CT A Tarkin question

I'm sure that Tarkin and Thrawn were aware of each other. But I don't believe Thrawn became a Grand Admiral until shortly before the Battle of Yavin. It should be noted, however, that Tarkin was regarded by the Sith as Sidious' best high-ranking officer in the Empire. Sidious had manipulated Vader into killing Tarkin's son in order to make Tarkin a more vicious and useful servant. Since Sidious only considered himself and Vader Sith Lords, as the vast majority of his Dark Jedi and Sith acolytes only learned a smattering of his, though some like Mara Jade and Jerec learned much more, it has been said by some that Sidious, Vader, and Tarkin were the Sith Triumvirate. That may sound odd, given how Tarkin was neither a Sith nor any type of Force-wielder, but technically, Tarkin outranked Jade, Jerec, and the other dark side adepts serving Emperor Sidious Palpatine. Sidious created a confusing hierarchy on purpose. While Vader was ostensibly his second-in-command, that in itself was was ambiguous, since Sate Pestage and the Imperial Advisors, the Grand Moffs, and Grand Admirals all held considerable power over their respective swaths of the Empire. While in theory there was a set hierarchy, I think that things would have been different if Sidious believed that he could control Thrawn better and if Thrawn were far more vicious than Tarkin. That way, Thrawn would have been on the front lines of the Galactic Civil War, not in the Unknown Regions and fighting Zaarin. As it was, Tarkin was considered more reliable in spite of his vast ambition. Sidious knew that Tarkin wanted to supplant him, but I personally doubt that Tarkin would have ever been so reckless as to challenge Sidious for control of the Empire. Even if he had lived and won at Yavin, Tarkin would have gone down in flames as Gentis, Trachta, Zaarin, etc. did. Now, Sidious had liked Thrawn, as much as he was capable of liking anyone. Lol. But let's not forget that he was aware that Thrawn was as adept at studying Sidious as Sidious would be at analyzing anyone else. I think Thrawn led his Imperial resurgence/confederation more out of a belief that he could bring order to the galaxy better than the New Republic and because he was cognizant of the threat of the coming Yuuzhan Vong.

 

Actually it's even later than that - Thrawn was promoted to fill Zaarin's slot when Zaarin went renegade. And this was quite late - after TESB and Shadows of the Empire, but before ROTJ.

 

Ah, I see. Thank you. That explains a lot. Obviously, Thrawn was very helpful to Sidious by putting down Zaarin, among other things.

 

With Tarkin as victor (yeah, well it's the EU...he could have taken that officer's advice and gotten on a shuttle.) - sign me up.

 

I love Tarkin because he's not a cookie-cutter Sith. The original concept of ANH was power hungry politicians as villains, then ESB sort of retconed everything with dark wizards, which would become the sith established in the EU and the prequels. The older I get the more I appreciate the corruption in the Imperial government/military over the hammy Sidious. Not saying I dislike Palpatine (I just sort of outgrown him.)

 

Except in the films, Vader isn't portrayed as a number 2 of the Empire. He is more of a agent who does dirty obs for Palps. Even Tarkin seems to outrank Vader.

 

Except in ANH, the Emperor wasn't even the numero uno of the galaxy. Tarkin was. IIRC, the old script says outright that Vader is a fallen Jedi who was taken in by Tarkin.

All of that was retconned away by Episode V, tho. Now the Sith were established, the Emperor was the big baddie, and Vader was his number two.

Oh, and also Vader was Luke's dad, or something like that

 

Not so much. ANH was about the Sith more than the politicians until the final film and that was only because Lucas wasn't sure if he would get to do more films and a decision to have Vader be the servant to Tarkin, than Vader and two other Sith Lords running things. He wanted Vader to have someone that he had to take orders from which is why after Tarkin was killed off, Palpatine was brought in as an actual threat.

 

I don't think that was retconned away in E5; it was always in place. E4 actually has a couple lines of dialog referencing The Emperor: "The Emperor has dissolved the council... permanently" (Tarkin) ... "That's impossible! How will the Emperor maintain control without the bureaucracy?" (Tagge) ... "No star system will dare oppose the Emperor now" (Tarkin)

So Tarkin was not numero uno of the galaxy. It's clear that everyone on the Death Star is subordinate to the Emperor. Granted, looking at the movie alone, we don't learn anything else about him, we don't know that he is a Sith (i.e. force user), we don't meet him, or anything like that.... but we do know there is some guy out there that they're all working for.

 

In the ANH novel, it suggests in the prologue that the Emperor is "controlled by the very bootlickers he has appointed to high office" and that "many of them use the name of the increasingly isolated Emperor to further their own ambitions"

Another galaxy, another time. ​

The Old Republic was the Republic of legend, greater than distance or time. No need to note where it was or whence it came, only to know that ... it was the Republic. ​

Once, under the wise rule of the Senate and the protection of the Jedi Knights, the Republic throve and grew. But as often happens when wealth and power pass beyond the admirable and attain the awesome, then appear those evil ones who have greed to match. ​

So it was with the Republic at its height. Like the greatest of trees, able to withstand any external attack, the Republic rotted from within though the danger was not visible from outside. ​

Aided and abetted by restless, power-hungry individuals within the government, and the massive organs of commerce, the ambitious Senator Palpatine caused himself to be elected President of the Republic. He promised to reunite the disaffected among the people and to restore the remembered glory of the Republic. ​

Once secure in office he declared himself Emperor, shutting himself away from the populace. Soon he was controlled by the very assistants and boot-lickers he had appointed to high office, and the cries of the people for justice did not reach his ears. ​

Having exterminated through treachery and deception the Jedi Knights, guardians of justice in the galaxy, the Imperial governors and bureaucrats prepared to institute a reign of terror among the disheartened worlds of the galaxy. Many used the imperial forces and the name of the increasingly isolated Emperor to further their own personal ambitions. ​

But a small number of systems rebelled at these new outrages. Declaring themselves opposed to the New Order they began the great battle to restore the Old Republic. ​

From the beginning they were vastly outnumbered by the systems held in thrall by the Emperor. In those first dark days it seemed certain the bright flame of resistance would be extinguished before it could cast the light of new truth across a galaxy of oppressed and beaten peoples...​

​

In that context, the notion that the Emperor is ineffectual, with Tarkin and others being those who are in charge in practice, isn't incompatible with the ANH movie as written.

 

If you have to go outside the movies to describe something in the movies, then that either is a shortcoming of the movies themselves or something that the movies are not beholden to.

We could spend all day talking about the movies being inconsistent with the books. The ROTJ book establishes Owen Lars as Ben Kenobi's brother and that Anakin didn't know that Luke's (unnamed) mother was pregnant. Even the original ROTJ screenplay has similar dialog. But AFAIC since the movie itself has no mention of that, then it isn't something that any of the subsequent movies should be beholden to - and, as we all know, the prequels indeed threw that all out the window.

 

The dialogue about Obi-wan and Owen was never meant to be canon, it was just put in there as an explanation to clear up the backstory. That's why it was never in the actual shooting script and was never said by Guinness. The copy of the screenplay that's been sold publicly was just taking dialogue from the novelization.

 

I'm not talking about something Lucas said in some interview somewhere. It was in the book, but not in the movie. I think it is silly to argue about whether or not it was ever "meant to be canon" but all that does is prove that the movies are not 99.9% beholden to each other but not at all to the books.

 

It wasn't in an interview, it was during the story meetings about writing ROTJ. But what Iron_lord was saying was that Palpatine wasn't the big bad when ANH was made. The Emperor wasn't calling the shots in the film, but Tarkin was. Tarkin makes the decisions, not Palpatine. That's part of the reason why Lucas didn't insert Palpatine into ANH, telling Tarkin to use whatever means were necessary to extract the location of the Rebel base.

 

Neither Darth Vader nor Cos Da**** are Knights of Sith in The Star Wars. The Knights of Sith are minions with no authority and Valorum is a minor character.

This is why I find the ANH novelization intriguing. If that part wasn't made up by Foster to justify Palpatine not appearing in the movie, it means that, as you said, Palpatine wasn't the big bad in 1977.

 

Source?

 

I was talking about in the third draft, where there were two other Sith Lords and one of the ideas was that they were seen praying to a large crystal that was supposed to represent the dark side itself. This went through revisions and alterations and is what would lead to having Palpatine be a Force user in TESB.

Foster didn't write the intro. Lucas did. He just didn't have time to work on the full book.

I think that's in the story meeting transcripts for ROTJ, from the Making Of book. I haven't read it, but what I understood from the discussions was that it was included to clear up plot points, but Lucas didn't seem as intent on that being part of the official origin.

 

For what it's worth, I don't recall anything like this in MoROTJ. Lucas does joke a little about the backstory ("Richard M. Nixon was [the Emperor's] name") but I'm not sure of any reason to think that the backstory he gives in those meetings, the screenplay, and the novel, is anything other than what he (vaguely) thought would be in the prequels as of 1980.

 

Hmm...

I've got a scanned copy of a script of ROTJ entitled 'Second Draft', dated December 19, 1982, and the Owen dialogue, along with all the bits about Luke's mother fleeing to Alderaan are there.
However, this isn't a scan of the shooting script - which was the Third Draft, December 1, with GL revisions dated January 4, 1982 - the first page of this one indicates that it was issued for publicity purposes, so it's probably identical to the published version.

Now I'm really curious as to what was in the shooting script, and what might have been shot. It would be very strange for LFL to add such material if it wasn't even in the shooting script (as opposed to the earlier published scripts, which included deleted scenes and dialogue we know were shot), and there's nothing about the volcano duel, which, if they were taking stuff from the novels, you'd think would be the first thing they'd add.

 

Would be interesting if Vader was appointed to the Death Star by Palpatine as a representative but also just in case Tarkin realised he was in charge of THE most dangerous super-weapon ever created. At that point, if Tarkin had decided he wanted to go solo, he would have taken a lot of stopping once the Death Star was fully functioning. It would be a bit like a commander of a nuclear sub going rogue, but on a astronomically larger scale. If he realised/believed the Emperor couldn't actually STOP him... well that's a throttling courtesy of Vader.

Which has absolutely no canon support or even suggestion, I just like the idea.

 

I think there might be a certain amount of EU support for that notion though.

 

The very first editions of the ANH novel (which did not even carry that name) included verbiage like the Emperor was 'controlled' by the 'boot-lickers' who insulated him from reality. The empire was portrayed as a complete mess, with no one in charge.

"You, my friend, are all that is left of their religion" suggests the Emperor was not written to be a Force-god at that time, and his character was re-purposed to fit the sequels.

Although doubters would explain that away by saying that if the Emperor was always a Sith, he never really was part of the 'Jedi' infrastructure ... but this would not account for Motti's contempt for the Force.

 

That doesn't suggest that the Emperor couldn't use the Force either.

 

I love how they retcon it, because it makes Palpatine into a wolf in sheep's clothing type of character, which makes him even more interesting.

 

Agreed. I think it would have been all but inevitable. After all, who is in command of the Death Star? As in, who is actually inside it? Tarkin. What could the Emperor do against him?