Spoilers Star Wars: Andor season 2

[Retros_x]

Genocide has long been a tool of control.

Oh of course! No doubt in that! But usually it gets done in a more primitive and much cheaper version than designing with tons of resources a super weapon.

But the primary purpose of the Death Star would presumably be to be a standing threat to ensure that the great number of supporters will always keep the Rebel elements in check because they don't want to be blown up.

Andor made a point that the Imperium didn't even believe a rebellion was possible when they were already designing a weapon. The timeline and chain of causation was a bit wonky here in the series.

It just felt off to me in Andor this commentary about real world geopolitics paired with the cartoonishly evil Empire with their star destroying super power. Star Wars is a fantasy story and universe for me and it felt not such a great fit. Its like when now somebody would write a LOTR series about the intricate political struggle in Mordor. Its like - huh? And again on the rebel and senate side this narrative worked for me, but whenever the Imperium and the Intelligence Officers were a focus point of the narrative it just felt wrong. At least they never showed Palpatine, that would break it completely.

 

[pukunui]

Andor made a point that the Imperium didn't even believe a rebellion was possible when they were already designing a weapon. The timeline and chain of causation was a bit wonky here in the series.

Episode II establishes that the Geonosians designed the Death Star as the "ultimate weapon". I think they may have been initially involved in its construction as well before Palpatine had them all exterminated.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

I am feeling sorry for Partagaz. Appointed to lead a team where incompetent people rival with traitors...

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Andor made a point that the Imperium didn't even believe a rebellion was possible when they were already designing a weapon. The timeline and chain of causation was a bit wonky here in the series.

I think what we may want to recall is that Palpatine is, essentially, an evil wizard driven mad by his own evil magic.

People think of him as this political mastermind and a personal manipulator and so on, but he's also like, not sane, and essentially working for and on behalf of evil magic.

Andor sensibly plays that down so it can talk about fascism, and not overfocus on the leader, who is kind of irrelevant to the fascism (seriously they are, you get the same fascism with a thousand different guys in charge, who range from the cold and calculating to absolutely loopy mystical quasi-hippies).

But it's not Andor making that error, it's just that Palpatine is a Sith maniac. Designing superweapons is canonically a Sith bugbear, something they keep returning to. Clearly having that dark Sith magic running through your brain simply draws you to idiotic superweapon plans (obviously this is a Watsonian explanation rather than Doylist one which is "Lucas thought it was cool and scary (correctly!), and it's become a huge part of Star Wars")

Episode II establishes that the Geonosians designed the Death Star as the "ultimate weapon". I think they may have been initially involved in its construction as well before Palpatine had them all exterminated.

Not quite, though from the movies you could easily think that.

The Geonosians didn't come up with it, they were manipulated into it by Count Dooku etc. at the behest of Palpatine:

DS-1 Orbital Battle Station

The DS-1 Orbital Battle Station, also designated as the DS-1 Death Star Mobile Battle Station, referred to as the Ultimate Weapon in early development stages, later known as the Death Star I or the First Death Star, often simply referred to as the Death Star, and codenamed Stardust, was a...

starwars.fandom.com

In the end it comes down to "Sith maniacs are obsessed with building singular superweapons".

To be fair, that does link up with real world fascists to some extent, because the Nazis holy hell did those guys come up with an endless array of "THIS ONE WEIRD TRICK WILL END WW2! THE ALLIES HATE IT!"-type weapons (whilst the Allies found a superweapon that actually might have done that if WW2 wasn't already winding down).

 

[MarkB]

I think what we may want to recall is that Palpatine is, essentially, an evil wizard driven mad by his own evil magic.

People think of him as this political mastermind and a personal manipulator and so on, but he's also like, not sane, and essentially working for and on behalf of evil magic.

Andor sensibly plays that down so it can talk about fascism, and not overfocus on the leader, who is kind of irrelevant to the fascism (seriously they are, you get the same fascism with a thousand different guys in charge, who range from the cold and calculating to absolutely loopy mystical quasi-hippies).

But it's not Andor making that error, it's just that Palpatine is a Sith maniac. Designing superweapons is canonically a Sith bugbear, something they keep returning to. Clearly having that dark Sith magic running through your brain simply draws you to idiotic superweapon plans (obviously this is a Watsonian explanation rather than Doylist one which is "Lucas thought it was cool and scary (correctly!), and it's become a huge part of Star Wars")


Not quite, though from the movies you could easily think that.

The Geonosians didn't come up with it, they were manipulated into it by Count Dooku etc. at the behest of Palpatine:

DS-1 Orbital Battle Station

The DS-1 Orbital Battle Station, also designated as the DS-1 Death Star Mobile Battle Station, referred to as the Ultimate Weapon in early development stages, later known as the Death Star I or the First Death Star, often simply referred to as the Death Star, and codenamed Stardust, was a...

starwars.fandom.com

In the end it comes down to "Sith maniacs are obsessed with building singular superweapons".

To be fair, that does link up with real world fascists to some extent, because the Nazis holy hell did those guys come up with an endless array of "THIS ONE WEIRD TRICK WILL END WW2! THE ALLIES HATE IT!"-type weapons (whilst the Allies found a superweapon that actually might have done that if WW2 wasn't already winding down).

Yeah, this concept was actually explored really well in Star Wars The Old Republic, in the Imperial Agent main quest line. The Sith Empire has this really great, solid government and bureaucracy which would be doing a really good job of running things, except that they're in the service of a bunch of Sith lords who could at any moment pursue some massively evil and twisted scheme just because they feel like doing it, and the civilian government can't do anything about it.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Yeah, this concept was actually explored really well in Star Wars The Old Republic, in the Imperial Agent main quest line. The Sith Empire has this really great, solid government and bureaucracy which would be doing a really good job of running things, except that they're in the service of a bunch of Sith lords who could at any moment pursue some massively evil and twisted scheme just because they feel like doing it, and the civilian government can't do anything about it.

Yaaaaaas the Imperial Agent plotline was amazing, like wall-to-wall facepalm at the insane stuff the Sith wanted to do.

It even worked out that way playing the MMO bits. I was playing an Imperial Agent and my wife a Sith Sorcerer (or w/e the double-bladed light saber Sith was called), and oh my god, I'd be like talking to some civilian and you rolled off to see whose dialogue option was used.

Mine would be like: "Ma'am these are serious charges that have been levelled against you, I suggest you come clean and we might be able to lightly on you"

and Hers would be like: < chops off NPC's head with a lightsaber and hisses "Traitor" >

She won a lot of the rolls so I got to see my Imperial Agent make a lot of horrified expressions. I'm sad that kind of MMO never caught on! And hell even multiplayer CRPGs like BG3 don't do this, even though it was absolutely hysterical.

 

[billd91]

Yeah, this concept was actually explored really well in Star Wars The Old Republic, in the Imperial Agent main quest line. The Sith Empire has this really great, solid government and bureaucracy which would be doing a really good job of running things, except that they're in the service of a bunch of Sith lords who could at any moment pursue some massively evil and twisted scheme just because they feel like doing it, and the civilian government can't do anything about it.

And it's not like people hadn't seen things like this before, literally. When the Nazis asserted control in 1933, they had a very effective German bureaucracy to work with (that they then politicized). But they also relied on the party imposed Gauleiters to maintain control - and those Gauleiters held the reins of the SA and then SS to use on their populations. Fear, fear of the SS, kept the locals in line. They may not have been any form of "super weapon" but maintaining another layer of repressive apparatus when you've already got control of the army and the police is a bit extravagant.
And that's what repressive regimes are when it comes to repressive power - extravagant. Every repressive regime seems to be deathly afraid of its population - or at least the subset of population the regime intends to control the most - and it seems that there is literally no price too high to pay to keep it in its place. Just look at US police budgets compared to virtually every other municipal department, particularly when they always say there isn't money for diversion and enrichment programs...

 

[Reef]

When I was younger, I used to think that the level of cartoonish, over-the-top villainy displayed by the evil factions in media was completely unrealistic. Enjoyable, but something you just had to suspend your disbelief for.

I'm much older now. And unfortunately, the last few decades have taught me that in fact, the villains of media are generally more restrained and realistic than real life ones.

So yeah, planet-destroying super weapons? Comically inept and evil bureaucracies? Populaces willing to shoot their own foot off as long as the plan was wrapped in the flimsiest of appealing lies? All too believable.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I think what we may want to recall is that Palpatine is, essentially, an evil wizard driven mad by his own evil magic.

People think of him as this political mastermind and a personal manipulator and so on, but he's also like, not sane, and essentially working for and on behalf of evil magic.

Andor sensibly plays that down so it can talk about fascism, and not overfocus on the leader, who is kind of irrelevant to the fascism (seriously they are, you get the same fascism with a thousand different guys in charge, who range from the cold and calculating to absolutely loopy mystical quasi-hippies).

But it's not Andor making that error, it's just that Palpatine is a Sith maniac. Designing superweapons is canonically a Sith bugbear, something they keep returning to. Clearly having that dark Sith magic running through your brain simply draws you to idiotic superweapon plans (obviously this is a Watsonian explanation rather than Doylist one which is "Lucas thought it was cool and scary (correctly!), and it's become a huge part of Star Wars")


Not quite, though from the movies you could easily think that.

The Geonosians didn't come up with it, they were manipulated into it by Count Dooku etc. at the behest of Palpatine:

DS-1 Orbital Battle Station

The DS-1 Orbital Battle Station, also designated as the DS-1 Death Star Mobile Battle Station, referred to as the Ultimate Weapon in early development stages, later known as the Death Star I or the First Death Star, often simply referred to as the Death Star, and codenamed Stardust, was a...

starwars.fandom.com

In the end it comes down to "Sith maniacs are obsessed with building singular superweapons".

To be fair, that does link up with real world fascists to some extent, because the Nazis holy hell did those guys come up with an endless array of "THIS ONE WEIRD TRICK WILL END WW2! THE ALLIES HATE IT!"-type weapons (whilst the Allies found a superweapon that actually might have done that if WW2 wasn't already winding down).

It should also be noticed that this super-weapon that was actually developed were then used against a hostile nation that could very likely have been beaten conventionelly as well, though perhaps only much bloodier, or would not have surrendered under the desired condition. And then, the weapon was never employed ever again for military conflicts (at least so far). And still a naughty word-ton more of them were built, though not just by the original creators, but also by rivals.

The Death Star might be exactly that - Alderaan and Yavin would have been all the examples they'd need. Only that there is probably no other galactic nation that could hope to build something similar.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

It crops up quite often in the novels, and more subtlety in Rebels, that Thawn thinks the Death Star is a waste of resources. And Vader doesn’t really seem enthusiastic about the project either.