Star Wars's Doctor Aphra Should Be a Disney+ Show On One Condition

Amazon Prime Reading has had Marvel's Star Wars comics for a while, but it wasn't until November when I was recovering from having teeth pulled that I actually downloaded some for something to read.  I downloaded the four volumes of the first Darth Vader series, two volumes of the second Darth Vader series and the offshoot series, Doctor Aphra.

If you've never heard of Doctor Aphra, it's because she was introduced in the comics, so I'm pretty sure she's never appeared in any movies or TV shows.  Which is something Disney should correct because she would make a great TV series because she's a pretty fun character.

Basically Doctor Chelli Aphra (and the "Doctor" part might not be legit) is like a young female Indiana Jones who has far looser morals.  And her sidekicks are a Wookie who used to be a gladiator, a psychotic C3PO called Triple Zero or 000, and heavily armed R2D2 called B2-1.  Doesn't that sound pretty awesome already?

In the comics she's recruited by Darth Vader when he's in the Emperor's doghouse and starts creating his own little army to regain the Emperor's favor.  Aphra is able to steal the memory chips or whatever of 000 and B2-1 that were locked up because they're crazy killbots.  Along with those killbots, she helps Vader find and activate an old Trade Federation droid army.  Once Vader manages to do whatever to regain the Emperor's favor, Aphra fakes her death so Vader won't kill her.

The character was popular enough to get her own spinoff series that ran for 40 issues.  The first volume is sort of like Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade in that Aphra's father is also a treasure hunter, though a less adventurous one, who recruits her to find an ancient Jedi temple.  Like Sean Connery in the Indiana Jones movie, he's spent pretty much his entire life looking for the thing, but it's only in the 5 issues of the comic where he actually finds it with Aphra's help.  Of course there's some competition and things go to hell, but in the end Aphra recovers a green crystal that contains the soul of an ancient Jedi.

There were two issues then that were part of a four-issue crossover with the regular Star Wars title published separately as The Screaming Citadel.  Aphra recruits Luke Skywalker to go to some planet where they might be able to activate the crystal.  The queen of the planet takes an interest in Luke when he demonstrates his Force ability.  She basically wants to suck the Force out of him or something like that.  With the help of Leia and an old girlfriend, Aphra manages to rescue Luke and activate the crystal, which is really not like a traditional Jedi.  It's more angry and crazy and genocidal.

The second volume of the comic is Aphra basically hosting an auction on an old space station.  And of course things go to Hell again.  Triple 0 contacts Darth Vader, who comes to the station with a bunch of Imperials to basically kill everyone.  In order to escape, Aphra has to give 000 its freedom, so she's no longer its master.

Overall it was pretty fun.  It'd make a great TV show with her hunting for various artifacts and concocting some scheme only for things to go to hell and her and her crew having to make a narrow escape.  Action, adventure, fun, in the Star Wars universe.  It'd be a winning combination!  Like The Mandalorian you can do it without any of the existing characters (Vader is in the comics but you don't really need him) and fit it wherever you want in the timeline.  The comics are between Episodes IV and V but it'd be easy to move that without changing the concept of the series.

And since the character is essentially Asian, (I mean they're in a galaxy far, far away so technically no one is "Asian") they could get some more representation in the Star Wars universe; it'd kind of make up for what happened to Rose in the new movies.  And she's a lesbian, though that might be too much for Disney, who still haven't had an openly gay main character in pretty much anything.

But the one caveat:  stick to the tone and story from the Vader comics and first two volumes of the solo series.  The third volume through the end they switched writers and the writer they brought in made the character and story no fun at all.  It's basically the difference between Saul Goodman on Breaking Bad and Saul Goodman on Better Call Saul; one is a fun scoundrel and the other is a pathetic sad sack.

What happens in the comics is the new writer has Aphra basically conscripted by 000 to work for him instead of the other way around.  Like in Suicide Squad he implants a bomb in her neck or something so she won't go rogue.  She recruits a crew so they can try to steal 000's full memories from some Imperial facility.  But of course everything goes to hell.  In the 4th volume Aphra is stuck on an Imperial prison that's basically a mish-mash of junked ships.  Periodically they're used as cannon fodder.  But eventually an old girlfriend, a cyborg Imperial officer who's into her, and a shape-shifting alien converge to help her finally escape.  It was a really dull slog to get through it.  Where was the fun of the first two volumes?  It had completely gone.

Really after reading the first two volumes I thought this would be one of those I'd want to pick up the non-Prime ones on sale.  But then after reading the third and fourth volumes I thought, "Nah.  I'm done."  So really, stick to the fun stuff and it'd be a great series.

That's always a problem with series, whether in comics, regular books, or TV when you change writers.  Some are a lot better than others.  In this case I think it was that the first writer, Kieren Gillen, created the character, so he had a lot better handle on it than Si Spurrier, his replacement.  So you'd definitely want Gillen, not Spurrier, to be the consultant for a series.  I'm just saying.