The Mandalorian Discussion Thread (spoilers and such)

[Juubi Karakuchi]

Episode 15. Good on the whole, with a couple of character moments.

Spoiler

This was pretty much what I expected, though there were one or two surprises. I don't know who those alien raiders are, but they seemed willing to risk death in large numbers to blow those shipments; not to mention hurling themselves at a stormtrooper/shoretrooper line. Crazed fanatics with big sticks and thermal detonators seem to be about what Imperial troops can handle.

The part inside the refinery, with the Imperials cheering and welcoming their two heroes was oddly painful. A remainder that for all their faults, Imperials are people too.

Very tense moment with the terminal, the big moment being when Din Djarrin finally breaks the helmet rule with no workaround; with Mayfeld sufficiently moved that he promised not to mention it to anyone. Followed up with an Inglorious Basterds moment with an officer who screamed political/commissar/loyalty officer just by the way he kept glancing at Din and Mayfeld. We find out why Mayfeld left the Empire, and the officer drops a major First Order-related hint.

Once again, Imperial troops proved inept. It can be explained in the first few seconds by confusion, but after that it's the usual.

Minor Points

- NR prison facilities make use of droid guards. Either the NR has manpower issues or droids make better prison guards. It does make sense, considering they would have no prejudices or personality issues of the sort that would lead to cruelty or corruption.

- Interesting to see shoretrooper armour in use here. Quite likely this particular faction is having supply problems and using whatever gear it can lay its hands on. Mixing them in with stormtroopers seems to back that up.

- I wasn't sold on the WW2-style AA guns; but then again, they might have been improvised out of available gear; see point above.

- An Imperial division is apparently about five to ten thousand people. A stormtrooper legion is 12,800 troopers, but Mayfeld seems a little too competent to have been a stormtrooper. The (non-stormtrooper) Imperial army may have used a different structure.

- Regarding armour. We hear shoretroopers screaming as they fall off the building after being shot; like that one stormtrooper in ANH. It hints that downed troopers may be still alive at least in some cases; suggesting that stormtrooper (and other) armour is intended not to stop blaster bolts completely, but merely reduce damage.

[Galvatron]

Boba Fett cleans up well. A fresh coat of paint and getting his armor to fit properly made a huge difference.

I suspect that shoretroopers are being retconned as tropical climate troopers and I'm fine with that.

[Broomstick]

Spoiler

Dinn Djarrin last season would rather die than remove his helmet... but removes his helmet for a chance to find The Kid. Wow, dude takes parenthood seriously.

I liked the character development of Mayfield. They didn't have to do that, but having done that, he's a much more interesting person.

We saw that Dinn's fighting style is partly based on having really good armor - a few of those hits he took hurt.

And yeah, Boba Fett cleans up pretty good.

[Darth Yan]

I thought Mayfield would betray him but that they would see it coming and work it into the plan. That they didn't was a nice touch. Operation Cinder as well....damn Palpatine was petty.

Though it was funny that the officer had a corrupt southern hick vibe rather than snooty aristocrat.

[LadyTevar]

We saw that Dinn's fighting style is partly based on having really good armor - a few of those hits he took hurt.

Yep, Dinn got too used to letting the armor protect him. My brother and I both winced and said "not Belkar!" at the same time.

Oh, did you notice what weapon Cara Doon was using? My brother did, and started laughing. They gave her a Carino rifle, according to him.

But damn, what a Western this was!
TNT Stagecoach, complete with attacking natives.
Snipers on the High Ground
One last shot to blow the place sky-high
And the prisoner is listed as 'dead' in thanks for his help

[LadyTevar]

And now, some bitching.

If your probably expensive mining transports are being picked off by natives with sky-skimmers and grenades, to the point only one's gotten through "in the last week", WTF AREN'T YOUR TIES ON PATROL TO PREVENT THIS? Because, from the timeline, I'm betting those TIEs were only just scrambled when the first transport was blown up.
Second, if your transports are being blown up regularly, WHERE ARE THE GUARDS? What's preventing a couple gunners riding 'shotgun' on the top, like soldiers on a train?
Why keep running 4-5 transports in the same line FOR A WEEK and letting them get blown up, losing thousands of credits in gas that needs to go to the "Project that makes Cinder look tiny"?

[Broomstick]

It's not like this the first Star Wars story that involves epic stupidity....

The discussion about Cinder makes it clear that the Empire really does not value people. If blowing up an entire division of 5-10,000 troops only rates a shrug what are a few transports? {insert}troopers are clearly as expendable as bullets. I get the impression that "training" consists of shoving a guy into armor, handing him a weapon, and saying "do what that guy over there says" and nothing more because their performance is about what you'd expect from that lack of troop investment.

Now, if you to no-prize the episode.... maybe there's a severe lack of fuel so Ties are only flown when absolutely necessary in the eyes of those running the operation. Who clearly don't give a damn how much carnage their actions cause. They tried gunners riding on top the roadtrain but they kept falling off. Or getting shot off. Because none of those guys have Dinn's training. The Imperials haven't changed tactics because they are an incredibly inertia-laden bureaucracy (guess all the inertia removed by shipboard dampers gets dumped directly into the commanders' brains).

But back to positive things about the series - I am enjoying how they are rounding out some of the past villains. Tusken Raiders still aren't sweet and lovable, but they were given more depth in this series. They're not unreasoning and unreasonable and can work with others towards a mutual goal. Mayfield is not a nice guy, but he's got a certain amount of honor, he's not unfeeling towards others, and has his own reasons to hate the Empire even if he's from it and still seen as an Imperial. It's part of what makes this series interesting despite some story-telling flaws.

[LadyTevar]

But back to positive things about the series - I am enjoying how they are rounding out some of the past villains. Tusken Raiders still aren't sweet and lovable, but they were given more depth in this series. They're not unreasoning and unreasonable and can work with others towards a mutual goal. Mayfield is not a nice guy, but he's got a certain amount of honor, he's not unfeeling towards others, and has his own reasons to hate the Empire even if he's from it and still seen as an Imperial. It's part of what makes this series interesting despite some story-telling flaws.

Yes, this series has been a gold-mine of deep-delving into the EU.
I didn't even know about "Operation Cinder" until this. It was either novels or comics, which I didn't follow.

[Knife]

I think it was comics but I learned of it from the cut screens and plot of battlefield II.

[Galvatron]

Yeah, it was also in the comics.

Spoiler

[chimericoncogene]

I always hated Cinder. It was unnatural, an abomination of human nature - Nero Decrees almost never get executed because by the time the dictator orders them, he usually has no power left to enforce them, and self-serving power hungry hacks that run such regimes generally prefer survival and personal enrichment over ideological fanaticism. A pathetic collapse into warlordism and rapid disintegration is far more natural.

OTOH, between phenomenal automation (as in cobalt bomb Doomsday Device levels of automation), inhumanly loyal clone stormtroopers in the Stormtrooper Corps, and gigaton turbolasers on every gunboat, even a compliance rate of under a percent could wreak substantial havoc, especially on lightly shielded frontier worlds, before the rest of the Imperial Navy got round to hunting down the crazies.

[Rogue 9]

[Batman]

Um-the facial scan. You have a face therefore you're authorized to use this terminal? Aren't those things usually a 'tad' more selective? That's like a fingerprint scanner going 'yep, you have fingerprints, we're cool'.
Why were those raiders trying to blow up the whateritwascalledium? They were clearly not trying to 'steal' it

[Galvatron]

I think it's obvious they were anti-Imperial freedom fighters, but they were also in Mando's way so he had to kill them.

[Broomstick]

That was one of the few times I was glad to click on a video in a discussion thread. That's a very well constructed essay.

It was apparent to me form the beginning that although Dinn was the series protagonist he wasn't really a good guy. Not evil or malicious, but very much lawful neutral. It makes him a good bounty hunter, but it can land him into situations that, to us, are morally ambiguous at best.

[Knife]

Um-the facial scan. You have a face therefore you're authorized to use this terminal? Aren't those things usually a 'tad' more selective? That's like a fingerprint scanner going 'yep, you have fingerprints, we're cool'.
Why were those raiders trying to blow up the whateritwascalledium? They were clearly not trying to 'steal' it

I took it as an anti droid thing, kind of like checking for a bot. Or perhaps a 'black list' of those who can't instead of a white list of those who could?

[GuppyShark]

Are you a droid?

Check all the boxes that contain Ewoks.

[Broomstick]

Um-the facial scan. You have a face therefore you're authorized to use this terminal? Aren't those things usually a 'tad' more selective? That's like a fingerprint scanner going 'yep, you have fingerprints, we're cool'.
Why were those raiders trying to blow up the whateritwascalledium? They were clearly not trying to 'steal' it

I took it as an anti droid thing, kind of like checking for a bot. Or perhaps a 'black list' of those who can't instead of a white list of those who could?

Given the sheer number of people in the Empire a black list might be easier than a white list.

Or it's another example of technological stupidity in the storyverse.

[Solauren]

Um-the facial scan. You have a face therefore you're authorized to use this terminal? Aren't those things usually a 'tad' more selective? That's like a fingerprint scanner going 'yep, you have fingerprints, we're cool'.
Why were those raiders trying to blow up the whateritwascalledium? They were clearly not trying to 'steal' it

I took it as an anti droid thing, kind of like checking for a bot. Or perhaps a 'black list' of those who can't instead of a white list of those who could?

Given the sheer number of people in the Empire a black list might be easier than a white list.

Or it's another example of technological stupidity in the storyverse.

Imperial Racism - Scan - Are you a droid, or is your species human? If not, access denied!
(Note: Haven't seen the episode yet)

[Broomstick]

Very clearly there's some sort of black list, that's why Cara and Fennec couldn't go in. There's some sort of issue with clones, so Boba couldn't go in. Yet Dinn - whose face, apparently, hasn't been seen since childhood or early teens, could pass. Hmm.... the scan checks for those on the blacklist, then checks to see the person at the terminal is organic, that is, non-droid?

[Patroklos]

This is a terminal that lets you see detailed tactical information on operational units. There are certainly less people with access to it than those who do. And of those that do, there is certainly compartmentalization within whatever the basic access is.

Then there would be at least two factor authentication.

Then we have this idea that if you have ever known an imperial code, it works forever on any access point anywhere.

Also what was the point of all of this? So they have the location of the ship now. A ship. That moves. To possibly anyplace within the galaxy in a few hours. In the time it took them just to leave the base their information is maybe useless.

It's all very lazy and contrived, and I doubt there was any viewer whose eyebrow didn't rise before going though greater security to access their iphone to research this very thing. That's very bad for a show suspension of disbelief wise.

[Broomstick]

It would make more sense if they were accessing a ship transponder rather than ship coordinates. But then Star Wars has also played fast and loose with proper use of units of measurement.

[Galvatron]

This sort of thing has been commonplace since ANH. Just look at what Obi-Wan and Artoo were able to do on the Death Star.

We should be more surprised an ISB base in the middle of nowhere actually had security that tight.

[Patroklos]

The general audience was a lot less computer savvy back then. Now we engage with them constantly, andcyber security is a daily concern for normal people for regular life.

[Batman]

Doesn't change the fact that 'in universe' this lack of cybersecurity is well established.