Legend of the Galactic Heroes - The New Thesis (S1E7): “The Capture of Iserlohn Fortress, Pt. 2”

The voiceover summary we start the episode with spends a lot of time on Shlumpy and the concerns that he may turn traitor like so many of his predecessors. The title of this two-parter makes it clear that this operation will be a success though, so if Shlumpy's going to betray the Alliance he'll either be caught by his own men before he can do much damage, or it'll be at a much later date. Speaking of Shlumpy & Friends, we then open on them standing on the bridge of the Trojan Horse ship, being given permission to dock at Iserlohn.

So far so good. I suspect Oberstein will be the one grilling them for hints of anything amiss. He was more skeptical than the two admirals over him, and back in the promotion scene he demonstrated a fondness for sniffing out disloyal officers.

As they pull toward the station, Shlumpy asks the two guys next to him if they have any personal memories from life under the Empire. Erm...shouldn't he already know this? Even if he didn't know just from living and training with the rest of the Ritter Rose, you'd think that kind of question would have come up when they were deciding who would play what role in this ruse. I suspect that this is clumsy exposition-compression from the novel. Anyway, one of them replies that no, he's a second generation refugee. The other just says that his grandfather was killed under suspicion of treachery, without saying anything about his own personal experiences. Shlumpy then reveals that he was six years old when his family left the Empire.

So, literally no one on the bridge was ever an Imperial soldier. Or even old enough to have gotten a sense of Imperial society from an adult perspective.

The perfect infiltrators, ladies and gentlemen.

At least the visuals of the ship entering the Iserlohn's docking space are cool.

But that doesn't make this any less stupid.

Battleship mating dance. Afterward, we see some SIGINT drones that the infiltration ship left floating behind it just outside Iserlohn's gravity well come to life and start quietly transmitting back to the 13th fleet. Aboard the Hyperion, Wen-Li infers that the silence suggests everything is going according to plan so far.

Inside the station, meanwhile, the infiltrators are telling the officer who receives them that they just barely managed to escape ahead of the rebel force coming to capture Iserlohn. The Free Planets Alliance has cooked up a piece of supertech of its own, and they think they can use it to neutralize the station's main weapon and allow their fleets to overwhelm its conventional defenses.

Which means it needs to go straight to the station's commanders before passing it on to the (brand new) supreme admiral. Convenient!

The admirals are informed...or, well, one of them is. Tweedledee is the only one onstation now, because Tweedledum decided to take the garrison fleet and go looking for Alliance fleets trying to sneak around the boundaries of their sensors despite his fellow officers' misgivings. Well...I guess it might pay off for him, if he does happen to find the 13th, but I get the impression Wen-Li is having it hang back a little further than that. When Dee hears the news, he gives the order for Dum's fleet to be called back to the station immediately...but they can't. Their communications are being jammed.

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How?

The 13th fleet is out of sensor range. How could they be blocking comms between the station and the garrison ships that are supposedly roving all around the system?

Is it supposed to be that drone that the decoy ship left floating outside the station's gravity well? That tiny drone? Wouldn't they at least have to seed those on multiple sides of the station to block all of its comms?

Hell, forget even those questions for now. Shouldn't the garrison fleet have noticed something was up the instant they stopped getting updates from the station? Even if there's a lag due to the distances involved (which I doubt there would be, given what we've seen of this setting's communications technology...), the instant they stop getting pings would be interpreted the same way as an actual distress call, no? Why even bother jamming them at all, then?

This makes even less sense than the last communications-jamming enigma back in the pilot.

In the absence of Dum and his ships, Dee just orders all Iserlohn crew to battle stations, extends the point defense turrets, and starts warming up the Mjolnir cannon. And also to bring the captain of that spy ship to him at once.

This triggers a little flashback, where we learn what the actual plan is.

The Rose Knights are supposed to take control of the bridge. That's...going to be a challenge, if they're letting the Imperials bring their commander there alone ahead of time, but okay. Also, they don't know exactly where said bridge is yet. Alliance intel has given them an incomplete schematic of Iserlohn Fortress, which has let them narrow down the control room to five possible locations. The infiltrators will need to get themselves brought to those locations one by one until they find the right one.

...

Okay, I'm just saying. If I were designing such a critical (and large) weapons platform as Iserlohn, I'd want to have redundant control centers. Make it so that any one of them can be locked out of the network by a consensus from the others, and all active control rooms need to be pressing the buttons at once in order to turn the Mjolnir gun on or off. Something like that? Maybe? I don't know, one bridge for something this huge and powerful seems like a real liability.

I'll trust Wen-Li's intel sources to be the voice of the author here and trust them that Iserlohn is, in fact, designed with one control center and no recourse if it's lost. I just think that that's dumb for the story to have done.

...

The briefing ends with Wen-Li saying that every fortress has a weakness in its defenses, any shell can be cracked with sufficient finesse, and Shlumpy replying with this jarring nonsequitor:

Okay Shlumps. Sure. Think of it like that if it helps you stay motivated.

As the conveyer tram thingy brings Shlumpy and a couple of his underlings with their Imperial escorts deeper into the station, they pass by a statue of Rudolf I that everyone has to salute when they move past it. The infiltrators do as the Imperial soldiers do, obviously, but doing so creates a hurdle when one of the escorts sees the wrist of Shlumpy's second in command.

Did they really not know this?

HOW could they have really not known this?

Even if not a single Ritter Rose soldier is an actual former Imperial Soldier (which I still can barely believe the story is asserting. If they're not, what the hell gives them the experience necessary for this op? Why would Wen-Li have gone through the trouble of recruiting them for this?) this is something that should absolutely be common knowledge. Even if the average Alliance grunt doesn't know it, their military intelligence agencies absolutely must, no way in hell do they not.

Then again, failing to communicate that information to spies being sent into the field definitely feels in-character for the level of competence of characters not named Reinhard or Wen-Li, so whatever. :/

They get out of this by saying that they had tattoos and other nonstandard body modifications done on them to help them infiltrate Alliance facilities, since the Alliance knows that tattoos are evidence against someone being an enemy soldier. Lol, describing a better written world than the one you actually live in. Anyway, it works and they're brought on to the control center.

Before entering the bridge itself though, they're taken to an antechamber, where they have to go through security before being allowed to enter. They're made to remove their weapons and pass through a body scanner, which detects a metal pen in Shlumpy's uniform vest pocket. When asked, he tells the guards that the pen is the one surviving heirloom of his grandfather, and that he keeps it on him at all times. They let him keep it.

I'll bet he filled the ink cartridge with a superdeadly poison or something.

Next, they have to scan the interviewees soldier ID bands. And, unfortunately, the Alliance fakes they brought aren't able to trick the computer. Shlumpy tells them that there must be a computer glitch or something, but they're not buying that. Fortunately, just at that moment, another soldier comes out of the bridge and demands to know what's taking so long, the admiral needs to speak to the spies now. He hurries them on through security without bothering to resolve the discrepancy.

-____________-

Guys. Telephones. I know you have them. We've seen you use them before. The spies don't need to physically be in the same room as the admiral in order to be debriefed. If there are security concerns, you can put them on the phone with him.

This is just...

So, the dumbfucks bring the other dumbfucks onto the bridge. Shlumpy uses his pen to take down the one soldier standing between him and Tweedledee and then takes the latter hostage with his own pistol.

When told that holding one officer at gunpoint won't be enough to take down the entire station, Shlumpy just smirks and launches us into another flashback.

They knew that wouldn't be enough, so they have another trick. There's an explosive gas used for deep-crust mining operations that's nontoxic and safe to transport, but detonates if it touches anything hot enough. Shlumpy presses a button on the intel briefcase, and it releases the stuff. Any weapons fire aboard the bridge will now destroy it, and probably the rooms next to it as well.

-__________-

Why was holding the admiral at gunpoint even necessary, then?

That whole stupid fight he just did with the pen, and the dashing over to the admiral and hoping he could grab his gun before he pulled it out himself? Why bother doing any of that shit? That introduces a MASSIVE possible failure point to the plan when he could get to the exact same end result just by releasing the gas as soon as he was inside the control room.

Also, did the scanner really not reveal the fact that the briefcase was full of explosive gas? Did they have a bunch of decoy papers stacked in there as well? Maybe they did, but in that case how much space was even left for the gas?

Does this superadvanced space navy really not use mass spectrometry for its security scans? That technology existed when the first LotGH novel was written. It's not one of those "science marches on" curveballs that the author couldn't have predicted.

When Shlumpy says who he really is, Tweedledee offers him a full pardon and an honorary officer position in the Imperial military if he switches sides now. It briefly flashes over to the Hyperion's bridge, where Wen-Li and Co are anxiously hoping that Shlumpy isn't going to turn traitor like so many before him. I might feel some real tension about this, but unfortunately the ending was already given away by the episode title.

Shlumpy's stated reason for not turning is, um...

Okay. Sure. If that's what motivates you, Shlumpadumpicus.

Iserlohn surrenders. Which I'm honestly kind of skeptical about. You'd think there'd be a mutiny over the admiral's decision here, but...I guess not. Jump cut to the 13th fleet just waltzing right into the station's docking bay and being let in.

As Shlumpy watches the ships dock, he reminisces about his family's flight from the Galactic Empire when he was a child. He was a nobleman, apparently, and was raised by his grandfather for most of his childhood. When he was about ten or so, his grandfather fell victim to a plot by rival nobles to frame him for treason and take his land and money.

So, he arranged for himself and his remaining family to take asylum in the Free Planets Alliance. There's no word on whether he himself managed to get out in time, or if he sent his family ahead of him before getting caught. It's established that he's dead now, but he was old enough at this time that he could have easily died of natural causes in the years since, so it could be either. Anyway, the point is that Shlumpy has learned through personal experience that being a well-placed and respected member of the Imperial leadership doesn't mean jack and shit for one's security, so he's not tempted to try to be one.

Back in the present, Shlumpy explains to his compatriots that the story about the pen was true. He always mixes a kernel of truth in with his lies. Because, in his words, lies alone may work on men, but women will always see through it if you don't include some truth.

...

Holy fuck is this guy one-note. Was he as monotonously like this in the books too, or is this Flanderization in action?

Maybe leaning into the playboy thing is supposed to be a defense mechanism for dealing with his painful family history. I guess? I dunno.

...

Wen-Li and his officers stride onto the Iserlohn bridge. They apologize for doubting Shlumpy's loyalty, and congratulate him on the sterling performance. Also, they just casually mention that they've stunned the rest of the Iserlohn's 500,000-strong crew with sleeping gas. Which...they had enough of on hand to gas the whole station with? I guess? Maybe the Imperials already had that set up as an anti-boarding measure or something.

Half a million POW's on top of the capture of the dreaded Iserlohn. Not a bad day. And all it took was a bunch of unlikely coincidences and the enemies all being so impossibly stupid that it's hard to explain why this wouldn't have already happened years ago.

Meanwhile, wherever the garrison fleet is randomly fucking around at the moment, Tweedledum gets a distress call from the station, saying that there's a mutiny going on and they need troop reinforcements aboard. He gives the order to turn around and head back to bail out Tweedledee's dumb ass, but Oberstein advises him to reconsider. This is a trap, he insists. The communications blackout ending just now and letting them get that one message through doesn't make sense for a situation where the station command is under siege by mutineers. Tweedledum brushes that off, because he outranks him so fuck you.

God, just look at Oberstein's face on the right there:

I'm at least fairly sure that he's supposed to be a bad guy, but it's hard to have anything but sympathy for him throughout this sequence.

So, the garrison fleet returns to the Iserlohn, and Wen-Li orders his men to orient the Mjolnir cannon into position.

...erm. They stunned the entire crew of this one-of-a-kind supertech weapon. I don't know how many of the 500,000 personnel aboard the Iserlohn were essential for operating the main gun, but I'd assume that there's at least a small-ish team of specialists required. How the hell do Wen-Li's people know how to operate this thing within just hours of taking it over?

Whatever.

Wen-Li decides to be merciful, and just disintegrates a handful of ships at the edges of the incoming fleet before telling them they'd better retreat; they won't be pursued if they do. Aboard the garrison flagship, Oberstein tells Tweedledum that retreat seems like a good idea if the enemy is being kind enough to permit it, and his sensor officer reports that the rest of the Alliance 13th fleet is coming up behind them. If they don't head back into imperial space now, they'll be flanked by a larger fleet and by the Iserlohn.

But, Tweedledum refuses. Of course. He informs Wen-Li that he must not understand the heart of a true warrior if he thinks his men are wiling to return and face the Kaiser having lost his greatest fortress. He orders the fleet to make a suicide run on the station, trying to damage it as much as possible before going down.

Oberstein, meanwhile, quietly boards a shuttle and puts as much distance between himself and the flagship as he possibly can.

On the Iserlohn, Wen-Li sighs and shakes his head, musing to himself that the "heart of the warrior" and idiots like Tweedledum who believe in it are the reason why this war can never end. He fires the big gun once more, this time hitting the fleet dead center and taking out the flagship and most of the vessels nearest to it.

Relieved of their idiot commander, the remaining garrison ships turn tail and run. By the look of things, Wen-Li managed to get away with only destroying about a third or so of the enemy fleet.

He tells Greenhill to contact Alliance HQ and have them bring more ships and personnel in to make the occupation permanent and deal with the many captured enemies. He's exhausted, and hoping to never command another army after today. And hoping even more that he won't need to, now that the Alliance has the advantage and he's made a show of good faith to the Imperials by sparing as many as he could. We're still near the beginning of the series though, so no dice.

Cut to the retreating Imperial ships, one of which has Oberstein's shuttle docked to it.

Oberstein is wondering what fate will await him back home. On one hand, as the highest ranking surviving officer he'd be an easy person to blame for this utter catastrophe. On the other, he can truthfully say that he was the one guy actually doing due diligence all along, and that the whole thing would have been prevented if he'd been listened to...assuming any proof of this survived the destruction of the flagship. Like I said, Oberstein may be a slimy one, but it's really hard to not be sympathetic to him in this two-parter.

Cut then to the capital building of the Republic of Fezzan, where prime minister Adrian Rubinsky hears about this development and has to reassess all his plans for Fezzan's near future. He looks a little bit less like Lex Luthor than he did in the OVA, but there's still a scare chord when he turns toward the camera like we're supposed to fear and hate him for whatever reason.

He ends up deciding he needs to have his sources on the Alliance homeworld of Heinessen learn more about this Yang Wen-Li character. Which strikes me as completely reasonable and innocuous, but once again the music and framing disagree. End episode.


One episode out of the seven DNT and two OVA episodes I watched so far has been anything approaching "good." The rest ranged from so-so to just plain stupid like this one.

LotGH doesn't look like it'll be winning me over any time soon.