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OMG!
Lieutenant Yogar Lyste!

Anyone else catch Rebel Recon? It made mention of the number of planets in the Mandalorian sphere of influence. Apparently it consists of over a thousand worlds. All of which the Empire is now presumably oppressing.

That's, uh, a whole lot of Mandalorians to account for!

In TCW Mandalore was speaking for 2000 worlds, but I thought it was a... voluntary league, not one that they obtained by conquest

eMeM wrote:In TCW Mandalore was speaking for 2000 worlds, but I thought it was a... voluntary league, not one that they obtained by conquest

it was voluntary (Ryloth was one those planets and it seems to be under it's "own" authority rather that of Mandalore), however world and planet aren't always equal when speaking of SW, a world generally means a member world or at least a signifigant colony, while planet can mean pretty much any uninhabited rock or gass ball, though in this context I assume it would mean colonies big enough to not be considered mere outposts.

Woooo, a documentary about code cylinders, that's not what I expected.

Also, tension. It's a really nice word that very rarely can be used to describe an episode of Rebels.
We need more stories about people without plot armour.

You are probably going to get that, hard , if this goes as I think it will. Thrawn has demonstrated he plays for keeps
And all because, this infantile collection of morons, who call themselves Rebels, cannot practice the most basic OpSec....

I like how they just handwaved the shuttle escaping from a trio of Star Destroyers after everyone involved knew it contained escaping rebels.

And that the way to greet a hostile shuttle is with a sector governor and a single trooper in a suddenly empty hanger.

Apparently the Death Star is unique in having manned security on its prison blocks too.

Thrawn might be 'playing the long game' but he is making himself look like an idiot in the meantime.

It is not so much Thrawn as it is just the way the Empire is portrayed in this series.

Unfortunately I think it is a consequence of the format as much as anything. Because the episodes only have 22 minutes, they often create storytelling issues like this because they are pressed for time and have some pretty extreme budget constraints. Clone Wars regularly had the same sorts of problems in general.

I'm guessing the length of the episodes is partly the reason why didn't go for large cast of expendeble characters around the main characters. The way I would done something like the Thrawn arc was to have main characters build this pool of semi-regular characters who can act both as pool of allies for missions but can be sacrificed to show the might of the empire and act as way to allow the main characters to escape but still have it cost for them since a friend had to loose their life to allow them to escape.

They couldn't even afford to have Kallus in his pajamas at the start!

Hmmm... well, Thrawn wanted Fulcrum to "win" and presumably Chopper did some systems sabotage? Prevented the tractor beams from operating or the ship from signalling the rest of the fleet?

Darth Tanner wrote: Apparently the Death Star is unique in having manned security on its prison blocks too.

Thrawn noted that the detail was absent after the sensors were identified as deactivated

Thrawn might be 'playing the long game' but he is making himself look like an idiot in the meantime.

He's playing the 'expected' part of "bumbling Imperial admiral" to lure the rebels into a false sense of security.

Also I think that instead of hunting down the Rebels base...he is tricking the Rebels to do the job for him. Kallus will be used to expedite this

If Thrawn ever made a backup of his map he may already know where the base is...

I expect he already knows from the look on his face when he checked the map after entering his office. Maybe he has a photographic memory?

If Thrawn let them change it, all he has to do is compare the "before" and "after" to see what different and he'll have the base's exact location.

Raesene wrote:I expect he already knows from the look on his face when he checked the map after entering his office. Maybe he has a photographic memory?

Dunno, his voice sounded like he was genuinely surprised nothing's missing.

Galvatron wrote:If Thrawn let them change it, all he has to do is compare the "before" and "after" to see what different and he'll have the base's exact location.

Unless he doesn't have any backup

While that isn't a bad plan, it wouldn't work here as it was Kallus who determined which planet was altered and Kallus doesn't know the location of the rebel base. I wonder if Kallus will survive this season, it seems like they're setting him up to die.

Lord Revan wrote:While that isn't a bad plan, it wouldn't work here as it was Kallus who determined which planet was altered and Kallus doesn't know the location of the rebel base.

Correction: Ezra recognized the planet first and then Kallus told Chopper to erase it and add a decoy.

Logically aside from the assassination attempt on Thrawn, Thrawn would also surmise that the vital coordinates he's got (that Kallus knows of) would be something that the Rebel sleeper agent would want to be altered too since even with Thrawn dead, the Imperials can still continue narrowing down the systems and eventually discover the Rebel base...

Heck, I bet Thrawn intentionally let Kallus and company know his search plans and his narrowing down of the possible worlds in order to spur them to action. If Thrawn has photographic memory, then letting the Rebel spies delete the location of their base (or, two worlds that might contain their base)... and comparing/finding out which ones they deleted, would save Thrawn all the trouble of eliminating the last hundred or so planets.

I think what's hurting Thrawn as a character atm is that he doesn't have Palleon equilevant whom he could explain his plans (which I suspect might be due to the time/budget limitations), if we had at least some indication of Thrawn plans beyond the guess work from episodes it would help his character loads as we would have some idea as to what his end game might be as well as better picture of the level competence in display as we could see which failures were "playing the role" and which were actual failures on Thrawn's part.

Best episode of the season so far IMO.

A few observations:
1. Thrawn's flagship is Chimaera, all's right with the world.
2. Anybody else loved that the codeword for the assassination droids was Rukh?
3. Governor Price was obviously setup by Thrawn. He placed all possible suspects in a position to help the Rebels escape with minimal effort


EDIT: Haha, Thrawn had the Holy Grail in his office.

Thanas wrote:EDIT: Haha, Thrawn had the Holy Grail in his office.

He did, didn't catch that one.

As for Price I wouldn't be surpriced if Thrawn had a fall guy (or gal in the case of Gov. Price) or 2 in case the risks he was taking didn't pay, he seems to smart to be ignorant about how the empire deals with failure of any kind, if the plan works Thrawn can say "it was all part of the plan to expose the rebel base to a swift death blow" and if things didn't work he can officially pin the blame to one the fall guys while personally making note as to what actually went wrong.

That's a reasonable hypothesis.

Thrawn generally doesn't seem like the kind of leader who passes his failures off as the fault of his subordinates, at least in TTT. However, I doubt he could have gotten as far as he did, especially as an alien in the Empire, without a very good understanding of Imperial culture and internal politics.

This week's episode is up on Disney XD's site already, for those with access to it.