S3 E06 Chapter 22: Guns for Hire.
There is a 2-minute sequence in this episode that (for me) is on par with the very best of all Star Wars: the provocation of the B2 Battle Droid, and its attempted escape (roughly 21:00-23:00). It took my breath away when I watched it, and it fully re-formed the way that the enslavement discourse worked in the prequel trilogy.
Din provokes multiple droids, seemingly at random, looking for a response. He's daring them to break their cover, and when one does, and attacks back, it then begins to run. The visuals of a Battle Droid running in fear are amazing. We see its feet slide as it turns corners, we see it scramble past obstacles, and somehow the direction imputes the fear of being caught on a faceless droid we only know from battle sequences as an impersonal mindless killing machine.
It's beautiful, and instantly implicates the viewer into the episode's discourse on enslavement, which SW has been doing for better and worse since 1977. I've been aware of that discourse (it's hard to miss), but I had never extended it to a Super Battle Droid -- or so I realize as I watch this thing scrambling and trying to escape. I had been selective in the droids to whom I had ascribed personhood, and this scene changed that. (Even at the beginning of the scene, when Din is randomly kicking the workers, I'd read it as funny. It's less funny on a re-watch.)
This is all integrated seamlessly with one of the most overt allusions we've seen. This episode was filled with "easter eggs" like this. The establishing shots of the patrons at the droid bar are almost shot-for-shot recreations of the Mos Eisley Cantina; that's hard to miss, and it instantly establishes this place as a haven in a galaxy where droids aren't allowed. There's allusions also to Logan's Run (the last great sf film pre-SW), with the city on Plazir-15 evoking the City of Domes in Logan's Run, tube cars and all, with the association confirmed with the scene with the lasers shooting randomly in a big white room, evoking the New You "malfunction" in Logan's Run. These allusions reinforce the one that appears when the Battle Droid is fleeing in terror.
As the Battle Droid runs in fear, I'm seeing Zhora, the replicant Deckard retires in Blade Runner. She's running in fear, her feet slipping (check), she scrambles over the hood of a vehicle (check), she turns onto a busy street that is lit in neon (check)... there's a handful of visual cues that tie her flight in a plastic raincoat, being gunned down by "our hero", simply for who she is, and not because of anything she has actually done. (More shades of Philip K. Dick, this time Minority Report: the only reason Din and Bo Katan are at the docks is because they've been told a crime will happen; nothing has happened yet.) So when Deckard takes the long-cut and jumps through the window to tackle the Super Battle Droid, the broken glass is also a cue to impute to the droid all the emotion about wrongful killing that we do when we see Zhora gunned down, as she falls through window pane after window pane hoping to stay alive. Only this time it's with one of the robot army that fought the clones in 2002.
It's a perfect, thoughtful sequence.
