Star Wars: Ahsoka

Awkwardly bringing the animated character to life in her own series, “Ahsoka” gets so much right about the look and action of “Star Wars” that its shortcomings – an overall stiffness slowed by long, pregnant pauses – feel more pronounced. There’s still hope for this showcase featuring Rosario Dawson as Anakin Skywalker’s all-grown-up Padawan, but the first two episodes don’t possess as much Force as they should.

Unless you’re immensely invested in the relationships between Ahsoka, Sabine, and Hera, or the search for Imperial Grand Admiral Thrawn and young Jedi Ezra Bridger, or a forgettable villain who was in one episode of The Mandalorian years ago, then there’s really nothing here to connect to. That could change, and I think that’s why Disney wisely decided to release two episodes at once, but as it stands the villains are boring and the heroes are all way too insistent on being stubbornly stoic about everything—which is also boring! [The score is the average of the grades for the first two episodes.]

There’s a chance that when some of the people everybody keeps talking about finally make appearances in Ahsoka, the entire show will gain the immediacy that’s currently lacking. Even Andor, which not every Star Wars show needs to be, started slow, but it was never bland.

All of this gives “Ahsoka” a fresh feel. It would be fresher, though, if “Star Wars” could just find new themes to explore, and do so in ways that don’t require so much standing around talking.

Despite dwindling returns from previous entries (“Mandalorian” of late and “Boba Fett” from the beginning), “Ahsoka” follows a similar template with shared setbacks: thin storylines, stock action scenes, and massive special effects serving sequences absent any emotional heft.

In a show where, when a scene needs to establish a thing, the characters often stand there directly, drily discussing that thing – “show don’t tell” being another writing rule that hasn’t survived the trip across the cosmos – Tennant is often left trying to say unfunny lines in a funny voice. Like everything in Ahsoka, he could be so much better if he were allowed to cut loose and entertain us.