Technical Difficulties

Andor is a polished, enjoyable, only slightly ponderous Disney+ Star Wars series about the first stirrings of Rebel activity against the hated Galactic Empire. Aesthetically, the design is “Star Wars Classic,” deemphasizing the fantastic. The intergalactic locales are all Death Star minimalism, earth-toned shantytowns, or conspicuously non-alien forests and coastlines. Yet exactly because it is fixated on “gritty” credibility and vibing with audience anxieties about present-day political decay, it actually rings more fantastic: this is once again a Rebellion that would have been effortlessly put down if the Emperor’s goons had the surveillance capability of the NSA circa Y2K. Almost every aspect of the plot depends on the fact that this universe’s literally sentient AI cannot help the hapless Imperial Security Bureau with basic things that our own contemporary tech makes sinisterly efficient: financial surveillance, inventory management, prisoner monitoring. In the end, it feels apt that Luthen “Axis” Rael (Stellan Skarsgård), the clandestine majordomo of the fledgli…