ST Death Star and Superweapons

It's a reference from the Ghostbusters movie, which has hordes of ghosts invading the material plane.

 

Okay. I've only ever seen about half of Ghostbusters, too.

 

Srsly?! Dude, turn off the computer and don't come back until you've seen Ghostbusters!

 

Indeed, Ghostbusters is great.

 

Right, which makes it even better than the Death Star. It's better than destroying a whole world and what it has to offer.

It's either a new weapon, or maybe the threat of creating a new Death Star. I wouldn't mind the Empire trying to recover the lost plans for building a new one. As long as there isn't an actual space station being built, it would make it different, especially if these plans were never allowed to be recovered and used again. Maybe this could be the film's McGuffin. Maybe Artoo Deetoo still has the plans buried deep in his memory banks but no one knows it. And since he had disappeared along with Luke, this will be the driving force of the entire movie.

 

I would prefer the MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) policy of the Seventies and Eighties played out. Both The Alliance and The Empire have planet destroying technology, (after all, The Alliance has the plans... Death Star proliferation is a Galactic threat) but both sides have been afraid to use them... Until now.

The Death Star has always been an allegory for Nuclear Weapons. Let's play that allegory out. If Star Wars is Myth-making, let us continue this Myth for Modern Times. At one time, Nukes were special, only The U.S., and soon thereafter the USSR, had them. But now the technology is in just about everybody who wants it's grasp. If North Korea can make a Nuke, Surely The Hutts could build a Death Star (even if it's not a "fully armed and operational battlestation") and more a "dirty-superlaser" (akin to a "dirty-bomb") that could be mounted practically anywhere, and still destroy a world.

 

After seeing that last, unfinished arc on SW.com, I'm starting to think that whatever the rumors are saying about digging up an old weapon on some frozen planet may be true. Maybe the new enemy is trying to build another Death Star, but securing another crystal took them decades to find.

 

That crossed my mind. On the other hand, if there was a connection then I feel that Disney would have chosen to complete those episodes

 

But...

Couldn't a ship just fly right into a planet while in hyperspace? I mean, if something the size of a Star Destroyer slammed into a planet at light speed... Good-bye all forms of life.

 

The EU had a Star Battlecruiser do that once - the Quaestor - it cracked the planet all the way to the core.

 

A Star Destroyer crash caused massive environmental damage to the Noghri world.

I don't think one could actually destroy a whole planet on impact.

 

I really hope they don't go the superweapon route, imo.

Because if they do, it just has to be bigger and more powerful than the previous thing....it causes Escalation. It's why Superman has so many powers. Every threat has to be worst than the last, so they come up with some new power for Superman to stop it.

KOTOR had the Star Forge, KOTOR 2 had the guy who "ate" the force or something...Revan supposedly is the most powerful whatever to have ever lived. The whole "most powerful"/"most destructive"/"Most whatever" ideas cannot go forever before they get ridiculous.

Dial it back a bit. make it more personal...make it more cunning. The prequels never relied on a super weapon...it was one man's cunning and influence that shaped the society around him that was such a big threat. Writing/movie quality aside, it could make for some compelling plots.

 

You can't really include Legends stuff though - the EU had a lot of super weapons but the main continuity has only had two, and one of those happened twice.

Super weapons aren't a common Star Wars thing - only two out of six movies had them.

VIII or IX might use one but I think Abrams will not have one in VII - he used super weapons in the last two Star Treks.

However, I'm sure if George had one in the treatment, that it is awesome.

 

Well, i'm not including EU as a way of saying that it happens too often, per se. I'm merely showing them as examples of writer's habits to introduce the all-powerful mcguffin into sci fi stories. It's an easy, convenient way to add threat to the story. But I prefer more subtle, complex threats. Into Darkness didn't really use a super weapon. I mean, though Khan was a Superman, he didn't have the ability to destroy everything with the touch of a button...he just had the ability to be one step ahead at all times.

 

That said, "Death Star Plans" appeared in AOTC and "Death Star Under Construction" appeared in RoTS.

 

True but it was only operational in two out of the six films.

 

Fair enough. Superweapons crop up a bit in TCW though - the fleet-killer Malevolence, the Blue Shadow Virus, and so forth.

 

So the Empire has a thing for superweapons. What's stopping them from building another one? It's been 30 years. That's enough time.

 

Resources may play a part - if they've spent the last 30 years being hammered by the Rebels, until only a few were left, they may have spent all their resources on fighting rather than building.

 

One can be cunning with a Death Star...

 

Maybe there's a reason why - like the ST covering the same idea, perhaps.

Right. And people are forgetting the other uses a Death Star has, which is destroying large capital ships, as well. To make a weapon look different but do the same thing would make the audience wonder why didn't they just make another Death Star.

 

The Death Star is a flawed design. Proven twice with its destruction.

 

Perhaps after 30 years, the imperials have managed to take the destructive capabilities of a death star and put it in a smaller package.

The Second Death Star wasn't finished. A big gaping hole that was the flaw was a gamble to lure the rebels there and it worked in their favor after the shield generator on the Endor moon was destroyed.

 

Yeah but from a storytelling standpoint (which is what SW is-a story) the idea is just horrible.

 

Superweapons are not only a part of SW, they are a part of Lucas' psyche. He is credited with evolving the idea of massive superweapons by many sci-fi genre writers and critics.

Will it be a Death Star? I would think not, but you never know. At this point, there is no canonical evidence to argue against the idea there were three more operative Death Stars at the end of ROTJ; with more on the way. The DS II's destruction at the end of the OT was significant because of Palpatine and Vader's demise, and a blow to the Imperial fleet. Now that sequels are back in the discussion, we may have to accept Death Stars or other technologically evolved massive weapons.