Attention Star Wars fans, The Bad Batch are making their return today in their own full-fledged series, all voiced as always by the incomparable Dee Bradley Baker.
If you haven’t watched season 7 of Star Wars: The Clone Wars and aren’t already familiar with The Bad Batch, the group made their debut in the final season of The Clone Wars and are now starring in their own animated series.
Here’s a rundown for the uninitiated—The Bad Batch are a group of clones who came out, how can we say this, wrong. The group each have distinct personalities, each of whom don’t fit in with the broader clone army featured in the Clone Wars, born with defects and have undergone strange mutations that separate them from regular clones.
While many clones have already become fan favorites, such as Captain Rex, Fives, and Commander Cody—even 99, the old janitor on Kamino, had a very touching episode–the Bad Batch are a completely different kettle- er batch of fish.
What makes the group work, however, is the family dnamic between them, something producer and director Brad Rau focused on strongly.
“We had to have the stories be emotionally charged, and emotionally based. That gives the action a lot more texture, honestly. Let’s face it, we’re blowing stuff up and we’re having fun doing that but to have the emotional context of that is the challenge in any of these stories. For us, it helps that we are coming into characters that are familiar and yet, we don’t know that much about. And it gives us room to kind of play around with how those characters develop,” says Rau.
Let’s run down the Bad Batch, shall we?
The leader of the group is Hunter who has heightened senses and tracking skills that help him gauge the terrain. Then there’s Tech, who quite obviously is the technically savvy member of the group ,and is always calm, collected and in his element when the team need to hack their way into or out of a heavy guarded facility. Wrecker is the powerhouse of the group, who uses his incredible strength in situations that require brawn over brains.
Next is Crosshair, the sharpshooter who likes to keep his targets at a distance and makes for useful ally when the rest of the Bad Batch are mounting a head on assault. Last but not least, there’s the android clone Echo, a familiar face from The Clone Wars series and a close friend of Fives, who also appeared in that series. He was previously believed to be dead when he died in an explosion protecting his fellow clones but he was later taken prisoner by the Separatist forces, turned into a cyborg and was brainwashed. He was later rescued by his fellow clones but chose to join the Bad Batch due to their similarities in their defective natures.
All of their combined personalities make for an interesting dynamic.
“They are a force to be reckoned with. They’re very much a team but they’re not like the Clones where it’s more of a top-down command structure,” says Dee Bradley Baker.
Baker himself doesn’t record the characters separately, having full conversations alone in the recording booth as he jumps from clone to clone.
“The Bad Batch are actually much further apart from each other, which oddly makes it a little bit easier to jump from character to character to character. For me it feels like I’m jumping from rock to rock on a stream. I can see the rock. The writing is clear. And that’s what what I jump to,” Baker says.
“It comes off looking more as a magic trick then it does maybe with the Clones but it’s still a really fascinating process as a voice actor have these scenes where I’m just talking to myself.”
The series was developed in collaboration with Dave Filoni, who created the previous series and has been the main creative force behind Star Wars animated efforts for years, spearheading The Clone Wars, Rebels as well as Star Wars: Resistance.
“I got to work with Dave on Star Wars: Resistance, which was such a great experience. Getting the chance to develop the series with him is aa master class in writing Star Wars. With this being a sequel series of sorts to the Clone Wars, it was kind of crucial that he be involved in this process very much. Because these are characters that he’s created and it’s the world that he knows, but every day, every script is a learning experience,” says Head Writer and Executive Producer Jennifer Corbett. “It’s so exciting to see this show grow and develop with this team. And he’s been fantastic to learn from.”
“I couldn’t think of a better mentor. Especially for Star Wars. The stuff he tells us every day is fantastic,” added Rau.
The series is set during the transition between the fall of the Republic and lays the groundwork for the rise of the Empire before it becomes the dominant force that we became accustomed to all the way back when Star Wars debuted in 1977 on screen.
“It’s very interesting to place them in the middle of this transitional moment and to see how it plays out,” says Baker.
Star Wars: The Bad Batch premieres today on OSN.
May the fourth be with you!
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