Shifty's Blog

Star Wars: Dewi and Freedi

This post contains spoilers for the first season of Andor.

One of my favourite scenes in Andor is also one of the series' weirdest. It's near the start of season 1, episode 11, "Daughter of Ferrix". Cassian and his prison buddy Melshi attempt to steal a starship to escape Narkina 5, but are briefly captured by its owners, two alien fishers. They seem to consider turning in their captives for a bounty, but their anger at the Empire for destroying the planet's ecosystem wins out, and they instead offer Cassian and Melshi a lift off the planet.

We never learn these two characters' full names in the show proper, but supplementary material identifies them as Dewi and Freedi Pamular. Dewi is a Keredian (a species first named in a discontinued mobile game), and appears to reuse an costume from an alien extra in Saw's hideout in Rogue One; Freedi is a different, unknown species. After their one scene, they never appear again in Andor or anywhere else.

I think they should get their own show. This post is my pitch. Hear me out.

This is obviously a pretty goofy premise, but I'm going to try to take it seriously, partly as a creative exercise and partly in the hope of conveying how much these two weird dudes mean to me.

Genre

One thing I appreciate about the recent rash of Star Wars spinoffs, in concept if not necessarily in execution, is the idea of exploring different genres within the same setting. The Mandalorian is a space Western. Andor is a space spy drama. The Acolyte is a space mystery thriller.

Dewi and Freedi is a space mockumentary. As far as I'm aware, this is unexplored territory for the franchise, with the exception of the SNL Kylo Ren Undercover Boss skit; it's high time somebody tapped the vein.

The mockumentary genre lives in the long, dark shadow of The Office, and is often associated with loud, in-your-face comedy, the kind that grabs you by the collar and demands laughs. I've got nothing against that - People Just Do Nothing is one of my favourite shows ever (and a Star Wars take on PJDN would be incredible, but that's a whole 'nother post) - but I don't think that fits my vision here.

Dewi and Freedi should be a gentler, subtler kind of comedy. Less wacky and cringey, more eccentric and observational. My two big tonal touchpoints are Detectorists, for its patient pacing and nuanced cast, and Northern Exposure, for its immaculate wilderness vibes and loose, laid-back approach to storytelling. There's space for serious moments, too, but they should be applied sparingly; they'll have more impact that way.

Overview

We don't see much of Dewi and Freedi in Andor, but we learn quite a bit about them:

Aside: Dewi's dialogue (Freedi only speaks untranslated Narkinian) is a masterclass in economical storytelling. Showrunner Tony Gilroy apparently wrote it himself, and said in an interview with Vulture that he found writing an alien character especially difficult, and that's part of the reason Andor, especially S1, is so human-centric by Star Wars standards. Worth it, as far as I'm concerned.

So, we know Dewi and Freedi's livelihood has been disrupted by the Empire, and their old fishing spots are starting to dry up. What do they do? Go forth and explore the galaxy! Find new markets and sources of fish! Hang out with weird locals! Watch the galaxy slide into civil war! Dewi and Freedi is a documentary snapshot of the last years of the Imperial era, through the lens of two loveable, eccentric fishers trying to make ends meet in an increasingly unstable Outer Rim.

Structure

Dewi and Freedi is mostly episodic. There are longer arcs going on, but they're mostly out of focus, bubbling away in the background, maybe coming to fruition (or maybe not) at the end of the season.

Each episode features a different planet or location, though budgetary and writing constraints might demand a few return visits. Most of these should be novel. One or two fanservice episodes where Dewi and Freedi visit a well-known Star Wars locale are fine, but they're not the main point of the show.

Aside: To address and reject one early idea I had for this pitch, this is not a Forrest Gump situation where the Pamulars are incidentally present for a bunch of pivotal canon Star Wars events. Like their appearance in Andor, their lives should feel tangential to the "main story" of the setting, touching on it occasionally but not making a habit of it.

Plots should be simple, because they're mostly vehicles for human (and alien) interest. I like the idea of sometimes having Adventure Time / Always Sunny-style "anti-plots" where nothing is resolved or learned and Dewi and Freedi just abandon the central conflict, but only sometimes.

Plots should also be small-scale. Dewi and Freedi do not foil conspiracies or topple regimes. This is a show about people, not institutions. When an organisation or faction appears, it manifests as one or two memorable characters.

Style

Classic mockumentary format. Handheld cameras where possible. Minimal, unobtrusive colour grading. No score, only diegetic sound. Frequent interstitial shots of the local scenery. It should look grounded and a little cheap, though realistically nothing Star Wars ever ends up cheap.

In an ideal world, Dewi and Freedi would be heavy on practical effects. Less CG aliens, more puppets and costumes. It just feels like it fits, y'know?

There are, of course, talking-head segments. Dewi is the most obvious candidate, slouching back and sipping a beer in a folding chair in the quadjumper's cargo bay, but other characters should feature too as appropriate.

Dry narration from a moderately recognisable character actor is a must. Mathew Baynton would be my #1 pick. (Maybe he also plays the camera operator?)

Characters

Much as I love Dewi and Freedi, they probably can't carry the show on their own. The core cast doesn't need to be huge because part of the appeal is getting to know new people and cultures every episode, but it'd probably benefit from a few more recurring faces. Here are some loose sketches. Casting choices are wildly aspirational.

A marketeer. Dewi and Freedi need a contact in "civilisation" and someone to help sell their catch, and the show could probably use a human face. I like the idea of someone who fancies herself a dashing Han Solo type, but is too uptight and nervous to do anything actually illegal, so she approaches entirely legitimate business with an exaggerated roguish swagger. Ideal casting: Jamie-Lee O'Donnell (Michelle from Derry Girls).

A rival fisher. She has beef with the Pamulars for reasons that are never really explained, and keeps crossing paths with them and squabbling over the same fishing spots. She tries to shame them and win over bystanders with a complex, tragic backstory, which you gradually realise she's making up as she goes along. Like them, she is fundamentally good, and occasionally willing to team up with them. Ideal casting: Meera Syal (many, many roles).

A rebel. In an early episode, Dewi and Freedi get tangled up in what they eventually realise is a money-laundering scheme for a nascent rebel cell. This guy spends the rest of the series tailing them, occasionally catching up with them, and desperately trying to recruit them. He thinks they haven't caught on to him, but they very much have and just aren't interested in joining up; sometimes they string him along for their own purposes. Like Dedra in Andor, he has completely misread what kind of show he's in. Ideal casting: Nathan Stewart-Jarrett (Curtis from Misfits, Ian from the original UK version of Utopia).

An Imperial. This one needs a careful approach. I don't want him to be a serious menace, but he shouldn't be a complete buffoon either. I think our best bet is not to make him a soldier or security officer, but an officious and slightly bigoted bureaucrat, who sees Dewi and Freedi as annoying edge cases that disrupt all his Systems. He's not a complete monster, though, and as the series goes on his bureaucratic cold war with them becomes respectful, almost playful, while his relationship with the Empire at large grows tenser and less certain. Ideal casting: Mike Wozniak (Mike Wozniak).

Themes

Humanism. This concept probably needs a different name in a setting with sapient aliens, but I think the point stands. This is a show centred on and concerned with people, over polities, systems, and ideologies. The central message is that everyone has a story, even if they only play a fleeting bit part in your own.

Class. Dewi and Freedi isn't just Picaresque in its episode structure. The protagonists are picaros in the classic 16th-century sense, low-class, slightly dishonest heroes surviving and outwitting a world that underestimates them. They stumble headlong into cultures and scenes they don't really understand, worlds wildly different from their own, and scrape by anyway through cunning, blind luck, and a knack for getting along with just about anyone.

The Narcissism of Small Differences. There is rich potential for subcultural slapfighting in this premise, the kind that gets millions of clicks on the galactic equivalent of r/hobbydrama. Bitter enmities between people who 99% agree with each other are a running theme.

High-Tech Poverty / Used Future. Star Wars always looks its best when it leans hard into this aesthetic. We're taking that tarnished, jury-rigged baseline and adding "soggy" to the mix. The Outer Rim is poor and rickety, with a vast range of often disjointed tech levels and a clever, resourceful populace cobbling together whatever they can from whatever they have.

Weird Dudes. Not exactly a theme, but it's important to me. Star Wars, for me, lives and dies by its fun, wacky alien designs. Dewi and Freedi features a constant parade of weird dudes. It's crucial that they're treated like people just as the humans are, but they can be weird people. If I actually got to showrun this thing, I'd demand a bare minimum of one new weird dude per episode. It'd be in my contract.

Hope. Cassian Andor escaped Narkina 5 because two complete strangers, struggling to get by, who had multiple good reasons to distrust or turn on him (the bounty, his implied criminal background, his attempted theft of their ship), instead decided to lend him a hand, because why not, because scob the Empire. Dewi and Freedi is more than willing to poke fun at the failings and follies of its cast, and the faint shadow of war is always there looming on the horizon, but it is an optimistic show overall. Things don't always get better, but they can always get better.

Miscellaneous

In my head, Dewi and Freedi is initially set a year or two after the Pamulars' encounter with Cassian, which would put it in 4-3 BBY, concurrent with the first half of Andor season 2. I think the show proper should probably leave the exact timing vague, however - it doesn't really matter, and it makes things more continuity-friendly. A later season where Dewi and Freedi try to keep on trucking against the backdrop of an active civil war is an interesting prospect, but let's not run before we can walk.

My headcanon is that Dewi's weird West Country-ish dialect is some sort of pidgin fisher-cant. Other fishers might use a similar speech pattern or a variant of it.

Freedi's dialogue is still Narkinian with no subtitles. He's handled R2-D2 / Chewbacca-style, with his sentiments explained by people's responses to him. He gets at least one talking-head segment. No, I don't know how that's going to work.

"NIAMOS!", the recurring EDM track from Andor, crops up several times throughout the series as Dewi and Freedi indicate that they're getting increasingly sick of it. Maybe there's one episode on a seedy pleasure planet with "NIAMOS!" playing almost constantly, a la Night at the Roxbury.

Violence should be minimal, if it's present at all. A Star Wars product with no cool fight scenes is going to be a hard sell, but I think it's worth it.

I don't see this show venturing into the supernatural side of Star Wars. Nobody uses the Force. Almost nobody mentions the Force.

It would be a crime to write a whole show about impoverished fishers, in a setting that canonically features giant sea monsters, and not do a Shadow Over Innsmouth homage at some point.