I agree with other posters that this episode was mediocre at best. When my six year old is saying stuff is kinda lame, (and he thought the helisabers were cool) it is an issue.

On 10/14/2017 at 4:21 PM, SEApocalypse said:

They literally lost the battle of endor as well. Completely. Without even having the ability to DBZ the moon. ;-)

Oh and btw, Bubi (Erich Hartman) and other german aces and elite squadrons like his JG 52 got pretty quickly acces to the best avaible fighters. This is similar to how the 181st got TIE Interceptors or how Vult Skerries was first seen in a Bloodstripe Interceptor and later even in a Defender. The empire is not only inspired by Nazi Germany, but it has as well a solid technological base.

Lasty a nitpick. With only Wedge and Luke surviving the battle of Yavin, 11% of the imperial fighters survived while only 6.7% of the rebel forces. I am discounting Han here. ;-)
Naturally the mission was still a success, not really a problem considering how easy the task was. Just like hitting Womb Rats in Beggar's Canyon

Just to nitpick your nitpick, there was a Y-Wing escaping the Death Star Blast as well . Ninja'd one page back.

As for aces in great ships I have no doubt that the Empire put their best in their best fighters. But did they have enough of those great fighters to cover all their great pilots? Black Squadron, despite being good enough to be Vader's wingmen, were still in TIE Fighters (have to wonder how Yavin would have went if they were in the Interceptors or Defenders that were available at this point). And at least in Legends the TIE Interceptor program didn't start until the Empire had been in existence for decades. That leaves the TIE Fighter with a huge service life and being used by ace and academy graduate alike.

So either we assume that the TIE Fighter had no enemy competition for the nearly 20 years that it was practically the sole space superiority fighter in the Empire (I don't know where they're going to put the Gunboat now or if it will make its way back to a full blown canon appearance), or they valued doctrine over all other things and many an ace caught a random laser blast/asteroid/missile/strong gust and bought it. This is what hearkens back to my IJN comment. Unless you had WH40K levels of attrition in the Imperial fighter corps (and they didn't face the Ghost crew THAT often), there just weren't enough Interceptors and Defenders to go around.

12 minutes ago, flyboymb said:

Just to nitpick your nitpick, there was a Y-Wing escaping the Death Star Blast as well .

As for aces in great ships I have no doubt that the Empire put their best in their best fighters. But did they have enough of those great fighters to cover all their great pilots? Black Squadron, despite being good enough to be Vader's wingmen, were still in TIE Fighters (have to wonder how Yavin would have went if they were in the Interceptors or Defenders that were available at this point)

Vader never bothered with getting upgrades for his own squadron. Vader things.

And the empire started with Y-Wings, V-Wings, etc 19 years before the battle of Yavin. We see them getting destroyed in rebels and getting finally out of duty for the empire a few years prior to the battle of Yavin. (iiirc that was season 2, so about 3 year prior to the battle of Yavin. We even have Vader in his ETA-2 during the beginning of the galactic civil war era. TIE-Fighters started being introduced about 14 years prior to the battle of Yavin, replacing ETA-2 and ARC-170s. So in this context the introducing of TIE-Interceptors prior to the battle of Yavin makes sense and as well that TIE-Fighters are still around at endor, because phasing out a complete fighter force takes time.

The F-22 is for example since 12 years in service and there is no replacement for it anytime soon either. It will likely stay in service for another decade and might starting to phase out in 2030 or so. The empire got a similar schedule with their fighters.

So it is not like the TIE-Fighter design was completely outdated, it was rather a cheap mass-production design, cheap operation costs as well, but not the only design the empire was using, just the most common. Now I am actually looking even more forward to see how Filoni will handle the TIE Defender

This whole argument about why did the Empire not give it's Ace Pilots access to the best available fighters is a waste of time. The only reason we ever even had the Tie Defender was as a baddie in a video game from the EU. It was cool and well loved. Then Disney wiped that. And in order to get us fans to buy into their new cannon, they started picking out choice bits and putting them back in. So now we get Thrawn, the Defender, Jacen Solo(aka Kylo Ren), etc. It's a blatant cash grab. Disney knows that all us fans of the saga like these classic EU ideas and will pay to see them again in new material. So they shoehorn them in. So now we have Awings and Bwings and Tie Interceptors and Tie Defenders before Yavin. There is no reason for in universe discussion. It's all about getting fans to swallow the rehashed stuff for the new cannon. It's a nostalgia grab plain and simple. It's much less risky than being original and trying new things. See Episode 7 for the ultimate example of getting the masses to love "new" things by "mirroring"(copying exactly) beloved ideas from the OT.

Exactly. The reason Vader's squadron doesn't fly the best ships is because the writers hadn't ****ing invented them yet.

18 minutes ago, DarthEnderX said:

Exactly. The reason Vader's squadron doesn't fly the best ships is because the writers hadn't ****ing invented them yet.

Exactly. And the reason why those TIE-Fighters don't get recognized as the best fighters at Yavin 4 is because the writers had to allow the good guys to be actually good at something and not get ***** slapped the whole movie by TIE-Fighter Minions. Only when they are up against rebel minions they are allowed to have a 3 to 1 kill ratio.

11 hours ago, Drasnighta said:

Season 3 premier.

Ezra flat out shoots one with blaster and I believe basically guts two more as he goes.

Bingo.

I am also tired of all of the shooting and chasing and there are no consequences for the Rebels. Sure, some of the Mandalores got incinerated, but they were the "red shirts". Time for someone important to get axed. It was a perfect time for Sabine's mother and brother to die and show the casualties of war, instead, they were "just out of range". How convenient.

13 hours ago, SEApocalypse said:

Vader never bothered with getting upgrades for his own squadron. Vader things.

And the empire started with Y-Wings, V-Wings, etc 19 years before the battle of Yavin. We see them getting destroyed in rebels and getting finally out of duty for the empire a few years prior to the battle of Yavin. (iiirc that was season 2, so about 3 year prior to the battle of Yavin. We even have Vader in his ETA-2 during the beginning of the galactic civil war era. TIE-Fighters started being introduced about 14 years prior to the battle of Yavin, replacing ETA-2 and ARC-170s. So in this context the introducing of TIE-Interceptors prior to the battle of Yavin makes sense and as well that TIE-Fighters are still around at endor, because phasing out a complete fighter force takes time.

The F-22 is for example since 12 years in service and there is no replacement for it anytime soon either. It will likely stay in service for another decade and might starting to phase out in 2030 or so. The empire got a similar schedule with their fighters.

So it is not like the TIE-Fighter design was completely outdated, it was rather a cheap mass-production design, cheap operation costs as well, but not the only design the empire was using, just the most common. Now I am actually looking even more forward to see how Filoni will handle the TIE Defender

For better or (likely) for worse, the F-35 is the de facto replacement for the F-22. While the F-22 is the superior aircraft, any that are loss to attrition, accidents, or being stolen by Sabine Wren won't be easily replaced as the production line has been shut down and there's a huge logistical hurdle to get it up again.

Actually, wasn't the X-Wing supposed to be an Imperial design before the Rebels stole it (at least in Legends)? This at least shows that the Empire was looking to go in the direction of quality over quantity. I don't believe it was meant to straight out replace the TIE, but it certainly wasn't a cheap fighter. It also wasn't powerful enough like the Defender or Phantom to be a game changer in relatively small numbers so we'd at least see Imperial X-Wings at Gunboat numbers or above. Having their newest toy fall into the hands of their enemy was a huge motivation towards the creation of the TIE Interceptor as the X-Wing was cutting through TIE Fighters and the introduction of the R-22 (Might as well call it the A-Wing now that it is officially pre-Yavin) didn't make things any more optimistic for Imperial pilots.

6 hours ago, Cannon3 said:

I am also tired of all of the shooting and chasing and there are no consequences for the Rebels. Sure, some of the Mandalores got incinerated, but they were the "red shirts". Time for someone important to get axed. It was a perfect time for Sabine's mother and brother to die and show the casualties of war, instead, they were "just out of range". How convenient.

That boat sailed as soon as Vader didn't finish off Ahsoka at the tail end of season 2. We had a golden opportunity to present Vader with one of his most beloved friend from his past in an effort to sway him from the Dark Side and have him brutally crush that connection with Anakin with no (outward) sense of remorse. This would have helped paint Vader as more of the man that 'killed' Anakin Skywalker and less of the emotional wreck that EU made him out to be. It also made Luke's eventual redemption of Vader that much more powerful as he was able to reach into parts of Vader that even his own Padawan was unable to reach.

But it seems that Filoni cannot bear to see his 'children' get killed off. How many major losses do you think we'll have now that Season 4 is already 2 episodes in? You'd have to make all the bad choices you could in a Mass Effect game to get an outcome where that many major characters were killed off in that short of an order. At the very least, we need something to show us why the Rebel High Command was so close to capitulating just at the mention of the Death Star and unwilling to even consider engaging in missions to try to counter it. Losing 2 Jedi allies and/or a Mandalorian supergirl would be a huge blow to morale just as losing Luke or Wedge would have been in the ESB era.

Not wanting to be a downer, but I found the start of the 4th season really uninteresting.

I am bored of the mandalorians. I don't know if its because they feel so one-dimensional or what, but their internal conflict doesn't manage to grab my interest.
They are defined as noble warriors, and basically those two words is all they are. All their characters are stiff like marble statues, and the show seems to regard them as cooler than they really are. "Everybody loves mandalorians!"
They say that if you want to make a character cool, you need to show him or her doing cool things, not have other characters tell the reader/audience that they are cool.

Yet it seems to be all what we get from Rebels is people saying how cool they are, but when they actually get to do anything, they are just bland and lame.

In the finale of the last season, the mandalorians came to help the rebels with the Interdictors. How would they defeat them? Skillful infiltration? Cool mandalorian counter weapon? Clever military tactic that would make Imperials use their weapon against themselves?
No. They fire their pistols at the capital ship until it blows.
...What?

Finally, we have been taught so many times in this saga and in general in our western culture and even in other cultures that the weapon doesn't make the warrior. A warrior is a warrior himself or herself, not the gear they carry.
Don't judge a book by its cover. The suit doesn't make the man. The cowl doesn't make the monk. " I am Ironman! Even without the armor." Then, Rebels comes and

.

This series is for kids, but a good series for kids doesn't treat kids as morons. And many episodes and plots in this series are quite moronic.

43 minutes ago, Azrapse said:

They say that if you want to make a character cool, you need to show him or her doing cool things, not have other characters tell the reader/audience that they are cool.

Yet it seems to be all what we get from Rebels is people saying how cool they are, but when they actually get to do anything, they are just bland and lame.

That's because Mandalorians aren't cool. Their armor looks cool, but their society isn't.

Boba Fett is cool. Unfortunately, this series that is set in what would imagine to be the peak of Boba Fett's career is completely Fettless.

I'm still disappointed we didn't do an entire season of the Ghost on the run from bounty hunters after the Rebel defeat last season.

About "noble warriors", is anyone else bothered by the portrayal of Bo Katan in the last episode?

She was Pre Vizsla's right hand, a big fish in the Death Watch, and it's not what the Death Watch was about, they wanted to return to being warriors, but there was not much nobility there... Bo Katan was fine playing unfairly against her sister, but not against the Empire.

And another matter is her sister. In this episode I got the impression that miss Kryze glorifies Satine! I bet she has a shrine dedicated to her somewhere. "I'm not like my sister"?! Wha... from the perspective of Mandalorian traditionalist warriors Satine was worse than the Empire ! Everyone is offended when Ezra suggest to stop using armour, Satine actually achieved that for a while! Mandos were pacifist under her rule, that's why Bo Katan, Pre Vizsla, and the rest of the Death Watch wanted to kill her using very unhonourable methods.

Honor, tradition, nobility, loyalty are so empty words when they keep spitting them all the time without their actions actually reflecting those words like at all.
They have what seems to be a totally constructed notion of themselves that doesn't match reality. "Mandalorians do this, mandalorians don't do that" but we get all the time examples of mandalorians not doing this and instead doing that.

I think this whole mandalorian thing seems to be a poor attempt to rip off the feudal samurai castes, with their clans and all, but totally missing the point in the way. All at the same time that they clone the looks of Jango Fett, that was already a clone of Boba Fett (even when storywise, it was the other way).

They are so proud and full of themselves while not really having any reason to be, that I am actually wishing the Empire tested the Death Star with what is left of their world.

At this point I am not even sure all of this isn't really intentional from the writing team. Ezra seems to be the voice of common sense in this chapter when he proposes the simple solution of just making armors out of different materials, getting only offended faces as response. Then again when he says "I am not a mandalorian. I don't want to be a mandalorian!" It's almost like he was thinking "All of this is so lame and stupid".

53 minutes ago, eMeM said:

About "noble warriors", is anyone else bothered by the portrayal of Bo Katan in the last episode?

She was Pre Vizsla's right hand, a big fish in the Death Watch, and it's not what the Death Watch was about, they wanted to return to being warriors, but there was not much nobility there... Bo Katan was fine playing unfairly against her sister, but not against the Empire.

Not really. That was, like, 10 years ago. And a lot of **** has happened to their world since then. I have no problem believing that she's not the same person anymore. Especially if you draw the conclusion that the Death Watch is the reason Mandalore is subservient to the Empire now.

3 hours ago, flyboymb said:

You'd have to make all the bad choices you could in a Mass Effect game to get an outcome where that many major characters were killed off in that short of an order.

Now I want to play Mass Effect 2 again.

With as few recruitments and loyalty missions as possible, not upgrading the Normandy and choosing totally inappropriate people for the job during the Suicide Mission.

"Mordin... hold the line."

"But Shep-"

"I SAID HOLD THE LINE"

36 minutes ago, DarthEnderX said:

Not really. That was, like, 10 years ago. And a lot of **** has happened to their world since then. I have no problem believing that she's not the same person anymore. Especially if you draw the conclusion that the Death Watch is the reason Mandalore is subservient to the Empire now.

And her personally at fault for Satine's death. Furthermore with Pre Vizsla death Bo Katan gave up on being ultra traditionalists. Unlike others in death watch, including Pre Vizsla himself, she was unwilling to accept Maul as leader. She rebelled basically against her own code back then and she suffered for 10 years because of her work for and with death watch.

7 minutes ago, SEApocalypse said:

And her personally at fault for Satine's death. Furthermore with Pre Vizsla death Bo Katan gave up on being ultra traditionalists. Unlike others in death watch, including Pre Vizsla himself, she was unwilling to accept Maul as leader. She rebelled basically against her own code back then and she suffered for 10 years because of her work for and with death watch.

So what was that "m-muh mando steel folded 10000 times" about? She was willing to die for tradition.

3 minutes ago, eMeM said:

So what was that "m-muh mando steel folded 10000 times" about? She was willing to die for tradition.

She was willing to die for her cultural heritage. There is a difference. Satine never wanted to forget the warrior culture the mando's once where, quite the opposite actually, she wanted everyone to remember what they did and change for the better. Now Bo Katan clearly ain't a pacifist and won't become one anytime soon, quite the opposite actually as well. She has seen that Satine's way was not working out either, but she seems not be able to relate to Satine's ideals. And this holds especially true in context that Satine never stopped fighting either, she just did not accept violence as means to fight.

9 hours ago, flyboymb said:

For better or (likely) for worse, the F-35 is the de facto replacement for the F-22. While the F-22 is the superior aircraft, any that are loss to attrition, accidents, or being stolen by Sabine Wren won't be easily replaced as the production line has been shut down and there's a huge logistical hurdle to get it up again.

These are two completely different aircraft with far different capabilities. The F-35 really is not the replacement for the F-22.

6 hours ago, DarthEnderX said:

Not really. That was, like, 10 years ago. And a lot of **** has happened to their world since then. I have no problem believing that she's not the same person anymore. Especially if you draw the conclusion that the Death Watch is the reason Mandalore is subservient to the Empire now.

Also the Clone Wars arc where Maul takes over Manadlore establishes that Bo Katan's views shift. She goes from clearly not respecting the Duchess' authority to re-evaluating her loyalty to Deathwatch. IIRC she helps break Satine out of jail. Even during the Clone War, she clearly re-evaulated what it meant to be a Mandalorian warrior.

I think a more interesting and satisfying conclusion might have actually been to have the Mandalorians give up their armour, and it could also be a nice echo of Satine's values/legacy. I certainly think it would have been more satisfying than reversing the polarity of the plot armour.

5 hours ago, Ken at Sunrise said:

These are two completely different aircraft with far different capabilities. The F-35 really is not the replacement for the F-22.

Tell that to the Air Force that seems fine with retiring the plane once they have enough F-35s.

5 hours ago, Ken at Sunrise said:

These are two completely different aircraft with far different capabilities. The F-35 really is not the replacement for the F-22.

The F35 isnt a replacement for the A10 warthog, and yet the A10 is being discontinued.

In the same way, the Tie fighter isnt a replacement for the ARC or Vwing, but the older fighters are being discontinued.

3 hours ago, FlyingAnchors said:

Tell that to the Air Force that seems fine with retiring the plane once they have enough F-35s.

The F-22 proved to be build for a use-case which became mostly obsolete after its development had been finished.
In other words with or without F-35, they would have stopped build them, stopped buying new ones and would have planned to phase them out either way.

If they would have build more F-22 it would be a little different, but as it is, they cancel orders to save money and invest more into drones and stuff that has been used in the last 20 years instead of more long range air superiority fighters. And by now, even if they wanted they could not really make the F-22 work, because they can not just re-start production without significant money investments AND the whole thing is severely outdated against state of the art technology anyway. So we will see most likely some new fighter by 2030 or so.

11 hours ago, Ken at Sunrise said:

These are two completely different aircraft with far different capabilities. The F-35 really is not the replacement for the F-22.

The F-35 is pretty much the M-16 of the armed forces at this point. It is supposed to be Harrier, Falcon, Eagle, Warthog, and Raptor all at once because it's just that easy to make a plane that fulfills all those rolls as it is to make a rifle that covers all battle scenarios.

I mean one of the major reasons why the F-22 was discontinued was that it would free up more money to but more F-35s because they would be soooo much cheaper than the Raptor.

2 hours ago, SEApocalypse said:

The F-22 proved to be build for a use-case which became mostly obsolete after its development had been finished.
In other words with or without F-35, they would have stopped build them, stopped buying new ones and would have planned to phase them out either way.

If they would have build more F-22 it would be a little different, but as it is, they cancel orders to save money and invest more into drones and stuff that has been used in the last 20 years instead of more long range air superiority fighters. And by now, even if they wanted they could not really make the F-22 work, because they can not just re-start production without significant money investments AND the whole thing is severely outdated against state of the art technology anyway. So we will see most likely some new fighter by 2030 or so.

The need for a top of the line air superiority fighter has been increasing as Russia pumps more money into modernizing their military and generally being butts towards the West. China is taking all the money we throw at them to do the same. Already their latest generation prototypes are being thrown up against the F-35 to see whether we're behind the times or not (not against the F-22 for whatever reasons). If there's something new on the horizon, then we've done a lot better at keeping things secret than usual.

It will be somewhat aggravating if we sunk that much cash into the F-35 only for something to push the envelope back further in a decade.

19 hours ago, DarthEnderX said:

That's because Mandalorians aren't cool. Their armor looks cool, but their society isn't.

Boba Fett is cool. Unfortunately, this series that is set in what would imagine to be the peak of Boba Fett's career is completely Fettless.

I'm still disappointed we didn't do an entire season of the Ghost on the run from bounty hunters after the Rebel defeat last season.

Hopefully the lack of fett means he's getting a solo movie and some events will conflict which is why he can't be on rebels.