Star Wars: Andor

[pukunui]

i'm starting to think Mon's husband is just a twit and not intentionally being a bad guy. I'm also waiting for the daughter to do something like give her parents an actual what-the hell talk

I dunno. I feel like he’s not as much of a twit as he appears. That said, I’m not convinced he’s so nefarious as to arrange to have his wife’s old chum assassinated.

As for their daughter, the actress is nailing the sassy, long-suffering teenage girl! (I have several in my household at the moment.)

I’m really curious to see how Cassian gets out of that prison. Anyone have any idea what they are building? They look a bit like KX droid chassis.

 

[Davies]

Anyone have any idea what they are building?

Two guesses:

1) TIE fighters -- the part that Cassian is assembling looks like it could be part of the outer wing structure, or part of the command pod.
2) Nothing. It's all busy work that accomplishes nothing. "The objective of X is X."

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Just a mention of a minor easter egg: "Axis" is a synonym for "Fulcrum".

 

[MarkB]

2) Nothing. It's all busy work that accomplishes nothing. "The objective of X is X."

I think it's unlikely, the Empire will have trouble supporting this level of mass incarcerations if it isn't putting prisoners to work - but I'm also imagining how soul-crushing it would be for Cassian to be transferred to a different room only to find that they're disassembling the same parts he was previously assembling.

 

[John R Davis]

Yeah, my initial thought was exactly this. Keep the prisoners busy by recycling

 

[Celebrim]

Two guesses:

The best guess I've seen is that it's the top portion of a probe droid armature assembly.

However, it could also be - and this would fit with Cassian being the Rebels primary case handler for Project Stardust - part of the Death star framing assembly.

 

[Celebrim]

So after watching episode 8, I have many thoughts. One of them is that there is some tribute here to THX-1338, but I've heard other commentators call that out.

The one that really struck me that I haven't heard anyone else say is that the introduction scene to the prison guards is meant to make clear that the guards are just as much prisoners as the prisoners. They have the exact same stresses and challenges as the prisoners that they are handling. They are worried when they are short staffed, and they are regularly short staffed. They are under what they feel is a crushing timeline and they are terrified when they get behind in their work by even a few seconds. The episode is meant to show that Palpatine is turning the entire Empire into one vast industrialized prison. Eventually, everyone is going to be inside a prison like that.

 

[Morrus]

The music made me think Bladerunner a lot.

 

[embee]

I think that was the most depressing 48 minutes of sci-fi I have seen since the first episode of The Leftovers. Honestly, that episode explains the Rebellion far more than any speech by Jyn Erso ever could.

Once again, it's a show that tells a story without words.

 

[Celebrim]

I’m really curious to see how Cassian gets out of that prison.

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.