Star Wars: Andor

[MarkB]

Me too. But once you breach the other defenses, I feel the whole thing tumbles quickly. The guards aren't well armed, and the means of evading most of the defenses is just good electrical insulation. The guards are also shown to be short staffed.

The prisoners are actually well armed. They have the tensioners which would make brutal clubs that would basically match guard shock sticks, and they have laser or fusion cutters that in confined quarters would be almost as good as blasters. And they are all fit from hours of hard manual labor.

I think that one obvious problem with the prison as constructed is that it has very little down time for maintenance. The guards feel rushed. During the shift changes they have to get the cells cleaned, provide the clean uniforms, and fix all the stuff that is going to break from routine use. If you build a prison like this there are some really strong features, but at some level it's got the very same problems that the horribly designed zoos in Jurassic Park have - the system is so complicated that once one part of it breaks the whole thing breaks.

Think of all the things that have to happen that we haven't seen. They need some way to punish the room and floor supervisors. They need to move the production from one shift out of the room into a verification area to check the work, and someone has to check that work. There are portions of the factory that would have to have more freedom of movement between areas than the poor grunts on the factory floor. And there is clear evidence that the workers are being able to subvert their controls as they move. Shifts are talking to each other during the shift exchange using sign language. It really just takes one well-placed guy getting a hold of boots and the guards have a potentially cascading problem.

Their main security measure, aside from the electrified floor, is the physical separation between prisoners and guards, with the prisoners effectively self-policing. But that self-policing is based on the premise of using prisoners near the end of their sentences, on the assumption that they'll be reluctant to jeopardise their imminent freedom.

But the Public Order bill undermines that, by extending the sentences of all prisoners, which removes the incentive for good behaviour.

And there's one time when guards do enter the prisoners' area - when adding or removing prisoners. That seems like the point of vulnerability.

 

[embee]

Realization that didn't sink in until I had my coffee:

At the beginning of the episode, Cassian is brought in to fill a vacant spot at a table. He is the new guy. There is no mention of the prior prisoner.

At the end of the episode, a prisoner commits suicide. He is treated as a bit of refuse to haul away ("Oi... we're going to be smelling him in the morning."). Left unspoken is that there is now a new vacancy at a table in the room. Another "Cassian" will be filling it soon enough.

Also, I don't think that the punishment for the table in last place is electrocution (Level 3). I suspect it's Level 2. Intractable pain followed by more interminable labor.

 

[embee]

Me too. But once you breach the other defenses, I feel the whole thing tumbles quickly. The guards aren't well armed, and the means of evading most of the defenses is just good electrical insulation. The guards are also shown to be short staffed.

The prisoners are actually well armed. They have the tensioners which would make brutal clubs that would basically match guard shock sticks, and they have laser or fusion cutters that in confined quarters would be almost as good as blasters. And they are all fit from hours of hard manual labor.

I think that one obvious problem with the prison as constructed is that it has very little down time for maintenance. The guards feel rushed. During the shift changes they have to get the cells cleaned, provide the clean uniforms, and fix all the stuff that is going to break from routine use. If you build a prison like this there are some really strong features, but at some level it's got the very same problems that the horribly designed zoos in Jurassic Park have - the system is so complicated that once one part of it breaks the whole thing breaks.

Think of all the things that have to happen that we haven't seen. They need some way to punish the room and floor supervisors. They need to move the production from one shift out of the room into a verification area to check the work, and someone has to check that work. There are portions of the factory that would have to have more freedom of movement between areas than the poor grunts on the factory floor. And there is clear evidence that the workers are being able to subvert their controls as they move. Shifts are talking to each other during the shift exchange using sign language. It really just takes one well-placed guy getting a hold of boots and the guards have a potentially cascading problem.

I think that the prison is better crafted than you give it credit for.

It's not prisoners vs guards. It's cell blocks vs each other, tables against each other. prisoners against each other. And the worst enemy of all is despair.

Kino Loy is a prisoner. He's ultimately a straw boss. We don't know how long he's been there but only that he's got one year left. He wasn't assigned there. He was sentenced there.

There are 50 prisoners per room - Loy's the 50th prisoner. The rooms seem to average about 1 suicide a month. So after 4 years, a room will have, on average, lost an entire cohort to suicide.

As the straw boss, Loy represents the only possible "hope" - last long enough to be the boss.

That's goddamn insidious.

You say that all it takes is one guy getting a pair of guard boots. That's like saying that all it takes to put a man on the Moon is a rocket ship. How do you get the boots? If someone gets the boots, how do you know he'll go along with The Plan? This is clutch given that every prisoner is conditioned to view his fellow prisoners as rivals, not allies.

 

[MarkB]

I think that the prison is better crafted than you give it credit for.

It's not prisoners vs guards. It's cell blocks vs each other, tables against each other. prisoners against each other. And the worst enemy of all is despair.

Kino Loy is a prisoner. He's ultimately a straw boss. We don't know how long he's been there but only that he's got one year left. He wasn't assigned there. He was sentenced there.

There are 50 prisoners per room - Loy's the 50th prisoner. The rooms seem to average about 1 suicide a month. So after 4 years, a room will have, on average, lost an entire cohort to suicide.

As the straw boss, Loy represents the only possible "hope" - last long enough to be the boss.

That's goddamn insidious.

You say that all it takes is one guy getting a pair of guard boots. That's like saying that all it takes to put a man on the Moon is a rocket ship. How do you get the boots? If someone gets the boots, how do you know he'll go along with The Plan? This is clutch given that every prisoner is conditioned to view his fellow prisoners as rivals, not allies.

Add to that, the primary means of punishment is general, not targeted. If you know that the result of one of your fellow prisoners grabbing a pair of boots is you and everyone else in the room being subjected to excruciating, possibly lethal punishment, you're conditioned to take down that prisoner yourself.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Add to that, the primary means of punishment is general, not targeted. If you know that the result of one of your fellow prisoners grabbing a pair of boots is you and everyone else in the room being subjected to excruciating, possibly lethal punishment, you're conditioned to take down that prisoner yourself.

So you kill all the other prisoners first, then steel the guard's boots.

Simples.

 

[Celebrim]

@embee: I'm aware of all that. I got that the first time. Also, I suspect all punishment is Level 1 - short term pain. Level 2 presumably cripples the subject for a considerable period, which you wouldn't want to do to your machine parts.

And the episode is constructed to give you that overwhelming sense of the inevitability and terror of the prison. It is a genius setup. I get the psychology of it.

But it's also made of glass, and the Public Order and Resentencing Directive is part of the hammer that is threatening to smash the system.

Despair is an enemy of the system. The designers know that. For one thing, if prisoner's despair, they commit suicide (which is a weakness in the system IMO). But the thing about suicidal despairing people is that they often want to take their perceived enemy down with them. So the designers are walking this fine line between hope and despair. The prisoners can't have hope, but they also can't let the prisoner's despair. There are carrots in the system as well as sticks.

"Revolutions are built on hope." All that needs to happen to take down the system is for one room to have the sense that can resist. As long as no one believes resistance is possible, you're right - every table is going to treat every other table as the enemy. No one wants to be punished. And even then, if the prisoners have some other hope at all, if they think that they can just work their time and leave then they'll probably not have the courage to take up arms.

But what happens when prisoners in despair get that hope? As soon as the Empire arbitrarily increased sentence lengths, they broke the one thing keeping every room from despair. So now the whole system is primed ready to explode. You can't afford to have a whole room in despair willing to rail itself, because if they are willing to rail themselves then they are also willing to fight. As soon as one group breaks the system, it will start to cascade. As long as the groups can only compete, they'll compete. But this is also the sort of shared environment of hardship that militaries use to forge special forces. As soon as the groups find something to cooperate on, the Empire will realize it's accidentally invented Sardaukar.

Another thing that struck me as potential weakness in the system is sorting the prisoners by cultural affiliation. By sorting out prisoners by home planet, you are importing loyalties that preexist the ones in the artificial culture you've created. And we can see in that desire for rooms to talk to each other that weakness, because without preexisting loyalties what would rooms have to say to one another? It's not like things are happening in their lives. It's preexisting feeling - for a brother, a friend, a fellow citizen - that motivates that.

Again, any hope but the hope of release and any motivations other than to win is dangerous.

 

[Rabulias]

And the episode is constructed to give you that overwhelming sense of the inevitability and terror of the prison. It is a genius setup. I get the psychology of it.

But it's also made of glass, and the Public Order and Resentencing Directive is part of the hammer that is threatening to smash the system.

Despair is an enemy of the system. The designers know that. For one thing, if prisoner's despair, they commit suicide (which is a weakness in the system IMO). But the thing about suicidal despairing people is that they often want to take their perceived enemy down with them. So the designers are walking this fine line between hope and despair. The prisoners can't have hope, but they also can't let the prisoner's despair. There are carrots in the system as well as sticks.

"Revolutions are built on hope." All that needs to happen to take down the system is for one room to have the sense that can resist. As long as no one believes resistance is possible, you're right - every table is going to treat every other table as the enemy. No one wants to be punished. And even then, if the prisoners have some other hope at all, if they think that they can just work their time and leave then they'll probably not have the courage to take up arms.

Very much so. And I think Luthen realizes this and is why he is pushing the Empire to move more quickly. If the Empire gets to turn the heat up slowly, the citizens adapt and accept the status quo as they can still get by... until it is too late. If the Empire moves too quickly, it will shatter that fragile hope that most people are clinging to. Luthen is looking to light the fire recognizing what the Empire is doing before it is too late.

Another thing that struck me as potential weakness in the system is sorting the prisoners by cultural affiliation. By sorting out prisoners by home planet, you are importing loyalties that preexist the ones in the artificial culture you've created. And we can see in that desire for rooms to talk to each other that weakness, because without preexisting loyalties what would rooms have to say to one another? It's not like things are happening in their lives. It's preexisting feeling - for a brother, a friend, a fellow citizen - that motivates that.

It may also play into the sign language communication we see.

 

[trappedslider]

Very much so. And I think Luthen realizes this and is why he is pushing the Empire to move more quickly. If the Empire gets to turn the heat up slowly, the citizens adapt and accept the status quo as they can still get by... until it is too late. If the Empire moves too quickly, it will shatter that fragile hope that most people are clinging to. Luthen is looking to light the fire recognizing what the Empire is doing before it is too late.

The frog in boiling water vs slowly turning the heat up.

 

[MarkB]

@embee: I'm aware of all that. I got that the first time. Also, I suspect all punishment is Level 1 - short term pain. Level 2 presumably cripples the subject for a considerable period, which you wouldn't want to do to your machine parts.

And the episode is constructed to give you that overwhelming sense of the inevitability and terror of the prison. It is a genius setup. I get the psychology of it.

But it's also made of glass, and the Public Order and Resentencing Directive is part of the hammer that is threatening to smash the system.

Despair is an enemy of the system. The designers know that. For one thing, if prisoner's despair, they commit suicide (which is a weakness in the system IMO). But the thing about suicidal despairing people is that they often want to take their perceived enemy down with them. So the designers are walking this fine line between hope and despair. The prisoners can't have hope, but they also can't let the prisoner's despair. There are carrots in the system as well as sticks.

"Revolutions are built on hope." All that needs to happen to take down the system is for one room to have the sense that can resist. As long as no one believes resistance is possible, you're right - every table is going to treat every other table as the enemy. No one wants to be punished. And even then, if the prisoners have some other hope at all, if they think that they can just work their time and leave then they'll probably not have the courage to take up arms.

But what happens when prisoners in despair get that hope? As soon as the Empire arbitrarily increased sentence lengths, they broke the one thing keeping every room from despair. So now the whole system is primed ready to explode. You can't afford to have a whole room in despair willing to rail itself, because if they are willing to rail themselves then they are also willing to fight. As soon as one group breaks the system, it will start to cascade. As long as the groups can only compete, they'll compete. But this is also the sort of shared environment of hardship that militaries use to forge special forces. As soon as the groups find something to cooperate on, the Empire will realize it's accidentally invented Sardaukar.

Another thing that struck me as potential weakness in the system is sorting the prisoners by cultural affiliation. By sorting out prisoners by home planet, you are importing loyalties that preexist the ones in the artificial culture you've created. And we can see in that desire for rooms to talk to each other that weakness, because without preexisting loyalties what would rooms have to say to one another? It's not like things are happening in their lives. It's preexisting feeling - for a brother, a friend, a fellow citizen - that motivates that.

Again, any hope but the hope of release and any motivations other than to win is dangerous.

I suspect the filtering by home planet is to match the inmates to the prison system - there's a distinct lack of non-humans in this one. You don't want to accidentally consign an electrically-resistant alien to your electrified prison - or one who can't get nutrition from the centrally-sourced food sludge.

 

[RuinousPowers]

The more the season progresses the more I feel the flashbacks were completely unnecessary. Even if the big reveal is that Meero is Cassian's sister, it's still time that was wasted. The show could have really used another editing pass to tighten it up.