Star Wars Andor S1E8: "Narkina 5"

Not long after his unhappy new employment, Cyril is paid a visit by the Imperial Security Bureau. Or rather, he's invited to come and pay them a visit. Forcefully. What ensues is a scene that shows a lot of complicated emotions for both him and his interrogator, Dierdre.

It turns out I've been overestimating Cyril. He may or may not have a redemption arc in his future, but if he does then it's yet to kick in. The reason for this meeting is that Cyril's name came up when Dierdre was reviewing the events that led to the discovery of that stolen comm relay. And, when reviewing his career since then, she discovered that he's been engaging in the most petty and ill-conceived bureaucratic grudge in galactic history against someone named Cassian Andor. Andor has been cited for numerous violations in fuel refinement and safety protocols, in the service of multiple corporations, in multiple sectors of the galaxy, within the past two weeks.

Holy shit Cyril lmao.

I guess that answers my question about his lingering thoughts about Cassa. Yeah, it's the white whale version. Cyril has convinced himself that since Cassa took everything from him, bringing Cassa down is the way to take it all back.

Diedre grills him about Cassa. He insists that he *knows* Cassa has a network of local accomplices and criminal contacts on Ferrix and is a threat to the security of the Galactic Empire and needs to be stopped right now and please give me my job back I deserve it you can tell because of how bad and dangerous this guy I'm trying to catch is.

After having him review the case files that her predecessor did a pretty poor job with, Dierdre tells him that she'll put in a good word for him with his supervisor and thanks him for serving the empire today. He asks her if she's sure he doesn't get any more brownie points than that. Couldn't she at least deputize him or something? Pwetty pweaaase?

No. No, and if he begs her in that obnoxious chihuahua voice one more time she'll really give him something to whimper about. Also, stop making up fake moving violations for Cassa, it's getting on everyone's nerves.

Cyril is left looking even more bitter and disillusioned than before as he returns to his silent, tomb-like office job. Like I said, this might be another step along the road to rebellion for him, but so far he's still directing most of his outrage onto Cassa instead of the people who deserve it.

...

It also continues to be ironic how he KEEPS ending up being right about how important and dangerous Cassa is, but totally by accident. Dierdre also had a bit of that going on for a while, but at this point she at least has actual data to back it up. Cyril is just prophetic madness lol.

...

Dierdre is coming out of this investigation looking pretty damned good, as a follow up ISB meeting scene makes clear.

She proves her chops to the audience even more than she already has by making most of her presentation center around that mysterious old man who Cyril saw Cassa fleeing the city with. She's apparently managed to connect him with a shadowy figure they've dubbed "Axis," who is a common thread between multiple thefts of Imperial military hardware in different regions of the galaxy. So, she's on to Luthen. Not by name, or even by face, but she knows he exists, and she knows anything connected to him is serious dissident activity.

I kinda wish we got to learn how she managed to figure that much out. But, I guess it's sufficient to assume that doing all these rendezvouses in person has finally started catching up to everyone's favored good-aligned supervillain.

Dierdre convinces the big boss to put her in charge of a special, inter-sectorial task force in charge of hunting down the criminal organization that "Axis" is a part of. His connection to the Aldhani heist is so far unsuspected, but she nonetheless convinces the ISB supervisor that he should be a priority target; It's an easy enough case for her to make once she reveals that the common thread connecting most of Axis' suspected thefts involve space combat technology, specifically. Yeah, that's the kind of thing the ISB definitely wants to nip in the bud before it starts sprouting pirate fleets and black market shipyards (and if they do end up connecting this to Aldhani, well, they'll pretty much be able to predict the Alliance to Restore the Republic as it exists in the OT). Since she already has Ferrix under her own purview, she's putting feelers out for anyone known to have been in contact with Cassa. Cassian Andor is the first name and face they've been able to concretely pin down as an associate of Axis', and they intend to pull on that thread as hard as they can.

...and Cassa has just made return visits to Mom and Bix. True, it's not clear if anyone saw him sneak over to Bix's house, but I'm sure it won't be hard for them to find out that Bix is an ex-girlfriend of his, and that she too was briefly detained during the failed Preox-Morlana manhunt. Yeah, this does not bode well for either of them.

...

Between Cassa being arrested and Dierdre coming into her own as a dangerous antagonist with a long reach, this arc definitely feels like the "Empire Strikes Back" of this gritty Star Wars reimagining. Especially coming right on the heels of a high-riding victory that involved piloting a ship through colorful energy blasts while pursued by TIE fighters.

That would also put Dierdre in Darth Vader's role, more or less. I wonder if she'll stay there? As I mentioned earlier, the fact that she seems to understand that brutal crackdowns against the general population is exactly what a terrorist would want them to do might lead her to get disillusioned with the Galactic Empire's insistence on doing it anyway. For pragmatic reasons, even if not any moral ones.

If she has an eleventh hour redemption, maybe she'll push the ISB supervisor guy down an elevator shaft or something.

...

Another point in Dierdre's favor is that, as part of her presentation to the rest of the ISB leadership, she explains that the sheer number of thefts has gone unnoticed because everyone in the damned empire prioritizes making themselves look good over making sure problems get solved. Virtually every department head and corporate bigshot is a Dickface. So, most of these incidents got swept under the rug and languished in local classified files until the new, post-Aldhani security reforms allowed her to requisition them.

I think she *wants* to say that the Empire's tendency to favor sticks over carrots when it comes to motivating people, and its prioritization of style and strongman posturing over substance when it comes to results, is creating this culture of irresponsibility in its managerial class. However, doing so would probably be way too dangerous for someone in her position; she's literally surrounded by career-obsessed ideological purity detectives who would just love to take her newly-acquired status for themselves. So, the most she can do is point out the institutional pathology that Axis has been hiding behind, without being able to propose any cures for it.

...then again, her own conduct when she was interviewing Cyril suggests that she might actually not know any better than this, herself. Maybe if it was up to her, she'd just make the punishment for lying about a failure much worse than the punishment for suffering a failure, and expect that to make a difference. Maybe I've been giving her far too much credit this whole time. Hard to say yet.

Well, let's get back to Cassa now.

Fortunately(?), the imperial justice system is so vast, so corrupt, and so callous that they can't find a man they're looking for even once they've already caught him. The individual who's managed to get the arresting officers, judge, and wardens to think of him as "Kif Gurgo" is nowhere near anyplace that Dierdre and Co are likely to look. Apparently, it's not that the planet Niamos desperately needs slave labor so much as its neighbour Narkina V does.

Erm....going by the visuals, shouldn't that be Narkina V-a?​

Every able bodied convict is sent here. The process consisting entirely of being led out of the courthouse and into one of the shuttles constantly queued up behind it, relieved of their socks and shoes, strapped into their chairs, and then a few hours later herded out of that shuttle and into the door of a Narkinian factory before it closes behind them. No words exchanged or explanations given at any point along the way.

Basically, policing in at least some parts of the Galactic Empire is just slavery sweepstakes. Officers walk around the cities picking healthy-looking people out of the crowds and enslaving them for 3d6 years.

...

It's like I really am watching The Apothecary Diaries.

...

The scenery of the industrial site on this moon is pretty impressive. Honestly, some of the most breathtaking CGI of the series so far. It's just unfortunate that the slaves are only allowed to see a few seconds' worth of it as they're herded at taser-point out of the shuttle and into the atrium of whichever factory rig needs new hands the most.

I especially like the constant whirlpools at the corners. Presumably they're sucking the water into heat sinks or hydraulic systems or something. It's also, like, symbolic and stuff.

The interiors look more like a hospital than a prison or a factory, at least at first. All pristine, sterile white, despite the wretched masses of humanity being constantly pumped in and out of them like the seawater. I guess that's sort of the Galactic Empire's whole #aesthetic though, they like shiny white surfaces. And this does seem to be an imperial industrial facility, rather than a corporate one that they've contracted. At least, all the characters refer to it as such, and no corporation is ever named. Not what I would have expected, to be honest. I wonder if perhaps this used to be a corporate slave-pit until its owners fucked up badly enough to get their industrial assets nationalized rather than just their security ones like Preox-Morlana. I think that's probably more or less it. It fits the general trajectory of things in the setting during this era.

It turns out the shoe-confiscation wasn't just random invasiveness or overzealousness. One of the first things the new inmates' impossibly punchable-looking warden tells them is that each room in the facility has its own electrifiable floor system. And by "tells them," I mean he tases all of them in the feet just to demonstrate that he can.

That's apparently the lowest of the three possible settings he can activate the voltage at. Presumably, it's a stun/kill/kill+ sort of scaling, with the third one being for extreme cases involving lots of inmates and/or ones with tougher physiologies etc. And, of course, the "stun" mode is painful enough to be effectively "punish."

The warden looks like he's actually getting something sexual out of it when he shocks them.

The slaves live in a self-contained world of white metal walls, barking intercoms, and floors that can hurt or kill them at any time and for any reason that the taskmasters deem sufficient. Said taskmasters are never seen in person except for when new slaves are being brought in, old slaves have managed to live through their sentences and are being brought out, or corpses are being removed. No word on what the ratio of those last two are, but the implication is that it's not that high of one.

Work crews are run and organized by inmate kapos rather than the management. Food is brought in and waste brought out by machines.

...

I'd ask why the actual labor isn't done by machines too, but that question is honestly only slightly more pointed in Star Wars than it is in real life, so no need I suppose.

...

The kapo of this particular factory floor, a man named Kino, gives Cassa the practical introduction that the guards didn't bother with. I've only seen this one scene of his so far, but Kino is already one of my favorite characters from this series.

Kino used to have compassion. You can see the vestiges of it all over his words and body language. There was probably a time - likely before he rose to his current status - when he did his best to make things better for his fellow inmates. However, the factory is set up so that every assembly crew competes with every other assembly crew to be the most productive on the floor, and every floor competes against every other floor to be the most productive in the facility. Presumably, there are some sorts of privileges and punishments - administered remotely - to the floors that encourage the kapos to administer smaller privileges and punishments of their own to their individual workers, but we don't know what those are yet. Whatever the details, this system is designed to turn victims into victimizers, and Kino's been worn down into the desired shape. He has less than a year left in his own sentence, and at this point he cares about absolutely nothing besides ensuring that nothing happens to jeopardize that. The actor does a wonderful job of communicating his whole thing with just a few words and gestures.

It's a microcosm of the empire itself, with the artificial competition leading to every sector, department, and agency becoming the fiefdom of some reputation-obsessed petty tyrant whose underlings despise them and vice versa. Sith philosophy being put into practice, I suppose.

It's also notable that, from the moment Cassa is led out of the courtroom onward, nobody says a single word about crime, punishment, or justice. None of the guards, wardens, or inmates think of this as criminal justice. The focus is 100% on the work, and only on the work, for every single one of them. If you told me that the warden legitimately doesn't know that his prisoners are convicted criminals and not just purchased from slaver gangs, I'd believe you. No one, at any stage in the process, cares what the convicts did, or even if they did anything at all. It's slavery sweepstakes.

...

Also, for all that the focus is put on the labor, the audience at least is never told exactly what it is they're producing at this factory. I imagine the slaves themselves must know (or at least be able to make some educated guesses) but the audience not being informed really rubs in the supreme alienation of their labor.

...

So, Cassa begins the first of what might well be thousands of gruelling 12-hour shifts. The look of stunned horror on his face as he realizes that this might actually be the rest of his life, and that it might be so not because of any of the serious criminal acts he actually is guilty of but simply because the Galactic Empire exists, is one of the actor's strongest moments so far.

The music is on point too.

And yeah, I take back what I said before. This is worse than Cyril's new job. Cassa might be able to chat with his coworkers on the job, but the work is so fast-paced and demanding that they can't really think about anything other than the work itself when it comes to discussion topics. Probably by design, to prevent them from organizing.


Splitting it here.