Why Star Destroyer Captains were highly Incompetent

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[isaackim]

“How many a*holes do we have on this Star Destroyer, anyhow?”
The Deck Crew, “YO!”
Vader, “I knew it. I’m surrounded by a*holes.”

[thestanleys]

Chosen for loyalty rather than ability

[thorpeaaron]

I wouldn't consider getting force choked by Darth Vader on a daily basis a privilege exactly.

[dangerbeans]

The Rebellion: everyone working towards a common goal.
The Empire: everyone working towards their own self interests.

The Rebellion even took advantage of this by attacking targets in one Moff's territory, then moving to another Moff's territory.

[GGBlaster]

This toxic power structure may have actually served Palpatine in very useful ways. By getting everyone stuck in a Galaxy-wide game of dog-eat-dog, he lowers the chances of a group of officers cooperating and banding together against him.

[Yacovo]

An important thing to remember is that benefit of an act of corruption for the individual is always dwarfed by the cost to the institution. Cheating on a test helps advance a graduate's career, but lessens the capability of the position they will inevitably occupy. Skimming some fuel or spare parts to enrich a captain a few thousand credits could cost the navy millions of credits by reducing the capability of the ship they captain. Thanks for the video.

[g.williams]

I think a big part of the problem is that there just aren’t 100k people who have risen up the ranks fast enough to be noticed and put in charge of an ISD that have the required skill set. There’s also the issue of many officers being promoted beyond their competence level, to where they sit at the captain position. It’s a real problem with managers in our own world, a lot of them were promoted to a manager role because they were competent at their individual job but don’t have the ability to effectively lead, resulting in them getting stuck in the chain of command and continuing to do poorly as a manager.

[_Morphne_]

Crazy to think that all of this lore about imperial incompetence had to be entirely manufactured after the movies came out just to explain how the empire didn’t completely massacre the rebellion in seconds.

[blackbird]

Shortly before Vader killed him, he said Ozzel was "clumsy/stupid".

If Ozzel wasn't a Rebel spy, the novel "Choices of One" make him look like one because of how he messed up in "The Empire Strikes Back":
> telling Vader that those weren't likely to be Rebels: in "Choices of One", then-Captain Thrawn told Vader that the Rebels had taken cold-weather gear from an Imperial supply cache.
> dropping the fleet too close and getting spotted, resulting in the Imperial ground assault because the Rebels had raised their shield.

[Acekhan]

Now I NEED a SW: Visions short feathuring a rebel Toyota Helix with an E-Web Heavy Blaster strapped to the back, probably on Jabiim!

[captiannemo]

Generation Tech is knocking it out of the park the last two weeks

[shadushio]

To be fair, it's rare that anyone in a position of power isn't an a**clown. Unfortunately.

[arwinaBluKat]

I learned from the thrawn novels that a lot of these positions were given to people from the powerful families they came from. Which it made it even more impressive thrawn was able to get to grand admiral considering he had no friends or family. Eli vanto also came from wild space and was a yokel and was quite brilliant himself but would have stayed a supply officer if it wasn’t for thrawn.

[Celestial_Reach]

I love the pic of the toyota with a missle launcher in the back lol

[piercelindenberg]

Konstantine got out of trouble with Vader for the tractor beam thing by blaming the officer at the tractor beam controls.

[skyden]

Two things come to mind from watching this video, first the fact of a ship's captain, or in this case, a fleet commander, that being Admiral Ozzel, having the sole authority to deploy ground troops from the SDs under his command. This is seen when, during the discovery of Echo Base on Hoth, Darth Vader orders General Veers to prepare his men. Despite the order being given right in front of Admiral Ozzel, the general still, after Vader departs, turns to Admiral Ozzel and request permission to proceed as instructed by Vader.
This leads to the second thing of mind, Captain turned Admiral Piet. A very competent and cunning individual himself. His decision to bring the report of the Hoth scouting probe droid to Admiral Ozzel while Vader was present was part of Piet's strategy to expose Ozzel as the incompetent officer that he was, much to Vader's satisfaction as Vader already suspected Ozzel of being either a traitor or completely incompetent. Vader also recognized Piet's proficiency as a naval officer and so would immediately promote Piet to admiral upon "dismissing" Admiral Ozzel for being "clumsy and stupid." Furthermore, the loss of the "Executor" during the Battle of Endor was not necessarily Admiral Piet's fault, it was the fault of the arrogant Emperor Palpatine who had ordered Piet to not engage with the Rebel Alliance capital ships, only to keep them from escaping. This would backfire as the Imperials did not believe that the rebels would choose to purposely engage the Imperial fleet at point-blank range, which, although the rebel capital ships wouldn't last long against the Star Destroyers, they would last longer than they would against the Death Star, and they would take a few Star Destroyers with them; this would include the "Executor."

[sirboomsalot]

I also noticed that there are a lot of similarities between the culture of the Imperial military and the Imperial *Japanese* military. I’m sure that was a huge inspiration

[robertthompson]

i have always enjoyed the guy at 11:37 where he sees the Kendall Ozzel fall down he looks up seed who it is and was like NOT MY PROBLEM.

[taylorstillman]

This is the one area where Resistance showed another side of the SW universe. I know, I know... Resistance is nobody's choice for praise of any sort, but Tam's experience in the first order was a cool insight into the inner workings of their military structure and academy life.

[theislandsurvivor]

It'll be interesting to analyze the Flag Officer(Admiralty) Corps as well.