CT Aside from hiding, what military advantage was there for the rebels to be on Hoth?

I imagine Hoth would be the last place anyone would expect to look. Too bad that Imperial drone caught on to them!

 

Production: George Lucas wanted a battle in the snow, just like he wanted a duel over Lava in Episode III.

Story Purposes: The Rebels probably hoped that being on a remote ice planet would have made their presence hard to find by the Empire. However, logically, the Imperials would search systems that are outside the Empire; hence why there were Storm Troopers on Tatooine. Which then leads to the inevitably conclusion: Rebel Intelligence is not so intelligent.

Aside from hiding, my guess is that the Rebels hoped that the cold would cause technical problems with the Imperial Equipment. Unfortunately, it did not effect the AT-ATs and AT-STs. Nor did it effect the Snowtroopers or even Lord Vader's life support systems.

 

1) I thought that Tatooine was part of the Empire by ANH.
2) Inevitable.
3) Affect.
4) Affect.

 

The Empire has a presence on Tatooine, but I believe it still is under Hutt control.

 

Besides hunting for missing droids, the strormtroopers were also policing the cantina bar fight. When Luke and Kenobi were stopped and not searched in Luke's speeder, Luke wasn't surprised to see Stormtroopers on the streets. Kenobi was paying Han extra to avoid imperial entanglements, which suggests you have to go through imperial bureaucracy to travel off Tatooine... If the empire is policing and doing customs duties, you can bet they're collecting taxes to pay for it, so I assume Tatooine is subject to imperial rule.

Jabba may be powerful, but he's only described as a gangster on-screen, isn't he?

 

There's also a line from Biggs' deleted scene where he refers to how the Empire is starting to 'nationalise commerce', and that Owen will soon be nothing more than a tenant, so yeah, Tatooine is clearly under official Imperial control by the time of SW/ANH. A lot can happen in twenty years.

That's not to say that the Hutts weren't still powerful, but it was probably more accurate to say that by then they were the ones with a presence on Tatooine while it was under Imperial control, not the other way around.

 

My only counter argument is that in ROTJ there is no sign of the Empire. Wouldn't imperials want to have some Stormtroopers stationed at Jabba's Palace? One can rationalize that Jabba was granted some special arrangement with the Empire, letting him have his privacy, but frankly that would be against the interests of the Empire.

 

Two reasons:

1. Jabba's Palace was in the middle of nowhere, it wasn't a town or city, it was basically a private estate.

2. Jabba the Hutt was a powerful gangster/crime lord, much like a Mafia leader (GL has even referred to him as being like 'The Godfather'). With such people, even some of the most hardline governments find it easier and more beneficial to deal with them, rather than fight a hopeless battle to keep them under complete control - and possibly force them to ally with their opponents.

(There's also nothing in ROTJ to say that the Hutts are in control of the planet anyway - Jabba's just called a gangster - and every indication in SW/ANH that it's under Imperial control)

 

I know it's not canon anymore, but Shadows of the Empire dealt with this pretty heavily.

Basically, it behooved the empire to use Jabba in a way that benefited them rather than attack Jabba. True the empire could have just blasted his palace from above, but I don't think the empire wanted a Hutt war.

 

There's an element of better the devil you know, I'm sure.

 

Well consider this, how many planets are there in the whole Galaxy?
Of them, how many are inhabited and how many are uninhabited?
I would wager that the number of uninhabited planets are at least ten times the number of inhabited ones.
If they hide on an inhabited planet, they risk that a local alerts the empire.
By choosing a very inhospitable planet, the rebels might have figured that the Empire would overlook it as a possible base.
And Ozzel didn't think much of Piett's "lead" and had Vader not been there it is likely that they would have overlooked it.
Also, the probe was just lucky that it landed so close to the base. Give the speed it was moving at, if it had landed on the other side of the planet it would have been months if not years before it would have reached the rebel base.

Besides, what other options did they have? Sure they could all go their separate ways and loose all their weapons and ships. That would make them hard to find but would also put an end to the rebellion. Simply just have ships and move around? They would require some resources.
This does seem what they are doing in RotJ but then they also seem a lot stronger, with a lot more ships and the presence of non humans indicate that the rebellion has spread.

Bye for now.
The Guarding Dark

 

The impression I get of the Rebellion is of many different cells operating fairly independently throughout the galaxy. They do have a leadership which coordinates with the cells and is the political heart of the Alliance, and which orchestrates large scale operations such as the attack on Endor - and basically controls the Rebel fleet. At all costs this leadership needs to be kept intact in order to preserve the unity and cohesion of the Alliance, or else it will simply fall apart without direction and strong political leaders. It makes sense to hide them somewhere like Hoth or Yavin.

 

This has already been pretty well covered, but I figure to give my own opinion on the matter.

1. Hoth was probably a very unknown world where hardly anybody noticed it.
2. The rebels could really dig themselves in to it make it more defensible, though it did't work as well as they would have liked.
3. They could also use the ice tunnels to have secret escape routes.

 

Han and Luke were VIPs?

 

Considering they were instrumental in destroying the Death Star, I'd say they're definitely VIP by TESB.

 

Hoth was significantly remote. If it weren't for Vader, the Imperials may not have found the Rebel base on Hoth.

Admiral Ozzel to Piett: "We have thousands of probes searching the galaxy. I want proof, not leads!"
Admiral Ozzel to Vader: "My lord (Vader), there are so many uncharted settlements. It could be smugglers."

 

But wasn't that three years earlier? Neither was exactly a leader of the rebellion.