Is Holdo a good leader?

[Gandalf]

Oh, Johnson is definitely a competent director, who pays attention to the little details in a scene. People may not disagree with his decisions, but anyone who says that they were the result of carelessness or incompetence rather than deliberate choices as a director is doing him an injustice.

Indeed. His episode of Breaking Bad is a masterwork of television.

[RogueIce]

Look, at the end of the day, in order for Johnson to set up his subversion with Poe playing Cowboy Cop, he had to make Holdo look like an ineffective bureaucrat. He succeeded in that. And so, to answer the thread's question: yes Holdo is a bad leader because all we've seen out of her is bad leadership.

We don't even need to get into some pointless debate about stealth shuttles, and it doesn't matter that Poe was also in the wrong. That scene shared way back when of Holdo and Poe's first encounter was what we needed to know.

Yeah, Holdo was in the worst possible situation and it was, as TRR said, her worst day. But like it or not, leaders are judged by how they handle the bad even more so than how they act when things are going smoothly. That is when good leadership is most important. Anyone can "lead" when things are going great; the true test of a leader is when things go off the rails, and how you handle that.

A great leader rises to the occasion.

A good leader at least holds it together and doesn't belittle, insult and dismiss their subordinates, regardless of whether they were out of line.

A bad leader does the above and follows up with, "Respect mah authoriteh!"

If this is all we've seen of Vice Admiral Holdo - and the rest of the movie doesn't exactly show her in a better light leadership-wise* - then all we can conclude is that yes, she's a bad leader. Unless you can show, in the movie where she was being a good leader - and saying Poe was an asshole doesn't count - this is all we have to go off of. This was Holdo's Moment of Truth. She failed.

*I think it's fair to say she has a good amount of personal courage, but the bravest person can still be a shitty leader of people.

[FaxModem1]

DJ didn't give the First Order any technical details though. For all we know, he just said, "Check for cloaked ships.", and that was it. Doesn't sound like something really involved, and that any partially competent First Order officer could ask for if they were curious about the lack of dead bodies on board the three ships when they were destroyed.

It was a specific "decloaking" scan according to the FO officer. I don't know what that involved, but we do know that the FO didn't do it until they were specifically told to by DJ. IDK, cloaking is rare in star wars, and it may be that a decloaking scan takes up a lot of time or specialized resources or something. Whatever the reason, it is clearly not something that the FO does as SOP, and Leia and Holdo exploited his fact. We can monday-morning-quarterback their decision back and forth, and blame the FO for being incompetent morons, but the rebels' plan would have worked if Poe hadn't gotten the details leaked.

I mean literally, the characters outright say that Holdo knew the FO wasn't scanning for small ships:

LEIA: Holdo knew the First Order was tracking our big ship. They're not monitoring for little transports.
POE: So we could slip down to the surface unnoticed and hide till the First Order passes. That could work.

Sure, if the FO were competent (or rather, if Johnson was a competent writer) they would've been scanning the wreckage for bodies or other signs that something funky was going on, and running decloaking scans around the capital ships to look for escaping rebels. But then, if they were competent they would've had a couple of SDs micro jump ahead of the rebel fleet, or used their fighters and bombers to run them down. Actually, if they were really competent it wouldn't have ever reached the Crait system because they would've launched a fighter screen for their dreadnought, had it's escorts actually escort it (did you know that the regular star destroyers never fire a single shot?), and completely wiped out the rebel fleet before they could jump away from D'Qar.

Exactly, the plan hinged on First Order stupidity, and there were better options, like sending a hyperdrive capable shuttle, the Ninka, or the Medical transport to buy some fucking gas, return, and the fleet can go elsewhere.

Or, the Resistance is run by idiots if Poe can make a phone call but Admiral 'stay the course until we're all dead' Holdo isn't trying to until she's at Crait. Either one is just as valid.

Look, I think the writing is moronic too, but it's not the characters' fault that Rain Johnson is aggressively ignorant of how technology works in Star Wars. For whatever technical reasons, they don't have the "power" to make their call, but the base on Crait does. Leia and D'acy said this before they even knew they were being tracked through hyperspace:

FINN: Alright, Well, until [Rey] comes back [with Luke], what's the plan?
LEIA: We need to find a new base.
LARMA D'ACY: One with enough power to get a distress signal to our allies. scattered in the Outer Rim.

and then again when she has hew window side chat with Poe on the shuttle:

LEIA: Poe...
POE: What is that?
LARMA D'ACY: The mineral planet, Crait. An uncharted hideout from the days of the Rebellion.
POE: That's a Rebel base?
LARMA D'ACY: Abandoned, but heavily armored with enough power to get a distress signal to our allies scattered in the Outer Rim.

Like I said, I don't know what the difference was between the holo-call Poe made and the big plot device distress call, but clearly there was a difference. Poe knew they needed to make their distress call when he called Maz, so the best in-universe explanation I can come up with is that there's some technical difference between the two that the characters are aware of but the audience is not.

They don't have to go to Crait to go for help. Finn and Rose prove in the film that you can hyperdrive to the other end of the galaxy to ask for help. They went to the wrong place, but Leia, Holdo, or Poe could have sent them to the nearest gas station and had them buy fuel, or the nearest NR base and gotten some fighters, shuttles, or whatever, come back, and restock the Raddus. So even if they COULDN'T make a phone call(even though we saw Poe do so with Maz), it's immaterial, send a courier back and forth over the course of the 18 hours that they have fuel left.

In both of these cases (decloak scanning and not having enough power to call for help) the real answer is that the technology has whatever limitations the plot demands, and Johnson didn't care enough to make these details make sense. I hate him and hate the movie because of it. For our purposes here though, what's important is that All the other characters agree with those technical details. If Holdo was being an idiot for waiting until Crait to make the call and for relying on the FO not scanning for the shuttles, Leia and Poe (and D'acy and the rest of the Resistance staff) are just as big of idiot for agreeing that it was a good plan. Which still leaves Holdo as someone who inherited an imperfect plan and executed it pretty much perfectly.

No, if we see earlier in the film that they can make a phone call. It's a bit of a plot hole that they HAVE to go to the planet to make a phone call. Even if they can't, they can still, as said above, send couriers back and forth.

And supposedly, there are New Republic ships out there that they're trying to rally with. If they can get them on their side, great. If not, they could potentially hire mercenaries. If not, again, they could buy some gas.

They never mention NR ships, just a vague reference to "allies scattered in the outer rim" which sounds a lot more like private fleets, smugglers, pirates and maybe mercs with sympathetic leaders -- old school rebel types. But that all requires talking with them, which the movie established that they couldn't do until they reached a base with a enough power.

Unless they shuttle there, or send the Ninka or the Medical frigate there, like Finn and Rose did.

They could also do what Finn and Rose did, and go there personally to get the allies by hand-delivering the message instead of waiting on a broadcast from Crait.

In what ships? The whole point of the entire chase was that they didn't have enough fuel to run to hyperspace and they'd just be followed if they did. The hyper capable fighters were all gone. Beyond the shuttle that Rose and Finn stole they might not have even had anything that could jump independently. That plan also relies on the messengers rallying the allies, amassing enough firepower to bail out the rebels (so a fleet several times the size of the entire resistance), then getting back to the still-running rebel fleet before they run out of fuel and the Supremacy blows them up. At least with Holdo's plan they're safe from the immediate threat that's bearing down on them, and have some breathing room in case their supposed allies don't immediately respond to their call (which - spoiler alert - they don't).

In the Ninka, the shuttles, or the Medical Transport. The Raddus, as said by Leia herself, is the only ship being tracked.

If D'acy really is the link between Holdo and Poe, then it falls to her to comfort Poe. That's her job. Either she should have done so immediately, and done so for bridge officers like Connix as well, or she also fucking sucked at her job.

There may have technically been more links in the chain of command between them, it's not really clear and the TOE was in shambles at that point. Maybe Poe's designated hand holder didn't even realize it was their job to worry about that, because they wee in the middle of a crisis. And yeah, it sucks for Poe that he felt helpless and no one would give him any responsibility so he could feel like a big strong man again, but that's what happens when you're demoted for disobeying orders - you stop being relied on to carry out vital tasks.

Then give him something non-vital to do. Having him lift crates will keep him busy. I've explained this multiple times in-thread, but in a crisis, it's best to keep your people busy so that their minds are off the possibility of impending death and the worst case scenario. It makes them feel productive and like they're helping fix the situation, even if it's just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

Or she realized Holdo's plan was idiotic and going to get them all killed? Or more likely, since Holdo is intelligence, she kept Commsec going to the point of no return and inspired multiple desertions and mutiny....
No, it didn't, because we had people like Finn running for escape pods. Not everyone of them is supposedly under Poe's sway, so Holdo's plan clearly wasn't keeping them calm, or they didn't know about it and were panicking.

The only mutineers were the pilots who were (understandably) personally loyal to Poe, and Connix, who was willing to mutiny from the word go. Remember, she covered for Rose and Finn stealing the shuttle almost immediately after Holdo took command. She was never going to follow Holdo over Poe. The only desertion attempts we know of (other than Finn) happened before Holdo took command.

I don't care how you slice it. If a crew mutinies or deserts, that's on the leadership for failing to address it. Connix, whether because of her loyalty to the proven hero of Starkiller base, or because she didn't trust Holdo's leadership, that's on Holdo for not creating an environment in which her officers felt that they could trust her. That's the bad part about being a spy, you don't try and create an atmosphere of trust, which is VERY necessary for a military command.

Or the rest of the bridge crew didn't know, and things were so compartmentalized that bridge officers thought it was safer to mutiny than to keep on following orders that didn't make any sense

Poe (and presumably anyone else) could see that the shuttles were being fueled and loaded the moment he stepped onto the bridge, because no one made any attempt to hide it. Bridge crew were actively monitoring/coordinating shuttle prep. There were no gasps or looks of shock when he announced that they were planning on abandoning the ship. Poe didn't seem to realize it, but he was the only person on the bridge who was in the dark.

Then why not explain it to him? or if he's such a threat because he's so hotheaded, relieve him and put him in the brig.

And, we see Holdo's command style when the Medical frigate is destroyed. there's no explanation, no comfort, just 'Stay the course'. So I'm not surprised that Connix rebelled(heh heh) against her. Why isn't there a intercom briefing over the entire ship to let them know what the plan is? The only reason is for the subversion, as Poe would have heard it.

regular crew members were jumping into escape pods due to the effects of Holdo's speech.

Problem with that is the deserters. If you have a desertion problem right after Holdo gets into an argument with a subordinate straight off the gate, than yes, that's on Holdo's shoulders, and it isn't limited to Poe's flight squadron.

And wasn't doing anything about the desertions. Again, I have to stress that. Poe wasn't the only one panicking if the ship has a desertion problem. Remember that.

The only desertion attempts we know of (other than Finn) happened before Holdo took command. And Finn is not a regular crew member, he's a turncoat who's has no real ties to the Resistance.

As Rogue 9 pointed out, Holdo did nothing to stop them aside from a two minute speech. And Finn may be a last minute turncoat, but the other deserters were probably ordinary members of the Resistance. Unless you can prove otherwise. Can you?

As they're wheeling the unconscious Leia away (after her "mary poppins" flight) she drops the beacon bracelet that Rey would be coming back to, and Finn picks it up. He then immediately tries to desert. He's not present to see Holdo's introduction, or Poe's fight with her; he's off packing a bag and sneaking to the escape pods. He never get's a chance to be demoralized by Holdo. When he gets to the escape pods, Rose is already there, and tells him "Just this morning, I had to stun three people who were trying to jump ship in this escape pod." And that's the only actual desertion attempts we know of. So, at the very least we can say that desertions were already a concern before Holdo took command, and we have no reason to believe that they were any better or worse under than under Leia.

Then Holdo should have done more to comfort her crew if desertions are a problem, even if she didn't cause them. Either A, she caused them and doesn't care that people are deserting, or B, she didn't cause them and still doesn't care that people are deserting.

Prove it. Prove that it wasn't the fact that the plan wasn't actually explained to him, as a leader should have done hours ago, when he was still in a good frame of mind and wasn't starting to panic from watching people die. Because that's what we see on screen, a man panicking because he thinks his leaders are getting them killed needlessly.

I can't prove a negative. I can't prove that he wouldn't have thrown a tantrum and leaked the Plan and started a mutiny if he had been told earlier, that's your job. I can prove that he did throw a tantrum and leak the plan and stage a mutiny as soon as he found out that the plan was to abandon ship. I can prove that he never expressed concern about where they would run to, and that's the only new detail Leia revealed to him after the mutiny was over.

He distrusted Holdo's leadership based on her appearance before he had said one word to her, and was immediately condescending, impatient and insubordinate in his first interaction. He was never "in a good frame of mind". All Holdo knows is that Leia's last act was to demote him for insubordination and disobeying an order to retreat, and as soon as she's announced he lies about the demotion and wants to be told the plan. What reason at all does she have to believe that if she tell's him the plan is to retreat he won't decide to disobey those orders too? Because that is exactly what he ends up doing. If you honestly believe that he would have reacted differently form the way he actually did, you prove it.

He initially asked her, and she started an argument with him. I've already gone over it ad nauseum, but Holdo should have relieved him, explained the plan to him, or had him report to his CO between her and him. She just told him to get lost. It's only after the destruction of the other two ships, and at least one captain, that he storms the bridge and shouts at her. He does give her latitude to explain herself, and she wastes it. She either A, wasted manpower by not having the pilots do anything, and/or B, made a bad situation worse by not getting the crew to calm down because they had nothing to occupy themselves with.

And yes, there's a hell of a difference between "we're abandoning ship" and "We're abandoning ship to go to this hidden base." Failure to recognize the difference that can have on a panicked soldier is bad leadership.

Really, the whole "he panicked and can't be held responsible for his actions" line of reasoning is total bullshit if you pay any attention to his character at all during the movie. He disobeys a direct order in the opening sequence. It's not like he sat and stewed for hours agonizing over the situation before he decided to work against Holdo. He was so "panicked" after a single, 30 second conversation with her that he immediately started mutinying. The first time we see him after that first conversation with Holdo is when he decides to withhold vital intelligence form anyone else (not because he's concerned with leaks but because he doesn't trust the decisions Holdo will make with that info), and instead convinces two enlisted personnel to go AWOL and steal a shuttle, and a junior officer to lie and cover their tracks. Poe didn't even understand what their plan was, but he trusted it more than he trusted Holdo, despite her impressive record.

Bullshit. Poe doesn't mutiny until the last ship is destroyed, here he is reacting to the Medical ship being destroyed and the Captain being killed, as I posted in the thread earlier:



Notice how he isn't immediately grabbing a gun and rushing to stun Holdo there, and waits until the Ninka is also destroyed to have his tantrum. He's waiting and seeing, while slowly losing composure over their fleet being destroyed, wondering where the hell Finn and Rose are, because he doesn't know or think Holdo is doing anything to save them, because, get this, SHE WON'T TELL ANYONE THAT SHE HAS A PLAN.

You assert that Poe wasn't okay with the plan when explained to him. But in the very film itself, he's okay with the plan once explained to him. He totally botches it by talking to Finn and Rose about it, but he IS okay with it.



Notice how Poe reacts, "That could work."

Funny how explaining things to him immediately gets him on-board with the plan. Almost as if knowing his superiors aren't planning on them dying pointlessly gets him to act more rationally.

Again, people are deserting. That's a classic sign of panic. That may be what Holdo and company thought Rose and Finn were doing with the shuttle they took, and just shrugged their shoulders that morale was so bad.

Fuck off, now you're just making shit up because you either know you have no point, or don't know the movie well enough to back up your argument. The only desertion once Holdo took command was Finn+Rose, at Poe's behest. Connix lies through her teeth to Holdo to cover their escape.
[/quote]

No, there were desertions prior to Finn. Whether they were a consequence of Holdo's leadership or not, Holdo needs to deal with them. We are given no sign, one way or the other, that the desertions stop, only that Rose was no longer there to guard the escape pods, because she's busy trying to find someone to hack the tracker. That's ineptitude there, Holdo did not consider her crew running for escape pods a priority, or at least we weren't shown it as a priority in the film. You'd have to prove that she did more than give a two minute speech to rectify that.

[Civil War Man]

Just so this thread isn't just beating up on Holdo and/or Poe, how about that unknown person running security on board the Raddus? I know the buck ultimately stops with the person at the top (Leia or Holdo depending on where we are in the movie), but they probably would have been running a tighter ship with the Keystone Kops than with whoever they had in charge of day-to-day operations. A lot of it can be blamed on them likely being critically understaffed or dangerously overworked, resulting in them having to triage cases. However, since Rose was guarding the escape pods, whether she was deputized or doing it on her own volition, it meant that preventing desertions was a low enough priority that they couldn't dedicate manpower to it. This is reinforced by Rose and Finn later being able to walk into the hanger bay and fly out with a hyperspace-capable shuttle without anyone apparently noticing or attempting to stop them (unless the security in the hanger were actually co-conspirators of Poe, like Connix).

And that's not to mention multiple unauthorized transmissions (Poe's calls to Maz and Finn/Rose, respectively), and their absence during the mutiny. Whatever your thoughts on Holdo, it's obvious the leadership problems were not just at the top.

[FaxModem1]

Just so this thread isn't just beating up on Holdo and/or Poe, how about that unknown person running security on board the Raddus? I know the buck ultimately stops with the person at the top (Leia or Holdo depending on where we are in the movie), but they probably would have been running a tighter ship with the Keystone Kops than with whoever they had in charge of day-to-day operations. A lot of it can be blamed on them likely being critically understaffed or dangerously overworked, resulting in them having to triage cases. However, since Rose was guarding the escape pods, whether she was deputized or doing it on her own volition, it meant that preventing desertions was a low enough priority that they couldn't dedicate manpower to it. This is reinforced by Rose and Finn later being able to walk into the hanger bay and fly out with a hyperspace-capable shuttle without anyone apparently noticing or attempting to stop them (unless the security in the hanger were actually co-conspirators of Poe, like Connix).

And that's not to mention multiple unauthorized transmissions (Poe's calls to Maz and Finn/Rose, respectively), and their absence during the mutiny. Whatever your thoughts on Holdo, it's obvious the leadership problems were not just at the top.

Maybe security was the first to desert?

[Civil War Man]

Maybe security was the first to desert?

New scene showing Rose dropping off one of the other would-be deserters she tazed to the brig and going back to her post. Then the deserter comes to, looks around, and realizes there is just a pile of stunned deserters and no one else there.

[Bob the Gunslinger]

Pretty sure all those attempted deserters are dead now. Guess they had a point.

[Patroklos]

Physical internal security isn’t a thing on real warships. There might be a master at arms for criminal stuff between crew mates but nobody roams the passageways on a beat. If you are running an organization where you can’t explicitly trust your crew to not eject themselves into deep space to escape you, you are either a slave galley or completely ineffective.

I get that for plot reasons in SW boarding and infiltrators are a thing, but that’s still an external threat not your own crew.

[Q99]

There's a Holdo novel coming out (By G Willow Wilson, who is good), so we finally may get an idea of what she's like leading in not-the-worst-conditions-one-can-be-dropped-in.

[The Romulan Republic]

Physical internal security isn’t a thing on real warships. There might be a master at arms for criminal stuff between crew mates but nobody roams the passageways on a beat. If you are running an organization where you can’t explicitly trust your crew to not eject themselves into deep space to escape you, you are either a slave galley or completely ineffective.

I get that for plot reasons in SW boarding and infiltrators are a thing, but that’s still an external threat not your own crew.

Yes, most big ships in Star Wars have a contingent of troops aboard for boarding/counter-boarding actions or conducting planetary assaults. I presume that those troops could be used as internal security in a pinch.

[FaxModem1]

Physical internal security isn’t a thing on real warships. There might be a master at arms for criminal stuff between crew mates but nobody roams the passageways on a beat. If you are running an organization where you can’t explicitly trust your crew to not eject themselves into deep space to escape you, you are either a slave galley or completely ineffective.

I get that for plot reasons in SW boarding and infiltrators are a thing, but that’s still an external threat not your own crew.

Yes, most big ships in Star Wars have a contingent of troops aboard for boarding/counter-boarding actions or conducting planetary assaults. I presume that those troops could be used as internal security in a pinch.

The big issue is that boarding is definitely a thing in Star Wars. A New Hope has Stormtroopers storming the Tantive IV to fight rebel ships. Especially since you might need vital information from living prisoners rather than dead corpses.

[Knife]

There is a big difference between guard duty and investigation and internal security. And the very thought that they put a mechanic on guard on a life boat does not bode well to that theory.