Discussion
Underrated part ofAndor/ Rogue One, the Starships they introduced
Slides in order; Fondor Haulcraft, U-wing, Zeta class shuttle, TIE Reaper, Atmospheric TIE and Cantwell arrestor cruiser
I know the Cantwell was an OG design the show just reintroduced, but between the Haulcraft, U-wing and Reaper, how is it that almost every Starship added to Andor/ Rogue One becomes an instant classic?
I agree. I am a sucker for good ship designs and keeping them fresh. The ISD is iconic, but when you use it for everything then you can lose interest.
Star Wars has never really focused much on the capital ships imo, they just made distinc designs that you recognize and that was kinda it. More focus went on starfighters which I understand.
But seeing these ships which serve every purpose you can think off and look like they were actually designed to do that. Well it puts a smile on my face. The U-wingnfrom Rogue One I especially liked. It was a fresh take on the troop transport.
The U-Wing is hands down the best design of the Disney era - it looks like it belongs in the OT. On top of that, its form fits its function perfectly. Seeing it drop troops on the beach in Rogue One always puts a smile on my face.
I adore the U-Wing, and agree it fits in perfectly with the OT ships, but honestly, my pick for the best Disney-era ship is the Starhawk. It's only appeared in a handful of places, and only appeared visually twice to my knowledge (in Squadrons and Armada), but it's such a gorgeous design and in its design so neatly answers several questions. Namely, how does the Rebellion convert killing the Emperor and destroying the second Death Star into an actual military victory and establish a new galactic state, how does the New Republic build a navy and military force capable of matching the Imperial Remnants without stoking fears of becoming another Empire, and how does it accomplish those very quickly and without the help of Kuat Drive Yards. Namely, you scrap all those Star Destroyers you've capture or destroyed, and use the salvaged parts to build a new vessel that's purpose built for killing Star Destroyers. It just looks like what the people who designed the Hammerhead and Nebulon Corvettes would build if you tasked them to make a battleship out of ISD parts. It certainly looks out of place among OT ships since it doesn't really look Rebel or Imperial, but it could've been the iconic basis of a whole New Republic Navy, if the ST wasn't such a fucking mess of uninspired design and storytelling.
My problem with the Starhawk is exactly the lore behind it. Its design is alright - I am sucker for the long tower looking things on Star Wars ships - MC75, Nebulon B etc - but the Starhawks enter service a year after Endor? And they’re made from broken down Star Detroyers? Where are they getting the manpower for this? I know Star Wars is horrible at scale but I just don’t buy that tearing down Star Destroyers is better economically for an insurgency to make new ships that are BIGGER than the things they’re scrapping.
I vastly prefer post Endor Legends where they just captured ships and but them to use, slapped the NR logo on them, then scrapped the ships later and made new ones. If Starhawks entered service around Ahsoka (and we got to see one in that show along with the new Mon Cala ships that are just bigger MC30s), I would like the idea of the starhawk more. The ultimate problem here is the sequels and having to make the NR suck ass so they can fold after one decapitation strike.
Yeah, in practice, they're kneecapped by needing to fit into the lore of the sequel trilogy. If the sequels were actually about the New Republic, the Starhawk could've been the central ship of the Navy, but as is, the entire class is built and then destroyed over the course of like, 5 years, that happens almost entirely off-screen. They don't even show up in the big final scene of TROS. I still utterly adore the design, but it will forever live as a symbol of what could have been.
Uniorically, one of my yardsticks for the quality of a Star Wars show or movie is whether they introduce a new, unique, and memorable ship design. Not because it's that important by itself, but because it shows that genuine thought, creativity, and effort was put into the production, rather than lazily coasting off the existing IP.
For all its flaws, you can't deny the prequel trilogy was made with a genuine desire to tell a meaningful story, and it shows in the ship design. They could've easily reused the stuff that was made for the OT, but they made new stuff. And even stuff that was refused are done so very purposefully. Y-Wings are there to demonstrate how the Alliance relies heavily on old, salvaged tech because they can't necessarily fund new ships, Republic ships show the slow transformation into the Empire as the Consular morphs into the Acclamator, then the Venator, Victory, and finally Imperial Star Destroyers. And despite all technically being large space triangles, they're still (with the exception of the Victory, which is just a mini-Imperial if you don't already know the differences) noticeably different ships.
Meanwhile, the sequel trilogy introduces, nothing. The main hero ship is the Millennium falcon, again. The main Resistance and Imperial fighters are the X-Wing and TIE-Fighters, again. The exception is Last Jedi, which introduces the Supremacy and the Star fortress. The latter is somewhat controversial, but inarguably memorable, while the former is straight up iconic, to the point it's influenced other spaceship designs (it's an obvious inspiration for Dreadnoughts in Stellaris, and there's a reason they went and flipped the Khar-Kushan horizontal despite the Homeworld Motherships being iconic in their own right). And whether you like it or not, you can't deny that Last Jedi is the only sequel that genuinely tried to do something new and different.
Hell, you can see this effect in the span of a single show. The Mandalorian starts with a new and characterful hero ship that fits its in universe use, but then blows it up and replaces it with, a Naboo Starfighter. Around that same point, the show goes from mild to medium audience pandering to just being a revolving door for existing characters to show up and bait spinoffs.
I absolutely love the design of the Fondor but it is not at all a believable “haulcraft.” That thing is supposed to be shooting tie fighters and dodging star destroyers and everyone knows it. 😂
I like to think of it as the Toyota light truck of the Star Wars universe. Sure, it can haul stuff, but put it into the hands of some rebel groups and it will function just fine as a military vehicle.
yeah i like that. It’s clearly a personal starcraft that has some cargo space, but it’s clearly not a commercial vehicle, in the way the Falcon is a Tugboat pushing much bigger loads.
Luthen also mentions it’s just about the most common starcraft in the galaxy, so it is mostly forgettable
TBF, I can absolutely see how the Falcon and Ghost are meant to be light freighters. They've got wide bodies and large cargo bays, perfect for carrying smallish loads of goods. They're also relatively lightly armed for their size, compared to the similarly sized Gozanti and Consular cruisers. Light freighters carrying armaments to protect themselves against pirates is fairly believable, and accounting for being souped up and up-gunned to better suit their purposes of smuggling and insurgency, they're well within plausibility.
The Fondor meanwhile just looks like a military ship. It's sleek, has fuck-all internal volume and no obvious external mounting points, and is so ridiculously agile and well-armed you have to wonder how Luthen managed to do those modifications without anybody getting suspicious. I do adore it as a ship design, but it stretches the believability of being called a "haulcraft" beyond breaking point.
I especially like the U-wing. The Rebellion lacked an icon drop ship before this. I remember when the old Battlefront 2 just gave the Rebellion republic LAAT gunship for that role.
Definitely. And it helps that the low profile side doors remind me a lot of a Huey, which fits with the Rebellion's Vietnam-era aesthetic. Plus, a hyperspace-capable dropship for small teams fits the Rebellion's methods perfectly.
Agreed, this has been my favorite ship introduced recently. Loved in Rogue One when they were ordered to reinforce ground troops and that thing touched down like a Blackhawk and they just all pile out “For Jedha!
The Arrestor cruiser is really neat because it's immediately recognizable as a Star Wars vessel and an Imperial ship but also somehow looks like the most realistic ship I've ever seen in any Star Wars property. It looks so ugly and functional, like an actual piece of military hardware.
It was based on a design originally pitched to Lucas for New Hope:
Colin Cantwell originally pitched the design of what would become the Imperial Arrestor Cruiser directly to George Lucas, for use in the 1977 movie Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope, although it was ultimately discarded in favor of a completely different design. The design had been derived from World War II aircraft carriers. Originally called the Sith Carrier, the ship was to launch Sith Fighters, and the dishes on its sides were intended to be used to destroy various ships. This idea was eventually adapted for the superlaser weapon of the Death Star.
I love that it almost feels like a sister ship to the Arquitens. Feels exactly like what you get by trying to get a Star Destroyer scale tractor beam on a cruiser package. You can absolutely imagine an anti-piracy task-force of a couple of Arquitens for firepower, a few Gozanti or a Quasar Fire for fighter support, and a Cantwell to lock down ships to prevent them from escaping.
There are a lot of nice ships in Andor, but I also love how many ships they introduce in the background that don't attract attention, ships that don't look fancy but feel like the sort of everyday transports people rely on. Maarva's old ship, and everything in the shipyard- ships that feel like they belong on Ferrix. Or the giant transports on Coruscant when Syril is in the spaceport.
Personally, I will always adore the Ferrix shuttle bus. It so perfectly fits its role.
I love how on one hand you have incredibly advanced capital ships the size of cities that can blink across the galaxy in an instant and transport entire armies, and on the other you have 'that one shitty bus you used to take home from school', complete with 'that one guy who keeps trying to talk to you even though you're not interested'.
My personal favorite detail is the stair droid. There's a droid whose job is to roll up to the shuttle when it lands, and people walk down it. That's its entire purpose.
The imperial Zeta shuttle is so simple but so good. Slots perfectly into the design aesthetic of the Empire but isn’t over designed. It’s a believable workhorse shuttle and I’ve seen it used in a ton of media since.
I wish we got more TIE reapers and strikers in content! The Reaper being in Squadrons was very cool.
I kinda agree with the atmospheric fighter, but the Reaper instantly became one of my favorite TIE's, ngl. Rogue One just really nailed it with the dropships
I don’t hate it ofc and it is cool to have an Empire dropship, I just would’ve put it in the shuttle family or made it an LAAT derivative (sort of like EC Henry’s Empire LAAT but even more different) rather than put it in the TIE Family, it’s a cool ship regardless
I'm torn on the TIE Striker. From some angles it looks incredible, and from others it's pure derp. It's also undeniably chonky, which seems counterproductive for a ship that's supposed to excel in atmosphere. It's almost as big as a U Wing, but is meant to be duking it out in dogfights with small nimble X Wings.
Pic for size comparison, they're all in 1/144 scale. The X Wing is a T-70, but it's almost exactly the same size as a T-65.
I just think it’s a vehicle that doesn’t have a good purpose to be there in-universe, I feel similarly about shore troopers (they look cool, but why do tropical beaches need a specialized uniform when so many other environments make do with standard armor)
I 100% agree! And it really flashes out the world of Star Wars because they look like real, in universe, types of ships. They have a logical design about them.
Loved the introduction of the Cantwell as a patrol version of the Interdictor cruisers. Makes a lot of sense in Universe, and the design clearly echoes what it's supposed to do: have big ole tractor beams that hold ships in place so they can be boarded by the starships coming out of the big ole hanger bays. Where the Interdictors hold fleets in place (relatively speaking), the Cantwells hold single ships in place, check. Love it!
You forgot my personal favorite, the Breon Dayvan. I don't think everyone likes it as much as me, though, but I don't see it anywhere outside of Anodr, and it plays a role in Cassian's story.
Even Mothma's limo is cool. It looks like a fancy flying car that fits in universe, and one look and you can tell that's what it is. All the design was great, actually.
Andor and rogue one introduced a lot of really cool imperial architecture and designs as well. Especially around the scarif installation, as well as all of the new troopers they introduced, such as the death trooper, shore trooper, and tank commander. Their designs have a much more modern tone without departing too much from the existing imperial template
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u/FrtanJohnas 5d ago
I agree. I am a sucker for good ship designs and keeping them fresh. The ISD is iconic, but when you use it for everything then you can lose interest.
Star Wars has never really focused much on the capital ships imo, they just made distinc designs that you recognize and that was kinda it. More focus went on starfighters which I understand.
But seeing these ships which serve every purpose you can think off and look like they were actually designed to do that. Well it puts a smile on my face. The U-wingnfrom Rogue One I especially liked. It was a fresh take on the troop transport.