Star Wars Resistance: Episode 11 - "Station Theta Black"

Synopsis: Poe and Kaz go for a spin and discover an abandoned First Order facility that's not really that abandoned but actually about to be blown up.

My thoughts: It really feels like things are heating up and leading to some sort of climax. The Fireball is once again in action as Kaz borrows it to head out with Poe to meet General Leia! It didn't need Leia in it for Kaz to hand over the data he got from last week, but it was a nice touch. The most surprising thing to me was that there appears to be zero other people on the resistance ship! I know they are short on staff but I don't recall seeing anyone else! Although it was totally unnecessary, it was nice to tie-in the bigger resistance picture, make Kaz feel valued and to spice things up. I'm still unsure what Poe sees in Kaz, other than his flying skills, and why Kaz is so up for for being in the Resistance against a threat that's largely really unknown?

The scenery at the First Order station is amazing but I can't get it around my head that it would be left so abandoned? Why leave such an obvious physical base empty without any guard? Yes, there was a security system there which detected Poe/Kaz but why not bring the explosives to blow it up before you leave? Totally weird but super fun when Kaz/Poe get chased about and somehow manage to get away from every close encounter. Kaz is naturally totally ridiculous once more but pulls it off in a way Jar Jar Binks used to.

It seems the First Order were busy plundering resources from the area for weapons. No one believes that'll make much of a wave in the Senate, which makes one feel that they must still be quite thick in the senate or Snoke has just as much a hold over them as Palpatine did?

It's General Leia!

Not so abandoned after all, eh?

Kaz screams and falls all over the place but gets the job done.

Rating 7/10 - More Resistance context setup for us here and some enjoyable confrontation in what was beautiful scenery at the space station.

Conversing about 'Citizen Curators' - Core Session 4

Introduction

In what's been a total opposite of my feelings before the last session, time has really flown by this time between sessions. Aside from being kept busy with my volunteering, I've been ploughing ahead with my first draft of my AMA CPD Plan, with the second draft deadline early January. Naturally I'm trying to factor some of the Citizen Curators course into the CPD Plan which isn't as easy as I expected. I also attended an Ethics session since my last blog post, which I have written about but not posted ... yet.

Once again, as per my previous blog posts on Citizen Curator Core Sessions, these are my own thoughts and views from the day, thus they aren't comprehensive or definitive representations of what was covered and discussed. 

Citizen Curator Core Session 4 – Curators in the Community.

It's back to home base for me this time around, as we were situated at Penlee Art Gallery & Museum in the rather unique former cart shed outer building. Luckily there are heaters in this somewhat shell of a structure as well as the world's slowest cold water tap when it comes to filling the kettle. There were also less of us, for various reasons I didn't fully grasp, which made it somewhat cosy, especially as I was the only male this time. 

Things started off with the usual reminders - a task that is very useful for my rubbish brain function as I often need pointers to help jog the memory into action. Oh, coffee helps too, but pokes and prods really do jumpstart my brain into optimal functionality. We had a rather fun "Fill in the gaps" shout-out-the-answer task at the start to go through the Citizen Curators Values and Conventions. I could remember most of them thanks to the visual clues, of which the most important is to be an observer and to think critically. Thankfully for me, those conventions come naturally; I'm never afraid to ruffle feathers.

Thinking ahead to the upcoming group project, we were reminded to think a little about any training requirements one might require, who our digital colleague is (of which none of us were familiar with the Penlee one) and to arrange a meeting with Tehmina to go through the first high level project plan; this we have scheduled for next week.

There was an opportunity to do some verbal reflections of experiences since the last session. Naturally I drew a total blank in my brain; recall being a very weak component of my brain structure. Thankfully there were other people with much better memories than me, and we nattered about their thoughts on troubles in a local Cornish music group and their participation in the 'Empowering Women in Cornwall' Facebook group. It's always interesting to hear others views and thoughts on issues and how they've made some sense of those experiences.

This session, as with all sessions, has a quotation based around the session's theme, with this week's being connecting with communities and the social and economic barriers as well as preconceptions of museums. The cost of entry to museums is a barrier to many with the cost varying quite wildly. Solutions, such as free days or free entry with an emphasis on donations, is one way to get people in. We discussed how single-parents and unprivileged might find it harder to visit, not least the logistics but also costs: family tickets are usually for the classic 2.4 children families. We also talked about more staff training for dealing with disabilities, so they can recognise not just the obvious visual disabilities visitors might have but the unseen ones. Personally, I find staff are often trained but when it comes to putting things into practise, it's almost as if they never had the training. Perhaps more real-world training or on-going training is needed because there's nothing like real practise to really help people learn.

Diversity

Diversity was heavily brought up. One needs to create as many ways in to museums as possible and remove obstacles. It's not just the obvious here either such as the workforce and governance, but diversity is needed across many areas. What types of collection are on display? Do they represent the audience? Who visits? Just schools? Or are there just exhibitions? One needs to look at profiling the groups who visit and finding out who they are and then working out who isn't visiting. One needs to think 'Beyond the legal' - for example, transport isn't a protected characteristic in law, but can museums help provide transport for certain groups who aren't able to visit?

Cornwall

We had a discussion on Cornish recognition, of which I am a born and bred Cornishman. No no no, it wasn't a discussion about me but our minority status, much like the Welsh, for we have our own distinctiveness in customs, traditions and sports etc. Most of our museums are highly kitted out for tourism, especially as 70% of visits are by tourists but what about the locals? Most museums closed out of season. There's also a lot of deprived areas in our county. Is enough done to help the locals by museums? There are special reductions and/or passes for locals at some museums, but do enough know about it?

Knowing your museum's communities

There are numerous ways to find out about who visits your museum, from the obvious forms of physical and online surveys, to playing more attention to comments left in visitor books and comment cards. Some places are better than others at reading those and making any actions based on the feedback they get. Talking to people and finding out why they don't visit, watching and observing those who do visit, looking at TripAdvisor and Google reviews - all various ways of getting data. I myself have been looking at the Google Analytics of where I volunteer's website. There's a wealth of information there. Perhaps too much information but it can tell you how many visits you get, what days/hours, what pages are being visited, for how long, if people return to visit your site and demographics. I did report back on the information I obtained from the analytics, which did make for interesting listening although I am still unsure what difference that data made to anyone's general thoughts.

Access

We looked at access to museums which includes physical issues but also the more invisible ones such as dyslexia and most mental health illnesses. Surprisingly, 1 in 5 museum websites don't provide access information, which, along with how to get to somewhere, you'd think would be right up there with the obvious things to provide information about. This led into the afternoon's group task, in which our group looked at a specific area of the museum and the kinds of included and excluded groups that area catered for. Homing in on Gallery 5 of Penlee Museum, which is upstairs and a reasonable large room, it clearly caters for art lovers, especially those who loved local art, as that's the primary function of that gallery. There was also work from local adults and children. Who did it not cater for? Well, we didn't think there were a lot of options for parents who work the standard 9-5 job to get access into the museum, the lift had a weight limit and excluded those confined to mobility scooters. The solution to these problems were not easily solvable with the latter already having been looked at by the museum and would require extensive work. As for the former issue, we figured a series of after closing time events, for children, parents, or the elderly would help to fill in some gaps for excluded audiences.

Star Wars Resistance: Episode 10 - "Secrets and Holograms"

Synopsis: The First Order finally arrive ... for a chat with Captain Doza, whilst Kaz does his best to find out what it's all about.

My thoughts: It's a return to form for the charismatic Kaz who performs his full repertoire of comedy poses and expressions this episode. Quite frankly, he's totally OTT and ridiculous, but I have to say, highly entertaining. There's actually a lot of silliness to this episode, of which Torra, Captain Doza's daughter, seems to share the same genes as Kaz, as she's also too is hyperactive and easily excitable. Thankfully again, much like most characters on this show, she's very likeable. What I don't quite understand is why she continually sneaks out of her room and the tower but later when she "rescues" Kaz from her father's office, she chooses the trash compactor route for them to evade everyone? Bizzare. Naturally, I assume it's intended to link back to Rucklin's jump as some sort of glorified servant in the tower where he's emptying the trash from Doza's office. That can be the only reason, and of course the game simulator sub-sub-sub-plot of the episode, so they can do some crazy leaping and jumping about to evade the compactor's lasers. As enjoyable as it all is, especially to see a view that is so nostalgic to A New Hope, I can't help but worry about the efficiency rating for this compactor which seems to fire haphazardly at anything that moves, rather than the static trash that it's actually there to incinerate? Is it really this stupid or was this done for effect? I can only guess the latter.

Learning that Captain Doza was a former senior employee of the Empire really raises an eyebrow, although you just know that Kaz's assumption about what that means is going to be anything but accurate. Having also gained the data off the agreement form between Doza and the First Order, I'm wondering what that could possibly tell anyone that they don't know already? Most T&C stuff is really dry and hardly known for containing sensitive material. Hopefully we'll find out a little about that at least. Clearly one can tell from the conversation between Doza and the First Order that it's all a little sketchy on the finer details:

How many stormtroopers will be positioned on station? As many as needed.
When will they leave? Whenever.

It's hardly committal is it?

Nice to see Rucklin, our Fred Jones lookalike (from Scooby Doo) back again and has not totally left the galaxy. He's far from happy with Kaz, which is uncanny, given it was all his fault really about their fallout. I forsee him causing more minor issues for Kaz in the future but not totally getting his way.

What's in that contract?

Kaz gets all up and close to the Empire ... uniform.

Comedy ensures as Torra and Kaz beat the incinerator.

Rating 7/10 - Enjoyable episode thanks to Torra and Kaz's eccentric behaviour as they skirt about The Tower.

Star Wars Resistance: Episode 9 - "The Platform Classic"

Synopsis: It's time for a race, 'The Platform Classic', and there's big prize money, which lures in Yeager's brother, reuniting them once again for a race.

My thoughts: There's absolutely no lead-on from the previous episode this week, so no First Order or Synara. Instead we have what feels totally like a filler in many ways, but it does flesh out a lot of Yeager's backstory: from his time racing against his brother, the fact he has flipping brother, and how they fell out big time. If I get it right, his brother cheated in a race and the result caused a crash or explosion that wiped out Yeager's family? It at least killed someone. They spend the whole race discussing how his brother had screwed up and wanted to apologize, to which Yeager is resolute in his defence that he has no interest in forgiving him and knows his brother is just in it for the money. With Yeager about to win the race, at the last minute he concedes the race to his brother, who he says "needs it more". Given his brother had added very little solid defence to his actions in the race than before the race, this is a very unexpected turn of events. I'd thought Yeager would win and give some of the money to his brother. No, it's a shock that it goes the way it does. Even more so when at the end they shake hands and hug! It's explained that this doesn't make it "right" between them but it's a start. Well, I know this is a cartoon, but I find it really hard getting my head around how he so easily forgives, with little genuine emotion from his brother for what is one heck of a serious mistake for anyone to get their heads around. I totally realise it's possible to forgive someone over very heinous crimes but, given this is the first time they've met since, it does seem all rather too quick. At the very least it does add a lot more to Yeager's character this episode.

On the plus side, Yeager's brother is rather pleasant and charismatic. Not to the degree of the really cocky racer a few episodes back though. His co-pilot has little to do aside from a humorous moment or two with Neeku, as does his rather dark evil looking droid. It's amazing to see the stunningly dressed Guavian Death Gang this episode, whom Yeager's brother has a debt to and hold his co-pilot as ransom. They are menacing but, more than anything, super cool to look at. Super 'The Force Awakens' flashbacks seeing them!

I'm left also unsure what Captain Doza gains from this episode? He instigated Yeager's brother coming back and their brotherly rivalry to help bring money to the platform. I guess the betting made money? There was no proof that money came from anywhere else because of his plan.

Oh Brother ...

Death Squad! Awesome!

Yeager forgives ... WTF?

Rating: 6/10 - Brotherly rivalry can be thrilling but it falls a little flat and odd here for me, however, the Death Squad and the race itself really make up for the brotherly storyline.