Death Star tractor beam query

Hello, my name is Wookieesniper and I have not watched a Star Wars movie in 30 days.

*bows*

So I watched a New Hope yesterday after not seeing any of the movies in at least a month, and I noticed something I believe may be a plothole. When the Millennium Falcon arrives at the Death Star, it is sucked in by the tractor beam straight into the loading port, pretty easily imo considering it made the Kessel run in less than 12 parsecs. Then during the Battle of Yavin, 30 odd tiny one man X-wing fighters go to the Death Star, and the death star, for some bizarre reason does not use the tractor beam. I'm sure that the Death Star has enough loading bays, one for each X-wing, and could capture, interrogate and publically execute every single rebel in the attack force. But it doesn't. Can anyone think of a logical solution to this problem? Why did the Death Star not use the tractor beam on the X-wings?


On a semi-related note, if this happened on the Clone Wars people would be fuming 24 hours a day for a whole week

 

I don't think every single docking bay was equiped with a tractor beam, that would make little sense I believe. It would be a waste of time, money, and resources to have each and every docking bay have a tractor beam, plus they need places to keep the ships, on top of the ones it's already holding, be able to launch ships for extrnal defense, and trying to capture every single starfighter in a big battle would be poor strategy and just a big hassle.

 

Pretty much all of the finale can be attributed to Tarkin. He, like most Imperials, believed the Station to be indestructible, so did not care about the little damage the fighters could do to the outer 'shell' of the Death Star. As he was a leading force behind it's construction it makes sense, the defences were designed to stop cruisers not fighters because lol fighters. It was only Vader that realised what fighters can do, perhaps due to his own experiences, and sent out his own squadron to combat them.

Had Tarkin shared a similar view he may have used the tractor beam, but it makes a lot more sense to launch every fighter on-board, hundreds or thousands and to wipe out the rebels that way. Even when Tarkin was told that there was a danger he didn't care, in his 'moment of triumph'.

 

The tractor beam may have still been disabled, thanks to Obi-Wan's sabotage.

 

Yeah, the Imperials don't have a very good track record for being... smart. Even if they did want to use the tractor beam, chances are they forgot to turn it back on.

 

Plus, if they tried to use it on Porkins, it would probably break.

 

Ah yes I did not think of that

But thanks everyone else too for clearing it up for me

And lol