"The Rise and Fall of the Galactic Empire" with Dan Salgarolo & Mike Van Gorder (Andorks: Detours)

0:00 This podcast is brought to you by our partisans, Shelby Von Trapp and Bobby Chudhury. If you want to find out how to join up with Saw's Rebels, or if you want access to our bonus episodes, head over to patreon .com slash andorkspod. Welcome to Andorx, the podcast where every week we'll analyze and scrutinize the Star Wars series Andorx, seven minutes at a time. I'm Rustin Hunter -Deust.

0:39 I'm Alex Lawinette. We have friends everywhere. And today we have two of them because we are joined by our friends, animation writer Dan Salgarolo and housing policy and candidate for Burbank City Council. Mike Van Gorder. Welcome, guys. Hello, boys. I am a housing policy. Did you know that? I said analyst. No. Did I not? You didn't.

1:02 I didn't say analyst? Did I just skip over that word? The important part is city council. We can re -take it. We'll re -take it. I'll redo it. I'll redo it. I'll make sure to read. But it's more fun this way. Don't redo it. Come on. Lean in. Lean in. We have friends everywhere, and today we have two of them because we are joined by our friends, animation writer Dan Salgarolo and housing policy analyst and candidate for Burbank City Council, Mike Van Gorder. Welcome, guys. Thank you. Thanks for having us back. Yeah, welcome back. It's a pleasure to have you back for today's episode because we're taking a little bit of a detour from our regular seven minutes of Andor Kempschel's novel. the rise and fall

1:47 of the galactic empire so you mean boom i can we read a book we read a whole book yes a historical text i don't know about a novel yeah this is non -fiction we usually only ask people to watch seven minutes of a tv show it's maybe the least ever asked of anyone to join a podcast and you guys had to read a 370 book club book club novel and it's not it's not a novel it's an alternate history and it's kind of a fascinating read in that way because Is this taken so seriously?

2:17 Yes, this is an in -universe history book charting the rise of Sheev Palpatine's fascist empire and trying to make sense of his inscrutable politics. And the politics of the galaxy. And the politics of the galaxy. No, I mean, it's very clearly, if you look at the cover of both the books, it's very clearly inspired by the book, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, History of Nazi Germany by William Shirer, who wrote it in the... I believe 60. Yeah, it came out in 1960, which is a sort of, thank God, this is 370. That book is 1300 pages. So it could have been worse. I think they had more to talk about. They had more to talk about. But it's a, as much as you can, a narrative.

2:55 It starts, that one starts with Martin Luther and goes all the way to Hitler of how Nazism rises and sort of how the culture creates this thing. So this is the equivalent of how does the empire appear and how does the empire disappear? It goes from Sheev Palpatine to Sheev Palpatine again. Exactly. Just like the franchise. Exactly.

3:12 But yes, it's told in lore that he is the Exegol excavation lead. And he is previously a lecturer at the Historical Institute of Lourdes, specializing in the ancient history of the Sith. Yes. And Beaumont Kinn, this is a return appearance into the universe. He is the character played by Dominic Monaghan in episode nine, Rise of the Skywalker.

3:35 Really? That's him? Yes, that's him. That's the person that wrote this book. That is the person who is writing this book. I thought it was Dr. Chris Hemsha. I do want to say, as the guy who says in the movie, the Holdo Maneuver, I was kind of surprised that it didn't get a name drop in this novel. Because he's the one who says, why don't we just do the Holdo Maneuver against Palpatine? That is one of the actually one of the cool things about this book is it does omit or he omits certain really like big like fan favorite things. And I think it's done tactically to make the audience feel like, oh, we know, you know, we know a little bit more than he does.

4:17 And that's an that's an exciting way to bring people into an otherwise what is otherwise a pretty dense situation. Just for context for our listeners, the book is split up into four parts. There's part one, which is Rise and Consolidation, and that gets into the rise of Emperor Palpatine, the Clone Wars, Imperial Senate, New Order, Imperial Society, Economy and Industry, which I'm going to spend a lot of time there. Then part two is Expansion and Oppression, Imperial Expansion and Strategy, the Imperial Military, Key Imperial Figures, the Inquisitorious. And this is really the period of the original trilogy that that's talking about. At first. Oh, no. Isn't that before the trilogy? Part two is still pre -episode four.

4:58 You're right. You're right. Yeah. It's actually the period in between the prequel and the original. I'm sorry. Because one of them, I'm like, oh, I have to remember things from the stupid Obi Wan show. Then you have crime and punishment, which I will also talk about for a long time. Prejudice and discrimination, which answers lots of questions I had about the Star Wars universe.

5:16 Atrocities and genocides. And then part three. Galactic Civil War, we've got opening skirmishes, fleet and starfighter tactics, the Tarkin Doctrine and the Death Star, Imperial military operations, post -Battle of Yavin, the Battle of Health and Imperial Morale, Crimson Dawn, the Battle of Endor. I skimmed through the Crimson Dawn. Part four is Fall and Continuation, the Fracture and Cinder, the Road to Jakku, Truth and Reconciliation, Complacency and Appeasement, and the First and Final Orders. Yeah, and that's like the sequel trilogy in Mandalorian. chapters of the book.

5:46 It's important context. This is written like a historical scholarly document. Like it is telling this story, basically a lecturer coming along and trying to tell a complete history of in universe. How we went from the New Republic to the Empire. Sorry, the Old Republic to the Empire to the New Republic to the First Order again. And it's all taken completely seriously. There's no illustrations in there. There's no ship combat. It's not about the photos. I mean, it's yeah. And it's very charming. It's it's stills from all the all the movies and TV shows that you love. And it's like this photograph was taken by this particular soldier at this moment in time. All part of the archives. Yeah, it's cool. But it's like if you

6:33 want to understand specifically the politics of and to sort of like give you an illustration of how fascism can come into being in a way that's. palatable i think this is a really fascinating read yeah there's a so many parallels to the things that we have been talking about on this show in relation to the show and or in our real world politics. And so when we had the idea of doing like detours, this was one of the very first things that we we put on the spreadsheet because we knew that this was going to have a lot to say about our current political hellscape that we're in. And I believe you said earlier that you wanted to get the two nerdiest people on this one. Is that what I heard? Two of our

7:17 biggest Star Wars. nerds. I'm very excited to be sharing this podcast with Saw Gerrera himself. It's pretty great. You don't know what you have unleashed. Do you think I don't understand? We've got two Saws now. We're going to do this periodically throughout the recording. What's the gas that he sniffs in the... Rhydonium. Rhydonium. I've always loved you. I think that, you know, Dr.

7:46 Kempschel has given him quite a task of trying to draw a through line through all of Star Wars canon and try to weave a cohesive narrative out of it. I kept being in awe of it. Like the number of things like I'm, you know, we're both some of the biggest Star Wars nerds. Some of the biggest. Officially, you got the sash. Yeah. And yet, and yet even I, you know, over the like. you know three decades that i've been a star wars fan like rehashing through some of this stuff i'm like oh my gosh the actual like research that had to go into this to make it all cohesive and make it all fit and sometimes you know as we will discuss i'm sure sometimes it uh it feels a little retconny but it's the best they've come

8:32 up the best reason for the retcon yeah which is basically like constantly he'll be like Due to archive issues or conflicting reports after the war, we're not really sure which. My favorite one is when he's talking about Thrawn. And he says, Thrawn himself is likely one of the most studied and biographized imperial figures to have ever existed. So there is little to be gained in going over all his exploits here and risk boring the reader with information they are already heavily acquainted with. Read, we have not figured out what Thrawn's place in the canon is. yet, so therefore I can't write about it. Brilliant.

9:09 This guy's got a doctorate. I need to follow this up from last week's episode, which was a couple weeks ago I was joking on the podcast that Robert's Rules, the parliamentary procedure that we use at DSA, other places that you use to sort of run a Democratic meeting, the Robert of Robert's Rules was an admiral. And I'm like, why isn't there a Star Wars little tiny alien that is the Robert's Rules equivalent? And it fucking exists in here, baby! Ron? No, it's indeed most administrative recruits who entered the bureaucracy of the empire were provided with a copy of Chief Administrator Sveit Neyman's Gargantuan Work, A Thorough Guide to the Bureaucratic Operation and Diligent Administration of the

9:49 Galactic Empire, which from my own research was not an easy read. The $3 was worth it for that fact alone. So that was my favorite, like his editorializing. His in -character editorializing was my favorite way of him sort of getting around things or retconning because it's actually the thing that made it the most sort of human was he writes this. Without being a human supremacist.

10:16 Right, precisely. He writes it in the character of a historian who has been a soldier and a traumatized soldier at that. And he regularly refers to the fact that he's, He may not be the most objective viewer of this and his emotions come through. And those are the moments where I was like, okay, this is something a little bit more than just a fictional historical text. It was kind of cool to see that character brought to light throughout the book. And I think to continue Rusty's point of why we're covering this book specifically when there are thousands of Star Wars books in the universe, I think for me... And or so much is how do you interpolate and convert real world politics and conflicts into the Star Wars universe

11:02 in a really efficient way? And to me, this book is very much in that vein of, sure, Jedi stuff exists. I can't believe the authors can't verify its existence, but I can verify these facts of political reporting. It strains credulity. Yes. And yet we know what to have happened. And I think the most important thing about this book and Andor and what they share is that both their creators truly hate Star Wars fans. Is this documented?

11:28 In page one. Yes. This is when I knew it was all in on this book. Basically, we were so sure that we had created the perfect way of preventing future conflicts and a return to imperialism. We were fools. I was a fool. As much as we might have wished the remnants of the empire could have left to rot beneath the sands of Jakku, it seems like we could not be free of it so easily.

11:48 I recall the shock I felt when resistant agents brought back from Batuu, among other things, were that there were traders in Black Spire Outpost selling the busts of Empire Palpatine and other trinkets of his fallen empire. Black Post Spire, of course, being at Disneyland. Yes. Oh, God. Awesome. Awesome. This guy keeps getting better.

12:07 The Funko Pops were decimated. Yeah, can we acknowledge for a moment how weird it is that people like... stormtroopers and like the book gets into it it does yeah yeah and the book's like please don't please don't idolize these people who have committed genocides and i know like the action figures are cool or whatever and like the you know regalia the naval regalia or the army never got it's like aesthetically pleasing to look at but what you are what you are praising is a version of a brown shirt stormtrooper from our world y 'all from our world Yeah. Everybody's going to their books to find references. No, I've always sounded a little weird when you see someone, you know, walking around with like the

12:53 cap with the Imperial logo on it. It's like, I don't know. I don't know. You're supposed to like Luke. Right, you know? Do you forget who the bad guys were? The book shouts it out towards the end of this growing number of civilians within the New Republic who also look to collect these relics, justifying their interest and obsession in the language of historians without having any real comprehension as to what exactly they were playing with. They had become so relaxed and assured that the Empire would not threaten them again that it was now through the lens of good humor. curiosity that they viewed the mitrial with which the Empire had waged war. Like, it just became knickknacks and trinkets and Funko

13:39 Pops and not a thing that, you know, killed millions of people. Right. Like, when I play Star Wars Squadrons, I really resented that I had to also play as a TIE fighter pilot. It's like, I don't want to blow up X -Wings. I don't want to help the Empire. Okay? More in the interest of... You know, ending the war. I mean, that's another really interesting thing they get into is how the rebellion and the empire and the New Republic, the Old Republic, all these different factions all kind of want the war and none of them were willing to overcommit themselves. I mean, yeah, it's so fascinating to... As someone who loved these movies and who knows all of the plot holes for all intents and purposes, to see them described

14:31 as like, we think that historically... Palpatine sent his fleet to the far side of Endor because he wanted to be a cocky bastard and trap Luke Skywalker. And that was more important than his fleet. And, you know, much to the chagrin of his military commanders, you know, who just had to deal with this raving, you know, psychopath with all of this power over all of them because he also had this attack dog that would just...

14:59 kill people if they annoyed him like senior senior staffers senior military officials with lots of institutional knowledge we're getting choked out on the deck of the executor because you failed me for the last time r .i .p admiral ozzel a lot of the book is like we're not sure what darth vader really did what do you do here surprise was wiser yeah russie how should we go through this do we want to start I think we're just going to talk about a little bit of everything here.

15:27 Do we want to talk about our Glub Shittos on top? Yes, because history is made by Glub Shittos. And this book truly is a celebration of every character who has ever existed in Star Wars. Oh, I picked two who are new. And I think one of the things I really enjoyed reading this book was reading a story and then heading over to wookapedia .com and trying to find out, is this a character from a obscure video game tie -in novel? Or is this an original creation written for the book? I don't think there were many of those. There were a surprising amount. At the very least, my two top picks were original creations in this novel. Hit us. Let's hear it. I mean, the one who caught my eye first is in a section

16:22 talking about imperial propaganda. And he's talking about how the empire co -opted the sport of hollow net or hollow ball. As a way of, you know, getting widespread appeal throughout the galaxy. And it calls out a character by the name of Eddie Mirtan, a keeper for the Coruscant Emeralds, who had a significant fan following and appeared in numerous Imperial recruitment materials before one day completely disappearing. It was only when he resurfaced as a part of a rebel cell on Sullust that it became clear he had defected right under the nose of the Empire and rebel propaganda. quickly adopted to make use of him.

17:05 So he was a creation of this book? This is a creation of the book, yeah. Our own little Pat Tillman in Star Wars. To me, that was even more, it's the USSR hockey players who defected when they played in the US, or Cuban players who come play in America, and the fact that there's a political aspect of the sport as well. Now, are the Coruscant Emeralds also made up for the book?

17:27 I have no idea. I didn't look that part up. Because that bumped me. Guys. Oh, yeah. I remember reading that and being like, there's one team for the entire planet. But maybe they just get the name. I mean, the New York Yankees and the New York Mets are both. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, but Coruscant is a planet of, what is it? Five trillion people?

17:46 Something like that, yeah. Like, you're telling me they only have one Holonet team? I mean, in the Olympics, there's only one team from every country. The hollow net thing we're going to discuss, I think, beyond this podcast. It opens so many questions of what the hollow net is. Yeah. What was it? Hollow net? Hollow ball? Hollow ball. No, I want to talk about hollow net. Yeah, yeah. The fact that there's like TV shows and like extended fictions is something that's so beyond any Star Wars lore I've seen. Yeah, well, we've seen in the holiday special, we see them watching television and we see, what's her name?

18:20 Edie watching television as well. But like scripted content. But yeah, scripted content, exactly. It felt like Taylor Sheridan entered the Star Wars universe with the description of the imperial propaganda TV shows. Yeah. But Dan, I want to hear who's your glupshiddo from this novel. Oh, I think I've found a unique one that also like aligns with my big interest in movie scores, especially John Williams. And I think I found in -world canon John Williams. Yes. Page 59, we have... Grand Admiral Balanhai Savat. His family were noted musicians, and he was a skilled composer in his own right, having come to Palpatine's attention with his grand opera, To the Stars.

19:03 He would later also compose a grand imperial fanfare that became widely used in the Navy, enduring even after Savat was seemingly arrested for treason. So I'm calling it, I think Admiral Savat is... in world canon john williams because he wrote the imperial fanfare i'm sure i'm sure so many friends of chris kemschel have found their name somewhere in here i hope so or like scrambled up you know as a glup which actually you can hear the imperial fanfare in the solo a star wars story soundtrack yep it is the imperial march but I believe, transposed into a major key as opposed to the creepy minor key. Yeah, it's like a cutesy airplane music. Or airplane or like, also like a, like a, almost like a national

19:52 anthem. Yeah, yeah. You're saying in Solo, a Star Wars story, they took a thing that everybody genuinely loved and then made it ridiculous? Yeah, they made it into music. And then people forgot about it? Yep. Okay. It's in the scene. where he gets the name recruited. Yeah. He gets the name. Yeah. It's in the background and it's like the, it's like the recruitment is load bearing in this book. Yes. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. That actually happened first in rebels though. They, they used it, uh, first. Yeah. The low, the theme in that way. Uh, and then they kind of did that same joke again. So we'll have to give credit, not just to John Williams, but also to John Powell and, and the kiners who wrote the rebels. My

20:31 third part about that reference is that. When it's having come to Palpatine's attention with his grand opera To the Stars, footnote 10, details drawn from the Coruscant Review of Music, number 7198. The idea that Coruscant has like a music review magazine that's like going for like 7 ,000 solar cycles. That was a really cool thing, I think, if we want to like take a little deviation of Palpatine's love of opera and and art and we know it a little bit from revenge of the sith why do these freaks always love opera yeah although i found it kind of curious that really early on like page six seven palpatine oh my god yeah shut up he's trying to court the youth vote i have a child six seven two children he's described

21:23 as being as as having uh being a collector loving art yeah and i'm like who does that sound like someone who's using being a collector as a cover perhaps indiana to accrue artifacts some sort of figure at the central maybe some important yeah the central axis of something There's a funny part of the book where it talks about his collection of art and says, while serving as Supreme Chancellor, Palpatine was known to display in his office a carved bass relief of a battle between Jedi and Sith forces, which given what we now know of his force alignment is an unsubtle display of allegiance that was seemingly completely missed by the Jedi at the time. So this book has to dance around all of the various holes

22:13 in Star Wars. And he does it like a goddamn ballerina. He makes it look so fun. And I enjoyed every one of these. And I think it also helps to make the world feel a little bit more real in a way that like people make mistakes in real life, right? Like people are not infallible. We don't all make the most rational decisions. And sometimes your boss puts all of the most important people in the galaxy on one boat and then lets it get blown up. I get that. I get that. I did find it to be, especially around Palpatine, sort of like the flip of the switch from this very conniving, long -term planning, scheming supervillain to all of a sudden him being... so pompous and so arrogant and so obsessed at which he like he

23:07 makes a point to say he always was this way but that was one for me one of the hardest things to to get the the the retconning and the you know untying the knot of what's portrayed on screen that was one of the hardest things for me for me to get through was with regards to Palpatine but I did appreciate like the very clear corollaries that were made between Palpatine and real life figures and people that have subjected their ideas on humanity. Anyone in particular jump out at you? So many. Mike, any figure in particular jump out at you as your Glupshido?

23:47 I mean, I didn't really come in prepared with the Glupshido. It's okay. That's fine. But one of the things that I really loved was was their examination of Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin. Oh, yeah. First of all, is it Wilhuff or Wilhuff? Like, Wilhuff for food? I think he Wilhuff. I think Wilhuff. I think he Wilhuff. Like, because you don't, I mean, he's in one, he's basically in one mainline story and then makes a couple of appearances in Rogue One. But, like, they explore, like, this, the Empire. As much as the political conquering, Palpatine was in his own way a political genius at what he did. Getting people complacent, creating this war, playing both sides of a war so that he could consolidate

24:33 power. That feels super real to me. But the other thing that really jumped out was Tarkin. being a central focus of the book in that he was like the main military commander that the emperor trusted. And the idea of the Tarkin Doctrine, there's one line in A New Hope, which is fear. We'll keep the star systems in line. Fear this battle station. And they take that one line and he turns it into an entire chapter. And it's believable. Again, like every chapter in this book. Makes sense, even with the inconsistencies that appear in the movies or the stories. I found a couple of references to my favorite Darth Vader comic books, which are just, if you haven't read the Darth Vader comics, they're, oh, they own.

25:18 The Kieran Gillen ones? Yes. I just read those, thanks to the folks at AMCA. It's a great novel. Yeah, and there is an exploration of that period after the loss of the Death Star of like, it's kind of a workplace. Not comedy, but like it sucks to be Darth Vader's workmate, you know, to work on a joint project with DV himself, you know, and General Taggy. Just, you know, the Death Star was one canon, whereas Star Destroyers are the ocean. But yeah, like all of the terrible things that Palpatine did could not have been done so effectively if there were not the terrible things that Tarkin did. You know, Tarkin was, well, Darth Vader became like this symbol of the Empire. Like, I feel like... Tarkin is the

26:09 Empire. Yeah. You know, because he's the one using military might for the purpose of just power itself. You know, like they talk about the Gorman Massacre. You know, there's the two Gorman Massacres, the one where he lands the shuttle in the middle of the protesters, and then the other Gorman Massacre where they just, you know, destroy Palmo, you know, for funsies.

26:30 I don't know. Like, the exploration of Tarkin as... You know, he's referred to multiple times in the book as the military genius. And it does seem like after they lose Tarkin, that's like the downward slope. Tarkin was the real emperor. That was my takeaway. I was like, that was my take because he was the competent one. I mean, it's like what I was saying before, like Palpatine seemed to be super hyper competent right up until he became emperor. And then he was like, okay, now I have the power to do what I really want, which is to pursue immortality, which is very.

27:04 kind of ephemeral. Very Voldemort -y. Oh, yeah. But who came first? Yeah, the book talks about how Palpatine wanted to rule the galaxy, but he had no interest in running it. Yep, sounds familiar. Yes, yeah, exactly. He thought that he was going to just get to host a reality show after this, and instead he ended up being in charge. Maybe this could be a thread throughout the episode, which is that, for me, so much of this is just the Nazis. I didn't even think of modern day things because it's so clear that Tarkin is like Goering. That he is a person under Hitler who is sort of running the actual entire show. Who was good at what he did. Yes. Until the supplies started running out. I wrote this.

27:45 I think if I can create a universe character, it would be Antoni Burden. Because once you've been to the Outer Rim, you'll never want to stop beating Wilhelm Tarkin with your bare hands. Yes. My daughter's middle name is Bourdain. To take the Kissinger quote from Anthony Bourdain. Yeah. Going through the episode, I think I'm glad you three boys are here because I think you're going to get much more of the extended Star Wars lore stuff. Men. Three men. We're boys.

28:09 We're all boys. We have a fucking Star Wars podcast. You're a boy. You did the Tarkin voice and everything. I was going to ask him to do a Tarkin line in the Saw Gerrera voice now, Mike. Can you give me a Tarkin line to go over? I can't really think of it. I was going to say, ah. This base will be fully operational. This base will be fully operational. Do you want to choose another target?

28:30 A military target? Then name the system. I grow tired of asking. Where's the rebel base? So we'll wrap up with my... I've got two, if that's okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was shocked that my second one was not a unanimous pick. I mean, I've got another one as well. Okay. I didn't want to steal them all up top. The first, of course, is J080.

28:50 I don't know if anybody picked him up. He's the archival droid at the Galactic Museum of Archives. He's helping him do all the research for this. And it's Jira. Yes. Like the academic thing. What? I have a master's degree, not a PhD. JSTOR? I was thinking of JSTOR. Yeah, actually, that's what I was thinking of. I just like that because he talks a lot about how human supremacy is an issue and the fact that he wants to call out this droid who's helping him out with the book.

29:20 I thought that was a really nice moment. That's sweet. And number two is my man, man, Grand Moff Porrest. Who's that? Grand Moff Porrest. Let me find the following Palpatine's death and the realization that Mas Amedda was not going to work as a replacement. He contacted Imperial forces across the galaxy, declared that he was invoking superior Imperial security code 88173 .1, which did not exist to declare himself emperor.

29:51 His rule. which was ignored by the military, lasted less than three days before he was murdered by one of his lovers. One of. Awesome. Just truly created by the good author of this book. Isn't that how Samuel Alito went down? Yeah, yeah. Just, yes. Invoking a rule that does not exist is so funny. He just made it up. And just nobody believed him. He's just this own little guy.

30:14 He just had his little island that he was in charge of. I'm the emperor now. Guys. That little excerpt of yours did shout out who, one of, I think, the MVPs of this book, Mas Amedda. Oh, yeah. Who comes up throughout this novel. And for anyone who doesn't know. The Marco Rubio of Star Wars. That's your Marco. I love it. That's my, yep. Constantly drinking water. Just off camera. For anyone who doesn't know, Mas Amedda is in the prequels. He's the blue guy who's standing next to Palpatine throughout the prequels. With the little spikes on the end of his little head tendrils. On the top and the bottom of his head, yeah. I think of him as much more of a Kissinger figure who exists across ideologies. He'll be

30:57 with Nixon and then he'll end up being friends with Hillary Clinton. He's this figure that exists and adapts. I think the difference, though, is that the book lays out how everyone was kind of surprised that Palpatine... kept him around because he's an alien or i guess in marco's case that he's you know cuban or whatever or that he just didn't like trump and then as soon as palpatine dies no one wants him around anymore and they just kick him out exactly but then he ends up being the downfall of the new republic he does yes yes yes he does end up becoming a leader in the New Republic or at least giving them advice. I imagine in like a Hannibal Lecter kind of way and ends up feeding them bad intel

31:40 and giving them bad ideas. Do you have blue makeup to even out my foundation? So I think he's kind of an MVP here because he's all throughout this book. Yeah, he's all over this book. Yeah, I mean, and he's repeatedly referred to as inept. Like he's just a figurehead. He's just speaking for people. He has no power himself. Yeah, I mean, we can think of a few people in our own world. Like, sure, Marco Rubio, but can we get some Catherine Levitt in there too? You know, just the mouthpiece. Eminently disposable. I mean, the book. literally calls out the fact that like they clearly interrogated him and never got any understanding of that. emperor's plan to come back and also i i love one part where

32:28 it's like when you cross -reference the transcripts from the interviews with masamita with the meeting minutes of later new republic meetings you see a frightening correlation between the advice that masamita was giving to the interrogators and new policies that were being enacted by the new republic like one of the things that i would really like to dive into is the depiction of the new Republic in this book. Because that's something we have been fascinated by. We don't need to do it right now, but we're putting a pin in it that that's a thing I really want to talk about. I don't want to miss out on my, what we should have had was Menos Amedda instead of Mas. Thank you. I just needed to get that in

33:09 there. I'm glad you got that out. Maybe it would be better if I didn't saw Menos Amedda. Luther! I have another glupshiddo who's an original for this book. There's a part in talking about the transition between the Empire and the New Republic led to a period of lawlessness. And there's this story that fell straight out of Deadwood where it talks about the surviving civilians on Iver X looted the local Imperial headquarters, but rather than dividing the wealth between themselves, used it to hire a bounty hunter by the name of Zigen Myat. She was tasked with locating senior Imperial officials. who had ordered the destruction of their cities and dragged them back for summary justice. Miat had successfully captured two majors

33:58 and a lieutenant governor, officials who were promptly executed by the Ivarians before the new republic stepped in. There could be no charges against Miat or the civilians, though. What laws had they broken? What laws even existed anymore? That's a great passage. Yes, this outlaw. bounty justice is so fun. He reminded me of Simon Wiesenthal, like a lot of the Nazi hunters after World War II who were hired. Exactly. It's taken too long to get these fuckers. Let's hire someone to do it. And so, yeah, this book is just chock full of all kinds of stuff. Like, I don't know if you guys picked up on the little reference to what happens to Saw Gerrera's partisans after the death of Saw. They become the Dreamers, is

34:45 what they're called. They're carrying the dream of Saw Gerrera alive. And this apparently comes from the Battlefront 2 prequel novel. Oh, wow. Okay. So this is what I'm saying. I'm just reading this and being like, wait, that's what happened to Saw Gerrera's crew? That's what happened to Two Tubes? He's a dreamer. Although they all apparently died, so I hope he wasn't. I hope Two Tubes and Two Tubes are out there. I mean, is there any end that a partisan would yearn for other than glorious death in combat for the Great Rebellion? That's very true. How many...

35:26 long nights did this guy spend talking to our man Pablo Hidalgo? Oh my God. I can only imagine. I can only imagine that they were best friends or they hate. So in Lucasfilm, they have something called the Holocron that is there. database of lore information. Jedi holocron, I hope. Exactly. Yeah, I hope so. And so I think this book is partly a means of helping to canonize that. Yeah, help establish the canon, you know, for sure.

36:02 They have all these disparate points and they needed to go through and figure all that shit out. So I hope that Pablo had a good time putting this together. Him and the rest of the story team all get a very effusive shout out. in the acknowledgements at the end. So I think they had a good time. Oh, I'd love to see the holocron.

36:19 That would be cool. Just type in every word you could think of, every character and just see everything that shows up. Well, it used to be, that used to be Wikipedia for me. This was, this actually, I'm grateful to you guys for having us on here because this really kind of, this brought me back to like a simpler time. Like I, as I've discussed previously, Star Wars was formative for me, but there was, no time in my life when i was more obsessed with it than when i was a teenager from teenager going into college where i could like pretty reliably be found at whatever bookstore or library sitting in the aisle reading extended universe star wars novels and then i when i finished those i'd go home

37:01 go to www .wikipedia .com and just dive into those endless articles about obscure glops and events and and that was really glorious and this kind of brought me back to that because nowadays well number one all that knowledge from back then is not canon anymore legends yeah right it's legends and wikipedia is is a flashing pop up ad -ridden hellscape that is basically unusable and i don't know maybe i'm sounding uncle owen grumpy right now but uh it absolutely is to give me give give me back some of that you know Bottom of the iceberg knowledge that I don't actually need. If you use Safari, use the show reader button and it takes all the text and removes the ads. That's my pro tip. Let me brew your

37:50 grumpy Owen there. What I loved about this book was that there's references to the stuff you know. But this book is so much more concerned with ideas than it is about lore. That's the thing I love about Andor. There is the opera to it. There is the scale of things. Where Andor succeeds is by drilling in and making it about individual people. And then this book, I think, is a really worthy companion piece to the feelings you get from Andor. Yeah, I remember, you know, like feeling excited, like, ooh, they're referencing that one thing I remember him saying from that one line in A New Hope. But for the most part, it's just ideas. It's just like, this is what a real world analysis would look like. This is

38:37 what it would feel like to look at these events critically and to not get, you know, deep into like how cool the Incom T -60, oh shit, Starfighter is. Oh God, what is the designation of the X Wing? I don't remember. The fighter that killed the Death Star. Yeah, whatever. It doesn't matter. I don't care. I don't care. There is a chapter on, you know, fleets and starship maneuvers and whatnot. But it's, again, ideas. Ideas. We love it. Yeah, it really gets into all of the nitty gritty of how a fascist empire actually maintains order. over people and fails and how impossible that is and and one of the sequences of it that really kind of clicks things together is when it's talking about prejudice and discrimination

39:28 in the empire and there's a segment where it talks about how the galactic empire provided cover for those who bore virtually any conceivable prejudice the whole machinery and apparatus of the empire was predicated on the often repeated assertion that one of the reasons the republic had failed was because of the many diverse voices species and interests that pulled it apart only the singular vision and voice of the emperor could hope to moderate the desire of all species to further their own ends when they should instead focus on the longevity and success of the empire Yeah. One of many really resonant passages. Yes.

40:10 Yeah. That is the ethos of the Nazi regime. That is the ethos of the anti -immigrant Trump regime. Yeah. You know, it's just like one year. There's one special kind of person. There's one very special kind of person. And they're better than everyone else. And we need to eliminate or minimize their participation in civic society. Yeah, people felt drawn to the Empire because they felt their lives had been overtly disrupted by the high taxes and the rationing of the Clone Wars. The Empire provided a form of security against the chaos that had recently engulfed them. Many were prepared to turn a blind eye to the consequences the Empire inflicted upon others in exchange for their own personal prosperity. Yeah, what's

40:59 that Lyndon Johnson line? If you can convince... a white man that he's better than a black man he'll let you pick his pocket yes exactly and it's worth it's worth diving into as well like the farce of the separatist war against the old republic you know because like much of the earlier chapters of paul patine engineering this fake war you know, with real world consequences so that they could constantly ask for more and more power and minimize the oversight from the Senate more and more and say like, well, this conflict just keeps going on and on. You know, it would be really better if we just simplified everything, minimized democracy and just gave one person control over like how to best manage this war.

41:48 And, you know. Palpatine had engineered the Separatist War. And he created it to be an endless war, too, so that they could always continue it. His life will be endless, so the war will be endless. Yeah, there's a really interesting passage. I don't remember what chapter it is, but there's these mud troopers on Mimban. Which is important for Andor reasons. Yes, well... That's where Han Solo meets Chewbacca. Where Han Solo is in Solo. He is a mud trooper. We don't know where he was stationed, but it very well could have been on Mimban. We don't know. We don't know yet. But the point of the engagement on Mimban was that the Mimbanese were really well entrenched, had very creative war tactics, and were willing

42:35 to duke it out. And the empire could just be at a perpetual state of war. As Thursday said, back in 2002. War all the time, right? So then they could keep going to the Senate and say, we need more money so we can keep fighting these Mimbanese. You know, we need more and more Star Destroyers, more and more soldiers. If there's one thing that is common between the Senate of the Empire and the Senate of the United States is that they will always fund a war. They're always happy to fund a war. I also think this book does a really good job of, I think, what I really appreciate about it is going like, None of this like extracurricular space wizard stuff matters. The whole argument he makes is that Palpatine would have existed whether he was a

43:19 Sith or not. Yeah. And like to your point about racial issues, he talks about if all the humans in the galaxy had revolted against imperial rule as some of the species on their own worlds did, then the empire would have become far harder to maintain. The answer, therefore, to that question of, quote, what took humans so long to rise up is sadly, quote, because they did not want to.

43:38 Right. Fire. They were comfortable. He then also does the closest thing to a Star Wars land acknowledgement in the next page. That was really funny. Can we hear that? Let me see if I can find it. I have a space DEI. Where is it? Whether directly or indirectly, I, along with all other humans, have been the beneficiaries of my prestige and privilege that have been associated with my species.

43:59 Yes, I think it goes into reparations. Yes, I love the reparations part. It is undeniable that humans generally fared much better under the empire than the other species, yet still retained much of their political power. Having lost their worlds, much of their property, their societal culture and wealth and political power, what would meaningful compensation even look like?

44:21 The arguments that followed often focused on reconciliation and rehabilitation rather than restitution, which was deemed to be impossible. But is that really true? The New Republic went straight to Reconstruction and then half -assed it. Just like we did. Just like we did in our history. I also think something I always bring up is what are the racial or gendered or what's the oppression system within the Star Wars world and why does it exist? And he can't really answer that. Basically, but he does make a very compelling argument that if Palpatine is the head of this government, and he is male, and he is human, and he is the emperor, then therefore men and humans should be prioritized. Yeah. Thought of

45:04 that hearing one of your recent episodes where you guys were wondering about what is the corollary to racism in this world. And I remember always sort of thinking like, the people in charge of the empire, all white guys. No aliens, no aliens up there. I mean, it started as a budget, like it's budget issues. Like it's like, we can't have everyone be aliens. It's much easier to just have a bunch of humans around. Yeah. But now we have to back into this human supremacy thing. But it works diegetically. It works, yeah.

45:35 And one thing I love about the book is that it goes out of its way to talk about how much the Empire almost had contempt for its soldiers. It talks about how the TIE fighters were these cheap mass -produced ships that had no hyperdrive. They had no shields. No shields, no ejection seats. That's why I didn't want to fly the TIE Fighters. Give me an X -Wing, man. It talks about how 72 % of TIE Fighter pilots died within two years of service. That's an insane number to have. And no actual military would be okay with that, but the Empire just is willing to... throw its own people into the maws of certain death if it means that they can instill fear in the rest of the galaxy. Not only the grunts, but

46:28 also the admirals, like all of the higher -ups. No one is safe in the Empire. Your competency... is not ultimately what will save you. The only thing that matters, and this gets explored time and again, is loyalty, specific loyalty to Palpatine and his project. And that's an element that we see, you know, coming up throughout Andor. In the final episodes of the arc, like, Dedra gets really mad at Partagas for, you know, killing all of Krieger's men. But Partagas says, look.

47:04 we needed to get the taste of Aldani out of the emperor's mouth. It doesn't matter that it's bad and sloppy work on our part. We have to make him happy. And it's explored in the book. Like he says, we know that's what Major Partagas said. We know that it was more important to appease and mollify the emperor than it was to be smart about the enemy that they were fighting. You know? It touches on another thing that I think about. pretty often with regards to our current political situation, which is not, and this is not meant to minimize the damage that's being done. But I always have this thought of like, man, a smart tyrant would be, we'd be in so much more trouble. Oh, for sure. Yeah, there are no

47:49 Tarkins in our empire. If it was Tarkins and Pardagast running the show, man, maybe that empire would have lasted a thousand years. But then they can never, the contradiction is that they can never find their successor. Because if you have a supremacist view, then you can't. ever have somebody who's too good at it because then they might take you down right right which is why trump will rather talk about a third term than a jd presidency right because like there is no world beyond trump devoid of charm or charisma whatsoever maybe he's masamita yeah jd makes masamita look like uh look like jar jar binks masa coucha Oh, man. Did you see that we literally got the Star Wars version of the boiling frog

48:37 allegory? Yes. So funny. Here we go. The surviving ISB documents suggest that it was modeled on biological lessons where the temperature is slowly raised in the tanks of Klatoenian paddy frogs who do not notice they are being boiled to death. That was... That was a little... Because idioms, certain idioms cannot exist. Just say frog, bro.

48:58 They can't exist in Star Wars because frog... We have frogs. We have frogs. We got frogs everywhere. We got frogs on... Simulda ate some frogs in the market there with the food jar. Yeah, I think the book also, I think, does a really good job of just honing in on very basic questions I've always had where they're like, it's hard to do a Senate because all the planets are on different years and a planet a year is different on different planets and... Yeah. It's such a good yes ending where to the point where it starts talking about how did they, the empire put human supremacy into the public, into the schools. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And one of the things that stuck with me most reminded me so much of what happened with

49:33 indigenous tribes of we're going to make basic the basic language. Right. So you have to speak in basic. Therefore, anyone who's their second language then immediately falls behind in education and then becomes a rationale for why those kids are not as smart because they can't understand basic, even though the fact is they have to be bilingual. And like, it's such a small thing of like, yes, if this is true, then that is such a smart way of going through this universe of, like I said, you could probably go through this book and find the real world Colorado for everything in here, but you just have to put it in Star Wars terms. If you've gotten to this point in the podcast and you haven't gotten the impression

50:02 yet, we'd like you to read this book. It's really good. If you're interested in all of the things that we talk about in this show of how Star Wars reflects real life, real history, and also all of the weird nooks and crannies of Star Wars lore, this book was made for you. Should have said that right away. We did. We did. But we'll plug it now. Again, now that you've heard a lot about everything this book has to say about Palpatine.

50:32 That leads me to the question of like, what is the value of this book to me it's entertaining yeah but i think from like a i only have so many years on this earth cycle like would it have been better for me to read a history book about some an actual genocide or an actual or the actual rise and fall of the third reich would that have been sounds like a real bummer honestly right but i guess because like to me this i'm like this book is very entertaining if you know enough about star wars and you know enough about real history to be like oh that's this like you're almost club shitting I'm like, why am I globetrotting the Wermacht? Like the clean Wermacht theory should not be like something like, oh, it's in

51:08 Star Wars now. I think it's entertaining. I have enjoyed doing this. I just don't know what relevance this has besides as a creative exercise of how do I try and pull all this work together. That's true. Yeah. That's true. And I think it's one of the cool things about Star Wars is it makes things like this possible. But I agree with you.

51:31 I mean, there were elements of it that I found difficult on that front because my brain, when I go to Star Wars, my brain is always in story mode and storytelling mode, right? And so there's elements of this that are, you know, a little dry. And you recognize as you're reading it that this is for Star Wars people. Like, this is deep, deep nerd. nerd stuff and on that front i honestly for me the stuff that i found most compelling was when the sort of humanity of the author as a character started coming out yeah like the only time when i forgot I was reading a fictional history of a fictional galaxy was when he's talking about the atrocities, the genocides. And he's like, he's getting emotional talking about them

52:18 and talking about the cultural erasure. And it started becoming a little bit more about a character. But there is, I think, Alex, you make a good point in that there is for us as storytellers. There's a reason why generally, even if we plan out all of the backstory. that we only show the audience that tip of the iceberg is because it's a lot more satisfying, I think, as an audience member to leave stuff up to the imagination, to be able to bring some of your iteration and your creativity and imagination to the story as opposed to having it serve to you wholesale.

52:57 Especially when it's adapting. arcs of a tv show or recounting like the plots of films those were definitely the parts of the book that i would like start to read a little bit faster as far as like okay i know what happened on hoth right like i yeah yeah the emperor you know sent them to go get luke and they failed right like i know all this stuff it was all the little what i loved are when he's like picking out these little stories from throughout the universe. There's a part where it talks about Clone Wars reenactors and how the Empire was using them, allowed this to happen. It was one of the only ways in which they allowed Republic imagery to show up. It was because it pacified people. useful escape

53:51 valve for any lingering Republic sympathy. And it kind of kept the rich people from getting involved in anything else if they could have their shiny little trinkets. And maybe to Alex's point, yes, we probably would all be better served if we had read 377 pages of a actual history book. But it's still pulling through things that make us look at our history in a different way.

54:20 Let me clarify. If you were listening to this and you listen to this podcast, it's definitely worth reading. It's a net positive, regardless that there are other things that have happened in the world. It's just interesting that a book like this can exist in the same way that it's interesting how the fuck does Andor exist. I mean, I kind of went insane when I got to a small reference on page 189 where there's basically the Wookiee version of Showa. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

54:47 There's a 13 hour documentary about the genocide of the Wookiees. Yeah. And I'm like. The day the trees fell. Yeah. Which is basically just, that's the show up. Like you've just made Star Wars. I'm like, I don't know. Is that funny? I find this funny, but I don't know why that's funny. That like this Holocaust documentary now exists with Wookiees. What emotion am I supposed to feel with that? It's just connection. You're supposed to feel connection of like, I recognize the reality. behind the story. The retelling in this way is grounding this silly space opera that we grew up with it as action figures and video games and whatnot. It's like, no, that there's a whole ocean of reality and connection

55:31 to be made. In the lore, in the storytelling, you know, when you strip out John Williams' score, and when you strip out the acting and the special effects and whatnot, and you just dwell on the politics that Georgie Porgie wanted us to think about occasionally, there's so much richness there. I guess my question is, does anyone who reads this, I would say this book has a fairly, I wouldn't say Marxist, it does get into class a little bit, but has a fairly like left -wing view of history and understanding the failure of neoliberalism. What are fans of this book who are not political taking out of this? Are they just going to like the cool? Well, I think it could be a gateway. Yeah. I mean, like if

56:10 I think about, you know, say maybe a teenager who's really interested in Star Wars or really interested in pop culture and not so interested in history. Like me, I was, you know, I was a good student. I was interested in history. I would not have read. I would not have been interested in reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.

56:31 I absolutely would have read this book as a teenager. I would have devoured this book. And I would like to maybe give my teenage self credit and say that if I had read this book, I would have been like, hmm, I wonder where this came from. This sounds like, it sounds familiar. Maybe it leads me down a certain path. Maybe it does open up. an interest in history. So maybe there is value to it as a gateway to learning more about...

57:03 You're telling me that Star Wars is a franchise that should be designed around children and teenagers and not adult men? I think to Dan's point, this book talks about... You mentioned a land acknowledgement, right? We talked about restitution. We talked about all of these things that I think... especially if you live in a very polarized household, are maybe hard to hear this perspective on, right?

57:30 Yeah, I grew up in one of those. This book can maybe help to smuggle concepts like prejudice and genocide into a house that might not be interested in talking about it. Yeah, it's like Gramsci used the word praxis instead of socialism. Yeah, I mean, there are moments in here that made me really physically... cringe because they felt so prescient a lot of the gaslighting stuff like there's the bits about people in the new republic being basically alderaan deniers like holocaust deniers and i was like oh my god this just hurts we need to to dive into everything this book reveals about mon mothma because I think it very much colors, you know, the character that we know and love from Andor. But if you want to

58:23 hear that, you're going to have to sign up for our Patreon to get the full episode. Head on over to patreon .com slash andorgspod where for five credits a month, you'll get the second half of this episode. So head on over there and check it out. It won't be as good. What the fuck is that? Don't listen to Mike. Do you want votes, Mike? Because I'm going to end this by saying don't vote for Mike Van Gorder. No, no, please.

58:50 Please vote for me. Volunteer. Donate. Donate. MikeVanGorder .com. Dan, do you have anything you want to plug? And where can people find you? You can find me on socials, at Salgatron, S -A L -G -A -T -R -O -N. Most active on Instagram. You can look me up on IMDb and find the various animated projects that I've worked on, various different streaming sites and YouTubes and stuff.

59:21 Yeah, I don't know. I have currently anything to plug. Most recently, I was on a show called Unicorn Academy, which should be having another drop on Netflix soon. Very fun show. And yeah, I'm working on... Getting repped for my novel, my YA sci -fi adventure novel right now, which I'm taking out to lit agents and which had some success on the blacklist recently, which is very exciting. So maybe I'll just ask everyone to keep their fingers and toes crossed for me to become a novelist in addition to a TV writer.

59:58 But thanks for having me. We'd love that. Mike, you don't have anything to plug. We can just... No, I actually have a fair amount to plug. First of all, if you're in Burbank, please vote for me for Burbank City Council. Favorite to win this one. Favorite to win this one. Yeah, it's great. I want you to be our first elected official.

1:00:18 I mean, yeah, it'll be nice to have another DSA member in elected office because I've been working on these sorts of projects for literally over a decade. But yeah, if you want to help get a dork and or a leftist elected, please donate vanguarderforburbank .com or mikevanguarder .com. Follow me on Instagram, vanguarderforburbank.

1:00:40 And if you're anywhere in the area of the San Fernando Valley, come knock doors for me, please, because I'm not getting that realtor money. I'm not getting the, like, they spent over a half million dollars electing a MAGA chud in Burbank in 2024. We'll beat that. is boots on the ground in conversations. And we've already knocked, like, I personally, at this point, it is, what is it? It is, as of this recording, August 12th, I have knocked 1 ,300 doors by myself, in addition to all the others that the team has knocked.

1:01:11 We got a goal of 20 ,000 doors. I think we can hit that. But please, you know, volunteer, donate what you can. Yeah, grassroots, baby. We're going to make this happen. Hell yeah. And thank you for having me. So give me a place to stump here. It's our pleasure, Mike. Thank you all for listening. Be sure to rate and review the show on whatever podcast platform you're listening to it on. Thank you for being a subscriber to our Patreon. You can follow the show on social media at andorkspod.

1:01:42 Send in your questions to andorkspod at gmail .com. And we'll see you next week for part one of episode 11, Daughter of Ferex. Later, dorks. Later, dorks. Grandmouth Porus, shine on, you crazy diamond.