While most of the attention on May the 4th was rightly on the epic premiere of The Bad Batch, there were a few other neat features that dropped on Disney+ as well, to very little fanfare.
That included two new shows, Biomes and Vehicle Flythroughs. These two shows are probably fairly self-explanatory by their names, but they take you as the viewer through various locations in the Star Wars universe.
Biomes provides some interactive ambience, as it takes you on a flyover of different Star Wars planets, with certain objects, vehicles, droids, and creatures all making appearances to keep it engaging. The locations include Hoth (The Empire Strikes Back), Tatooine (A New Hope), Sorgan (The Mandalorian), Crait (The Last Jedi), Mustafar (Rogue One), and Ahch-To (The Last Jedi). It runs for about 18 minutes and is a beautiful look at Star Wars locales.
Vehicle Flythroughs is a similar concept, only – as you could guess – focused on vehicles instead of planets. Two episodes were released, each about three minutes long, with the first one giving you a look at the Millennium Falcon, with the other focusing on a First Order Star Destroyer. Both of these episodes give you a look at the ship’s exterior before then giving you a quick tour inside. It also makes for some nice ambience, though shorter and more focused on a tour rather than the scenery.
I thoroughly enjoyed both of these shows, and my biggest hope is that they just continue to produce more stuff like this! It seems like Vehicle Flythroughs is the more readily set up to do this (since they were released as separate episodes), but Biomes is definitely the one I want more of. I don’t know about you, but I will often just put on some nature scenery in the background on the TV while I’m working, and I’ve actually long hoped for a Star Wars version of that. I definitely plan on using Biomes in this fashion, and I think the locations they chose are absolutely beautiful – I was especially pleased to see Crait, Vader’s Castle, and especially Ahch-To included. What’s curious, however, is that there is not a single inclusion from the prequel trilogy (since the version of Mustafar included is very clearly from Rogue One). One of the biggest strengths of the prequels was the new locations, and planets like Naboo and Kamino would be fantastic for a show like this.
I’m guessing that a lot of what was included has to do with the locations that they could rather easily transfer to this format, which is why a rather obscure planet like Sorgan made the cut (it’s no doubt beautiful to look at on this show, but it’s a rather strange inclusion when considering some of the other planets not highlighted). So I really hope that this does well and that Lucasfilm decides to do more episodes of Biomes, because I’m a big fan.
Star Wars Thoughts 