We need to talk about Andor

[vakundok]

Emm, actually I thought this was his past, pre-robbery.

[Battlehymn Republic]

Ep 10 solidifies that Andor is the best Star Wars series in years if not decades.

[Grand Moff Yenchin]

Ep11
I kept watching the space battle scene. Luthen handled the situation in a ruthless cool.

[RogueIce]

Well, we all knew that stormtroopers can be competent killers when you don't have character shields, as the troops on Leia's ship and some of the Ewoks showed us.

Today we learn they are even better when it comes to shooting down unarmed civilians.

[bilateralrope]

The after credits scene lets us know what the prison was working on.

Andor can't keep himself from interfering with that project

[Raesene]

Andor and Rogue One are my favorite star wars by Disney.
Great ending, and lots of possibilities open for season 2

[MKSheppard]

What I did found silly though was, that in a universe with a million planets, the news of a couple of corp security getting their asses kicked on a backwater planet reaches the meeting room of the top brass ISB on the capital city, and gets high priority in return. Waaaay too much micromanaging.

Here's the thing.

The empire doesn't give a fuck about the Corp Security guys or particularly care. They just needed a pretext to seize power from the Corporation there; and Andor gave them it.

Remember, the other Corp guys tell Sybill that most of their actual control over their region is "on paper" only, and that it's been years since they sent a Corporate Strike Team "boots on ground" there.

So what happens when a Corp Strike Team shows up for the first time in five years and is killed?

It's important to note that this is five years before Yavin, and even though the Empire is 15 years in, it still kind of has to follow some semblance of "law" and wait for pretexts.

ISB likely had that Corporate Sector under a microscope, waiting for someone to screw up enough and give them the pretext they needed.

[GuppyShark]

The after credits scene lets us know what the prison was working on.

Andor can't keep himself from interfering with that project

I'm pretty sure that was the only after credits scene in the series, too.

[MKSheppard]

INITIAL SUMMARY:
Andor isn't as flashy as Obi Wan Kenobi or Mandalorian, but it fills in a massive hole in the canon of Star Wars, and it's clear that the writers of ANDOR have a better idea of how SW works or should work than anyone before them.

DISCLAIMER: I have not yet seen Mandalorian so I cannot comment on that show.

ANDOR is essentially a old school WEG D6 RPG campaign translated to the small screen; and everyone involved understands that there's more to Star Wars than Jedi.

PRELIMINARY SUMMARY CONCLUSION:
The main show runners of ANDOR should be in charge of Star Wars.

I haven't really felt this much about a TV show since the original Battlestar Galactica 2003 miniseries.

Twelve years (or so) ago, I was yelling at the screen that you don't have to worry about fire on a spaceship, just vent onboard atmosphere to space to kill fires and moments later, Tigh did just that.

I had that moment with ANDOR.

I monologued to Shroom that:

Han Solo's smuggling modus operandi seems to be to have a ship (Millennium Falcon) fast enough (Class 0.1 hyperdrive), that he can outrun hypernet updates, land on a new planet or dock at a port before the semi-daily updates to the Imperial Smuggler Database arrive by hyperdrive courier boat; and buy a fresh Ship ID Chip for the Falcon (there are advantages to flying a YT1300 in Star Wars); and maybe do some repainting; and he's now San Holo.

The next day, I saw in ANDOR them directly referencing information lag in the show -- i.e. a fake ID is given for a ship, and it takes the Imperial Patrol Cruiser a few moments to send out a request for that ID and get it back from whatever datacenter holds that ID.

WEG: These Guys Read It
A recurring plotline in the show is that the proto-Rebels split up their thefts to take advantage of Imperial Organizational Splits.

Instead of stealing everything from a single sector, where it would be noticed, they steal X from Sector 1, Y from Sector 2, and so on; so that the ISB counter-intelligence officer in charge of that sector never sees anything more than random undercounting or supply shennigans; and the ISB officers never talk to other ISB sector officers about what's going on.

That pretty much IIRC is straight out of the various WEG sourcebooks.

New Archetypes
Almost every SW writer (book, cartoons, etc) keeps trying to create iconic characters; i.e. they keep trying to make Han Solo II or Luke Skywalker II -- when you simply can't focus group your way into memorable characters.

The good writers understand that the best SW characters are archetypes and try to find ones that aren't being used.

Tim Zahn figured out that Vader was the Evil Knight, while Palpatine was the Dark Wizard; so trying to create a new Dark Wizard as a *primary* antagonist wouldn't work.

So he created a character (Thrawn) from an unused archetype (Doctor Morarity/Sherlock Holmes).

Luthien is basically the Elizabeth Swann (quiet professional) to Han Solo's Jack Sparrow (brash and wings it constantly).

He's got a plan with backups to backups.

The feeling I get from watching Luthien in action is that there are Elite Smugglers like him floating around SW; quietly fixing the messes that the Elite (Senators, Hyper Business Magnates) get themselves into.

"What's that? Your brash (idiot) son got in with Saw Guerra's group?"

*sigh*

"Fine. I'll extract him for you and erase all proof he was ever there for 400,000 credits."

New Locations
This show doesn't rely completely on returning to tired locations such as Tatooine to sell the show; but goes new places.

Even when they return to old stomping grounds such as Coruscant, it makes sense because Coruscant is very important politically and they use that to introduce entirely new characters and sub-locations (Senatorial Apartments and Imperial Security Bureau Headquarters), rather than doing the cheap and lowbrow "let's go to Imperial Palace for a gratitious scene of Palpatine and Vader discussing Saw Guerra's partisans."

Costuming, Set Decoration, etc
Everything is top-notch.

You can see that the Corporate Officer Cap style is derived from the same fashion style that Imperial Officer Caps are from; albeit with different colors and materials.

This show is nailing 1970s computer interfaces like crazy; and that leads me to a new theory about SW (I'll mention it next).

Lots of subtle background details -- when Mon Mothma is giving her speeches in the Imperial Senate, you can see the light rings around the individual senatorial pods turning off as people "vote" against her.

Prevalence of Indigenous Cultures in SW and what it means

There's at least two human indigenous cultures we see during the show -- and that makes me think that there's been at least one major Galactic Scouring (or collapses) in the history of the SW universe.

The kind of indigenous human cultures that we see exist would only happen if civilization had collapsed for a significant amount of time, causing a regression to more primitive civilizations.

I would not be angry if they retconned the Great Hyperspace War (GHW) into a sort of total war/ collapse thing, creating the ashes from which the Old Republic was founded after nearly a millenia of darkness.

This may also be why SW tech is brutally functional.

The pre-GHW culture may have gone for high end Star Trek magitech, and suffered during the collapse as a result.

When civilization recovered, they incentivized being able to fix a hyperdrive in the middle of nowhere with table scraps; so it looks like it's all from the 1970s.

The Memes, I did it all for Shroom!
Lesbian Guerrillas in Space!
Arranged Child Marriages in Space!
Dances with the Na'vi - Blowpipes beat Blasters!

Minimalism, worrying but can be explained away

The Minimalism is a bit worrying, but I can rationalize it without too much trouble:

A.) The Empire in the Corporate Sector doesn't particularly *care* about a corporate strike team of 10 guys getting nearly wiped out. It's small potatoes in the noise of quadrillions.

It's important to note that this is five years before Yavin, and even though the Empire is 15 years in, it still kind of has to follow some semblance of "law" and wait for pretexts at this point in it's political developkment -- i.e. Palpatine lets Mon Mothma and the other Senators waste time (and money) making speeches -- Palpatine didn't dissolve the Senate until the Death Star was fully functional in ANH.

The ISB likely had that Corporate Sector under a microscope, waiting for someone to screw up enough and give them the pretext they needed to execute an Imperial takeover.

Grueseomely, it may be that all of this is part of the Imperial power games we see -- imagine a meeting at ISB HQ:

"This year, my unit added 121 more worlds in the Chommel Sector to Imperial Governance."

"Good work, Lieutenant. You're promoted to Captain effective immediately."

The screw-up is hinted early on by the Corporates themselves -- remember that the other Corp guys told Sybill that most of their actual control over their region is "on paper" only, and that it's been years since they sent a Corporate Strike Team "boots on ground" there.

So what happens when a Corp Strike Team shows up for the first time in five years and is killed?

ISB now has their pretext to seize power in the name of "maintaining order".

B.) The theft of a sector's worth of payrolls at Aldhani is blown out of proportion, given the scale of SW and the low death count during the operation -- A bunch of people die, but it's well under about a dozen.

But as I mentioned earlier, pretext is the name of the game, and what's to say that the Empire through the ISB, detains the entire planetary garrison and sends them to an Imperial prison, so that they can make up a completely different story than what happened for public consumption -- e.g. inflating the 14 dead and 31 wounded to "hundreds of dead"; and who's going to contradict them?

These guys actually understand politics/power plays, unlike Obi-Wan show-runners

We see that ISB agents in disguise are trailing prominent senators such as Mon Mothma everywhere, and that the Empire is tightening up banking regulations, making it harder to funnel cash to keep the proto-Rebellion operating; a huge plot thread is Mothma having to correct a 400,000 credit discrepancy in her books to make it "legal" in advance of a forthcoming Imperial Audit.

Meanwhile, in Obi Wan...
Spoiler

Bail Organa disappears, travels to Tatooine, and goes to the secret hiding location of the most wanted Jedi Criminal in the Galaxy, and then comes back with nobody knowing any better.

Doing something like that is *possible* -- but there's a price. Breaking Bad nailed it almost a decade ago (and semi recently in Better Call Saul and El Camino) with the Vacuum Cleaner Repair Guy.

He can get you out; but it's going to cost you; and there's no turning back -- because while it's possible to move *anyone*, the more notorious you are, the cost rises exponentally, as the high end elite smuggler has to burn/use up contacts or favors to get you out; possibly risking himself to exposure as well.

So it's something that you do only when ISB agents are closing in on you to arrest you for embezzling 1.5 million credits and funneling it to Saw Guerra's gang, not the weak sauce "need" that the writers of Obi-Wan came up with.

Stalinist Purges...in SPACE!

I got pretty strong Stalinist purge feeling vibes, and I'm coming around to Palpatine knowing about and letting the Rebellion happen as a "long game" thing.

He always had the intention to "reorganize" galactic society into something more suiting whatever mysterious dark purposes he wanted. But he knew he couldn't do that right away; and even then, he would need a pretext

Returning to an earlier meme, Palpatine knew there would always be lesbian space marxist revolutionaries, but he couldn't justify restructuring galactic society if it's a bunch of Pol Sci students rebelling in the jungle.

The ironic thing is, BOTH Palpatine and the Proto-Rebel Alliance NEED oppression, but each of them needs it for a different reason.

I've been thinking more on this, and I think Palpatine deliberately had the Death Star slowed down; whether from withholding funding for essential R&D work, or having certain people killed.

The Death Star had to be ready at the right time -- just as the sparks of galactic rebellion ignite -- so that Palpatine could then smash the Rebels with the Death Star, showing how futile it is to resist the New Order.

But, the Death Star itself is very dangerous to Palpatine himself -- it represents a potential alternate seat of power -- i.e. Tarkin could suddenly get the "vapors" and declare HIMSELF Emperor and blow up Imperial Palace (and Coruscant too); so it can't be ready *too* early.

He's once again trying to play both sides like he did during the Clone Wars; showing his arrogance -- if it worked before, it'll work again.

Post-Credits Scene in Episode 12 / Season Finale Spoiler

It appears that the Superlaser itself is the "pacing item" for the Death Star; since this is set 5 years before ANH; and the Death Star is substantially complete, except for the main focusing dish array. Perhaps they did try firing the prison labor built dish, only for it to blow up; and force a redesign of the entire system, delaying completion to ANH era?

Hard PG-13 and classic callbacks
There's tons of callbacks to the Original Trilogy; especially in the torture scenes -- the doors to the torture chamber slide shut as the torture begins and we pan the camera away to an Imperial officer walking away.

CLOSING SIDENOTE:
Tattooine isn't fucking mentioned. This gets a automatic +6D boost from me.

That realization led me to thinking about how I would incorporate Tatooine if I was a SW Showrunner and the studio told me I had to do it or else.

I'd have a new guy in a Rebel cell looking at a starmap for places to hide after a big heist. He sees Tatooine on the starmap and mentions it, leading to everyone else looking at him like he grew a second head.

"But, it's the middle of nowhere; and they have a class $NUMBER$ starport!" he counters.

"There's only one star port on the planet [Mos Eisley], you dumbass."

"So?"

"The Hutts have one of their winter palaces there, you dumbass. The hutts know everyone who goes in and out of Mos Eisley or it's surroundings. They'd sell us out to the Empire in a heartbeat for a few credits."

Essentially, Tatooine is a Venus Fly Trap for smugglers. Its why it's so poorly developed -- nobody wants to end up indebted to the Hutts.

So, imagine this.

Han Solo has finished a job in his typical style -- he's blasted his way out of a blockade/arrest party, and he's now radioactively hot and needs to lay low or change IDs for a bit.

With typical Solo arrogance, he disregards warnings from Chewbacca about Tatooine. Arriving on Tatooine, it doesn't take long for Jabba to make Han an offer he can't refuse ... "Work for me, or else I turn you over to the Empire. Don't worry, you can work your way out."

*huttese laughter follows*

And that's how a really good pilot (Han) with a really hot ship is working for the equivalent of a Mogadishu warlord (Jabba); explaining why he's sitting in that bar in ANH.

He could have paid off Jabba's "keep quiet" fee quite a bit ago, but Han's modus operandi for noisy escapes has bitten him in the ass. He could have paid Jabba off months ago, but then he wouldn't have had the money to buy that clean ship ID card after almost being caught by a pair of Imperial Customs Cruisers.

A smuggler needs a clean ship ID to operate, and Han knows that, but he keeps messing it up, it's just a part of his character.

[Lord Revan]

In the legendaries there was several times the Republic had collapsed for all intents and purposes. Even though the Galactic Republic existed it was reduced sectorial power or a power in name only.

That could explain a fragmentation of human culture across the Galaxy. Look at how different modern US states are from each culturally and then amplify that with there being no central authority and travel and communication being spotty on a good day and you can quickly have a lot of very different cultures emerge without needing total societal collapse.

[Galvatron]

I got pretty strong Stalinist purge feeling vibes, and I'm coming around to Palpatine knowing about and letting the Rebellion happen as a "long game" thing.

I keep half-expecting it to be revealed that Luthen is a re-imagining of Galen Marek from The Force Unleashed. Between the Starkiller armor in his shop to his organizing of the rebellion, my spider-sense won't stop tingling.

[ray245]

INITIAL SUMMARY:
Andor isn't as flashy as Obi Wan Kenobi or Mandalorian, but it fills in a massive hole in the canon of Star Wars, and it's clear that the writers of ANDOR have a better idea of how SW works or should work than anyone before them.

DISCLAIMER: I have not yet seen Mandalorian so I cannot comment on that show.

ANDOR is essentially a old school WEG D6 RPG campaign translated to the small screen; and everyone involved understands that there's more to Star Wars than Jedi.

PRELIMINARY SUMMARY CONCLUSION:
The main show runners of ANDOR should be in charge of Star Wars.

I haven't really felt this much about a TV show since the original Battlestar Galactica 2003 miniseries.

Twelve years (or so) ago, I was yelling at the screen that you don't have to worry about fire on a spaceship, just vent onboard atmosphere to space to kill fires and moments later, Tigh did just that.

I had that moment with ANDOR.

I monologued to Shroom that:

Han Solo's smuggling modus operandi seems to be to have a ship (Millennium Falcon) fast enough (Class 0.1 hyperdrive), that he can outrun hypernet updates, land on a new planet or dock at a port before the semi-daily updates to the Imperial Smuggler Database arrive by hyperdrive courier boat; and buy a fresh Ship ID Chip for the Falcon (there are advantages to flying a YT1300 in Star Wars); and maybe do some repainting; and he's now San Holo.

The next day, I saw in ANDOR them directly referencing information lag in the show -- i.e. a fake ID is given for a ship, and it takes the Imperial Patrol Cruiser a few moments to send out a request for that ID and get it back from whatever datacenter holds that ID.

WEG: These Guys Read It
A recurring plotline in the show is that the proto-Rebels split up their thefts to take advantage of Imperial Organizational Splits.

Instead of stealing everything from a single sector, where it would be noticed, they steal X from Sector 1, Y from Sector 2, and so on; so that the ISB counter-intelligence officer in charge of that sector never sees anything more than random undercounting or supply shennigans; and the ISB officers never talk to other ISB sector officers about what's going on.

That pretty much IIRC is straight out of the various WEG sourcebooks.

New Archetypes
Almost every SW writer (book, cartoons, etc) keeps trying to create iconic characters; i.e. they keep trying to make Han Solo II or Luke Skywalker II -- when you simply can't focus group your way into memorable characters.

The good writers understand that the best SW characters are archetypes and try to find ones that aren't being used.

Tim Zahn figured out that Vader was the Evil Knight, while Palpatine was the Dark Wizard; so trying to create a new Dark Wizard as a *primary* antagonist wouldn't work.

So he created a character (Thrawn) from an unused archetype (Doctor Morarity/Sherlock Holmes).

Luthien is basically the Elizabeth Swann (quiet professional) to Han Solo's Jack Sparrow (brash and wings it constantly).

He's got a plan with backups to backups.

The feeling I get from watching Luthien in action is that there are Elite Smugglers like him floating around SW; quietly fixing the messes that the Elite (Senators, Hyper Business Magnates) get themselves into.

"What's that? Your brash (idiot) son got in with Saw Guerra's group?"

*sigh*

"Fine. I'll extract him for you and erase all proof he was ever there for 400,000 credits."

New Locations
This show doesn't rely completely on returning to tired locations such as Tatooine to sell the show; but goes new places.

Even when they return to old stomping grounds such as Coruscant, it makes sense because Coruscant is very important politically and they use that to introduce entirely new characters and sub-locations (Senatorial Apartments and Imperial Security Bureau Headquarters), rather than doing the cheap and lowbrow "let's go to Imperial Palace for a gratitious scene of Palpatine and Vader discussing Saw Guerra's partisans."

Costuming, Set Decoration, etc
Everything is top-notch.

You can see that the Corporate Officer Cap style is derived from the same fashion style that Imperial Officer Caps are from; albeit with different colors and materials.

This show is nailing 1970s computer interfaces like crazy; and that leads me to a new theory about SW (I'll mention it next).

Lots of subtle background details -- when Mon Mothma is giving her speeches in the Imperial Senate, you can see the light rings around the individual senatorial pods turning off as people "vote" against her.

Prevalence of Indigenous Cultures in SW and what it means

There's at least two human indigenous cultures we see during the show -- and that makes me think that there's been at least one major Galactic Scouring (or collapses) in the history of the SW universe.

The kind of indigenous human cultures that we see exist would only happen if civilization had collapsed for a significant amount of time, causing a regression to more primitive civilizations.

I would not be angry if they retconned the Great Hyperspace War (GHW) into a sort of total war/ collapse thing, creating the ashes from which the Old Republic was founded after nearly a millenia of darkness.

This may also be why SW tech is brutally functional.

The pre-GHW culture may have gone for high end Star Trek magitech, and suffered during the collapse as a result.

When civilization recovered, they incentivized being able to fix a hyperdrive in the middle of nowhere with table scraps; so it looks like it's all from the 1970s.

The Memes, I did it all for Shroom!
Lesbian Guerrillas in Space!
Arranged Child Marriages in Space!
Dances with the Na'vi - Blowpipes beat Blasters!

Minimalism, worrying but can be explained away

The Minimalism is a bit worrying, but I can rationalize it without too much trouble:

A.) The Empire in the Corporate Sector doesn't particularly *care* about a corporate strike team of 10 guys getting nearly wiped out. It's small potatoes in the noise of quadrillions.

It's important to note that this is five years before Yavin, and even though the Empire is 15 years in, it still kind of has to follow some semblance of "law" and wait for pretexts at this point in it's political developkment -- i.e. Palpatine lets Mon Mothma and the other Senators waste time (and money) making speeches -- Palpatine didn't dissolve the Senate until the Death Star was fully functional in ANH.

The ISB likely had that Corporate Sector under a microscope, waiting for someone to screw up enough and give them the pretext they needed to execute an Imperial takeover.

Grueseomely, it may be that all of this is part of the Imperial power games we see -- imagine a meeting at ISB HQ:

"This year, my unit added 121 more worlds in the Chommel Sector to Imperial Governance."

"Good work, Lieutenant. You're promoted to Captain effective immediately."

The screw-up is hinted early on by the Corporates themselves -- remember that the other Corp guys told Sybill that most of their actual control over their region is "on paper" only, and that it's been years since they sent a Corporate Strike Team "boots on ground" there.

So what happens when a Corp Strike Team shows up for the first time in five years and is killed?

ISB now has their pretext to seize power in the name of "maintaining order".

B.) The theft of a sector's worth of payrolls at Aldhani is blown out of proportion, given the scale of SW and the low death count during the operation -- A bunch of people die, but it's well under about a dozen.

But as I mentioned earlier, pretext is the name of the game, and what's to say that the Empire through the ISB, detains the entire planetary garrison and sends them to an Imperial prison, so that they can make up a completely different story than what happened for public consumption -- e.g. inflating the 14 dead and 31 wounded to "hundreds of dead"; and who's going to contradict them?

These guys actually understand politics/power plays, unlike Obi-Wan show-runners

We see that ISB agents in disguise are trailing prominent senators such as Mon Mothma everywhere, and that the Empire is tightening up banking regulations, making it harder to funnel cash to keep the proto-Rebellion operating; a huge plot thread is Mothma having to correct a 400,000 credit discrepancy in her books to make it "legal" in advance of a forthcoming Imperial Audit.

Meanwhile, in Obi Wan...
Spoiler

Bail Organa disappears, travels to Tatooine, and goes to the secret hiding location of the most wanted Jedi Criminal in the Galaxy, and then comes back with nobody knowing any better.

Doing something like that is *possible* -- but there's a price. Breaking Bad nailed it almost a decade ago (and semi recently in Better Call Saul and El Camino) with the Vacuum Cleaner Repair Guy.

He can get you out; but it's going to cost you; and there's no turning back -- because while it's possible to move *anyone*, the more notorious you are, the cost rises exponentally, as the high end elite smuggler has to burn/use up contacts or favors to get you out; possibly risking himself to exposure as well.

So it's something that you do only when ISB agents are closing in on you to arrest you for embezzling 1.5 million credits and funneling it to Saw Guerra's gang, not the weak sauce "need" that the writers of Obi-Wan came up with.

Stalinist Purges...in SPACE!

I got pretty strong Stalinist purge feeling vibes, and I'm coming around to Palpatine knowing about and letting the Rebellion happen as a "long game" thing.

He always had the intention to "reorganize" galactic society into something more suiting whatever mysterious dark purposes he wanted. But he knew he couldn't do that right away; and even then, he would need a pretext

Returning to an earlier meme, Palpatine knew there would always be lesbian space marxist revolutionaries, but he couldn't justify restructuring galactic society if it's a bunch of Pol Sci students rebelling in the jungle.

The ironic thing is, BOTH Palpatine and the Proto-Rebel Alliance NEED oppression, but each of them needs it for a different reason.

I've been thinking more on this, and I think Palpatine deliberately had the Death Star slowed down; whether from withholding funding for essential R&D work, or having certain people killed.

The Death Star had to be ready at the right time -- just as the sparks of galactic rebellion ignite -- so that Palpatine could then smash the Rebels with the Death Star, showing how futile it is to resist the New Order.

But, the Death Star itself is very dangerous to Palpatine himself -- it represents a potential alternate seat of power -- i.e. Tarkin could suddenly get the "vapors" and declare HIMSELF Emperor and blow up Imperial Palace (and Coruscant too); so it can't be ready *too* early.

He's once again trying to play both sides like he did during the Clone Wars; showing his arrogance -- if it worked before, it'll work again.

Post-Credits Scene in Episode 12 / Season Finale Spoiler

It appears that the Superlaser itself is the "pacing item" for the Death Star; since this is set 5 years before ANH; and the Death Star is substantially complete, except for the main focusing dish array. Perhaps they did try firing the prison labor built dish, only for it to blow up; and force a redesign of the entire system, delaying completion to ANH era?

Hard PG-13 and classic callbacks
There's tons of callbacks to the Original Trilogy; especially in the torture scenes -- the doors to the torture chamber slide shut as the torture begins and we pan the camera away to an Imperial officer walking away.

CLOSING SIDENOTE:
Tattooine isn't fucking mentioned. This gets a automatic +6D boost from me.

That realization led me to thinking about how I would incorporate Tatooine if I was a SW Showrunner and the studio told me I had to do it or else.

I'd have a new guy in a Rebel cell looking at a starmap for places to hide after a big heist. He sees Tatooine on the starmap and mentions it, leading to everyone else looking at him like he grew a second head.

"But, it's the middle of nowhere; and they have a class $NUMBER$ starport!" he counters.

"There's only one star port on the planet [Mos Eisley], you dumbass."

"So?"

"The Hutts have one of their winter palaces there, you dumbass. The hutts know everyone who goes in and out of Mos Eisley or it's surroundings. They'd sell us out to the Empire in a heartbeat for a few credits."

Essentially, Tatooine is a Venus Fly Trap for smugglers. Its why it's so poorly developed -- nobody wants to end up indebted to the Hutts.

So, imagine this.

Han Solo has finished a job in his typical style -- he's blasted his way out of a blockade/arrest party, and he's now radioactively hot and needs to lay low or change IDs for a bit.

With typical Solo arrogance, he disregards warnings from Chewbacca about Tatooine. Arriving on Tatooine, it doesn't take long for Jabba to make Han an offer he can't refuse ... "Work for me, or else I turn you over to the Empire. Don't worry, you can work your way out."

*huttese laughter follows*

And that's how a really good pilot (Han) with a really hot ship is working for the equivalent of a Mogadishu warlord (Jabba); explaining why he's sitting in that bar in ANH.

He could have paid off Jabba's "keep quiet" fee quite a bit ago, but Han's modus operandi for noisy escapes has bitten him in the ass. He could have paid Jabba off months ago, but then he wouldn't have had the money to buy that clean ship ID card after almost being caught by a pair of Imperial Customs Cruisers.

A smuggler needs a clean ship ID to operate, and Han knows that, but he keeps messing it up, it's just a part of his character.

Every action, every decision should have a level of cost. Having plot convenient tech just to get the good guys out of trouble with no real cost is just bad writing.

Andor is basically what ep 8/TLJ was trying to do, but done competently.

[Adam Reynolds]

Shep's spoilers corrected:

Spoiler

Meanwhile, in Obi Wan...
Bail Organa disappears, travels to Tatooine, and goes to the secret hiding location of the most wanted Jedi Criminal in the Galaxy, and then comes back with nobody knowing any better.

Doing something like that is *possible* -- but there's a price. Breaking Bad nailed it almost a decade ago (and semi recently in Better Call Saul and El Camino) with the Vacuum Cleaner Repair Guy.

He can get you out; but it's going to cost you; and there's no turning back -- because while it's possible to move *anyone*, the more notorious you are, the cost rises exponentally, as the high end elite smuggler has to burn/use up contacts or favors to get you out; possibly risking himself to exposure as well.

So it's something that you do only when ISB agents are closing in on you to arrest you for embezzling 1.5 million credits and funneling it to Saw Guerra's gang, not the weak sauce "need" that the writers of Obi-Wan came up with.

Post-Credits Scene in Episode 12 / Season Finale
It appears that the Superlaser itself is the "pacing item" for the Death Star; since this is set 5 years before ANH; and the Death Star is substantially complete, except for the main focusing dish array. Perhaps they did try firing the prison labor built dish, only for it to blow up; and force a redesign of the entire system, delaying completion to ANH era?
clean ship ID to operate, and Han knows that, but he keeps messing it up, it's just a part of his character.

Right now you can only have one spoiler and it has to be the first code to end.

[MKSheppard]

Every action, every decision should have a level of cost. Having plot convenient tech just to get the good guys out of trouble with no real cost is just bad writing.

If you're going to use plot convenient tech, you need to work it in subtly earlier in the show; I wouldn't be surprised if we see those NS-9 Starpath Units show up later in Season 2 of Andor; albeit perhaps in a slightly different use pattern than "track every imperial unit within x parsecs".

[MKSheppard]

Linky on interview with Cinta's actress

It’s not about churning the Star Wars lore again and again, and you know, swimming in that story. It’s about a bigger message and a bigger statement. I think he is just studying how fascism tend to foment. But what’s brilliant is that it shows both sides. You get to see the [side of] bad guys as well...

...

But the director [of that three-episode arc on Aldhani], Susanna White, was brilliant in bringing us together. We got to read through the scripts with each other and had this whole process, and she even gave us homework to do. We had to watch these documentaries.

Q: What kind of documentaries?

They were all on real-life rebels and conflicts. Can’t Get You Out Of My Head by Adam Curtis was one of them. Susanna also gifted us this book, Shoot the Women First, about women in rebellions or conflicts and how they are perceived differently. I think it’s a direct quote that somebody said: “Shoot the women first” because it is women who slip under the radar as people assume that they are meek. We actually got to dig deep into the horrors of being a rebel, which is what Rogue One and Andor does.

There are some great blogs out there that picked up on this, that the Star Wars movies, as brilliant as they are, kind of glamourise the lives of rebels. Then you have Luke Skywalker coming in with the mind tricks, and everything happens when it needs to happen, whereas the average life of a rebel is shit. It’s crap. It’s difficult. You are hunted. You are in hiding, and you are constantly fighting for your rights. That’s what I liked about Andor. It’s saying this is what actual rebels do. Skywalker [in the first three movies] is building off of what rebels did in Rogue One, and that’s how rebellions work. It’s the people that do the groundwork, and then the heroes kind of win.

It’s basically what Luthen, Skarsgård’s character, monologues about, that his work will be forgotten by everyone, but he will still do it.

That’s my favourite speech. I got to have drinks with him, and he did that monologue for us. It was just me and my friend Sule [Rimi], who plays Lieutenant Gorn. We were up till 3 in the morning chatting with him, and we got really into the philosophy behind Andor. This is the base belief that all the rebels have, which is that I am planting the seeds for a world that I am not going to see and I will never get to enjoy the fruits. The tragedy of that acceptance is beautiful.

[MKSheppard]

Consider:

Lefty Anarcho Commie Twitter loves andor.
The largest gun board on the internet loves andor
Shep loves andor.
Shroom loves andor.
Saxton loves andor.
The Guardian loves andor
The Telegraph loves Andor



Who knew that competent bad guys, competent good guys, well developed backstories for locations, etc etc could be so much better than capeshit (of which Jedishit is a subvariant).

Denise Gough was skeptical

"I didn't really have anything to compare it to because I hadn't seen any. I have never been a Star Wars... Not that I wasn't a fan. It never really was my thing. So when I was in talks about being in it, Tony [Gilroy - series creator] let me read the first three episodes to get a flavor of what it was because I was like, 'I don't know. I'm a theater actress. I'm not sure this is what I want to walk into. What if it's all just in space with green screens? And I don't know how I'll feel about that.' 

Then I read these three episodes, and I was like, 'Hold on. This is not what I expected it to be. This is like a dance.'"

Also, the set director/episode directors actually had a feel for how to set up a battle for the climactic 12th episode, unlike Obi Wan Kenobi's directors.

[Lord Revan]

Something I think Andor did reasonably well was to show that the Empire (and by extension Emperor Palpatine) had become complacent and arrogant and didn't really think there any credible threats left, it kind of shows how the flaws in the Galactic Empire were what enabled the Rebel Alliance to win in the end.

[Cykeisme]

Very good observations Shep. Was a joy to read.

[Lonestar]

Andor is a massive improvement on world building the Rebellion than anything seen on the screen so far.

Previously the struggle between the Rebellion and the Empire has usually been presented as a struggle between the Galactic elites. The Rebel Alliance leadership is filled with senators, planetary leaders(or families), or the former secret police of the Republic. The Empire built the Deathstar to bring to heel wealthy Core Worlds like Alderaan and Chandrila, not the proletariat worlds of the Outer and Mid Rims.

What we see in Andor is, finally, the marginal worlds where the Empire is noticeably *worse* than the prior Republic. We see fleshed-out planetary societies like Ferrix that previously at least had an absentee landlord going for them, or the wide scale oppression of indigenous peoples like on Aldhani-and it becoming official policy midway through the season. In other words, we are finally seeing the Empire being "bad" for people other than the elites shoved out of power by Palpatine.

Also, no goddam Jedi or Sith. Just a bunch of middle management assholes in the ISB or Imperial colonial proxy forces. No goddamn Tatooine. Coruscant only appears to actually give Mon Mothma some texture and the ISB middle-management losers.

[Crazedwraith]

It always amuses me that people trash Star Wars for including Jedi.

[DesertFly]

Absolutely. I loved Andor, but its different tone isn't something I want to permeate the rest of Star Wars. There should always be room for experimentation and a willingness to try new things in the franchise, but I like the fun space adventure tone. That's what originally hooked me and keeps me coming back.

[Batman]

The problem isn't the inclusion of Jedi but the fact that at least for FILMED Star Wars they usually DOMINATE. They're center stage. In a franchise (and a galaxy) that large, there should be room for stories without Jedi. Given there were so few of them and they usually only got involved at the 'the fate of the galaxy is at stake' level There should be room for endless stories NOT involving Jedi. And in FILMED Star wars at least, prior to Andor there weren't all that many.

[Zor]

The whole prison arc is seriously excellent storytelling that stands out. This is not to denigrate anything else in Andor, the heist arc, the ISB arc, Mon's arc, Starsgaard's arc and the riot on Ferrix are all great in their way.

Zor

[Elfdart]

I just binge-watched the series and was bored silly until Andor was thrown in prison and Andy Sirkis showed up. The writers turned the last few episodes into a nice amalgam of Battle of Algiers, 1984 (the one with John Hurt and Richard Burton) and THX-1138. Instead of eating their own creative seed corn (i.e. just gnawing on the bones of Lucas' movies), they got inspiration from elsewhere. It's nice to see a little originality for a change (hell, I'd settle for novelty).

Eleven years ago, I suggested Billie August as a possible director for a Star Wars spinoff. While he wasn't hired, the makers of Andor shot the series in the same cold, bleak way August filmed Smilla's Sense Of Snow, a moody film where the protagonist is up against the government and corporate interests.

I've noticed that the "PEW-PEW" sound isn't being used by Disney Star Wars for the blasters anymore. Did Ben Burtt take the sound effect with him when Disney kicked him to the curb?

[Shroom Man 777]

It always amuses me that people trash Star Wars for including Jedi.

They should trash Star Wars for excluding BOR GULLET!