Star Wars: Andor - 1.12 - Rix Road

[Marvin]

Just finished. I enjoyed that.
Very different in tone to the original movies. I'm just old enough to have seen Star Wars, as it was first known, in the cinema. But I think a lot of rose tinted spectacles are applied when discussing the original stuff. Yeah I still enjoy it when I rewatch now and again, but so much of that enjoyment is nostalgia. If they were released now they would be torn apart.
This was different, but in an excellent, modern, well executed way. Unlike Star Trek Discovery which is/was (think it just got cancelled?) modern in a depressing, predictable way.

Finally, that last scene, which I nearly missed until I read this thread. Did everyone catch that it was the very machine part (that three pronged thing) that they were all making in the prison. That was going into, what I believe, is the primary weapon of the Death Star. Andor himself helped make the planet killing weapon! Great touch. (Maybe @ctg could get a nice pic of it going in.)

 

[ctg]

Maybe @ctg could get a nice pic of iy going in

I can try.

 

[ctg]

For @Marvin

 

[Brian G Turner]

Really enjoyed this episode.

It wasn't quite what I was expecting, but the marching band, the increasing panic among the Imperials, then the complete confusion and firing on civilians after the bomb exploded was all superbly done - very gripping!

What I really enjoyed about this series is the focus on the lower classes normally ignored in SF/F storytelling - Ferriz was just one big work site, and the people there were very representative of that. This made the Imperial oppression all the more believable and tense for it.

And, of course, the attention to detail with the sets was amazing, and the acting great too - there was also some wonderful dialogue in this season, and it's not often you come away from a modern series with great phrases, just sound bytes.

Also! Stormtroopers are dangerous again - just as they were at the opening of the very first Star Wars film when boarding Leia's consular ship, and on Tatooine. I really didn't like how they were trivialized and mocked in some episodes of The Mandolorian, but here in Andor, Stormtroopers are really menacing - the way they should be.

Overall, it did feel a little padded and overlong in parts, but aside from that, can't really fault it. I hope season 2 gets a little more ambitious and does like Parson says by adding more space battles.

 

[Brian G Turner]

I have to admit to feeling rather short-changed by the abject lack of depiction for the Saw Gerrera raid on teh power station, or whatever it was. It was clearly a massive instigating factor in bringing a key character into the narrative, and an important decision to send 30 men to their deaths knowing that those deaths were required to keep safe the identity of the double agent inside the empire. So why not show it?

I thought the whole point was to make it a placeholder for Coventry - when in WWII Churchill was told that having cracked the enigma, the codebreakers had uncovered a massive bombing raid planned on the UK city of Coventry that would doubtless result in many civilian deaths, but Churchill had to act like they didn't know so as not to alert the Nazi's to their insider information. I figured that was the whole point of the raid being allowed to continue into a trap. Showing any sort of battling would have added some excitement and tension to what otherwise need to be a cold and haunting decision.

 

[BT Jones]

I thought the whole point was to make it a placeholder for Coventry - when in WWII Churchill was told that having cracked the enigma, the codebreakers had uncovered a massive bombing raid planned on the UK city of Coventry that would doubtless result in many civilian deaths, but Churchill had to act like they didn't know so as not to alert the Nazi's to their insider information. I figured that was the whole point of the raid being allowed to continue into a trap. Showing any sort of battling would have added some excitement and tension to what otherwise need to be a cold and haunting decision.

Perhaps, but then wouldn't a cold decision like that have had far more resonance had we at least got to see or know the people that were being sacrificed? Yes, it was pure, unsympathetic calculation, but I felt the (average) viewer might not have really appreciate what was at stake without seeing as much.

 

[Toby Frost]

I agree with all of Brian's points. It's a very good ending and the tension is racked up well. It's clear very early on that things are going to go wrong, but it's not clear how and when. Andor is definitely a more grown-up Star Wars story, not just in terms of violence and swearing, but in its sophistication and willingness to be quite slow. I wouldn't want all of Star Wars to be like Andor, but I hope it continues and remains as good.