Andor Season 2 Discussion/Commentary

[Galvatron]

Spoiler

So what happened to that fancy TIE fighter?

[MKSheppard]

Replying to Galvatron for Ep 1-3 question
Spoiler

Galv:
So what happened to that fancy TIE fighter?

Presumably it was torn apart in a secret hangar with some information fed to Rebel Sympathizers at Incom.

The "unfinished" plot questions like that are the big victims of Andor compressing 4 seasons worth of plots into a single season. There really isn't time for each plot arc to "breathe", due to the need to jump ahead a significant amount of time for the next arc.

This is where post credit sequences come in handy...

[MKSheppard]

More Episode 4-6 Commentary
Spoiler

1.) Forest Whittaker must be loving his job -- he gets to chew the scenery as Saw; and even this scenery chewing shows key backstory:

A.) Establishes highly refined Starfighter fuel as very toxic, very dangerous; which is credible. Also explains why they can't just poke a hole in a space oil tank farm and drain the fuel directly.

B.) Establishes how everyone keeps control of Rylium even in remote areas where only automated refueling can be done -- that complicated electromechanical 'lock' that operates on prime numbers acting to prevent unauthorized personnel from running the fuel pumps and stealing your rylium.

C.) It appears that "X-Wings" may exist in universe several years before ANH as Saw's gang appears to operate them. Are these T-65 models or are they an immediate precursor T-50 model in between the Z-95 and T-65?

2.) The scene where Cassian shows up at Luthien's "front" business is really really stupid. I wanted to throw a brick at the TV over that. After all the trouble of setting up safehouses and a non connected notification system (the flashing beacon); Cassian decides, as a Top #1000 wanted man in the Empire, to show up at Luthien's Legitimate business? When an episode or so earlier they were talking about how they couldn't go to the park, etc because the Empire is now installing more and more camera-based surveillance systems at those places?

[Galvatron]

1C pleases me.

[MKSheppard]

Episode 7-9 commentary:
Spoiler

Overall Reactions:

HOLY SHIT. I'm spun up and want to see Episodes 10-12 now now now now. I don't want to wait until next week.

Specific Subpoints:

1.) It appears that Luthien's group + Saw's group + the guys at Yavin are all loosely interconnected; how, we don't know exactly.

2.) Luthien's idea of operations burns people out fast.

3.) The idea/concept of a Force Healer neatly explains how so many Jedi (relatively speaking) were able to escape Order 66 and the Inquistitors for so long: "The guerrilla must move amongst the people as a fish swims in the sea".

If there's a relatively large number of low-level/latent Force users who have no idea what they're doing or can only do low level stuff, then that provides a population for the Jedi to hide out in.

4.) When Mothma's driver asked what they were doing for the next few days, because they had to update the Senate parking plan... *chef's kiss* I love it when the bad guys are competent; and can think one step ahead.

5.) Speaking of bad guy competency; the Gorman Plan had overlapping parts (concurrency) over the years with Plan B alternates from the start:

A.) Last ditch efforts over the last few years to find a synthetic substitute for the Khalkate.

Obviously Palpatine doesn't want to destabilize the skinsuit of the Old Republic he's keeping around in the Early Empire until he's got all his Ts crossed and i's dotted. Deep core mining an old/rich world so badly that planetary core stability is threatened will cause unrest; so efforts to find an alternate are genuinely looked at.

B.) In conjunction with A, if you decide to go the "strip mine" route, you need to have the job done as fast as possible so that it's done and in the can within a short period of time to prevent any more unrest than is necessary.

Strip mining a planetary core that fast needs a lot of equipment; and while the Empire has unimaginable levels of industry, there might be large amounts of specialized equipment required for this job with long lead times between order/delivery.

Waiting until you have 105% of the equipment needed for the job on hand lets you rapidly stage the whole thing across the planet, instead of slowly opening up drillholes every few months as equipment orders trickle in from the manufacturers.

C.) Even the preparatory propaganda was years in the making -- I'd have to go back and recheck when exactly in the timeline (years before Yavin) that Krennic did the initial presentation on Gorman. This was a careful plan coming together, not a half ass operation thrown together overnight to please the Fuhrer's Emperor's latest demand.

6.) The guy at the front desk of the hotel recognized Cassian from the last trip he made and figured out who he was right from the start in this episode. Notice how he "somehow" found a hotel room for Cassian overlooking the plaza? A hotel room that's a perfect sniper nest?

7.) BDSM SCENE BDSM SCENE BDSM SCENE

8.) Once again, the Empire needs a pretext for legality and is willing to do impressive/disgusting levels of wetwork to get said pretext(s). That black-suited officer who arrived to assist Dedra is pretty much the textbook example of the old WEG Imperial Intelligence's Destabilization Branch.

Sending out a group of ill trained Imperial Army recruits into a hostile crowd and then lighting things off with a sniper...that's impressively evil.

More later.

[Elfdart]

Are we talking canon or headcanon? In canon, the official narrative is that Alderaan was destroyed for treason.

Galvs, I had a long post typed up about the immediate timeline for ANH (which I may recycle for an unique thread later on); and decided to skip that for now.

Gilroy in Rogue One having the Tantive IV literally blasting out of Admiral Raddus' ship over Scarif makes sense now.

Not really. Remember in ANH when the Empire has two goals? Remember what the Empire's two main goals were in ANH?

1) Recover the Death Star plans.
2) Find the secret base where the Rebels keep their long-range fighters.

They failed at #1 because the crew of the blockade runner bought Leia just enough time to hide the plans in R2-D2, who time and again slipped right under the noses of the Imperial forces. How did they fail at #2? Leia never cracked under torture or "truth serum", but surely one of her crew taken alive would have talked -even in a desperate effort to save their own lives. The only way the secret couldn't have been given up is if the crew had never been to Yavin and didn't know there was a Rebel base on the moon*. So having Leia, her ship and her crew on Yavin, then inside a Rebel warship is kinda stupid. It should have been a ship fleeing the battle (the one the Rebels won, according to ANH, but Rogue One shows them losing the battle), knowing they're done for, then transmitting to Leia's ship, which just happened to be in the area, or was there on some other mission.

* Not just Leia's crew. How "secret" is this base when everyone just comes and goes like it's Laverne & Shirley's apartment?

Rick Worley defends the prequels as misunderstood masterpieces, praising their visual symbolism, mythic storytelling, political themes and artistic integrity. Then Andor comes along and does all of that better, and suddenly it’s "IP-mining slop for middle-aged manchildren."

He claims Star Wars is about myth, politics and archetypes until someone other than George Lucas executes those ideas with actual discipline and nuance. Then it's just "dark and dour" and "YA for dads."

This isn't about craft. It's about worship. If Lucas didn’t direct it, Worley can't take it seriously. No matter how well it embodies everything he claims to value.

The problem is that Andor is more of a THX-1138 spin-off than a Star Wars one.

[Galvatron]

Calling Scarif a loss doesn’t make sense. The Rebels accomplished their objective: they got the Death Star plans out.

That's a win. Yeah, they lost a lot of people and ships, but they knew going in it was basically a suicide mission. The point wasn't to survive, it was to succeed.

[MKSheppard]

Leia never cracked under torture or "truth serum", but surely one of her crew taken alive would have talked -even in a desperate effort to save their own lives. The only way the secret couldn't have been given up is if the crew had never been to Yavin and didn't know there was a Rebel base on the moon

Some points to make:

1.) The Tantive IV is assigned to the Alderaanian diplomatic fleet. Are you going to use an official diplo ship (which is heavily tracked wherever it goes) to go to the secret base unless you absolutely have to?

All Major Elfdart at the ISB has to do is get the official shipping logs from the Bureau of Shipping as to where the Tantive IV was/passed near. You can then cross reference those locations with the known speed of the ships' hyperdrive to get an idea of where to drop your probe droids. So ergo, the Tantive IV isn't used to make secret spy drops.

2.) In keeping with #1; Leia hadn't yet told her crew their ultimate destination when they got waylaid by the Devastator. Everyone on board under torture by Vader is going to answer the question 'where were you going?' with:

"Tatooine!" [to get Obi Wan Kenobi]

Even if Vader then tortures them to death, they're still going to credibly say they don't know anything, because they don't.

The ship's computer won't be of any use, because Leia never entered their final destination into it; so there won't be any data remnants that survived multiple wipes.

[MKSheppard]

Episodes 7-9 Discussion re Elfdart's point -- broken out here because spoiler tags break.
Spoiler

ELFDART:
How "secret" is this base when everyone just comes and goes like it's Laverne & Shirley's apartment?

This is actually a minor/medium level plot point in Episode 7 of Andor:

========================

Andor: We filed an exit plan.

Rebel: Without a destination.

Andor: It's a personal trip.

Rebel: This ship's to be fitted with hyper-comms tomorrow.

Cassian: We'll be back soon.

Rebel: That is unacceptable, and you know it. This isn't a base for privateers. Those who enjoy the security of Yavin must proclaim their loyalties.

Cassian: Don't push too hard. You know where I stand. The day I need permission to come and go, I'm gone.

Rebel: That day is near.

========================

After that exchange, I actually paused the episode to talk with Frank Hipper about that.

Yavin at that point IMHO, isn't an "operational" base yet.

It's still in the parlance of the old WEG Rebel Alliance Sourcebook (1E/2E) -- a "safe world" -- a place where people who are "hot" can be stashed -- i.e. if one of Luthien's agents ends up blowing their cover badly, Luthien through his connections with the proto-Rebels can have his agent stashed on Yavin.

This may be why Cassian and Bix have that quasi cabin out in the woods -- this way if the Empire (or associated forces) find Yavin, there will be enough time for them (or others like them) to disappear into the woods while the Empire is interrogating the support people at the main Temple Base.

It's clear from that exchange that pretty soon they were going to be tightening up the entry/exit rules -- presumably this was caused by the beginning of large scale training at Yavin; per Vel:

We're not Luthen's puppets anymore. We're not a bunch of maniacs running around Aldhani. We're building a real army.

Before the start of large scale combat training; you can offer credible explanations to the ISB, if necessary:

A.) We're a small commercial outfit associated with $PLANET_NAME or $CORPORATION_NAME. We got hired to construct a refuelling depot for them here.

B.) Those Y-Wings? Self defense against pirates, they're known to be operating in this region of space.

But once you start cycling whole squadrons of starfighters through the place or training companies' worth of troops; all those excuses go out the window.

Later in Episode 9, it's revealed that there's only one official outgoing flight every day, which helps limit the spread of information about the base.

Now; I do have to take umbrage with Gilroy over a few things, but mostly this bit:

Yavin never should have been referred to specifically by name...ESPECIALLY INSIDE THE IMPERIAL SENATE BUILDING. If they were bugging every Senator's office; they would be bugging the elevators too!

It should have been a codeword -- Site Convergence -- named after Palpatine's ancestral home on Naboo to further confuse things if it had been overheard or leaked.

"We're moving you to Site C," similar to how Los Alamos in WW2 was 'Site Y'.

But I can understand why Gilroy didn't go to that autistic level of detail -- at the end of the day, it's still Star Wars -- you have to keep things a little simplified so that the average normie doesn't need to keep a scratchpad of all the codenames and such.

For example, look at how simple the 'telltale' that Syril set up on his door on Ghorman was -- a piece of string attached to suction cups. That's pretty basic tradecraft.

[MKSheppard]

Episode 7-9 commentary Part II
Spoiler

1.) Both Luthen and the Empire have very SIMILAR project planning goals:

Luthen: Think about a planet like Ghorman in rebellion. A planet of wealth and status.

Cassian: And if it goes up in flames?

Luthen: It will burn... very brightly.

2.) Notice how Cassian and Syril are almost mirror images of each other? Particularly in how they get sucked into the orbit of certain types?

Syril = Dedra
Cassian = Luthen

Also notice how both of them decide "you know what? I'm out of here" -- they have a basic decency at their core that prevents them from going full amoral bastard (unlike say, Dedra or Luthen).

3.) This episode was (almost) about Syril enlisting in the cause.

Remember Nemik's Manifesto?

Freedom is a pure idea. It occurs spontaneously and without instruction. Random acts of insurrection are occurring constantly throughout the galaxy. There are whole armies, battalions that have no idea that they've already enlisted in the cause.

But then Syril saw Cassian in the midst of all the chaos -- the perfect example of the 'outside agitator' that he'd been trying to track for the last...two years? Why is Cassian here on Ghorman when all hell is breaking loose? Syril put together 2 + 2 and got 4 when he should have gotten 5.

4.) The Second Ghorman Massacre was astonishingly brutal. You can see why nobody really uses Battle Droids openly. They're the ultimate blunt instrument and very bad for PR purposes -- it's hard to spin KX droids killing dozens of people through direct blunt trauma on film into a glorious act.

5.) Stormtroopers are restored to their proper status as terrifying instruments of Imperial Policy. When you see them show up, you know that shit is truly going to hit the fan per their status as 'elites'. Also notice how while the Imperial Army + ISB + etc were all taking cover behind the nearest object(s); the Stormtroopers were slowly advancing at a steady upright pace, in spite of casualties, similar to the Tantive IV breaching scene in ANH?

6.) One thing I really like during this entire season is that when Dedra is doing Wetwork/Blackbag jobs on Ghorman, she doesn't contact Major Partagaz directly from her office; which would provide a paper trail. Instead, she has to go to a seemingly random terminal in the basement to get in touch with Partagaz.

7.) In keeping with #6; notice how Dedra is on the verge of a complete nervous breakdown following Syril's death, but she has to keep it all in because she's in the clandestine communications room, awaiting Partagaz's call? It wouldn't do good to show up on that secure line totally losing your shit.

8.) Another thing I really like about the entire run of Andor so far is that there are no cliche unnecessary cameos by either Vader or the Emperor.

Instead, the Emperor's name is used for internal dickwaving (look at me, I'm so important I had a 40 second meeting with the Emperor!) or when the characters need to signify that This Is Really Important [tm], imparting the unspoken feeling that you really don't want the Eye of Mordor that's the Emperor's personal attention to swing onto you as a result of your actions.

9.) We now have a completely new Imperial Uniform style in the Senate Blues. Away 501st Legion!

10.) I love all the little bits of detail that drop out from what we see in the Senate:

A.) Early morning Senate sessions to keep attendance down.

B.) Bail using Palpatine's own actions -- "Article 17-252 of Senate Protocols...allowing a Senior Senator, in the case of emergency may yield the floor freely, without interruption to another Senior Senator." against the Empire.

C.) Malicious compliance by the Senate's own staff, including a borged up female version of Lobot?

D.) The gloriously 1970s technological displays in the secret ISB surveillance room somewhere near the Senate.

11.) I talked at a bit of length with Frank Hipper IRL about the massive manpower sink that the Empire has in having actual human beings manning the security consoles for all the bugs in the Senate.

They could have just used droids for all that.

I think the SW galaxy deliberately runs things a bit messy to get as much employment as possible; i.e. lots of deliberately hidden jobs programs, like actual human drivers (perhaps as status symbols also) when a droid could drive just as well and won't be drunk at 6 AM in the morning, etc.

12.) I love how the Empire is a genuinely credible threat in this show -- they almost pull off a victory here because they've got so many agents and operatives all over the place -- "This is an ISB authorized arrest!"

13.) Mothma's clearly not used to violence as a member of the elite.

14.) Han Shot First [tm] is no longer the crowning moment of cynicism in Star Wars. It's been dethroned by "Kloris! Kloris! We found her!" That's absolutely a *chef's kiss* moment.

15.) The Proto-Rebels officially assigning Gold Squadron the credit for this escapade is another great cynical moment; which you can read two ways:

A.) The Rebels want to project a 'good guy' image to the greater galaxy for propaganda purposes, and Cassian isn't exactly poster material, with the way he outright murdered Kloris to effectuate their final escape.

B.) They want to preserve Cassian's usefulness as a 'wetwork' operative as long as possible. That's kind of impossible if his face is splashed all over the underground Holonet as the rescuer of Mon Mothma. This way, he gets to stay in the shadows as #213 on the Imperial Most Wanted List; rather than #4.

[Galvatron]

I was a little disappointed that they...
Spoiler

...missed an opportunity to show us the rebel base on Dantooine. Shouldn't it have preceded the one on Yavin?

[MKSheppard]

Reply to Galvatron
Spoiler

I was a little disappointed that they...

...missed an opportunity to show us the rebel base on Dantooine. Shouldn't it have preceded the one on Yavin?

I think this is one of the main casualties of the compression of 4 seasons into 1, along with the reliance on practical sets wherever possible.

I think Gilroy didn't have the money to do everything he originally wanted; especially after he decided that the Imperial Senate would be a key plot center; with as much shooting on location as possible there at either real world locations or physical sets on soundstages.

So it made sense to focus on Yavin as much as possible -- but then again, we still have three more episodes to go; perhaps the reason the Rebel Commander is so insistent on "locking down" Yavin is that the 'changeover' from Dantooine to Yavin is about to occur?

[Solauren]

For Galvatron and MKS Spoiler

It's also possible that Dantooine is a secondary base, or even just a safe house. It's not used much, so that's why Leia gave it up in A New Hope.

[Elfdart]

Calling Scarif a loss doesn’t make sense. The Rebels accomplished their objective: they got the Death Star plans out.

That's a win. Yeah, they lost a lot of people and ships, but they knew going in it was basically a suicide mission. The point wasn't to survive, it was to succeed.

Oh please. In the conference room of the Death Star, the top brass are in agreement: The Rebel Alliance can fight and win against the Imperial Starfleet. Not "make a hit-and-run raid" but actually defeat the Emperor's forces in battle. It's like the scene in Godfather 2 where mobsters are having a big pow-wow in Havana. Michael Corleone tells the assembled mafia dons that Castro's forces are not just a nuisance, but that they could win and overthrow Batista and if that happens, they can kiss their casinos, hotels, smuggling operations and whorehouses goodbye.

But you know what? I'm seriously considering a binge-watch of the series. If it's half as interesting as all the discussion about it*, maybe I won't be bored like I was in the first season. Besides, this is the best meme about a TV show I've seen since the last season of Game of Thrones, when someone posted a still of a crazed Danerys scorching an entire city with "Still With Her" (the slogan of Hillary's dead-enders) superimposed on it.



* Spoiler

Many years ago, a co-worker and I were invited to a sneak preview of Merchant-Ivory's production of Henry James' The Golden Bowl. My "date" was hoping Nick Nolte, Kate Beckinsale, Uma Thurman and especially Jeremy Northam would be there since she had a serious thing for him. No such luck, but Merchant and Ivory were there while the evening was hosted by celebrity ass-kisser journalist Bobbie Wygant. After about the fifth or sixth time she called M-I "the Rolls-Royce of cinema" I started to snicker every time she called them that. The movie started, so she finally shut the fuck up and my co-worker stopped elbowing me in the arm and ribs. The film was a total bore. Then the lights came up and before Wygant could say "Rolls-Royce of cinema" again, someone in the crowd asked the obvious question:

Why is this movie R-rated?

There was no real violence, no foul language, no tits (sorry, Uma Thurman fans), no ass (sorry Kate Beckinsale fans), no drug/alcohol abuse (sorry Nick Nolte fans)... nothing that would have shocked audiences a hundred years earlier when the book was published. Ismail Merchant said they asked the MPAA and never got a straight answer. They didn't have time to appeal or re-cut the film and in any event, they doubted younger people would want to see it anyway. The discussion about the ratings system, Henry James (apparently, I was one of only three or four people in a packed theater who read the book), adapting novels to film, etc was fascinating enough that my co-worker was no longer miffed that the stars didn't show (the promotional material made it seem like they would), and I didn't mind that Uma Thurman didn't whip 'em out in that snore fest of a movie.

But if Andor 2 is boring like Andor 1, I'm going to shower some people with buckets of yellow rain.

[Galvatron]

Calling Scarif a loss doesn’t make sense. The Rebels accomplished their objective: they got the Death Star plans out.

That's a win. Yeah, they lost a lot of people and ships, but they knew going in it was basically a suicide mission. The point wasn't to survive, it was to succeed.

Oh please. In the conference room of the Death Star, the top brass are in agreement: The Rebel Alliance can fight and win against the Imperial Starfleet. Not "make a hit-and-run raid" but actually defeat the Emperor's forces in battle. It's like the scene in Godfather 2 where mobsters are having a big pow-wow in Havana. Michael Corleone tells the assembled mafia dons that Castro's forces are not just a nuisance, but that they could win and overthrow Batista and if that happens, they can kiss their casinos, hotels, smuggling operations and whorehouses goodbye.

That scene in the Death Star conference room doesn't undermine the point, it reinforces it. The top brass finally realizes the Rebels aren't just idealistic pests pulling off isolated stunts. Scarif changed that. They got the Death Star plans, destroyed two Star Destroyers and escaped Vader. Suddenly this wasn't just a nuisance, it was a coordinated military operation with real stakes and real damage.

Michael's line in Godfather II fits perfectly. Before Scarif, the Empire treated the Rebellion like Castro's early guerrillas (annoying, but not worth panicking over). After Scarif, the conversation shifts. The Rebels aren't just causing trouble, they might actually win. That's what scares the Empire, not because they held territory or won a fleet engagement, but because they proved they could strike at the heart of Imperial power and walk away with the one thing that mattered.

That's not a loss. That's the moment the Empire starts sweating.