Star Wars: Andor

[Celebrim]

This. They really need to avoid episodes in which nothing happens. It's self-indulgent.

I don't feel "nothing happens"

a) A minor character died and the death was meaningful.
b) Another minor character did a heel face turn and we had reason to care.
c) Syril has developed an obsession with Deedra to go along with his obsession with Andor. It wasn't a good look, and I feel his character is death spiraling, which is sad because I was rooting for him. Which again, just shows I had reason to care.
d) Deedra got promoted and is now assuming a position of leadership within the ISB Oversector group she's a part of. We learn that she is right on the heels of Luthien, having detected the very plan that Luthien is trying to get Saw to get on board. But after being put into a position to root for her earlier on, we're now rooting against her even as she triumphs.

I do feel that some of the plot lines were weak resulting in poor pacing.

i) Bix failed to develop in any way as a character. The torture scene was IMO weak, although that may not be fair because some people found it really strong world building. Deedra as a field agent may have been her weakest scene, and the whole torture scene was a lot of telling not showing - something Andor has been otherwise good at avoiding. There are more minor characters on Ferrix that we care about than Bix.
ii) Mon Mothma's plot line continues to be about the weakest of the bunch and also the most jagged story telling since we skip around so much. While new plot points have been introduced and the insight into the politics of the empire in this period is interesting, I feel it's not interesting enough to really justify the time we are taking on it.
iii) The Vel plotline continued to be weak, and really we've had no reason to see her since the end of the Aldanni episode. Learning she was related to the Mothma's also was a "small galaxy" move that didn't really advance any plots, and it also wasted the viewers time with Mon Mothma.

I feel part of the problem is ultimately how actors in TV shows are contracted. Contracts for actors generally require that they appear in X episodes if they are going to be a long term part of the show. If you want a primary cast member, you can't have them only appearing in 3 shows per season.

 

[Zaukrie]

I got the feeling they weren't really cousins.... Am I the only one that saw the senator stroke Vels arm? I mean, my wife thought I was wrong....Vel also used the same line about the rebellion taking the lead in life that she and her lover use. I'm sure I'm wrong...

I think the prison stuff is great. I think the idea the rebel leaders want the empire to get more evil, to stoke rebellion, is great. Some real life parallels there....

The torture scene was much better than watching it like GoT. But the characters back home just aren't growing. Also, man, those early flashbacks were a total waste.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I don't feel "nothing happens"

a) A minor character died and the death was meaningful.

Who, the old convict guy? It was obvious he was going to die from the point he was introduced. His only purpose in the narrative was to die to show how horrible the Empire is.

b) Another minor character did a heel face turn and we had reason to care.

Who? I must have missed that.

c) Syril has developed an obsession with Deedra to go along with his obsession with Andor. It wasn't a good look, and I feel his character is death spiraling, which is sad because I was rooting for him. Which again, just shows I had reason to care.

Not something that take 50 minutes to establish.

d) Deedra got promoted and is now assuming a position of leadership within the ISB Oversector group she's a part of. We learn that she is right on the heels of Luthien, having detected the very plan that Luthien is trying to get Saw to get on board. But after being put into a position to root for her earlier on, we're now rooting against her even as she triumphs.

All this was established in the previous episode.

I do feel that some of the plot lines were weak resulting in poor pacing.

i) Bix failed to develop in any way as a character.

Agreed.

The torture scene was IMO weak, although that may not be fair because some people found it really strong world building. Deedra as a field agent may have been her weakest scene, and the whole torture scene was a lot of telling not showing - something Andor has been otherwise good at avoiding. There are more minor characters on Ferrix that we care about than Bix.
ii) Mon Mothma's plot line continues to be about the weakest of the bunch and also the most jagged story telling since we skip around so much. While new plot points have been introduced and the insight into the politics of the empire in this period is interesting, I feel it's not interesting enough to really justify the time we are taking on it.
iii) The Vel plotline continued to be weak, and really we've had no reason to see her since the end of the Aldanni episode.

Too many characters.

Learning she was related to the Mothma's also was a "small galaxy" move that didn't really advance any plots, and it also wasted the viewers time with Mon Mothma.

I feel part of the problem is ultimately how actors in TV shows are contracted. Contracts for actors generally require that they appear in X episodes if they are going to be a long term part of the show. If you want a primary cast member, you can't have them only appearing in 3 shows per season.

 

[Celebrim]

Who, the old convict guy? It was obvious he was going to die from the point he was introduced. His only purpose in the narrative was to die to show how horrible the Empire is.

Yes, his death was obvious from the time we first met him, but not for the reason you suggest. They could have killed anyone to how horrible the Empire was. The point of killing the old guy is that he was a "short timer". He was about ready to leave.

Who? I must have missed that.

Kino Loy. I mean that was the central story arc of the episode. Kino Loy has represented the hard-nosed tough guy that ultimately believes that if you follow the Empire's rules and work within the system, that eventually it's going to work out - at the end of the program or the process or whatever, there will be a just world. And now that Andor has his respect, because Andor's team is the most productive on the floor, Andor has been working on him this whole episode trying to get him to see that he can't work with the Empire. And Kino Loy has literally been turning his back on Andor. But after the death of "the old guy" and learning that the Empire isn't ever going to let anyone out of the prison converts Kino Loy to Cassian's point of view, signified by the fact that Kino answers Cassian's question about how many guards work each floor. In other words, the room supervisors and other "trusted" prisoners (like the med-techs and other prisoners that work behind the scenes) will now be in on the escape attempt.

The prison is a microcosm for the whole galaxy. The whole point of the prison episodes is to convey that really the whole galaxy is within the prison. This is done in a lot of subtle ways.

Not something that take 50 minutes to establish.

It didn't. It took like 4 minutes. The rest of the show was devoted to the main plot lines with Deedra and Cassian, which very Star Wars like shows viewpoint characters for both the good guys and the bad guys.

All this was established in the previous episode.

No, it wasn't. In the last Episode, Deedra defeated her foil in the board room battle and was allowed to begin her war on the Rebels. Now we are beginning to see the outcome of that war as Deedra wins victories in the field that are leading to her greater and greater prestige "at court". And we learned something we did not know, that Deedra has got intelligence on Kreeger from an intercepted rebel logistics pilot which means Saw's assessment that Kreeger is "slow and stupid" may get vindicated as Kreeger will be walking into a trap when he attacks the power plants.

Too many characters.

Possibly. As I said, Vel is a decent character but she really hasn't deserved screen time in episodes 7,8 and 9. That's time that should have been invested in other characters or just cut out to preserve pacing. But the problem might not be too many characters, but the choppy way each story is being told. It might have been better to just give Mon Mothma a full episode to establish her and then only cut back to her when she's making decisions that impact the rebellion. I think it was a mistake for example to not show the dinner party that she didn't want to attend, as it would have beautifully tied in to the canon while actually giving her spotlight time and building a meaningful disagreement between herself and her husband (who is currently being played only as a shallow bimbo, which is uninteresting). I mean, I could get into depth where I think the pacing goes wrong and why, but EnWorld isn't a particularly friendly place to have a conversation about how the artists need to be didactic (probably to make suits happy) is getting in the way of just telling the story. Point is, I think between the realities of making a professional TV production meaning that your actor contracts will contain clauses insisting on appearing in a certain number of episodes so that they can be billed as a cast member and not a guest star and all the rest of the screen actor's guild boilerplate, combined with producers that demand "relevant" plot lines is interfering with how things are staged.

Right now it's not clear that Syril Karn's story has a payoff. Just when I think they are going to make him relevant again, they keep subverting my expectations. If Syril Karn doesn't have a payoff worth the time investment, then I'll agree with you that like Vel his time on stage needed to be cut. But, on the other hand, he's a fascinating viewpoint character and I think the writers are good enough that if they didn't have a gun for him to fire later on, they wouldn't be showing him to you now.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Yes, his death was obvious from the time we first met him, but not for the reason you suggest. They could have killed anyone to how horrible the Empire was. The point of killing the old guy is that he was a "short timer". He was about ready to leave.

That just made his fate more obvious. If he had walked on wearing a red shirt and carrying a spear it couldn't have made it any more predictable.

Kino Loy. I mean that was the central story arc of the episode.

Again, predictable. And he hasn't changed his character - he is still working for his own best interests. He has just been shown proof that his best interests are not served by playing by the rules.

It didn't. It took like 4 minutes.

And then we had 40 minutes of nothing happening.

The last two episodes should have been edited into one, the first two episodes should have been edited into one. This is just someone who can't bear to use the scissors.

 

[MarkB]

That just made his fate more obvious. If he had walked on wearing a red shirt and carrying a spear it couldn't have made it any more predictable.

Again, predictable. And he hasn't changed his character - he is still working for his own best interests. He has just been shown proof that his best interests are not served by playing by the rules.

And then we had 40 minutes of nothing happening.

The last two episodes should have been edited into one, the first two episodes should have been edited into one. This is just someone who can't bear to use the scissors.

I think we need this level of weight to it. We need to see the prison working as intended, the Imperial system in general working as intended, to really feel the stakes and see the effects on the people. If Andor had walked into prison one week and mounted a mass break-out the next, that would've been just bog-standard Imperial incompetence.

 

[Celebrim]

I think we need this level of weight to it. We need to see the prison working as intended, the Imperial system in general working as intended, to really feel the stakes and see the effects on the people. If Andor had walked into prison one week and mounted a mass break-out the next, that would've been just bog-standard Imperial incompetence.

Agreed.

Most of my concerns on the pacing are agnostic, in as much as they are scenes that currently do not have a payoff but which may have a payoff at a future point.

a) The Syril Karn story line after episode #3.
b) The childhood flashbacks in episodes #1 and #2.
c) The Vel story line after episode #6.
d) Is Mon Mothma's character being explored deeply enough to justify the time? I feel like she either needs less screen time or more depending on what the story around her is driving at. For example, her story suffers for the lack of any foil but her husband, who hasn't been presented with any depth compared to foils and antagonists like Syril, Deedra, Skeen, Blevin or even Syril's mother. Her antagonist is actually The Emperor himself, so I think it's been a mistake to not put a foil in her way like Sate Pestage. I also have problems with the lack of nuance she has in her speeches. She talks like an opposition party in a free government, not like a member of an opposition party in an authoritarian government. Someone should have spent more time listening to say Russian State TV and how opposition figures word their statements in a way that they are critical but not of the person of the ruler.

All of that might be filler, depending on what happens in the future. Of the three, I think following Syril Karn is the most obviously worthwhile and the other two are very much in question.

But I don't feel like this is a show that has filler or wasted dialogue. The writing is generally very sharp and purposeful.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Fair point. Maybe the droid does not incorporate it, but uses something newer, that is faster/more evil?

It might be just the kind of internal department jealosy and jurisdictional conflicts you might expect from a totalitarian bureaucracy where everyone fears that he's the next on the chopping black and needs some ace in a hole. The kind fo shenengians Dedra was dealing with, when the officer responsible for Feenix refused to hand over information that she could use to further her investigation because it was not her jurisdiction.

Quite simply Darth Vader and Tarkin weren't part of the ISB or commanding an ISB division, so they won't get the fancy ISB tools, they only get the Imperial Navy tools. (But Tarkin was sitting on the Death Star, that would clearly give him, pardon, the Empire, ultimate power and make the ISB an irrelevant organization since no one would even dare to rebel out of fear of losing their homeworld. But hey, if the ISB needs they more screams for their interrogation toy, he could place some microphones on the Death Star target worlds...)

 

[Sacrosanct]

Maybe it's just me, but the hardest/most difficult parts to watch have been the scenes with Syril's mother.

 

[billd91]

Maybe it's just me, but the hardest/most difficult parts to watch have been the scenes with Syril's mother.

I've been enjoying them. She reminds of me of Nancy Walker playing Ida, Rhoda Morgenstern's mother.