{"id":26,"date":"2022-09-23T01:42:58","date_gmt":"2022-09-23T00:42:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/joshtest04.wordpress.com\/2022\/09\/23\/ando-calrissian-andor-episodes-1-2-3\/"},"modified":"2025-05-05T20:24:04","modified_gmt":"2025-05-05T19:24:04","slug":"ando-calrissian-andor-episodes-1-2-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fevered.earth\/index.php\/2022\/09\/23\/ando-calrissian-andor-episodes-1-2-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Ando Calrissian (Andor Episodes 1, 2, 3)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Last time<\/a> turmoil engulfed the Galactic Republic as we discussed episode -3 of Obi-wan, The Phantom Menace.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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They better not try and make a big thing out of that Quake logo Rebel Alliance symbol again. I will snap.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

So once again we return to these damn Star Wars. It does feel like a joke. Following Obi-wan<\/em> I swore blind that I was done dipping my toes in the Disney Star War pool, the life-giving waters were certainly all dried up and gone by the time I watched Kenobi face Vader on the exceedingly dark planet of the stalagmites. The problem\u200a\u2014\u200ait seemed\u200a\u2014\u200awas that there was simply nothing more to say on the subject of Star Wars. You can pass some time making do-overs, like the sequel trilogy, you can last a while doodling in the gaps as with Solo<\/em> and Rogue One, <\/em>and Mandalorian<\/em> probably warranted a look-in from me eventually but there\u2019s an awful lot of it. Disney\u2019s four-billion-dollar purchase was running along on borrowed time. At some point they were going to try something\u200a\u2014\u200alike interpolating an alternative follow-up to the prequel trilogy where Vader has some kind of evil daughter who menaces baby Luke\u200a\u2014\u200aand have it just not work. And so it was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I found Andor <\/em>to be a baffling announcement for a series anyway, in the fashion of Michael Bluth hearing about his son\u2019s girlfriend. Really? Him? Don\u2019t get me wrong, Diego Luna was perfectly pleasant in Rogue One, <\/em>his chemistry with protagonist Felicity Jones papering over any number of cracks in the shooting script. Despite that, he wasn\u2019t an obvious candidate for the extended universe treatment, not just because\u200a\u2014\u200aspoilers abound\u200a\u2014\u200ahe pops his clogs in the climax of that film, sacrificing himself to the rebel cause. There\u2019s little obvious scope for expanding his story in preference to any of the rest of that cast, many of who were underserved in Rogue One<\/em>. It almost seemed ridiculous to hope that, even absent the pressure of dealing with a prominent legacy character like Ben Kenobi, the series might flourish. The most we could hope for was that in a post-Obi-wan <\/em>world, it might be a safer bet to take on characters and relationships that aren\u2019t dripping with potential\u200a\u2014\u200aif only to save us all the heartbreak.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Him?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I speculated in writing on that series that Obi-wan<\/em> was an attempt to make a new sequel to Revenge of the Sith <\/em>in the way that Rogue One<\/em> had been an attempt to make a new prequel to A New Hope<\/em>. The insertion of Andor <\/em>into this genealogy forces us to consider Rogue One <\/em>instead <\/em>as a new Return of the Jedi, <\/em>the terminal end of a series that\u2019s about to be filled in backwards. This is, inarguably, a George Lucas move. From the prequels to the Clone Wars to the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, George Lucas loves nothing more than starting a series in the middle somewhere. Could this be an authentically positive omen for Andor<\/em>?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Getting it out of the way straight off, it\u2019s good. I hate it and I wish it weren\u2019t the case but it\u2019s really good. The genius of Andor<\/em>, at least in this first trilogy of episodes, is that it doesn\u2019t even try. It\u2019s barely Star Wars. Where it could reference Star Wars it often doesn\u2019t\u200a\u2014\u200awhen antagonist Arnold Rimmer addresses a crack team of extremely unpleasant security agents in the second episode, it could be a pastiche of Darth Vader addressing the bounty hunters in Empire Strikes Back<\/em>, but it isn\u2019t. Instead its Lieutenant Gorman from Aliens<\/em> trying to give a pep talk to the cops from The Fifth Element<\/em>. The first episode opens with the titular Cassian Andor (last seen sleepwalking through that terrible reshoot scene for Rogue One <\/em>where he lets a man climb halfway up a wall before shooting him)<\/em> in a greasy, grimy neon city that\u2019s Blade Runner<\/em> by way of Attack of the Clones <\/em>but separate and distinct from both.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This feels mean.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It seems implausible that we actually see less of this future neon city than we do the party drug planet from Obi-wan <\/em>given how much more vibrant and coherent it feels\u200a\u2014\u200ain what will become a running mark of quality, there\u2019s an extended scene of the club bouncer patting Andor down and giving him the house rules before he heads in. These small moments and subtle characters count tenfold in making the setting compelling, and Andor<\/em> has them in spades: the busybody on the space transport who thinks everything\u2019s crooked, the town bellringer who takes immense pride in his work without saying a single word, the guy who Cassian owes money to who has hired a local shark man to lightly menace him (yes, a loan-shark). These things could all easily be on the cutting room floor, and a persistent complaint I had about Obi-wan<\/em> was that they invariably were, giving the impression of a world where people only ever talked when they wanted to muse about starting a rebellion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This is just Wall-E<\/em>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The introduction sequence ends with the inciting incident for the plot of this run of three episodes: Andor shoots first. Framed for a crime he totally committed, he desperately tries to get off-planet while paying his debts and looking after his suspiciously sassy mother. A droid that looks like Wall-E to such an extent that Disney would surely sue if this weren\u2019t being made by Disney pleads with him to stay, but no dice, he\u2019s getting his friend who works on pod race engines to ring up Stellen Skarsg\u00e5rd immediately. Interspersed are flashback scenes in which we see that Andor himself comes from a tribe of presumably-indigenous humanoid scavengers on an Imperial planet. That is to say, he is an Ewok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The antagonism is provided by Inspector Karn, who as I\u2019ve mentioned draws on no-one so much as Red Dwarf\u2019s Arnold Rimmer, a cripplingly insecure, incredibly tedious busybody who serves as deputy inspector for the sub-Imperial corporate police force. He is an absolute delight in every scene, especially once paired with Alex Fern\u2019s toadying fascist sergeant. I can only assume we\u2019re going to see him get promoted to the highest ranks in the course of his Javert-like pursuit of Andor (who, I should note again, is totally guilty).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Boo! Hiss!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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It\u2019s not all roses (well, it\u2019s mostly roses). The 40-minute episode format, while I personally prefer it to the prestige TV standard hour makes little sense for a set of three episodes that feel like nothing more than an episode of Sherlock<\/em>, a show that hugely benefitted from its feature-length runtime. The ending of the second episode is particularly odd, showcasing some dramatic walking that has the air of being test footage. I\u2019m going to try and consider the show to be a run of movies as best as I can, a series of four features. If they\u2019d released it all at once I\u2019d probably have gone back to my old tricks and started at the end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The action sequence that takes up most of the third episode falls a little flat in places, such as the multiple uses of \u201ca rope coil has suddenly detached from a pillar\u201d maybe making sense from a logical point of view but perhaps not a dramatic one. Much in the tradition of classic Doctor Who however, the bread and butter of the acting is just good enough to make up for it. Watching Skarsg\u00e5rd and Luna bicker over who gets to be mysterious and aloof to who is well worth the price of entry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Not another one!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The ending of the third episode, where Andor leaves with Skarsg\u00e5rd, is somewhat muted only because we\u2019re having such a great time with the characters established on Ferrix (the name of the planet). I didn\u2019t want to see them go, but I also can\u2019t see how the plot could return to Ferrix without being contrived. We\u2019ll see. Plenty of time to mull things over in the weeks to come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The tricky thing with Star Wars is, everyone wants to have a lightsaber. You want to have a lightsaber. I want to have a lightsaber. The people making Andor<\/em> want to have a lightsaber. How long can they maintain the trapeze act of making Star Wars that isn\u2019t primarily influenced by Star Wars? That\u2019s what we\u2019re going to find out, I guess.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Up next:<\/p>\n\n\n\n