Working in the Depths
In "Narkina 5" (Andor 1.8), Cassian Andor is sent to an Imperial prison on the watery world of Narkina 5. The prison is an enormous mechanical structure located in the middle of an ocean and the prisoners are confined in its underwater depths, where they are forced to work in endlessly repeating shifts, unwittingly building components for the Death Star. When one group's shift ends, they return to their bunks by walking along a corridor with two paths going in opposite directions. As one shift ends, another begins; the work never stops.
The design of the corridor, with the two shifts walking past each other as they trade places, directly evokes the 1927 science fiction film Metropolis, a major influence on Star Wars.
Metropolis takes place in a futuristic city divided into two levels. The affluent residents of the upper level lead pleasurable lives, indifferent to the sufferings of the workers who toil in the lower level – "the depths" – to maintain the enormous "Heart Machine" that powers the entire city. In much the same way, the imprisoned workers on Narkina 5 toil to create the Death Star that will hold the Empire together while their suffering is hidden away from the rest of the galaxy (from the affluent residents of the city planet Coruscant, for instance).
At the climax of Metropolis, the workers stage a rebellion, flooding the depths with water while they ascend to the upper level. Water is similarly prominent in the climax of Andor's prison storyline. In "One Way Out" (Andor 1.10), when Cassian and the other prisoners rise up against their Imperial jailers, they escape first by flooding their workroom with water, shorting out the mechanical floor that shocks them for noncompliance, and then by climbing to the top level of the prison and swimming away across the ocean of Narkina 5.
EXPLORE FURTHER…
Shows: Andor
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Concepts: ascent and descent / oceans / underworld / water
Influences: Metropolis
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