Andor Andor Episode 1.01 Discussion Thread (Spoilers Allowed)

Separatists seem probable source, Commerce Guilds, Corporate Alliance, or Trade Federation. Ship had separatists in there too it seems. Republic is another possibility, sure separatist guilds were also Republic before the crisis and the war but Republic war effort could have organized massive new mining operations. I think excavators looked little too normal and earth-like to me, I would've liked to see more alien mining equipment, like walking giant drills. Like these

Spoiler: tridents on Kamino

I wanted more visual connection to established Star Wars anyways. Little hints that this takes place in the same universe as movies and animated shows.

 

I was right about to say that maybe the planet being toxic is a lie to keep people away. Right now I'm operating under the idea that the kids on Kenari weren't affected by the toxins because...reasons...however it would be a little more realistic if we found out all of that was a lie.

Maybe whoever was in charge of the mining project, (the Empire, Separatists, Republic?), killed all the adults working on the mine but didn't want anybody to know about it so they came up with the toxic story to scare everybody away.

What's throwing me off is that all the people on that crashed ship have yellow skin which first made me think they were aliens but maybe they were humans that were poisoned? But they had oxygen masks on. Wouldn't that have protected them like it protected Maarva and her husband?

I have a lot of questions!

 

It really seemed yellow skin was caused by poison and didn't seem masks helped them or maybe they were killed by purpose (masks were maybe sabotaged or something). Maybe Sidious wanted to move poison from separatist hands to Republic/Empire hands and left no witnesses, or simply test effectiveness of it by killing some random dudes. He could kill his own men without remorse like that. Or some of his like-minded underlings like Tarkin or Dooku.

 

A gas mask doesn't necessarily help against every poison. You need some sort of filter that protects against the specific poison you are facing. In addition to that, they tend to have a limited life-span as well.

There could be other explanations as well, like someone being exposed to the poison before he put the mask on, so he was already dying anyway. Or the crash causing the mask to not sit properly anymore, exposing the person to the gas again.

By the time Maarva arrived, the air had cleared out already. If it hadn't, Cassian wouldn't have survived either. The ship had plenty of holes and open access ports after all. Enough to cause a proper air circulation to clean out the air, or at least diluting the gas enough to make it not dangerous anymore.

 

I think these are the most likely explanations, especially since the ship clearly experienced some kind of explosion, either accidental or as the result of enemy action. This could likely lead to either unexpected contact with the gas where they were unable to get suited up in time, or the potential compromising of their protective gear if they were already wearing it.

 

Found this first episode rather hard to get into. It felt sluggish, without much incident. I'm not asking for Mando style giant gunfights all the time, but something happening would be nice. After the intro it felt just like Cassian walking around town talking to people. Not very deep conversations either, or much beyond that. The 'villains' feel like middle-management, and I can't get a bead on their leader guy, or why he seems oddly obsessed.

Things I did like:

The tower bell ringer with his hammers. That was a very cool, Star Warsy kind of detail to throw in for a throwaway moment.
Canonisation of brothels(?) in the Star Wars universe. Was not expecting that as our first destination, but I'll go along for the ride.
The design of Cassian's ship (the one he flies to leave the planet at the start, not the one he meets his droid in), which was a lovely blend of Y-Wing and U-Wing styles to make something new. Always like it when you can trace a design lineage from common elements (like the engine nacelles).
The design of Cassian's droid friend (didn't catch the name). Lovely iteration on the astromech concept, with the ergonomic folding design. It feels weighty and a good fit for the setting. The stutter is a nice feature to set him apart too.


Still haven't seen ep 3, but I really hope things start to happen. It's not really building much tension so much as slowly unravelling an obvious plot for me so far.

 

I'm confused. There was a toxic event on Kenari in the past that killed all the adults...but then the ship that crashes on Kenari was carrying toxins too?

 

That’s not clear yet is it? I’m thinking two separate events. Kids are in their own. Later the planet is poisoned.

When the kids arrived at the downed ship yellow gas was emanating from openings. So I think the ship bright the poison.

It doesn’t seem to be a more Star Trek option where the planet became toxic but the kids are unaffected by the poison because they are kids.

 

There’s two important things to keep in mind about the mystery of Kenari:
1) we haven’t been told anything at all about the adults of the native tribe, except that they appear to be missing around the time of the Clone Wars.
2) information that comes from officially published Imperial reports may not be entirely factual.

 

Yes that is still mystery too.

You don't say! Not entirely factual indeed.

I really think poison thing will be important in the main plot of this show. It's something really nasty Empire is probably still using.

I wonder if this is connected to older idea from Thrawn trilogy. The case of Trihexalophine1138 especially.
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Trihexalophine1138

Also it might have connection to Blue-shadow virus, especially since there is strong color involved, yellow this time though
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Blue_Shadow_Virus

Third possible option is some connection to sterilization of Geonosis, although Geonosian and human physiology is quite different, it was this Geonosian poison caused breathing problems to Saw Gerrera according to previous source books (which btw have very different backstory for Cassian too but whatevs)
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Sterilization_of_Geonosis

It may not have any direct connection to any of these, but I think it would be cool to establish some continuity to use of bioweapons in GFFA.

It may be that persons killed were part of Republic strike team posing as separatists and Maarva knew it since he says Republic officer was killed but they clearly wore CIS insignias. They wouldn't mess up such a big detail would they? She was also worried all kids would be killed by the Republic. That's very unusual considering jedi are the power behind republic military still at the time. Jedi don't kill innocents or kids even though separatist propaganda may claim otherwise (or jedi is like of Pong Krell or Anakin turned Vader). Unless order 66 is just given or something.

It's all very unclear still, but I think it was important to establish something very fishy happened on Kenari and it was also very very secret. Empire probably came up with fictional simplification to cover what really happened. There were series of weird events. Mining stopped, adults killed, children left alone, ship with poison shot down and planet poisoned eventually(?) or just claimed to be poisoned and it really is site of secret imperial biolab or something.

It's not like the Death Star is only thing Empire comes up with.

 

5/10

Well made I guess but I just don't like the whole skulking around a grimy dirt town thing. Weirdly it felt like a second episode more to me than the type of pilot that wants to start out with a bang.

 

Liked ep 1, ep2.. not so much.

 

Ship might have been leaving the planet when it crashed rather than arriving.

 

As a standalone episode, very interesting in the way it's setting up the characters and situations. Very deliberate, not much 'action' (for Star Wars), but very intriguing. 7/10.

 

Also it felt like it was pulling its punches a bit. The brothel could've been mistaken for another blue drink cantina, and the camera was still shying away from violence even if it is supposed to be accentuated as not being typical fun SW action. Maybe "Star Wars for adults" could use a home beyond D+.

 

I was interested in this series enough to be interested in continuing watching I guess. It's well filmed and put together, I will say that. So I gave it a 7. I didn't go higher cos it was really just a lot of Cassian walking around all clandestine from one place to another-and although the flashbacks are interesting, IMO they show too little at a time. You have to watch thru three of them just to figure out one thing they're doing. I guess all that comes to personal preference stuff.

With as many episodes as there are, I'm sure I'll have to get thru some exposition to see some really good stuff. Although I will say that this really does not "feel" like Star Wars-like at all. But-if I ever want to see new SW material that doesn't involve the Empire or Skywalkers etc. I have to be open to it not "feeling" like SW ALL the time.

So I'll continue to give it a chance.

 

Why would you assume that the latter has anything to do with Disney+?
There is plenty of gory stuff on it, and nothing that suggests that a show would somehow alter its violence just because of being on Disney+. The show is the way it is, because that is the creative vision. "Star Wars for adults" - apart from not being any official claim - doesn't somehow mean that you should expect extremely graphic violence.

 

I would assume based on everything I've watched on Disney+ thus far. It all feels relatively sanitized. Although to be fair I know they added those Netflix Marvel shows, which I haven't watched yet, so admittedly they might feel different from what I'd consider the service's norm. This episode of Andor didn't strike me as anything more "adult" than what we've seen with Boba or Mando (the producer's might not have pushed the adult tagline but I've seen it everywhere in regards to the show). And it's not about "extremely graphic violence." TPM and ROTJ didn't feature "extremely graphic violence," but nor did I get the impression of the camera shying away from the harshness of conflict like I did here to a certain degree.

 

The forest encampment felt very Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome; a bunch of kids eking out survival under the leadership of the kids closest to adulthood.

And B2EMO's design is a bit (a small one) of a throwback to the good robot from The Black Hole.

 

There's a grinning & jogging alien that is onscreen from 14:47 to 14:54 that reminds me of the two Ubdurian brothers that are in Takodana Castle. I wonder if he's also an Ubdurian.

Which reminds me of the time I stopped into a Vietnamese market and spotted some cookies that looked a bit like Oreos, but they were durian-flavored. Later, I mentioned them to a friend, and he said "Ah, yes, Dureos."

 

I watched the episode for a second time and noticed there’s a Y-wing in the shipyard that Cassian borrowed from.

 

I haven't seen anything on Disney+ that made it seemed sanitized, nor something that would suggest that you have to shy away from showing stuff if your show runs on Disney+. That seems more like a claim some people tend to make about Disney in general. After decades of "I can't believe Disney let them do that", maybe it's time for people to realize that Disney is perfectly fine with whatever you can come up with, as long as it fits to the story. Just because some parts of Disney are explicitly aimed at children (though even those tend to have stuff that clearly goes way over children's heads) doesn't mean all parts are. Disney has grown way beyond what it once was.

What other people are saying about a show is irrelevant. They never marketed it as "Star Wars for adults" therefore you cannot judge it by such a claim. Not that "for adults" somehow means you need to have everything captured in detail on camera. It's about the whole content in there which would make it adult, not the rare action-sequences in between. Shying away or not shying away from showing something violent - not that I noticed any of the former - isn't what defines something as being adult or not. Showing the impact it has on characters, that's what makes it adult. The tenseness of the situation, Timm freaking out over seeing his girlfriend with a bloody head and being shot for getting closer, the guards getting more and more nervous, the junior officer being shell-shocked from the carnage he just witnessed, that's what makes things "adult" (alongside many other things), the emotional impact on everyone involved, not whether a scene focuses on showing something directly or indirectly.

Compare James Bond to Jason Bourne. Both have plenty of action, but going beyond that Bond is more show and spectacle, suave spy-game, with some character moments added in, while Bourne is all about being gritty and personal. That's kind of the difference here as well.