Professor Huyang

"Use the *vwoorp*, Luke." An ancient droid, but still quick of mind, Huyang oversaw the construction of lightsabers in the Jedi Order for centuries. After the fall of the Republic and the Jedi, his databanks remain a repository of ancient Jedi lore, including an exacting record of every lightsaber constructed under his supervision. He continues to be operational after the end of the Jedi Order, surviving through the rise and fall of the Empire, to see the dawn of the New Republic. Just as Rebels was a continuation of The Clone Wars, Ahsoka was a continuation of Rebels. Ahsoka Tano's slightly cranky droid companion, Huyang, first appeared in a Season 5 arc of The Clone Wars. You remember the story where the padawans went to that ice cave to get their lightsaber crystals? It was right after that. Now that they had crystals, someone needed to teach them how to build lightsabers around them, and Huyang was the one to do it. Huyang (apparently he went back to droid school and got his droid master's degree sometime between the cartoon and this toy, because he was never "Professor" anything back then) was voiced by David Tennant, in his first Disney role. He has a rather odd face, with small golden eyes, conical ears sticking sideways out below his "WWI doughboy helmet" scalp, and long, drooping metal jowls that stick down lower than his chin. It's a bit off-putting, which helps explain why the kids were leery of him at first. According to Huyang, he's been tutor for more than a thousand generations of padawans. Official sources have said he was built about 25,000 years ago, making him tens of thousands of years old even when guys like Revan were around. Despite that, his body could pass for a fairly modern droid, like C-3PO - he's shaped like a skinny human, basically. Like a protocol droid, he has exposed wires around his midsection, and he wears a little leather skirt, to help sell the idea that he's actively making things, like a blacksmith. Even though the way he makes things is not even remotely dangerous that way. His body is a pale, metallic beige with dark grey around the joints. The scalp has a blue tint to it, and there are dark silver sections on the back of his legs. A few of his stomach-wires get paint apps to help them stand out, and there are different shades for his belt and apron. In the cartoon, the loupe on his head can swivel down to sit in front of his eye - here it's sculpted in place, but gets a light blue paint app on the lens. The Professor, here, appeared pretty normal until he started looking for lightsaber parts in his ship's various drawers and cabinets: while he was facing on direction, a tiny extra pair of arms extended from his back and began rifling through the equipment behind him. In addition to the normal Black Series articulation, this figure also includes a backpack with those tiny arms, and each of them have a swivel shoulder, hinged elbow, and hinged wrist. That's not as big a range of motion as the show gave them, but it's more than zero; Hasbro might have given us a backpack that was just sculpted instead of actually being playable. There have been a lot of reports of this figure having extremely loose ankles, but mine is fine; the hinges in the shoulders are a little stiff, but overall everything works perfectly well. Beyond the backpack, his accessories are a datapad and one of the training lightsabers he used when evaluating Sabine Wren. Yes, one. Despite the fact that he used four. It doesn't help that it doesn't have its big yellow blade, making it even harder to recognize. Neither of his small hands are shaped to hold anything, but you could wedge the datapad in there if you like. Playing Huyang earned David Tennant an Emmy in 2013, beating out two fellow Clone Wars nominees: Jim Cummings and Sam Witwer. We still don't have any 6" scale Doctors Who, or even a Killgrave, but this Professor Huyang is a lot of fun. -- 03/23/24