Where the Lighting Took Me
The lighting in the Bad Batch is glorious.
Whether filtering soft rays of sunlight through the forests of Raxus, highlighting the stark sterility of the bare, overbright hallways of Tipoca City, or showing us the threatening gloom amidst the rusting hulks of long past glory days in the junkyards of Bracca, every episode has looked fantastic.
Which is exactly why the flatness of the lightning reflecting off of Tech’s goggles caught my eye.
Because there’s no way that this skill has somehow missed being applied to the curve of prescription lenses. No. They’re safety glasses, there’s no vision correction happening there, he doesn’t need to wear them.
And yet, he never takes them off. He even has a specially modified helmet to make sure he never has to take them off.
So why wear them then?
Other than them providing a convenient and unobtrusive resting place for his device with the red light on it. Possibly his always-on recording device AKA microphone (which is never mentioned in TBB and only ever referenced that one time it became important to the plot back in TCW)
Tech: When the locals attacked us, I recorded the creature’s distress call.
Hunter: He records everything. It’s a hobby
And no one ever questions why he’s recording everything, or if he ever deletes it afterwards. He’s in the military, walking around recording everyone’s conversations, and no one ever questions it? Really?
They discuss mission plans in front of him, Jedi offer their opinions in front of him, and no one ever asks about it because it’s dismissed as just being a hobby.
And what about the people who don’t know he’s recording? People like Saw Gerrera? What might they say in front of him when they don’t know he’s recording every word they say.
Does Omega know he’s doing it? Does Cid?
.
He didn’t ask for permission to scan Omega, either from her directly or from the Kaminoans. He just ran a medical scan on another person simply because he wanted to, and no one queried that either.
Why the fuck not? I’d be hella pissed if people walked around running medical tests on me without asking for my permission first.
She wasn’t injured or in distress, he had no specific reason to scan her. But he did it anyway.
Okay, that’s a bit creepy, but he didn’t necessarily mean anything by it.
Well yeah, that’s always a possibility. But as long as there’s a market out there for a fuckton of recorded confidential information gleaned from your personal contact with the GAR, known rebels, information brokers, etc, as well as from bio scans of individuals who you know to be worth a lot of money to certain others I’m going to remain curious about what he could potentially do with it when the food or fuel next starts to run out.
But getting back to his carefully cultivated aesthetic…
The goggles, the way he sweeps his hair back to emphasise his receding hairline, the lightness of the paint job on his armour, combined with the fact that he wears less than the other boys do, makes him look smaller and less threatening.
He leans heavily into the visual stereotype of ‘nerd’ and lets people make a lot of assumptions about his capabilities.
Crosshair is exactly as tall, and has the same build as Tech. But Tech slouches, so even when they’re standing together he looks slightly shorter.
Crosshair in armour looks threatening. His stance, his colour choice, the hard sharp angles of the armoured plates, everything. Tech deliberately downplays his look to make himself look like less of a threat.
He has straps on his chest plate, they look like backpack straps. But the packs they wear attach directly to the back plate of their armour, and those straps are there even when he isn’t wearing it. In Ep 15 you can see that the strap simply crosses over the back plate, running underneath, but not connecting to, his pack. But they’re a warm brown, they look soft, which in turn helps to make him look soft. Same goes for the leather? belt with pouches and the straps on his legs. No hard corners or sharp lines there, just soft materials making smooth curves and rounded edges.
We see them all in their blacks in the brig, we see how tightly stretched over their bodies they are, so it isn’t the undersuit we can see in the gaps between his armour, that layer is too loose and wrinkly to be that. It’s an additional layer which gives the impression of him wearing clothes that are too big for him, implies wordlessly that he’s smaller than he really is.
But we know he’s no slouch. He’s had the same basic training that all of the other have had. We see him peeling back that steel wall plate in the brig without much difficulty, he catches Omega when she drops from the ceiling storage compartment with ease, and he runs about with twin blasters blazing in almost every fight we see him in.
Everyone notes how meticulous Crosshair is, but no one appears to notice it in Tech’s perfectly cultivated appearance.
But back to the goggles - because they bother me
There’s no visual necessity for him to wear them all the time, but no one but him realises that, so even in the brig, when they were all stripped down to their blacks and left with nothing more than their modesty and wits to get by, he still got to keep them - and the device clipped onto the side.
The design of them restricts his peripheral vision, although they do potentially allow him to pretend to fall asleep in a chair and listen in on people’s conversations without them noticing.
But they help to disguise the looks he throws at people and hide his angry scowls and eye rolling, which he does ALL the time. They’re a very useful tool for helping to hide his mood.
The ONLY time we’ve seen him without them is in that one photograph Hunter had in the trunk in his room, and yet, his Lego minifigure has a reversible head with goggles on one side, and no goggles on the other.
So… will he stop wearing them when he decides he no longer needs to maintain his ‘harmless nerd’ facade?
Have you ever noticed that when he adjusts his goggles he touches the little button on the underside with his thumb? His finger goes in front of the tab on the top edge, but his thumb hits that button. Doesn’t matter which hand he adjusts them with, the grip is the same every time. So what do those buttons do?
And what is he supposed to be adjusting them all the time for anyway? The strap runs right around his head, holding them close to his face. It isn’t like he’s wearing glasses with arms which hook over his ears and slide down his nose, needing to be constantly pushed back up again.
It’s another affectation hiding his true purpose.
Because we’ve all seen him do it countless times without ever really thinking about it, so why wouldn’t everyone else around him do the same?
There must be more to this than just his appearance though, right?
Well, yes. After carefully sitting in the background and doing very little to stand out for the majority of the first season apart from dismissing Echo’s perfectly reasonable concerns regarding slavery and working for Separatists let’s take a look at this scene from Ep 15.
The team have arrived on Kamino and are tracking Hunter’s comm signal. They arrive in the room underneath the training room:
Tech: According to the comm signal, Hunter is directly above us.
Echo: The training room?That’s open ground. If Crosshair’s waiting, he’ll pick us off.
Wrecker: Oh, he’s waiting.
Tech: Precisely why we will not be going in through the main entrance, like he would expect. We’ll enter through the lift. That should give us a slight advantage.
Ok, fair enough. Tech has scanned for the signal and knows he’s above them.
But wait… Let’s have a closer look at that scanner.
Which clearly shows a yellow dot for Hunter’s comm, but also 6 little red dots showing the other occupants of the room. Crosshair and the 5 members of the Elite Squad.
So Tech not only knows Crosshair is up there waiting for them, but that he has 5 others with him, and knows exactly where they’re waiting for them. But he chooses to say nothing about that and simply walks the team right into what he full well knows is the dead centre of the trap. So why? What’s up there that he wants that badly that he’s willing to risk all of their lives to acquire.
Hunter?
Is fearless leader really worth that much to him?
Or is he after something else?
And why, when they get up there does Tech, twin blaster man, not get his second blaster out? Why does he go in with one blaster and the ball device. He’s clearly chosen to put his scanner away, but also chosen not to go with his usual weapon of choice.
Was he hoping those other signals were droids and he could use a droid popper on them? Because an explosive could risk injuring Hunter. Did he assume that whatever Crosshair had planned to do he wouldn’t want to do in front of other people? Or did he just want to appear ready for anything?
Because if they were droids surely they would have shown as such on the scanner? After all the time they’ve spent fighting droids you can’t tell me he doesn’t know the difference between a human and a droid when they show up on his display.
During the fight the ball vanishes and afterwards the scanner is back out. Why? They’re still up against Crosshair so what is it that he needs his scanner in hand for at that particular moment?
When Crosshair announces that he had his chip removed Hunter looks shocked, but Tech (in a ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ moment) just looks pissed.
And what of everything Crosshair says in that room. The way it all seems so oddly phrased? Until you’re reminded that he knows full well that Tech records everything, and anything he says there could be used against him at a later point in time.
But aside from the one gunshot there isn’t anything directly incriminating said. Nothing which could immediately be used as proof against him.
Ok, that’s… a lot to think about
Yeah, but it also casts a shadow over all of his previous actions, right back to TCW, and makes me question his motivations for literally everything we’ve ever seen him do
Let’s look at his actions on Daro…
Even after Echo clearly pointed out that the system here was different and it’d take him longer to deal with it, Tech entered a clone clode and accidentally set off the security alert.
But was it accidental? Did he do it deliberately?
Was he trying to call attention to their presence there, or to get them caught?
Also, he was first onto the Marauder once it was within range to escape, which we gloss right past since Omega was struggling to keep the ship steady, but he also manages to move the ship away from the mountain just enough that Hunter can’t make the leap.
Deliberate move, or just an unfortunate side effect of being shot at?
At this point we really can’t be certain.
But he hesitated before leaving Hunter behind!
Yeah? So he maybe regretted his action for a brief moment, or wanted to look like he did. Maybe he just wondered if he could really get his plan to play out in the way that he wanted when he wasn’t going to be there to oversee it.
There’s not enough information to be certain. Yet.
Anything else?
Well, there’s a scene on Bracca in Ep 8 which has always bothered me.
They’re busy raiding the ship for anything they can strip out and sell in order to pay off their debt to Cid.
Tech comms Omega and tells her he needs her on the bridge.
The moment Omega arrives we’re distracted by Tech waving his crotch right at the camera. He says the hardware’s data imprint is still there and he’s transferring the files (which are never mentioned again), then gives Omega the job of copying the master drive, gives her a data rod and sends her off to crawl about under a different panel.
Which she then totally doesn’t do because she’s too busy looking out of the window and asking about the war.
Shortly afterwards a light on the console starts flashing and beeping. But if she’d been doing the job he’d given her would she even have noticed it?
And why did he ask for Omega anyway? Surely Echo would have been more suited to the job, or at least been more familiar with the tech onboard. Why did he want her there?
Tech is quick to dismiss it as a short circuit, and looks out of the window just in time to see 3 Empire shuttles immediately fly right past the window.
It’s a proximity sensor, why would he be so quick to dismiss it? They’re not supposed to be there. There are junkers working there, moving about on hover platforms. The Venator’s power being turned on could potentially have attracted attention from anyone looking their way. Or was he expecting someone else?
Because then we cut to Kamino where Nala Se and Lama Su talk about retrieving Omega.
Lama Su: The Empire’s mission on Bracca poses a threat to our contingency plan. I will have to call upon further assistance.
Nala Se: Is that wise? We already have someone handling matters.
Lama Su: As long as one of these bounty hunters deliver the young clone intact, that is all that should concern us.
We’re led here to assume that they’re talking about Fennec being the ‘someone they already have’ vs Cad Bane coming in and taking her. But are they?
Why not consider that Tech is the ‘someone handling matters’ and he’s already arranged for her to be picked up.
They’re all alone in this part of the ship and she trusts him. If a ship arrives and he says they should go check it out together she’d definitely go with him. He can even block her comms so she can’t tell the others what they’re doing. She’s worth a good amount of money and we’ve already seen that he both doesn’t see a problem with making money from selling people and is highly financially motivated.
Maybe he’d leave with them, maybe he’d claim to have bravely fought off the interlopers who appeared and made off with Omega before he could stop them, maybe he’d even let himself be stunned so he could really make that claim look good afterwards. Who knows? Because that’s not what ended up happening.
But there’s a very unpleasant probability in all of this that Season 2 Tech is going to show us all just how far removed from the ‘sweet nerdy ‘lil boy’ that so many imagine him to be he truly is.
Oh shit
Oh shit
Shared for later
