance that Hosnian Prime is blown up by the First Order, and all of the governing body of the New Republic with it. The end of the scene does provide a celebratory moment as Jacen Syndulla’s live-action debut occurs when the young Jedi hopeful, flanked by his buddy Chopper, comes to talk to his mother.
As that red tape rendezvous of politics concludes, the action turns back to Ahsoka, Sabine Wren, and Huyang pulling out of hyperspace in the Denab system, above the planet Seatos. The advances of space flight visual EFX and the Volume are shown off in this scene as Shin Hati, Marrok, and 4 other “hot rod” ships engage the T-6. It’s tough to top the soundtrack by Kevin Kiner and co., but the sound effects accompanying all things space battle are intense, sharp, and beautiful in their Star Wars way.
And here, after Ahsoka, in her space gear, returns to the ship, is when the dogfight enters the atmosphere. The magic and wonder of the world Geooge Lucas created is elevated by the melodic rumbling of the “swimming” Purrgil and the calls of the massive, living, energy conductors. A partial nod to the past, and likely a set-up for the near future, there is a moment of appreciation and fantasy by Hera and Sabine as they navigate through the pod (pack, colony, brood, swarm?) of powerful space whales.
We end with an emergency landing, a momentary reprieve from Shin and Marrok, and the orders for ground troops to search the forest for the hidden ship. But more importantly, with Baylan Skoll wrestling within his own mind. What is he thinking?
Mark Newbold
There’s a classic episode of the sitcom Friends where Phoebe agrees to train Joey to learn to play guitar, and as fans of the show know Phoebe is a somewhat unconventional teacher. She doesn’t allow Joey to learn the correct name of the chords or even hold a guitar, and for some strange reason that episode came to mind while watching Ahsoka and Sabine train in Time To Fly. With this being the second phase of Sabine’s training after Ahsoka walked away from the first, you have to wonder just how far the Sabine got in her education the first time. She’s clearly new to combat with a blast shield and has no talent in the Force to speak of and, and yet she’s being schooled by a droid who is 25,000 years old who has most likely trained, conversed and sparred with more Jedi than any sentient intelligence in the history of the order. And the former apprentice of the Chosen One.
That poses a number of interesting questions – is Sabine truly skilled in the Force? Is Ahsoka determined to train her despite the apparent last of Force talent because she senses something no one else does, or is there another reason? We’re a number of decades before the era of The Force Awakens, which appeared to signify a change in the balance of the Force, so is there hope for Sabine’s training or is Ahsoka doing this to prove something to herself? We don’t know if this is set before or after the events of The Book of Boba Fett, so there may be some surprises in store – clearly Ahsoka is talented in the Force, but can she be the teacher to Sabine that Anakin never was for her while Anakins son Luke begins an academy of his own?
As for the episode itself, it’s relatively short and sweet. We see the training – and yes, that cup on the table of Ahsoka’s T-6 Shuttle is the MVP of the episode – and most interestingly see the fragile state of the New Republic. Seeing Mon Mothma and the excellent Genevieve O’Rielly is always a joy, but clearly Mothma is hampered. It’s usually the case; when politicians lead countries through war and rebellion, they’re often moved on once peace is achieved, and while Mothma is still the figurehead her influence – like Finnis Valorum decades before her – is lessened. Clearly Senator Xiono and General Syndulla have clashed before, and with the open admission that former Imperials sit at every level of the New Republic infrastructure you can see how a scenerio is engineered to keep the New Republic toothless and unstable as the First Order grows in the shadows.
The rest of the episode was a showcase for the visual effects work of ILM, the impressive and growing range and depth of StageCraft, the chemistry between Ahsoka, Huyang and Sabine (and the actors behind them) and the music of Kevin Kiner. It’s one of the longest dogfights in all of Star Wars, right up there with the asteroid field in Empire and the approach to Geonosis in Attack of the Clones, and as a visual, action sequence it was superb. There shall undoubtedly be grumbles about Ahsoka’s space acrobatics, but in a galaxy where there are 25,000 year old robots and an all-powerful Force that can literally move cups across a table, anything is possible. My only grumble – it should have been about 10 minutes longer.
Sander de Lange looks at all the reveals and easter eggs in Ahsoka – The Guide Part 3: Time To Fly.
Brian Cameron and Ross Hollebon discuss Time To Fly on this weeks Good Morning Tatooine.
Mark Mulcaster and Mark Newbold discuss Part 3 on Making Tracks Reaction Chat: Ahsoka S1 – Master and Apprentice and Toil and Trouble.
- Hardcover Book
- Mann, George (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 416 Pages - 11/14/2023 (Publication Date) - Random House Worlds (Publisher)
