Is Holdo a good leader?

[tezunegari]

I mean, if you kneecap the world's greatest runner and then tell him to run through quicksand, he's not going to be setting any records, but it doesn't mean that he's a shitty runner now. It means you stacked the deck against him.

The runner would still know how to walk.

Holdo failed at basic leadership - the equivalent of the runner forgetting how to keep the balance while standing up or tying the running shoes.

She antagonized Poe from the beginning.
In the first scene they had together Poe was professional, giving a summary of the situation to the new commander who might not now the full extend of the situation or what Poe knows about it, and then asked for a plan / orders.

She immediately plays on his demotion (and given the way it was delivered with Leia slapping him, he might have taken it as an unofficial overreaction by Leia until Holdo confirmed it), mocks him for his personality and how she knows the hotshot pilot type (and the german voice actress really put in an interesting passive-aggressive UST there).

She even admits that this type of personality is dangerous... but does nothing to control him either by giving him a fake plan that makes halfway sense, by busy work or putting him in the brig.

Everytime she is confronted by him she gives answers that sound like prevarications and when Poe finally goes of the deep end, accusing her of treason?
She throws him of the bridge when she should have had him thrown in the brig... or taken him aside and explained "Sacrifice the ship as bait, take crew to a hidden base on a planet nearby, wait for allies to pick us up."

Also the "there's a spy" argument can't really be applied as noone even suggest that posibility on screen - which would have made the situation more believable. Poe trusts the explanation of Finn while Holdo believes it impossible and focuses on the known way of tracking ships (beacons or spy).

All of Poe's bad decisions after Holdo takes command can be plainly laid at her own feet.
Give him the order to check the local starmaps for planets... send him to the hangar deck to assist in the modifications of the shuttles... or flat out tell him that "We are going to sacrifice the flottila to hide the crew at an abandon base nearby."

And this is the reason why so many people "bend over backwards" for Poe.
His action can at least be seen as phyrric victory, considering that we don't know the numbers of Siege Dreadnoughts the FO has (or if he spoke in plural because he didn't know himself and went with the worst case scenario), while Holdo straight out made the situation worse but didn't even give a hint about her motives even after the twist reveal.

It's not like Poe was a brown-nosing sycophant who blindsided her with his mutiny.
He went from professional to questioning and ultimately challenging and threatening openly.
She did nothing to prevent that... even when he openly called her a traitor she didn't say anything to explain why he's wrong (or put him in the brig).

No matter the reveal. Holdo fucked up at something so basic when her job pretty much requires that she knows about how to act when confronted with people like Poe (you know, she admitted to knowing his type and how dangerous it can be?) that the only twist reveal that could be explaining it without bending over backwards for her is making her either an idiot couch-commander, or a outright traitor like Pong Krell in Clone Wars.

[The Romulan Republic]

That's pretty much my feeling as well. No, she didn't turn around the morale disaster, she may even have inadvertently added to it a bit, but morale would have been crumbling anyway due to the severity of the situation, and its a bit much to put all the blame on Holdo for failing to turn it around in the space of 18 hours while assuming command of a critically under-supplied, hopelessly outnumbered fleet with a badly damaged flag ship and a decapitated command structure.

I mean, if you kneecap the world's greatest runner and then tell him to run through quicksand, he's not going to be setting any records, but it doesn't mean that he's a shitty runner now. It means you stacked the deck against him.

If all it took to make soldiers crumble was a hopeless situation the German sailors fighting under Maximilian von Spee during the battle of the Falklands Islands would have struck colors instead of going down swinging in a fight that lasted just shy of eight-and-a-half hours against a foe that would have let them surrender honorably. Now obviously Holdo couldn't hold Spee's jockstrap

What a spectacularly misogynistic way of putting it.

In any case, its a flawed analogy because, while Spee's men may have known they were horribly outmatched, they could still take comfort in the fact that their deaths would not be pointless, that even if they died fighting their country would continue the struggle and might still prevail. Whereas the Resistance fleet is their entire fleet. There is no one else to continue the battle if they fail, not in any meaningful way.

but you'd hope she'd at least be competent enough to avoid a full-on mutiny and crew fleeing to escape pods against a foe that will show no quarter.

Now before you say that Spee was a long term commander and that people didn't know or respect Holdo to that same degree at the start of the battle note that Spee and the Scharnhorst were out of the fight less than halfway through the battle. Each captain kept their ship fighting after their commander and the fleet's flagship went down. Hell, Leipzig fought until she had no ammunition left and still never struck her battle ensign. Morale needn't crumble just because a situation is hopeless.

Not if you entered the battle with strong morale, maybe but its pretty clear that Resistance morale and discipline were suffering before Holdo took over. We see it when Poe launches a reckless attack against orders during the evacuation. We see it when he challenges Holdo's authority almost immediately after she assumes command. We see it in the frequent desertions, with no proper security in place to stop them, just a tech. who's on the verge of an emotional breakdown herself and probably gave herself the assignment. Which scene happened almost immediately after Holdo took over. Are we to assume that she exudes such an aura of incompetence by her mere presence that a perfectly healthy fleet collapsed into mass desertions and a breakdown of internal security the moment she assumed command? Clearly, there were pre-existing morale problems.

But no, people just ignore all that and insist that everything that happened is 100% her fault, as though she took a strong fleet and destroyed it in 18 hours rather than inheriting a week fleet and failing to fix everything in 18 hours.

[Shroom Man 777]

Couldn't Holdo explain something to her subordinates, even if it's vague enough to just reassure them, or if she can't do that for security reasons, lie so that they will be comforted?

If people are scrambling for escape pods, she should know she has a problem, unless things are so bad that no one is reporting this to her.

Now there's a thought, the Resistance is in such shambles that Holdo isn't getting a complete picture because departments aren't checking in with her about what's going on. In which case, she should probably send runners to find out why.

Sure, she was promoted after a lot of their high command - including Ackbar, RIP - bit the dust. They had to provide for the transferees from the other ship, figure out how to restore operations after their flight deck got wrecked - which also decimated other officers and the Heroes of Starkiller, Poe's peers, etc.

The fact of the matter is that she was promoted from leadership of her unit to leadership of all unit during a hectic period and people are expecting some miraculous feat of human resources when just a few hours passed between her appointment to the Raddus going kamikaze on the Supremacy.

And for all we know, while Holdo might be accustomed to how her unit operates, the other cells of the Resistance that fell under her purview might've been even more ragtag and prone to cowboy bullshit - which explains how Poe rose up the ranks in his own unit. People bring up examples of real-life commanders who led better, but that's also contingent on them directing professional soldiers. The Resistance was full of irregulars, individuals like Finn and Han who just arrived within the day were assigned critical roles, etc. Heck, historically we have the Rebel unit that struck Scarif being similarly disorganized, the whole operation that led to the first victory of the Rebellion was unsanctioned and partly commanded by someone who wasn't even in the group (Jyn). This anarchic mishmash probably doesn't work well regardless of whether Holdo was pulling some inspiring Ciaphas Cain-style leadership.

They're lucky the Gerrerist Partisans weren't there, otherwise Saw Jr., Benthic and Bor Gullet would've just taken over and lined up those guilty for counter-revolutionary activities. This approach does work at times, as seen when the Gerrerists sacked Coruscant and Kuat, executingImperialists and nobles by airlocks or AT-AT stomping.

Other examples of real-life great leaders whose commands broke down during demoralizing situations was when General Francis X. Hummel's team of elite, hardened and highly professional Force Recon Marines turned on him after several failed launches of their VX gas rockets in Alcatraz.

[NeoGoomba]

The Resistance should have tried harder to recruit Captain Jellico or Sgt. Apone

[FaxModem1]

Couldn't Holdo explain something to her subordinates, even if it's vague enough to just reassure them, or if she can't do that for security reasons, lie so that they will be comforted?

If people are scrambling for escape pods, she should know she has a problem, unless things are so bad that no one is reporting this to her.

Now there's a thought, the Resistance is in such shambles that Holdo isn't getting a complete picture because departments aren't checking in with her about what's going on. In which case, she should probably send runners to find out why.

Sure, she was promoted after a lot of their high command - including Ackbar, RIP - bit the dust. They had to provide for the transferees from the other ship, figure out how to restore operations after their flight deck got wrecked - which also decimated other officers and the Heroes of Starkiller, Poe's peers, etc.

The fact of the matter is that she was promoted from leadership of her unit to leadership of all unit during a hectic period and people are expecting some miraculous feat of human resources when just a few hours passed between her appointment to the Raddus going kamikaze on the Supremacy.

And for all we know, while Holdo might be accustomed to how her unit operates, the other cells of the Resistance that fell under her purview might've been even more ragtag and prone to cowboy bullshit - which explains how Poe rose up the ranks in his own unit. People bring up examples of real-life commanders who led better, but that's also contingent on them directing professional soldiers. The Resistance was full of irregulars, individuals like Finn and Han who just arrived within the day were assigned critical roles, etc. Heck, historically we have the Rebel unit that struck Scarif being similarly disorganized, the whole operation that led to the first victory of the Rebellion was unsanctioned and partly commanded by someone who wasn't even in the group (Jyn). This anarchic mishmash probably doesn't work well regardless of whether Holdo was pulling some inspiring Ciaphas Cain-style leadership.

They're lucky the Gerrerist Partisans weren't there, otherwise Saw Jr., Benthic and Bor Gullet would've just taken over and lined up those guilty for counter-revolutionary activities. This approach does work at times, as seen when the Gerrerists sacked Coruscant and Kuat, executingImperialists and nobles by airlocks or AT-AT stomping.

Other examples of real-life great leaders whose commands broke down during demoralizing situations was when General Francis X. Hummel's team of elite, hardened and highly professional Force Recon Marines turned on him after several failed launches of their VX gas rockets in Alcatraz.

Well, the film certainly would have gone differently that way. Holdo having her men grab Finn and tossing him in an airlock to scare the rest of the crew into behaving. That certainly would have had an interesting effect on the crew.

[Jub]

What a spectacularly misogynistic way of putting it.

Fuck right off. I could care less about what's between Holdo's legs than what's between her ears and from what we see on screen she's not exactly a bright bulb of a leader.

In any case, its a flawed analogy because, while Spee's men may have known they were horribly outmatched, they could still take comfort in the fact that their deaths would not be pointless, that even if they died fighting their country would continue the struggle and might still prevail. Whereas the Resistance fleet is their entire fleet. There is no one else to continue the battle if they fail, not in any meaningful way.

How does continuing to fly your battle ensign while out of shells help the war effort in any way?

Not if you entered the battle with strong morale, maybe but its pretty clear that Resistance morale and discipline were suffering before Holdo took over.

So why weren't Leia and Holdo able to hold morale together before the chase started? If Holdo was Leia's chosen second in command what was she doing for morale in the hours leading up to the chase? Leadership doesn't just happen under fire it happens in the days, weeks, and months before the first shot is ever fired. The Resistance has a leadership issue if a couple of bad defeats shatters morale to the degree we saw on screen.

We see it when Poe launches a reckless attack against orders during the evacuation. We see it when he challenges Holdo's authority almost immediately after she assumes command. We see it in the frequent desertions, with no proper security in place to stop them, just a tech. who's on the verge of an emotional breakdown herself and probably gave herself the assignment. Which scene happened almost immediately after Holdo took over. Are we to assume that she exudes such an aura of incompetence by her mere presence that a perfectly healthy fleet collapsed into mass desertions and a breakdown of internal security the moment she assumed command? Clearly, there were pre-existing morale problems.

We've been over the chain of command and as far as anybody can tell there was nobody between him and Holdo so what exactly did Poe do wrong besides use too aggressive a tone in dealing with a terrible superior officer? We don't actually know how soon after Holdo taking over that scene takes place so I'll need you to show your work for morale breaking down to that degree before Holdo took over. Give me a timeline of events and set a range of times in which the events we see on screen could have happened.

Also, even if the morale was an issue before Holdo took command it's still on her. Given her rank, she bears a lot of the burden for morale being so poor to begin with. At the very least the crew of her ship should be loyal to her and support her and yet we don't see this. Not a single scene of them before or after the subversion is revealed talking about Holdo's leadership and what she meant to them. That's damning beyond anything else because sailors have strong feelings about their captains and if those feelings are positive you can damn well expect them to express those feelings in the wake of that officer going down with her ship.

But no, people just ignore all that and insist that everything that happened is 100% her fault, as though she took a strong fleet and destroyed it in 18 hours rather than inheriting a week fleet and failing to fix everything in 18 hours.

Nobody is putting 100% of the blame on Holdo you white knighting cuck. Have you even read my posts? I specifically called out Poe as being a bad follower, but being a poor follower is simply a lesser sin than being a bad leader. That's what you've failed to realize as you argue with wall of ignorance posts repeating the same 'But what about Poe?' screed post after insufferable post.

If you need an example, look at how Jellico is remembered after Jutland to see just how little it takes for history to remember you as a coward who made the wrong call and he got called that for not winning a battle hard enough. It doesn't take much for people to call you out as a poor leader but that's the burden of command that you accept that when you're promoted. The higher you go the more burden you personally shoulder.

------

Other examples of real-life great leaders whose commands broke down during demoralizing situations was when General Francis X. Hummel's team of elite, hardened and highly professional Force Recon Marines turned on him after several failed launches of their VX gas rockets in Alcatraz.

Real-life... You realize the Rock isn't a documentary, right?

[Shroom Man 777]

Well, the film certainly would have gone differently that way. Holdo having her men grab Finn and tossing him in an airlock to scare the rest of the crew into behaving. That certainly would have had an interesting effect on the crew.

And THAT would've caused a ridiculous mutiny as well I guess. If Holdo is some traditional-style commander of a more regular force, or a Leia-type space aristocrat without the ragtag grit or experience with smugglers and farmboys, any amount of traditional leadership skills she's got would still be severely tested by the situation on board the Raddus, IMO. I mean, the freaking Dumbledore's Army or the Order of the Phoenix were probably less ad hoc than the Resistance remnants in Raddus (by virtue of these people having worked with each other for a long time and developed some modicum of standardized ops)

If Holdo was Leia's chosen second in command what was she doing for morale in the hours leading up to the chase? Leadership doesn't just happen under fire it happens in the days, weeks, and months before the first shot is ever fired. The Resistance has a leadership issue if a couple of bad defeats shatters morale to the degree we saw on screen.

She might not even be the second in command. A whole line of succession, including Ackbar, got decimated in the blitz on the Raddus. Aside from leadership, the professionalism of the crew is also something that's built over time and the remnants on Raddus were a highly irregular disparate bunch from different straggler cells each with different compositions, doctrines and organizational styles.

At the very least the crew of her ship should be loyal to her and support her and yet we don't see this. Not a single scene of them before or after the subversion is revealed talking about Holdo's leadership and what she meant to them

Because Poe was talking to members of his own crew and circle, not among those under Holdo? Even then there was mention of one battle Holdo was in.

Real-life... You realize the Rock isn't a documentary, right?

It's obviously found footage.

[The Romulan Republic]

I mean, if you kneecap the world's greatest runner and then tell him to run through quicksand, he's not going to be setting any records, but it doesn't mean that he's a shitty runner now. It means you stacked the deck against him.

The runner would still know how to walk.

Holdo failed at basic leadership - the equivalent of the runner forgetting how to keep the balance while standing up or tying the running shoes.

She antagonized Poe from the beginning.
In the first scene they had together Poe was professional, giving a summary of the situation to the new commander who might not now the full extend of the situation or what Poe knows about it, and then asked for a plan / orders.

She immediately plays on his demotion (and given the way it was delivered with Leia slapping him, he might have taken it as an unofficial overreaction by Leia until Holdo confirmed it), mocks him for his personality and how she knows the hotshot pilot type (and the german voice actress really put in an interesting passive-aggressive UST there).

False.

She doesn't "play on his demotion"- she corrects him when he gives her a false rank. And Poe is hardly professional- he begins their interactions by misrepresenting his rank, then questioning her. She has no reason to take Poe seriously in light of this, and the fact that he just got demoted for a rash action that got a bunch of irreplaceable people and ships destroyed.

"But maybe he thought it wasn't an official demotion, so it doesn't count!" That's just ignoring canon evidence.

Also, the performance of the voice actor in the German dub has pretty much zero bearing on canon. I haven't listened to it and I don't speak German, so I can't really comment on it beyond that, but I think it says a lot that one of your arguments for why Holdo should be faulted amounts to "That nasty woman is unfit for command because her tone shows she's passive-aggressive and horny." Yeah, that's not misogynistic at all.

She even admits that this type of personality is dangerous... but does nothing to control him either by giving him a fake plan that makes halfway sense, by busy work or putting him in the brig.

Her one clear, genuine mistake is not brigging his ass.

Everytime she is confronted by him she gives answers that sound like prevarications and when Poe finally goes of the deep end, accusing her of treason?
She throws him of the bridge when she should have had him thrown in the brig... or taken him aside and explained "Sacrifice the ship as bait, take crew to a hidden base on a planet nearby, wait for allies to pick us up."

Poe was way past listening to anything she said at that point.

She should have brigged him, yes.

Also the "there's a spy" argument can't really be applied as noone even suggest that posibility on screen - which would have made the situation more believable. Poe trusts the explanation of Finn while Holdo believes it impossible and focuses on the known way of tracking ships (beacons or spy).

Its a logical explanation, but one that was not articulated on-screen, no.

All of Poe's bad decisions after Holdo takes command can be plainly laid at her own feet.

This is such a rediculously and obviously biased piece of spin that I don't know how anyone could take it seriously.

"Poe fucked everything up. But everything he does wrong is automatically Holdo's fault, so Poe being the one at fault really means Holdo is the one at fault!"

Give him the order to check the local starmaps for planets... send him to the hangar deck to assist in the modifications of the shuttles... or flat out tell him that "We are going to sacrifice the flottila to hide the crew at an abandon base nearby."

You do realize that she was trying to manage an entire fleet in the middle of a crisis? That we don't see everything Holdo does over those 18 hours because the film is deliberately given us a limited perspective, but that she had other shit to do besides assuaging one disgruntled officer's insecurities?

And this is the reason why so many people "bend over backwards" for Poe.
His action can at least be seen as phyrric victory, considering that we don't know the numbers of Siege Dreadnoughts the FO has (or if he spoke in plural because he didn't know himself and went with the worst case scenario), while Holdo straight out made the situation worse but didn't even give a hint about her motives even after the twist reveal.

This whole "We don't know how many siege dreadnoughts they had, that one totes might have been the only one!" is such embarrassingly desperate reaching. At best its every bit as fucking speculative, if not more so, as "Holdo might have kept quiet about her plan because she was concerned about spies."

You want to build an entire justification on your personal headcanon, I'll do the same right back at you.

As to Holdo... she destroyed way more FO tonnage at less cost than Poe with her ramming attack, and her evac plan (which was just a modification of Leia's plan) would to all appearances have likely worked if not for Poe's going behind her back, inducing other personnel to do so, and then spilling the beans over an unsecured com. channel. Oh but I forgot, everything Poe does wrong is actually Holdo's fault, because she is the only character who has any responsibility for anything.

Whereas Poe most definitely made a bad situation worse, by... well, see above. Every death on those transports is on his head (and DJ's), more than Holdo's (who laid down her life to save the remaining transports after Poe's plan fucked them all).

It's not like Poe was a brown-nosing sycophant who blindsided her with his mutiny.
He went from professional to questioning and ultimately challenging and threatening openly.
She did nothing to prevent that... even when he openly called her a traitor she didn't say anything to explain why he's wrong (or put him in the brig).

No, he went from unprofessional to seditious to throwing a tantrum to treason and mutiny.

No matter the reveal. Holdo fucked up at something so basic when her job pretty much requires that she knows about how to act when confronted with people like Poe (you know, she admitted to knowing his type and how dangerous it can be?) that the only twist reveal that could be explaining it without bending over backwards for her is making her either an idiot couch-commander, or a outright traitor like Pong Krell in Clone Wars.

Her being a traitor has zero canon evidence unless you take Poe's deranged rantings as canon, and is in fact massively contradicted by canon. It is so self-evidently absurd that it doesn't really deserve refutation, but I include said refutation anyway for the sake of completeness.

As to incompetence... see above. You have blamed her for others' failures, made assumptions that are utterly unsupported by evidence while criticizing others' speculation, and engaged in character smears with a distinctly misogynistic undertone, apparently based on nothing but your interpretation of a single dub which none of us who don't speak German can meaningfully comment on.

Why the hell should I take your criticisms seriously?

[The Romulan Republic]

you white knighting cuck.

Sneering at men who call out misogyny (or just men they don't like) as "cucks" is such an iconically Alt. Reich/Incel slur that I cannot believe you are unaware of its political connotations. Whether it is a sincere expression of your ideology or just another attempt at trolling, you chose to use it anyway. I will judge you accordingly.

Edit: Hell, just to preempt the inevitable whines about how I "accuse everyone who disagrees with me of being a fascist" or how I'm "hysterical", here's an excerpt from the Globe and Mail:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/cu ... e33876354/

It's a profanity that's been popularized in those two dark and sticky corners of the Internet – the world of online porn and anonymous forums such as Reddit or 4chan, communities that too often attract the repulsive "alt-right," those who espouse racist, fascist or white-supremacist ideologies. The term is short for "cuckold," meaning a man whose wife has sex with another man. But in recent years "cuck" has also become synonymous with a genre of porn in which a man (usually white) looks on as a man or men (usually black) have sex with his wife. Its use in a political context has become a racist/sexist slur against white male liberals who are seen, in far-right circles, as traitors to their race and gender. The implication being that if you are a white man defending liberal values then, metaphorically speaking, your wife is being … uh, you get it.

Case in point: White supremacist David Duke's recent tweeted response to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's declaration of tolerance in the wake of the immigration and refugee ban signed by U.S. President Donald Trump. "This cuck is a danger to all of North America... #buildthatwall."

At the moment, "cuck" is only derisive to the social-media-savvy minority who recognize the profound ugliness of its meaning. But make no mistake, it's a full-blown first-degree swear. The kind of word that will, in the near future, end marriages and friendships and get high-school students expelled. It's heavy and dirty and it's deeply hateful. I would never say it. And I'm a person who loves to swear.

The derogatory connotations of "cuck" make it every bit as offensive as all those other words that can't actually be printed here. Think of it as your new all-purpose racist, sexist super-slur. A bad word invented by bad men for the purposes of humiliating and shaming the good men among us into renouncing their tolerance and decency. What a charming development in the linguistic evolution of our species.

In fact, I'd say this makes a good argument that "cuck" should fall under our board rules prohibiting the use of racial slurs.

Edited to fix minor typo.

[Shroom Man 777]

How the hell can anyone, even real-life competent commanders beyond reproach like the highly decorated USMC Force Recon General Francis X. Hummel who was doing wetwork in Indochina when people were in their diapers where are the guidance chips, handle someone like Poe who is from the J.J. Abrams Chris Pine Trek school of organization and leadership? Which was the type of cowboy power fantasy projection pulp ridiculousness TLJ was playing with.

you white knighting cuck.

Sneering at men who call out misogyny (or just men they don't like) as "cucks" is such an iconically Alt. Reich/Incel slur that I cannot believe you are unaware of its political connotations. Where it is a sincere expression of your ideology or just another attempt at trolling, you chose to use it anyway. I will judge you accordingly.

Yeah whining about "white knighting" and blathering about "cucks" is a telling sign. Hard to take seriously.

[FaxModem1]

Rommie, I'm going to tell you this. Regardless of tone, which IMO, was still professional, he was still a subordinate asking for orders.

Holdo started the fight because he used the wrong rank. As I've said before, whether that was due to his slip of the tongue, or outright lying, she started a fight for very little reason. Maybe she was stressed and needed to vent at someone, but she was in charge, and should have rectified that immediately by pointing out that she's extremely busy and is trying to get everything done, and give her a few minutes to get this done and she'll brief him. Even if she doesn't trust him, or doesn't want him doing anything, having him lifting crates onto transports will make sure he's out of the way, and isn't as openly insulting and counterproductive as insulting him for being a 'flyboy' and telling him to go away.

[The Romulan Republic]

Rommie, I'm going to tell you this. Regardless of tone, which IMO, was still professional, he was still a subordinate asking for orders.

Holdo started the fight because he used the wrong rank. As I've said before, whether that was due to his slip of the tongue, or outright lying, she started a fight for very little reason. Maybe she was stressed and needed to vent at someone, but she was in charge, and should have rectified that immediately by pointing out that she's extremely busy and is trying to get everything done, and give her a few minutes to get this done and she'll brief him. Even if she doesn't trust him, or doesn't want him doing anything, having him lifting crates onto transports will make sure he's out of the way, and isn't as openly insulting and counterproductive as insulting him for being a 'flyboy' and telling him to go away.

Honestly, I thought that her rebuke of him was pretty mild, considering that (willfully nor not) he introduced himself by misrepresenting his rank after just being demoted for... disobey orders and thereby getting a bunch of people killed. Was she the absolute model of professionalism? No. No one is saying Holdo's perfect here. But its a fairly minor and sin, and hardly amounts to either a justification or an explanation for Poe's subsequent behaviour.

[The Romulan Republic]

How the hell can anyone, even real-life competent commanders beyond reproach like the highly decorated USMC Force Recon General Francis X. Hummel who was doing wetwork in Indochina when people were in their diapers where are the guidance chips, handle someone like Poe who is from the J.J. Abrams Chris Pine Trek school of organization and leadership? Which was the type of cowboy power fantasy projection pulp ridiculousness TLJ was playing with.

you white knighting cuck.

Sneering at men who call out misogyny (or just men they don't like) as "cucks" is such an iconically Alt. Reich/Incel slur that I cannot believe you are unaware of its political connotations. Where it is a sincere expression of your ideology or just another attempt at trolling, you chose to use it anyway. I will judge you accordingly.

Yeah whining about "white knighting" and blathering about "cucks" is a telling sign. Hard to take seriously.

Heh, I remember when "White Knighting" was a term used by feminists to criticize men who played up their support of women and womens' issues to make themselves look good/score. Then it got co-opted by the Alt. Reich, I guess, because that's what they do- co-opt other peoples' ideas, terms, and cultures in order to control the cultural debate (like how they positioned themselves as "pro-free speech" so that now being "pro-free speech" is practically seen as synonymous in political discourse with being pro-racism).

They're a God damn fucking cultural cancer which gets into every system, highjacks it, and then multiplies.

Edit: That's part of why I tend to see their influence in these debate, even when people insist that they just don't like the movie. Because that's what they do. They weasel their way into every conversation, disguising the overt fascism in ways that seem more palatable to the mainstream, and dupe otherwise more reasonable people into unwittingly repeating their talking points.

Hell, the term "Alt. Right" was literally created, by the admission of the white supremacist credited with doing so, in order to rebrand white supremacist ideas to make them more palatable to the mainstream.

[Jub]

She might not even be the second in command. A whole line of succession, including Ackbar, got decimated in the blitz on the Raddus. Aside from leadership, the professionalism of the crew is also something that's built over time and the remnants on Raddus were a highly irregular disparate bunch from different straggler cells each with different compositions, doctrines and organizational styles.

Regardless at her rank she ought to damned well know what she's doing and be capable of taking over in the situation she was handed.

As for the Raddus, why are we assuming that the Resistance flagship wasn't manned by a permanent cadre of officers and crew? Even if they only had enough for the Raddus to have a skeleton crew of regulars those are the people that should have put backbone into the rest of the fleet. If they were so badly trained, that shows piss poor leadership going all the way to Leia.

none of that absolves Holdo of her own poor leadership. Leadership situations aren't fair, you either rise to meet them or fail and Holdo failed. That makes her a bad leader.

Because Poe was talking to members of his own crew and circle, not among those under Holdo? Even then there was mention of one battle Holdo was in.

That doesn't matter, he made his position known. Why did nobody from Holdo's command take it upon themselves to straighten Poe out? Ask a sailor what would happen if that situation came up in the USN and I'd bet money that it wouldn't go down like it did in TLJ.

-----

She doesn't "play on his demotion"- she corrects him when he gives her a false rank. And Poe is hardly professional- he begins their interactions by misrepresenting his rank, then questioning her. She has no reason to take Poe seriously in light of this, and the fact that he just got demoted for a rash action that got a bunch of irreplaceable people and ships destroyed.

"But maybe he thought it wasn't an official demotion, so it doesn't count!" That's just ignoring canon evidence.

Was the official paperwork filed to strip Poe of his rank for that matter does the Resistance even have a codified system for removing somebody's rank? If so did Leia follow it and if not how was Poe supposed to know if he was actually demoted or not?

In real military and even para-military organizations there are rules for removing somebody's rank and it doesn't happen just because one person says so. Leia let her emotions get to her and put both Poe and Holdo in a bad situation by removing his rank the way she did.

Her one clear, genuine mistake is not brigging his ass.

That's a mistake that could have resulted in a serious pannel of inquiry if not a court martial in many real life militaries. That mistake alone makes Holdo a bad leader.

Poe was way past listening to anything she said at that point.

Then she needs to deal with that either by having somebody else deal with him or by taking punitive action.

Its a logical explanation, but one that was not articulated on-screen, no.

Oh oh, I've seen you handle this situation before! This is the part where I get to call you a liar for asserting that something we don't see happen on screen is fact, right?

This is such a rediculously and obviously biased piece of spin that I don't know how anyone could take it seriously.

"Poe fucked everything up. But everything he does wrong is automatically Holdo's fault, so Poe being the one at fault really means Holdo is the one at fault!"

That's how leadership works. If you can't handle that I sure hope you never lead anything.

You do realize that she was trying to manage an entire fleet in the middle of a crisis? That we don't see everything Holdo does over those 18 hours because the film is deliberately given us a limited perspective, but that she had other shit to do besides assuaging one disgruntled officer's insecurities?

Then why doesn't she assign somebody to take care of that, isn't delegation something a leader is supposed to do in a crisis? It's not like we have literal military manuals telling us how she's supposed to handle things...

This whole "We don't know how many siege dreadnoughts they had, that one totes might have been the only one!" is such embarrassingly desperate reaching.

So tell us Rom, how many siege dreadnoughts does the First Order have? How long does it take to build one and how long after it's built does it take to train a crew on it and shake the ship down? You're asserting that the lose of a siege dreadnought isn't a major blow so back up this assertion.

As to Holdo... she destroyed way more FO tonnage at less cost than Poe with her ramming attack, and her evac plan (which was just a modification of Leia's plan) would to all appearances have likely worked if not for Poe's going behind her back, inducing other personnel to do so, and then spilling the beans over an unsecured com. channel. Oh but I forgot, everything Poe does wrong is actually Holdo's fault, because she is the only character who has any responsibility for anything.

Holdo traded 3 capital ships and thousands of lives for a big ass ship. Poe traded a wing of bombers and at most hundreds of lives for a siege dreadnought... I think your math is off.

No, he went from unprofessional to seditious to throwing a tantrum to treason and mutiny.

Him and a good fraction of the crew.

-----

you white knighting cuck.

Sneering at men who call out misogyny (or just men they don't like) as "cucks" is such an iconically Alt. Reich/Incel slur that I cannot believe you are unaware of its political connotations. Whether it is a sincere expression of your ideology or just another attempt at trolling, you chose to use it anyway. I will judge you accordingly.

Edit: Hell, just to preempt the inevitable whines about how I "accuse everyone who disagrees with me of being a fascist" or how I'm "hysterical", here's an excerpt from the Globe and Mail:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/cu ... e33876354/

It's a profanity that's been popularized in those two dark and sticky corners of the Internet – the world of online porn and anonymous forums such as Reddit or 4chan, communities that too often attract the repulsive "alt-right," those who espouse racist, fascist or white-supremacist ideologies. The term is short for "cuckold," meaning a man whose wife has sex with another man. But in recent years "cuck" has also become synonymous with a genre of porn in which a man (usually white) looks on as a man or men (usually black) have sex with his wife. Its use in a political context has become a racist/sexist slur against white male liberals who are seen, in far-right circles, as traitors to their race and gender. The implication being that if you are a white man defending liberal values then, metaphorically speaking, your wife is being … uh, you get it.

Case in point: White supremacist David Duke's recent tweeted response to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's declaration of tolerance in the wake of the immigration and refugee ban signed by U.S. President Donald Trump. "This cuck is a danger to all of North America... #buildthatwall."

At the moment, "cuck" is only derisive to the social-media-savvy minority who recognize the profound ugliness of its meaning. But make no mistake, it's a full-blown first-degree swear. The kind of word that will, in the near future, end marriages and friendships and get high-school students expelled. It's heavy and dirty and it's deeply hateful. I would never say it. And I'm a person who loves to swear.

The derogatory connotations of "cuck" make it every bit as offensive as all those other words that can't actually be printed here. Think of it as your new all-purpose racist, sexist super-slur. A bad word invented by bad men for the purposes of humiliating and shaming the good men among us into renouncing their tolerance and decency. What a charming development in the linguistic evolution of our species.

In fact, I'd say this makes a good argument that "cuck" should fall under our board rules prohibiting the use of racial slurs.

Edited to fix minor typo.

We all know your skin is about as thick as tissue paper and that you run from every thread where somebody asks you a hard question but FFS at least try to do something aside from whine about how the bad men on the internet hurt your feelings in every second post. I have a geniunely diagnosed mental illness and I bitch less than you do.

Regardless, Debate Rule 3 just called and says you have no grounds to ignore my argument. So respond or I'll accept your concession.

-----

Honestly, I thought that her rebuke of him was pretty mild, considering that (willfully nor not) he introduced himself by misrepresenting his rank after just being demoted

Prove that his rank was actually lowered using official Resistance policy or that such a policy exists. If your argument is that his rank can be stripped in a matter of hours just because Leia's in a bad mood prove that she acted properly and that his demotion was official.

[The Romulan Republic]

So no apology for using a misogynist, white supremacist slur.

Jub, you have a tendency to attack and smear me, then pompously demand that I address your arguments or concede, while either using that as a pretext to force me to engage with your personal abuse, or trying to force me to "prove" an endless slew of minutia. Now I answered your post before, perhaps more sharply than I needed to, but hey, at least I didn't use misogynist/white supremacist slurs against you, so I'm still winning on tone. You responded to me, in part, by denying that you were being misogynistic while using the afforementioned notorious misogynist/white supremacist slur.

I'm arguing with about half a dozen people here (there are also board rules against dog-piling), and contrary to your libel I have not "run away" from the thread. But I will prioritize the ones who didn't just respond to me by using a misogynist, white supremacist slur. If you want to take that as a concession, go ahead.

[Shroom Man 777]

@TRR:

Maybe she's pissed that he got a crapload of them killed and if he was in her crew, the reprecussions would've been worse. And if he were in the Partisans, Bor Gullet would've had him spaced for counter-revolutionary ideologically impure application of Gerrerism in tactico-strategic dialectics.

Regardless at her rank she ought to damned well know what she's doing and be capable of taking over in the situation she was handed.

...

none of that absolves Holdo of her own poor leadership. Leadership situations aren't fair, you either rise to meet them or fail and Holdo failed. That makes her a bad leader.

What kind of failure? The mutiny didn't doom them nor as far as we see actually shed blood, it swiftly failed and they still escaped. But if you're still categorizing Poe's op-sec mistakes (leading to the FO detecting the Resistance Cloak) as Holdo's mistakes then there's no satisfying you. (On that note, jesus christ why is a blabbermouth like Poe in such a rank?!) And by that logic, in Poe's defiance earlier on that led to the decimation of their bomber squad, all those deaths were Leia's fault!

She did know what she was doing. But nonetheless war and chains of command doesn't mean people are placed in the positions they want. Sometimes after nuclear holocausts and the elimination of almost the entire government, secretaries of the department of education end up in command of humanity's remains fleeing implacable religious fanatic killing machines.

As for the Raddus, why are we assuming that the Resistance flagship wasn't manned by a permanent cadre of officers and crew? Even if they only had enough for the Raddus to have a skeleton crew of regulars those are the people that should have put backbone into the rest of the fleet. If they were so badly trained, that shows piss poor leadership going all the way to Leia.

I didn't mean that the Raddus didn't have a permanent crew for ship ops. It definitely did. And it may be different from the organizational leadership of the Resistance, since the Raddus had more people than its own crew, i.e. the evacuees from the base and the other ships.

That doesn't matter, he made his position known. Why did nobody from Holdo's command take it upon themselves to straighten Poe out? Ask a sailor what would happen if that situation came up in the USN and I'd bet money that it wouldn't go down like it did in TLJ.

Who the hell knows? It's already clear that the Resistance is full of irregulars, after Poe spoke with Holdo he was speaking with members of his own cadre. And unless Holdo's subordinates divulged the plan, what could have been said to Poe - on-screen or off-screen - to straighten him out? His original commanders tried to say "no, don't send our bombers on a run that'll decimate them" and he couldn't get that in his head.

Leia let her emotions get to her and put both Poe and Holdo in a bad situation by removing his rank the way she did.

IDK how is that different from any of the "take off your badge and hand me your gun" moment from any other show? If Leia or Holdo were chewing a cigar, wearing suspenders, in an NYPD office, it would've been more realistic

And who the hell knows how paperwork is done in a society that doesn't even have paper, AND during a crisis in a span of hours, AND in a group of ragtag irregulars that's a smorgasbord of guerrilla cells.

Prove that his rank was actually lowered using official Resistance policy or that such a policy exists. If your argument is that his rank can be stripped in a matter of hours just because Leia's in a bad mood prove that she acted properly and that his demotion was official.

She said he was demoted. If this was in any other show would we be questioning the demotion? Or are we expecting a Brooklyn Nine-Nine where Holt will go no, you don't actually turn over your gun and badge to the chief, you file paperwork and THEN turn over the gun and badge to the quartermaster or something

[FaxModem1]

Rommie, I'm going to tell you this. Regardless of tone, which IMO, was still professional, he was still a subordinate asking for orders.

Holdo started the fight because he used the wrong rank. As I've said before, whether that was due to his slip of the tongue, or outright lying, she started a fight for very little reason. Maybe she was stressed and needed to vent at someone, but she was in charge, and should have rectified that immediately by pointing out that she's extremely busy and is trying to get everything done, and give her a few minutes to get this done and she'll brief him. Even if she doesn't trust him, or doesn't want him doing anything, having him lifting crates onto transports will make sure he's out of the way, and isn't as openly insulting and counterproductive as insulting him for being a 'flyboy' and telling him to go away.

Honestly, I thought that her rebuke of him was pretty mild, considering that (willfully nor not) he introduced himself by misrepresenting his rank after just being demoted for... disobey orders and thereby getting a bunch of people killed. Was she the absolute model of professionalism? No. No one is saying Holdo's perfect here. But its a fairly minor and sin, and hardly amounts to either a justification or an explanation for Poe's subsequent behaviour.

Not trying to dogpile you, so take this as me trying to figure this out. I still consider Holdo a bad leader due to her conduct, but I think it's because she's illsuited for command, as it makes her misjudge people, as opposed to when she isn't in charge of the situation, as proven by her more approving tone of Poe after they're loading his unconscious body onto the transport.

After rewatching the actual argument scene when the other ships in their flotilla are destroyed. An officer tells Poe that Holdo had banished him from the bridge after their initial conversation. That seems like an overreaction to his initial inquiry about what the plan was and lying about his rank. And it isn't this scene, where both the medical ship and the Ninka are destroyed, that Poe
actually angrily storms in, asking what her plan is, since they lost two good captains for no reason at all. That's seems like an unwarranted grudge on her part.

I think the most plausible thing here is that she sorely misjudged Poe, and didn't realize that once the plan was explained to him, as Leia did, he'd do what he could to keep it going and help. (While still majorly messing it up by broadcasting it to people off the ship). My reasoning for this is that after the mutiny, she calls him a troublemaker and that she likes him. So, I'm not sure if she just really misjudged him, and didn't realize his dedication until after everything was said and done. Or if having Leia back in charge gave her the chance to reevaluate him when she didn't have the flotilla's weight on her shoulders, and she could be more observant of him as a person.

[Jub]

So no apology for using a misogynist, white supremacist slur.

Jub, you have a tendency to attack and smear me, then pompously demand that I address your arguments or concede, while either using that as a pretext to force me to engage with your personal abuse, or trying to force me to "prove" an endless slew of minutia. Now I answered your post before, perhaps more sharply than I needed to, but hey, at least I didn't use misogynist/white supremacist slurs against you, so I'm still winning on tone. You responded to me, in part, by denying that you were being misogynistic while using the afforementioned notorious misogynist/white supremacist slur.

I'm arguing with about half a dozen people here (there are also board rules against dog-piling), and contrary to your libel I have not "run away" from the thread. But I will prioritize the ones who didn't just respond to me by using a misogynist, white supremacist slur. If you want to take that as a concession, go ahead.

Do you know why I used the term I did Rom? I used it because you keep arguing that people are attacking Holdo because she's a woman.

I challenge you to point a single attack on this message board that focuses on Holdo's gender. My jockstrap comment absolutely does not count, because - and you probably don't know this - it' a well-known sports term used to compare two players (i.e. "Crosby couldn't carry Gretzky's jockstrap") there's no sexism intended or implied by using that in this debate. The way I went at you is mocking you for bringing Holdo's gender into a debate that has nothing to do with what may or may not exist in a fictional character's pants.

You have a bad habit of bringing shit from off this board into your debates here and it needs to stop.

-----

What kind of failure? The mutiny didn't doom them nor as far as we see actually shed blood, it swiftly failed and they still escaped. But if you're still categorizing Poe's op-sec mistakes (leading to the FO detecting the Resistance Cloak) as Holdo's mistakes then there's no satisfying you. (On that note, jesus christ why is a blabbermouth like Poe in such a rank?!) And by that logic, in Poe's defiance earlier on that led to the decimation of their bomber squad, all those deaths were Leia's fault!

Having a mutiny at all is a failure of leadership. Failing to brig Poe is a failure of leadership. Failure to delegate is a failure of leadership. These are all things that Holdo, as commanding officer was responsible for.

She did know what she was doing. But nonetheless war and chains of command doesn't mean people are placed in the positions they want.

Then why accept the rank that she held? If you don't want command don't take the rank it's as simple as that.

I didn't mean that the Raddus didn't have a permanent crew for ship ops. It definitely did. And it may be different from the organizational leadership of the Resistance, since the Raddus had more people than its own crew, i.e. the evacuees from the base and the other ships.

Then the Holdo should have used either the crew from the ship she originally commanded for security or leaned on the Raddus' crew to do it. It's fair to say that we can expect that Raddus to have the best crew in the fleet.

Who the hell knows? It's already clear that the Resistance is full of irregulars, after Poe spoke with Holdo he was speaking with members of his own cadre. And unless Holdo's subordinates divulged the plan, what could have been said to Poe - on-screen or off-screen - to straighten him out? His original commanders tried to say "no, don't send our bombers on a run that'll decimate them" and he couldn't get that in his head.

They don't say anything, they lay him out and let the MPs sort it out afterward. That's a realistic scenario for how Holdo's crew should have dealt with Poe if Holdo was a well respected leader.

IDK how is that different from any of the "take off your badge and hand me your gun" moment from any other show? If Leia or Holdo were chewing a cigar, wearing suspenders, in an NYPD office, it would've been more realistic

Those guys are playing to a shitty trope and should be investigated for abuse of power. I expect better of Leia (and the writers) than that.

And who the hell knows how paperwork is done in a society that doesn't even have paper, AND during a crisis in a span of hours, AND in a group of ragtag irregulars that's a smorgasbord of guerrilla cells.

In that case why should Poe accept his demotion? If there are no rules why can't Poe just declare himself to hold arbitraryly high rank?

She said he was demoted. If this was in any other show would we be questioning the demotion? Or are we expecting a Brooklyn Nine-Nine where Holt will go no, you don't actually turn over your gun and badge to the chief, you file paperwork and THEN turn over the gun and badge to the quartermaster or something

Yeah, I expect things to work like they do in reality, or at least a close approximation of it. Especially in a series formerly known for delving into that kind of thing. Go back and look at how much politicking and backstabbing we see in the OT and compare it to how the same types of situations are set up in the ST. It's night and day.

[The Romulan Republic]

Rommie, I'm going to tell you this. Regardless of tone, which IMO, was still professional, he was still a subordinate asking for orders.

Holdo started the fight because he used the wrong rank. As I've said before, whether that was due to his slip of the tongue, or outright lying, she started a fight for very little reason. Maybe she was stressed and needed to vent at someone, but she was in charge, and should have rectified that immediately by pointing out that she's extremely busy and is trying to get everything done, and give her a few minutes to get this done and she'll brief him. Even if she doesn't trust him, or doesn't want him doing anything, having him lifting crates onto transports will make sure he's out of the way, and isn't as openly insulting and counterproductive as insulting him for being a 'flyboy' and telling him to go away.

Honestly, I thought that her rebuke of him was pretty mild, considering that (willfully nor not) he introduced himself by misrepresenting his rank after just being demoted for... disobey orders and thereby getting a bunch of people killed. Was she the absolute model of professionalism? No. No one is saying Holdo's perfect here. But its a fairly minor and sin, and hardly amounts to either a justification or an explanation for Poe's subsequent behaviour.

Not trying to dogpile you, so take this as me trying to figure this out. I still consider Holdo a bad leader due to her conduct, but I think it's because she's illsuited for command, as it makes her misjudge people, as opposed to when she isn't in charge of the situation, as proven by her more approving tone of Poe after they're loading his unconscious body onto the transport.

After rewatching the actual argument scene when the other ships in their flotilla are destroyed. An officer tells Poe that Holdo had banished him from the bridge after their initial conversation. That seems like an overreaction to his initial inquiry about what the plan was and lying about his rank. And it isn't this scene, where both the medical ship and the Ninka are destroyed, that Poe
actually angrily storms in, asking what her plan is, since they lost two good captains for no reason at all. That's seems like an unwarranted grudge on her part.

I think the most plausible thing here is that she sorely misjudged Poe, and didn't realize that once the plan was explained to him, as Leia did, he'd do what he could to keep it going and help. (While still majorly messing it up by broadcasting it to people off the ship). My reasoning for this is that after the mutiny, she calls him a troublemaker and that she likes him. So, I'm not sure if she just really misjudged him, and didn't realize his dedication until after everything was said and done. Or if having Leia back in charge gave her the chance to reevaluate him when she didn't have the flotilla's weight on her shoulders, and she could be more observant of him as a person.

Clarification: we have no evidence that both escorts' captains went down with the ship. We only see one die. For all we know, the other evacuated in time. But that's a fairly minor nitpick here.

Overall... you could interpret the facts that way you describe, if you're inclined to do so. You could also come up with other interpretations. I think its possible, for example, that Holdo reevaluated Poe once Leia woke up and she saw that Leia (who she is clearly close to) had a high regard for him. In fact, if she gives a lot of weight to Leia's opinion, and all she initially knew about him was "Leia had him demoted", that might explain a lot right there. I also think, however, that its difficult to judge Holdo as a commander when she's in a situation so stacked against her and the film deliberately gives us a skewed perception of events. Judging only by her interactions with Poe, you can make a case that's she's quick to judgement, needlessly confrontational, overly-secretive, and excessively rigid/inflexible in her battle plans. Her brief interactions with Leia, and her actions during the final minutes of her life, give the impression of someone who is warm, perceptive, deeply loyal and courageous, and capable of quickly innovating in the ultimate crisis. But we see far less of her from that perspective.

If I tend to favor interpretations that show Holdo in a more favorable light, its partly because there are a lot more advocates for the other side here, and I'm trying to even the scales, not because I think that Holdo is completely flawless and not alternative interpretations can be made.

[tezunegari]

If I tend to favor interpretations that show Holdo in a more favorable light, its partly because there are a lot more advocates for the other side here, and I'm trying to even the scales, not because I think that Holdo is completely flawless and not alternative interpretations can be made.

So you are only playing devil's advocat / thenth man just because the majority considers Holdo a bad example of leadership by what is shown on screen?
Not because there is actually evidence that we overlooked or missed.

Your whole reasoning to support Holdo is "The majority on this board dislikes her, I must argue in her favor"?

Do I understand that correctly?

[Shroom Man 777]

Having a mutiny at all is a failure of leadership. Failing to brig Poe is a failure of leadership. Failure to delegate is a failure of leadership. These are all things that Holdo, as commanding officer was responsible for.

What if on the subordinates' end there's a dearth of professionalism, procedure and even training? If say a general who is doing things on point but on the eve of a risky operation mercenaries in his army chicken out and leave, is the mercs' dereliction that general's fault? These things happen in irregular forces, guerrilla groups, terror cells, etc. The Resistance is not a regular force that operates cohesively, particularly when these components have just connected within hours.

Then why accept the rank that she held? If you don't want command don't take the rank it's as simple as that.

There was no one else of such rank? A huge chunk of the command staff got decimated with Ackbar.

Then the Holdo should have used either the crew from the ship she originally commanded for security or leaned on the Raddus' crew to do it. It's fair to say that we can expect that Raddus to have the best crew in the fleet.

To do what? (If it's running the ship, that's what they were doing presumably)

They don't say anything, they lay him out and let the MPs sort it out afterward. That's a realistic scenario for how Holdo's crew should have dealt with Poe if Holdo was a well respected leader.

Maybe they were busy chasing after suspected deserters, which was a problem the film already alludes to. Or, well, like they know he's wrong but he's also a Hero of Starkiller Base and expected better?

In that case why should Poe accept his demotion? If there are no rules why can't Poe just declare himself to hold arbitraryly high rank?

I didn't mean that there were no rules or protocols, I mean we have no idea how the unseen clerical processes works - do you just shout it and the onboard computers just fill in the holo-spreadsheet? Maybe it was automatically registered, maybe this rag-tag stripped down force does such things quickly and records it with their tech? From our POV, who knows how they work?

Yeah, I expect things to work like they do in reality, or at least a close approximation of it. Especially in a series formerly known for delving into that kind of thing. Go back and look at how much politicking and backstabbing we see in the OT

What? Aside from Lando at Bespin, C3PO with the Ewoks and possibly the attempt at negotiating with Jabba, what politicking is there in the OT? In the Prequels there was a load of that stuff, which [tangent] IMO kind of affected the pacing[/tangent] and I don't think Jar-Jar going "let's make him Emperor" is that compelling with regards to power plays, rank promotion or demotion.

Clarification: we have no evidence that both escorts' captains went down with the ship. We only see one die. For all we know, the other evacuated in time. But that's a fairly minor nitpick here.

No you see in the Expanded Universe that particular type of ship required an actual person to pilot it with no automated functions because of the anti-machine-intelligence proscriptions enshrined after the Jutlerian Bihad in the Dark Age of Machinery when the metallicans rose up in the galactic chaos after Exar Kun's sun-busting which is a thematic counterpoint to the biological horror of the Yuzan Vong and the killbots were defeated by giant shoulder pads which Dash Rendar's attire harkens back to you see in this issue of blah blah blah.

I don't think TRR is doing it just to be contrarian to the majority of the board, more like just to respond to the overreaction. Besides it's probably not the majority of the board anyway.

[Jub]

What if on the subordinates' end there's a dearth of professionalism, procedure and even training? If say a general who is doing things on point but on the eve of a risky operation mercenaries in his army chicken out and leave, is the mercs' dereliction that general's fault? These things happen in irregular forces, guerrilla groups, terror cells, etc. The Resistance is not a regular force that operates cohesively, particularly when these components have just connected within hours.

That's on their leaders to hammer out of them. Holdo should have trained her forces to deal with stress and follow her orders under tough conditions. Then she should have used those forces to, at the very least, secure the Raddus and instill some confidence in the rest of the crew.

There was no one else of such rank? A huge chunk of the command staff got decimated with Ackbar.

Why take the rank of Vice Admiral if you don't want the possibility of leading the whole damn thing someday? That's not some low rank that you'd never expect to lead a force under adverse conditions, it's a rank that could command half the feet at Endor.

To do what? (If it's running the ship, that's what they were doing presumably)

To put some backbone into people and secure the ship. You know, the stuff that didn't happen in the movie.

Maybe they were busy chasing after suspected deserters, which was a problem the film already alludes to. Or, well, like they know he's wrong but he's also a Hero of Starkiller Base and expected better?

Then give is a scene of that! Give us anything so we can, with the benefit of hindsight, say that Holdo wasn't an awful leader. We get none of that and it hurts any argument that Holdo is a good leader.

I didn't mean that there were no rules or protocols, I mean we have no idea how the unseen clerical processes works - do you just shout it and the onboard computers just fill in the holo-spreadsheet? Maybe it was automatically registered, maybe this rag-tag stripped down force does such things quickly and records it with their tech? From our POV, who knows how they work?

Usually, you'd at least expect a formal hearing where people outside of the situation make the call. You know, a proper procedure that takes heat of the moment decesions out of the equation for the sake of stability and order.

What? Aside from Lando at Bespin, C3PO with the Ewoks and possibly the attempt at negotiating with Jabba, what politicking is there in the OT?

Vader dealing with Tarkin on the Death Star. Mentions that the Senate had been dissolved setting the tone that those higher up in the Empire are now able to take what they want without recourse. Leia pretending to be a diplomat. When Vader chokes a mofo and promotes somebody else, literally over their dead body we've already established that it's just how he does business. Politics was key to the OT even if it didn't take center stage.

[Shroom Man 777]

Holdo's forces didn't break from the stress, they stayed the course. Poe and his clique were the ones who didn't. Yes, she should've used those forces to secure the Raddus - and we DO see them take precautions against deserters, that's how Finn got tased. I don't know if Rose was part of Holdo's team... and she ended up joining Finn's mission anyway. Jesus.

It could be a nice theme if the whole Poe being rash and reckless and getting people killed, Holdo having her hands full herding cats and orphans since everyone else dead, Hux and Kylo's sibling rivalry, Snoke's bullshit, was to illustrate how ad hoc and actually impractical and even comically disorganized revolutionary groups can be. Some rise because they're favored by patrons, others just because they're the only ones left and put up quite a fight even though being badass doesn't mean they're capable of higher responsibilities, and others are just ambitious snakes. Reminds me of the bullshit in the Philippine Revolution with the heroic mythologized figures who are actually just lost individuals winging it as everything burns around them.

Usually, you'd at least expect a formal hearing where people outside of the situation make the call. You know, a proper procedure that takes heat of the moment decesions out of the equation for the sake of stability and order.

And if there's no time for that (like say when fleeing from an enemy armada in damaged and depleted vessels), the demotions don't go through? Who knows what procedure is like in a resistance that has actual space royalty as Generals, etc.

Vader dealing with Tarkin on the Death Star. Mentions that the Senate had been dissolved setting the tone that those higher up in the Empire are now able to take what they want without recourse. Leia pretending to be a diplomat. When Vader chokes a mofo and promotes somebody else, literally over their dead body we've already established that it's just how he does business. Politics was key to the OT even if it didn't take center stage.

I see what you mean, though most of those examples were more of quick but well-done ways of setting up the context and even then the verbal sparring isn't really a clue of "realistic protocols." For this specific subject, though, the only remotely relevant example is the one with Vader murdering his subordinate and... that's worse lol.

[The Romulan Republic]

If I tend to favor interpretations that show Holdo in a more favorable light, its partly because there are a lot more advocates for the other side here, and I'm trying to even the scales, not because I think that Holdo is completely flawless and not alternative interpretations can be made.

So you are only playing devil's advocat / thenth man just because the majority considers Holdo a bad example of leadership by what is shown on screen?
Not because there is actually evidence that we overlooked or missed.

Your whole reasoning to support Holdo is "The majority on this board dislikes her, I must argue in her favor"?

Do I understand that correctly?

No, and that's a blatant misrepresentation of what I said.

I said that there are multiple interpretations that can be made, some of which are more favorable to Holdo than others, that its difficult to pin down which is correct because the film gives us an incomplete and slanted perspective, and that I therefore tend to argue the more favorable ones to lend some balance to the debate.

Note: None of those interpretations include your absurd claims about how Holdo is to blame for everything Poe does wrong, implications that her actions are driven by sexual tension with Poe, etc. There's a range of reasonable positions that can be argued, but there are also some things that are just completely fabricated, or at best massively reaching.

[Jub]

Holdo's forces didn't break from the stress, they stayed the course. Poe and his clique were the ones who didn't. Yes, she should've used those forces to secure the Raddus - and we DO see them take precautions against deserters, that's how Finn got tased. I don't know if Rose was part of Holdo's team... and she ended up joining Finn's mission anyway. Jesus.

You don't set a lone tech to guard anything important, so I think it's safe to assume that Holdo didn't set Rose up as a guard.

And if there's no time for that (like say when fleeing from an enemy armada in damaged and depleted vessels), the demotions don't go through? Who knows what procedure is like in a resistance that has actual space royalty as Generals, etc.

That depends on what procedure says happens. In the US it takes a court-martial though an officer of sufficient rank can dock your pay in a more timely fashion and let the court figure out the rest. In Poe's case, Leia probably should have confined him to his quarters herself until things were properly sorted out.

VI see what you mean, though most of those examples were more of quick but well-done ways of setting up the context and even then the verbal sparring isn't really a clue of "realistic protocols." For this specific subject, though, the only remotely relevant example is the one with Vader murdering his subordinate and... that's worse lol.

Yeah, but we know Imperial command is supposed to be awful because it was set up that way in ANH. The ST gives us zero setup and expects us to just roll with whatever happens next.

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No, and that's a blatant misrepresentation of what I said.

You literally typed, "I tend to favor interpretations that show Holdo in a more favorable light, its partly because there are a lot more advocates for the other side here, and I'm trying to even the scales" if that isn't an admission of playing devil's advocate I don't know what is.

I said that there are multiple interpretations that can be made, some of which are more favorable to Holdo than others, that its difficult to pin down which is correct because the film gives us an incomplete and slanted perspective, and that I therefore tend to argue the more favorable ones to lend some balance to the debate.

So you're giving Holdo the benefit of the doubt because the movie's direction was mean to her...? Is that really your argument?

There's a range of reasonable positions that can be argued, but there are also some things that are just completely fabricated, or at best massively reaching.

Of course, none of your arguments reach or rely on inference about things that didn't happen on screen.