The Mandalorian The Mandalorian 2.07 - Chapter 15 - Discussion Thread (Spoilers Allowed)

Probably just a case of a blacklist being used instead of a whitelist. So instead of checking who has access, it checks for who doesn't have access. Both approaches are valid, depending on your circumstances.

That might be because
a) the terminal is in the midst of a secret Imperial installation and you wouldn't expect any infiltrators making it that far. If the New Republic had found out, it would have launched a full assault, not tried an infiltration
b) there might have been other checks in place, making the scan not the primary check of identity. After all, Din already connected an Imperial device to the terminal

 

It was an easy way for the screenwriters to have Mando remove his helmet. It obviously makes very little sense in a military context, but it's not the worst sin in the history of story-telling either.

 

Every ATM I've ever seen in the last 20 years, and more than a few self-checkouts in groceries stores I've seen, have cameras installed in them. They're not there to verify your identity, they're there to bust you in case the card holder later says their card was stolen and used fraudulently.

In this case, it may have simply been there to keep a visual record of who was asking for the information in case it should later be necessary.

 

I voted this 9/10. As far as Star Wars goes, this is exactly the kind of entertainment I want to see: Sneaking into the bad guy's base, stealing the secrets, and blowing the place up as you leave. The face-detection thing seemed really unsecure, but this is the Empire we're talking about here. The sole purpose of that was for Mando to remove his helmet so he could reveal his face. On the rewatch, I enjoyed Mayfeld a lot more when we first saw him in the scrap fields, previous memories of him were still fresh in my mind.

I was pleased to find a video of this line in multiple languages, I watched it after the amusement of Mayfeld's line kept echoing in my head.

 

ATM does not provide you with sensitive information concerning military operations. If they did, you can bet they'd verify your identity.

 

This is Star Wars. Where R2-D2 hacks into Imperial databases constantly without tripping any security systems. The facial recognition thing here doesn't bother me in the slightest.

At the end of the day, the scene isn't about Imperial remnant security protocol. It is about how far Din is willing to go in sacrificing what he once believed to be his ideals, his religion, in order to save the person that he cares most about

 

Where?

 

Yes, but do we know that it needed reloaded, versus breaking? I took it as the latter. If you over-analyze every detail, then none of the Star Wars movies make any sense. (My favorite, the stormtroopers in ANH doing a thorough search, i.e. 'this one's locked, move on to the next one...').

 

I also read that moment as a mechanical failure (the show has been very heavy on mocking Stormtroopers and their gear, after all), the equivalent of a gun jamming.

 

I agree, these security arguments are nitpicking. If R2-D2 could hack in constantly at its height hacking the Remnant shouldn't be a problem. More importantly as you pointed out is too be representative of his relationship w/Grogu.

 

I get that Lucas said that Star Wars was for kids but don’t people realize that he was basically retconning (well, lying) about his original intent? Compare ANH to the later films: Kenobi severs an arm and you see the blood on the floor, they show the two burned corpses of Luke’s adopted parents, you hear the bones in Capt. Antilles neck breaking, etc. But when ANH was a massive, overwhelming success with the kids he began to move in that direction. But even but the time of ESB he hadn’t fully adopted that position imho, allowing Kirschner (is that right?) to take a much darker approach that would appeal more to adults. By 1983, however, Lucas had decided Star Wars was for kids and he has leaned hard into that position for decades since. He made Star Wars so he can say what he likes, but that doesn’t make it true any more than if Edison had said he worked on electricity for sexual gratification. Edison didn’t, but there are millions of sex toys out there that owe him their existence. But that’s just my $.02 and we all know Lucas’s position.

 

It's barely visible :

 

did we get a name for the scrapyard planet in the beginning?

 

Exactly. Obi-Wan severs Dr. Evazan's arm w/o a second thought in ANH. Also TCW has a lot of mature content that appeals to adults as well, maybe not all of it but there were points on my recent viewing before the last season where I thought wow, that has a deeper meaning that a kid would pick up on. I was a kid when I watched it I should add.

 

Becuase he inserted a code cynider into it that had the proper clearence. The scan was a seperate thing; basically a background check to make sure he had'nt been flagged by the system in some way; like a camera at an atm, as others have noted.

Am I the only one who was suprised by how young he looks? He's 45 and he looked way older in Game of Thrones to me then he did her or last season; maybe it's the haircut?

No, but your credit card (the code cylinder) does does both of those things.

I don't think he was lying or retconning; GL's always been a little out their and seem SW is a kinda-sort-wierdish-way - it seems likely to me that he geniunely believed what he said.

Probobly Karthon, as Todd says a couple posts above. But for all we know at this point Karthon might be a nearby city, region, a continiant or even a company - maybe it's a place on Bracca?

 

it didn’t look like Bracca to me, I’m considering it Karthon until further information

also @K2771991

I don’t mean to be rude or personal, but these super long posts of yours, they just don’t read well, sorry but they don’t, most of the time I just scroll past them, because why bother? Again, I’m not trying to be mean or rude, I’m just trying to offer advice on how to better participate in a discussion.

 

@starfish is this better?

I only post the way I do becuase it's easier to respond to everyone at once rather then do it peacemeal. Sorry if it's hard to read, but I group responses to specific peaple together so it's easy for them to read the specific responses to them. You did'nt sound rude, though - peaple have brought it up before, it's just I don't always have the time or inclination to wait around for someone to post after me so I can paste the rest of the responses without double-posting.

It's probobly Karthon, your right, since Star Wars tends to name places after what planet their on so long as it's a throwaway planet; as for it not looking like Bracca (or, say, Raxus Prime, for that matter), Bracca's a planet, so it could concivibly have a region that looks like the one from Fallen Order and anouther that looks like the Karthon Scrap Yards (think how Coruscant has both Galactic City and the Works, or how the Earth has both Death Valley and Victoria Falls).

Yes, but I'm assuming he was the one hiring the other hunters for Gideon, since nobody knew about Gideon until he showed up at the end; as you said, he's a middle man.

Which Mando and co. do not have acess to.

The guild is intergalactic, and irragardless of him not being the overall guildmaster Karga obviusly had the authority to re-instate Djarin's membership, since he did exactly that and nobody said "hey, you don't have the authority to do that!"

And unless Mando, Cara or Grogu rat him out, the rest of the guild will never know.

Well, they're call *tracking* fobs, so obviusly they track the target in some way.

How is it a plot hole? Mando does'nt have access to any fobs, so he can't use them to find Grogu. We've seen that peaple are still trying to get Grogu this season, so who knows, maybe their using fobs?

As for why their's not that many of them; as I said, maybe the guild has rules agianst hunting your own/those close to them and most free agents are willing to risk it even for the money - you alianate the guild like that and you might be hurting your chances of joining later or even ruining your career as a hunter by earning yourself a bad rep. Or maybe Gideon does'nt have any left to give peaple (like they could have all been destroyed on Nevarro last season), so it's harder for them to find Grogu becuase they have to do the legwork themselves?

It really sounded/looked like a jam to me, but either way it does'nt really change anything so I suppose it's not that big a deal how you interprate it.

Eh, peaple throw jammed/out of ammo guns all the time in movies/shows/video games, so I don't think this is that big a deal.

As for why he threw it instead of getting more, it looked to me like he thought he was about to die (his body language); the pirates were about to bombard them with thermal detonators (it only would have taken one) after all, and that was going to happen irregardless of whether or not he went inside to get a new gun or tried to reload.

Their transport trucks filled with what we are repeatedly told is a highly-volatile fuel (which is probobly why the pirates attacked with melee weapons at first), so it makes perfect sense they would'nt carry weapons.

Heck, the juggernauts in this episode were basically the Imperial version of this.

Military vehicle does'nt nesseserly equal combat vechicle; real world militaries deploy a lot of unarmed units.

 

Alright now that I've gathered my thoughts here I can give my review of the episode. While it may be a filler/side quest episode, I really enjoyed it (to be fair, I've enjoyed most of the filler episodes). Something about the series seems right at home with the established universe in the 1-6 saga. Even things like Turbo Tanks and Shore Troopers help make this expansion of the universe feel right at home. And they've done the unthinkable and managed to turn Bill Burr into a sympathetic character.

Here's my hottest take; I think it handled the "morally gray" aspect of the galactic struggle better than when it was done with a less than subtle approach in The Last Jedi and Rogue One. Granted, the mythology of the original Star Wars was very black and white. But it seems like a lazy twist to reinterpret that as "what if the good guys were just as bad". Rather, the approach this episode takes is understanding why the Empire was so attractive to many and how its loyalists were able to justify everything they did. There were two instances that stuck out to me. There was a real sense of camaraderie during the celebration of the Juggernaut returning to the base. Even as the audience, I felt relief and joy to see the Tie Fighters actually save the heroes. Then there was the commander that ended up blowing their cover. You could immediately peg him as a despicable war criminal, but the scariest part was that he had no reservations and believed in what he was doing 100%.

This was also the most vulnerable we've seen Mando. A lot of tension was lost in his invincible suit of armor, so this episode did the obvious and took him out of it. The lengths of humiliation he goes through shows how his relationship with Grogu changed him. The fights also carried more weight when he was noticeably winded from taking hits where his armor usually protected him. Finally, in terms of honoring the source material, we got to see Stormtroopers living up to their legend for a short time when they were picking off pirates.

As for the criticisms, the facial recognition part was a tough sell and a less than subtle ploy to get Mando's helmet off. And while we got to see Stormtroopers doing their job, once they were facing down the main characters, they went back to being cannon fodder. It's also funny how easily Mando's Tank Trooper armor shattered against a wooden spear. Though I suppose the Ewok weapons penetrating Stormtrooper armor already prepared us for that.

Now let's talk about Boba. I like the new paint job, though it was missing a bit of the smooth, metallic feel of the OT armor. Though the bits of bare metal peaking through kept it from looking too plastic-y. It looks like he's staying with the long robe look for now, but at least he had the rest of his armor (or at least I'd assume since he has the missing knee pad). The costume fit is much better than the last episode where the torso was very puffy. Seeing him cradle the classic rifle also brought me right back.

Slave I looks great; I never would have imagined I'd see that much of the ship. Turning that into a realistic space seems like a designer's nightmare, but they made it work. Overall, the episode was a strong 9/10. But then the seismic charge bumped it up to a 10/10.

 

That one looks surprisingly like the one we saw in the episode

 

This is a poor comparison what ATM have you used that provides you with the location of one of your highest officials? The scanner was immersion breaking levels of stupid.

The tracking fobs were up there with the dumbest plot devices in the history of Star Wars. There was never an explanation because any explanation makes a stupid plot point even more dumb.

EDIT: mods sorry for double post

 

The fobs objectively made 100% perfect sense and were actually quite well-explained in the very first episode of season one by The Client (Werner Herzog). The problem is the assumption by some that the fobs are all you need to track down a target. That simply isn’t the case. As shown in season one, the fobs are only activated once you are close to the target. Otherwise, why would the Imps need to employ bounty hunters to find Grogu? Why not just use a fob and go get him? Here’s what we know from season one about this issue.

1. The Imperials need a bounty hunter to track down Grogu. That’s because they don’t know where he is. Despite the fobs, they can’t find him. They need a hunter.

2. Din asks the Client for at least three pieces of information as an “aid” to finding Grogu, not as the sole means. Those are 1) chain code; 2) puck with personal details including facial features; 3) fob. For Grogu, all they have is a fob and one part of his chain code - his age. And Din is disappointed by that. He makes it clear that this is going to make it difficult to find him.

3. Once Din (off-screen) determines that his target is on Arvala-7, he requires the assistance of a local guide (Kuiil) to help him locate the possible location of the target. So the fob doesn’t just take him there. It’s not beeping like crazy in Kuiil’s hut, is it? We don’t hear the fob working until Din is really close to Grogu. Essentially within the same building. Nay, the same room. So again, it only works when you’re very close to the target.

4. On Sorgan, ONE bounty hunter finds Din and Grogu TWO WEEKS after their landing. If the fobs worked as you say they did, hundreds of bounty hunters would’ve arrived the same day that Din did. Instead, only one. After two weeks. Because it still requires a bounty hunter to do the old-fashioned detective work to track someone. And as Din said, the commotion he and Cara made on the planet may have alerted people to their location. And he was right. What he meant by “they’ll keep sending hunters” and “he’ll never be safe” is not that the fobs are bringing bounty hunters to Grogu, but that as long as the bounty is not lifted, he’ll always he hunted. And by people who are good at it.

5. Further evidence that the fobs only work when close to the target is that Toro Calican’s fob doesn’t go off on Tatooine, despite being on the same planet as his target.

6. So ultimately, it makes no sense to claim that all Din needs to do is grab a fob with Grogu’s details and find him, as the fob simply doesn’t tell him where in the galaxy Grogu is. Din has to do old-fashioned detective work to get that information. He needs to find the location of Gideon’s ship first.

In short, the fobs objectively made perfect sense. However, if you make the incorrect assumption (incorrect because the show’s literal script contradicts the assumption) that the fobs are all you need to find someone, then of course you won’t think the story makes sense. None of it would make sense, as the very need for a bounty hunter wouldn’t exist. If all you needed was a fob to track someone down, then bounty hunters would ALL be out of a job. Replaced by fobs.

And the face scan is a similar issue. Ultimately it’s not that easy to get info on key Imperial remnant military assets because there are multiple layers of security: you need to be aware of where an Imperial terminal of that kind is, you need to locate that place (and this one was deemed wholly secret by Mayfeld), you need to infiltrate the base, you need a security code cylinder, and you need to not be on a **** list. The last one is what the face scan was about. Could the system have been more secure? Sure. But we’re talking an Imperial remnant here, and a small base at that, not the Empire at its height. And we know from R2’s exploits that the Empire at its height had iffy security measures too.

 

6 out of 10.
Never felt like any of the good guys were in any danger.
No tension as a result.

 

I thought the officer mess hall scene felt very dangerous.

Lol. Fobs became relevant to season 2 when someone suggested that one be used by Din to track down Grogu. In order to definitively demonstrate why that wouldn’t work, the fobs had to be explained again...for the millionth time.