Spoilers Star Wars: Andor season 2

[chuckdee]

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.

That's what's telling on the Imperial side. All of the Sith storylines are over the top and fanatical, while the other down to earth classes (Bounty Hunter/Imperial Agent) are just get it done. There are differences in the tone for the Rebellion also- the Smuggler/Trooper feel a lot different than the Jedi classes.

 

[chuckdee]

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.

Not just not enthusiastic - he hated it. They went into his feelings a lot in the Dark Horse Darth Vader series. He knew it would be a failure from the start, and he had really good reasons for it too.

In one panel, the Emperor even calls him out for the Rogue One fiasco, claiming that Vader let them escape deliberately. He doesn't deny it.

His thought was that putting that many resources of the Empire into a singular weapon was folly, and if it was destroyed, would deal a serious blow to morale, and could not be at all the hotpoints that it was needed at as efficiently as a smaller strike force could. They can destroy planets with bombardment from space by Imperial Star Destroyers. Why, then, did they need the Death Star?

 

[Rabulias]

Why, then, did they need the Death Star?

I never read the New Jedi Order books, but I heard that they touched on this a bit. The Yuuzhon Vong had a planet-sized weapon or something, and Palpatine had foreseen the need to have a weapon capable of taking out something like that. That it helped in his day job of running the galaxy through fear was a bonus.

 

[MarkB]

I never read the New Jedi Order books, but I heard that they touched on this a bit. The Yuuzhon Vong had a planet-sized weapon or something, and Palpatine had foreseen the need to have a weapon capable of taking out something like that. That it helped in his day job of running the galaxy through fear was a bonus.

Yeah, they travelled between galaxies in world ships, which pretty much were what they said on the tin. Not sure I particularly buy the concept of making Palatine a retroactive attempted galaxy-saver, though.

 

[Retros_x]

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

But that is exactly where I get the tonal whiplash from. The imperium is a comical satire of fascists lead by an evil wizard, but Andor attempts to make some real life commentary and "serious" storytelling in this setting. I am not saying the full series is bad because of it, I very much enjoyed it a lot, but there were moments especially in the second season where I just got tonal whiplash because of the evil wizard and his clown possé contrasted by plotlines inspired by real historical events.

 

[chuckdee]

I never read the New Jedi Order books, but I heard that they touched on this a bit. The Yuuzhon Vong had a planet-sized weapon or something, and Palpatine had foreseen the need to have a weapon capable of taking out something like that. That it helped in his day job of running the galaxy through fear was a bonus.

Again, Imperial Star Destroyers (Especially that really huge one that I forget the name of right now) serve the same purpose. Their task is interdiction and planetary destruction. They are not subtle weapons. They serve the same purpose. In fact, I'd say a wider purpose, because the Death Star doesn't traverse the hyperspace lanes as quickly as a smaller vessel, and the Death Star has only one purpose. People are already scared when Star Destroyers show up- that's been adequately proven. With a smaller crew, lesser resources, and the benefit of utilizing existing infrastructure to build them.

 

[Rabulias]

Not sure I particularly buy the concept of making Palatine a retroactive attempted galaxy-saver, though.

I think Palpatine foresaw the Vong as a threat to himself and his power.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

But that is exactly where I get the tonal whiplash from. The imperium is a comical satire of fascists lead by an evil wizard, but Andor attempts to make some real life commentary and "serious" storytelling in this setting. I am not saying the full series is bad because of it, I very much enjoyed it a lot, but there were moments especially in the second season where I just got tonal whiplash because of the evil wizard and his clown possé contrasted by plotlines inspired by real historical events.

I don't see it as "tonal whiplash" because fascist dictators are often insane clowns (not the good posse kind).

Just look at Hitler. An absolutely weird freak. Even if we ignore all propaganda and only look at we know as facts, what he said himself, what people very close to him said, he was absolutely an enormous weirdo and had very strange and irrational beliefs. And he was openly mocked by a lot of people as obviously a total loser freak at the time, in public (c.f. Chaplin's The Dictator, but also just a lot of media commentary re: Hitler from the 1930s - there was plenty of "He's a smart guy, see!" too but like a lot of "LOL this loser"). And he repeatedly either originated or signed off on frankly obviously insane and stupid military projects, much to the extreme frustration of Nazi leadership around him. I feel like Hitler would 100% have signed off on the Death Star.

Or for a less extreme example, but also an insane person, look at Mussolini, a man who immediately drank all his own Koolaid, and then went out and bought more, and was basically genuinely believing he was "reviving the Roman Empire" (bloody hell) and so on.

Even Franco was a freak, he was just a lot more sane than those two, but still eventually wildly self-mythologizing, a lot of strange ideas that no-one dared contradict, and so on. He ruled a lot longer because he had the sense to stay out of WW2 militarily and to keep most of his fascism inside Spanish borders (because I would argue, he was a lot more sensible than than many fascists, and hadn't drunk his own Koolaid initially, though he kind of did later on).

Not every fascist leader is a freak-of-the-week, but if you're a total freak, you basically need to be a fascist dictator, a king, or similar, or you won't be in power long.

Palpatine manages to keep most of his being a freak under wraps which helps him a lot.