Review: “Star Wars: Doctor Aphra – The Everlasting Spark”

Continuing the story of Dr. Aphra.

content (propaganda)

The Eternal Spark has captured Dr. Aphra and transformed her into something completely different! As a result, Aphra becomes trapped in her own twisted mind and can only resort to her memories. Is there even a way out for her, or will the spark eventually consume Aphra entirely? This transformation confronts Sana Staros with an ancient malevolent presence, and she must quickly make a decision that could save or destroy Aphra.

criticism

Aphra is dead! Well, not really, by the end of the last volume, she connected to the spark and got up again. How did you say that at the time? It was also a mistake to allow fan favorite Aphra to jump off a cliff so easily. Even if it happened at some point…

At least you can’t complain about the graphics, because here you are at the usual high level. So you can read the emotions in characters’ faces at any time and action scenes don’t have to be masked either, even if they happen in Aphra’s memories most of the time.

And that brings us to the heart of the issue, because there is a dialogue between Aphra and El Sharara. Not only is Aphra’s past revealed, but also that of the Sharara. The inclined reader learns a thing or two about Aphra’s emotional world. This may not be new in places, but it sure deepens the character. The same goes for Spark, although it’s definitely more difficult to talk about character development with AI.

It’s also nice at this point that a little more space is finally being given to siblings Tyrone and Ariole as you also learn a thing or two about these two, who have been little more than a peripheral character in the past few volumes.

The plot then revolves around Stana, who gathers some of Aphra’s old crew (read: the first comic series) to rescue Aphra. It’s now on Vermillion, though again this volume has more to do with Crimson Dawn than the entire series crossover. But that’s another topic. But don’t expect great performances from Qi’ra here, after all it’s about Aphra’s rescue mission.

And it’s good that Magna is not missing either. Aphra’s lover has been sorely overlooked in the new series so far, here it comes back and it will certainly be interesting when the two meet up in the next volume.

The killer droids provide further mitigation, as do the remnants of earlier Aphra stories (even from the mythology) so that one could speak of a consistently successful deployment of characters here.

The only criticism you can make at this point is that the story doesn’t really run and of course ends at the most interesting moment. But this was kind of expected.