The Bad Batch is Hindered By Its Own Premise

Back in May and June I rewatched most of the Star Wars animated shows:  Clone Wars, Bad Batch, and Rebels because with the Obi-Wan Kenobi show dropping and Ahsoka coming soon it seemed like a good idea to refresh my memory.  And really I didn't feel like watching much else when not watching other new stuff like Strange New Worlds, The Orville, or The Boys.

Anyway, on second viewing, I didn't really care that much more for The Bad Batch than the first time.  After the first few episodes it still seems like it's just flailing to find a concept.  Going from that into Rebels, it's clear the latter is the better show.  First there's a more solid premise, but there's also a lot better characters.  And the reason for this is largely because the premise of The Bad Batch hinders its own characters.

In Rebels you have a diverse group of humans, aliens, and a droid from different parts of the galaxy and with different backgrounds, but they all have a tragic backstory that gives them reason to hate the Empire.

• Kanan was a Padawan whose master was killed by Order 66
• Hera's people were oppressed by the Empire 
• Zeb's people were slaughtered by the Empire to the point he thought he was the last one
• Sabine is a Mandalorian, who were oppressed and nearly wiped out by the Empire
• Ezra's parents were imprisoned and eventually killed by the Empire for inciting people to resist

The backstories play out in different episodes, sometimes in different seasons.  But they all help to flesh the characters out--even a droid like Chopper.  That really makes the crew better and more relatable overall.

The problem in The Bad Batch is all the main characters are clones.  Clones of the same dude.  They were pretty much made at the same time, except maybe for Omega and Echo, who originally was a normal clone soldier.  This really eliminates the possibility of tragic backstories.  They were all "born" on Kamino so there's no going to different planets to meet different people from their pasts.

It's almost like trying to make a show about a group of siblings, except even most siblings are different ages so they know some different people.  This is basically like having a show about quintuplets who all grew up together, went to the same school together, and worked in the same place for years.  The homogenous background makes it harder to develop stories.

To compensate they've tried to plug the Batch into moments of Star Wars history, starting with the back-door pilot in the final season of The Clone Wars.  Then in the first episode Hunter saves young Kanan when Order 66 goes down.  Later they meet up with "Cut," a clone deserter from an episode of The Clone Wars, save Jabba's Rancor, work with a couple of smugglers from the last season of The Clone Wars, and help young Hera and her parents on Ryloth.  But saying they were present at and influencing some events still doesn't really make the characters themselves that interesting.

When your characters all have pretty much the same background and largely the same looks, then really all you can do is develop the characters in the present.  Hunter and Wrecker's relationship with Omega and Crosshair's betrayal of the team is about the only character work done in the present.  Tech and Echo remain pretty flat throughout the first season with Hunter taking the center stage and Wrecker being comic relief.  Going forward to really have any chance of being as good as The Clone Wars or Rebels, there needs to be more development of all the characters and not just trying to plug them into the timeline.

For writers there's the obvious lesson that when you have a group of characters, it helps if they have some differences in their backgrounds.  That doesn't just mean skin color so much as social class and where they grew up and who their parents were and what kind of people they were.  If you haven't watched Rebels, then think of The Breakfast Club:  they all had different social backgrounds and roles in their school, which made for clashes when they were all brought together.  And there are probably other shows, movies, or books you can think of.  Like, say, Where You Belong where Frost was an orphan living with his somewhat poor and somewhat neglectful grandma while the Maguire twins lived with their neglectful father in a big fancy house.  Or in the Scarlet Knight books where Emma is orphaned and lives with her middle-class aunt while her friend Becky lives in a trailer with an abusive mother.

Which reminds me of Sisterhood, the prequel about the Joubert sisters who were all witches.  While they all grew up in the same house on a French vineyard, their lives all went in different directions.  Sophie was the smartest and a goody-too-shoes until she turned against the coven after learning the secret that they were not really sisters but three ancient witches who were memory wiped and turned into children.  She tried to recruit others to her cause but her coup failed and she seemingly died--until she shows up in book 7 of the Scarlet Knight series.  Agnes fell in love with a mortal man named Alejandro and raised a family with him while hiding her power.  And Sylvia was the black sheep who learned to hunt demons and other monsters before falling in love with Alejandro herself and having an affair with him that led to her giving up a daughter on the steps of Notre Dame.

So see you have a similar beginning but then different paths leading to developing the characters.  But you can't do that when all your characters are essentially the same people who are together all the time.  Circling back to the beginning.