The Bad Batch is the perfect show for Star Wars fans who never get into the franchise's animated series like The Clone Wars

UPROXX

"Now, look, if you are already into The Clone Wars and Rebels and Star Wars Resistance, then it’s a safe bet you’re already on board for more. But then there are people more like me who, for whatever reason, just never got into those other shows," says Mike Ryan, who adds: "I’m directing this to a specific audience: the audience who hasn’t really watched the prior Star Wars animated shows. Because I, too, was in that boat. But the concept around this series, these soldiers trying to makes heads or tails out of what just happened, I find pretty intriguing...Unlike The Clone Wars and, to a point, Rebels, we don’t really know where any of this is headed. What can a small group of soldiers do anyway against the mighty Empire? What are the intricacies of Tarkin and the Empire not using Clone troopers anymore? If you look at the Star Wars timeline this is set in, there’s a lot of open space between Revenge of the Sith and Solo. For the first time, a Star Wars animated show has me hooked, at least so far. And if you’ve never religiously watched one before, The Bad Batch might be a good one to start with."

ALSO:

• Each of The Bad Batch's group scenes is so dynamic and driven that it's astounding to think that they're all basically one guy talking to himself in a sound booth
• Dee Bradley Baker performs a stunning feat of vocal acrobatics, especially considering that he delivers a distinct, recognizable voice for each one
• How The Bad Batch expands the Star Wars universe
• The Bad Batch gets caught in some of the same trappings that many of the more recent Star Wars stories have fallen into, such as distracting cameos
• The Bad Batch isn't bad, in much the same way The Clone Wars wasn't bad -- but it fails to capture the wider adult imagination
• The Bad Batch producers didn't want to go overboard with Star Wars cameos: "Because we're all such massive Star Wars fans on the team, it was very tempting to want to just play with everyone possible," says executive producer Jennifer Corbett. "But we had to check ourselves and make sure that the people that do come into the story, it has to be purposeful and why we're incorporating them in this episode and how it relates in terms of the batches journey. Because otherwise, as fun as all these characters are, it might just be fan service if we're using all the action figures, but it's really serving no point. You will see some familiar faces and it was very, very planned out and thought out of why our team specifically interacts with them because where we are in the timeline, there's several people out there that they could cross paths with."
• Dee Bradley Baker on voicing The Bad Batch's five main characters: “It’s not how I normally think of myself or my capacities,” he says. “It’s been a real refreshing insight to me that as a voice actor, you’ve got more in you than you think you do. To stretch my wings in a way that I’ve never been asked to before and maybe never will again, it’s such a unique project.”