... if Cassian likes his stay at the resort so much, I really don't begrudge him staying there a little while longer. He's earned it.

I will say that in addition to the episode being good as usual, I got my little happy moment out of the major deciding to bring in Military Intelligence to deal with that rebel cell Saw wanted nothing to do with. It's been in the trailer and was bound to happen at some point of course, but I've been looking forward to some Death Trooper action all this time. It might even be good considering how the show went so far.

Fear makes “the ends justifies the means” all too tempting for people, including the justification of “enhanced interrogation techniques”.

Not that I sympathize for the Imperials, but it is interesting how show has avoided talking about what crimes the prisoners have committed. Most are there from before the increased sentences. Yet it is all to easy to assume they have only committed offenses as petty as Cassian has.

Take the prison break. Some blaster fun, with those sounds we know and love, and indeed blasters we know and love. Yet…it’s restrained. It’s…realistic, so far as a sci-fi shoot out can get. People stood in the middle of the corridor…get shot.

When Gollum and Andor hit the control centre, their anger and menace is genuine. Yet they’re overall quite restrained. Also a nice bit of exposition that once shutdown, main power takes weeks to get back online. That such a claim seems…daft…doesn’t matter. It’s enough to move the plot along, and explain why they didn’t just switch the power back on. It also shows that while serious and desperate, and willing to kill? Gollum and Andor won’t kill for the sake of it. There’s no attempt to hunt down the remaining staff or execute the command station dudes for the sake of it.

Aaaahhhhhhh. It’s just so bloody good! More more more more more more more more more more more more more more.

I think even hours is an awfully long time to start up a functioning hydroelectric generator. I'm just going to go with mechanical issues due to the shutdown.

In fact, I blame the bottomless pit. I mean, no one questioned that, right? The prison is a tube in a lake or ocean with a bottomless pit in the middle that the water rushing through the generators flows into. I have no idea how that's supposed to work, but it looks cool and the Empire sure loves its bottomless pits. The Scarif citadel had one of those too, didn't it?

I'd just put the generator startup time down to having a complex system that's fine while it's kept running but has so many issues after an interruption.

Of more concern is why water on the floor shorts out of the floor. I’m curious what it’s doing that a person in contact with it isn’t. It’s needing to make connections the system normally wouldn’t. It would have to be leaks under the floor I would think since we saw the levels aren’t water tight.

Yeah, I'm not going to claim any worthwhile expertise either. I went and looked up the Wikipedia article that seems to confirm my hazy knowledge of power generation from whenever I picked that stuff up:

Hydropower is a flexible source of electricity since stations can be ramped up and down very quickly to adapt to changing energy demands. Hydro turbines have a start-up time of the order of a few minutes. Although battery power is quicker its capacity is tiny compared to hydro. It takes less than 10 minutes to bring most hydro units from cold start-up to full load; this is quicker than nuclear and almost all fossil fuel power.

It definitely seems unwarranted to go with such a long reboot time, but it occurs to me that it might be thematic instead of technical. Just like the Empire, its works run smoothly and efficiently as long as every little cog plays its part. But as soon as that is no longer the case, the whole thing comes to a halt and is no longer functional. The Empire is oftentimes described as heavy-handed, which is of course an apt general description, but when you try to look at reasons for why that might be the case, the suggestion might be that both on a societal and technological level it's just massively dogmatic and works according to a singular plan that must be followed no matter the cost or else it all comes crumbling down. It's the perfect machine and can do marvelous things as long as all goes well, and because of the need for all to go well, every effort must be taken to make that happen. And because every effort is taken, there is no need to question running the perfect machine over something else. It's the kind of circular logic that I could see the writers try to use to characterize the Empire at large.

Another thought, although this is baseless layman's speculation, is that modern hydroelectric generators are better than they were half a century ago. We mustn't forget that Star Wars uses Space 70s technology. You certainly couldn't stuff the computer that runs your Star Destroyer in your back pocket in the 70s. It might just be that the writers felt that a retro-technological touch was in order.

As for the button, button, switch thing, this is Star Wars. You know? Bottomless pits and no guard rails? Failsafes and workplace safety basically don't exist in the setting. Do bad things happen if you do those moves in that sequence? Yes. Is anybody going to do that? No. There is a technician on duty at that console and he is trained to know how his workstation works. Unauthorized personnel doesn't get to push buttons on strange consoles. Just tell them to keep their hands off that stuff unless ordered to shut down the power and everything will be wonderful. Failsafes? Pft. What could possibly go wrong?

About the water, the pipes behind the wall are made of metal, wet and have a constant stream of water connecting them to the floor. Possibly that's a way for the electricity to connect with the system?