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.

[Mange]

For Galvatron and MKS

Spoiler

From ANH, it's pretty clear it was a significant base: "Our scoutships have reached Dantooine. They found the remains of a Rebel base, but they estimate it has been deserted for some time."

[MKSheppard]

Episodes 9-12 (Season 2 Finale Block) Commentary Part 1:
Spoiler

After all the discussion over whether Luthien was a hidden/secret Jedi (the lightsaber wings on his ship + that khyber crystal he was clutching in S1)...

...it turns out that he was just a random normie who started saying "Make it Stop" one day. I do wonder what branch he was with at the time -- was it Imperial Army, ISB, or just a local planetary milita type thing?

Stormtroopers Do the Dirty Deeds

That execution of civilians in retaliation for a sniper killing an Imperial the day before is something right out of the HOSTAGES TRIAL at Nuremberg; where the defendants pointed out that the British Manual of Military Law and the US Rules of Land Warfare (1940) allowed lots of stuff:

https://maint.loc.gov/law/mlr/pdf/rules ... e-1940.pdf

The offending forces or populations generally may lawfully be subjected to appropriate reprisals. Hostages taken and held for the declared purpose of insuring against unlawful acts by the enemy forces or people may be punished or put to death if the unlawful acts are nevertheless committed. Reprisals against prisoners of war are expressly forbidden by the Geneva convention of 1929.

That's word for word out of FM 27-10 (1 OCT 1940).

What they got List, et al for was exceeding the scope of reprisals -- you're supposed to measure yourselves and kill small amounts of hostages, not level entire villages.

It didn't escape my eye that they had Stormtroopers do the field executions; instead of using random Imperial Army soldiers -- the Empire uses Stormies when absolute reliability is needed; which makes Taramyn Barcona's (ex Stormie in the Aldhani heist group) defection all the more impressive -- what did the Empire force/tell Taramyn to do that caused him to break and nope the fuck out right into the Rebellion?

Luthien's tactics came back to bite him

Killing Lonni was a really bad mistake. With Lonni dead, there was a lot of information loss at each step in the "knowing chain" from Lonni --> Luthien --> Kleya --> Cassian to the point that the Rebel Leadership didn't believe Cassian at first; until further secondary information showed there was some fire where there was smoke.

It would have worked a lot better if an actual ISB supervisor was there, which begs the point that Luthien should have been thinking "wait...what could make an ISB supervisor break and start fearing the shadows?"

The only explanation I can come up with is that Luthien was under intense amounts of stress this last year on Coruscant -- the ISB tightening its net closer and closer; and wasn't thinking clearly that day.

Shame we never got an extra season of Andor to spread things out more.

Luthien was pretty canny with Lonni, though

This point comes from a redditor who pointed out that Luthien telling Lonni he's taking him to Yavin was a test. Luthien at that point had already decided to kill Lonni; but could get one last bit of information out of him. Whether or not the Empire had found Yavin by this point. Lonni's confusion at the name showed Luthien that the Empire had no idea where it was.

Imperial Semi-Competence Porn: If Dedra had just decided to rush Luthien instead of gloating, she would have captured him healthy and with most of the data banks intact. But she's spent what, five years of her life and untold amounts of stress from her superiors due to the AXIS case; so she wanted to gloat. She saves the day though by actually having a full tactical team on standby as well as an actual medical team at the ready in case SHTF.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Who will guard the guards themselves?) -- Major Partagaz sending an ISB Marshal to arrest Dedra at the hospital (where she's cleared an entire floor for Luthien) is another case of Competence Porn. It shows that there's a formalized system within the ISB to police their ranks if there's such a thing as an ISB Marshal.

More later...

[MKSheppard]

ISB Organization from ANDOR S1+S2
Spoiler

I went back to Season 1 Episode 4: "Aldhani" and started screencapping the ranks and people.

Partagaz has 9 consoles to his left, and 9 to his right; for a total of 18 people being directly supervised by Partagaz.

Just 18 people is too little for a million million worlds. What I believe we're seeing is the ISB version of one of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff's Directorates, presumably the J3 Operations Directorate; or in ISB parlance, I3.

Ranks in the ISB seem to go:

"Colonel" Yularen running the ISB at the top - 3R/3B (6T) single row badge.

Major Partagaz (5B) chairs his directorate I3, which is composed of:

Two (2) Captains (4B), Lagret and one unnamed black male who sits to Partagaz's left.

Sixteen (16) Lieutenants (3B) who oversee multiple sectors (in S1, Blevins has six while Dedra has two) as supervisors.

Sixteen (16) Sub-Lieutenants (2B) who are assigned to the Supervisors as Attendants (Heert is introduced as Dedra's Attendant in S1 before a promotion to Lieutenant later.)

If we assume the average Lieutenant on the council oversees five sectors, then the total number of sectors covered is about 95; or about the top 10% of all Sectors, also assuming the Empire has a thousand sectors at this point.

At first, I thought that Lagret was the XO to Partagaz's CO; but then I spotted the second Captain in the room.

Two options:

1.) Captains are for "special" locations-- i.e. Lagret and the other guy have that rank so they can handle Coruscant and other specialized areas where "rank bar waving" is necessary to get anywhere.

2.) If we assume that "Colonel" Yularen has his own version of this conference room; then there are 18 other ISB Majors (5B) running their own councils who would have to have "seconds" at those meetings -- that rank would be Captain (4B). This means that there has to be a second "backup" Captain who has appropriate rank to chair these council meetings when the Major-in-Charge and his Assistant are at higher level meetings being yelled at by Yularen.

[MKSheppard]

Episodes 9-12 (Season 2 Finale Block) Commentary Part 2:
Spoiler

I really don't have much time anymore, so I'll just bulletpoint out the things standing out for me:

1.) Competence -- The ISB Strike Team that they sent to grab Kleya did everything right -- didn't flag each other, told the inexperienced ISB Lt to stay behind in cover, set up security minders in the shuttle, at the main entrance to the building and tossed stun grenades into the apartment, instead of trying to feed themselves one at a time into the fatal funnel that was the doorway to the apartment.

They only lost because of the completely outside context problem of K2SO. "Are you with us?" "No."

I can't overstate how much I admire decent competency -- the entirety of the Ahsoka TV show could have been avoided if the Captain of that New Republic ship hadn't been such a blithering idiot when an unknown shuttle showed up while he was taking a high security prisoner back to Coruscant.

2.) That emergency radio walled up in the wall of the Safehouse so it wouldn't be easily found during a search of the safehouse.

3.) Restrictions on broadcasting from Yavin -- the Rebels stepped up their security and became far more rigorous since the last few episodes.

4.) ISB initially thinking Kleya was a strike team of three people, until they saw the surveillance footage from the cameras (in grainy VHS freeze frame). I like how they acknowledged surveillance exists in-universe; it's just a bit more cumbersome to access than IRL.

5.) Anyone else catch the analogies between OB1 turning off the tractor beam on the DS1 in ANH and Kleya turning off Luthien's Life support?

6.) Orson Krennic becomes a genuine villain here in his own right. Absolutely superb performance by Mendelsohn here, channeling Casey Affleck's Boris Pash from OPPENHEIMER. Lots of subtle details here -- when Krennic interrogates Dedra, he turns off all the surveillance systems in that cell, so that secrecy is maintained regarding the Death Star.

"I want the names I don't know."

He's running down the leak himself personally -- which makes his "hands on" behavior later in Rogue One (which I just rewatched) more believable.

7. Luthien tripped himself up by using the Haulcraft too long; Dedra made the connection in the "scavenged" files -- "When questioned, he said that he had been recruited by a man with a Fondor Haulcraft full of antiquities. In classic fashion, your team tortured him to death, and that crucial piece of information, rather than being directed my way, was buried.."

7.) I love all the little easter eggs: "Jedha Working Group" -- indicating that a subcommittee had to meet and come up with ways to plot how best to rip apart the Jedi ruins on Jedha for Kyber Crystals without riling up the population (too) much.

8.) Coruscant is the perfect place to run Special Ops from -- there are so many ships coming and going at any one point in time, that if you're not flying a known "hot" ship, you can just fake your way out and hide in existing traffic. This isn't the case with a place like Mos Eisley on Tatooine, which may see only two departures or arrivals per day.

9.) Admiral Raddus saying "Who's Kleya?" as well as them never returning to Ferrix or Rix Road during the remainder of Andor. Gilroy's vision of SW is a big universe where not everyone knows everything, and you don't keep returning to fucking Tatooine over and over.

10.) I remarked to Hipper that perhaps Krennic deliberately stashed Dedra at Narkina 5? Krennic knew that shit was going to roll downhill at ISB momentarily (He did warn Partigaz that he couldn't protect him earlier); and while Dedra was highly annoying for being a scavenger, she was somewhat competent. So stuff her in Narkina 5 until the heat rolls over and she can be eventually rehabilitated, ala Stalinist purge victims Koniev and Korolev.

Only...Krennic is the only one who knows why she's at Narkina 5 and he's gonna die in a few days

It's highly likely Dedra's forgotten for the next five years or so until the fall of the Empire.

11.) Krennic to everyone below him is the Eye of Mordor falling upon them, but the few people above him in the Hierarchy (Vader, Tarkin, presumably other Grand Moffs) shit on Krennic all the time -- probably because they have to cover for constant delays and cost overruns in the Death Star program.

12.) It shows how the Rebellion was able to survive for so long once things went "hot" with Scarif/Yavin -- because a good portion of the ISB general staff was purged right before the Empire was tested the most in it's history with the:

Dissolution of Senate
Vaporization of Alderaan
Destruction of Death Star

all within the space of about one (1) week.

Yes, there are many ambitious underlings below Partagan, Dedra, etc and all the others; but they don't have the experience in running high level ops; and it will take the ISB time to regain that institutional staff level expertise lost.

13. Frank Hipper and me agreed that if Dave Filoni was show runner, Kleya would have shoved Luthien into a medical crash cart and smuggled him out of the hospital, with help from a few plucky patients.

I also today that we would've had an episode set underground in the Ghorman Spider Hive, making contact with the Spider Hive Queen who agrees to swarm the Imperial bases at a set time; SPIDERS SPIDERS SPIDERS EVERYWHERE

Finally, someone else on Twitter thought things through for the ultimate Filoni-continuation of Andor:

https://x.com/bones4918/status/1922929076953604141

“So Dedra, dyes her hair dark brown, except for the very front bits, and then she dyes her uniform red, and her cellmates says she’s insane, with an Iceheart… then when the Emperor dies, there’s a power vacuum, and you see, the prison rises from the ocean depths, it’s Lusankya”