Star Wars: Admiral Holdo

[Gray Lensman]

The Y-wings sort of served a similar function in the OT. It's why they're the first to make the Death Star run. Although we don't really see them doing their intended purpose until Rogue One.

Not seeing Y-wings didn't bother me - they were 20-30 years out of date when the OT started, and there has been another 30ish years since then.

[Qwerty]

Doesn't this belong in the Star wars sub forum

[PyroTwilight]

I don't think there was anything wrong with Holdo and how she acted.

The problem was how little sense the whole set up made.

Holdo and Poe were both right but the movie made it seem like Holdo was completely correct which is a writing issue.

Or as I pointed out about Poe's "lessons"

Lesson 1: Don't be a hothead. Live to fight another day and protect your people.

Poe: Oh ok. That makes sense. Protecting our people is the top priority, you're right General Leia.

Then we somehow get to

Lesson 2: If someone you don't know well is executing a plan that looks like it'll lead to your peoples deaths you should just go with it.

Poe: Wait. Doesn't that completely contradict what the first Lesson was about?

[Soubhagya]

I don't think there was anything wrong with Holdo and how she acted.

The problem was how little sense the whole set up made.

Holdo and Poe were both right but the movie made it seem like Holdo was completely correct which is a writing issue.

Or as I pointed out about Poe's "lessons"

Lesson 1: Don't be a hothead. Live to fight another day and protect your people.

Poe: Oh ok. That makes sense. Protecting our people is the top priority, you're right General Leia.

Then we somehow get to

Lesson 2: If someone you don't know well is executing a plan that looks like it'll lead to your peoples deaths you should just go with it.

Poe: Wait. Doesn't that completely contradict what the first Lesson was about?

Second one isn't a lesson. The first one is the only lesson.

Once he comes to know what the plan it he starts behaving like a spoiled child. Throwing around things, calling Holdo a coward and a traitor. And Holdo sends him out of the bridge. And rightly so. Try something like this to your boss in the middle of an emergency. And then Poe goes and tells Finn and Rose to hurry and DJ hears the plan of the Rebels.

So, if he had not been hot headed. Had he tried to listen and actually talk, it still wouldn't have happened. They would have safely reached the planet Crait and called off Rose and Finn before they tried to enter the ship.

If there's a second lesson i think that one was what Holdo did what was right. She was unconcerned about being seen as a hero. That was said by Leia to Poe aboard that transport. I don't think there's a payoff for this.


(Though it can be said that both his actions in calling off the attack to the miniaturized death star and not running straight away to Luke as he was going to battle Kylo can be put into this 'second' lesson).

[Soubhagya]

Tiger tanks.



They even had illogical weak spots as they only had decent armour on the front side.

I looked up wiki page. Yes it was slow moving. And not very good.

[PyroTwilight]

Second one isn't a lesson. The first one is the only lesson.

Once he comes to know what the plan it he starts behaving like a spoiled child. Throwing around things, calling Holdo a coward and a traitor. And Holdo sends him out of the bridge. And rightly so. Try something like this to your boss in the middle of an emergency. And then Poe goes and tells Finn and Rose to hurry and DJ hears the plan of the Rebels.

So, if he had not been hot headed. Had he tried to listen and actually talk, it still wouldn't have happened. They would have safely reached the planet Crait and called off Rose and Finn before they tried to enter the ship.

If there's a second lesson i think that one was what Holdo did what was right. She was unconcerned about being seen as a hero. That was said by Leia to Poe aboard that transport. I don't think there's a payoff for this.


(Though it can be said that both his actions in calling off the attack to the miniaturized death star and not running straight away to Luke as he was going to battle Kylo can be put into this 'second' lesson).

We have a new Leader who's inspiring no real trust and who as we later see in the mutiny feel so out of the loop and like they're walking to their deaths that they rebel.

But here's the thing I watched the film twice in theaters. The plan as it was set up was made extremely vague and here's part of the writing issue.

When Poe hears the apparent plan is getting on these escape shuttles he instantly thinks Holdo’s big plan is to escape/run away with the assumption that such a plan is a suicide mission because those shuttles don’t have a way to escape and not be shot down. Ironically it’s BECAUSE of Leia’s earlier lesson about preserving as many lives as possible based on what what SEEMS like a HUGE longshot of a plan (and in turn Holdo seeming like a traitor or incompetent running the remaining Resistance members into assured death) that Poe does what he does. Since as far as Holdo cares she's willing to let Poe and others think they're walking to their dooms.


Only for said plan to be EXACTLY that but…they somehow have a type of cloaking Poe is somehow not aware of? Is this a new technology? It doesn’t sound like it because when it’s later explained to Poe what the plan actually is his immediate reaction isn’t “Wait they can do that?” or “Is it new tech?” he simply realizes “OH that could work.”


So what’s the story there? Is it new? Something highly experimental? Something cobbled up by the Resistance higher ups as a one shot emergency getaway?


Especially if we run on the idea that Holdo thought Poe or someone near him might be a spy at that point the story there was no longer a reason to keep the plan hidden. Poe has LEARNED what the plan is minus one glitch. And if the idea is that someone on the Crew could leak this to the First Order then it’d STILL be leaked once everyone started to be loaded onto the shuttles to escape. And the plan isn’t really all that very safe by any means.

After all, all it took for the First Order to find them was to stop and say “Hey maybe we should check just in case they’re trying to escape secretly somehow.”, which while inadvertently done because of Poe’s actions is something they could’ve done on their own and is rather surprising that they didn’t. Which isn’t to say Holdo HAD to tell him but it also serves no point to keep it hidden anymore at that time.


Basically while the story is meant to trick us into thinking Poe's right and then tell us he was wrong to act the way he did, it made perfect sense for Poe to act as he did. He just had the bad luck of all things that Finn and Rose got an unscrupulous guy as their hacker.

[choptop]

She was useless.

[Soubhagya]

We have a new Leader who's inspiring no real trust and who as we later see in the mutiny feel so out of the loop and like they're walking to their deaths that they rebel.

But here's the thing I watched the film twice in theaters. The plan as it was set up was made extremely vague and here's part of the writing issue.

When Poe hears the apparent plan is getting on these escape shuttles he instantly thinks Holdo’s big plan is to escape/run away with the assumption that such a plan is a suicide mission because those shuttles don’t have a way to escape and not be shot down. Ironically it’s BECAUSE of Leia’s earlier lesson about preserving as many lives as possible based on what what SEEMS like a HUGE longshot of a plan (and in turn Holdo seeming like a traitor or incompetent running the remaining Resistance members into assured death) that Poe does what he does. Since as far as Holdo cares she's willing to let Poe and others think they're walking to their dooms.


Only for said plan to be EXACTLY that but…they somehow have a type of cloaking Poe is somehow not aware of? Is this a new technology? It doesn’t sound like it because when it’s later explained to Poe what the plan actually is his immediate reaction isn’t “Wait they can do that?” or “Is it new tech?” he simply realizes “OH that could work.”


So what’s the story there? Is it new? Something highly experimental? Something cobbled up by the Resistance higher ups as a one shot emergency getaway?


Especially if we run on the idea that Holdo thought Poe or someone near him might be a spy at that point the story there was no longer a reason to keep the plan hidden. Poe has LEARNED what the plan is minus one glitch. And if the idea is that someone on the Crew could leak this to the First Order then it’d STILL be leaked once everyone started to be loaded onto the shuttles to escape. And the plan isn’t really all that very safe by any means.

After all, all it took for the First Order to find them was to stop and say “Hey maybe we should check just in case they’re trying to escape secretly somehow.”, which while inadvertently done because of Poe’s actions is something they could’ve done on their own and is rather surprising that they didn’t. Which isn’t to say Holdo HAD to tell him but it also serves no point to keep it hidden anymore at that time.


Basically while the story is meant to trick us into thinking Poe's right and then tell us he was wrong to act the way he did, it made perfect sense for Poe to act as he did. He just had the bad luck of all things that Finn and Rose got an unscrupulous guy as their hacker.

Do we know how many people took part in the mutiny? The number of people shown helping Poe were:

1. A handful of rebels who held Holdo and the top brass at gunpoint.
2. The lady from the bridge who helped them cover up Rose and Finn's departure to Canto Bight earlier.

The whole thing happens really fast. Poe simply needed to take control of the bridge to jump to light speed, as soon as Finn had shut down the tracker. He needed a really small amount of time. Apart from the people whom i mentioned and the people who tried to desert by escape pods before being stopped by Rose, others trusted their leaders. It was an almost 'covert' takeover involving a small group of rebels led by Poe. Very soon, the door to the bridge was broken and Leia 'stunned' Poe. Had it been a full scale mutiny things wouldn't have returned to normalcy so soon.

And cloaking technology is something easy to miss in the film. There are only two lines in the film about that. One is from a First Order official who informs Hux that, 'The thief was giving the correct info. They ran the 'decloaking' and surely there were 30 ships leaving the ship.' The other is when DJ cloaks the ship when they try to go near the main ship of FO.

Cloaking-decloaking tech is not mentioned by anyone else. Its not mentioned by Poe. Not by Holdo. Not even Leia. As its a common technology taken as a given to bring up during a conversation of escape. Which is kind of odd as i don't think this has ever been mentioned before in a prior film. And it plays quite an important role in the film. Without that decloaking tech rebels would have simply escaped to Crait unharmed. And without cloaking tech they couldn't even try to escape from the main ship. 30 transports is not something FO can miss.

First Order was not monitoring for small transports. Their attention was on the main ship. So this was the plan. Rebels would leave by 30 odd transport ships under cloaking tech to Crait which was 'an uncharted and abandoned base from the days of the rebellion'. Hide there and signal for help from the other rebels scattered in the outer rim. FO wouldn't be able to notice them escaping due to the reasons i cited. (Cloaked transports. FO most probably had no idea about Crait. It was an abandoned base from the days of the rebellion. And they were focusing on the main ship without monitoring for small transports). They would keep following the almost empty main ship while the resistance will escape right under their noses.

After hearing all this Poe said, 'This can work.' Before that he was disturbed as it looked like a bad plan without fully understanding the plan. First, they were abandoning ship. That's a big loss. That was their main ship. Second, its a bad idea to leave the safety of the ship, which at least had shields and means of attack. Those transports regardless of cloaking tech did not have shields or guns.

Poe did not know about Crait. And quite possibly did not know that FO weren't monitoring for small transports. So, he flipped. It was very risky. And they were abandoning ship. He had knowledge about cloaking tech. Without that there's no question of even thinking of such a plan. Resistance's main ship was just out of range of the canons which can cover an attacking fleet (the reason they did not send any more fighter craft to attack). But it was within range of First Order's watch. You can't escape if all they had to do was look out of the window.

[regnak]

In ESD that was many, many asteroids, or the unlucky one hitting the bridge, which is an established weak point in the design.

Plus, anyone trying to get overly technical about the science fantasy of Star Wars is already missing the point. It has plasma swords that instantly cauterize wounds but don't ignite the user instantly, artificial intelligence that has achieved sentience yet guns are still aimed manually, and space fighters that bank and turn like they are in the atmosphere. Scientific logic was thrown out the window in this series in the 1970's.

The first rule of Star Wars has always been Style over Substance. The franchise is built on this foundation.

No SW is built on WWII style naval battles but in space. What Holdo did with the hyperspace ramming flies in the face of all that.

[BeastieRunner]

No SW is built on WWII style naval battles but in space. What Holdo did with the hyperspace ramming flies in the face of all that.

Okay ... that ramming during WWII flies in the face of, wait a second ...

The last cases of ramming during a declared war occurred during WW2. On the night of the 6th-7th April 1945, British MTBs and German E-boats clashed off the Dutch coast. One British MTB, M.T.B 493, rammed an E-boat, while another, M.T.B. 494 was itself rammed by an E-boat. 494 was sunk, and 493 was not repaired, while one E-boat was sunk. However, this was a small craft action. The last case of two surface ships ramming each other was that of the British destroyer HMS Glowworm in April 1940. Glowworm had been operating with HMS Renown to cover minelaying operations off the coast of Norway. She was detached on the 7th April, to recover a man lost overboard in heavy weather. While attempting to rejoin with Renown, she encountered German forces moving into position to invade Norway. Heavily outnumbered, she rammed the German heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper, before sinking. Hipper was heavily damaged, but was able to continue her mission.

The last one sounds like what happened in the movie.

[Gray Lensman]

No SW is built on WWII style naval battles but in space. What Holdo did with the hyperspace ramming flies in the face of all that.

Ships with hundreds of guns (rather than a handful of YUGE ones backed up by defensive weaponry) doesn't make me think of WWII naval battles, it makes me think of the Age of Sail. Britain expects every man shall do his duty and all that.

[Zero Hunter]

Not seeing Y-wings didn't bother me - they were 20-30 years out of date when the OT started, and there has been another 30ish years since then.

The sad thing is the Y-Wing was a much more practical bomber than those stupid things Rian Johnson came up with in TLJ. The Y-Wings could actually move and fight while the bombers in TLJ was just about the dumbest design of any vehicle in the franchise. Those bombers were just slow flying bricks set up for target practice. Hell one Tie fighter could probably take out a fleet of those dumb things before they got anywhere close to their target just because of the speed and maneuverbility those lying bricks lacked.

[regnak]

Okay ... that ramming during WWII flies in the face of, wait a second ...



The last one sounds like what happened in the movie.

No not all, we have seen ramming like that before both in ROTJ with a fighter into a bridge that had the shield down and in RO with a cruiser designed for that purpose. What happened in TLJ was crippling one and destroying multiple other ships. it was like a tactical nuclear weapon hitting a Earth Navy.

[regnak]

Ships with hundreds of guns (rather than a handful of YUGE ones backed up by defensive weaponry) doesn't make me think of WWII naval battles, it makes me think of the Age of Sail. Britain expects every man shall do his duty and all that.

Hello WWII fighter combat and carriers all over the place.

[BeastieRunner]

No not all, we have seen ramming like that before both in ROTJ with a fighter into a bridge that had the shield down and in RO with a cruiser designed for that purpose. What happened in TLJ was crippling one and destroying multiple other ships. it was like a tactical nuclear weapon hitting a Earth Navy.

Canonically speaking, we know that a Star Wars ship entering hyperspace emits radiation and blasts anything in its wake ... we saw that in TFA and in a recent episode of Rebels. You don’t want to be directly behind or near a ship as it jumps. We also know that hyperspace functions like a separate dimension but is prone to mass incursions such as Inderdictors, stars, planets, etc. We also know hyperdrives have a safety feature that prevents them from jumping in close proximity to a gravity well, but that can be overridden.

The ramifications of the Holdo Maneuver are probably that we're going to see some new-type of space warfare in IX and/or that it wasn't ramming but reversion to realspace that caused the damage. I think the Raddus didn’t jump through the Supremacy, but reverted to realspace inside it or so close to it that it could have caused that damage and based on what we know ... go off like a "tactical nuclear weapon hitting a Earth Navy." This type of maneuvering is alluded to in the Tarkin novel back in 2014.

It’s possible that the Holdo Maneuver isn’t more common because it’s so tough to pull off given all those variables and a reason why skipper missiles don't exist or work in Star Wars. Yet. But now we can have those things and up some drama in our space battles. They spent 7 films and the last 3 (TFA, RO, and TLJ) intentionally showing people pilot the big ships ... so clearly they're getting ready to change Star Wars space combat. We also know that droids aren't the best pilots given the events of the Clone Wars. If they were any good, we'd have droid armies. What Holdo did was probably a war crime, too.