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Spoilers Star Wars: Andor season 2

To be fair, it's reasonable that a droid be virtually immune to anything short of a military grade blaster rifle.

What's not reasonable is that the Ghorman front at this time didn't have heavy weaponry including military grade rifles and carbines. That they were still armed with light pistols and the like despite being armed by Luthen's "Axis" network just a year before Endor was hard to believe.
They did have military weapons, didn't they?

The whole first raid thing was to steal a shipment of military weapons to the secret armory.

Those at the protest though had concealable weapons as it was not planned as a military attack on the imperials.
 

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They did have military weapons, didn't they?

Well, you'd think so.

Those at the protest though had concealable weapons as it was not planned as a military attack on the imperials.

Seemed a bit strange to me. You spend a year engaged in armed revolt and then go to a protest? I know what the script writers were going for but of the twelve episodes I felt that was by far the weakest. Too many people jumping through stupid hoops to serve the needs of the plot. Too much slow establishing shots when they could have been showing motives and greater subtlety by the Empire as well as actions by the Ghorman Front that would seem to make sense from their point of view without seeing the bigger picture.
 

Seemed a bit strange to me. You spend a year engaged in armed revolt and then go to a protest? I know what the script writers were going for but of the twelve episodes I felt that was by far the weakest. Too many people jumping through stupid hoops to serve the needs of the plot. Too much slow establishing shots when they could have been showing motives and greater subtlety by the Empire as well as actions by the Ghorman Front that would seem to make sense from their point of view without seeing the bigger picture.
They covered the set-up pretty well. The Ghorman rebels could feel that the Empire was actively goading them into stronger action and cooler heads had been prevailing to try to keep things small, but finally they were backed into a corner, which was exactly what the Empire wanted.

And part of the point is that once the Empire decided to pull the trigger on the situation, they didn't show subtlety, or restraint, or patience. Dedra was the one orchestrating everything on the ground, but even she was blindsided and only found out at the last minute that they were going ahead, after they'd already brought their heavy mining equipment into orbit. And they didn't even bother waiting for their orchestrated inciting incident to actually kick off before they started landing the mining equipment on the planet.
 

They covered the set-up pretty well. The Ghorman rebels could feel that the Empire was actively goading them into stronger action and cooler heads had been prevailing to try to keep things small, but finally they were backed into a corner, which was exactly what the Empire wanted.

And part of the point is that once the Empire decided to pull the trigger on the situation, they didn't show subtlety, or restraint, or patience. Dedra was the one orchestrating everything on the ground, but even she was blindsided and only found out at the last minute that they were going ahead, after they'd already brought their heavy mining equipment into orbit. And they didn't even bother waiting for their orchestrated inciting incident to actually kick off before they started landing the mining equipment on the planet.

The set up was just, "We pull back the security at the plaza a little bit and hope that this creates an armed protest even though we no longer have an insider to suggest it?" It's not smart. For example, I would have announced a "March for Peace" with loyal citizens of the Empire showing up to protest the Ghorman Front. The Plaza would be opened for that. Then you could have the Ghor's arguing over whether to organize a counter-protest, and over the merits of doing so, deciding for the counter protest to show the Galaxy that their side has the overwhelming support of the people of Ghorman and if they don't counter protest then they are conceding to the Imperials control over the narrative - failing to understand that the narrative the Empire really wants is that the whole planet is hostile. Then everything proceeds as orchestrated except anyone viewing events from the outside would see them as logical and not orchestrated. Even sending in the green squad to provide security would have had a visible purpose: to protect the loyal citizens caught in the middle of the "increasingly violent counter protest" The Empire would have been made to seem intelligent; but equally, the Ghorman wouldn't have been made to seem stupid.

Personally, I would have loved a pullback shot harkening to the Euromaiden or Arab Spring or Civil Rights marches or really any big familiar political event, then the shooting starts and then we have AT-ST's stomping on people, scores of KX droids, phalanxes of storm troopers, probe and camera droids following people through the streets making it impossible for them to hide. And the Ghormon Front increasingly aware that the Empire is prepared for everything that they can do. Which is what we are given to see, just at a smaller scale than what is implied by a planetary insurrection and massive mining fleets.

Ghorman by this point is just as much of a war zone as Jedha; the only reason we don't see that in the show is budget, not story telling. Heck, by this point in the story the Ghorman Front is in terms of scale a bigger threat to the Empire than Saw's Partisans. It's been allowed to grow out of control to justify the massive crackdown.
 

Personally, I would have loved a pullback shot
I’m pretty sure that was budget restrictions*, and the decision to favour physical sets over cgi. Ghorman always felt like just one plaza. But as someone who grew up with 70s Doctor Who, I can work with that. I think it’s made pretty clear that most of the people at the protest are civilians, not active rebels (even if they didn’t have sufficient extras). You want a genocide, you have to kill everyone, not just active combatants.

*they probably blew most of it building a working tie avenger for the first arc.
 

The set up was just, "We pull back the security at the plaza a little bit and hope that this creates an armed protest even though we no longer have an insider to suggest it?" It's not smart. For example, I would have announced a "March for Peace" with loyal citizens of the Empire showing up to protest the Ghorman Front. The Plaza would be opened for that. Then you could have the Ghor's arguing over whether to organize a counter-protest, and over the merits of doing so, deciding for the counter protest to show the Galaxy that their side has the overwhelming support of the people of Ghorman and if they don't counter protest then they are conceding to the Imperials control over the narrative - failing to understand that the narrative the Empire really wants is that the whole planet is hostile. Then everything proceeds as orchestrated except anyone viewing events from the outside would see them as logical and not orchestrated. Even sending in the green squad to provide security would have had a visible purpose: to protect the loyal citizens caught in the middle of the "increasingly violent counter protest" The Empire would have been made to seem intelligent; but equally, the Ghorman wouldn't have been made to seem stupid.
And if it had been left up to Dedra, they'd probably have done something like that. She does subtle. But she was cut out of the planning phase in favour of Krennic's people, and Krennic doesn't do subtle.
Personally, I would have loved a pullback shot harkening to the Euromaiden or Arab Spring or Civil Rights marches or really any big familiar political event, then the shooting starts and then we have AT-ST's stomping on people, scores of KX droids, phalanxes of storm troopers, probe and camera droids following people through the streets making it impossible for them to hide. And the Ghormon Front increasingly aware that the Empire is prepared for everything that they can do. Which is what we are given to see, just at a smaller scale than what is implied by a planetary insurrection and massive mining fleets.

Ghorman by this point is just as much of a war zone as Jedha; the only reason we don't see that in the show is budget, not story telling. Heck, by this point in the story the Ghorman Front is in terms of scale a bigger threat to the Empire than Saw's Partisans. It's been allowed to grow out of control to justify the massive crackdown.
They don't need to do any of that, though. All they need is an armed scuffle and an excuse to pull their own troops out. Who cares whether the Ghorman Front goes free or is chased down? The whole planet's about to be wrecked, nobody's walking away from that.
 


And if it had been left up to Dedra, they'd probably have done something like that. She does subtle. But she was cut out of the planning phase in favour of Krennic's people, and Krennic doesn't do subtle.

No, she was not cut out of planning. She was only cut out of tactical in that they were bringing in someone who would be willing to kill Imperials to get the job done. She was given 48 hours to come up with something. This wouldn't have been hard to do. You don't need a lot of planning because you are counting on the "March for Peace" to be small and overwhelmed by the size of the Ghor counter-protest. You only need a handful of galactic citizens to get squashed in the crackdown to make this a big thing in the Senate. Internal to the show, the show doesn't make sense. It only makes sense if we start externally to the show with small budgets relative to the scale of the production and little reliance on CGI for the sets and contracts with the SAG and things like that. It's not a super big deal because I understand it's "just a TV show" and I am willing to overlook some things that have to do with pacing (if it requires a long technical explanation for how it works or if it requires showing events in an less dramatic order) but it's part of the reason I feel I could rewatch Season One multiple times, but I've got no desire to rewatch Season Two. It's why in my long running Star Wars campaign, I can treat Season One as a canon but have to treat Season Two as quasi-canon. Three stars out of five rather than four stars out of five.
 

The whole planet's about to be wrecked, nobody's walking away from that.

Like most of the Empire's ill-considered crackdowns, I would presume that even if the Empire kills off 90% of its 800 million inhabitants, the surviving 80 million provide the Rebel Alliance with 400 legions of partisans because well, they have motive now. Crapping in your own back yard has consequences. That and there will be a Ghor diaspora already preexisting this move likely to want to send funds and other support to family members that survive the genocide, and since that diaspora is largely going to be on ancient wealthy worlds that is a lot of financial influence. The only thing Palps could do dumber than this would be blow up one of the most aesthetically and philosophically admired garden worlds in the galaxy, a core world that has been a part of the Republic since before the Empire still has reliable records, just to make a demonstration and then let the Rebels then heroically blow up the very superweapon he'd been planning to hold the galaxy hostage with. Palps turns into an idiot the moment he goes from plotting to take over the galaxy to actually being in charge of it.
 

Like most of the Empire's ill-considered crackdowns, I would presume that even if the Empire kills off 90% of its 800 million inhabitants, the surviving 80 million provide the Rebel Alliance with 400 legions of partisans because well, they have motive now
Pretty sure the mining was predicted to cause total biosphere collapse. So 100% fatalities.
 

Into the Woods

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