ST Space chase/ Crait plan discussion thread

None of the characters who we got to know/were attached to already knew. So even if D'Arcy knew, that doesn't mean much really.

^That's an issue with the film overall imo.

 

If we are discussing the way Holdo dealt with the situation, it doesn't matter whether we are attached or not to whoever knows the plan. What matters is his/her rank. D'acy was surely more entitled to know the plan than Rose.
Anyway, I'm just being pedantic, I also don't get why Holdo behaved like that.

 

You would assume that when it comes to evac plans, not only should there been one already in place since D’Qar, everyone should have been informed of it from the start. I mean, that is basic safety procedure and it’s even people’s right to know what to do and where to go in case of emergency.

Clearly we don’t have a situation like Hoth when the rebellion acted minimally competent and the entire crew seemed to be informed of the rendezvous point. Because the plot required, we’re dealing with a bizarre situation where a military organization doesn’t seem to have a basic evac plan as they set course to a random location in the middle of nowhere that conveniently happened to be nearby a base they only remembered it existed last minute.

So it’s rather difficult to access this situation from a military point of view, because from a realistic perspective this shouldn’t even have happened in the first place.

Still, we are talking about evac plans in a situation of emergency, not normal military plans. And in evac plans everyone is automatically involved, for obvious reasons. The ones in the chain of command need to know how to carry out the rest of the evac if something happens to the superiors, and the crew needs to know where and how to retreat to safety if something happens to the leadership. The last thing you need in emergency situations is people refusing to communicate with each other and not telling others the basics and how to safely proceed. That only leads to panic, confusion and disorder. As we saw, ironically, though I don’t think it was RJ’s intentions to justify Poe’s mutiny.

There is another aspect of the narrative I would like to comment on. It has been a recurring argument that Holdo was justified to withhold basic information on the evac plan because if it was known to everyone, it could leak to the FO. And judging from a Laura Dern’s interview, I think that was RJ’s reasoning for this. The plot tries to “justify” her behavior by having Poe informing Finn and Rose of (his misinterpretation of the poorly informed) evac plan and DJ overhearing it.

I already said that there should have been an already planned out and organized evac plan in place from the start as basic strategic planning and common sense (as well as basic leadership competence), but the fact that Poe doesn’t seem know even the most basic security procedures for someone who held a Commander rank is extremely contrived to the say the least. He basically spoils Holdo’s plan to Finn before even asking where they were (or if they were next to someone that could overhear them). And for no good reason, because it's not like they needed to know that, but the plot required someone to act without thinking. (Also, Star Wars does have code names to account for "overhearing" or enemy interception of their communications - heck in TESB you hear "code kay-one-zero" to let everyone know of the evacuation signal. It's really weird that Poe was communicating with Finn and Rose normally, without even adopting any form of coded communication or care that in this stealth mission others could overhear their tactical plans.)

And this only hurts Poe’s character arc, which, along with his equal failure to communicate his plan to Holdo, his mutiny and him getting a slap in the wrist for everything he did, does not make him convincingly come across as a someone ready to receive Leia’s torch in the leadership of the Resistance/Rebellion/whatever they call themselves now. The guy shouldn’t even be holding a rank at all.

 

You guys are arguing almost entirely with the benefit of hindsight...

 

But there was a well organized evacuation from D'Qar (One that was executed perfectly up until the point that Poe decided to ignore orders from a General) that allowed the Resistance to escape in spite of Poe's nonsense. The jump destination only seems like a bad idea AFTER you find out the FO can track them through hyperspace. This is information the neither the Resistance nor the audience was privy to while the evacuation was happening. So I'm not really sure how this evacuation is at all less competent than the one we saw on Hoth.

 

I don't know who you are referring to with the undefined "you guys", but in my case it's absolutely not true. I'm questioning Poe', Holdo' and Hux's behaviors regardless of the outcomes. The same is true for the poster who criticized Holdo, since the hindsight is clearly in Holdo's favor.

 

There wasn’t. An evac plan means you have a place to evac. They didn’t have one. They had to think of one through the chase scene. And I thought it was weird that they dropped from LS in the middle of nowhere and not in front of a base, and after my first watching I had the impression that was because of the lack of fuel or something. It's only in my second watching that I noticed they didn't seem to know where to go. The destination jump still doesn't make much sense, but it had to be that way just so the movie could unfold the way it did.

I also wouldn’t say their tactics were well organized. It took me some time to make sense of them, and I'm still not sure what was the actual plan. Poe had been green-lit to destroy the surface cannon of a Dreadnought for the purpose of moving in the bombers. Someone had already fielded in the bombers. So there was an attack plan already in place that had nothing to do with the actual evacuation, for unknown reasons. Then midway through it the plan gets cancelled, to which Poe disobeys, and also for unknown reasons, Leia doesn’t communicate her orders to the bombers team. I wouldn’t call this “well organized”.

 

There's no way that Holdo could have predicted that Poe would lead a mutiny. It even comes as a surprise to the audience and we know Poe more than Holdo does. Poe acts increasingly irrationally in the aftermath of losing both Leia and his X-wing (doing things we have never seen a rebel/resistance person do before). These characters are going through stressful situations and they act according to those stresses. It's only after you've seen Poe reach that point that you can look back and say that Holdo should have seen that coming or shouldn't have employed more "common sense" to avoid it. It's a poor way of making the argument.

 

I think most criticism of Holdo comes from people being genuinely surprised she had a plan despite the movie leading us to believe she didn’t have one and/or was a traitor, making people wondering why she didn’t just simply tell the plan in the first place and spared us all that drama.

People who defend Holdo’s behavior also do it so after knowing she wasn’t in fact a clueless leader or a traitor as the movie made it look like, because had the movie’s intentions been in fact to portray Holdo as an incompetent leader or a traitor, we wouldn’t be having this conversation in the first place.

This “in hindsight” argument goes both ways.

 

I couldn't disagree more on this. Poe said "you are a coward and a traitor!" What else was he supposed to do in order to make her elaborate the educated guess that maybe () something dangerous was going on?

Right few minutes before Poe asked the question in the most explicit way (I'd say he was begging rather than asking, to be precise) "just tell us that you have a plan!"
And she talked about the sun...

 

You're assuming that they didn't intentionally go to a place in the middle of nowhere. I don't know why you're doing that. It seems fairly reasonable that they wanted to be somewhere off the grid until they could figure out the best place to jump to to refuel. They didn't jump to another base because they don't have another base. At the end of ESB the rebels are also in the middle of nowhere regrouping.

The plan is pretty simple to follow. Evacuate the base is the primary objective. If they are unable to evacuate in time, they need to launch an attack on the dreadnought so that it can't destroy the base. They are still in the middle of their evacuation when the FO arrives. So they start the attack on the dreadnought. Once the final transport is off the ground, Leia calls off the attack on the dreadnought because it has not yet reached a point of no turning back. Poe is in command of the bombers because they are his team. I don't know what your profession is like, but at my job I have a boss that tells me what to do. My boss's boss does not tell me what to do. He tells my boss what to do.

 

I totally agree. Once I thought about it, I realized how bad I think his arc was written. It's good to learn to be disciplined and not reckless. That's a good lesson to learn. But the movie clearly shows that Poe's lesson learned is that he needs to not question authority and just fall in line when his superiors don't tell him anything about what's going on. That's a terrible message to send to anyone.

It is implied she did, since she was working closely with Holdo. Holdo must have told D'Acy and the other commanders NOT to tell Poe the plan (because you assume someone would tell Poe as long as they were told not to). Holdo must have directed them all to intentionally withhold the plan from him, which is an orchestrated act. I guess Holdo thought it would be a good thing to single Poe out, for whatever reason, but she was wrong. Nobody is ever gonna just say "Ok, they tell me nothing but I'll just go along like a mindless idiot." If she just would've told him her plan, then at least there's a chance he likes it, or at the most he'll debate it with her. Holdo just lacked these crucial communication skills and didn't want to deal with him.

 

Haven't thought about it.
Besides, I don't even understand what was supposed to stay secret anymore. That the transports were charged was clear to everybody who paid attention, Poe simply casually noticed it, nobody was hiding it. So is it just that they were intended to go to Crait the secret part? But I don't get it, once the FO knew that there were transports in the first place, deducing they were going to Crait was trivial. The secrecy argument sounds weak to me.

 

I think it's the story writing that just falls hollow. Yeah, doesn't make sense. Holdo just stands there as the transports start to fuel in the background, not caring if Poe notices now? I think it was just all written the way it was for dramatic effect in the end.

 

Middle of nowhere in space is not a place. I thought it was obvious I was talking about a place that provided shelter, resources, etc to accommodate their survival. Which is basic strategic planning. They were a NR-supported Resistance who lived in a free galaxy a couple of days ago, they should’ve had plenty of time to establish secret hideouts. Even a much smaller Rebellion in ANH had other bases.

And the very own movie establishes that they did have bases, they just didn’t conveniently remember they existed before.

And no, in TESB, the Rebellion was shipped to a rendezvous point. Luke didn’t go there because we decided to take trip to Dagobah. Leia and Han were meant to go there, but Falcon’s hyperdrive malfunctioned and they drifted around in space looking for the nearest safe place to land and get the ship fixed.

Regarding the plan: That could’ve been the case, though it is my opinion that the movie portrayed the situation in very confusing way. The Star Destroyers are the first ships that popped out of LS and signaled the FO presence to the Resistance, which were already in the middle of their evacuation. For unclear reasons, Poe appeared to be already fielded in whatever plan was when the Dreadnought appears after the SDs. And with the evacuation already in place even before the FO showed up with their ships, it’s even odder that they would somehow have in place, already fielded in, an attack plan that only – and really only – concerned one Dreadnought that appeared the last minute when their evac was almost complete already.

I also wondered why the Star Destroyers weren’t doing anything, and the Resistance also didn’t seem to be in the slightest concerned about them. But I disagree it was easy to understand what they were doing and why. It’s easy though to come up with posterior explanations for this and try to make some sense out of it.

I would say though it’s common sense to expect the General to overrule the commands of insubordinate lower ranking officers. If Leia said “retreat”, everyone, no exceptions, should’ve gotten that memo.

 

At the end of ESB the entire Rebellion is out beyond the galactic rim in space, not at another base that provides shelter and resources.

The Resistance does not have other bases. Crait is not a Resistance base. Crait was a Rebel base that was abandoned 35 years prior. The Resistance is not NR supported. That's literally the reason it exists...because the NR wouldn't build a military of their own.

 

^ At the end of ESB they were in a actually well-equipped (well, medically at least) large hidden ship (a place) which could have been said "rendezvous point" or not, as we see them going somewhere and saying to Lando that they would meet him in the rendezvous point on Tatooine. It's also clear that some time had passed, so it's unknown if they weren't just moving bases. Either way, the movies are good at showing a well organized Rebellion who had set up pre-planned rendezvous points in case of emergency/separation.

The Resistance was supported by the NR. It was mentioned in TFA.

 

By whom?

"The Resistance was a splinter group from the Republic's military and operated wholly independently of the Republic chain of command. The Republic quietly tolerated Organa's activities,[4] as she pursued evidence that the First Order was violating the Galactic Concordance, while some members of the Galactic Senate secretly supported her actions with their funding and sympathies."

 

By the script?

The crawl:
"With the support of the REPUBLIC, General Leia Organa leads a brave RESISTANCE."

Hux:
"We shall destroy the government that supports the Resistance, the Republic."

The text you quoted also states they were "secretly" supported and got funding.

 

Fair...I didn't remember that from the crawl. Either way, they were secretly supported by individuals in the Senate, but had no official ties to the New Republic. There weren't any NR bases hosting Resistance members or ships.

 

Why does Poe say he's the Commander of the Republic Fleet in TLJ? What was that all about?

 

Yeah, that was weird.

 

I'm still confused though. Hux says the Resistance is supported by the Republic (implying the whole Republic), and the script says so too, but other canon material makes it clear that the Resistance was created separately because the Republic didn't believe in militarizing, and didn't take the threat of the FO seriously. It didn't support the Resistance. So again, what is happening here?