My Geek Life: Star Trek: Prodigy Episode 1x06, "Kobayashi" and The Book of Boba Fett Episode 2, "The Tribes of Tatooine"

 Hey everyone! Happy Friday! How are all of you doing today? I'm doing okay. I decided to do something a little different today. This is Josh's Geek Cave, so I decided to talk about the geekiest thing I did or observed this week. This time I'll be talking about the latest episodes of Star Trek: Prodigy and The Book of Boba Fett because they did the coolest, geekiest things that TV shows have done in these franchises and I really enjoyed them. These aren't reviews, just discussions about certain elements from this week's episodes. There will be spoilers so if you haven't watched Prodigy and The Book of Boba Fett, then please do so before reading this post any further. Let's get into it.

The thing I've always loved about animation is that you can do anything you want. For example you can bring Adam West and Burt Ward back as Batman and Robin and have them do all the stuff they did on the TV show in the late '60s. And in the case of Star Trek, you can bring back characters and have them look as old as they were in their original shows. Like Kate Mulgrew as the holographic version of Kathryn Janeway in Star Trek: Prodigy or Robert Duncan MacNeil as Tom Paris on Star Trek: Lower Decks. In the case of this week's episode, called "Kobayashi" the lead character, Dal, discovers the Holodeck on the U.S.S. Prodigy and after Hologram Janeway (that's her official name in the credits) recommends it to him, he takes the Kobayashi Maru test. He selects the Bridge of the Galaxy class U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-D and selects holographic versions of Spock, Uhura, Beverly Crusher, Scotty, and Odo as his crew.

While other animated shows, like Star Wars: The Clone Wars, would've simply recast these iconic roles, Prodigy did something much cooler. They took audio clips from the characters's previous TV and movie appearances and put them in the episode, though Gates McFadden returned to voice Beverly Crusher, as such she is the only one to have new dialogue in the episode, even though Nichelle Nichols is still alive. But I geeked out so HARD anytime we cut back to Dal on the Holodeck, because it was on the Enterprise-D which is MY Enterprise, with holographic versions of some of the best, as well as some of my favourite, characters Star Trek has ever introduced us to. So I knew that the Enterprise-D Bridge would be in the episode via the Holodeck because Nickelodeon released images of it as a sneak peek of the episode. But, despite being on Twitter all day yesterday I didn't know about the characters who would be appearing in the episode besides Hologram Janeway. Which made it even cooler when I watched the episode and Spock, Uhura, Scotty, Crusher, and Odo appeared. 

I had decided not to review the first episode of The Book of Boba Fett because there just wasn't enough to talk about with that first episode on it's own. But the second episode, "The Tribes of Tatooine" did something that warranted this discussion. In the flashbacks presented in the episode, similar to how Arrow did it for it's first five seasons, Boba Fett enters a bar, where some thugs are harassing two people. The two people being harassed are Fixer and Camie. If you don't know who they are, that's okay, they aren't actually in any of the Star Wars movies.

When George Lucas wrote the script for Star Wars (1977), he wrote several scenes that featured Luke Skywalker with his friends, particularly his best friend, Biggs. Two of the other characters in these scenes were Fixer and Camie. However, once he realized that the story was being told through the point of view of R2-D2 and C-3PO and that they were leading the audience to meet Luke, he had those scenes cut out of the movie. They still existed in the novelization of the movie. Which I first read in either the late '90s or early 2000s, during my initial foray into the Star Wars novels.

The deleted scenes also appeared in the first issue of Marvel's original Star Wars series that ran from 1977 until 1987. Though Fixer and Camie only show up in one panel and that's it, with the rest of the scene focusing more on Luke and Biggs. So if you read the novelization of the movie or Star Wars #1, you knew who Fixer and Camie were, but movie going audiences never saw them. Except in 1998 they did.

In 1998 LucasArts released a CD-ROM for the PC called Star Wars: Behind the Magic which was an interactive activity centre which included a trivia game, other games, a search engine for the entries and so much more. But the biggest draw for this set is that it took a deep dive into the making of the entire Original Trilogy. This was back when DVD was a brand new home video format and they didn't have all the fancy bonus features that they would in the 2000s. Plus the Original Trilogy wouldn't get a DVD release until 2004. The deleted scenes with Fixer, Camie, Luke, and Biggs first appeared in very rough form on this CD-ROM. There's no sound and the picture quality is rougher than a VHS tape was at the time. There's also a lost cut of the Cantina sequence, but there's nothing from The Empire Strikes Back or Return of the Jedi outside of production stills of deleted scenes from those movies.

The deleted scenes weren't included on the 2004 Original Trilogy DVD box set or on any subsequent DVD releases in the 2000s. However, they were restored (as much as possible anyway) and included on the Blu-ray set, Star Wars: The Complete Saga in 2011.

So to have Fixer and Camie, played by different actors obviously, show up as actual, official, canon, characters finally, after nearly 50 years, is pretty exciting for me as I've been reading the novelization and the comic book adaptation of A New Hope since I was in my very early teens. But, for those of you who only watch the movies, weren't around in 1998 when Behind the Magic came out, and don't watch DVD and Blu-ray bonus features or read the movie novelizations, you wouldn't even think twice about it, because those two characters haven't been seen on screen in a movie or show before. Though Camie especially had several short stories in sourcebooks and magazines over the years.

Both of these surprise appearances by familiar characters filled me with great joy. Just because I am a fan of both Star Trek AND Star Wars, so to have the chance to see characters I didn't think I'd see or hear again, or see at all in the case of Fixer and Camie, is fantastic. When I was a kid I never thought I would live in an era where I could watch Star Trek and Star Wars TV shows at the same time, in both animation AND in live action. It's an amazing time to be a geek and I hope you relish in your geekdom, whatever it may be. Even when people try to tear you down for it. I'm finally at a place in my life where I relish in it big time and I don't care what other people may think about me for it.

And that my friends is it for me for this week. However, next week I will be getting to my post on Blu-rays that I mentioned in my last post. I'm also going to be reviewing Star Wars: Aftermath by Chuck Wendig. So until then have an awesome weekend, and an awesome night tonight and I will talk to you all next week. Stay safe and take care.